The Metamorphosis and Other Stories Read online

  Karl, on the other hand, felt more strong and lucid than he had perhaps ever been at home. If only his parents could see him, championing the good cause in a foreign country before distinguished personalities, and although he had not yet achieved victory, he was entirely prepared for the final conquest! Would they revise their opinion of him? Sit him down between them and praise him? Look for once, just once, into the eyes so devoted to them? Uncertain questions and the most unsuitable moment to ask them!

  “I have come because I believe that the stoker is accusing me of some sort of dishonesty. A girl from the kitchen told me she had seen him on his way over here. Captain, sir, and all of you gentlemen, I am prepared to refute all accusations by means of my documents, and with statements of unbiased and uninfluenced witnesses who are standing outside the door, if need be.” So spoke Schubal. This was admittedly the clear speech of a man, and from the changed expressions on the listeners’ faces, one could have thought these were the first human sounds they had heard in a long time. Of course, they failed to notice that even this nice speech had holes. Why was the first relevant word that occurred to him “dishonesty”? Was this perhaps the accusation that should have been made, instead of his nationalist prejudice? A girl from the kitchen had seen him on his way to the office and Schubal had understood immediately? Was it not his guilty conscience that sharpened his wit? And he had brought witnesses along straightaway and also called them unbiased and uninfluenced? Deceit, nothing but deceit! And the gentlemen tolerated it and even acknowledged it as proper conduct? Why had he clearly let so much time pass between the kitchen girl’s announcement and his arrival here? For no other purpose than to allow the stoker to tire the gentleman out until they had gradually lost their capacity for clear judgment, which Schubal had most to fear? Had he, who had surely been standing behind the door for a long time, not waited to knock until the moment when, due to that gentleman’s incidental question, he had reason to hope that the stoker was done for?

  Everything was clear and also involuntarily presented as such by Schubal, but the gentlemen had to be shown differently, even more perceptibly. They needed to be shaken up. So Karl, quickly, at least made the most of the time they had before the witnesses appeared and obscured everything!

  But just then the Captain waved off Schubal, who—seeing that his concern had been postponed for a little while—immediately stepped aside and, joined right away by the attendant, began a quiet conversation, which was neither lacking sidelong glances towards the stoker and Karl nor the most convincing hand gestures. Schubal seemed to be practicing his next big speech.

  “Didn’t you want to ask the young man something, Herr Jakob?” said the Captain amid general silence to the gentleman with the bamboo cane.

  “Indeed,” said the latter with a slight bow of thanks for his attentiveness. And then asked Karl again: “So what is your name?”

  Karl, who believed it was in the best interest of the main cause for this persistent inquirer’s inquiry to be dealt with soon, answered curtly, without, as was his custom, introducing himself by way of his passport, which he would have had to find first: “Karl Rossmann.”

  “But,” said the man addressed as Jakob, and stepped back, initially almost in disbelief, with a smile. Also the Captain, the chief purser, the ship’s officer, yes even the attendant clearly showed excessive astonishment at Karl’s name. Only the gentlemen from the harbor authority and Schubal remained indifferent.

  “But,” repeated Herr Jakob, approaching Karl with somewhat stiff steps, “then I am your uncle Jakob and you are my dear nephew. I suspected it all along!” he said to the Captain before he hugged and kissed Karl, who let all this happen in silence.

  “And what is your name?” asked Karl, as soon as he felt he had been released, very politely but entirely unmoved, and strained himself to foresee the consequences that this new development may have for the stoker. For the time being, there was no indication that Schubal could profit from this event.

  “Realize your good luck, young man,” said the Captain, who believed that Karl’s questions had wounded the personal dignity of Herr Jakob, who now stood at the window, apparently to avoid showing the others his excited face, which he kept dabbing at with a handkerchief. “It is the Senator Edward Jakob who has just announced himself to be your uncle. A brilliant career is now awaiting you, no doubt entirely contrary to your previous expectations. Try to grasp this, as well as you can at the moment, and collect yourself!”

  “I do indeed have an Uncle Jakob in America,” said Karl turning to the Captain, “but if I understood correctly, Jakob is merely the Senator’s surname.”

  “So it is,” said the Captain expectantly.

  “But my Uncle Jakob, who is my mother’s brother, bears the first name Jakob, while his surname would naturally have to be identical to that of my mother, whose maiden name is Bendelmayer.”

  “Gentlemen!” called the Senator, returning cheerfully from his recuperative post by the window, in response to Karl’s explanation. Everyone, with the exception of the harbor authorities, broke out in laughter, some due to emotion, some for reasons unknown.

  “By no means could my statement have been that ridiculous,” thought Karl.

  “Gentlemen,” the Senator repeated, “you are participating, against your and my intention, in a little family scene and I can therefore not avoid providing you an explanation, because I believe that only the Captain”—this reference led to reciprocal bows—“is fully informed.”

  “Now I must really pay attention to every word,” said Karl to himself and was pleased, as he noticed during a sideways glance, to notice that life had begun to return to the figure of the stoker.

  “I have spent the many years of my American visit—though the word visit is hardly suitable for an American citizen, which I am with all my soul—so during all these long years, I have been living entirely detached from my European relatives, for reasons which, firstly, do not belong here and, secondly, would really be too painful for me to explain. I even fear the moment that I may be forced to explain them to my dear nephew, when frank words about his parents and their kin will unfortunately be unavoidable.”

  “He is my uncle, no doubt,” said Karl to himself and listened. “He probably had his name changed.”

  “And now my dear nephew was—let’s just use the word that truly describes the issue—simply thrown out, like one throws a cat out the door when it is bothersome. I certainly do not wish to excuse what my nephew did to be punished in this way, but his fault is such that simply naming it already contains enough absolution.”

  “That sounds good enough,” thought Karl, “but I don’t want him to tell it to everyone. And anyway, he can’t possibly know about it. How could he?”

  “He was namely,” continued his uncle, rocking a little on the bamboo cane that he had fixed before him, whereby he actually succeeded in preventing the unnecessary ceremony that the situation would otherwise certainly have had, “he was namely seduced by a maid servant, Johanna Brummer, approximately 35 years of age. I definitely do not wish to offend my nephew with the word ‘seduce,’ but it is difficult, after all, to find another, equally suitable word.”

  Karl, who had already moved rather close to his uncle, turned around at this point to read the impression the story had made on the faces of those present. No one was laughing; everyone was listening patiently and earnestly. After all, one doesn’t laugh at the nephew of a Senator at the first opportunity that presents itself. It was more accurate to say that the stoker was smiling at Karl, even if just slightly, which was firstly good news, as it was a new sign of life, and secondly forgivable, because Karl had wanted to make a secret out of this issue that had now become so public.

  “Now this Brummer woman,” his uncle went on, “has had my nephew’s child, a healthy boy, who was given the name Jakob at his baptism, no doubt in commemoration of my humble self, who, despite certainly only being mentioned incidentally by my nephew, must have made a grea
t impression on the girl. Fortunately, I might add. For his parents, in order to avoid having to pay alimony or being otherwise drawn further into this scandal—I am familiar, I must emphasize, with neither the local laws nor any further details about his parents’ circumstances—so, in order to avoid paying alimony and their son’s scandal, they had him, my dear nephew, transported to America with irresponsibly insufficient equipment, as one can see, and the boy would have been left to his own devices, if it were not for the signs and wonders that have not quite ceased in America, and would probably have deteriorated in some alley of the New York harbor if that maid servant had not informed me of the entire story, including a personal description of my nephew and, sensibly, also the name of the ship, in a letter directed at me, which, after a long odyssey, came into my possession the day before yesterday. If my intention was to entertain you, gentlemen, I could certainly read you several passages of this letter”—he pulled two enormous, densely written sheets of paper from his pocket and waved them back and forth—“it would certainly make an impression, for it was written with a somewhat simple, although always well-intentioned cleverness and with much love for the child’s father. But I wish neither to entertain you more than necessary for the purpose of clarification, nor as a welcome to potentially hurt any feelings harbored by my nephew, who can read the letter, if he desires, for his own instruction in the privacy of the room that is already awaiting him.”

  Karl, however, had no feelings for that girl. In the surging crowd of a continuously receding past, she sat in her kitchen next to the kitchen cupboard, upon whose surface she had propped her elbows. She looked at him when he came into the kitchen now and then to get a glass of water for his father or pass on instructions from his mother. Sometimes she wrote a letter in a contorted position beside the kitchen cupboard and drew inspiration from Karl’s face. Sometimes she held her hand over her eyes, then no words could get through to her. Sometimes she kneeled in her cramped little room beside the kitchen and prayed to a wooden cross; Karl then observed her shyly in passing through the crack in the slightly opened door. Sometimes she bustled about in the kitchen and shrank back laughing like a witch when Karl got in her way. Sometimes she closed the kitchen door when Karl had entered and held the handle in her hand until he demanded to leave. Sometimes she bought things that he didn’t even want and pressed them silently in his hands. But once she said “Karl” and led him, who was still amazed at the unexpected familiarity, sighing and making grimaces into her little room, which she locked. Nearly choking him, she embraced his neck, and while she asked him to undress her, she actually undressed him and laid him in her bed as though she would never leave him to anyone from now on and stroke him and care for him until the end of the world. “Karl, oh my Karl!” she cried, as though she were seeing him and having her ownership of him confirmed, while he saw not the slightest thing and felt uncomfortable in the many warm bed clothes that she seemed to have piled up specially on his behalf. Then she laid herself down beside him and wanted him to tell her some secrets, but he couldn’t tell her any and she was annoyed either in jest or in earnest, shook him, listened to his heartbeat, offered her chest for him to do the same, which she could not bring him to do, pressed her bare stomach against his body, groped with her hand between his legs so repulsively that Karl shook head and neck from the pillows, then thrust her stomach against him several times. He felt as though she were part of him and, perhaps for this reason, was overcome by a dreadful helplessness. In tears, and after many requests on her part to meet again, he finally reached his bed. That was all that had happened and his uncle had still managed to make a big story out of it. And the cook had also thought of him and informed his uncle of his arrival. She had dealt with that nicely and he would have to return the favor.

  “And now,” cried the Senator, “I would like to hear from you publicly whether I am your uncle or not.”

  “You are my uncle,” said Karl and kissed his hand and was kissed on the forehead in return. “I am very glad that I have met you, but you are mistaken if you believe that my parents only speak ill of you. Aside from that, your speech contained several mistakes, that is to say, I mean, everything didn’t really happen in that way. Indeed, you are truly not able to judge things very well from here, and furthermore, I believe that it would do no particular damage if the gentlemen are slightly misinformed about the details of an issue that could hardly be of much interest to them.”

  “Well spoken,” said the Senator, who led Karl before the visibly sympathizing Captain and asked: “Do I not have a splendid nephew?”

  “I am happy,” said the Captain with a bow that can only be achieved by those with military training, “to have met you nephew, Herr Senator. It is a particular honor for my ship that it was able to provide the setting for such a meeting. But the journey in the steerage must have been quite terrible; after all, who knows for sure who’s riding along down there? Of course, we do everything possible to alleviate the journey for the people on the steerage as much as possible, much more than the American liners, for example, but we have still not managed to succeed in making such a journey a pleasure.”

  “It did me no harm,” said Karl.

  “It did him no harm!” repeated the Senator, laughing loudly.

  “Only, I’m afraid I lost my trunk while—” and with this he reminded himself of everything that had happened and what remained to be done, looked around and beheld all those present, silent with deference and amazement in their former places, their eyes directed at him. Only the harbor officials—insofar as their stringent, complacent faces allowed any insight—showed their regret at having come at such an inconvenient time. The pocket watch, which they now had lying before them, was probably more important than everything that had happened and might still happen in this room.

  The first one to express his good wishes after the Captain was strangely enough the stoker. “I congratulate you wholeheartedly,” he said, and shook Karl’s hand, by which he also intended to express something like appreciation. As he then intended to address the Senator with the same words, the Senator stepped back as though the stoker had thereby exceeded his rights; the stoker desisted immediately.

  But the others now understood what was to be done and at once formed a tumult around Karl and the Senator. So it happened that Karl even received congratulations from Schubal, which he accepted, and thanked him for. Finally the harbor officials came up to them in the restored calm and said two English words, which made a ridiculous impression.

  The Senator was entirely inclined to remind himself and the others of more marginal moments, in order to fully savor this enjoyment, which was, of course, not only tolerated by everyone but also accepted with interest. So he pointed out that he had entered Karl’s most distinctive features, as mentioned in the cook’s letter into his notebook, should he possibly need them at any moment. And then, during the stoker’s unbearable rambling, he had taken out his notebook for no other purpose than to distract himself and tried, as a game, to connect the cook’s observations, which were of course lacking a detective’s precision, to Karl’s appearance. “And that is how to find one’s nephew!” he concluded, in a tone as though he wished to be congratulated again.

  “What will become of the stoker?” asked Karl, passing over his uncle’s last story. In his new position, he believed he could articulate everything that came to mind.

  “The stoker will get what he deserves,” said the Senator, “and what the Captain considers to be right. I think we have heard enough and more than enough from the stoker, as I’m sure each of the gentlemen here will agree.”

  “But that’s not the point, in a matter of justice,” said Karl. He stood between his uncle and the Captain and believed, perhaps influenced by this position, that the decision was in his hands.

  But the stoker still seemed to have lost all hope. He held his hands halfway behind his belt, which, due to his excited movements, had been exposed along with a strip of his checkered shirt. Th
is didn’t trouble him in the least; now that he had lamented all his suffering, one should also see the few rags covering his body before carrying him away. He devised that the attendant and Schubal, as the two lowest in rank, should render this final act of kindness. Schubal would have his peace and quiet then and no longer be brought to despair, as the chief purser had put it. The Captain would not be able to hire anyone but Romanians, Romanian would be spoken everywhere, and then maybe everything really would run better. No stoker would chatter away in the purser’s office anymore; only his final chatter would be kept in quite fond memory, for, as the Senator had explicitly stated, it had indirectly provided the occasion for the recognition of his nephew. This nephew, by the way, had previously tried to be of use to him quite often and had received more than enough thanks in return by his service during the recognition; it would not even occur to the stoker to demand anything more from him now. Besides, even if he was the Senator’s nephew, he was far from being a captain, and it was from the Captain’s mouth that the harsh verdict would ultimately fall.—So, in accordance with his conviction, the stoker also attempted to avoid looking over at Karl, but unfortunately, there was no other place left in this room full of enemies for him to rest his eyes.