The Metamorphosis and Other Stories Read online

  His sister began to play; his father and mother, each from their side, followed the movements of her hands attentively. Gregor, attracted by her playing, had dared to venture a little farther and his head was already in the living room. He hardly found it surprising that he had shown so little consideration for the others lately; previously such consideration had been a great source of pride. And he now had all the more reason to hide, for due to the dust that lay all over his room and flew around at the smallest movement, he too was entirely covered with dust. He dragged threads, hair, and scraps of food around with him on his back and sides. His indifference toward everything was far too great for him to lie down on his back as he used to do several times a day and scrub himself against the carpet. And despite his condition, he was not ashamed to advance a little farther onto the flawless living room floor.

  And indeed, no one paid any attention to him. His family was entirely absorbed in the violin playing. The boarders, on the other hand, who had initially positioned themselves with their hands in their pockets so close behind the sister’s music stand that they could all have read the music, which certainly must have disturbed her, soon withdrew to the window where they stayed, conversing in low voices with bowed heads, and being observed by the father with concern. It now appeared to be more than obvious that their expectation of hearing a pleasant and entertaining violin concert had been disappointed, that they were tired of the entire performance, and were only allowing their peace and quiet to be disturbed out of politeness. Particularly the manner in which they all blew their cigar smoke toward the ceiling through their noses and mouths implied great nervousness. And yet his sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was tilted to the side and she followed the staves considerately and sadly with her eyes. Gregor crept forward a little farther and kept his head close to the floor so that he could possibly catch her glance. Could he be a beast if music could seize him like this? He felt as though he were being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for. He was determined to go up to his sister, to tug at her skirts to indicate that she should come into his room with her violin, for no one here was worth playing for as much as he would be. He would not let her out of his room again, at least not as long as he lived. For the first time his repulsive shape would be useful to him; he wanted to be at all doors in his room simultaneously and hiss at the attackers. His sister should not be forced, but stay with him voluntarily. She should sit next to him on the sofa, her ear leaned down toward him, and he would then confide to her that he firmly intended to send her to the conservatory, and that, if misfortune had not interfered, he would have told everyone last Christmas—surely Christmas had passed already?—ignoring any objections. After this declaration his sister would be moved to tears, and Gregor would raise himself up to her shoulder and kiss her neck, which she kept bare since she began going to work without ribbon or collar.

  “Herr Samsa!” called the gentleman in the middle to the father, and without wasting another word pointed his finger at Gregor, who was slowly moving forward. The violin fell silent, the middle boarder first smiled at his friends, shaking his head, and then looked back at Gregor. Rather than chasing Gregor away, his father seemed to find it more necessary to first calm the boarders down, although they were not excited at all and seemed to be more entertained by Gregor than the violin playing. He hurried over to them and with outstretched arms tried to urge them into their room and simultaneously block their view of Gregor with his body. Now they really did become a little angry. It wasn’t clear anymore whether this was due to the father’s behavior or because it was now dawning on them that they had been living with Gregor as their neighbor without their knowledge. They demanded explanations from the father, raised their arms as well, pulled anxiously at their beards, and only slowly retreated toward their room. In the meantime, Gregor’s sister had recovered from the bewilderment she had fallen into after her playing had been abruptly interrupted. After holding violin and bow for a while in her loosely hanging hands and continuing to look at the music as though she were still playing, she suddenly pulled herself together, lay the instrument on her mother’s lap—she was still sitting on her chair and having difficulty breathing with her heaving lungs—and ran into the next room, which the boarders, urged by her father, were now quickly approaching. One could see how the blankets and pillows on the beds flew upwards and arranged themselves in his sister’s skillful hands. Before the gentlemen had even reached the room she had finished making the beds and slipped out. His father seemed to be so caught up in his obstinacy again that he forgot all the respect that he still owed his tenants. He just kept urging them, all the way to the door of their room, where the gentleman in the middle stamped his foot thunderously, bringing the father to a halt. “I hereby declare,” he said, raising his hand and looking around for the mother and sister, “that in consideration of the revolting conditions that prevail in this apartment and family”—here he spit spontaneously on the floor—“I am giving my notice immediately. I will, of course, not pay a cent for the days that I have already spent here; on the contrary, I will consider whether I shouldn’t proceed against you with claims that—believe me—will be quite easy to substantiate.” He fell silent and looked straight in front of him, as though he were expecting something. And indeed his two friends chimed in right away with the words: “We also give notice immediately.” At that he grasped the door handle and closed the door shut with a bang.

  Gregor’s father staggered, groping his way to his armchair, and let himself fall; it looked as though he were stretching out for his usual evening nap, but the intense nodding of his seemingly unsupported head revealed that he was by no means sleeping. All this time Gregor had been lying quietly in the same place where the boarders had caught sight of him. His disappointment at the failure of his plan and perhaps also the weakness caused by being hungry for so long made it impossible for him to move. He feared with some certainty that at any moment a catastrophe would erupt above him and he waited. Not even the violin startled him as it slipped from beneath his mother’s shaking fingers and gave off a clanging sound as it fell from her lap.

  “Dear Parents,” said his sister, striking the table with her hand in introduction, “things cannot go on this way. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I do. I do not wish to speak the name of my brother in front of this monster, and so I will only say: we must try to get rid of it. We have tried everything humanly possible to care for it and tolerate it. I don’t think anyone could reproach us in the slightest.”

  “She’s absolutely right,” Gregor’s father said to himself. His mother, who was still struggling for air, began to cough hollowly into the hand she held over her mouth with an insane expression in her eyes.

  His sister ran over to her mother and held her forehead. Her words seemed to have given her father more decisive thoughts, for he was now sitting up straight, playing with his messenger’s cap between the plates that were still lying on the table from the boarders’ supper, and glancing over at the motionless Gregor from time to time.

  “We must try to get rid of it,” said the sister only to her father this time, for her mother heard nothing over her coughing. “It will kill both of you, I see it coming. If we all have to work so hard, we can’t also bear this endless torment at home as well. I can’t bear it either anymore.” And she broke into such heavy sobs that her tears fell onto her mother’s face, which she wiped with a mechanical movement of her hand.

  “My child,” said her father compassionately and with remarkable understanding, “but what should we do?”

  Gregor’s sister only shrugged her shoulders as a sign of the helplessness that had taken hold of her while she was crying, in contrast with her earlier self-assurance.

  “If only he could understand us,” said her father half questioningly, but she shook her hand vehemently in the midst of her tears as a sign that it was entirely unthinkable.

  “If only he could understand us,” repeated her father and closed hi
s eyes to acknowledge her conviction that this was impossible, “then it may be possible to reach an agreement with him. But as it is—”

  “It has to go,” the sister cried. “That is the only way, Father. You must simply try to get rid of the thought that it is Gregor. Our real misfortune is that we’ve believed it for so long. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that people cannot possibly live together with such an animal and he would have left on his own accord. We would then have no brother, but could carry on with our lives and honor his memory. But instead this creature plagues us, chases our boarders away, apparently wants to take over the entire apartment, and have us sleep in the street. Just look, Father,” she screamed suddenly, “he’s at it again!” And in a state of panic that was completely incomprehensible to Gregor, his sister even left her mother, literally sprang from her armchair as though she would rather sacrifice her mother than remain in Gregor’s vicinity, and hurried behind her father, who, agitated solely because of her behavior, also stood up and raised his arms halfway as if to protect her.

  But Gregor had no intention of frightening anyone, least of all his sister. He had simply begun to turn himself around in order to wander back to his room, although this admittedly looked rather conspicuous because in order to achieve the difficult turns, his afflicted condition forced him to rely on the use of his head, which he lifted and struck against the floor several times. He paused and looked around. His good intention seemed to have been recognized; it had only been a brief scare. Now everyone was looking at him sadly in silence. His mother lay in her armchair, legs stretched out and pressed together, her eyes almost falling shut from fatigue; his father and his sister were sitting next to one another, and his sister had laid her hand around her father’s neck.

  “Now maybe they’ll let me turn around,” Gregor thought and began to work again. He couldn’t keep from panting from the strain, and now and then he also had to rest. In any case, no one was forcing him; it was all left to him. When he had completed the turn, he immediately began to crawl straight back. He was amazed at the great distance separating him from his room and didn’t understand at all how he, in his weak state, had traveled the same path a short time ago, almost without noticing it. Concerned only with crawling swiftly, he hardly noticed that there were no words, no outcries from his family to disturb him. It was not until he was already in the doorway that he turned his head, not completely, for he felt his neck stiffening, but he still saw that nothing had changed behind him, only that his sister had risen. His last glance fell upon his mother, who had now fallen fast asleep.

  He was hardly inside his room when the door was shut hastily, bolted, and locked. Gregor was so startled by the sudden racket behind him that his little legs buckled beneath him. It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She had already been standing there and waiting when she leapt forward nimbly—Gregor had not heard her coming—and called out “Finally!” to her parents while she turned the key in the lock.

  “And now?” Gregor asked himself and looked around in the dark. He soon discovered that he could no longer move at all. This did not surprise him, for it struck him as unnatural that he had until now actually been able to move at all on these skinny little legs. Otherwise he felt relatively comfortable. Although he felt pains in every part of his body, they seemed to be gradually growing weaker and weaker and would eventually cease altogether. The rotten apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, which were covered entirely in soft dust, were already hardly noticeable. He thought back on his family with affection and love. His conviction that he must disappear was possibly even more resolute than that of his sister. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful contemplation until the clock tower struck three in the morning. He lived to see the sky begin to grow lighter outside his window. Then his head sank involuntarily to the floor and his final breath streamed feebly from his nostrils.

  When the cleaning woman came early in the morning—out of sheer strength and haste, she slammed all the doors so loudly, no matter how often she was asked to avoid doing so, that it was impossible to sleep peacefully anywhere in the apartment from her arrival onwards—at first she found nothing to be out of the ordinary during her usual brief visit to Gregor. She thought he was deliberately lying there motionless and pretending to sulk; she presumed he possessed all kinds of intelligence. Because she happened to be holding the long broom in her hand, she tried to tickle Gregor from the doorway. When this also proved unsuccessful, she became annoyed and poked into Gregor a little, and only when she had pushed him from his spot without meeting any resistance, did she become more attentive. When she soon recognized the situation at hand, she opened her eyes wide, whistled to herself, and did not linger for long, but tore open the door to the bedroom and called with a loud voice into the darkness: “Come and have a look; it’s dead; its lying over there, dead as a doornail!”

  The Samsas sat upright in their double bed and struggled to overcome the shock of being woken by the cleaning woman before they got around to grasping her announcement. But then Herr and Frau Samsa got out of bed, each on their side, as quickly as they could. Herr Samsa threw the blanket over his shoulders, Frau Samsa appeared only in her nightgown; in this state they entered Gregor’s room. In the meantime, the door to the living room, in which Grete had slept since the boarders had moved in, had also opened; she was completely dressed, as though she had not slept at all, as her pale face also seemed to confirm. “Dead?” said Frau Samsa and looked up inquiringly at the cleaning woman, although she could, after all, investigate everything herself and recognize it even without investigation. “I should think so,” said the cleaning woman and pushed Gregor’s corpse well to the side with her broom as proof. Frau Samsa moved as though she wanted to hold the broom back, but did not do so. “Well,” said Herr Samsa, “now we can thank God.” He crossed himself and the three women followed his example. Grete, who had not taken her eyes off the corpse, said: “Look how thin he was. He had not eaten anything for such a long time, after all. The food was taken out just as it had been brought in.” Gregor’s body truly was completely flat and dry, as one could actually only recognize now, for he was no longer elevated by his little legs and there was nothing else to distract the eye.

  “Come into our room for a while, Grete,” said Frau Samsa with a melancholy smile, and Grete followed her parents, not without looking back at the corpse, into the bedroom. The cleaning woman closed the door and opened the window wide. Despite the early morning hour, a mildness had been mixed into the fresh air. It was, after all, already the end of March.

  The three boarders emerged from their room and looked around in astonishment for their breakfast; they had been forgotten. “Where is our breakfast?” the gentleman in the middle sullenly asked the cleaning woman. She, however, placed a finger before her lips and then gestured hastily and silently to the gentlemen that they should enter Gregor’s room. They did enter and, with their hands in the pockets of their somewhat shabby coats, they stood around Gregor’s corpse in the room, which was now full of daylight.

  Then the door to the bedroom opened and Herr Samsa appeared in his uniform with his wife on one arm and his daughter on the other. They were a bit teary eyed; Grete pressed her face onto her father’s arm from time to time.

  “Leave my home at once!” said Herr Samsa and pointed at the door without letting the women go. “What do you mean?” said the gentleman in the middle, somewhat aghast with a mawkish smile. The other two held their hands behind their backs, rubbing them together incessantly, as though in pleasant anticipation of a big fight that would have to turn out well for them. “I mean exactly what I said,” answered Herr Samsa and walked straight up to the boarder with his two companions. At first the boarder stood there calmly and looked at the floor, as though the things in his head were being rearranged into a new order. “Then we will be going,” he said and looked up at Herr Samsa, as though he had been overcome by a sudden wave of hum
ility and was requesting further permission even for this decision. Herr Samsa merely nodded to him briefly several times with his eyes opened widely. At that, the gentleman immediately walked into the hallway with long steps; his two friends had already been listening attentively for some time with calm hands and now they almost hopped after him, as though they were afraid that Herr Samsa could enter the hallway before them and disturb their connection to their leader. In the hallway, all three removed their hats from the coat rack, pulled their canes from the umbrella stand, bowed in silence, and left the apartment. In his mistrust, which proved to be entirely unfounded, Herr Samsa walked with his two women out onto the forecourt; leaning on the railing, they watched the three gentlemen slowly but steadily descending the long staircase, disappearing at each level in a particular bend in the stairway and reappearing a few moments later; the further they descended, the more the Samsa family lost interest in them, and, when a butcher with proud posture and a tray on his head had climbed the stairs toward them and then high above them, Herr Samsa and the women left the railing and, as if relieved, returned to their apartment.