The Meowmorphosis Read online

  But his sister unfortunately thought otherwise. She had grown accustomed, certainly not without justification, so far as the discussion of matters concerning Gregor was concerned, to act as a special authority with more expertise than their parents—and so now their mother’s advice was, for his sister, sufficient reason to insist on the removal, not only of the chest of drawers and the writing desk, which were the only items she had thought about at first as they were quite spoiled by his pouncing and racing across them, but also of all the furniture, with the exception of the indispensable couch. Of course, it was only childish defiance—and possessiveness of her recent very unexpected but hard-earned favorite pet—that led her to this demand.

  But perhaps the enthusiastic sensibility of young women of her age also played a role. This feeling sought release at every opportunity, and with it, Gregor thought, perhaps his sister now felt tempted to make Gregor’s situation even more terrifying to the family, so that then she would be able to do even more for him than now. For surely none except Grete would ever trust themselves to enter a room in which Gregor ruled the empty walls all by himself. And so she did not let herself be dissuaded by her mother, who in this room seemed agitated and uncertain and finally yielded, helping Grete with all her energy to push the chest of drawers out of the room.

  Now, Gregor could do without the chest of drawers if need be, but the writing desk really had to stay. And scarcely had the women left the room with the chest of drawers, groaning as they pushed it, when Gregor stuck his head out from under the sofa to take a look how he could intervene cautiously and with as much consideration as possible. But unfortunately it was his mother who came back into the room first, while Grete had her arms wrapped around the chest of drawers in the next room and was rocking it back and forth by herself, without moving it from its position. His mother was not used to the sight of Gregor, and he realized he might make her ill with her delicate chest and his voluminous fur, so, frightened for her, Gregor scurried backward to the far end of the sofa—but he could not prevent the sheet from moving forward a little. That was enough to catch his mother’s attention. She came to a halt, stood still for a moment, and then went back to Grete.

  Gregor kept repeating to himself over and over that really nothing unusual was going on, that only a few pieces of furniture were being rearranged, but he soon had to admit to himself that the movements of the women to and fro, their quiet conversations, and the scratching of the furniture on the floor affected him like a great swollen commotion on all sides, and, so firmly was he pulling in his head and paws and pressing his belly into the floor, he had to tell himself unequivocally that he wouldn’t be able to endure all this much longer. They were cleaning out his room, taking away from him everything he cherished; they had already dragged out the chest of drawers in which the fret saw and other tools were kept, and they were now loosening the writing desk that was fixed tight to the floor, the desk on which he, as a business student, a school student, indeed even as an elementary school student, had written out his assignments. At that moment he really didn’t have any more time to check the good intentions of the two women, whose existence he had in any case now almost forgotten, because in their exhaustion they were working really silently, and the heavy stumbling of their feet was the only sound to be heard.

  And so he wriggled out—the women were just propping themselves up on the writing desk in the next room in order to take a breather—changing the direction of his path four times. He really didn’t know what he should rescue first. Then he saw hanging conspicuously on the wall, which was otherwise already empty, the large framed picture of the woman dressed in nothing but fur. He quickly scurried up to it and pawed at the bottom edge of the gilt frame, clinging to it with desperation. By leaping and scrabbling at the frame, he pulled himself up onto the top of the heavy portrait, where he settled himself, though a part of his ample, striped belly and tail spilled over the picture. At least this painting, which Gregor now covered nearly to the woman’s shoulders, would now not be taken away. He twisted his head toward the door of the living room to observe the women as they came back in.

  They had not allowed themselves very much rest and were coming back right away. Grete had placed her arm around her mother and held her tightly. “So what shall we take next?” Grete said, looking around. Then her glance met Gregor’s from the wall. She kept her composure only because her mother was there. She bent her face toward her mother in order to prevent her from looking around, and said, although in a trembling voice and too quickly, “Come, let’s go back to the living room for a moment.” Grete’s purpose was clear to Gregor: She wanted to bring his mother to a safe place and then chase him down from the painting. Well, let her just try! He squatted on his picture and did not hand it over. He would sooner spring into Grete’s face.

  But Grete’s words had immediately made his mother very uneasy. She turned around, caught sight of the enormous brown shape against the flowered wallpaper, and, before she became truly aware that what she was looking at was Gregor, screamed out in a high-pitched raw voice, “Oh God, oh God!” and fell with outstretched arms, as if she were surrendering everything, onto the couch and lay there motionless, her hands extended to him as if imploring. Gregor felt a terrible urgency in his fluffy chest and moved to jump down—there would be time enough to save the picture—but he was stuck fast on the glass and the gilt and had to tear himself loose forcefully, which made him topple ungracefully from his perch. He then went to his mother immediately, purring and pressing himself desperately against his mother’s chest, as he had when a babe, and accepting her hesitant hands on his large, heavy body, grateful and sorry to have caused such chaos in their comfortable home. His mother, for her part, wept unhappily, for nothing remained that anyone could say. But she did stroke him, and she did let him press his cheek against her hand.

  “Gregor, you …,” cried out his sister with a raised fist and an urgent glare—for he had never nuzzled her so willingly. These were the first angry words she had directed at him since his transformation. She ran into the room next door to bring some spirits or other with which she could revive her mother from her fainting spell. Gregor wanted to help as well; he darted after his sister into the next room, as if he could give her some advice, as he used to once upon a time, but then he had to stand there idly behind her while she rummaged about among various small bottles. Still, she was frightened when she turned around. A bottle fell onto the floor and shattered. A splinter of glass wounded Gregor in the face, some corrosive medicine or other dripped over him. He tried to lick his paw and mop it away, but the taste of it was sour and foul. Now, without lingering any longer, Grete took as many small bottles as she could hold and ran with them to her mother. She slammed the door shut with her foot, leaving Gregor stranded. He was now shut off from his mother, who was perhaps near death, thanks to him. He could not open the door, and he did not want to chase away his sister, who of course had to remain with their mother. At this point, he had nothing to do but wait, and overwhelmed with self-reproach and worry, he began to mew pitifully and knead the carpet below the door, turning in circles and climbing upon the fresh, new furniture that stood in the parlor. Finally, in his despair, as the entire room started to spin around him, he fell asleep on a large table.

  A short time elapsed. Gregor lay there limply. All around was still. Perhaps that was a good sign. Then there was a ring at the door. At this, caught outside his designated room, Gregor sprang guiltily away, and noting that the parlor window was quite ajar, slipped out in abject humiliation—and yet with a sharp feeling of release, finally feeling the air on his whiskers. He leapt upon the rose trellis and, half-climbing, half-falling, descended to the wet, cold street below.

  Grete went to open the door; their father had arrived. Seeing her alarmed appearance, he immediately asked: “What’s happened?” Grete replied with a dull voice—evidently she was pressing her face into her father’s chest—“Mother fainted, but she’s getting better no
w. Gregor has broken loose.”

  “Yes, I have expected that,” said his father, “I always told you it would happen, but you women never want to listen.”

  III.

  It was late evening when Gregor landed. The city lay deep in snow. There was nothing to be seen of his old apartments, for mist and darkness surrounded them, and not the faintest glimmer of light showed where the great building stood. Gregor stood on the road leading back to his house for a long time, looking up at what seemed to be a void. The stones of the street pressed painfully against his paws, nothing at all like the plush carpet of his former apartments, and though the rush of traffic assailed his sensitive ears from the roadway beyond the alley, these discomforts were ameliorated by the wonderful smells of old food and scraps of fish that littered the frozen ground, no doubt tossed out from some high window by a soul not weighed down by such predicaments as Gregor currently faced.

  Gregor began to investigate the possibilities of the rubbish heaps, amazed at the delicacy of his nose, its ability to discern haddock from cod, its unerring sense of what had gone to rot and what remained good for a cat’s stomach—which indeed he already knew would tolerate much a man’s would not—and its cheerful performance of many operations at once, not only snuffling out fish but ascertaining what other creatures had visited the alley before him, what sorts of moods they had been in, and whether or not he could expect rain later this evening. When at home, Gregor had not noticed his nose behaving in this manner; he supposed he had been surrounded entirely by familiar things that he had no need to inspect in any great detail. Nor, truly, had his nose had any pressing need to care for him, as Grete had performed most functions of a nose quite admirably.

  “How much my life has changed,” Gregor thought,” and yet how unchanged it has remained at the bottom of it all!” Even as a man among men, he thought, he had long sensed some small dissonance, some infinitesimal maladjustment in his spirit, causing a vague feeling of discomfiture that not even the most pleasant public functions could ease entirely; and even more than that, that sometimes—no, not sometimes, but very often—the mere look of some fellow man of his own station, the mere look of him would fill Gregor with helpless embarrassment and panic, even with despair. If he were to dig deep into his most shameful thoughts, he would have to admit that he had even looked at his own sister with such detached horror, at how like an insect she went about her daily routines, never seeming to enjoy them or despise them, or indeed to think at all, seeming so wholly different from Gregor himself that he wondered that they could truly be related, so like different species they lived. Even her violin playing, in which he often took some portion of pleasure, would, when he had fallen out of sorts, sound to him like nothing more than a huge insect’s legs rubbing together in some arcane attempt at language.

  Finding a choice bit of herring in the road, Gregor licked it thoroughly before beginning to slurp it up, and he considered that he had always tried to quiet his feelings of apprehension as best he could. Friends, if he had had any, might have helped him, if he could have found a kindred heart, a true fellow man to divulge his troubles to; yet the source of all his troubles seemed to be that he did not feel he had a fellow man, that he, Gregor Samsa, was singular in the world—alien, even—that to no corner of the city or even the continent could he turn to find a sympathetic person who had felt as he had felt, act as he had acted, suffered as he had suffered. Perhaps he had taken the job as a salesman in order to escape those very apartments where he suffocated alongside his family—perhaps, worse still, he had done it in a vain, desperate hope of finding anyone at all in whom he could confide these unformed, unsettling feelings of unbelonging.

  True, there had been peaceful times, times in which these sudden fits of melancholy were still not lacking but in which they were accepted with more philosophy, perhaps inducing a certain lethargy and laziness of habit, but nevertheless allowing him to carry on as a somewhat cold, reserved, canny, and calculating—but all things considered, a normal and civilized enough—man. And yet a man he was no longer, and soon, he felt certain, he would no longer be a kitten either, but a cat, full in the belly and strong in the leg, with ears most pointed and capable. Between Grete’s care and his occasional, spontaneous, excited careening about his room, he was becoming quite large and strong, and surely this had been a factor in the great frights he continued to give his family. How long would he keep growing? More pressing—how long could he provide food and warmth for himself now that he had escaped his confinement at home? Gregor had no fear that his father’s round, angry face would appear out of the upper windows and alert the neighbors to his presence, leading to a recapture and a swift return to his previous miserable circumstances. More likely, they would all be glad to be rid of him, as he could not in his present state serve any purpose to them, neither to pay his father’s debt nor to provide the household nor—but Gregor, thinking clearly now, as sharp-eyed animals will when they find themselves in frozen alleys with their supper in question, could not think of another way in which he was of any use to his relations, nor indeed could he think of the smallest fashion in which they were any use to him.

  Perhaps, Gregor thought, this new hardness of feeling could be attributed to the fresh exercise of his altered shape. He had often observed that the cats belonging to his neighbors showed no particular warmth or love for their owners, no matter how fine or poor their food and bedding. If those cats wished to claw up a drapery, they did so without considering the expense to be entered in their masters’ ledger, nor the swings of the kitchen maid’s broom against their backsides, nor anything save their personal desires. Gregor licked the remainder of the herring from his white paw. He had never acted according to his desires alone, but only according to the dicta of his kin, his duty, and that great filial ledger that ruled his life. He had not resented it; but he had to adapt to his current situation, and despite what they had all hoped, his current situation seemed to be permanent. That difference of spirit he had always felt on the inside was now evident on the outside—and perhaps if all this meant to continue, Gregor might be entitled to some portion of the freedom and uncaring disposition he had always found baffling in the feline species before now.

  With this sense of purpose then, Gregor raised his tail, fully erect, and strode from the dark alley of his earlier existence.

  WHEN GREGOR SAMSA, coming along the alleyway, walked into the open street, he saw that it was raining. It was not raining much.

  On the pavement straight in front of him there were many people walking in the various rhythms of city business. Every now and again one would step forward and cross the road. A little girl was holding a tired puppy in her outstretched arms. Two gentlemen were exchanging information of some sort. The one held his hands palms-up, lifting and lowering them in a regular motion, as though he were balancing a weight. Then one caught sight of a lady whose hat was heavily festooned with ribbons, buckles, and flowers. Gregor shuddered, thinking of the collar that even now itched against his neck. He batted at it with a hindpaw, burning with shame. And hurrying past was a young man with a slim walking cane, his left hand, as though paralyzed, pressed flat to his chest at an odd angle. Now and then there came men who were smoking, trailing clouds along ahead of them. Three gentlemen—two holding lightweight overcoats on their up-crooked forearms—several times made a ritual of walking out from the front of the buildings on the opposite edge of the sidewalk, surveying what was afoot there, and then drawing back into the doorway again, talking all the while.

  Gregor darted through the gaps between the passers-by. Instantly he was accosted by carriages on delicate high wheels, drawn along by horses with arched necks. As he tumbled this way and that he caught glimpses of people sitting at ease on the upholstered seats, gazing silently at the pedestrians, the ships in the river-yards, the balconies, and the evening sky. It happened that one carriage surged up behind him and overtook another; the horses pressed against each other, and the harness straps hung
dangling. The animals tugged at the reins, the carriage barreled forward, swaying side to side as it came up to speed, until the swerve around the first carriage was completed and the horses moved apart again, only their narrow quiet heads inclined toward each other, and poor Gregor, quite soaked in a frozen slushy slurry of muddy water, had achieved transit across a busy street in his middlingly fashionable district of Prague. He congratulated himself, and then bent immediately to licking himself from head to foot, a compulsion he still found humiliating but undeniable, irresistible, as the sensation of the very slightest speck of dirt caused him to descend into a frenzy of washing, and his fur was now laden with quite a bit more than a speck of filth from his adventures.

  Gregor felt tired already. The fur of his cheeks was pale as the faded brownish red of his flanks, which had a kind of Moorish pattern to their stripes and spots. The lady by the doorsteps over there, who had up to now been contemplating her shoes, which were quite visible under her tightly drawn skirt, now looked at him. She did so indifferently, with perhaps a bit of scorn or protective instincts toward the supper she was no doubt preparing beyond the lintel frame. Gregor thought perhaps she looked a bit bored as well. “Well,” he thought. “If I could tell her the whole story, she would be astonished! She would certainly give me supper, then, and beg me to tell her more! On the street one works so hard at surviving that one is too tired even to enjoy anything at all. But even all that work does not give a kitten the right to be treated lovingly by everyone; on the contrary, a cat is always alone, an utter stranger and rarely even an object of curiosity. And oh, so long as I say ‘one’ or ‘a cat’ instead of ‘I,’ there is nothing to it and one can easily tell the story, even laugh at its twists and turns; but as soon as I admit to myself that it is me, it is Gregor that has been so ruined, I feel a horror, and a weeping within me.”