Arrest (Chapter One)

Someone must have been spreading lies about Josef K., for one morning, though he had done nothing wrong, he was arrested.

The cook of his landlady, Frau Grubach, who brought him his breakfast every day at eight, did not come this time. That had never happened before. K. waited a little while, saw from his pillow the old woman who lived opposite watching him with a curiosity quite unusual for her, and then, both annoyed and hungry, rang the bell. At once there was a knock at the door, and a man came in whom he had never seen before in the flat. He was thin but solidly made, in a tight black suit fitted out, like clothes for travelling, with every kind of fold and pocket and buckle and button, and a belt besides — a suit that looked extremely useful, though for what, no one could have said.

"Who are you?" asked K., half sitting up in bed. But the man ignored the question, as though his appearance had to be accepted, and merely said: "You rang?"

He and a second man — the warders, Franz and Willem — told K. that he was under arrest. For what? They could not say. They were minor officials; they knew nothing; they had their orders. Proceedings had been started, and he would learn everything in due course. Meanwhile they ate his breakfast in the next room, and suggested that he hand over his good underwear to them for safekeeping, since it would otherwise only be stolen at the depot; and they advised him to wear his best black coat.

K. looked for his papers to prove who he was, and could find only his bicycle licence; he went on looking and found his birth certificate, and held it out triumphantly. The warders were not interested. "What do we care about papers? We are humble subordinates who can hardly read a document. We're paid to guard you for ten hours a day." The authorities they served, they said, never went looking for guilt among the population, but were, as the law stated, drawn by guilt, and had to send out warders. That was the law. "I don't know this law," said K. "So much the worse for you," said the warder. K. thought of telephoning his friend Hasterer, the public prosecutor; and in the window across the street the old woman had been joined by an old man, and then by another, all three watching.

It was K.'s thirtieth birthday. He was the chief clerk — the Prokurist — of a large bank, an important man, a man with prospects, who lived in a furnished room in a respectable lodging house. He thought it must be a joke, organised by his colleagues for his birthday. It was not a joke. In the room of the young lady next door, Fräulein Bürstner, a typist, who had gone out early, an inspector was sitting at her little table, with her things — a candle, a box of matches, a book and a pincushion — arranged in front of him as if he needed them for the hearing. Three young men were standing by her photographs, looking at them: K. recognised them, after a while, as three junior clerks from his own bank — Rabensteiner, Kullich and Kaminer.

The inspector was polite, and told him nothing. "I can't tell you that you're accused of anything, or rather I don't know if you are. You're under arrest, that's true, but that's all I know." And he added: "This shouldn't stop you from going about your business. You'll be able to lead your ordinary life." "So being under arrest isn't so bad after all," said K. "I never said that it was," said the inspector.

He was not interested in K.'s explanations, or his indignation, or his threat to telephone the prosecutor. "By all means telephone," he said; "but I don't see what sense there would be in it." He advised K. to think less about the warders and the inspector and more about himself, and not to make so much noise about his innocence: it spoiled the good impression he otherwise made.

So K. went to the bank, in a taxi, with the three clerks, who had been sent along to make his arrival there seem less conspicuous.

That evening he came home late, and spoke with Frau Grubach, who was respectful and sympathetic. It seemed to her, she said, something learned — something she did not understand, and did not need to understand. Then he waited up for Fräulein Bürstner, to apologise for the disturbance in her room. She came in near midnight, tired, a little amused. He told her what had happened, acting out the scene, shouting his own name as the inspector had — so loudly that someone in the next room knocked on the wall. She was frightened that her reputation would suffer. K. reassured her; and then, as she went to the door, he rushed at her and kissed her on the mouth and then all over her face, like a thirsty animal whose tongue races over spring water it has found at last. Then he went to bed and fell asleep almost at once, thinking with satisfaction about his conduct, though surprised that he was not more satisfied.