The Metamorphosis and Other Stories Read online

  Often he lay there the whole long night through, not sleeping a wink and only scrabbling for hours on the leather. Or he did not shy away from the great effort of moving an armchair to the window, crawling up to the window sill, and, propped up in the armchair, leaning himself against the window, apparently only as some sort of remembrance of the liberating sensation he used to feel when gazing out the window. For in fact, he was beginning to see even things that were only a small distance away less clearly by the day. He could no longer catch sight of the hospital on the opposite side of the street, the all-too-frequent sight of which he had previously cursed, and had he not known for sure that he lived in the quiet, but entirely urban Charlottenstrasse, he could have thought he was gazing out of his window at a desolate landscape, in which the gray sky and the gray earth merged indistinguishably. Only twice had his attentive sister needed to see that the armchair was by the window before she began pushing the armchair right back over to the window each time she had cleaned up his room, and from now on she even left the inner window sash open.

  If only Gregor had been able to speak to his sister and thank her for everything she had to do for him, he could have endured her services more easily; but as it was, he suffered because of it. His sister certainly tried her best to erase the awkwardness of the whole thing, and the more time passed, the more she succeeded at it of course, but Gregor also came to see through everything much more clearly with time. Already her entrance was terrible for him. Hardly had she entered than she ran straight to the window, without taking time to close the doors, however careful she usually was to spare everyone the sight of Gregor’s room, and tore it open with hasty hands as though she were almost suffocating, and stayed at the window for a little while, even on the coldest of days, breathing deeply. She alarmed Gregor twice daily with her running and clamoring; he trembled all the while under the sofa, knowing quite well that she would certainly have spared him all this commotion if it had been at all possible for her to be in the same room as Gregor with the window shut.

  Once—a month must have already passed since Gregor’s transformation and his sister no longer had particular reason to be astonished at Gregor’s appearance—she came a little earlier than usual and found Gregor, motionless and propped upright quite frighteningly, still gazing out the window. It would not have been unexpected for Gregor if she had not entered, for in his position he prevented her from opening the window straight away, but not only did she not enter, she even shrank back and closed the door; a stranger could almost have thought that Gregor had been lying in wait for her and had wanted to bite her. Of course Gregor hid himself immediately under the sofa, but he had to wait until midday before his sister returned, and she seemed much more anxious than usual. He concluded from this that the sight of him was still unbearable to her and was certain to remain unbearable, and that it must require great strength for her to keep from running away at the sight of even the small part of his body that protruded from beneath the sofa. One day, in order to spare her this sight as well, he carried the linen cloth from the sofa on his back—he needed four hours for this task—and arranged it in such a way that he was now completely covered and his sister could not see him, even if she bent down. If she had considered this linen cloth to be unnecessary, she could have removed it, after all, for it was clear enough that Gregor did not find amusement in entirely closing himself off in this way. But she left the linen cloth where it was, and Gregor even believed to have caught a grateful glance once as he carefully lifted the cloth a little to see how his sister found the new arrangement.

  During the first two weeks, his parents could not bring themselves to come into his room, and he often heard how they gave his sister complete recognition for the work she was doing, whereas before they had often been irritated by her for she seemed to them to be a somewhat useless girl. Now, however, both his father and mother waited in front of Gregor’s room while his sister cleaned it up, and, hardly had she come out when she had to tell them exactly how the room looked, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this time, and if perhaps a slight improvement could be observed. His mother, incidentally, had wanted to visit Gregor relatively soon, but his father and sister had initially held her back with rational arguments, which Gregor listened to quite attentively and approved of fully. But later on, she had to be held back by force, and when she then cried: “Let me see Gregor, after all he is my poor son! Can’t you understand that I must see him?” then Gregor thought that it might be good after all if his mother came inside, not every day, of course, but perhaps once a week; she understood everything much better than his sister, who, despite all her efforts, was still a child, after all, and perhaps for this reason had taken on such a difficult task out of childish carelessness.

  Gregor’s wish to see his mother was soon fulfilled. During the day, Gregor didn’t want to show himself at the window, solely out of consideration for his parents; nor could he crawl much on the few square meters of floor; lying calmly was already difficult for him to bear at night, and eating soon brought him not the least amount of pleasure: so for diversion, he developed the habit of crawling to and fro across the walls and ceiling. He was particularly fond of hanging from the ceiling; it was much different than lying on the floor; one could breathe more freely; a slight swaying passed through one’s body; and in the state of almost happy diversion in which Gregor found himself up there, it could happen that, to his own surprise, he would let go and crash to the ground. But now, of course, he had more control over his body than before and didn’t hurt himself even during such a big fall. His sister noticed at once the new form of amusement that Gregor had found for himself—after all, he also left his sticky traces here and there as he crawled—and she set her mind to allowing Gregor the largest amount of crawling space possible by removing the furniture that was hindering him, primarily the chest and the desk. But she was not able to do this on her own; she didn’t dare to ask her father for help; the housemaid would certainly not have helped her, for although this girl of about sixteen had been holding out bravely since their previous cook’s resignation, she had requested the privilege of being allowed to keep the kitchen door constantly locked and only having to open it when specifically asked to do so; so his sister had no other choice than to fetch his mother, once during his father’s absence. And with cries of excited joy, his mother did approach, only to fall silent at the door to Gregor’s room. First, his sister looked to see if everything was in order in the room; only then did she let her mother enter. With the greatest haste, Gregor had pulled the linen cloth even further down with more folds, the whole thing really looked as though a cloth had been casually thrown over the sofa. Gregor refrained from spying from under the linen cloth this time as well; he refrained from seeing his mother this time and was happy that she had come after all. “Come on, you can’t see him,” said his sister, apparently leading his mother by the hand. Gregor then heard how the two weak women moved the old but heavy chest from its place, and how his sister consistently took most of the work upon herself without listening to the warnings of her mother, who was afraid she was going to overexert herself. It took a long time. Already after a quarter hour’s work, his mother said they should just leave the chest there; first of all, it was too heavy, they wouldn’t be finished by the time his father returned, and with the chest in the middle of the room, Gregor’s every movement would be blocked, and second, it was not at all certain that they would be doing Gregor a favor by removing the furniture. It seemed to her that the opposite was true; the sight of the empty wall truly weighed upon her heart; and why shouldn’t Gregor feel the same, since he had been accustomed to the furniture for so long and would therefore feel abandoned in an empty room. “And is it not the case,” concluded his mother very quietly, almost in a whisper, as if she wished to prevent Gregor, whose exact whereabouts she didn’t know, from hearing even the sound of her voice, for she was convinced that he didn’t understand her words, “and is it not the case that by rem
oving the furniture, we are showing him that we have lost any hope of his recovery and have ruthlessly abandoned him? I think it would be best to try and keep the room in the exact condition that it was before, so that Gregor, when he returns to us, will find everything unchanged and be all the more able to easily forget what happened in the meantime.”

  As he heard his mother’s words, Gregor realized that the complete lack of direct human contact during these past two months, combined with his monotonous life in the midst of his family, must have confused his mind, for there was no other way to explain how he could have seriously wanted his room to be emptied. Had he really wanted to have his warm room, comfortably equipped with inherited furniture, transformed into a cave, in which he would surely be able to crawl around unimpeded in all directions, but at the same time quickly and completely forget his human past? Indeed, had he already been close to forgetting just now, before his mother’s voice, which he hadn’t heard for a long time, jarred him awake? Nothing was to be removed; everything had to stay; he could not manage without the positive influence of the furniture on his condition; and if the furniture was a hindrance for his senseless crawling about, it not only did him no harm but was also a great advantage.

  But unfortunately his sister was of a different opinion; when discussing matters related to Gregor with her parents, she had become accustomed to acting as the special expert, which was admittedly not entirely unjustified. So now his mother’s advice was also reason enough not only to insist on the removal of the chest and desk, which his sister had initially thought of on her own, but the removal of all furniture, with the exception of the indispensable sofa. Of course, it was not only childish defiance and the self-confidence that she had so unexpectedly and arduously acquired of late that led her to determine this course; she had actually observed, after all, that Gregor required a lot of room to crawl, whereas it appeared that he did not use the furniture at all. Perhaps a role was also played by the emotional sensibility of girls her age, which seeks gratification at every opportunity, and by which Grete was now letting herself be tempted to make Gregor’s situation even more terrifying in order to then be able to help him even more than before. For no one other than Grete would dare to enter a room in which Gregor alone was solely in control of the empty walls.

  And so she refused to be dissuaded from her decision by her mother, who also seemed to be unsure in this room out of sheer anxiousness and soon fell silent and made every effort to help his sister get the chest out. Now, if need be, Gregor could do without the chest, but the desk had to stay. And hardly had the women left the room with the chest, on which they pressed themselves groaning, than Gregor stuck his head out from under the sofa to see how he could intervene as carefully and considerately as possible. But unfortunately it had to be his mother who returned first, while Grete held her arms around the chest in the next room and swung it back and forth on her own, without, of course, managing to move it at all. His mother, however, was not accustomed to the sight of Gregor; it could make her ill, and so he anxiously hurried backwards to the other end of the sofa, but was no longer able to avoid making the front of the linen cloth move slightly. That sufficed in getting his mother’s attention. She paused, stood still for a moment, and then went back to Grete.

  Although Gregor told himself repeatedly that nothing unusual was happening, after all, that only a few pieces of furniture were being rearranged, he soon had to admit that the women’s walking back and forth, their little shouts, the scratching of the furniture on the floor, all affected him like a great tumult fed from all sides, and he inevitably had to admit to himself that, no matter how tightly he pulled his head and legs in and pressed his body down to the floor, he would not be able to stand it for much longer. They were clearing out his room, taking everything that was dear to him; they had already carried out the chest, in which his fretsaw and other tools were stored; they were now loosening the desk, which had already dug itself firmly into the floor, and at which he had completed his assignments as a business school student, as a secondary school student, and yes, even as a primary schoolboy. He really had no more time to assess the good intentions of the two women, whose existence he had incidentally almost forgotten, for in their exhaustion they were now working in silence, and all that could be heard were the heavy steps of their feet.

  And so he burst out—the women were leaning against the desk in the next room to catch their breath a little—changing his direction four times as he ran. He really didn’t know what to save first, when he saw the picture of the lady clad entirely in furs hanging conspicuously on the otherwise empty wall. He crawled hurriedly up to it and pressed himself against the glass, which held him tight and felt good on his hot abdomen. At least this picture, which Gregor was now covering completely, would certainly not be taken from him. He turned his head toward the door to the living room in order to see the women when they returned.

  They hadn’t given themselves much rest and were already returning; Grete had laid her arm around their mother and was almost carrying her. “So, what shall we take now?” said Grete, looking around. Her eyes met Gregor’s on the wall. It was probably due to her mother’s presence that she kept her composure. She leaned her face to her mother’s to keep her from looking around and trembled as she said thoughtlessly: “Come, shouldn’t we go back to the living room for a moment?” Grete’s intention was clear to Gregor; she wanted to bring her mother to safety and then chase him down from the wall. Well, she could go ahead and try! He was sitting on his picture and was not going to give it up. He would rather jump out at Grete’s face.

  But Grete’s words had only unsettled her mother, who stepped aside, beheld the enormous brown spot on the floral wallpaper, and before actually becoming aware that it was Gregor she was looking at, exclaimed in a rough, screaming voice: “Oh God, oh God!” and fell with outstretched arms, as though she had given up entirely, onto the sofa and did not move. “Gregor!” shouted his sister with a raised fist and stern expression. These were the first words she had spoken directly to him since his transformation. She ran into the next room to fetch some sort of essence with which she could awaken her mother from her unconsciousness. Gregor also wanted to help. There was still time to rescue his picture, but he was stuck fast to the glass and had to tear himself away with force. Then he too ran into the living room, as though he could give his sister some kind of advice, as he used to in the past. But instead he had to stand idly behind her while she rummaged around in various little bottles, managing to startle her as she turned around; a bottle fell on the floor and shattered; a splinter injured Gregor in his face and some sort of corrosive medicine flowed around him. Without further delay, Grete then took as many little bottles as she could hold and ran with them to her mother, slamming the door shut with her foot. Gregor was now cut off from his mother, who was perhaps near death because of him. He was not allowed to open the door, for fear of chasing away his sister, who had to stay with his mother. He could now do nothing but wait, and, beset with self-reproach and concern, he began to crawl. He crawled over everything, walls, furniture, and the ceiling, and finally, in his desperation, as the whole room had already begun to spin, he fell onto the middle of the big table.

  A little while passed as Gregor lay there listlessly. All around him it was quiet; perhaps that was a good sign. Then the doorbell rang. The maid was locked in the kitchen, of course, so Grete would have to answer it. His father had arrived. “What has happened?” were his first words; Grete’s appearance must have revealed everything to him. Grete answered with a muffled voice, as she was apparently pressing her face on her father’s breast: “Mother was unconscious, but she is already feeling much better. Gregor has escaped.” “I expected he would,” said his father “I always told you he would, after all, but you women didn’t want to listen.” It was clear to Gregor that his father had interpreted Grete’s all-too-brief report falsely and assumed that Gregor was guilty of committing some act of violence. Gregor therefore had to
try and appease his father, for he had neither the time nor the ability to explain things to him. And so he fled to the door of his room and pressed himself against it, so that his father could see right when he entered the hallway that Gregor had the best intention of returning to his room at once, and that there was no need to force him back, for one simply needed to open the door, and he would disappear right away.

  But his father was not in the mood to notice such subtleties. “Aha!” he shouted the moment he entered in a voice that sounded as though he was simultaneously angry and pleased. Gregor withdrew his head from the door and lifted it toward his father. He had truly never imagined his father as he was standing there now. Recently, due to his new habit of crawling around, Gregor had neglected to follow the activities in the rest of the apartment as he had done before; otherwise, he should have actually been prepared to encounter some changed circumstances. Nevertheless, nevertheless, was this still his father? The same man who tiredly lay buried in bed as Gregor marched off on a business trip, who had greeted him on the evening of his return in his dressing gown from his armchair, who had not been entirely capable of standing up, but instead had only raised his arms as a sign of his joy, and who, during their seldom strolls together on a few Sundays a year and on high holidays, between Gregor and his mother, who were already walking rather slowly, had walked even a little more slowly, wrapped up in his old overcoat, working his way forward with his carefully-positioned walking stick, and almost always standing still and gathering his companions around him whenever he wanted to say something? But now he was standing upright quite well, dressed in a close-fitting blue uniform with gold buttons like those worn by the attendants at the banking institutions, his strong double chin unfolded above the high, stiff collar of his coat; his black eyes gazing out boldly and attentively from beneath his bushy eyebrows; his white hair, usually disheveled, combed down into a meticulous, shining side part. He tossed his cap with its gold monogram, probably that of a bank, in an arc across the entire room onto the sofa and walked, with the tails of his long uniform coat thrown behind him and his hands in his pockets, toward Gregor with a sullen expression on his face. Perhaps he didn’t know himself what he intended to do; after all, he lifted his feet unusually high. Gregor was amazed at the enormous size of his boot soles, but he did not linger in doing so, for he had known from the first day of his new life that his father believed only the utmost severity to be appropriate in his treatment of Gregor. And so he ran away from his father, paused when his father stopped, and hurried forward again the moment his father stirred. They circled the room several times in this manner, without anything decisive occurring, indeed without the entire thing even having the appearance of a pursuit, it was so slow. Gregor therefore remained on the floor for the time being, especially because he feared that his father could regard his escape onto the walls or ceiling as particularly mischievous. In any case, Gregor had to tell himself that he would not be able to keep up this running for long, for each of his father’s steps required him to carry out a whole host of movements. He had already begun to notice a shortness of breath, just as he had not possessed entirely reliable lungs in earlier times. So he staggered along in order to save all his strength for the chase, hardly keeping his eyes open, not even thinking, in his stupor, of any way to escape other than running. He had already almost forgotten that he was free to use the walls, although here they were obstructed by carefully carved furniture full of prongs and spikes—when something, flung lightly, flew down just beside him and rolled around in front of him. It was an apple. A second one quickly followed. Gregor stood still in terror; running further was useless, for his father had decided to bombard him. He had filled his pockets from the fruit bowl on the sideboard and was now throwing apple after apple without taking careful aim. These small red apples rolled around on the floor and bumped into one another as though electrified. A lightly thrown apple grazed Gregor’s back, but slid off harmlessly. The one that flew immediately after it, on the other hand, actually penetrated Gregor’s back. Gregor wanted to drag himself further, as though the surprisingly unbelievable pain could disappear with a change of location, but he felt as though he were nailed down and stretched himself out in thorough confusion of all his senses. It was only with his last glance that he still managed to see the door to his room being flung open, and in front of his screaming sister, how his mother was hurrying forward in her shift, for his sister had undressed her to allow her to breathe freely in her unconsciousness, and running toward his father, and how along the way her untied skirts slid to the ground one after another, and how she threw herself at him tripping over her skirts, and embraced him, in complete union with him—now Gregor’s sight was already failing—with her hands on the back of his father’s head, begging him to spare Gregor’s life.