The Meowmorphosis Read online

  Forgetting that he still didn’t know much about his present ability to move and that his speech possibly—indeed, probably—had once again not been understood, Gregor pushed back out of his mother’s embrace, intending to approach the manager, who was already holding tight onto the handrail with both hands on the landing in a ridiculous way. But as Gregor looked for something against which he could hold himself upright, with a small yowl he scrabbled and immediately fell down onto his four little legs. Scarcely had this happened when he felt for the first time that morning a general physical well-being. His small limbs had firm, thickly carpeted 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 relief from all his suffering was at hand. But at that very moment, as he lay on the floor kneading the carpet in a restrained manner quite close to his mother, who had apparently forgotten her initial delight at the appearance of a large kitten in place of a son, she suddenly sprang right up with her arms spread far apart and her fingers extended, crying 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, looking over toward her. He suddenly felt desperate to be in her lap once more, to have her stroke his head, and pet him, and perhaps give him a bit of fish. But she would not look at him. The manager momentarily disappeared completely from his mind. At the sight of the flowing coffee Gregor couldn’t stop himself licking his chops a few times. At that his mother screamed all over again, hurried from the table, and collapsed into the arms of his father as he rushed toward 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, shouting “Huh!” along the way. The sound echoed back up through the stairwell.

  The manager’s flight seemed to agitate Gregor’s father, who earlier had been relatively calm. Unfortunately, instead of running after the man—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 along with his hat and overcoat on a chair. 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 plea of Gregor’s was of any use; no plea could even be understood. No matter how willing he was to turn his head respectfully, his father just stomped all the harder with his feet. The newspaper waved frighteningly in his vision, filling him with a curious terror, that he might be beaten with the news of the day, or worse.

  Across the room his mother had pulled open a window, in spite of the cool weather; leaning out with her hands on her cheeks, she pushed her face far outside the window. Between the alley and the stairwell a strong draft came up, the curtains on the window flew around, the newspapers on the table swirled about, and individual sheets fluttered down over the floor. His father relentlessly pressed forward, hissing furiously like a wild man. Now, Gregor had no practice at all in bolting away—and this backing up through the half-open door was really very slow going. If Gregor had only been allowed to take his own time about it, he would have been in his room presently, but he was afraid to make his father impatient by the time-consuming process of deciding whether he wished to be inside or outside a door—for such things seemed to take much longer to work their way through his feline brain than they once had—and each moment he faced the threat of a mortal blow on his head or back from the cane in his father’s hand. Finally Gregor had no other option, for he noticed with horror that he did not yet understand how to maintain his attention on one thing when he desired so many things at once. And so he began, amid constant anxious sideways glances in his father’s direction, to turn himself around as quickly as possible, although in truth this was only done at a leisurely, unconcerned pace that any man might find infuriating. But Gregor found himself unable to move any other way. Perhaps his father noticed his good intentions, for he did not disrupt Gregor in this motion, but with the tip of the cane like a pointer he even directed Gregor’s sauntering movement here and there.

  If only his father would not hiss so unbearably! Because of that Gregor totally lost his head. He was already almost within his own room, when, with this hissing constantly in his ear, he just couldn’t help turning back a little, to hiss in return, as a cat’s honor demanded. Gregor did so, and immediately regretted it. He’d been successful in squeezing partway through the half-open door, but now it became clear that his body was too wide to go through any farther. He had already grown quite alarmingly huge and rotund, larger and furrier than any reasonable person might expect a kitten of only a few hours’ age, or indeed an adult cat of any description. Naturally his father, in his present mental state, had no idea of opening the door wider to create a comfortable 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 consider the door, consider himself, groom his whiskers, rub his cheeks against the jamb, further consider the nature of both doors and salesmen, and finally sniff at the air of his room, to see if it offered suitable napping opportunities, and thus perhaps, at the end of it all, get through the door. On the contrary, as if there were no obstacle and with a peculiar noise, he now forced Gregor forward. Behind Gregor, the sound at this point was no longer like the voice of just one man. Now it was truly no joke, and Gregor forced himself, come what might, into the door.

  The left side of his velvety, chubby body was lifted up. He lay at an angle in the door opening. His one flank was sore from the scraping. On the white door bits of fur were left clinging. Soon he was stuck fast and could not move anymore on his own. The white paws on his left hung twitching in the air above, and the right ones were pushed painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one really strong liberating push from behind, and he sprang, his pride wounded severely, far into the interior of his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and finally it was quiet.

  II.

  Gregor woke from a heavy sleep in the evening twilight. He would certainly have woken up soon in any case, for he felt well rested and wide awake, but it seemed to him that, in fact, it had been a hurried step and a cautious closing of his door that had aroused him.

  Light from the electric streetlamps outside lay pale here and there on the ceiling and on the higher parts of the furniture, but on the floor, around Gregor, it was dark. He pushed himself slowly toward the door, his whiskers twitching, which he now learned to value for the first time, for they allowed him to check what was happening out there in the shadows. His entire left side felt like one long unpleasantly stretched scar, and he really had to hobble on his three good legs, because, in addition, one poor paw 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 spotted that which had enticed him into motion: the smell of something to eat. A bowl stood there, filled with milk, in which swam tiny pieces of white bread. He almost laughed with joy, for his hunger now was much greater than it had been in the morning, and he immediately plunged half his face into the milk. But he soon drew it back again, because it was difficult for him to eat on account of his delicate left side—he could eat only if his entire body was comfortable, which it presently was not. He turned away from the bowl sadly and crept b
ack 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—which he had never been home to see himself, but of which his sister had always told him—had recently fallen out of their general routine. But everything was so still, despite that the apartment was certainly not empty. “What a quiet life the family leads,” Gregor said to himself, and as he stared ahead 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 what if, now, all tranquility, all prosperity, all contentment was to come to a horrible end? In order not to lose himself in such thoughts, Gregor preferred to set himself moving, so he bent and began to thoroughly lick his hind leg in the middle of his room.

  Once during the course of the long evening, one side door—and then the other door—opened just a tiny crack and quickly closed again. Someone presumably had wanted 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 he waited in vain; the door was not opened again. Earlier, when the door had been locked, 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 anymore, and the keys were stuck in the locks on the outside.

  The light in the living room was turned off only late at night, and now it was easy to establish that his parents and his sister had stayed awake all this time, for one could hear clearly as all three moved away on tiptoe. So now it was certain that no one would come into Gregor anymore until the morning. Thus, he had a long time to think undisturbed about how he should reorganize his life from scratch. There in the high, open room, he felt compelled by some unknown instinct to crouch on the floor, his haunches drawn up and his paws tucked under his white, fluffy chest. He purred deeply, and yet the room made him anxious, without his being able to figure out the reason, for he had lived there for five years. With a sudden, half-unconscious springing to action, but not without a bit of 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.

  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 that in his present condition he was now forced to cause them.

  EARLY IN THE MORNING—scarcely past night, really—Gregor had an opportunity to test the power of the decisions he had just made, for his sister Grete, 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 behavior, she immediately opened the door again and walked in on her tiptoes, as if she was creeping up upon someone and wishing to pounce upon them. Gregor had pushed his head forward just to the edge of the couch to look at her when she exclaimed and fell upon him, gathering up his bulk into her arms, and all in secret nuzzling and speaking sweetly to him. Yet he could not enjoy her attentions, which in any event were far too familiar for his taste. He was too hungry to be petted and fawned over thus. Would she not notice that he had left the milk standing, not indeed from any lack of hunger, that it was now warm and stale, and would she bring in something else for him to eat? Something like meat, wet and soft, as his heart truly desired? 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 claw free and abase himself at his sister’s feet, and beg her for something or other good and juicy to eat.

  Finally his sister ceased cuddling his large white paws, which he endured most patiently, and noticed with astonishment that the bowl was still full, with only a little milk spilled around it. She set him on the couch and picked it up immediately, although not with her bare hands but with a rag, and took it out of the room. Gregor immediately began imagining what she would bring next—but he never could have predicted what his sister, out of the goodness of her heart, in fact did. She brought him, to test his taste, an entire selection, all spread out on an old newspaper. There were shredded bits of liver left over from breakfast; chicken still on the bone from the evening meal, smeared with a white sauce; some raisins and almonds; kippers that 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—which Gregor supposed had been designated as his alone—into which she had poured some water. And out of her delicacy of feeling, since she knew that he would not eat in front of her, she went away very quickly and even turned the key in the lock, so that Gregor would understand that he could make himself as comfortable as he wished. Gregor’s small limbs quivered: The time for eating had come! His wounds must, in any case, have healed overnight; 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 still hurt even the day before yesterday.

  “Am I now going to be less sensitive,” he thought, already sucking greedily on the kippers, 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 liver, the chicken, and the sauce. The bread and fruit, by contrast, didn’t taste good to him. He couldn’t 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, despite 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. Amid minor attacks of asphyxiation, he looked at her with somewhat protruding, limpid eyes, as his unsuspecting sister swept up with a broom not just the remnants, but even the foods that 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 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, her occasional kissing, smacking sounds, meant to entice him
to her lap. 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 that sounded almost as though the situation were normal and no source of alarm. “Well, today it tasted good to him,” she said, if Gregor had really cleaned his plate; whereas, on the other hand, when she insisted (as she did with increasing frequency) on bringing him bread and vegetables, cakes, candies and other unappetizing foodstuffs that were not fish or other soft meats, or even the milk he had been too injured to enjoy fully, his sister would say sadly, “Now everything has stopped 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 would scurry right away to the appropriate door and press his entire body against it, purring and rubbing his cheek against the grain of the wood in a fashion he found most embarrassing yet a distinct source of pleasure. In the early days especially, there was no conversation that was not concerned with him in some way or other, even if only in secret. For two days, all the family’s meal-time discussions he could hear were about how people should now behave toward him; 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 there alone with him and they could not under any circumstances imagine leaving 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 goodbye about fifteen minutes later, she thanked them for the dismissal with tears in her eyes, as if she was receiving the greatest favor that 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, if they would only allow her to stroke Gregor’s large, striped head just once, which she found adorable, yet terrifying.