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Franz Kafka The
Metamorphosis (1916) This translation by Ian Johnston of Malaspina
University-College, Nanaimo, BC, has certain copyright restrictions.
For information please use the following link: Copyright.
For comments or question please contact Ian Johnston. For more links to
Kafka e-texts in English click here] [This text was last revised on February 19, 2007] Franz Kafka One
morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered
that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his
armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown,
arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the
blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in
place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his
circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes. “What’s
happened to me,” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper room for a
human being, only somewhat too small, lay quietly between the four well-known
walls. Above the table, on which an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods
was spread out—Samsa was a travelling salesman—hung the picture
which he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and set in
a pretty gilt frame. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and a fur
boa. She sat erect there, lifting up in the direction of the viewer a solid
fur muff into which her entire forearm had disappeared. Gregor’s
glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the rain drops
were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge—made him quite
melancholy. “Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget
all this foolishness,” he thought. But this was entirely impractical, for he
was used to sleeping on his right side, and in his present state he could not
get himself into this position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his
right side, he always rolled onto his back again. He must have tried it a
hundred times, closing his eyes so that he would not have to see the
wriggling legs, and gave up only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in
his side which he had never felt before. “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 work going on at head
office, and, in addition to that, I 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. 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 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 through
that noise which made the furniture shake? Now, it is true he had not slept
quietly, 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 or
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 irrepressibly 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
turned out to be purely imaginary when he stood up, 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 doub 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 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 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 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 striking of 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. 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 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
constant rhythm—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 and care
that he completed 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
decide, 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
immediately 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 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 at
night. 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 a painful 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 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. 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 never be.” “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 going as well as I thought. But things are all right. 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, and 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 by
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 thin limbs. By doing this he gained control
over himself and kept quiet, for he could now hear the manager. “Did
you understood 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. Have you heard Gregor speak yet?”
“That was an animal’s voice,” said the manager, remarkably quietly 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 got used to them. But at least people now
thought that things were not completely all right with him and were prepared
to help. 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 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 for a moment,” 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 very wide without
him yet being really 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—was looking at his father with
her hands clasped. She 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
grey-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 work all the more eagerly 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. Chairman himself, who in his
capacity as the employer may let his judgment make casual 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 telling 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 at Gregor over his twitching shoulders with pursed lips. 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 his 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. Without
thinking that as yet he did not know anything about his present ability to
move and 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 he looked for something to steady himself, with a
small scream Gregor 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 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
momentarily had disappeared 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. His chin level with the banister, 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. Now,
unfortunately this flight of the manager also 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 picked up 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 swished, and individual sheets fluttered down over the floor. The
father relentlessly pressed forward, pushing out sibilants, like a wild man.
Now, Gregor 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 here and there. 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 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 get
through the door. On the contrary, with a peculiar noise he now drove 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 sore with the scraping. On the white door ugly blotches were
left. Soon he was stuck fast and would have not 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 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 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
aroused him. Light from the electric streetlamps lay pale here and there on
the ceiling 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. A bowl stood there, filled with sweetened milk, in which
swam tiny pieces of white bread. He almost laughed with joy, for he now had a
much 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 in a beautiful apartment
like this for his parents and his sister. 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 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 and was sorry only
that his body was too wide to fit completely under it. 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 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, and a slice of salted bread smeared with butter. In
addition to all this, she put down a 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 would now know that he could 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 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 bear the smell and even
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 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 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, as before, 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 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 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
her 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
betray anyone, not even the slightest bit. 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 a 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 hadn’t 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 an 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 in
front of 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 the 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
only 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 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, 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. Gregor
found out clearly enough—for his father tended to repeat himself often
in his explanations, partly because he had not personally concerned himself
with these matters for a long time now, and partly also because his mother
did not understand everything right away the first time—that, in spite
all bad luck, a fortune, although a very small one, was available from the
old times, which the interest, which had not been touched, had in the
intervening time gradually allowed to increase a little. Furthermore, in
addition to this, the money which Gregor had brought home every month—he
had kept only a few florins 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 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 the money to live on had to be earned. Now,
although his father was old, he was a healthy man who had not worked at all
for five years and thus could not be counted on for very much. He had in
these five years, the first holidays of his trouble-filled 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 labouring for breath?
Should his sister earn money, a girl who was still a seventeen-year-old child
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 satisfaction which looking out the window used to
bring him in earlier times. For from day to day he perceived things with less
and less clarity, even those 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
attentive sister must have observed 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 and from now on she even left the inner
casement 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 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 might
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 the noon meal before his sister returned, and
she seemed much less calm than usual. From this he realized that his
appearance was still constantly intolerable to her and must remain
intolerable 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 often 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 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 unlucky 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 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, and he did not injure himself in such a great
fall. 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 Gregor’s
creeping around as easy 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 while 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 walk in. In great
haste Gregor had drawn the sheet down even further and wrinkled it more. The
whole thing really looked just like a coverlet thrown carelessly over the
couch. On this occasion, Gregor held back from spying out from under the
sheet. Thus, he refrained from looking at his mother this time and was just
happy that she had come. “Come on; he’s not visible,” 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 greater part of the work, without
listening to the warnings of his mother, who was afraid that she would strain
herself. The work lasted a 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 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 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 an 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 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,
without moving it from its position. 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. But 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 scratching of the furniture on the floor
affected him like a great turbulent commotion 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 breather—changing 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, and 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 into 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 short
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 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, all the time 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, penetrating, 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, apparently the symbol of the 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 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 him, 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. Gregor
remained on the floor for the time being, especially since he was afraid that
his father might 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 suffer from 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 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 the unexpected and incredible pain would 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 so how his mother then ran up to his father—on the
way her loosened petticoats slipping 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 his
present unhappy and hateful appearance, Gregor was a member of the family and
should not be treated as an enemy, and 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 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 very quiet. After the
evening meal, the father fell asleep quickly in his arm chair. The mother and
sister talked guardedly to each other in the stillness. Bent far over, 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 later to obtain a better position. 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 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, slept peacefully nonetheless. 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 insisted always on
staying even longer by the table, although he regularly fell asleep and then
could only be prevailed upon 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 settle himself even more deeply in 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, and proceed on his own from there, 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 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 now mother and sister, after they had escorted the father to bed,
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
employer and supervisor 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 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 take from the larder what he at all account deserved, even if he was
not hungry. Without thinking any more about how they might be able to give
Gregor special pleasure, the sister now kicked some food or other very
quickly 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 changing her ways. 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 supine, embittered and immobile on the couch.
However, the mother’s punishment was not delayed for long. 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 arm chair—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 was
not to take over the cleaning of Gregor’s room from 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 by chance 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 to look in on
Gregor. At first, she also called him to her with words which she presumably
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! One day 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 his room things which they could
not put anywhere else, and at this point there were many such things, 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 items ended up in Gregor’s room, even the box of ashes
and the garbage pail from the kitchen. The cleaning woman, always in a hurry,
simply flung anything that was momentarily 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 plate set before them, as if they wanted to check it 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 plate,
obviously to establish whether it was sufficiently tender and whether or not
something 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.” 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, thank you,” cried out 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 dust,
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 often
had done earlier during the day. In spite of his 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 and were allowing their peace and quiet to be disturbed
only out of politeness. The way in which they all blew the smoke from their
cigars out of their noses and mouths in particular 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 started 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 once at his friends, and then looked down at Gregor once more. Rather
than driving Gregor back again, the father seemed to consider it of prime
importance 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 simultaneously 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
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—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 he must always show his lodgers. He pressed on and on,
until at 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,
banged the door shut, and locked it. 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 certainly afraid 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 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 come over her while she was crying. “If
only 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 only 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, 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
banging it against the floor several times. He paused and looked around. His
good intentions seem 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 door 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. From
the window he witnessed the beginning of the general dawning outside. 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 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 because he wanted to play 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, 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 they
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 night-shirt,
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, “Look how thin he was. He had
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 the end of March. The
three lodgers stepped out of their room and looked around for their
breakfast, astonished that they had been forgotten. “Where is the breakfast?”
asked the middle one of the gentlemen grumpily to the cleaning woman.
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 bed room 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 pulled open 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 asking fresh permission for this
decision. Mr. Samsa merely nodded to him repeatedly 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 would 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, left
the banister, 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 angrily. “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 asked
directly. 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 still usually respected. “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
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. They 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
prospects. The greatest improvement in their situation at this moment, 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 found. While they amused
themselves in this way, it struck Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, almost at the same
moment, how their daughter, who was getting more animated all the time, 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 got up first and stretched her
young body. [Back
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