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Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis
“O God,” he thought, “what a demanding job I’ve chosen! Day in, day out, on the road. The stresses of selling are
much greater than the actual work going on at head office, and, in addition to
that, I still have to cope with the problems of travelling, the worries about
train connections, irregular bad food, temporary and constantly changing human
relationships, which never come from the
heart. To hell with it all!” He felt a slight itching
on the top of his abdomen. He slowly pushed himself on his back closer to the
bed post so that he could lift his head more easily, found the itchy part,
which was entirely covered with small white spots—he did not know what to make
of them and wanted to feel the place with a leg, but he retracted it immediately,
for the contact felt like a cold shower all over him.
He slid back again into his earlier position. “This getting up
early,” he thought, “makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep.
Other travelling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I come back
to the inn during the course of the morning to write up the necessary orders,
these gentlemen are just sitting down to breakfast. If I were to try that with
my boss, I’d be thrown out on the spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn’t
be really good for me. If I didn’t hold back for my
parents’ sake, I’d have quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the boss and told him
just what I think from the bottom of my heart. He would’ve fallen right off his
desk! How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employee from
way up there. What’s more, the boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to
step up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven’t completely given up that hope
yet. Once I’ve got together the money to pay off my parents’ debt to him—that
should take another five or six years—I’ll do it for sure. Then I’ll make the
big break. In any case, right now I have to get up. My train leaves at five
o’clock.”
He looked over at the alarm clock ticking away by the chest of
drawers. “Good God!” he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were going
quietly on. It was even past the half hour, already nearly quarter to. Could
the alarm have failed to ring? One saw from the bed that it was properly set
for four o’clock. Certainly it had rung. Yes, but was it possible to sleep
peacefully through that noise which made the furniture shake?
Now, it is true he had not slept peacefully, but evidently he had slept all the
more deeply. Still, what should he do now? The next train left at seven
o’clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample
collection was not packed up yet, and he really did not feel particularly fresh
and active. And even if he caught the train, there was no avoiding a blow-up
with the boss, because the firm’s errand boy would have waited for the five
o’clock train and reported the news of his absence long ago. He was the boss’s
minion, without backbone and intelligence. Well then, what if he reported in
sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious, because during
his five years’ service Gregor had not been sick even once. The boss would
certainly come with the doctor from the health insurance company and would
reproach his parents for their lazy son and cut short all objections with the
insurance doctor’s comments; for him everyone was completely healthy but really
lazy about work. And besides, would the doctor in this case be totally wrong?
Apart from a really excessive drowsiness after the long sleep, Gregor, in fact,
felt quite well and even had a really strong appetite.
As he was thinking all this over in the greatest haste, without
being able to make the decision to get out of bed—the alarm clock was
indicating exactly quarter to seven—there was a cautious knock on the door by
the head of the bed. “Gregor,” a voice called—it was his mother—“it’s quarter
to seven. Don’t you want to be on your way?” The soft voice! Gregor was
startled when he heard his voice answering. It was clearly and unmistakably his
earlier voice, but in it was intermingled, as if from below, an irrepressible,
painful squeaking, which left the words positively distinct only in the first
moment and distorted them in the reverberation, so that one did not know if one
had heard correctly. Gregor wanted to answer in detail and explain everything,
but in these circumstances he confined himself to saying, “Yes, yes, thank you
mother. I’m getting up right away.” Because of the wooden door the change in
Gregor’s voice was not really noticeable outside, so his mother calmed down
with this explanation and shuffled off. However, as a result of the short
conversation, the other family members became aware that Gregor was
unexpectedly still at home, and already his father was knocking on one side
door, weakly but with his fist. “Gregor, Gregor,” he called out, “what’s going
on?” And, after a short while, he urged him on again in a deeper voice:
“Gregor! Gregor!” At the other side door, however, his
sister knocked lightly. “Gregor? Are you all right? Do
you need anything?” Gregor directed answers in both directions, “I’ll be ready
right away.” He made an effort with the most careful articulation and inserted
long pauses between the individual words to remove everything remarkable from
his voice. His father turned back to his breakfast. However, the sister
whispered, “Gregor, open the door—I beg you.” Gregor had no intention of
opening the door, but congratulated himself on his precaution, acquired from
travelling, of locking all doors during the night, even at home.
First he wanted to stand up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed,
above all have breakfast, and only then consider further action, for—he noticed
this clearly—by thinking things over in bed he would not reach a reasonable
conclusion. He remembered that he had already often felt some light pain or
other in bed, perhaps the result of an awkward lying position, which later,
once he stood up, turned out to be purely imaginary, and he was eager to see
how his present fantasies would gradually dissipate. That the change in his
voice was nothing other than the onset of a real chill, an occupational illness
of commercial travellers, of that he had not the slightest doubt.
It was very easy to throw aside the blanket. He needed only to
push himself up a little, and it fell by itself. But to continue was difficult,
particularly because he was so unusually wide. He needed arms and hands to push
himself upright. Instead of these, however, he had
only many small limbs, which were incessantly moving with very different
motions and which, in addition, he was unable to control. If he wanted to bend
one of them, then it was the first to extend itself, and if he finally
succeeded doing what he wanted with this limb, in the meantime all the others,
as if left free, moved around in an excessively painful agitation. “But I must
not stay in bed uselessly,” said Gregor to himself.
At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower part of his
body, but this lower part—which, by the way, he had not yet looked at and which
he also could not picture clearly—proved itself too difficult to move. The
attempt went so slowly. When, having become almost frantic, he finally hurled
himself forward with all his force and without thinking, he chose his direction
incorrectly, and he hit the lower bedpost hard. The violent pain he felt
revealed to him that the lower part of his body was at the moment probably the
most sensitive.
Thus, he tried to get his upper body out of the bed first and
turned his head carefully toward the edge of the bed. He managed to do this
easily, and in spite of its width and weight his body mass at last slowly
followed the turning of his head. But as he finally raised his head outside the
bed in the open air, he became anxious about moving forward any further in this
manner, for if he allowed himself eventually to fall by this process, it would
really take a miracle to prevent his head from getting injured. And at all
costs he must not lose consciousness right now. He preferred to remain in bed.
However, after a similar effort, while he lay there again, sighing
as before, and once again saw his small limbs fighting one another, if anything
even worse than earlier, and did not see any chance of imposing quiet and order
on this arbitrary movement, he told himself again that he could not possibly
remain in bed and that it might be the most reasonable thing to sacrifice
everything if there was even the slightest hope of getting himself out of bed
in the process. At the same moment, however, he did not forget to remind
himself from time to time of the fact that calm—indeed the calmest—reflection
might be much better than confused decisions. At such moments, he directed his
gaze as precisely as he could toward the window, but unfortunately there was
little confident cheer to be had from a glance at the morning mist, which
concealed even the other side of the narrow street. “It’s already seven
o’clock,” he told himself at the latest sounds from the alarm clock, “already
seven o’clock and still such a fog.” And for a little while longer he lay
quietly with weak breathing, as if perhaps waiting for normal and natural
conditions to re-emerge out of the complete stillness.
But then he said to himself, “Before it
strikes a quarter past seven, whatever happens I must be completely out of bed.
Besides, by then someone from the office will arrive to inquire about me,
because the office will open before seven o’clock.” And he made an effort then
to rock his entire body length out of the bed with a uniform motion. If he let
himself fall out of the bed in this way, his head, which in the course of the
fall he intended to lift up sharply, would probably remain uninjured. His back
seemed to be hard; nothing would really happen to that as a result of the fall
onto the carpet. His greatest reservation was a worry about the loud noise
which the fall must create and which presumably would arouse, if not fright,
then at least concern on the other side of all the doors. However, he had to
take that chance.
As Gregor was already in the process of lifting himself half out
of bed—the new method was more of a game than an effort; he needed only to rock
with a series of jerks—it struck him how easy all this would be if someone were
to come to his aid. Two strong people—he thought of his father and the servant
girl—would have been quite sufficient. They would only have had to push their
arms under his arched back to get him out of the bed, to bend down with their
load, and then merely to exercise patience so that he could complete the flip
onto the floor, where his diminutive legs would then, he hoped, acquire a
purpose. Now, quite apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he
really call out for help? In spite of all his distress, he was unable to
suppress a smile at this idea.
He had already got to the point where, by rocking more strongly,
he maintained his equilibrium with difficulty, and very soon he would finally
have to make a final decision, for in five minutes it would be a quarter past
seven. Then there was a ring at the door of the apartment. “That’s someone from
the office,” he told himself, and he almost froze, while his small limbs only
danced around all the faster. For one moment everything remained still. “They
aren’t opening,” Gregor said to himself, caught up in some absurd hope. But of
course then, as usual, the servant girl with her firm tread went to the door
and opened it. Gregor needed to hear only the first word of the visitor’s
greeting to recognize immediately who it was, the manager himself. Why was
Gregor the only one condemned to work in a firm where, at the slightest lapse,
someone at once attracted the greatest suspicion? Were all the employees then
collectively, one and all, scoundrels? Among them was there then no truly
devoted person who, if he failed to use just a couple of hours in the morning
for office work, would become abnormal from pangs of conscience and really be
in no state to get out of bed? Was it really not enough to let an apprentice
make inquiries, if such questioning was even generally necessary?
Must the manager himself come, and in the process must it be demonstrated to
the entire innocent family that the investigation of this suspicious
circumstance could be entrusted only to the intelligence of the manager? And
more as a consequence of the excited state in which this idea put Gregor than
as a result of an actual decision, he swung himself with all his might out of
the bed. There was a loud thud, but not a real crash. The fall was absorbed
somewhat by the carpet and, in addition, his back was more elastic than Gregor
had thought. For that reason the dull noise was not quite so conspicuous. But
he had not held his head up with sufficient care and had hit it. He turned his
head, irritated and in pain, and rubbed it on the carpet.
“Something has fallen in there,” said the manager in the next room
on the left. Gregor tried to imagine to himself whether anything similar to
what was happening to him today could have also happened at some point to the
manager. At least one had to concede the possibility of such a thing. However,
as if to give a rough answer to this question, the manager now, with a squeak
of his polished boots, took a few determined steps in the next room. From the
neighbouring room on the right the sister was whispering to inform Gregor:
“Gregor, the manager is here.” “I know,” said Gregor to himself. But he did not
dare make his voice loud enough so that his sister could hear.
“Gregor,” his father now said from the neighbouring room on the
left, “Mr. Manager has come and is asking why you have not left on the early
train. We don’t know what we should tell him. Besides, he also wants to speak
to you personally. So please open the door. He will be good enough to forgive
the mess in your room.” In the middle of all this, the manager called out in a
friendly way, “Good morning, Mr. Samsa.” “He is not well,” said his mother to
the manager, while his father was still talking at the door, “He is not well,
believe me, Mr. Manager. Otherwise how would Gregor miss a train? The young man
has nothing in his head except business. I’m almost angry that he never goes
out in the evening. Right now he’s been in the city eight days, but he’s been
at home every evening. He sits here with us at the table and reads the
newspaper quietly or studies his travel schedules. It’s a quite a diversion for
him to busy himself with fretwork. For instance, he cut out a small frame over
the course of two or three evenings. You’d be amazed how pretty it is. It’s
hanging right inside the room. You’ll see it immediately, as soon as Gregor opens
the door. Anyway, I’m happy that you’re here, Mr. Manager. By ourselves, we
would never have made Gregor open the door. He’s so stubborn, and he’s
certainly not well, although he denied that this morning.” “I’m coming right
away,” said Gregor slowly and deliberately and didn’t move, so as not to lose
one word of the conversation. “My dear lady, I cannot explain it to myself in
any other way,” said the manager; “I hope it is nothing serious. On the other
hand, I must also say that we business people, luckily or unluckily, however
one looks at it, very often simply have to overcome a slight indisposition for
business reasons.” “So can Mr. Manager come in to see you now?” asked his
father impatiently and knocked once again on the door. “No,” said Gregor. In the
neighbouring room on the left an awkward stillness descended. In the
neighbouring room on the right the sister began to sob.
Why did his sister not go to the others? She had probably just got
up out of bed now and had not even started to get dressed yet. Then why was she
crying? Because he was not getting up and letting the manager in, because he
was in danger of losing his position, and because then his boss would badger
his parents once again with the old demands? Those were probably unnecessary worries
right now. Gregor was still here and was not thinking at all about abandoning
his family. At the moment he was lying right there on the carpet, and no one
who knew about his condition would have seriously demanded that he let the
manager in. But Gregor would not be casually dismissed right way because of
this small discourtesy, for which he would find an easy and suitable excuse
later on. It seemed to Gregor that it might be far more reasonable to leave him
in peace at the moment, instead of disturbing him with crying and conversation.
But it was the very uncertainty which distressed the others and excused their
behaviour.
“Mr. Samsa,” the manager was now shouting, his voice raised, “what’s the matter? You are barricading yourself
there in your room, answering with only a yes and a no, are making serious and
unnecessary trouble for your parents, and neglecting—I mention this only
incidentally—your commercial duties in a truly unheard of manner. I am speaking
here in the name of your parents and your employer, and I am requesting you in
all seriousness for an immediate and clear explanation. I am amazed. I am
amazed. I thought I knew you as a calm, reasonable person, and now you appear
suddenly to want to start parading around in weird moods. The Chief indicated
to me earlier this very day a possible explanation for your neglect—it
concerned the collection of cash entrusted to you a short while ago—but in
truth I almost gave him my word of honour that this explanation could not be
correct. However, now I see here your unimaginable pig headedness, and I am
totally losing any desire to speak up for you in the slightest. And your
position is not at all the most secure. Originally I intended to mention all
this to you privately, but since you are letting me waste my time here
uselessly, I don’t know why the matter shouldn’t come to the attention of your
parents as well. Your productivity has also been very unsatisfactory recently.
Of course, it’s not the time of year to conduct exceptional business, we
recognize that, but a time of year for conducting no business, there is no such
thing at all, Mr. Samsa, and such a thing must not be permitted.”
“But Mr. Manager,” called Gregor, beside himself and, in his
agitation, forgetting everything else, “I’m opening the door immediately, this
very moment. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has prevented me from
getting up. I’m still lying in bed right now. But I’m quite refreshed once
again. I’m in the midst of getting out of bed. Just have patience for a short
moment! Things are not yet going as well as I thought. But things are all right
with me. How suddenly this can overcome someone! Only yesterday evening
everything was fine with me. My parents certainly know that. Actually just
yesterday evening I had a small premonition. People must have seen that in me.
Why have I not reported that to the office? But people always think that
they’ll get over sickness without having to stay at home. Mr. Manager! Take it
easy on my parents! There is really no basis for the criticisms which you’re
now making against me. Nobody has said a word to me about that. Perhaps you
have not read the latest orders which I sent in. Besides, now I’m setting out
on my trip on the eight o’clock train; the few hours’ rest have
made me stronger. Mr. Manager, do not stay. I will be at the office in person
right away. Please have the goodness to say that and to convey my respects to
the Chief.”
While Gregor was quickly blurting all this out, hardly aware of
what he was saying, he had moved close to the chest of drawers without effort,
probably as a result of the practice he had already had in bed, and now he was
trying to raise himself up on it. Actually, he wanted to open the door. He
really wanted to let himself be seen and to speak with the manager. He was keen
to witness what the others now asking about him would say when they saw him. If
they were startled, then Gregor had no more responsibility and could be calm. But if they accepted everything quietly, then he would have no
reason to get excited and, if he got a move on, could really be at the station
around eight o’clock. At first he slid down a few times on the smooth
chest of drawers. But at last he gave himself a final swing and stood upright
there. He was no longer at all aware of the pains in his lower body, no matter
how they might still sting. Now he let himself fall against the back of a
nearby chair, on the edge of which he braced himself with his small limbs. By
doing this he gained control over himself and kept quiet, for he could now hear
the manager.
“Did you understand even a single word?” the manager asked the
parents, “Is he playing the fool with us?” “For God’s sake,” cried the mother,
already in tears, “perhaps he’s very ill, and we’re upsetting him. Grete!
Grete!” she yelled at that point. “Mother?” called the sister from the other
side. They were making themselves understood through Gregor’s room. “You must
go to the doctor right away. Gregor is sick. Hurry to the doctor. Did you hear
Gregor speak just now?” “That was an animal’s voice,” said the manager,
remarkably quiet in comparison to the mother’s cries. “Anna! Anna!” yelled the
father through the hall into the kitchen, clapping his hands, “Fetch a
locksmith right away!” The two young women were already running through the hall
with swishing skirts—how had his sister dressed herself so quickly?—and pulled
open the doors of the apartment. One could not hear the doors closing at all.
They probably had left them open, as is customary in an apartment where a huge
misfortune has taken place.
However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not
understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him,
clearer than previously, perhaps because his ears had gotten used to them. But at
least people now thought that things were not completely all right with him and
were prepared to help him. The confidence and assurance with which the first
arrangements had been carried out made him feel good. He felt himself included
once again in the circle of humanity and was expecting from both the doctor and
the locksmith, without differentiating between them with any real precision,
splendid and surprising results. In order to get as clear a voice as possible
for the critical conversation which was imminent, he coughed a little, and
certainly took the trouble to do this in a really subdued way, since it was
possible that even this noise sounded like something different from a human
cough. He no longer trusted himself to decide any more. Meanwhile in the next
room it had become really quiet. Perhaps his parents were sitting with the
manager at the table whispering; perhaps they were all leaning against the door
and listening.
Gregor pushed himself slowly towards the door, with the help of
the easy chair, let go of it there, threw himself against the door, held
himself upright against it—the balls of his tiny limbs had a little sticky
stuff on them—and rested there momentarily from his exertion. Then he made an
effort to turn the key in the lock with his mouth. Unfortunately it seemed that
he had no real teeth. How then was he to grab hold of the key? But to make up
for that his jaws were naturally very strong; with their help he managed to get
the key really moving. He did not notice that he was obviously inflicting some
damage on himself, for a brown fluid came out of his mouth, flowed over the
key, and dripped onto the floor. “Just listen,” said the manager in the next
room. “He’s turning the key.” For Gregor that was a great encouragement. But
they should all have called out to him, including his father and mother, “Come
on, Gregor,” they should have shouted. “Keep going, keep working on the lock!”
Imagining that all his efforts were being followed with suspense, he bit down
frantically on the key with all the force he could muster. As the key turned
more, he danced around the lock. Now he was holding himself upright only with
his mouth, and he had to hang onto the key or then press it down again with the
whole weight of his body, as necessary. The quite distinct click of the lock as
it finally snapped really woke Gregor up. Breathing heavily he said to himself,
“So I didn’t need the locksmith,” and he set his head against the door handle
to open the door completely.
Because he had to open the door in this way, it was already open
really wide without him yet being visible. He first had to turn himself slowly
around the edge of the door, very carefully, of course, if he did not want to
fall awkwardly on his back right at the entrance into the room. He was still
preoccupied with this difficult movement and had no time to pay attention to
anything else, when he heard the manager exclaim a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like
the wind whistling—and now he saw him, nearest to the door, pressing his hand
against his open mouth and moving slowly back, as if an invisible constant
force was pushing him away. His mother—in spite of the presence of the manager
she was standing here with her hair sticking up on end, still a mess from the
night—first looked at his father with her hands clasped, then went two steps
towards Gregor and collapsed right in the middle of her skirts, which were
spread out all around her, her face sunk on her breast, completely concealed.
His father clenched his fist with a hostile expression, as if he wished to push
Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly around the living room,
covered his eyes with his hands, and cried so that his mighty breast shook.
At this point Gregor did not take one step into the room, but
leaned his body from the inside against the firmly bolted wing of the door, so
that only half his body was visible, as well as his head, tilted sideways, with
which he peeped over at the others. Meanwhile it had become much brighter.
Standing out clearly from the other side of the street was a section of the
endless gray-black house situated opposite—it was a hospital—with its severe
regular windows breaking up the facade. The rain was still coming down, but
only in large individual drops visibly and firmly thrown down one by one onto
the ground. Countless breakfast dishes were standing piled around on the table,
because for his father breakfast was the most important meal time in the day,
which he prolonged for hours by reading various newspapers. Directly across on
the opposite wall hung a photograph of Gregor from the time of his military
service; it was a picture of him as a lieutenant, as he, smiling and worry
free, with his hand on his sword, demanded respect for his bearing and uniform.
The door to the hall was ajar, and since the door to the apartment was also
open, one could see out into the landing of the apartment and the start of the
staircase going down.
“Now,” said Gregor, well aware that he was the only one who had
kept his composure. “I’ll get dressed right away, pack up the collection of
samples, and set off. You’ll allow me to set out on my way, will you not? You
see, Mr. Manager, I am not pig-headed, and I am happy to work. Travelling is
exhausting, but I couldn’t live without it. Where are you going, Mr. Manager? To the office? Really? Will you
report everything truthfully? A person can be incapable of work momentarily,
but that’s precisely the best time to remember the earlier achievements and to
consider that later, after the obstacles have been shoved aside, the person
will certainly work all the more diligently and intensely. I am really so
indebted to Mr. Chief—you know that perfectly well. On the other hand, I am
concerned about my parents and my sister. I’m in a fix, but I’ll work myself
out of it again. Don’t make things more difficult for me than they already are.
Speak up on my behalf in the office! People don’t like travelling salesmen. I
know that. People think they earn pots of money and thus lead a fine life.
People don’t even have any special reason to think through this judgment more
clearly. But you, Mr. Manager, you have a better perspective on what’s involved
than other people, even, I tell you in total confidence, a better perspective
than Mr. Chief himself, who in his capacity as the employer may easily let his
judgment make mistakes at the expense of an employee. You also know well enough
that the travelling salesman who is outside the office almost the entire year
can become so easily a victim of gossip, coincidences, and groundless
complaints, against which it’s totally impossible for him to defend himself,
since for the most part he doesn’t hear about them at all and only then when
he’s exhausted after finishing a trip and at home gets to feel in his own body
the nasty consequences, which can’t be thoroughly explored back to their
origins. Mr. Manager, don’t leave without speaking a word indicating to me that
you’ll at least concede that I’m a little in the right!”
But at Gregor’s first words the manager had already turned away, and now he looked back with pursed lips at Gregor over
his twitching shoulders. During Gregor’s speech he was not still for a moment
but kept moving away towards the door, without taking his eyes off Gregor, but
really gradually, as if there was a secret ban on leaving the room. He was
already in the hall, and given the sudden movement with which he finally pulled
his foot out of the living room, one could have believed that he had just
burned the sole of his foot. In the hall, however, he stretched his right hand
out away from his body towards the staircase, as if some truly supernatural
relief was waiting for him there.
Gregor realized that he must not under any circumstances allow the
manager to go away in this frame of mind, especially if his position in the
firm was not to be placed in the greatest danger. His parents did not
understand all this very well. Over the long years, they had developed the
conviction that Gregor was set up for life in this firm and, in addition, they
had so much to do nowadays with their present troubles that all foresight was
foreign to them. But Gregor had this foresight. The manager must be held back,
calmed down, convinced, and finally won over. The future of Gregor and his
family really depended on it! If only the sister had been there! She was
clever. She had already cried while Gregor was still lying quietly on his back.
And the manager, this friend of the ladies, would certainly let himself be
guided by her. She would have closed the door to the apartment and talked him
out of his fright in the hall. But the sister was not even there. Gregor must
deal with it himself. And without
thinking that as yet he did not know anything about his present ability to move
and without thinking that his speech possibly—indeed probably—had once again
not been understood, he left the wing of the door, pushed himself through the
opening, and wanted to go over to the manager, who was already holding tight
with both hands gripping the handrail on the landing in a ridiculous way. But
as Gregor looked for something to steady himself, with a small scream he
immediately fell down onto his numerous little legs. Scarcely had this
happened, when he felt for the first time that morning a general physical well
being. The small limbs had firm floor under them; they obeyed perfectly, as he
noticed to his joy, and even strove to carry him forward in the direction he
wanted. Right away he believed that the final amelioration of all his suffering
was immediately at hand. But at the very moment when he lay on the floor rocking
in a restrained manner quite close and directly across from his mother, who had
apparently totally sunk into herself, she suddenly sprang right up with her
arms spread far apart and her fingers extended and cried out, “Help, for God’s
sake, help!” She held her head bowed down, as if she wanted to view Gregor
better, but ran senselessly back, contradicting that gesture, forgetting that
behind her stood the table with all the dishes on it. When she reached the
table, she sat down heavily on it, as if absent-mindedly, and did not appear to
notice at all that next to her coffee was pouring out onto the carpet in a full
stream from the large, overturned container.
“Mother, mother,” said Gregor quietly and looked over towards her.
The manager had momentarily vanished completely from his mind. On the other
hand, when he saw the flowing coffee Gregor could not stop himself snapping his
jaws in the air a few times. At that his mother screamed all over again,
hurried from the table, and collapsed into the arms of his father, who was
rushing towards her. But Gregor had no time right now for his parents—the
manager was already on the staircase. With his chin on the bannister,
the manager looked back for the last time. Gregor took an initial movement to
catch up to him if possible. But the manager must have suspected something,
because he made a leap down over a few stairs and disappeared, still shouting
“Huh!” The sound echoed throughout the entire stairwell.
But now unfortunately this flight of the manager seemed to bewilder
his father completely. Earlier he had been relatively calm. For instead of
running after the manager himself or at least not hindering Gregor from his
pursuit, with his right hand he grabbed hold of the manager’s cane, which he
had left behind on a chair with his hat and overcoat. With his left hand, his
father grabbed a large newspaper from the table and, stamping his feet on the
floor, he set out to drive Gregor back into his room by waving the cane and the
newspaper. No request of Gregor’s was of any use; no request would even be
understood. No matter how willing he was to turn his head respectfully, his
father just stomped all the harder with his feet. Across the room from him his
mother had pulled open a window, in spite of the cool weather, and leaning out
with her hands on her cheeks, she pushed her face far
outside the window. Between the lane and the stairwell a strong draught came
up, the curtains on the window flew around, the newspapers on the table
rustled, and individual sheets fluttered down over the floor. The father
relentlessly pushed his way forward, hissing like a wild man. Now, Gregor still
had no practice at all in going backwards—it was really very slow going. If
Gregor only had been allowed to turn himself around, he would have been in his
room right away, but he was afraid to make his father impatient by the
time-consuming process of turning around, and each moment he faced the threat
of a mortal blow on his back or his head from the cane in his father’s hand.
Finally Gregor had no other option, for he noticed with horror that he did not
understand yet how to maintain his direction going backwards. And so he began,
amid constantly anxious sideways glances in his father’s direction, to turn
himself around as quickly as possible, although in truth this was only done
very slowly. Perhaps his father noticed his good intentions, for he did not
disrupt Gregor in this motion, but with the tip of the cane from a distance he
even directed Gregor’s rotating movement now and then. If only his father had
not hissed so unbearably! Because of that Gregor totally lost his head. He was
already almost totally turned around, when, always with this hissing in his
ear, he just made a mistake and turned himself back a little. But when he
finally was successful in getting his head in front of the door opening, it
became clear that his body was too wide to go through any further. Naturally
his father, in his present mental state, had no idea of, say, opening the other
wing of the door a bit to create a suitable passage for Gregor to get through.
His single fixed thought was that Gregor must get into his room as quickly as
possible. He would never have allowed the elaborate preparations that Gregor
required to orient himself and thus perhaps in this way to get through the
door. Perhaps with his excessive noise he was now driving Gregor forwards as if
there were no obstacle. Behind Gregor the sound at this point was no longer
like the voice of only a single father. Now it was really no longer a joke, and
Gregor forced himself, come what might, into the door. One side of his body was
lifted up. He lay at an angle in the door opening. His one flank was really
sore from the scraping. On the white door ugly blotches were left. Soon he was
stuck fast and would not have been able to move any more on his own. The tiny
legs on one side hung twitching in the air above, and the ones on the other
side were pushed painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one really
strong liberating push from behind, and he scurried, bleeding severely, far
into the interior of his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and
then finally it was quiet.
II
Gregor first woke up from his heavy swoon-like sleep in the
evening twilight. He would certainly have woken up soon afterwards even without
any disturbance, for he felt himself sufficiently rested and wide awake,
although it appeared to him as if a hurried step and a cautious closing of the
door to the hall had roused him. Light from the electric streetlamps lay pale
here and there on the ceiling of his room and on the higher parts of the
furniture, but underneath around Gregor it was dark. He pushed himself slowly
toward the door, still groping awkwardly with his feelers, which he now learned
to value for the first time, to check what was happening there. His left side
seemed one single long unpleasantly stretched scar, and he really had to hobble
on his two rows of legs. In addition, one small leg had been seriously wounded
in the course of the morning incident—it was almost a miracle that only one had
been hurt—and dragged lifelessly behind.
By the door he first noticed what had really lured him there: it
was the smell of something to eat. For a bowl stood there, filled with sweetened
milk, in which swam tiny pieces of white bread. He almost laughed with joy, for
he had an even greater hunger than in the morning, and he immediately dipped
his head almost up to and over his eyes down into the milk. But he soon drew it
back again in disappointment, not just because it was difficult for him to eat
on account of his delicate left side—he could eat only if his entire panting
body worked in a coordinated way—but also because the milk, which otherwise was
his favourite drink and which his sister had certainly placed there for that
reason, did not appeal to him at all. He turned away from the bowl almost with
aversion and crept back into the middle of the room.
In the living room, as Gregor saw through the crack in the door,
the gas was lit, but where, on other occasions at this time of day, his father
was accustomed to read the afternoon newspaper in a loud voice to his mother
and sometimes also to his sister, at the moment no sound was audible. Now,
perhaps this reading aloud, about which his sister had always spoken and
written to him, had recently fallen out of their general routine. But it was so
still all around, in spite of the fact that the apartment was certainly not
empty. “What a quiet life the family leads,” said Gregor to himself, and, as he
stared fixedly out in front of him into the darkness, he felt a great pride
that he had been able to provide such a life for his parents and his sister in
such a beautiful apartment. But how would things go if now all tranquillity,
all prosperity, all contentment should come to a horrible end? In order not to
lose himself in such thoughts, Gregor preferred to set himself moving, so he
crawled up and down in his room.
Once during the long evening one side door and then the other door
were opened just a tiny crack and quickly closed again. Someone presumably
needed to come in but had then thought better of it. Gregor immediately took up
a position by the living room door, determined to bring in the hesitant visitor
somehow or other or at least to find out who it might be. But now the door was
not opened any more, and Gregor waited in vain. Earlier, when the door had been
barred, they had all wanted to come in to him; now, when he had opened one door
and when the others had obviously been opened during the day, no one came any
more, and now the keys were stuck in the locks on the outside.
The light in the living room was turned off only late at night,
and it was now easy to establish that his parents and his sister had stayed
awake all this time, for one could hear them clearly as all three moved away on
tiptoe. Now it was certain that no one would come in to Gregor any more until
the morning. Thus, he had a long time to think undisturbed about how he should
reorganize his life from scratch. But the high, open room, in which he was
compelled to lie flat on the floor, made him anxious, without his being able to
figure out the reason, for he had lived in the room for five years. With a
half-unconscious turn and not without a little shame he scurried under the
couch, where, in spite of the fact that his back was a little cramped and he
could no longer lift up his head, he felt very comfortable right away and was
sorry only that his body was too wide to fit completely under the couch.
There he remained the entire night, which he spent partly in a
state of semi-sleep, out of which his hunger constantly woke him with a start,
but partly in a state of worry and murky hopes, which all led to the conclusion
that for the time being he would have to keep calm and with patience and the
greatest consideration for his family tolerate the troubles which in his
present condition he was now forced to cause them.
Already early in the morning—it was still almost night—Gregor had
an opportunity to test the power of the decisions he had just made, for his
sister, almost fully dressed, opened the door from the hall into his room and
looked eagerly inside. She did not find him immediately, but when she noticed
him under the couch—God, he had to be somewhere or other, for he could hardly
fly away—she got such a shock that, without being able to control herself, she
slammed the door shut once again from the outside. However, as if she was sorry
for her behaviour, she immediately opened the door again and walked in on her tiptoes,
as if she was in the presence of a serious invalid or a total stranger. Gregor
had pushed his head forward just to the edge of the couch and was observing
her. Would she really notice that he had left the milk standing, not indeed
from any lack of hunger, and would she bring in something else to eat more
suitable for him? If she did not do it on her own, he would sooner starve to
death than call her attention to the fact, although he had a really powerful
urge to move beyond the couch, throw himself at his sister’s feet, and beg her
for something or other good to eat. But his sister noticed right away with
astonishment that the bowl was still full, with only a little milk spilled
around it. She picked it up immediately, although not with her bare hands but
with a rag, and took it out of the room. Gregor was extremely curious what she
would bring as a substitute, and he pictured to himself very different ideas
about it. But he never could have guessed what his sister, out of the goodness
of her heart, in fact, did. To test his taste, she brought him an entire
selection, all spread out on an old newspaper. There were old half-rotten
vegetables, bones from the evening meal, covered with a white sauce which had
almost solidified, some raisins and almonds, cheese which Gregor had declared
inedible two days earlier, a slice of dry bread, a slice with butter, and a
slice of salted bread smeared with butter. In addition to all this, she put
down the bowl—probably designated once and for all as Gregor’s—into which she
had poured some water. And out of her delicacy of feeling, since she knew that
Gregor would not eat in front of her, she went away very quickly and even
turned the key in the lock, so that Gregor could now know that he might make
himself as comfortable as he wished. Gregor’s small limbs buzzed now that the
time for eating had come. His wounds must, in any case, have already healed
completely. He felt no handicap on that score. He was astonished at that and
thought about how more than a month ago he had cut his finger very slightly
with a knife and how this wound had hurt enough even the day before yesterday.
“Am I now going to be less sensitive?” he thought, already sucking greedily on
the cheese, which had strongly attracted him right away, more than all the
other foods. Quickly and with his eyes watering with satisfaction, he ate one
after the other the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce. The fresh food, by
contrast, did not taste good to him. He could not even bear the smell and
carried the things he wanted to eat a little distance away. By the time his
sister slowly turned the key as a sign that he should withdraw, he was long
finished with everything and now lay lazily in the same spot. The noise
immediately startled him, in spite of the fact that he was already almost
asleep, and he scurried back again under the couch. But it cost him great
self-control to remain under the couch, even for the short time his sister was
in the room, because his body had filled out somewhat on account of the rich meal
and in the narrow space there he could scarcely breathe. In the midst of minor
attacks of asphyxiation, he looked at her with somewhat protruding eyes, as his
unsuspecting sister swept up with a broom, not just the remnants, but even the
foods which Gregor had not touched at all, as if these were also now useless,
and as she dumped everything quickly into a bucket, which she closed with a
wooden lid, and then carried all of it out of the room. She had hardly turned
around before Gregor had already dragged himself out from under the couch,
stretched out, and let his body expand.
In this way Gregor now got his food every day, once in the
morning, when his parents and the servant girl were still asleep, and a second
time after the common noon meal, for his parents were asleep then for a little
while, and the servant girl was sent off by his sister on some errand or other.
They certainly would not have wanted Gregor to starve to death, but perhaps
they could not have endured finding out what he ate other than by hearsay.
Perhaps his sister also wanted to spare them what was possibly only a small
grief, for they were really suffering quite enough already.
What sorts of excuses people had used on that first morning to get
the doctor and the locksmith out of the house again Gregor was completely
unable to ascertain. Since they could not understand him, no one, not even his
sister, thought that he might be able to understand others, and thus, when his
sister was in his room, he had to be content with listening now and then to her
sighs and invocations to the saints. Only later, when she had grown somewhat
accustomed to everything—naturally there could never be any talk of her growing
completely accustomed to it—Gregor sometimes caught a comment which was intended
to be friendly or could be interpreted as such. “Well, today it tasted good to
him,” she said, if Gregor had really cleaned up what he had to eat; whereas, in
the reverse situation, which gradually repeated itself more and more
frequently, she used to say almost sadly, “Now everything has been left again.”
But while Gregor could get no new information directly, he did
hear a good deal from the room next door, and as soon as he heard voices, he
scurried right away to the appropriate door and pressed his entire body against
it. In the early days especially, there was no conversation which was not
concerned with him in some way or other, even if only in secret. For two days
at all meal times discussions of that subject could be heard on how people
should now behave; but they also talked about the same subject in the times
between meals, for there were always at least two family members at home, since
no one really wanted to remain in the house alone and people could not under
any circumstances leave the apartment completely empty. In addition, on the
very first day the servant girl—it was not completely clear what and how much
she knew about what had happened—on her knees had begged his mother to let her
go immediately, and when she said good bye about fifteen minutes later, she
thanked them for the dismissal with tears in her eyes, as if she was receiving
the greatest favour which people had shown her there, and, without anyone
demanding it from her, she swore a fearful oath not to reveal anything to
anyone, not even the slightest detail.
Now his sister had to team up with his mother to do the cooking,
although that did not create much trouble because people were eating almost
nothing. Again and again Gregor listened as one of them vainly invited another
one to eat and received no answer other than “Thank you. I’ve
had enough” or something like that. And perhaps they had stopped having
anything to drink, too. His sister often asked his father whether he wanted to
have a beer and gladly offered to fetch it herself, and when his father was
silent, she said, in order to remove any reservations he might have, that she
could send the caretaker’s wife to get it. But then his father finally said a
resounding “No,” and nothing more would be spoken
about it.
Already during the first day his father laid out all the financial
circumstances and prospects to his mother and to his sister as well. From time
to time he stood up from the table and pulled out of the small lockbox salvaged
from his business, which had collapsed five years previously, some document or
other or some notebook. The sound was audible as he opened up the complicated
lock and, after removing what he was looking for, locked it up again. These
explanations by his father were, in part, the first enjoyable thing that Gregor
had the chance to listen to since his imprisonment. He had thought that nothing
at all was left over for his father from that business; at least his father had
told him nothing to contradict that view, and Gregor in any case had not asked
him about it. At the time Gregor’s only concern had been to use everything he
had in order to allow his family to forget as quickly as possible the business
misfortune which had brought them all into a state of complete hopelessness.
And so at that point he had started to work with a special intensity and from a
minor assistant had become, almost overnight, a travelling salesman, who
naturally had entirely different possibilities for earning money and whose
successes at work were converted immediately into the form of cash commissions,
which could be set out on the table at home for his astonished and delighted
family. Those had been beautiful days, and they had never come back afterwards,
at least not with the same splendour, in spite of the fact that Gregor later
earned so much money that he was in a position to bear the expenses of the
entire family, costs which he, in fact, did bear. They had become quite
accustomed to it, both the family and Gregor as well. They took the money with
thanks, and he happily surrendered it, but a special
warmth was no longer present. Only the sister had remained still close to
Gregor, and it was his secret plan to send her next year to the Conservatory,
regardless of the great expense which that necessarily involved and which would
be made up in other ways. In contrast to Gregor, she loved music very much and
knew how to play the violin charmingly. Now and then during Gregor’s short
stays in the city the Conservatory was mentioned in conversations with his
sister, but always merely as a beautiful dream, whose realization was
unimaginable, and their parents never listened to these innocent expectations
with pleasure. But Gregor thought about them with scrupulous consideration and
intended to explain the matter in all seriousness on Christmas Eve.
In his present situation, such completely futile ideas went
through his head, while he pushed himself right up against the door and
listened. Sometimes in his general exhaustion he could not listen any more and
let his head bang listlessly against the door, but he immediately pulled
himself together once more, for even the small sound which he made by this
motion was heard near by and silenced everyone. “There he goes on again,” said
his father after a while, clearly turning towards the door, and only then would
the interrupted conversation gradually be resumed again.
Now, Gregor found out clearly enough—for his father tended to
repeat himself from time to time in his explanations, partly because he had not
personally concerned himself with these matters for a long time now, and partly
because his mother did not understand everything right away the first
time—that, in spite all bad luck, an amount of money, although a very small
one, was still available from the old times and that the interest, which had
not been touched, had in the intervening time allowed it to increase a little.
Furthermore, in addition to this, the money which Gregor had brought home every
month—he had kept only a few crowns for himself—had not been completely spent
and had grown into a small capital amount. Gregor, behind his door, nodded
eagerly, rejoicing over this unanticipated foresight and frugality. True, with
this excess money, he could really have paid off more of his father’s debt to
his employer and the day on which he could be rid of this position would have
been a lot closer, but now things were doubtless better the way his father had
arranged them.
At the moment, however, this money was not nearly sufficient to
permit the family to live on the interest payments. Perhaps it would be enough
to maintain the family for one or at most two years, that was all. Thus, it
only added up to an amount which one should not really draw upon and which must
be set aside for an emergency. But they had to earn money to live on. Now, it’s
true his father was indeed a healthy man, but he was old and had not worked for
five years and thus could not be counted on for very much. He had in these five
years, the first holidays of his laborious but unsuccessful life, put on a good
deal of fat and thus had become really heavy. And should his old mother now
perhaps work for money, a woman who suffered from asthma, for whom wandering
through the apartment even now was a great strain and who spent every second
day on the sofa by the open window having trouble with her breathing? Should
his sister earn money, a girl who was still a seventeen-year-old child and
whose earlier life style had been so very delightful that it had consisted of
dressing herself nicely, sleeping in late, helping around the house, taking
part in a few modest enjoyments and, above all, playing the violin? When it
came to talking about this need to earn money, at first Gregor went away from
the door and threw himself on the cool leather sofa beside the door, for he was
quite hot from shame and sorrow.
Often he lay there all night long, not sleeping at all, just
scratching on the leather for hours at a time. Or he undertook the very
difficult task of pushing a chair over to the window. Then he crept up on the
window sill and, braced on the chair, leaned against the window to look out,
obviously with some memory or other of the liberating sense which looking out
the window used to bring him in earlier times. For, in fact, from day to day he
perceived things with less and less clarity, even those only a short distance
away. The hospital across the street, the all-too-frequent sight of which he
had previously cursed, was not visible at all any more, and if he had not been
very well aware that he lived in the quiet but completely urban Charlotte
Street, he could have believed that from his window he was peering out at a
featureless wasteland, in which the grey heaven and the grey earth had merged
and were indistinguishable. His observant sister only had to notice a couple of
times that the chair stood by the window; then, after cleaning up the room,
each time, she pushed the chair back right against the window again and from
now on she even left the inner casements open.
If Gregor had only been able to speak to his sister and thank her
for everything that she had to do for him, he would have tolerated her service
more easily. As it was, he suffered under it. The sister admittedly sought to
cover up the awkwardness of everything as much as possible, and, as time went
by, she naturally became more successful at it. But with the passing of time
Gregor also came to understand everything much more clearly. Even her entrance
was terrible for him. As soon as she came in, she ran straight to the window,
without taking the time to shut the door, in spite of the fact that she was
otherwise very considerate in sparing anyone the sight of Gregor’s room, and
yanked the window open with eager hands, as if she was almost suffocating, and
remained for a while by the window breathing deeply, even when it was still so
cold. With this running and noise she frightened Gregor twice every day. The
entire time he trembled under the couch, and yet he knew very well that she
would certainly have spared him gladly if it had only been possible to remain with
the window closed in a room where Gregor lived.
On one occasion—about one month had already gone by since Gregor’s
transformation, and there was now no particular reason any more for his sister
to be startled at Gregor’s appearance—she arrived a little earlier than usual
and came upon Gregor as he was still looking out the window, immobile and well
positioned to frighten someone. It would not have come as a surprise to Gregor
if she had not come in, since his position was preventing her from opening the
window immediately. But not only did she not step inside; she even retreated
and shut the door. A stranger really could have concluded from this that Gregor
had been lying in wait for her and wanted to bite her. Of course, Gregor
immediately concealed himself under the couch, but he had to wait until noon
before his sister returned, and she seemed much less calm than usual. From this
he realized that his appearance was still intolerable to her and must remain
intolerable to her in future, and that she really had to exert a lot of
self-control not to run away from a glimpse of only the small part of his body
which stuck out from under the couch. In order to spare her even this sight,
one day he dragged the sheet on his back and onto the couch—this task took him
four hours—and arranged it in such a way that he was now completely concealed
and his sister, even if she bent down, could not see him. If this sheet was not
necessary as far as she was concerned, then she could remove it, for it was
clear enough that Gregor could not derive any pleasure from isolating himself
away so completely. But she left the sheet just as it was, and Gregor believed
he even caught a look of gratitude when, on one occasion, he carefully lifted
up the sheet a little with his head to check, as his sister took stock of the
new arrangement.
In the first two weeks his parents could not bring themselves to
visit him, and he often heard how they fully acknowledged his sister’s present
work; whereas, earlier they had often got annoyed at his sister because she had
seemed to them a somewhat useless young woman. However, now both his father and
his mother frequently waited in front of Gregor’s door while his sister cleaned
up inside, and as soon as she came out, she had to explain in great detail how
things looked in the room, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this time,
and whether perhaps a slight improvement was perceptible. In any event, his
mother comparatively soon wanted to visit Gregor, but his father and his sister
restrained her, at first with reasons which Gregor listened to very attentively
and which he completely endorsed. Later, however, they had to hold her back
forcefully, and when she then cried “Let me go to Gregor. He’s my unfortunate
son! Don’t you understand that I have to go to him?” Gregor then thought that
perhaps it would be a good thing if his mother came in, not every day, of
course, but maybe once a week. She understood everything much better than his
sister, who, in spite of all her courage, was still merely a child and, in the
last analysis, had perhaps undertaken such a difficult task only out of
childish recklessness.
Gregor’s wish to see his mother was soon realized. While during
the day Gregor, out of consideration for his parents, did not want to show himself
by the window, he could not crawl around very much on the few square metres of
the floor. He found it difficult to bear lying quietly during the night, and soon eating no longer gave him the slightest
pleasure. So for diversion he acquired the habit of crawling back and forth
across the walls and ceiling. He was especially fond of hanging from the
ceiling. The experience was quite different from lying on the floor. It was
easier to breathe, a slight vibration went through his body, and in the midst of
the almost happy amusement which Gregor found up there, it could happen that,
to his own surprise, he let go and hit the floor. However, now he naturally
controlled his body quite differently than before, and he did not injure
himself in such a great fall. Now, his sister noticed immediately the new
amusement which Gregor had found for himself—for as he crept around he left
behind here and there traces of his sticky stuff—and so she got the idea of
making the area where Gregor could creep around as large as possible and thus
of removing the furniture which got in the way, especially the chest of drawers
and the writing desk. But she was in no position to do this by herself. She did not dare to ask her father to help, and the
servant girl would certainly not have assisted her, for although this girl,
about sixteen years old, had courageously remained since the dismissal of the
previous cook, she had begged for the privilege of being allowed to stay
permanently confined to the kitchen and of having to open the door only in
answer to a special summons. Thus, his sister had no other choice but to
involve his mother at a time when his father was absent. His mother approached
Gregor’s room with cries of excited joy, but she fell silent at the door. Of
course, his sister first checked whether everything in the room was in order.
Only then did she let his mother enter. Gregor had drawn the sheet down with
the greatest haste even further and wrinkled it more. The whole thing really
looked just like a coverlet thrown carelessly over the couch. On this occasion,
Gregor also held back from spying out from under the sheet. He refrained from
looking at his mother this time and was merely happy that she had now come.
“Come on. You can’t see him,” said his sister and evidently led his mother by
the hand. Now Gregor listened as these two weak women shifted the still heavy
old chest of drawers from its position and as his sister constantly took on
herself the greatest part of the work, without listening to the warnings of his
mother, who was afraid that she would strain herself. The work lasted a very
long time. After about a quarter of an hour had already gone by, his mother
said it would be better if they left the chest of drawers where it was,
because, in the first place, it was too heavy: they would not be finished
before his father’s arrival, and leaving the chest of drawers in the middle of
the room would block all Gregor’s pathways, but, in the second place, they
could not be at all certain that Gregor would be pleased with the removal of
the furniture. To her the reverse seemed to be true; the sight of the empty
walls pierced her right to the heart, and why should Gregor not feel the same,
since he had been accustomed to the room furnishings for a long time and would
therefore feel himself abandoned in an empty room. “And is it not the case,”
his mother concluded very quietly, almost whispering, as if she wished to
prevent Gregor, whose exact location she really did not know, from hearing even
the sound of her voice—for she was convinced that he did not understand her
words—“and isn’t it a fact that by removing the furniture we’re showing that
we’re giving up all hope of an improvement and are leaving him to his own
resources without any consideration? I think it would be best if we tried to
keep the room exactly in the condition it was in before, so that, when Gregor
returns to us, he finds everything unchanged and can forget the intervening
time all the more easily.”
As he heard his mother’s words Gregor realized that the lack of
all immediate human contact, together with the monotonous life surrounded by
the family over the course of these two months, must have confused his
understanding, because otherwise he could not explain to himself how he, in all
seriousness, could have been so keen to have his room emptied. Was he really
eager to let the warm room, comfortably furnished with pieces he had inherited,
be turned into a cavern in which he would, of course, then be able to crawl
about in all directions without disturbance, but at the same time with a quick
and complete forgetting of his human past as well? Was he then at this point
already on the verge of forgetting and was it only the voice of his mother,
which he had not heard for a long time, that had
aroused him? Nothing was to be removed—everything must remain. In his condition
he could not function without the beneficial influences of his furniture. And
if the furniture prevented him from carrying out his senseless crawling about
all over the place, then there was no harm in that, but rather a great benefit.
But his sister unfortunately thought otherwise. She had grown
accustomed, certainly not without justification, so far as the discussion of
matters concerning Gregor was concerned, to act as a special expert with respect
to their parents, and so now the mother’s advice was for his sister sufficient
reason to insist on the removal, not only of the chest of drawers and the
writing desk, which were the only items she had thought about at first, but
also of all the furniture, with the exception of the indispensable couch. Of
course, it was not only childish defiance and her recent very unexpected and
hard won self-confidence which led her to this demand. She had also actually
observed that Gregor needed a great deal of room to creep about; the furniture,
on the other hand, as far as one could see, was not the slightest use. But
perhaps the enthusiastic sensibility of young women of her age also played a
role. This feeling sought release at every opportunity, and with it Grete now
felt tempted to want to make Gregor’s situation even more terrifying, so that
then she would be able to do even more for him than she had up to now. For
surely no one except Grete would ever trust themselves
to enter a room in which Gregor ruled the empty walls all by himself.
And so she did not let herself be dissuaded from her decision by
her mother, who in this room seemed uncertain of herself in her sheer agitation
and soon kept quiet, helping his sister with all her energy to get the chest of
drawers out of the room. Now, Gregor could still do without the chest of
drawers if need be, but the writing desk really had to stay. And scarcely had
the women left the room with the chest of drawers, groaning as they pushed it,
when Gregor stuck his head out from under the sofa to see how he could
intervene, cautiously and with as much consideration as possible. But
unfortunately it was his mother who came back into the room first, while Grete
had her arms wrapped around the chest of drawers in the next room and was
rocking it back and forth by herself, of course without moving it from its
position. But his mother was not used to the sight of Gregor; he could have
made her ill, and so, frightened, Gregor scurried backwards right to the other
end of the sofa. However, he could no longer prevent the sheet from moving
forward a little. That was enough to catch his mother’s attention. She came to
a halt, stood still for a moment, and then went back to Grete.
Although Gregor kept repeating to himself over and over that
really nothing unusual was going on, that only a few pieces of furniture were
being rearranged, he soon had to admit to himself that the movements of the
women to and fro, their quiet conversations, and the scraping of the furniture
on the floor affected him like a great commotion stirred up on all sides, and,
so firmly was he pulling in his head and legs and pressing his body into the
floor, he had to tell himself unequivocally that he would not be able to endure
all this much longer. They were cleaning out his room, taking away from him
everything he cherished; they had already dragged out the chest of drawers in
which the fret saw and other tools were kept, and they were now loosening the
writing desk which was fixed tight to the floor, the desk on which he, as a
business student, a school student, indeed even as an elementary school
student, had written out his assignments. At that moment he really did not have
any more time to check the good intentions of the two women, whose existence he
had in any case almost forgotten, because in their exhaustion they were working
really silently, and the heavy stumbling of their feet was the only sound to be
heard.
And so he scuttled out—the women
were just propping themselves up on the writing desk in the next room in order
to take a short breather. He changed the direction of his
path four times. He really did not know what he should rescue first. Then he
saw hanging conspicuously on the wall, which was otherwise already empty, the
picture of the woman dressed in nothing but fur. He quickly scurried up over it
and pressed himself against the glass which held it in place and which made his
hot abdomen feel good. At least this picture, which Gregor at the moment
completely concealed, surely no one would now take away. He twisted his head
towards the door of the living room to observe the women as they came back in.
They had not allowed themselves very much rest and were coming
back right away. Grete had placed her arm around her mother and held her
tightly. “So what shall we take now?” said Grete and looked around her. Then
her glance met Gregor’s from the wall. She kept her composure only because her
mother was there. She bent her face towards her mother in order to prevent her
from looking around, and said, although in a trembling voice and too quickly,
“Come, wouldn’t it be better to go back to the living room for just another
moment?” Grete’s purpose was clear to Gregor: she wanted to bring his mother to
a safe place and then chase him down from the wall. Well, let her just try! He
squatted on his picture and did not hand it over. He would sooner spring into
Grete’s face.
But Grete’s words had immediately made the mother very uneasy. She
walked to the side, caught sight of the enormous brown splotch on the flowered
wallpaper, and, before she became truly aware that what she was looking at was
Gregor, screamed out in a high-pitched raw voice “Oh God, oh God” and fell with
outstretched arms, as if she was surrendering everything, down onto the couch
and lay there motionless. “Gregor, you. . .” cried out his sister with a raised
fist and an urgent glare. Since his transformation these were the first words
which she had directed right at him. She ran into the room next door to bring
some spirits or other with which she could revive her mother from her fainting
spell. Gregor wanted to help as well—there was time enough to save the
picture—but he was stuck fast on the glass and had to tear himself loose
forcibly. Then he also scurried into the next room, as if he could give his
sister some advice, as in earlier times, but then he had to stand there idly
behind her, while she rummaged about among various small bottles. Still, she
was frightened when she turned around. A bottle fell onto the floor and
shattered. A splinter of glass wounded Gregor in the face, and some corrosive
medicine or other dripped over him. Now, without lingering any longer, Grete
took as many small bottles as she could hold and ran with them in to her
mother. She slammed the door shut with her foot. Gregor was now shut off from
his mother, who was perhaps near death, thanks to him. He could not open the
door; he did not want to chase away his sister, who had to remain with her
mother. At this point he had nothing to do but wait, and, overwhelmed with
self-reproach and worry, he began to creep and crawl over everything: walls,
furniture, and ceiling. Finally, in his despair, as the entire room started to
spin around him, he fell onto the middle of the large table.
A short time elapsed. Gregor lay there limply. All around was
still. Perhaps that was a good sign. Then there was ring at the door. The
servant girl was naturally shut up in her kitchen, and therefore Grete had to
go to open the door. The father had arrived. “What’s happened?” were his first
words. Grete’s appearance had told him everything. Grete replied with a dull
voice; evidently she was pressing her face against her father’s chest: “Mother
fainted, but she’s getting better now. Gregor has broken loose.” “Yes, I have
expected that,” said his father, “I always warned you of that, but you women
don’t want to listen.” It was clear to Gregor that his father had badly
misunderstood Grete’s all-too-brief message and was assuming that Gregor had
committed some violent crime or other. Thus, Gregor now had to find his father
to calm him down, for he had neither the time nor the ability to explain things
to him. And so he rushed away to the door of his room and pushed himself
against it, so that his father could see right away as he entered from the hall
that Gregor fully intended to return at once to his room, that it was not
necessary to drive him back, but that one only needed to open the door, and he
would disappear immediately.
But his father was not in the mood to observe such niceties. “Ah!”
he yelled as soon as he entered, with a tone as if he were at once angry and
pleased. Gregor pulled his head back from the door and raised it in the
direction of his father. He had not really pictured his father as he now stood
there. Of course, what with his new style of creeping all around, he had in the
past while neglected to pay attention to what was going on in the rest of the
apartment, as he had done before, and really should have grasped the fact that
he would encounter different conditions. And yet, and yet, was that still his
father? Was that the same man who had lain exhausted and buried in bed in
earlier days when Gregor was setting out on a business trip, who had received
him on the evenings of his return in a sleeping gown and arm chair, totally
incapable of standing up, who had only lifted his arm as a sign of happiness,
and who in their rare strolls together a few Sundays a year and on the most
important holidays made his way slowly forwards between Gregor and his
mother—who themselves moved slowly—always a bit more slowly than them, bundled
up in his old coat, working hard to move forwards and always setting down his
walking stick carefully, and who, when he had wanted to say something, almost
always stood still and gathered his entourage around him? But now he was
standing up really straight, dressed in a tight-fitting blue uniform with gold
buttons, like the ones servants wear in a banking company. Above the high stiff
collar of his jacket his firm double chin stuck out prominently, beneath his
bushy eyebrows the glance of his black eyes was fresh and alert, and his
usually dishevelled white hair was combed down into a shining and carefully
exact parting. He threw his cap, on which a gold monogram, probably the symbol
of a bank, was affixed, in an arc across the entire room onto the sofa and,
thrusting back the edges of the long coat of his uniform, with his hands in his
trouser pockets and a grim face, moved right up to Gregor. He really did not
know what he had in mind, but he raised his foot uncommonly high anyway, and
Gregor was astonished at the gigantic size of the sole of his boot. However, he
did not linger on that point, for he had known even from the first day of his
new life that, as far as he was concerned, his father considered the only
appropriate response to be the greatest force. And so he scurried away from his
father, stopped when his father remained standing, and scampered forward again
when his father merely stirred. In this way they made their way around the room
repeatedly, without anything decisive taking place. In fact, because of the
slow pace, it did not look like a chase. So Gregor remained on the floor for
the time being, especially since he was afraid that his father could interpret
a flight up onto the wall or the ceiling as an act of real malice. At any
event, Gregor had to tell himself that he could not keep up this running around
for a long time, because whenever his father took a single step, he had to go
through a large number of movements. Already he was starting to feel a shortage
of breath, just as in his earlier days when his lungs had been quite
unreliable. As he now staggered around in this way in order to gather all his
energies for running, hardly keeping his eyes open and feeling so listless that
he had no notion at all of any escape other than by running and had almost
already forgotten that the walls were available to him, although here they were
obstructed by carefully carved furniture full of sharp points and spikes, at
that moment something or other thrown casually flew close by and rolled in
front of him. It was an apple. Immediately a second one flew after it. Gregor
stood still in fright. Further running away was useless, for his father had
decided to bombard him. From the fruit bowl on the sideboard his father had
filled his pockets, and now, without for the moment taking accurate aim, he was
throwing apple after apple. These small red apples rolled around on the floor,
as if electrified, and collided with each other. A weakly thrown apple grazed Gregor’s
back but skidded off harmlessly. However, another thrown immediately after that
one drove into Gregor’s back really hard. Gregor wanted to drag himself off, as
if he could make the unexpected and incredible pain go away if he changed his
position. But he felt as if he was nailed in place and lay stretched out
completely confused in all his senses. Only with his final glance did he notice
how the door of his room was pulled open and how, right in front of his
screaming sister, his mother ran out in her underbodice, for his sister had
loosened her clothing in order to give her some freedom to breathe in her
fainting spell, and how his mother then ran up to his father—on the way her
loosened petticoats slipped toward the floor one after the other—and how,
tripping over them, she hurled herself onto his father and, throwing her arms
around him, in complete union with him—but at this moment Gregor’s powers of
sight gave way—as her hands reached around his father’s neck, and she begged
him to spare Gregor’s life.
III
Gregor’s serious wound, from which he suffered for over a month
—since no one ventured to remove the apple, it remained in his flesh as a
visible reminder—seemed by itself to have reminded the father that, in spite of
Gregor’s present unhappy and hateful appearance, he was a member of the family
and should not be treated as an enemy, but that it was, on the contrary, a
requirement of family duty to suppress one’s aversion and to endure—nothing
else, just endure.
And if through his wound Gregor had now also apparently lost for
good his ability to move and for the time being needed many, many minutes to
crawl across his room, like an aged invalid—so far as creeping up high was
concerned, that was unimaginable—nevertheless, for this worsening of his
condition, in his view he did get completely satisfactory compensation, because
every day towards evening the door to the living room, which he was in the
habit of keeping a sharp eye on even one or two hours beforehand, was opened,
so that he, lying down in the darkness of his room, invisible from the living
room, could see the entire family at the illuminated table and listen to their
conversation, to a certain extent with their common permission, a situation
quite different from what had happened before.
Of course, it was no longer the animated social interaction of
former times, which in small hotel rooms Gregor had always thought about with a
certain longing, when, tired out, he had had to throw
himself into the damp bedclothes. For the most part what went on now was only
very quiet. After the evening meal, the father soon fell asleep in his arm
chair. The mother and sister warned each other to be quiet. Bent far over the
light, the mother sewed fine undergarments for a fashion shop. The sister, who
had taken on a job as a salesgirl, in the evening studied stenography and
French, so as perhaps to obtain a better position later on. Sometimes the
father woke up and, as if he was quite ignorant that he had been asleep, said
to the mother “How long you have been sewing again today!” and went right back
to sleep, while the mother and the sister smiled tiredly to each other.
With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take off his
servant’s uniform even at home, and while his sleeping gown hung unused on the
coat hook, the father dozed completely dressed in his place, as if he was
always ready for his responsibility and even here was waiting for the voice of
his superior. As a result, in spite of all the care from the mother and sister,
his uniform, which even at the start was not new, grew dirty, and Gregor
looked, often for the entire evening, at this clothing, with stains all over it
and with its gold buttons always polished, in which the old man, although very
uncomfortable, nonetheless was sleeping peacefully.
As soon as the clock struck ten, the mother tried gently
encouraging the father to wake up and then persuading him to go to bed, on the
ground that he could not get a proper sleep here and that the father, who had
to report for service at six o’clock, really needed a good sleep. But in his
stubbornness, which had gripped him since he had become a servant, he always
insisted on staying even longer by the table, although he regularly fell asleep
and then could be prevailed upon only with the greatest difficulty to trade his
chair for the bed. No matter how much the mother and sister might at that point
work on him with small admonitions, for a quarter of an hour he would remain
shaking his head slowly, his eyes closed, without standing up. The mother would
pull him by the sleeve and speak flattering words into his ear; the sister
would leave her work to help her mother, but that would not have the desired
effect on the father. He would merely settle himself even more deeply into his
arm chair. Only when the two women grabbed him under the armpits would he throw
his eyes open, look back and forth at the mother and sister, and habitually say
“This is a life. This is the peace and quiet of my old age.” And propped up by
both women, he would heave himself up elaborately, as if for him it was the
greatest trouble, allow himself to be led to the door by the women, wave them
away there, and proceed on his own from that point, while the mother quickly
threw down her sewing implements and the sister her pen in order to run after
the father and help him some more.
In this overworked and exhausted family who had time to worry any
longer about Gregor more than was absolutely necessary? The household was
constantly getting smaller. The servant girl was now let go. A huge bony
cleaning woman with white hair flying all over her head came in the morning and
evening to do the heaviest work. The mother took care of everything else, in
addition to her considerable sewing work. It even happened that various pieces
of family jewellery, which previously the mother and
sister had been overjoyed to wear on social and festive occasions, were sold,
as Gregor found out in the evening from the general discussion of the prices
they had fetched. But the greatest complaint was always that they could not
leave this apartment, which was much too big for their present means, since it
was impossible to imagine how Gregor might be moved. But Gregor fully
recognized that it was not just consideration for him which was preventing a
move, for he could have been transported easily in a suitable box with a few
air holes. The main thing holding the family back from a change in living
quarters was far more their complete hopelessness and the idea that they had
been struck by a misfortune like no one else in their entire circle of
relatives and acquaintances. What the world demands of poor people they now
carried out to an extreme degree. The father bought breakfast to the petty
officials at the bank, the mother sacrificed herself for the undergarments of
strangers, the sister behind her desk was at the beck and call of customers,
but the family’s energies did not extend any further. And the wound in his back
began to pain Gregor all over again, when his mother and sister, after they had
escorted the father to bed, now came back, let their work lie, moved close
together, and sat cheek to cheek and when his mother would now say, pointing to
Gregor’s room, “Close the door, Grete,” and when Gregor was again in the
darkness, while close by the women mingled their tears or, quite dry eyed,
stared at the table.
Gregor spent his nights and days with hardly any sleep. Sometimes
he thought that the next time the door opened he would take over the family
arrangements just as he had earlier. In his imagination appeared again, after a
long time, his boss and the manager, the chief clerk and the apprentices, the
excessively spineless custodian, two or three friends from other businesses, a
chambermaid from a hotel in the provinces, a loving, fleeting memory, a female
cashier from a hat shop, whom he had seriously but too slowly courted—they all
appeared mixed in with strangers or people he had already forgotten, but
instead of helping him and his family, they were all unapproachable, and he was
happy to see them disappear. But then again he was in no mood to worry about
his family. He was filled with sheer anger over the wretched care he was
getting, even though he could not imagine anything which he might have an
appetite for. Still, he made plans about how he could get into the larder to
take there what he at all accounts deserved, even if he was not hungry. Without
thinking any more about how they might be able to give Gregor special pleasure,
the sister very quickly kicked some food or other, whatever she felt like, into
his room in the morning and at noon, before she ran off to her shop. And in the
evening, quite indifferent to whether the food had perhaps only been tasted or,
what happened most frequently, remained entirely undisturbed,
she whisked it out with one sweep of her broom. The task of cleaning his room,
which she now always carried out in the evening, could not have been done any
more quickly. Streaks of dirt ran along the walls; here and there lay tangles
of dust and garbage. At first, when his sister arrived, Gregor positioned
himself in a particularly filthy corner in order with this posture to make
something of a protest. But he could well have stayed there for weeks without
his sister’s doing the job any better. In fact, she perceived the dirt as much
as he did, but she had decided just to let it stay. In this business, with a
touchiness which was quite new to her and which had generally taken over the
entire family, she kept watch to see that the cleaning of Gregor’s room
remained reserved for her. His mother had once undertaken a major clean up of
his room, which she had only completed successfully after using a few buckets
of water. But the extensive dampness made Gregor sick, and he lay spread out, embittered and immobile, on the couch.
However, the mother’s punishment did not fail to materialize. For in the
evening the sister had hardly observed the change in Gregor’s room before she
ran into the living room mightily offended and, in spite of her mother’s hand
lifted high in entreaty, broke out in a fit of crying. Her parents—the father
had, of course, woken up with a start in his armchair—at first looked at her
astonished and helpless, until they started to get agitated. Turning to his
right, the father heaped reproaches on the mother that she had not left the
cleaning of Gregor’s room to the sister and, turning to his left, he shouted at
the sister that she would no longer be allowed to clean Gregor’s room ever
again, while the mother tried to pull the father, beside himself in his
excitement, into the bed room. The sister, shaken by her crying fit, pounded on
the table with her tiny fists, and Gregor hissed at all this, angry that no one
thought about shutting the door and sparing him the sight of this commotion.
But even when the sister, exhausted from her daily work, had grown
tired of caring for Gregor as she had before, even then the mother did not have
to come at all in her place. And Gregor did not have to be neglected. For now
the cleaning woman was there. This old widow, whose bony frame had enabled her
to survive the worst a long life can offer, had no real horror of Gregor.
Without being in the least curious, she had once accidentally opened Gregor’s
door. At the sight of Gregor, who, totally surprised, began to scamper here and
there, although no one was chasing him, she remained standing with her hands
folded across her stomach staring at him. Since then she did not fail to open
the door furtively a little every morning and evening and look in on Gregor. At
first, she also called him to her with words which she probably thought were
friendly, like “Come here for a bit, old dung beetle!” or “Hey, look at the old
dung beetle!” Addressed in such a manner, Gregor made no answer, but remained
motionless in his place, as if the door had not been opened at all. If only,
instead of allowing this cleaning woman to disturb him uselessly whenever she
felt like it, they had given her orders to clean up his room every day! Once in
the early morning—a hard downpour, perhaps already a sign of the coming spring,
struck the window panes—when the cleaning woman started up once again with her
usual conversation, Gregor was so bitter that he turned towards her, as if for
an attack, although slowly and weakly. But instead of being afraid of him, the
cleaning woman merely lifted up a chair standing close by the door and, as she
stood there with her mouth wide open, her intention was clear: she would close
her mouth only when the chair in her hand had been thrown down on Gregor’s
back. “This goes no further, all right?” she asked, as
Gregor turned himself around again, and she placed the chair calmly back in the
corner.
Gregor ate hardly anything any more. Only when he chanced to move
past the food which had been prepared did he, as a game, take a bit into his
mouth, hold it there for hours, and generally spit it out again. At first he
thought it might be his sadness over the condition of his room which kept him
from eating, but he very soon became reconciled to the alterations in his room.
People had grown accustomed to discard in there things which they could not put
anywhere else, and at this point there were many such items, now that they had
rented one room of the apartment to three lodgers. These solemn gentlemen—all
three had full beards, as Gregor once found out through a crack in the
door—were meticulously intent on tidiness, not only in their own room but,
since they had now rented a room here, in the entire household, particularly in
the kitchen. They simply did not tolerate any useless or shoddy stuff.
Moreover, for the most part they had brought with them their own pieces of
furniture. Thus, many items had become superfluous, and these were not really
things one could sell or things people wanted to throw out. All these pieces
ended up in Gregor’s room, even the box of ashes and the garbage pail from the
kitchen. The cleaning woman, always in a great hurry, simply flung anything
that was for the moment useless into Gregor’s room. Fortunately Gregor
generally saw only the relevant object and the hand which held it. The cleaning
woman perhaps was intending, when time and opportunity allowed, to take the
stuff out again or to throw everything out all at once, but in fact the things
remained lying there, wherever they had ended up at the first throw, unless
Gregor squirmed his way through the accumulation of junk and moved it. At first
he was forced to do this because otherwise there was no room for him to creep
around, but later he did it with a growing pleasure, although after such
movements, tired to death and feeling wretched, he did not budge again for
hours.
Because the lodgers sometimes also took their evening meal at home
in the common living room, the door to it stayed shut on many evenings. But
Gregor had no trouble at all going without the open door. Already on many
evenings when it was open he had not availed himself of it, but, without the
family noticing, was stretched out in the darkest corner of his room. However,
on one occasion the cleaning woman had left the door to the living room slightly
ajar, and it remained open even when the lodgers came in as evening fell and
the lights were put on. They sat down at the head of the table, where in
earlier days the mother, the father, and Gregor had eaten, unfolded their
serviettes, and picked up their knives and forks. The mother immediately
appeared in the door with a dish of meat and right behind her the sister with a
dish piled high with potatoes. The food gave off a lot of steam. The gentlemen
lodgers bent over the plates set before them, as if they wanted to check them
before eating, and in fact the one who sat in the middle—for the other two he
seemed to serve as the authority—cut off a piece of meat still on the dish,
obviously to establish whether it was sufficiently tender and whether or not it
should be sent back to the kitchen. He was satisfied,
and mother and sister, who had looked on in suspense, began to breathe easily
and to smile.
The family itself ate in the kitchen. In spite of that, before the
father went into the kitchen, he came into the living room and with a single
bow, cap in hand, made a tour of the table. The
lodgers rose up collectively and murmured something into their beards. Then,
when they were alone, they ate almost in complete silence. It seemed odd to
Gregor that, out of all the many different sorts of sounds of eating, what was always audible was their chewing teeth, as if by that
Gregor should be shown that people needed their teeth to eat and that nothing
could be done even with the most handsome toothless jawbone. “I really do have
an appetite,” Gregor said to himself sorrowfully, “but not for these things.
How these lodgers stuff themselves, and I am dying of
hunger!”
On this very evening the violin sounded from the kitchen. Gregor
did not remember hearing it all through this period. The lodgers had already
ended their night meal, the middle one had pulled out a newspaper and had given
each of the other two a page, and they were now leaning back, reading and
smoking. When the violin started playing, they became attentive, got up, and
went on tiptoe to the hall door, at which they remained standing pressed up
against one another. They must have been audible from the kitchen, because the
father called out, “Perhaps the gentlemen don’t like the playing? It can be
stopped at once.” “On the contrary,” stated the lodger in the middle, “might
the young woman not come into us and play in the room here, where it is really
much more comfortable and cheerful?” “Oh, certainly,” cried the father, as if
he were the one playing the violin. The men stepped back into the room and
waited. Soon the father came with the music stand, the mother with the sheet
music, and the sister with the violin. The sister calmly prepared everything
for the recital. The parents, who had never previously rented a room and
therefore exaggerated their politeness to the lodgers, dared not sit on their
own chairs. The father leaned against the door, his right hand stuck between
two buttons of his buttoned-up uniform. The mother, however, accepted a chair
offered by one of the lodgers. Since she let the chair stay where the gentleman
had chanced to put it, she sat to one side in a corner.
The sister began to play. The father and mother, one on each side,
followed attentively the movements of her hands. Attracted by the playing,
Gregor had ventured to advance a little further forward, and his head was
already in the living room. He scarcely wondered about the fact that recently
he had had so little consideration for the others. Earlier this consideration
had been something he was proud of. And for that very reason he would have had
at this moment more reason to hide away, because as a result of the dust which
lay all over his room and flew around with the slightest movement, he was
totally covered in dirt. On his back and his sides he carted around with him
threads, hair, and remnants of food. His indifference to everything was much
too great for him to lie on his back and scour himself
on the carpet, as he had done earlier several times a day. In spite of this
condition he had no timidity about inching forward a bit on the spotless floor
of the living room.
In any case, no one paid him any attention. The family was all
caught up in the violin playing. The lodgers, by contrast, who for the moment
had placed themselves, hands in their trouser pockets, behind the music stand
much too close to the sister, so that they could all see the sheet music,
something that must certainly have bothered the sister, soon drew back to the
window conversing in low voices with bowed heads, where they then remained,
anxiously observed by the father. It now seemed really clear that, having
assumed they were to hear a beautiful or entertaining violin recital, they were
disappointed; they had had enough of the entire performance and were allowing
their peace and quiet to be disturbed only out of politeness. In particular,
the way in which they all blew the smoke from their cigars out of their noses
and mouths up into the air led one to conclude that they were very irritated.
And yet his sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was turned to the side,
her eyes following the score intently and sadly. Gregor crept forward still a
little further, keeping his head close against the floor in order to be able to
catch her gaze if possible. Was he an animal that music so captivated him? For
him it was as if the way to the unknown nourishment he craved was revealing
itself. He was determined to press forward right up to his sister, to tug at
her dress, and to indicate to her in this way that she might still come with
her violin into his room, because here no one valued the recital as he wanted
to value it. He did not wish to let her go from his room any more, at least not
so long as he lived. His frightening appearance would for the first time become
useful for him. He wanted to be at all the doors of his room simultaneously and
snarl back at the attackers. However, his sister should not be compelled but
would remain with him voluntarily. She would sit next to him on the sofa, bend
down her ear to him, and he would then confide in her that he firmly intended
to send her to the Conservatory and that, if his misfortune had not arrived in
the interim, he would have declared all this last Christmas—had Christmas really
already come and gone?—and would have brooked no argument. After this
explanation his sister would break out in tears of emotion, and Gregor would
lift himself up to her armpit and kiss her throat, which she, from the time she
had been going to work, had left exposed without a band or a collar.
“Mr. Samsa!” called out the middle lodger to the father and,
without uttering a further word, pointed his index finger at Gregor as he was
moving slowly forward. The violin fell silent. The middle lodger smiled, first
shaking his head at his friends, and then looked down at Gregor once more.
Rather than driving Gregor back, the father seemed to consider it more
important for the time being to calm down the lodgers, although they were not
at all upset and Gregor seemed to entertain them more than the violin recital.
The father hurried over to them and with outstretched arms tried to push them
into their own room and at the same time to block their view of Gregor with his
own body. At this point they became really somewhat irritated, although one no
longer knew whether that was because of the father’s behaviour or because of
the knowledge they had just acquired that they had, without being aware of it,
a neighbour like Gregor. They demanded explanations from his father, raised
their arms to make their points, tugged agitatedly at their beards, and moved
back towards their room quite slowly. In the meantime, the isolation which had
suddenly fallen upon his sister after the unexpected breaking off of the
recital had overwhelmed her. She had held onto the violin and bow in her limp hands for a little while and had continued
to look at the sheet music as if she was still playing. All at once she pulled
herself together, placed the instrument in her mother’s lap—the mother was
still sitting in her chair having trouble breathing, for her lungs were
labouring hard—and had run into the next room, which the lodgers, pressured by
the father, were already approaching more rapidly. One could observe how under
the sister’s practised hands the covers and pillows on the beds were thrown
high and then rearranged. Even before the lodgers had reached the room, she had
finished fixing the beds and was slipping out. The father seemed once again so
gripped by his stubbornness that he forgot about the respect which, after all,
he must show his lodgers. He pressed on and on, until right in the door of the
room the middle gentleman stamped loudly with his foot and thus brought the
father to a standstill. “I hereby declare,” the middle lodger said, raising his
hand and casting his glance both on the mother and the sister, “that
considering the disgraceful conditions prevailing in this apartment and
family”—with this he spat decisively on the floor—“I immediately cancel my
room. I will, of course, pay nothing at all for the days which I have lived
here; on the contrary, I shall think about whether or not I will initiate some
sort of action against you, something which—believe me—will be very easy to
establish.” He fell silent and looked directly in front of him, as if he was
waiting for something. In fact,
his two friends immediately joined in with their opinions, “We also give
immediate notice.” At that he seized the door handle and with a bang slammed
the door shut.
The father groped his way tottering to his chair and let himself fall in it. It looked as if he was stretching out
for his usual evening snooze, but the heavy nodding of his head, which appeared
as if it had no support, showed that he was not sleeping at all. Gregor had
lain motionless the entire time in the spot where the lodgers had caught him.
Disappointment with the collapse of his plan and perhaps also weakness brought
on by his severe hunger made it impossible for him to move. He was afraid and
reasonably certain that they might launch a combined attack against him at any
moment, and he waited. He was not even startled when the violin fell from the
mother’s lap, out from under her trembling fingers, and gave off a
reverberating tone.
“My dear parents,” said the sister banging her hand on the table
by way of an introduction, “things cannot go on any longer in this way. Maybe
if you don’t understand that, well, I do. I will not utter my brother’s name in
front of this monster, and thus I say only that we must try to get rid of it.
We have tried what is humanly possible to take care of it and to be patient. I
believe that no one can criticize us in the slightest.”
“She is right in a thousand ways,” said the father to himself. The
mother, who was still incapable of breathing properly, began to cough numbly
with her hand held up over her mouth and a manic expression in her eyes.
The sister hurried over to her mother and held her forehead. The
sister’s words seemed to have led the father to certain reflections. He sat
upright, played with his service hat among the plates, which still lay on the
table from the lodgers’ evening meal, and looked now and then at the motionless
Gregor.
“We must try to get rid of it,” the sister now said decisively to
the father, for the mother, in her coughing fit, was not listening to anything.
“It is killing you both. I see it coming. When people have to work as hard as
we all do, they cannot also tolerate this endless torment at home. I just can’t
go on any more.” And she broke out into such a crying fit that her tears flowed
out down onto her mother’s face. She wiped them off her mother with mechanical
motions of her hands.
“Child,” said the father sympathetically and with obvious
appreciation, “then what should we do?”
The sister only shrugged her shoulders as a sign of the perplexity
which, in contrast to her previous confidence, had now come over her while she
was crying.
“If he understood us,” said the father in a semi-questioning tone.
The sister, in the midst of her sobbing, shook her hand energetically as a sign
that there was no point thinking of that.
“If he understood us,” repeated the father and by shutting his
eyes he absorbed the sister’s conviction of the impossibility of this point,
“then perhaps some compromise would be possible with him. But as it is. . .”
“It has to go,” cried the sister. “That is the only way, father.
You must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The
fact that we have believed this for so long, that is truly our real misfortune.
But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long ago realized
that a communal life among human beings is not possible with such a creature
and would have gone away voluntarily. Then we would not have a brother, but we
could go on living and honour his memory. But this animal plagues us. It drives
away the lodgers, will obviously take over the entire apartment, and leave us
to spend the night in the lane. Just look, father,” she suddenly cried out,
“he’s already starting up again.” With a fright which was totally
incomprehensible to Gregor, the sister even left the mother, literally pushed
herself away from her chair, as if she would sooner sacrifice her mother than
remain in Gregor’s vicinity, and rushed behind her father who, excited merely by
her behaviour, also stood up and half raised his arms in front of the sister as
though to protect her.
But Gregor did not have any notion of wishing to create problems
for anyone and certainly not for his sister. He had just started to turn
himself around in order to creep back into his room, quite a startling sight,
since, as a result of his suffering condition, he had to guide himself through
the difficulty of turning around with his head, in this process lifting and
striking it against the floor several times. He paused and looked around. His
good intentions seemed to have been recognized. The fright had lasted only for
a moment. Now they looked at him in silence and sorrow. His mother lay in her
chair, with her legs stretched out and pressed together, her eyes almost shut
from weariness. The father and sister sat next to one another. The sister had
put her hands around the father’s neck.
“Now perhaps I can actually turn myself around,” thought Gregor
and began the task again. He couldn’t stop puffing at the effort and had to
rest now and then. Besides, no one was urging him on. It was all left to him on
his own. When he had completed turning around, he immediately began to wander
straight back. He was astonished at the great distance which separated him from
his room and did not understand in the least how in his weakness he had covered
the same distance a short time before, almost without noticing it. Always
intent only on creeping along quickly, he hardly paid any attention to the fact
that no word or cry from his family interrupted him. Only when he was already
in the doorway did he turn his head, not completely, because he felt his neck
growing stiff. At any rate, he still saw that behind him nothing had changed.
Only the sister was standing up. His last glimpse brushed over the mother, who
was now completely asleep.
He was only just inside his room when the door was pushed shut
very quickly, bolted fast, and barred. Gregor was startled by the sudden
commotion behind him, so much so that his little limbs bent double under him.
It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She was already standing up,
had waited, and then sprung forward nimbly. Gregor had not heard anything of
her approach. She cried out “Finally!” to her parents, as she turned the key in
the lock.
“What now?” Gregor asked himself and looked around him in the
darkness. He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move at all. He
was not surprised at that. On the contrary, it struck him as unnatural that up
to this point he had really been able up to move around with these thin little
legs. Besides he felt relatively content. True, he had pains throughout his
entire body, but it seemed to him that they were gradually becoming weaker and
weaker and would finally go away completely. The rotten apple in his back and
the inflamed surrounding area, entirely covered with white dust, he hardly
noticed. He remembered his family with deep feelings of love. In this business,
his own thought that he had to disappear was, if possible, even more decisive
than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection
until the tower clock struck three in the morning. In front of the window he
witnessed the beginning of the outside growing generally lighter. Then without
willing it, his head sank all the way down, and from his nostrils his last
breath flowed weakly out.
Early in the morning the cleaning woman came. In her sheer energy
and haste she banged all the doors—in precisely the way people had already
frequently asked her to avoid—so much so that once she arrived a quiet sleep
was no longer possible anywhere in the entire apartment. In her customarily
brief visit to Gregor she at first found nothing special. She thought he lay so
immobile there on purpose and was playing the offended party. She gave him
credit for as complete an understanding as possible. Since she happened to be
holding the long broom in her hand, she tried to tickle Gregor with it from the
door. When that was quite unsuccessful, she became irritated and poked Gregor a
little, and only when she had shoved him from his place without any resistance
did she become attentive. When she quickly realized the true state of affairs,
her eyes grew large and she whistled to herself. However, she didn’t restrain
herself for long. She pulled open the door of the bedroom and yelled in a loud
voice into the darkness, “Come and look. It’s kicked the bucket. It’s lying
there. It’s completely snuffed it!”
The Samsas sat upright in their marriage bed and had to get over
their fright at the cleaning woman before they managed to grasp her message.
But then Mr. and Mrs. Samsa climbed very quickly out of bed, one on either
side. Mr. Samsa threw the bedspread over his shoulders, Mrs. Samsa came out
only in her nightshirt, and like this they stepped into Gregor’s room.
Meanwhile, the door of the living room, in which Grete had slept since the
lodgers had arrived on the scene, had also opened. She was fully clothed, as if
she had not slept at all; her white face also seemed to indicate that. “Dead?”
said Mrs. Samsa and looked questioningly at the cleaning woman, although she
could have checked everything on her own and it was clear even without a check.
“I should say so,” said the cleaning woman and, by way of proof, poked Gregor’s
body with the broom a considerable distance more to the side. Mrs. Samsa made a
movement, as if she wished to restrain the broom, but did not do it. “Well,”
said Mr. Samsa, “now we can give thanks to God.” He crossed himself, and the
three women followed his example. Grete, who did not take her eyes off the
corpse, said, “Just look how thin he was. He has eaten
nothing for such a long time. The meals which came in here came out again
exactly the same.” In fact, Gregor’s body was completely flat and dry. That was
apparent really for the first time, now that he was no longer raised on his
small limbs and nothing else distracted one from looking.
“Grete, come into us for a moment,” said Mrs. Samsa with a
melancholy smile, and Grete went, not without looking back at the corpse,
behind her parents into the bed room. The cleaning woman shut the door and
opened the window wide. In spite of the early morning, the fresh air was partly
tinged with warmth. It was already almost the end of March.
The three lodgers stepped out of their room and looked around for
their breakfast, astonished that they had been forgotten. The middle one of the
gentlemen asked the cleaning woman grumpily “Where is the breakfast?” However,
she laid her finger to her lips and then quickly and silently indicated to the
lodgers that they could come into Gregor’s room. So they came and stood in the
room, which was already quite bright, around Gregor’s corpse, their hands in
the pockets of their somewhat worn jackets.
Then the door of the bedroom opened, and Mr. Samsa appeared in his
uniform, with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other. All were a
little tear stained. Now and then Grete pressed her face into her father’s arm.
“Get out of my apartment immediately,” said Mr. Samsa and pointed to
the door, without letting go of the women. “What do you mean?” said the middle
lodger, somewhat dismayed and with a sugary smile. The two others kept their
hands behind them and constantly rubbed them against each other, as if in
joyful anticipation of a great squabble which must end up in their favour. “I
mean exactly what I say,” replied Mr. Samsa and went directly up to the lodger
with his two female companions. The latter at first stood there motionless and
looked at the floor, as if matters were arranging themselves in a new way in
his head. “All right, then we’ll go,” he said and looked up at Mr. Samsa as if,
suddenly overcome by humility, he was even asking
fresh permission for this decision. Mr. Samsa merely nodded briefly and
repeatedly to him with his eyes open wide. Following that, with long strides
the lodger actually went out immediately into the hall. His two friends had
already been listening for a while with their hands quite still, and now they
hopped smartly after him, as if afraid that Mr. Samsa could step into the hall
ahead of them and disturb their reunion with their leader. In the hall all
three of them took their hats from the coat rack, pulled their canes from the
umbrella stand, bowed silently, and left the apartment. In what turned out to
be an entirely groundless mistrust, Mr. Samsa stepped with the two women out
onto the landing, leaned against the railing, and looked over as the three
lodgers slowly but steadily made their way down the long staircase, disappeared
on each floor in a certain turn of the stairwell, and in a few seconds
reappeared again. The further down they went, the more the Samsa family lost
interest in them, and when a butcher with a tray on his head came up to meet
them and then with a proud bearing ascended the stairs high above them, Mr.
Samsa, together with the women, soon left the bannister,
and they all returned, as if relieved, back into their apartment.
They decided to pass that day resting and going for a stroll. Not
only had they earned this break from work, but there was no question that they
really needed it. And so they sat down at the table and wrote three letters of
apology: Mr. Samsa to his supervisor, Mrs. Samsa to her client, and Grete to
her proprietor. During the writing the cleaning woman came in to say that she
was going off, for her morning work was finished. The three people writing at
first merely nodded, without glancing up. Only when the cleaning woman was
still unwilling to depart, did they look up annoyed. “Well?” asked Mr. Samsa.
The cleaning woman stood smiling in the doorway, as if she had a great stroke
of luck to report to the family but would only do it if she was questioned
thoroughly. The almost upright small ostrich feather in her hat, which had
irritated Mr. Samsa during her entire service with them, swayed lightly in all
directions. “All right then, what do you really want?” asked Mrs. Samsa, whom
the cleaning lady respected more than the others. “Well,” answered the cleaning
woman, smiling so happily she couldn’t go on speaking right away, “you mustn’t
worry about throwing out that rubbish from the next room. It’s all taken care
of.” Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent down to their letters, as though they wanted to
go on writing. Mr. Samsa, who noticed that the cleaning woman now wanted to
start describing everything in detail, decisively prevented her with an
outstretched hand. But since she was not allowed to explain, she remembered the
great hurry she was in, and called out, clearly insulted, “Bye bye, everyone,” then turned around furiously and left the
apartment with a fearful slamming of the door.
“This evening she’ll be given notice,” said Mr. Samsa, but he got
no answer from either his wife or from his daughter, because the cleaning woman
seemed to have once again upset the tranquillity they had just attained. The
women got up, went to the window, and remained there, with their arms about
each other. Mr. Samsa turned around in his chair in their direction and
observed them quietly for a while. Then he called out, “All right, come here
then. Let’s finally get rid of old things. And have a little consideration for
me.” The women attended to him at once. They rushed to him, caressed him, and
quickly ended their letters.
Then all three left the apartment together, something they had not
done for months now, and took the electric tram into the open air outside the
city. The car in which they were sitting by themselves was totally engulfed by
the warm sun. Leaning back comfortably in their seats, they talked to each
other about future prospects, and they discovered that on closer observation
these were not at all bad, for the three of them had employment, about which
they had not really questioned each other at all, which was extremely
favourable and with especially promising future prospects. The greatest
improvement in their situation at this point, of course, had to come from a
change of dwelling. Now they wanted to rent a smaller and cheaper apartment but
better situated and generally more practical than the present one, which Gregor
had chosen. While they amused themselves in this way, it struck Mr. and Mrs.
Samsa, almost at the same moment, as they looked at their daughter, who was
getting more animated all the time, how she had blossomed recently, in spite of
all the troubles which had made her cheeks pale, into a beautiful and
voluptuous young woman. Growing more silent and almost unconsciously
understanding each other in their glances, they thought that the time was now
at hand to seek out a good honest man for her. And it was something of a
confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions when at the end of their
journey their daughter stood up first and stretched her young body.
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