The Meowmorphosis Page 12

  As it happened, even after his sister, exhausted from her daily work, had grown tired of caring for Gregor as she used to, even then his mother did not have to take up the burden—and yet Gregor was not neglected. For now the cleaning woman was there. This old widow, who had clearly survived much in her long life with the help of her bony frame, 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 though no one was chasing him, playing almost as if he were his old self and occupiable with a bit of yarn or mouse—she remained standing with her hands folded across her stomach, staring at him. Since that day, she never failed 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 that she presumably thought were friendly, like “Come here for a bit, old kitty!” or “Hey, look at the sweet kitty!” Addressed in such a manner, Gregor answered nothing, 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 an early 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 toward her, as if for an attack, arching his back, although slowly and weakly. But instead of reacting with fear, 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. “Enough of this—got it?” she asked, as Gregor turned himself around again, and she placed the chair calmly back in the corner. He was helpless; why did she hate him so, when those ginger cats of Mrs. Grubach’s enjoyed the run of the neighborhood, leaping blithely on and off the window sill just outside, as if they’d never been brought to meet him and had no obligation to him at all? Perhaps she had a phobia, or perhaps she needed a good biting to improve her disposition.

  GREGOR ATE HARDLY anything anymore. Only when he chanced to walk past the food that had been prepared would he, almost as a game, take a bit into his mouth and make a perfunctory attempt at swallowing before, usually, spitting it out again. At first he thought it might be his sadness over the condition of his room and the loss of all possibilities, the loss of the life he might have had as a street cat, that kept him from eating; but he very soon became reconciled to the new, lessened state of his room and his life. The family and the cleaning woman had grown accustomed to storing in his room things that had no place 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 were now living here, in the entire household, and particularly in the kitchen. They simply did not tolerate any useless or shoddy stuff. Moreover, they had brought along many of their own pieces of furniture. Many of the family’s items had thus become superfluous, and these were not really things one could sell or things one wanted to throw out. All these items, then, 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 object and the hand that held it.) The cleaning woman perhaps meant, when time and opportunity allowed, to take the stuff out again or to eventually dispose of it all at once, but in fact the mess just remained there, however it had landed upon being tossed, unless Gregor squirmed his way through the accumulation of junk and pushed things around himself. At first he was forced to do this because otherwise there was no room for him to slink around, but later he did it with a growing pleasure—although after such exertion, tired to death and feeling wretched, he wouldn’t budge for hours.

  Because the lodgers sometimes took their evening meal at home at the common table, the door to the living room now stayed shut on many evenings. But Gregor had no trouble at all going without the open door. Even on many evenings when it was open he had stopped availing himself of it; without the family noticing, he would instead simply stretch out in the darkest corner of his room. However, one night the cleaning woman left the door to the living room slightly ajar, and it remained open even when the lodgers arrived in the evening and the lights were put on. They sat down at the head of the table where in earlier days his mother, his father, and Gregor had eaten, unfolded their napkins, and picked up their knives and forks. Gregor’s mother promptly appeared from the kitchen with a dish of meat; right behind her came his sister carrying a dish piled high with potatoes. The food gave off a lot of steam. The gentlemen lodgers bent over the plates set before them, as if they wanted to examine the meal before eating, and in fact the one who sat in the middle—he seemed to serve as the leader of the three—cut off a piece of meat still on the plate, obviously to establish whether it was sufficiently tender or whether it should be shipped back to the kitchen. He was satisfied, and Gregor’s mother and sister, who had looked on in suspense, now breathed easily and smiled.

  The family themselves ate in the kitchen. But before Gregor’s father went into the kitchen, he came into the common room and with a bow, cap in hand, made a tour of the table. The lodgers rose up collectively and murmured something in 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 swallowing, as if demonstrating to Gregor that people needed the full use of their throats to eat and nothing productive could be accomplished with even the keenest teeth and tongue alone. “I really do have an appetite,” Gregor said to himself sorrowfully, “but not for these things. How these lodgers stuff themselves, and I am starving to death.”

  On this particular evening, the violin sounded from the kitchen. Gregor couldn’t remember having heard it all through this period. The lodgers had by now ended their night meal; the middle one had pulled out a newspaper and handed a page each to the other two, and they were now leaning back, reading and smoking. When the violin started playing, they grew attentive; they got up and went on tiptoe to the kitchen door, at which they remained standing pressed up against one another. They must have been audible from the kitchen, because Gregor’s 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 Gregor’s father, as if he were the one playing the violin. The men stepped back into the room and waited. In a moment, Gregor’s father emerged with the music stand, his mother with the sheet music, and his sister with the violin. Grete calmly prepared everything for the recital. The parents—who had never before rented out a room and therefore were clearly overdoing their politeness to the lodgers—dared not sit on their own chairs. Gregor’s 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 lodger; since she made sure to leave it where the gentleman had chanced to put it, she sat to one side in a corner.

  Gregor’s sister began to play. His father and mother both followed attentively the movements of her hands. Gregor, attracted by the music, ventured to creep a little farther forward, now poking his head into the living room. He gave little thought to his lack of consideration for the others. Before, he would have taken their presence very seriously and would have felt at this moment all the more reason to hide away, because—as a result of the dust that lay all over his room and flew around with the slightest movement—he
was totally covered in dirt. Stuck to his fur all over was dust, thread, hair, and specks of food. His indifference to everything was such that he could no longer be bothered to lie on his back and scratch it on the carpet, as he frequently used to do. Now, in spite of his condition, Gregor felt no timidity about inching forward through his door onto 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 had promptly placed themselves, hands in their trouser pockets, behind the music stand, much too close to Gregor’s sister, so that they could all see the sheet music, something that must certainly bother the girl—soon drew back to the window, conversing in low voices with bowed heads, where they remained as Gregor’s father worriedly watched them. It seemed clear that their expectation of a beautifully entertaining violin recital had been disappointed, and it was now only out of politeness that they were allowing the continued interruption of their regular peace and quiet. Particularly, the way in which they all blew their cigar smoke out of their noses and mouths led one to conclude that they were quite irritated. And yet Gregor’s sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was turned to the side, her gaze followed the score intently and sadly. Gregor crept forward a little farther still, keeping his head close against the floor in order to be able to catch her gaze if possible. Was he fully an animal now, that music so captivated him? And of course it brought to mind the terrible song of the cat of his dreams, and the music of Josef K’s seven cats. For him it was as if the way to the unknown nourishment he craved was revealing itself. He was determined to press forward right to his sister, to tug at her dress, and to indicate to her in this way that she might bring her violin into his room and cuddle him and press him to her breast once more. He would not struggle. No one here valued her recital as he did, as he wanted to. He did not wish to let her leave his room ever again, at least not as long as he lived. It occurred to him that his frightening appearance would for the first time become useful for him; he imagined guarding all the doors of his room simultaneously, snarling back at any attackers. Of course, his sister should not be compelled—no, she 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 absolutely intended to send her to the conservatory, and, indeed, 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 started going to work, had begun to leave exposed, wearning no ribbon or collar.

  “Mr. Samsa,” called out the middle lodger to Gregor’s father, and, without uttering a further word, pointed his index finger at Gregor, who was creeping 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. His father, rather than rushing to drive Gregor back again, seemed to consider it of prime importance to calm the lodgers—although they were not acting particularly upset, even though Gregor’s size was so great now that he could not fit on the large living room chair, for he would have crushed it entirely; perhaps, indeed, because of his size, Gregor seemed to fascinate the lodgers more than the violin recital had. His 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 it was impossible to tell whether that was because of his father’s behavior or because of the dawning realization that they had been living, without knowing it, alongside a neighbor like Gregor.

  They demanded explanations from Gregor’s father, raised their arms to make their points, tugged agitatedly at their beards, and moved back toward their room quite slowly. Meanwhile, the utter lack of attention that had suddenly fallen upon Grete after the sudden breaking off of the recital overwhelmed her. She held onto the violin and bow in her limp hands for a little while, continuing to stare at the sheet music as if she was still playing. Then, all at once, she pulled herself together, placed the instrument in her mother’s lap—the woman was still sitting in her chair, having trouble breathing, for her lungs were laboring, and Gregor’s labored in a mirror of hers, on account of his sister’s collar and his father’s flung yarn, he wheezed and coughed alongside his mother in distress—and ran into the next room, which the lodgers, pressured by his father, were nearing closer and closer. Gregor could see how, under his sister’s practiced hands, the sheets and pillows on the beds were quickly tidied and arranged. Even before the lodgers reached the room, she had finished fixing the beds and slipped out again—which was good, for their father seemed so gripped once again with his stubbornness that he was forgetting to treat his renter with the usual deference and respect. Instead, he pressed on and on until, at the door of the rented room, the middle gentleman stamped loudly with his foot and thus brought Gregor’s father to a standstill.

  “I hereby declare,” the middle lodger said, raising his hand and casting his glance on both Gregor’s mother and 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 that I have lived here; on the contrary I shall think about whether or not I will initiate some sort of action against you, something that—believe me—will be very easy to establish.” He fell silent and stared, as if he was waiting for something. His two friends suddenly joined in, discovering their own opinions: “We also give immediate notice.” At that they stepped into their room; the middle lodger seized the door handle, banged the door shut, and locked it.

  How much easier things had been when Gregor was a kitten and small enough to pass, almost, somewhat, for a usual sort of beast who might live in a house.

  His father groped his way to his chair and let himself fall in it. It looked as if he were stretching out for his usual evening snooze, but the heavy nodding of his head showed that he was not in fact sleeping at all. Gregor had lain motionless the entire time in the spot where the lodgers had caught him. His disappointment with the collapse of his plan to seduce his sister into loving him once more—and perhaps also weakness brought on by his severe hunger—made it impossible for him to move. He was certainly afraid that a general disaster would break upon him at any moment, and he waited. He was not even startled when the violin fell from his mother’s lap, out from under her trembling fingers, and gave off a reverberating tone.

  “My dear parents,” said Gregor’s 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, who sits in its own filth and wheezes and almost certainly has fleas and grows so large that soon even his room will not contain him, 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 am quite sure that no one could possibly criticize us in the slightest.”

  “She is right. A thousand times she is right,” said Gregor’s father. His mother, who was still incapable of breathing properly because of the dust and dander, began to cough numbly with her hand held up over her mouth and a manic expression in her eyes. Grete hurried over to her mother and held her forehead.

  The girl’s words seemed to have led her father to certain reflections. He sat upright, played with his uniform hat among the plates—which still lay on the table from the lodgers’ evening meal—and glanced now and then at the motionless Gregor.

  “We must get rid of it,” Gregor’s sister now said decisively to her father, for her 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 har
d as we all do, they cannot also tolerate this endless torment at home. Such strangeness, to have a brother who vanished and left only an ungrateful furball in his place. I just can’t go on anymore.” And she broke out into such a crying fit that her tears splashed 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?”

  Gregor’s sister only shrugged her shoulders, a sign of the hopelessness that, in contrast to her previous confidence, had come over her abruptly while she was crying.