He still had time. "Allow me," he said, and hurried between the two
policemen through into his room. "He seems sensible enough," he heard
them say behind him. Once in his room, he quickly pulled open the drawer
of his writing desk, everything in it was very tidy but in his
agitation he was unable to find the identification documents he was
looking for straight away. He finally found his bicycle permit and was
about to go back to the policemen with it when it seemed to him too
petty, so he carried on searching until he found his birth certificate.
Just as he got back in the adjoining room the door on the other side
opened and Mrs. Grubach was about to enter. He only saw her for an
instant, for as soon as she recognised K. she was clearly embarrassed,
asked for forgiveness and disappeared, closing the door behind her very
carefully. "Do come in," K. could have said just then. But now he stood
in the middle of the room with his papers in his hand and still looking
at the door which did not open again. He stayed like that until he was
startled out of it by the shout of the policeman who sat at the little
table at the open window and, as K. now saw, was eating his breakfast.
"Why didn't she come in?" he asked. "She's not allowed to," said the
big policeman. "You're under arrest, aren't you?" "But how can I be
under arrest? And how come it's like this?" "Now you're starting again,"
said the policeman, dipping a piece of buttered bread in the honeypot.
"We don't answer questions like that." "You will have to answer them,"
said K. "Here are my identification papers, now show me yours and I
certainly want to see the arrest warrant." "Oh, my God!" said the
policeman. "In a position like yours, and you think you can start giving
orders, do you. It won't do you any good to get us on the wrong side,
even if you think it will--we're probably more on your side that anyone
else you know!" "That's true, you know, you'd better believe it," said
Franz, holding a cup of coffee in his hand which he did not lift to his
mouth but looked at K. in a way that was probably meant to be full of
meaning but could not actually be understood. K. found himself, without
intending it, in a mute dialogue with Franz, but then slapped his hand
down on his papers and said, "Here are my identity documents." "And what
do you want us to do about it?" replied the big policeman, loudly. "The
way you're carrying on, it's worse than a child. What is it you want? Do
you want to get this great, bloody trial of yours over with quickly by
talking about ID and arrest warrants with us? We're just coppers, that's
all we are. Junior officers like us hardly know one end of an ID card
from another, all we've got to do with you is keep an eye on you for
ten hours a day and get paid for it. That's all we are. Mind you, what
we can do is make sure that the high officials we work for find out
just what sort of person it is they're going to arrest, and why he
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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