Chapter 9

In the Cathedral

A very important Italian business contact of the bank had come to
visit the city for the first time and K. was given the task of showing
him some of its cultural sights. At any other time he would have seen
this job as an honour but now, when he was finding it hard even to
maintain his current position in the bank, he accepted it only with
reluctance. Every hour that he could not be in the office was a cause
of concern for him, he was no longer able to make use of his time in the
office anything like as well as he had previously, he spent many hours
merely pretending to do important work, but that only increased his
anxiety about not being in the office. Then he sometimes thought he saw
the deputy director, who was always watching, come into K.'s office, sit
at his desk, look through his papers, receive clients who had almost
become old friends of K., and lure them away from him, perhaps he even
discovered mistakes, mistakes that seemed to threaten K. from a thousand
directions when he was at work now, and which he could no longer avoid.
So now, if he was ever asked to leave the office on business or even
needed to make a short business trip, however much an honour it seemed -
and tasks of this sort happened to have increased substantially recently
- there was always the suspicion that they wanted to get him out of his
office for a while and check his work, or at least the idea that they
thought he was dispensable. It would not have been difficult for him to
turn down most of these jobs, but he did not dare to do so because, if
his fears had the slightest foundation, turning the jobs down would have
been an acknowledgement of them. For this reason, he never demurred
from accepting them, and even when he was asked to go on a tiring
business trip lasting two days he said nothing about having to go out in
the rainy autumn weather when he had a severe chill, just in order to
avoid the risk of not being asked to go. When, with a raging headache,
he arrived back from this trip he learned that he had been chosen to
accompany the Italian business contact the following day. The
temptation for once to turn the job down was very great, especially as
it had no direct connection with business, but there was no denying that
social obligations towards this business contact were in themselves
important enough, only not for K., who knew quite well that he needed
some successes at work if he was to maintain his position there and
that, if he failed in that, it would not help him even if this Italian
somehow found him quite charming; he did not want to be removed from his
workplace for even one day, as the fear of not being allowed back in was
too great, he knew full well that the fear was exaggerated but it