The Metamorphosis and Other Stories Page 5

  II

  It was not until dusk that Gregor awoke from his heavy, coma-like sleep. He would certainly also have awoken a little later without being disturbed, for he had recovered sufficiently and felt well-rested, but it seemed to him that fleeting footsteps and a cautious closing of the door to the hallway had awoken him. Here and there the glow from the electric streetlight lay pallidly on the ceiling and the upper parts of the furniture, but down by Gregor it was dark. He slowly pushed himself toward the door, still searching around awkwardly with his feelers, which he was only now learning to appreciate, to see what had happened there. His left side seemed to be a single long, unpleasantly tense scar, and he actually had to limp on his two rows of legs. One little leg had also been badly injured during the course of the morning’s events—it was almost a miracle that only one had been injured—and dragged behind lifelessly.

  Only at the door did he realize what had actually lured him there. It had been the smell of something edible, for there stood a bowl filled with sweet milk, in which small pieces of white bread were swimming. He could have laughed with joy, for he was even hungrier than he had been in the morning and he quickly plunged his head into the milk, almost covering his eyes. But he soon pulled it back in disappointment; not only was eating causing difficulties due to his sensitive left side—and he could only eat when his entire body collaborated, puffing and panting—but the milk, which was usually his favorite drink, and which his sister had certainly brought him for that reason, didn’t taste good, so he turned away from the bowl, almost with reluctance, and crept back to the center of the room.

  In the living room, the gas was lit, as Gregor saw through the crack in the door, but although his father usually read the afternoon paper at this time of day in a raised voice to his mother and sometimes also to his sister, not a sound was now to be heard. Well, perhaps this habit of reading aloud, which his sister had always told and written him about, wasn’t even practiced anymore of late. But it was also so quiet all around, despite the apartment certainly not being empty. “What a quiet life his family lived after all,” said Gregor to himself and felt, as he stared before him into the darkness, great pride that he had been able to provide such a life in such a fine apartment for his parents and sister. But what if all the peace, all the affluence, all the contentment were now to come to a dreadful end? To keep from losing himself in such thoughts, Gregor instead set himself in motion and began crawling up and down the room.

  Once during the long evening, one of the side doors was opened, and once the other door was opened a small crack and quickly closed again; someone must have felt the need to come in, but had too many reservations after all. So Gregor began stopping directly in front of the living room door, determined to bring the hesitant visitor in somehow, or at least to find out who he was; but now the door was not opened again, and Gregor waited in vain. Early that morning, when all the doors had been locked, everyone had wanted to come in, but now that he had unlocked the one door and the others had been apparently unlocked during the day, no one came, and the keys were now on the other side of the locks.

  It was not until late at night that the light in the living room was put out, so it was easy to conclude that his parents and his sister had stayed awake for so long, for as one could hear exactly, all three of them were now leaving on tiptoe. Certainly no one would enter Gregor’s room again until morning, so he had a long time to contemplate how to rearrange his life without being disturbed. But the high, spacious room, in which he was forced to lie flat on the ground, frightened him, although he was unable to determine the reason, for it was, after all, the room that he had inhabited for the past five years—and with a partially instinctive turn, and not without a little shame, he hurried under the sofa, where, despite his back being slightly squashed and despite no longer being able to raise his head, he immediately felt very comfortable and only regretted that his body was too wide to be entirely accommodated under the sofa.

  He remained there the entire night, which he spent partially in a half-sleep, from which hunger had repeatedly awoken him, and partially in a state of worry and vague hope, which all led to the conclusion that he must behave calmly for the time being and, through patience and the greatest consideration, make the inconvenience, which he was forced to cause in his present state, as bearable as possible for his family.

  Early in the morning, it was almost still night, Gregor already had the opportunity to test the strength of the resolution he had just made, for his sister opened the door from the hallway, almost completely dressed, and looked inside with suspense. She didn’t find him right away, but when she noticed him under the sofa—good heavens, he had to be somewhere, after all, he couldn’t have flown away—she was so startled that she, unable to restrain herself, slammed the door again from outside. But then, as though regretting her behavior, she immediately opened the door again and, as though she were visiting one who was critically ill or even a stranger, entered the room on the tips of her toes. Gregor had pushed his head forward just to the edge of the sofa and was observing her. Would she notice that he had left the milk untouched, and that it was due in no way to a lack of hunger, and would she bring him a different dish that suited him better? If she didn’t do it on her own, he would rather starve than call her attention to it, although he actually felt an immense urge to shoot out from beneath the sofa, throw himself at his sister’s feet and beg her for something good to eat. But his sister noticed at once with astonishment that the bowl was still full, with just a little milk spilled around it. She picked it up right away, not with her bare hands, of course, but with a washrag, and carried it out. Gregor was incredibly curious to see what she would bring instead and made all kinds of speculations about it. But he never could have guessed what his sister, in all her kindness, really had done. She brought him, in order to try out his taste, an entire assortment, everything spread out on an old newspaper. There were old, half-rotten vegetables; bones from supper that were covered in hardened white sauce; a few raisins and almonds; a cheese that Gregor had declared inedible two days before; one piece of dry bread, one piece of buttered bread, and one piece of bread that had been buttered and salted. In addition, she also put down the bowl, which was probably now reserved for Gregor once and for all, and which she had filled with water. And out of sensitivity, for she knew Gregor would not eat in front of her, she departed as quickly as possible and even turned the key in the door so Gregor could understand that he could make himself as comfortable as he wanted. Gregor’s little legs whizzed as he now went to eat. His wounds, for that matter, must have already healed completely, for he no longer felt any hindrance. He was amazed at this and thought of how he had slightly cut his finger with a knife more than a month ago, and how this wound had still been painful enough the day before yesterday. “Might I be less sensitive now?” he thought, already sucking greedily at the cheese, to which he had felt immediately and particularly attracted before all the other food. One after another and with eyes tearing with satisfaction, he consumed the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce. The fresh foods, on the other hand, didn’t taste good to him at all; he couldn’t tolerate their smell at all and even dragged the things that he wanted to eat a little farther away. He was long since finished with everything and was lying lazily in the same place when his sister slowly turned the key to signal that he should withdraw. This startled him immediately, although he was already almost dozing, and he hurried back under the sofa. But it cost him a great amount of willpower to stay under the sofa, even if only for the short time during which his sister was in the room, for his body was slightly rounded from the ample meal and he could hardly breathe in the tight space. Between brief bouts of suffocation, he watched with somewhat protruding eyes as his unsuspecting sister swept together not only the leftovers, but also the food that Gregor had not touched, as though it too were no longer of any use, and how she hastily poured everything into a bucket that she closed with a wooden lid and carried everything out. Hard
ly had she turned around, when Gregor had already pulled himself out from under the sofa and stretched and puffed himself up.

  Gregor now received his meals in this manner every day, once in the morning, while his parents and the maid were still sleeping, the second time after the common lunch, for then his parents would also sleep for a little while and his sister would send the maid away on some errand. Surely they didn’t want Gregor to starve either, but perhaps they could not have endured learning more about his food than through hearsay. Perhaps his sister wanted to spare them even a possibly small amount of grief, for they were truly suffering enough at the moment. With which excuses they had managed to get the doctor and the locksmith out of the apartment on that first morning, Gregor could not find out, because due to the fact that he could not be understood, no one, including his sister, thought that he could understand the others, and so he had to be satisfied with listening to his sister’s occasional sighs and appeals to the saints when she was in his room. It wasn’t until later, when she had grown somewhat accustomed to everything—it was, of course, impossible to speak of becoming entirely accustomed—Gregor sometimes caught a comment that was meant kindly or could be interpreted as such. “He certainly liked his food today,” she said when Gregor had cleaned his plate diligently, while in the opposite case, which had gradually become increasingly frequent, she was accustomed to almost sadly saying: “Now it’s all been left again.”

  Although Gregor could not learn any news directly, he heard many things from the adjoining rooms, and, as soon as he heard even just one voice, he would run directly to the relevant door and push himself with his entire body against it. Especially in the early days there was no conversation that didn’t somehow, even if only secretly, concern him. For two days, consultations were to be heard at all meals about how they should now react; but they also spoke of the same topic between the meals, for at least two family members were always at home, as no one apparently wanted to stay home alone and there was no way that they could all leave the apartment together. Already on the first day, the maid had begged his mother on her knees to be immediately dismissed—it wasn’t quite clear what and how much she knew about what had occurred—and when she took her leave fifteen minutes later, she thanked them in tears for her dismissal, as though for the greatest of good deeds that had been bestowed upon her here, and, although no one had demanded it of her, gave a dreadful oath to never betray even the smallest detail to anyone.

  Now his sister, together with his mother, also had to do the cooking; that wasn’t much trouble, however, because they ate hardly anything. Again and again, Gregor could hear one of them encouraging another in vain to eat, receiving no other answer than “Thank you, I’ve had enough” or something similar. Perhaps they didn’t drink anything either. His sister often asked his father if he would like a beer, and affectionately offered to get it herself, and when he remained silent, she then said, to remove any reservations, that she could send the caretaker to fetch it. But then his father finally uttered a big “No,” and it was not spoken of again.

  Already during the course of the first day, his father had presented their entire financial situation and prospects to his mother as well as his sister. From time to time he rose from the table and removed some document or notebook from his little home safe, which he had salvaged from the collapse of his business five years ago. One could hear how he opened the complicated lock and, following the removal of what he had been looking for, locked it again. These explanations by his father were in part the most pleasant news that Gregor had heard since his captivity. He had believed that his father’s business had left him with nothing at all, at least his father had told him nothing to the contrary, and Gregor had admittedly never asked him about it. Then, Gregor’s only concern had been to do his utmost to enable his family to quickly forget the financial misfortune that had driven everyone to a state of complete hopelessness. He had therefore begun to work with particular zeal and almost overnight, the little clerk had turned into a traveling salesman, who had entirely different possibilities to earn money, of course, and whose business successes could be transformed immediately as commissions into cash that could be laid on the table at home before his amazed and delighted family. Those had been good times, and never had they recurred thereafter, at least not in this glory, although Gregor had later earned so much money that he was able to carry the expenditures of his entire family, and also did so. They had simply become accustomed to it, the family as well as Gregor. They took the money gratefully, he was glad to provide it, but no particular warmth emerged anymore. Only his sister had still remained close to Gregor, and it was his secret plan to send her, who, unlike Gregor, loved music deeply and could play the violin movingly, to the conservatory next year, regardless of the great expense that it would entail, which he would have to earn in some other way. During his brief stays in the city, the conservatory was often mentioned in conversations with his sister, but always only as a beautiful dream, whose realization was unthinkable. Their parents didn’t even like to hear these innocent references, but Gregor had thought about it quite distinctly and intended to announce it ceremoniously on Christmas Eve.

  Such thoughts, entirely useless in his present state, went through his head while he was stuck there upright against the door, eavesdropping. Sometimes he couldn’t even listen any further due to general tiredness and he carelessly let his head bump against the door, but immediately held it firmly again for even the slight noise that he had made was heard next door and made everyone fall silent. “What’s he up to now, I wonder,” said his father after a while, apparently facing the door, and only then did they gradually continue their interrupted conversation.

  Gregor was well enough informed now—for his father was in the habit of repeating his explanations often, partly because he had not dealt with these matter himself for a long time now, and partly because his mother had not understood everything the first time—that despite all misfortune, some assets still existed from the old days, which had grown slightly in the meantime due to the untouched interest. And furthermore, the money that Gregor had brought home every month—he had only kept a small amount for himself—had not been used up entirely and had accumulated into a small amount of capital. Gregor, behind his door, nodded eagerly, delighted at this unexpected foresight and thrift. Of course, he actually could have used these excess funds to further pay off his father’s debt to his boss, and that day when he would have been rid of his position would have been much closer, but now it was undoubtedly better the way his father had arranged things.

  This money, however, was by no means enough for his family to be able to live on its interest; it was maybe enough to support his family for one or two years at the most, but not more than that. So it was merely an amount that was actually not to be touched and that had to be saved for emergencies; but the money to live on had to be earned. Now although his father was a healthy man, he was also an old man who hadn’t worked at all for five years and, in any event, would not consider himself to be capable of very much; he had gained a lot of weight in these last five years, which had been the first holiday of his arduous yet unsuccessful life, and had therefore become quite sluggish. And was his old mother now to earn money, she who suffered from asthma, for whom a walk through the apartment was strenuous, and who spent every second day with breathing difficulties on the sofa by the open window? And was his sister to earn money, she who was still a child at seventeen years of age and was so happily granted a lifestyle that, up until now, had consisted of dressing herself nicely, sleeping late, helping out in the household, joining in a few humble pleasures, and, above all, playing the violin? When the conversation arrived at the necessity to earn money, Gregor always let go of the door first and flung himself on the cool leather sofa next to it, for he was quite hot with humiliation and grief.