Chapter 3 - Page 2

past now and I've nearly forgotten about
it, but at the time it made me furious. And now you tell me yourself
that you are a married woman." "It wasn't any disadvantage for you to
have your speech interrupted. The way they talked about you after you'd
gone was really bad." "That could well be," said K., turning away, "but
it does not excuse you." "There's no-one I know who'd hold it against
me," said the woman. "Him, who put his arms around me, he's been chasing
after me for a long time. I might not be very attractive for most
people, but I am for him. I've got no protection from him, even my
husband has had to get used to it; if he wants to keep his job he's got
to put up with it as that man's a student and he'll almost certainly be
very powerful later on. He's always after me, he'd only just left when
you arrived." "That fits in with everything else," said K., "I'm not
surprised." "Do you want to make things a bit better here?" the woman
asked slowly, watching him as if she were saying something that could be
as dangerous for K. as for herself. "That's what I thought when I heard
you speak, I really liked what you said. Mind you, I only heard part of
it, I missed the beginning of it and at the end I was lying on the floor
with the student. - it's so horrible here," she said after a pause, and
took hold of K.'s hand. "Do you believe you really will be able to make
things better?" K. smiled and twisted his hand round a little in her
soft hands. "It's really not my job to make things better here, as you
put it," he said, "and if you said that to the examining judge he would
laugh at you or punish you for it. I really would not have become
involved in this matter if I could have helped it, and I would have lost
no sleep worrying about how this court needs to be made better. But
because I'm told that I have been arrested - and I am under arrest - it
forces me to take some action, and to do so for my own sake. However,
if I can be of some service to you in the process I will, of course, be
glad to do so. And I will be glad to do so not only for the sake of
charity but also because you can be of some help to me." "How could I
help you, then?" said the woman. "You could, for example, show me the
books on the table there." "Yes, certainly," the woman cried, and
pulled K. along behind her as she rushed to them. The books were old
and well worn, the cover of one of them had nearly broken through in its
middle, and it was held together with a few threads. "Everything is so
dirty here," said K., shaking his head, and before he could pick the
books up the woman wiped some of the