Frieda leaves K.

Frieda's departure from K. is the decisive rupture in his already precarious position in the village, stripping him of the one personal connection that had given him a home, a job, and a tenuous link to the castle. The event unfolds on the night K. has spent at Barnabas's house, learning the family's tragic history from Olga, and it is Jeremias, the assistant K. had dismissed, who delivers the news and claims Frieda for himself.

The Messenger and the News

K. encounters Jeremias on the road outside Barnabas's house. The assistant looks transformed: older, wearier, his face fuller but more lined, his walk slow and limping, a stark contrast to the jaunty, galvanized bearing he had as K.'s servant. Jeremias explains that Artur, the other assistant, has gone back to the castle to complain of K.'s harsh treatment, while he himself stayed behind. He tells K. that he went to the school window, found Frieda crying on a school bench, and came to an agreement with her. Jeremias announces that he is to become a room-service waiter at the Castle Inn, and Frieda will return to her old job behind the bar. "There was no sense in marrying you, not for Frieda," he says bluntly. When K. tries to argue, Jeremias reveals that Galater, who was deputizing for Klamm at the time, had sent the assistants to K. with the specific instruction to "cheer him up a little," since K. "takes everything very hard." The assistant claims that K.'s callous treatment—leaving them freezing by the fence, nearly striking Artur dead with a blow, hunting Jeremias through the snow—made the job impossible.

K.'s Failed Counter-Arguments

K. attempts to regain control by threatening Jeremias, pointing out that neither of them has written notice of termination and that he might still intervene through his own connections. But Jeremias is unimpressed, saying K. is afraid of assistants in general and that Frieda had begged him to free her from K. K. insists that Frieda had asked only to be set free from the "servile, lascivious assistants," but Jeremias dismisses this as a lie. The confrontation is interrupted by the arrival of Barnabas, who brings the news that Erlanger, one of Klamm's principal secretaries, has summoned K. to the Castle Inn. Jeremias immediately runs off to get there ahead of K., and K. chases after him, taking his arm and saying, "Is it desire for Frieda that's come over you all of a sudden? I feel exactly the same, so we'll go at the same pace."

The Confrontation in the Corridor

Inside the Castle Inn, K. finds Frieda in the corridor, carrying a tray of empty dishes. She acts as if she does not recognize him at first, then looks blankly at him. When K. grasps her shoulders, she tells him to go back to "those—well, you know their names," the Barnabas sisters. She reveals that she has been taken back to work in the bar, and that there is no longer going to be any wedding. K. tries to defend himself, explaining that his visit to the family was necessary for their joint future, that he finds the dark girl's company as awkward as Frieda does, and that he appreciates Olga only for her efficiency and lack of egotism. But Frieda is unmoved, saying that the very smell of their living-room on his clothes shames her beyond bearing. She accuses him of leaving the school without a word, staying half the night with them, and slinking out by a secret way to spare the reputation of those girls.

The Final Break

K. shifts tactics, comparing Frieda's relationship with the assistants to his own conduct toward the Barnabas family. He points out that she admitted being attracted to the assistants and that he had helped defend her against them. But Frieda reveals the deeper truth: Jeremias is lying in her bed in her room down the corridor. She explains that he caught a chill outside, that he was her childhood playmate on the slopes of Castle Mount, and that once K. drove the assistants away, Jeremias, off duty and fearing nothing, broke the school window and helped her out. "Under my old friend's influence I couldn't help myself," she says. K. argues that Jeremias does not love her, that he sees her only as a small part of his main task from Galater, but Frieda is not persuaded. She tells K. to go to "those girls of yours" and says she will never come back to him. The scene ends with Jeremias appearing at the bottom of the steps in his shirt, wrapped in Frieda's shawl, looking like a patient escaped from the hospital. Frieda immediately goes to him, leads him back into their room, and closes the door, leaving K. alone in the corridor.