The Meowmorphosis Page 13

  “If only he understood us,” said Gregor’s father in a semi-questioning tone. Grete, 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,” his father repeated, shutting his eyes to absorb the girl’s conviction upon the impossibility of this point, “then perhaps some compromise would be possible with him. But, as it is …”

  “It must be gotten rid of,” cried Gregor’s 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 stupid, dirty animal and would have gone away voluntarily, to be with his own kind. Then I would not have a brother, but we could go on living and honor 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 alley. Just look, Father,” she suddenly cried out, “he’s already starting up again.” With a fright that was totally incomprehensible to Gregor, his sister jumped back from their 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, alarmed by her behavior, also stood up and half raised his arms in front of Gregor’s sister as though it were necessary to protect her.

  But Gregor had no desire to create problems for anyone, certainly not for his sister. He had just started to turn himself around in order to crawl back into his room—quite a startling sight, since, as a result of his declining condition, he had to guide himself through the difficulty of turning around with his head, in this process trying to lift it but banging it against the floor several times. He could not help it—his neck spasmed and thrust him against the floor, and anyway his girth was getting much bigger now than the space in which he had to turn. He paused and looked around. His good intentions seemed to have been recognized; the fright had lasted only for a moment. Now they just 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. His father and sister sat next to each other. Grete had set her hands around her father’s neck.

  “Now perhaps I can actually turn myself around,” thought Gregor, and he began the task again. He couldn’t stop puffing at the effort and had to rest now and then. Clouds of his fur wafted toward his mother, and she began to cough again.

  No one was urging him on. It was all left to him on his own. When he had completed turning around, he immediately made toward his door. He was astonished at the great distance that separated him from his room and could not at all understand how, in his weakness, he had covered the same distance a short time before, almost without noticing it. Intent now on trotting along quickly, he hardly paid any attention to the fact that not a single word or cry from his family interrupted him.

  Only when he was already in the door did he turn his head to look behind him—not completely, because his neck was quite limited in its range of motion by the accursed collar. At any rate, he saw that behind him nothing had changed. Only his sister was standing. His last glimpse brushed over his mother, who now appeared completely asleep. Hardly was Gregor inside his room, however, when the door was pushed shut quickly, bolted fast, and barred. He 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 had stood up right away, waited, and then sprung forward nimbly; Gregor had not heard anything of her approach. “Finally!” she cried out to her parents, as she turned the key in the lock.

  GREGOR HAD NO DESIRE TO CREATE PROBLEMS. HE REMEMBERED HIS FAMILY WITH DEEP FEELINGS OF LOVE.

  “What now?” Gregor asked himself, looking 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 to move around with these thin little legs supporting a body much bigger than even Josef K’s had been. He did not want to guess at the meaning of it. 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. He hardly even noticed the collar pulling tightly around his neck and the inflamed surrounding area, where his fur was entirely covered with white dust. His body grew around it, and in the mounds of fur the thing could hardly be seen. It pulled tighter; he could not feel it, not really. He remembered his family with deep feelings of love. He thought that he must disappear, and this decision was, if possible, even more certain than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three o’clock in the morning. Through the window he witnessed the beginning of dawn outside. Then, without willing it, his head sank all the way down, and from his moist pink nostrils, over his still-beautiful fur, flowed out weakly his last breath. It seemed to him as the breath left him that he heard the great cat’s song once more, and a circle of some kind seemed to shut within him.

  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 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 hard without any resistance did she become concerned. 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 kaput! It’s just lying there, dead and done with!”

  Mr. and Mrs. Samsa bolted awake in their marriage bed; they had to get over their startlement at the cleaning woman’s abrupt shout before they managed to grasp what she was saying. But then they climbed 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. Grete ran up behind them; she was fully clothed, as if she had not slept at all, which her white face also seemed to indicate. “Dead?” said Mrs. Samsa, and looked questioningly at the cleaning woman, as if she could not understand, although she could easily check for herself. “I should say so,” said the cleaning woman and, by way of proof, poked Gregor’s body with the broom once again, firmly. Mrs. Samsa made a movement as if she wished to restrain the broom, but didn’t 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, really. He had eaten nothing for such a long time, yet he kept growing. The meals we put in here came out again exactly the same.” In fact, Gregor’s body looked surprisingly flat and dry—enormous, but bony and starved. That was apparent for the first time, now that he was no longer raised on his small limbs with his fur puffed outward and his whiskers no longer distracted one’s gaze.

  “Grete, come into our room for a moment,” said Mrs. Samsa with a melancholy smile, and Grete, not without looking back at the corpse, followed her parents into their bedroom. 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 emerged from their room and looked around for their breakfast, astonished that they ha
d been forgotten. “Where’s breakfast?” asked the middle one of the gentlemen grumpily to the cleaning woman. She laid her finger to her lips and quickly and silently motioned to the lodgers that they should come into Gregor’s room. So they came and stood in the room, which was already quite bright, around Gregor’s corpse, their hands in the pockets of their somewhat worn jackets.

  Then the door of the bedroom opened, and Mr. Samsa appeared in his uniform, with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other. All were a little tear-stained. Grete pressed her face onto her father’s arm.

  “Get out of my apartment immediately,” Mr. Samsa said to the lodgers; he pulled open the door to the hall, without letting go of the women. “What do you mean?” said the middle lodger, sounding dismayed despite his sugary smile. The other two men kept their hands behind them, constantly rubbing them together as if excitedly anticipating a great squabble that must end up in their favor. “I mean exactly what I say,” replied Mr. Samsa, stepping directly with his wife and daughter up to the man. The lodger at first stood there motionless, then 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 simply nodded to him energetically, his eyes open wide.

  The lodger immediately and decisively strode out into the hall. His two friends, who’d just been listening, hopped smartly after him, as if afraid that Mr. Samsa might step into the hall ahead of them and disrupt their bond with their leader. In the hall, all three of them took their hats from the coat rack, pulled their canes from the cane holder, bowed silently, and left the apartment. Mr. Samsa, in an unnecessary but determined show of suspicion, 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 staircase and disappeared around the turn. Once they vanished, the Samsa family lost interest in them, and when a butcher with a tray on his head arrived just then and, with a proud bearing, passed them on his way farther up the stairs, Mr. Samsa, together with the women, left the banister, and they all went, 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. While they wrote, the cleaning woman came in to say that she was leaving, for her morning work was finished. The family, busy writing, at first merely nodded, without glancing up. Only when the cleaning woman failed to depart did they look up angrily. “Well?” asked Mr. Samsa. The woman stood smiling in the doorway, as if she had a great stroke of luck to report to the family but would only do so if asked directly. The small, almost upright ostrich feather in her hat, which had irritated Mr. Samsa during her entire service, swayed lightly in all directions. “All right then, what do you really want?” asked Mrs. Samsa, whom the cleaning woman still usually respected. “Well,” she answered, smiling so happily she couldn’t go on speaking right away, “about that rubbish from the next room being thrown out, you mustn’t worry about it. 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, put his hand out to silence her. Since she was not allowed to explain, she remembered the great hurry she was in, and called out, clearly insulted, “Bye-bye, everyone!” She turned around furiously and left the apartment with a fearful slamming of the door.

  “This evening she’ll be let go,” said Mr. Samsa, but received no answer from either his wife or his daughter, because the cleaning woman seemed to have upset once again 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 do away with the 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 chatted about their future prospects, and they discovered that, upon careful observation, these were not at all bad, for all three of them had employment—which they had not really discussed with each other at all—that was extremely favorable and held promising prospects. The greatest improvement in their situation to come next, of course, had to be a change of dwelling. Now they planned to rent an apartment smaller and cheaper but better situated and generally more practical than the present one, which Gregor had found. As they occupied themselves with this talk, 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 that 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.

  THE END

  Appendix

  The Curious Life of Franz Kafka,

  author of The Meowmorphosis

  By Coleridge Cook

  Franz Kafka, arguably the most depressing writer ever to put pen to paper, was born into a middle-class Jewish family just outside Prague, in what was then Bohemia, the modern-day Czech Republic. By no means should this fact be taken to mean that he was a Bohemian in the modern sense of the word, though the term is technically correct.

  His father, Hermann Kafka, was described, unsurprisingly, given his son’s depiction of fathers in literature, as a “huge, selfish, overbearing businessman”; Kafka called his father “a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature.” One must then wonder how so much was lost in transmission to his slight, nervous son and snigger in retrospect that the word Kafkaesque has come to mean the profound absence of those virtues. Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a ritual slaughterer of kosher meats—showing that, from the beginning, the Kafkas were a cheerful bunch—and came to Prague from Osek, a Jewish village in southern Bohemia. In a great boon to biographically minded literary critics everywhere, Hermann Kafka worked as a traveling sales representative, establishing himself as an independent seller of men’s and women’s luxury goods and accessories, employing several people and utilizing a large and satisfied cat as his business logo.

  Franz Kafka’s mother, Julie, was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous brewer in Podebrady; she was better educated than her husband, though not than her son, who, as noted above, would eventually have an adjective coined in his honor, as much as his family members might be aggrieved to find that their surname did not come to be a colloquial term for “pleasant” and “prosperous.”

  In summary: Little Franz was the scion of slaughterers, fancy boutique salesmen, and brewers of alcohol, and of these he feared the fancy boutique owner as the manliest and most intimidating.

  Franz was the eldest of six children. He had two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, who died at the ages of fifteen months and six months, respectively, before Franz was seven; and three younger sisters, Gabriele, Valerie, and Ottilie. On workdays, both parents were absent from the home, making little Franz a latchkey kid we can all identify with. (An animated musical film is rumored to be forthcomi
ng, showing the young life of Kafka as a scamp with a cheeky word for everyone and a buoyant spirit no one can help but love. Gabriele, Valerie, and Ottilie have been cast as a trio of talking cats, for reasons that will soon become clear.) His mother helped manage her husband’s business and worked long into the evening behind the counter; the children were left to their own devices under the casual eye of the occasional servant or governess.

  Franz’s relationship with his father was troubled, which certainly could not be surmised by anyone reading his works and counting up the good fathers on their fingers, then collapsing into a pit of despair when they find more unfeeling, evil father-devils than can be had in a Joss Whedon story.

  Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of French language and culture; one of his favorite authors was Gustave Flaubert, who like Kafka never met a horrible circumstance that didn’t thrill him to the bone. From 1889 to 1893, Franz attended the Deutsche Knabenschule, the boys’ elementary school near the meat market. His Jewish education was lackadaisical, limited to his bar mitzvah at age thirteen and attendance at synagogue four times a year with his father; like any modernist child flirting with the sensual trends of nihilism, he did not enjoy this at all. After elementary school, he was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented state gymnasium, Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, where he learned, wrote, and spoke German.

  It was there that the cats first found him.

  It began innocently enough: Stray cats, of which central Europe has no paucity, began to follow little Franz to school. At first he didn’t notice, but eventually it became impossible to ignore as the stream of cats thickened and then began waiting outside his classrooms for him to emerge. The other students withdrew from Franz, recognizing perhaps the presence of a genius in their midst, or possibly a witch, or, even more possibly, someone who smelled altogether too much like fish. Kafka began to suspect all these things of himself as well, but since he had already decided that his father was a villain for the ages, he knew he could tell no one and would have to sort it out on his own.