The Meowmorphosis Read online

  PRAISE FOR QUIRK CLASSICS

  PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES

  BY JANE AUSTEN AND SETH GRAHAME-SMITH

  “Jane Austen isn’t for everyone. Neither are zombies. But combine the two and the only question is, Why didn’t anyone think of this before? The judicious addition of flesh-eating undead to this otherwise faithful reworking is just what Austen’s gem needed.”—Wired

  SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS

  BY JANE AUSTEN AND BEN H. WINTERS

  “The effect is strangely entertaining, like a Weird Al version of an opera aria, and Eugene Smith’s amusing illustrations add an extra touch of bizarre hilarity.”—Library Journal

  “It’s a monsterpiece.”—Real Simple

  ANDROID KARENINA

  BY LEO TOLSTOY AND BEN H. WINTERS

  “Android Karenina lives up to its promise to make Tolstoy ‘awesomer’ ”—The A.V. Club

  “Winters does a spectacular job, adding robots and mechanical terrorism to the misery, adultery, and philosophical introspection of Tolstoy’s masterpiece.”—Library Journal

  “This is quite possibly the definitive mash-up novel. If anything, the sci-fi elements add to the book’s feelings of isolation and humanity.”—Den of Geek

  Copyright © 2011 Quirk Productions, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book, except the Appendix, may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  The Appendix is copyright © 2011 by Quirk Productions, Inc., and released under the terms of a Creative Commons U.S. Attribution-ShareAlike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) as a remixed work based on the Wikipedia entry on Franz Kafka. Some rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2011921159

  eISBN: 978-1-59474-512-6

  Cover design by Doogie Horner

  Cover photo courtesy the Bridgeman Art Library International Ltd.

  Illustrations by Matthew Richardson

  Production management by John J. McGurk

  Quirk Books

  215 Church Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19106

  quirkbooks.com

  quirkclassics.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  List of Illustrations

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Appendix

  Discussion Questions

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  “What’s happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream.

  “But, sir,” called Gregor, “I’m opening the door immediately, this very moment.”

  She held out her arms and Gregor leapt happily into them, propelled by some ancient instinct.

  She bathed him vigorously, ignoring his caterwauls of protest.

  Near the monument lounged a large cat not unlike himself—a tabby with a languorous expression.

  The two cats tossed Gregor into a dank corner of the room.

  Someone must have been telling lies about Gregor Samsa.

  “I dreamed, I think, that a strange and beautiful cat was standing before me.”

  Gregor’s labored breathing seemed to have reminded his father that he was a member of the family.

  Gregor had no desire to create problems. He remembered his family with deep feelings of love.

  I.

  One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that he had been changed into an adorable kitten. He lay in bed on his soft, fuzzy back and saw, as he lifted his head a little, his brown arched abdomen divided into striped bowlike sections. His blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place as he rolled from side to side. His legs—too many!—pitifully thin compared to the rest of his rotund circumference, pawed 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 a bit too small—lay quietly between the four well-known walls. On the wall above the table, upon which was spread an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods—Samsa was a traveling salesman—hung the picture that 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 in a fur hat and a fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting in the direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her entire forearm had disappeared. Samsa felt a powerful urge to leap upon the sample cloths and scratch at them thoroughly, but as soon as it had come, it passed.

  Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the raindrops were falling audibly 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 proved quite impractical, for he was used to sleeping on his back, and in his present state he couldn’t get comfortable in this position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his back, he always rolled again onto his furry side, or his belly, his haunches settling last onto his old bed. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so he would not have to see the waggling paws, and gave up only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his side that he had never felt before.

  “O God,” he thought, yawning and stretching his front paws. “What a relentless job I’ve chosen! Day in, day out, always on the road. The stress of sales is much harder than the work going on at the head office, and on top of that I have to cope with the problems of traveling: the worries about train connections, the irregular and bad food, the never-ending stream of new people with whom you never get to make a real connection. To hell with it all!” He felt a slight itching on the top of his back, between his shoulders. He slowly wriggled closer to the bedpost 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 claw. But he retracted it immediately, for the contact felt like a cold shower all over him.

  “WHAT’S HAPPENED TO ME?” HE THOUGHT. IT WAS NO DREAM.

  He slid back again into his previous position. “This getting up early,” he thought, for his thoughts were already becoming quite feline, “makes a man stupid. A man must have his sleep. Other traveling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I go back to my inn during the course of a morning to write up the sales invoices, the other gentlemen are just sitting down to breakfast. If I were to try that with my boss, I’d be fired on the spot. Still—who knows whether that mightn’t be good for me, really? If I weren’t keeping this job 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! And how bizarre it is, anyway, for him to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employees from way up there, particularly since the chief has trouble hearing, so we have to step up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven’t completely given up that hope yet. Once I’ve made enough 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 my 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 ticking quietly on; in fact, it was past the half hour, already nearly quarter to. Could the alarm have failed to ring? No, he saw from the bed that it was properly set for four o’clock; certainly it had rung. Yes, but how could he have slept through that noise, which made the furniture shake? Now, it’s true he’d no
t slept quietly, but evidently he’d 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 wasn’t packed up yet, and he really didn’t feel particularly energetic. And even if he caught the train, there was no avoiding a blowup with the chief, because the firm’s errand boy—the boss’s minion, really, lacking any backbone or intelligence—would’ve waited for the five o’clock train and long ago reported the news of his absence. Well then, what if he reported in sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious, because during his five years’ service Gregor hadn’t stayed home sick even once. The boss would certainly come with the doctor from the health insurance company, would reproach his parents for their lazy son and cut short all objections, echoing the insurance doctor’s avowed opinion that everyone was always healthy, just lazy about work. And 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 very strong appetite.

  As he was thinking all this over urgently, yet still unable to make the decision to get out of bed—the alarm clock read 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?” Her soft voice! Gregor began to answer but was startled when he heard his own voice: It was clearly and unmistakably his own, but in it was intermingled, as if from below, an irrepressibly pert and endearing squeaking, which left the words distinct only for an instant and distorted them in the reverberation, so that one didn’t 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 now 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 yelled 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 by inserting long pauses between the individual words to remove everything mewling and kittenish from his voice. His father turned back to his breakfast. However, his sister whispered, “Gregor, open the door—I beg you.” Gregor had no intention of opening the door; he congratulated himself on maintaining his wise travel habit 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 realized clearly—by thinking things over in bed he would not reach a reasonable conclusion. Yet the bed seemed warmer and more comfortable than ever, and he was loath to leave it. He felt a strong desire to knead the coverlet with his white paws. But Gregor remembered that he had often in the past felt some light pain or other in bed, perhaps the result of an awkward reclining 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. Surely the change in his voice was nothing other than the onset of a real chill, an occupational illness of commercial travelers; of that he had not the slightest doubt.

  It was easy to throw aside the blanket. He needed only to push himself up a little, and it fell off by itself. But to continue was difficult, particularly because he was so unusually fat and cuddly. He needed arms and hands to push himself upright. Instead of these, however, he had only four large, soft paws that were incessantly moving with unfamiliar motions, flexing and curling, extending claws and retracting them, and that, in addition, he was unable to control. If he wanted to bend one of them, then it was the first to straighten 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 darling 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 couldn’t picture clearly—proved itself too difficult to move, particularly with what felt like a long, bushy tail added to the equation. The attempt went so slowly. When, having become almost frantic, he finally hurled himself forward with all his force and without caution, he chose his direction incorrectly, and he hit the lower bedpost hard. The violent pain that ensued revealed to him that the lower part of his body was at the moment probably the most sensitive. He could not abide his tail being squashed, most of all. This disaster also revealed to Gregor Samsa that he was quite a large kitten, for his upper parts were still curled up sweetly in bed.

  So now he tried to get his upper body out of bed first, turning his head carefully toward the edge of the bed. He managed to do this easily, and in spite of its width and wriggly, almost liquid 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 farther 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.

  After a second effort, he lay there again, sighing as before, and once again he saw his small limbs fighting one another, having discovered on their own some insignificant piece of fluff; all four of his paws batted it between them, as if he had nothing better to do! If anything, this was worse than earlier, and he didn’t see any chance of imposing quiet and order on this arbitrary movement. He told himself again that he couldn’t possibly remain in bed and that he really should be prepared 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 didn’t forget to remind himself of the fact that calm—indeed the calmest—reflection—indeed, perhaps a nap—might be better than the most confused decisions. But no! He forced himself to remain sharply awake. Looking for motivation, 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 as the alarm clock struck again, “already seven o’clock and still such a fog.” And for a little while longer he lay quietly, just purring, struggling valiantly against the onslaught of the nap, as if perhaps waiting for normal and natural conditions to reemerge from 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 slide 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 soft and extremely bendable; nothing would really happen to it as a result of the fall. His greatest reservation was a worry about the loud noise that the fall would surely create and which presumably would arouse, if not fright, then at least concern on the other side of all the doors. However, it had to be tried.

  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 slide prudently—it struck him how easy all this would be if someone were to come to his aid. Two strong peo
ple—he thought of his father and the servant girl—would have been quite sufficient. They would have only 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 furry little legs would then, he hoped, acquire a purpose. But, 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 stretching out his forepaws and hind paws together, 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 answering the door,” Gregor said to himself, caught up in an absurd hope. But of course then, as usual, the servant girl with her firm footstep 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 office manager himself. Why was Gregor the only one condemned to work in a firm where the slightest lapse 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 one morning for office work, would become sick 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?