One morning Karl pushed the Bath chair in which Brunelda sat out of the gate. It was rather later than he had planned. They had agreed to arrange the exodus for night-time, to attract none of the attention in the street which would have been inevitable by day, however demurely Brunelda offered to cover herself with a large grey cloth. But getting her down the steps had taken too long, in spite of the eager cooperation of the student, who, as it now transpired, was nothing like as strong as Karl. Brunelda comported herself very bravely, hardly groaning at all, and trying in every way to make it easier for her two bearers. But there was no other way of doing it than setting her down on every fifth step, to give themselves, and her too, time for a minimal rest. It was a chilly morning, a cold subterranean sort of breeze was blowing in the corridors, but Karl and the student were covered in sweat, and each time they stopped kept having to wipe their faces with a corner of Brunelda’s cloth, which she kindly let them have. And so it was fully two hours till they reached the bottom, where the little handcart had been waiting since the previous evening. The lifting of Brunelda into it was again a laborious process, but then one could see the whole enterprise as crowned with success, because the pushing of the wagon couldn’t be that difficult, with its high wheels, although there was always the chance that the wagon might fall apart under Brunelda’s weight. That was a risk that had to be taken, though, one could hardly travel with a spare conveyance, although the student had half jokingly volunteered to get hold of one and push it. Next they had to take leave of the student, which was actually very cordial. All the past disagreements between Brunelda and the student appeared forgotten, he even apologized for the old insult to Brunelda he had perpetrated during her illness, but Brunelda said that had been long forgotten and more than made up for. She ended up asking the student to be so good as to accept a dollar from her as a keepsake, which she had some trouble finding among her skirts. In the light of Brunelda’s famous avarice, this gift was really very significant, and the student was quite delighted with it, and in his delight tossed the coin high up in the air. Then, though, he had to look for it on the ground, and Karl had to help him, and it was Karl in the end who found it under Brunelda’s cart. The farewell between the student and Karl was of course much more straightforward, they simply shook hands, and said they were sure they would meet again, by which time at least one of them – the student insisted it would be Karl, Karl that it would be the student – would have achieved fame, as unfortunately hadn’t happened yet. Then Karl, in good heart, picked up the wagon handle, and pushed it out of the gate. The student watched them as long as they were in sight, and waved his handkerchief. Karl frequently turned round and nodded goodbye, even Brunelda would have liked to turn round, but such a movement was too strenuous for her. At the end of the street, in order to make a last farewell possible for her, Karl described a circle with the wagon, so that Brunelda could see the student too, who used the opportunity to wave especially vigorously with his handkerchief.
But then Karl said they mustn’t have any more stops, they had a long way ahead of them, and had set out much later than they’d meant to. And indeed, one could already see the occasional vehicle, and even the odd pedestrian too, on his way to work. Karl had meant nothing more by his remark than what he had said, but Brunelda with her sensitivity had a different interpretation and completely covered herself with her grey cloth. Karl made no objection; a handcart with a grey cloth draped over it was still a very arresting sight but incomparably less than a clearly visible Brunelda would have been. He navigated very carefully; before turning a corner, he would look down the street; if it seemed necessary, he even left the wagon and went on alone a few paces, if he could see some potentially disagreeable encounter looming, then he waited until it might be avoided, or even followed a different route down a new street. But even then, as he’d previously studied all possible routes in detail, he never risked making a long detour. Even so, there were obstacles that might have been anticipated, but couldn’t be foreseen individually. Suddenly, for instance, in a street that climbed gently, enjoyed good visibility, and was happily completely deserted, something that Karl sought to make the most of by especial haste, a policeman emerged from the dark corner of an entry way, and asked Karl what he was pushing in his carefully covered cart. Though he had looked quite stern to begin with, he had to smile when he lifted the cloth and saw the hot and apprehensive form of Brunelda. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘There I was thinking you had about ten sacks of potatoes, and it’s just one female? Where are you headed for? Who are you?’ Brunelda didn’t even dare look at the policeman, but kept her eyes on Karl, evidently doubting that even he would be able to save her. But Karl had had enough dealings with policemen, the whole affair didn’t seem so terribly threatening to him. ‘Miss, why don’t you show him’, he said, ‘the piece of paper you were given?’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Brunelda, and started looking, but in such a hopeless fashion that she really would arouse suspicion. ‘Miss’, said the policeman with manifest irony, ‘seems unable to find her paper.’ ‘Not at all,’ said Karl calmly, ‘she’s got it all right, she’s just mislaid it.’ He began looking for it himself, and soon pulled it out from behind Brunelda’s back. The policeman gave it a perfunctory glance. ‘So that’s you, is it,’ said the policeman with a smile, ‘Miss? And what about you, little fellow, in charge of transport and arrangements? Can’t you find any better occupation?’ Karl merely shrugged his shoulders, that was just typical police nosiness. ‘Well, have a good trip then,’ said the policeman, when he didn’t get an answer. There was probably contempt in the policeman’s tone, and so Karl went away without saying goodbye, the contempt of the police was still preferable to their interest.
Shortly afterwards he had a possibly even more disagreeable encounter. A man approached him, pushing a handcart full of milk churns, and obviously burning to know what was under the grey cloth on Karl’s cart. It was hardly possible that he had exactly the same route as Karl, but he stuck to his side, whatever surprising turns Karl made. At first he contented himself with exclamations, such as: ‘That looks like a heavy load’ or ‘Your load looks badly balanced, something’s about to fall off the top.’ Then, later, he put direct questions: ‘What have you got under that cloth?’ Karl replied: ‘What’s it to you?’ But as that only made the man still more curious, Karl finally said: ‘Apples.’ ‘What a lot of apples,’ said the man in amazement, and he repeated it a few times yet. ‘That’s a whole apple harvest,’ he said. ‘That’s right,’ said Karl. But, either because he didn’t believe Karl, or because he wanted to annoy him, he went further, he started – all the while they were moving – reaching out playfully for the cloth, and finally went so far as to tug at it. How Brunelda must be suffering! Out of consideration for her, Karl wanted to avoid an argument with the man, and he turned abruptly into the next open gate, as though that were his destination. ‘Here we are,’ he said, ‘thanks for your company.’ The man stopped in amazement in front of the gate, and watched Karl calmly going in, prepared if need be, to cross the whole of the first courtyard. Surely the man could be in no more doubt, but to satisfy his wickedness one more time, he left his wagon standing, tiptoed after Karl and tugged so hard on the cloth that he almost bared Brunelda’s face. ‘Your apples need to breathe,’ he said, and off he ran. Even that Karl put up with, since it finally rid him of the man. He pulled the cart into a corner of the courtyard, where there were some large empty crates, in the lee of which he wanted to say some comforting words to Brunelda under her cloth. But he had to talk to her a long time, because she was in tears, and quite seriously beseeched him to let her stay behind the crates all day, and only go on at night. He might not have been able to convince her how mistaken that would have been on his own, but when someone at the other end of the pile of crates hurled an empty crate on to the ground, so that it made a dreadful noise that echoed round the empty courtyard, she was so terrified that, without another word, she pulled the cloth back over her again, and was probably delighted when Karl quickly got moving again.
The streets were now getting more and more populous, but the wagon aroused rather less attention than Karl had feared. Perhaps it might even have been wiser to choose a different time for the move. If another journey like this should become necessary, Karl decided to try it at noon. Without any further serious incident, he finally turned into the dark narrow alleyway where Enterprise No. 25 was. In front of the door stood the squinting administrator with his watch in his hand. ‘Are you always this late?’ he asked. ‘We had various obstacles,’ explained Karl. ‘You always get those,’ said the administrator. ‘In this firm, they’re not an excuse. Kindly remember that!’ Karl barely listened to talk like that any more, everyone used their own power and belaboured the next man. Once you’d gotten used to it, it wasn’t really much more than the regular striking of a clock. But what did alarm him as he pulled the wagon into the corridor was the dirt there, although he’d been expecting it too. It wasn’t, when he looked at it more closely, any tangible sort of dirt. The stone flags in the passage had been swept almost clean, the whitewash on the walls wasn’t old, the artificial palms only slightly dusty, and yet everything was greasy and repulsive, it was as though everything had been somehow misused, and no cleaning on earth could ever make it better. Whenever Karl came to a new place, he liked to think what improvements could be made to it, and how pleasant it must be to roll up his sleeves and get down to it, regardless of the almost infinite labour it would take. But here he didn’t know where to start. Slowly he took the cloth off Brunelda. ‘Welcome, Miss,’ said the administrator affectedly, there was no question that Brunelda had made a good impression on him. No sooner had Brunelda sensed that than, as Karl observed with satisfaction, she began to exploit it. The fear of the last few hours vanished. She [text ends here]