First Cross-examination

The First Cross-examination marks Josef K.'s first direct encounter with the court that has arrested him, transforming his initial contempt for the proceedings into a public confrontation that reveals the court's pervasive and deceptive nature. Summoned by telephone to a hearing on the Sunday following his arrest, K. arrives late, disoriented, and determined to treat the event as a farce he can dismiss with a single, decisive speech. Instead, he finds himself in a packed, airless attic room where the examining judge mistakes him for a house painter, the audience divides into factions that seem to support or oppose him, and his own oratory—though initially triumphant—ultimately exposes the extent to which the court has already ensnared him.

Summons and Preparation

The hearing is announced by telephone, with the caller informing K. that cross-examinations will follow one another regularly, perhaps not every week but quite frequently, and that Sunday has been chosen so as not to disturb his professional work. K. is told he must appear without fail, and the address—a street in a suburb well away from the city centre—is given without further directions. He hangs up without answering, having decided immediately that this first examination will probably also be the last. The invitation from the deputy director to join him on his sailing boat that same Sunday morning forces K. to decline, humiliating the deputy director and marking the first professional cost of the trial. On the morning itself, K. is very tired from a late night of drinking, oversleeps, dresses hurriedly without breakfast, and rushes to the suburb. He deliberately walks rather than taking a tram, wanting to avoid any help from strangers and to preserve his independence, but he is nonetheless running to arrive by nine o'clock.

The Search for the Courtroom

Juliusstrasse is a long street of monotonous grey tenement blocks occupied by poor people, with windows full of men in shirtsleeves, women with dishevelled heads, and children. K. passes a fruitmonger's cart, a gramophone playing a murderous tune, and a bare-footed man reading a newspaper on a crate. The building itself is enormous, with a tall gateway intended for delivery wagons. Inside the yard, K. finds three stairway entrances and a small passageway leading to a second yard; he is irritated that he has not been given more precise directions, interpreting this as either neglect or indifference. He decides to climb the stairs, recalling the policeman Willem's remark that the court is attracted by the guilt, and reasons that the courtroom must therefore be on the stairway he selects by chance. On the stairs, he disturbs a large group of children playing, and on the first floor he begins a systematic search by inventing a joiner called Lanz—the name of Mrs. Grubach's nephew, the captain—so that he can ask at every flat and thus look into the rooms. Almost all the doors are open; the rooms are small, one-windowed, with women cooking, babies in arms, and people lying on beds in their clothes. K. knocks at closed doors, asks for Lanz, and is often led from floor to floor by helpful tenants. By the fifth floor, he decides to give up, but then, angry at the time wasted, he knocks at the first door he sees. A young woman with black, shining eyes points him to the adjoining room.

The Courtroom and the Examining Judge

K. steps into a medium-sized, two-windowed room filled with a diverse crowd of people, with a gallery under the ceiling where visitors stand bent down with their heads and backs touching the roof. The air is stuffy and oppressive. A small, red-faced youth takes K. by the hand and leads him through a narrow passage between two factions of the crowd to a low podium at the far end, where a little table stands at an angle. Behind it sits a small, fat, wheezing man—the examining judge—who is talking with someone behind him. The youth has difficulty reporting K.'s arrival; the judge pulls out his watch and says, "You should have been here one hour and five minutes ago." A general muttering arises from the right-hand side of the hall. K. decides to do more watching than talking and simply replies, "Well maybe I have arrived late, I'm here now," which draws loud applause from the right. The judge, after a few words to close his discussion with the man behind him, reaches for a little notebook that looks like an old school exercise book, misshapen from much thumbing. He turns to K. and asks, "you are a house painter?" K. replies, "No, I am the chief clerk in a large bank," provoking hearty laughter from the right-hand faction. The judge becomes cross and threatens the gallery, his eyebrows pushing themselves up into big, black, bushy shapes over his eyes.

K.'s Speech and the Exposure of the Notebook

K. begins to speak, convinced he is doing so in the same manner as the quiet left-hand faction. He declares that the judge's question about being a house painter is symptomatic of the whole way the proceedings are being carried out, and that he acknowledges the proceedings only out of pity for the court. He picks up the examining judge's notebook, touching it only with the tips of his fingers as if it were something revolting, and holds it up so that the closely written, blotted, and yellowing pages flap down. "Those are the official notes of the examining judge," he says, and lets the notebook fall onto the desk. The judge grabs it, tries to tidy it, and holds it in front of himself. K. continues, saying that what has happened to him is not an isolated case but a symptom of proceedings carried out against many, and that he stands here on behalf of them, not for himself alone. He describes his arrest in detail: the two police thugs who occupied the next room, their attempts to bribe him and steal his clothes, the supervisor who brought three junior employees from the bank into Miss Bürstner's room to damage his reputation. He insists that the whole affair has caused him nothing but unpleasantness and temporary irritation. He then accuses the judge of giving a secret sign to someone in the crowd, and gives him full public permission to stop giving secret signs and to give his orders in words instead. The judge rocks backwards and forwards on his seat; the two factions begin to intermingle; the air becomes even more fuggy. K. strikes the desk with his fist, startling the judge and his advisor, and declares that he has nearly finished. There is immediate silence, showing how well K. is in control of the crowd.

The Interruption and the Revelation of the Badges

K. is interrupted by a screeching from the far end of the hall. It is the washerwoman, whom he had recognised as a likely source of disturbance when she entered earlier. A man has pulled her into a corner by the door and is pressing himself against her; it is not she who is screaming, but the man, who has opened his mouth wide and looks up at the ceiling. K.'s first thought is to run over there, but the first row of people in front of him stay where they are, no-one moves, and no-one lets him through. Old men hold out their arms in front of him, and a hand from behind takes hold of his collar. K. jumps down from the podium and stands face to face with the crowd. He now sees that the faces around him have dark, little eyes, drooping cheeks, and thin, stiff beards; underneath those beards, on the collars of their coats, there are badges of various sizes and colours. As far as he can see, every one of them is wearing one of these badges. All of them belong to the same group, even though they seemed to be divided to the right and left of him. When he turns round, he sees the same badge on the collar of the examining judge, who calmly looks down at him with his hands in his lap. "So," calls out K., throwing his arms in the air, "all of you are working for this organisation, I see now that you are all the very bunch of cheats and liars I've just been speaking about." He briskly takes his hat from the edge of the table and, surrounded by a silence caused perhaps by the completeness of their surprise, pushes his way to the exit. The examining judge is waiting for him at the doorway and says, "I merely wanted to draw your attention to something you seem not yet to be aware of: today, you have robbed yourself of the advantages that a hearing of this sort always gives to someone who is under arrest." K. laughs towards the door, calls them a bunch of louts, and hurries down the steps. Behind him, the noise of the assembly rises as it becomes lively once more and probably begins to discuss these events as if making a scientific study of them.