K. talks with Pepi about her situation

When K. wakes up in the dark bar of the Castle Inn after a sleep of over twelve hours, he finds the world around him has shifted. The room is warm and empty, lit only by the single electric light above the beer-pulls, and night has fallen again outside the windows. Pepi, the young chambermaid who had briefly replaced Frieda as barmaid, is the first to attend to him, bringing coffee and cakes. Her manner is no longer malicious but sad, as if she has come to know the malice of the world for herself and now speaks to K. as a companion in misfortune. She is decked out even more extravagantly than before, with a profusion of bows and ribbons threaded through her carefully curled hair and a necklace hanging into the low-cut neck of her blouse, but her melancholy is palpable. When K. surreptitiously tries to undo one of her bows, she wearily tells him to leave her alone and sits down on a cask beside him, her gaze fixed on his coffee-pot as if she needs a distraction to tell her story.

Pepi's Story: A Tale of Ambition and Betrayal

Pepi begins by declaring that K. himself is to blame for her unhappiness, though she does not bear him a grudge. She explains that by taking Frieda away from the bar, K. made it possible for her, Pepi, to rise to the position of barmaid—a post she had never seriously aspired to, having been a mere chambermaid with an insignificant job and few prospects. She had dreamed of a wonderful future, but she had come to terms with her lot. Then Frieda suddenly left, and the landlord's eye fell on Pepi, who had put herself forward. At that time, she says, she loved K. as she had never loved anyone before, seeing him as a hero and a deliverer of maidens who had opened the way for her to rise, even if he had done it unknowingly. She had spent hours whispering her thanks into his ear on the night of her appointment. She had even entertained the idea that K. was deceiving himself about loving Frieda, and that once Pepi had the position herself, he would come to plead with her, and she would have the choice of either listening to him and losing the job, or turning him down and rising higher. She had worked it out that she would give up everything and lower herself to his level, to teach him the true love that he could never know with Frieda. But it all turned out differently.

Pepi then describes the brutal reality of her four days as barmaid. She had prepared herself as best she could, borrowing an expensive length of dress material from a friend and sewing a beautiful dress with the help of two other chambermaids, working cheerfully and singing. She had also mastered the few skills required and felt quite at home in the bar from the start. The landlord was satisfied, and the takings were even a little higher than in Frieda's time. Pepi introduced innovations, leaving the supervision of the servants to the cellar lads and being friendly to everyone, unlike Frieda, who had kept herself entirely for Klamm. The guests were obviously glad of the change, and Pepi felt she was swimming in a sea of goodwill. A clerk called Bratmeier even gave her a chain and locket with his picture in it. But four days were not enough. The gentlemen are mostly elderly and set in their ways, and it takes them time to get used to a new barmaid, however much the change is for the better. Pepi still seemed like a temporary barmaid. The greatest misfortune was that Klamm, although he had been in the village for the first two of those days, had not come down to the guest-room. Pepi had waited for him in a forbidden niche in the corridor, her heart palpitating, but he never came. She now knows why: Frieda would not let him. Frieda, she claims, used her connections to keep Klamm away, sending the assistants as messengers to her old friends, complaining that she was kept captive by a man like K., stirring up bad feeling against Pepi, and announcing that she would be back any day now. Frieda also exploited her success with the landlord by pointing out that Klamm was not coming down there any more because there was only a girl like Pepi serving in the bar.

Pepi's interpretation of Frieda's entire relationship with K. is a masterpiece of cynical calculation. She argues that Frieda, seeing her status as Klamm's lover beginning to fade and her position in the bar becoming insecure, decided on a scandal: she would throw herself at the first insignificant man who came along, thereby attracting attention and reaffirming her own importance. The land surveyor, K., was the perfect, lowly victim. Frieda told him she was Klamm's lover, and he was lost. Pepi insists that Frieda never truly loved K., but used him as a tool to engineer her own dramatic return to the bar, making herself more enticing than before because of her scandalous behaviour. According to Pepi, Frieda's power of observation and decision is her special skill, and she recognized that the time was ripe to come back. If Pepi had been given just two or three more days, she would have been the established barmaid, liked and loved by all, and Frieda would have been utterly forgotten. But Frieda, with the help of pressure from friends and assistants, persuaded the landlord to take her back, and Pepi is now to return to her old life as a chambermaid.

K.'s Rebuttal: A Defense of Frieda and a Critique of Pepi

K. listens to Pepi's long, impassioned monologue and then responds with a calm, measured critique. He tells her that she has a wild imagination and that her story is nothing but a dream from the dark, cramped room she shares with the other chambermaids. He points out that her dress and hairstyle, on which she prides herself so much, are the fantastic outcome of that darkness and are laughed at by everyone here. He denies that he has been misused and betrayed, and he corrects her version of events: Frieda has left him, but it is entirely untrue to say that he tired of her or chased her away. He admits that he neglected her, but says there were particular reasons for that which he cannot mention here. He would be happy if she came back to him, but he would begin neglecting her again at once.

K. then delivers a sharp assessment of Pepi's unsuitability for the barmaid's post. He tells her that she is a good girl, but the post bewilders her because she is not suitable for it. To her, the job seems like heaven, and as a result she does everything with excessive enthusiasm, decking herself out as she thinks the angels are adorned, trembling for her post, and trying to win over everyone with far too much friendliness, which is a nuisance to the guests who want peace. He contrasts her with Frieda, who was experienced, cool, and controlled, with the expression of a landlady rather than a barmaid. He defends Frieda's relationship with Klamm, telling Pepi that she is wrong to think Klamm could not have loved Frieda. He says he would trust Frieda's word alone for that, even if he did not have incontrovertible evidence of it. He tells Pepi that her inexperience shows in her refusal to believe in that relationship. He concludes by suggesting that both he and Pepi tried too hard, too noisily, and too childishly to gain something that can easily and quietly be had with Frieda's calm and objectivity, like a child tugging at a tablecloth and sweeping all the beautiful things off the table.

Pepi's Invitation and the Landlady's Interruption

Pepi, undeterred by K.'s critique, responds by saying that he is in love with Frieda because she ran away from him. She then makes a practical proposal: since Frieda has left him, and he has neither work nor a bed, he should come and join her and the other chambermaids in their room. She describes the warm, cramped life they lead, the comfort of having a man to help and protect them, and the fun of keeping their secret. She promises him freedom in the spring, when he can leave if he finds somewhere else to stay. K. asks how long it is until spring, and Pepi replies that the winter here is long and monotonous, but that they are safe from it down in their room. Spring and summer, she says, seem as short as if they were not much more than two days long, and even on those days snow sometimes falls.

Their conversation is interrupted by the landlady, who enters the bar and seems surprised to find K. still there. K. apologizes and prepares to leave, but the landlady, with a strange, dreamy look, brings up his remark from the previous night about her dress. She is agitated and contradictory, first forbidding him to mention her dresses, then demanding to know where he got his knowledge of them. She leads him into her private office, where she shows him a wardrobe full of dresses—dark, grey, brown, and black, all carefully hung up—and tells him she has two more wardrobes full of them upstairs. She accuses him of being a fool, a child, or a very bad, dangerous man, and then dismisses him, but not before telling him that she is having a new dress delivered tomorrow and that she might let him go and fetch it. As K. leaves the office, Gerstäcker, who has been waiting in the hall, seizes his sleeve and insists on taking him away, revealing that he needs K. to help with his horses and to bring influence to bear on Erlanger. K., laughing, takes Gerstäcker's arm and lets himself be led through the darkness.