forcibly reminded himself that the grin was not deliberate, that he in
fact wasn't able to grin deliberately. At that moment Mrs. Grubach
opened the door from the hallway into the living room where all the
people were. She did not seem to feel guilty about anything at all, and
K., as often before, looked down at the belt of her apron which, for no
reason, cut so deeply into her hefty body. Once downstairs, K., with his
watch in his hand, decided to take a taxi--he had already been delayed
by half an hour and there was no need to make the delay any longer.
Kaminer ran to the corner to summon it, and the two others were making
obvious efforts to keep K. diverted when Kullich pointed to the doorway
of the house on the other side of the street where the large man with
the blonde goatee beard appeared and, a little embarrassed at first at
letting himself be seen in his full height, stepped back to the wall and
leant against it. The old couple were probably still on the stairs. K.
was cross with Kullich for pointing out this man whom he had already
seen himself, in fact whom he had been expecting. "Don't look at him!"
he snapped, without noticing how odd it was to speak to free men in this
way. But there was no explanation needed anyway as just then the taxi
arrived, they sat inside and set off. Inside the taxi, K. remembered
that he had not noticed the supervisor and the policemen leaving--the
supervisor had stopped him noticing the three bank staff and now the
three bank staff had stopped him noticing the supervisor. This showed
that K. was not very attentive, and he resolved to watch himself more
carefully in this respect. Nonetheless, he gave it no thought as he
twisted himself round and leant over onto the rear shelf of the car to
catch sight of the supervisor and the policemen if he could. But he
turned back round straight away and leant comfortably into the corner of
the taxi without even having made the effort to see anyone. Although it
did not seem like it, now was just the time when he needed some
encouragement, but the gentlemen seemed tired just then, Rabensteiner
looked out of the car to the right, Kullich to the left and only Kaminer
was there with his grin at K.'s service. It would have been inhumane to
make fun of that.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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