“Ah!”, he shouted as he came in, sounding as if he were both angry and
glad at the same time. Gregor drew his head back from the door and
lifted it towards his father. He really had not imagined his father the
way he stood there now; of late, with his new habit of crawling about,
he had neglected to pay attention to what was going on the rest of the
flat the way he had done before. He really ought to have expected
things to have changed, but still, still, was that really his father?
The same tired man as used to be laying there entombed in his bed when
Gregor came back from his business trips, who would receive him sitting
in the armchair in his nightgown when he came back in the evenings; who
was hardly even able to stand up but, as a sign of his pleasure, would
just raise his arms and who, on the couple of times a year when they
went for a walk together on a Sunday or public holiday wrapped up
tightly in his overcoat between Gregor and his mother, would always
labour his way forward a little more slowly than them, who were already
walking slowly for his sake; who would place his stick down carefully
and, if he wanted to say something would invariably stop and gather his
companions around him. He was standing up straight enough now; dressed
in a smart blue uniform with gold buttons, the sort worn by the
employees at the banking institute; above the high, stiff collar of the
coat his strong double-chin emerged; under the bushy eyebrows, his
piercing, dark eyes looked out fresh and alert; his normally unkempt
white hair was combed down painfully close to his scalp. He took his
cap, with its gold monogram from, probably, some bank, and threw it in
an arc right across the room onto the sofa, put his hands in his
trouser pockets, pushing back the bottom of his long uniform coat, and,
with look of determination, walked towards Gregor. He probably did not
even know himself what he had in mind, but nonetheless lifted his feet
unusually high. Gregor was amazed at the enormous size of the soles of
his boots, but wasted no time with that—he knew full well, right from
the first day of his new life, that his father thought it necessary to
always be extremely strict with him. And so he ran up to his father,
stopped when his father stopped, scurried forwards again when he moved,
even slightly. In this way they went round the room several times
without anything decisive happening, without even giving the impression
of a chase as everything went so slowly. Gregor remained all this time
on the floor, largely because he feared his father might see it as
especially provoking if he fled onto the wall or ceiling. Whatever he
did, Gregor had to admit that he certainly would not be able to keep up
this running about for long, as for each step his father took he had to
carry out countless movements. He became noticeably short of breath,
even in his earlier life his lungs had not been very reliable. Now, as
he lurched about in his efforts to muster all the strength he could for
running he could hardly keep his eyes open; his thoughts became too
slow for him to think of any other way of saving himself than running;
he almost forgot that the walls were there for him to use although,
here, they were concealed behind carefully carved furniture full of
notches and protrusions—then, right beside him, lightly tossed,
something flew down and rolled in front of him. It was an apple; then
another one immediately flew at him; Gregor froze in shock; there was
no longer any point in running as his father had decided to bombard
him. He had filled his pockets with fruit from the bowl on the
sideboard and now, without even taking the time for careful aim, threw
one apple after another. These little, red apples rolled about on the
floor, knocking into each other as if they had electric motors. An
apple thrown without much force glanced against Gregor’s back and slid
off without doing any harm. Another one however, immediately following
it, hit squarely and lodged in his back; Gregor wanted to drag himself
away, as if he could remove the surprising, the incredible pain by
changing his position; but he felt as if nailed to the spot and spread
himself out, all his senses in confusion. The last thing he saw was the
door of his room being pulled open, his sister was screaming, his
mother ran out in front of her in her blouse (as his sister had taken
off some of her clothes after she had fainted to make it easier for her
to breathe), she ran to his father, her skirts unfastened and sliding
one after another to the ground, stumbling over the skirts she pushed
herself to his father, her arms around him, uniting herself with him
totally—now Gregor lost his ability to see anything—her hands behind
his father’s head begging him to spare Gregor’s life.
III
No-one dared to remove the apple lodged in Gregor’s flesh, so it
remained there as a visible reminder of his injury. He had suffered it
there for more than a month, and his condition seemed serious enough to
remind even his father that Gregor, despite his current sad and
revolting form, was a family member who could not be treated as an
enemy. On the contrary, as a family there was a duty to swallow any
revulsion for him and to be patient, just to be patient.
Because of his injuries, Gregor had lost much of his mobility—probably
permanently. He had been reduced to the condition of an ancient invalid
and it took him long, long minutes to crawl across his room—crawling
over the ceiling was out of the question—but this deterioration in his
condition was fully (in his opinion) made up for by the door to the
living room being left open every evening. He got into the habit of
closely watching it for one or two hours before it was opened and then,
lying in the darkness of his room where he could not be seen from the
living room, he could watch the family in the light of the dinner table
and listen to their conversation—with everyone’s permission, in a way,
and thus quite differently from before.
They no longer held the lively conversations of earlier times, of
course, the ones that Gregor always thought about with longing when he
was tired and getting into the damp bed in some small hotel room. All
of them were usually very quiet nowadays. Soon after dinner, his father
would go to sleep in his chair; his mother and sister would urge each
other to be quiet; his mother, bent deeply under the lamp, would sew
fancy underwear for a fashion shop; his sister, who had taken a sales
job, learned shorthand and French in the evenings so that she might be
able to get a better position later on. Sometimes his father would wake
up and say to Gregor’s mother “you’re doing so much sewing again
today!”, as if he did not know that he had been dozing—and then he
would go back to sleep again while mother and sister would exchange a
tired grin.
With a kind of stubbornness, Gregor’s father refused to take his
uniform off even at home; while his nightgown hung unused on its peg
Gregor’s father would slumber where he was, fully dressed, as if always
ready to serve and expecting to hear the voice of his superior even
here. The uniform had not been new to start with, but as a result of
this it slowly became even shabbier despite the efforts of Gregor’s
mother and sister to look after it. Gregor would often spend the whole
evening looking at all the stains on this coat, with its gold buttons
always kept polished and shiny, while the old man in it would sleep,
highly uncomfortable but peaceful.
As soon as it struck ten, Gregor’s mother would speak gently to his
father to wake him and try to persuade him to go to bed, as he couldn’t
sleep properly where he was and he really had to get his sleep if he
was to be up at six to get to work. But since he had been in work he
had become more obstinate and would always insist on staying longer at
the table, even though he regularly fell asleep and it was then harder
than ever to persuade him to exchange the chair for his bed. Then,
however much mother and sister would importune him with little
reproaches and warnings he would keep slowly shaking his head for a
quarter of an hour with his eyes closed and refusing to get up.
Gregor’s mother would tug at his sleeve, whisper endearments into his
ear, Gregor’s sister would leave her work to help her mother, but
nothing would have any effect on him. He would just sink deeper into
his chair. Only when the two women took him under the arms he would
abruptly open his eyes, look at them one after the other and say: “What
a life! This is what peace I get in my old age!” And supported by the
two women he would lift himself up carefully as if he were carrying the
greatest load himself, let the women take him to the door, send them
off and carry on by himself while Gregor’s mother would throw down her
needle and his sister her pen so that they could run after his father
and continue being of help to him.
Who, in this tired and overworked family, would have had time to give
more attention to Gregor than was absolutely necessary? The household
budget became even smaller; so now the maid was dismissed; an enormous,
thick-boned charwoman with white hair that flapped around her head came
every morning and evening to do the heaviest work; everything else was
looked after by Gregor’s mother on top of the large amount of sewing
work she did. Gregor even learned, listening to the evening
conversation about what price they had hoped for, that several items of
jewellery belonging to the family had been sold, even though both
mother and sister had been very fond of wearing them at functions and
celebrations. But the loudest complaint was that although the flat was
much too big for their present circumstances, they could not move out
of it, there was no imaginable way of transferring Gregor to the new
address. He could see quite well, though, that there were more reasons
than consideration for him that made it difficult for them to move, it
would have been quite easy to transport him in any suitable crate with
a few air holes in it; the main thing holding the family back from
their decision to move was much more to do with their total despair,
and the thought that they had been struck with a misfortune unlike
anything experienced by anyone else they knew or were related to. They
carried out absolutely everything that the world expects from poor
people, Gregor’s father brought bank employees their breakfast, his
mother sacrificed herself by washing clothes for strangers, his sister
ran back and forth behind her desk at the behest of the customers, but
they just did not have the strength to do any more. And the injury in
Gregor’s back began to hurt as much as when it was new. After they had
come back from taking his father to bed Gregor’s mother and sister
would now leave their work where it was and sit close together, cheek
to cheek; his mother would point to Gregor’s room and say “Close that
door, Grete”, and then, when he was in the dark again, they would sit
in the next room and their tears would mingle, or they would simply sit
there staring dry-eyed at the table.
Gregor hardly slept at all, either night or day. Sometimes he would
think of taking over the family’s affairs, just like before, the next
time the door was opened; he had long forgotten about his boss and the
chief clerk, but they would appear again in his thoughts, the salesmen
and the apprentices, that stupid teaboy, two or three friends from
other businesses, one of the chambermaids from a provincial hotel, a
tender memory that appeared and disappeared again, a cashier from a hat
shop for whom his attention had been serious but too slow,—all of them
appeared to him, mixed together with strangers and others he had
forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family they were all of
them inaccessible, and he was glad when they disappeared. Other times
he was not at all in the mood to look after his family, he was filled
with simple rage about the lack of attention he was shown, and although
he could think of nothing he would have wanted, he made plans of how he
could get into the pantry where he could take all the things he was
entitled to, even if he was not hungry. Gregor’s sister no longer
thought about how she could please him but would hurriedly push some
food or other into his room with her foot before she rushed out to work
in the morning and at midday, and in the evening she would sweep it
away again with the broom, indifferent as to whether it had been eaten
or—more often than not—had been left totally untouched. She still
cleared up the room in the evening, but now she could not have been any
quicker about it. Smears of dirt were left on the walls, here and there
were little balls of dust and filth. At first, Gregor went into one of
the worst of these places when his sister arrived as a reproach to her,
but he could have stayed there for weeks without his sister doing
anything about it; she could see the dirt as well as he could but she
had simply decided to leave him to it. At the same time she became
touchy in a way that was quite new for her and which everyone in the
family understood—cleaning up Gregor’s room was for her and her alone.
Gregor’s mother did once thoroughly clean his room, and needed to use
several bucketfuls of water to do it—although that much dampness also
made Gregor ill and he lay flat on the couch, bitter and immobile. But
his mother was to be punished still more for what she had done, as
hardly had his sister arrived home in the evening than she noticed the
change in Gregor’s room and, highly aggrieved, ran back into the living
room where, despite her mothers raised and imploring hands, she broke
into convulsive tears. Her father, of course, was startled out of his
chair and the two parents looked on astonished and helpless; then they,
too, became agitated; Gregor’s father, standing to the right of his
mother, accused her of not leaving the cleaning of Gregor’s room to his
sister; from her left, Gregor’s sister screamed at her that she was
never to clean Gregor’s room again; while his mother tried to draw his
father, who was beside himself with anger, into the bedroom; his
sister, quaking with tears, thumped on the table with her small fists;
and Gregor hissed in anger that no-one had even thought of closing the
door to save him the sight of this and all its noise.
Gregor’s sister was exhausted from going out to work, and looking after
Gregor as she had done before was even more work for her, but even so
his mother ought certainly not to have taken her place. Gregor, on the
other hand, ought not to be neglected. Now, though, the charwoman was
here. This elderly widow, with a robust bone structure that made her
able to withstand the hardest of things in her long life, wasn’t really
repelled by Gregor. Just by chance one day, rather than any real
curiosity, she opened the door to Gregor’s room and found herself face
to face with him. He was taken totally by surprise, no-one was chasing
him but he began to rush to and fro while she just stood there in
amazement with her hands crossed in front of her. From then on she
never failed to open the door slightly every evening and morning and
look briefly in on him. At first she would call to him as she did so
with words that she probably considered friendly, such as “come on
then, you old dung-beetle!”, or “look at the old dung-beetle there!”
Gregor never responded to being spoken to in that way, but just
remained where he was without moving as if the door had never even been
opened. If only they had told this charwoman to clean up his room every
day instead of letting her disturb him for no reason whenever she felt
like it! One day, early in the morning while a heavy rain struck the
windowpanes, perhaps indicating that spring was coming, she began to
speak to him in that way once again. Gregor was so resentful of it that
he started to move toward her, he was slow and infirm, but it was like
a kind of attack. Instead of being afraid, the charwoman just lifted up
one of the chairs from near the door and stood there with her mouth
open, clearly intending not to close her mouth until the chair in her
hand had been slammed down into Gregor’s back. “Aren’t you coming any
closer, then?”, she asked when Gregor turned round again, and she
calmly put the chair back in the corner.
Gregor had almost entirely stopped eating. Only if he happened to find
himself next to the food that had been prepared for him he might take
some of it into his mouth to play with it, leave it there a few hours
and then, more often than not, spit it out again. At first he thought
it was distress at the state of his room that stopped him eating, but
he had soon got used to the changes made there. They had got into the
habit of putting things into this room that they had no room for
anywhere else, and there were now many such things as one of the rooms
in the flat had been rented out to three gentlemen. These earnest
gentlemen—all three of them had full beards, as Gregor learned peering
through the crack in the door one day—were painfully insistent on
things’ being tidy. This meant not only in their own room but, since
they had taken a room in this establishment, in the entire flat and
especially in the kitchen. Unnecessary clutter was something they could
not tolerate, especially if it was dirty. They had moreover brought
most of their own furnishings and equipment with them. For this reason,
many things had become superfluous which, although they could not be
sold, the family did not wish to discard. All these things found their
way into Gregor’s room. The dustbins from the kitchen found their way
in there too. The charwoman was always in a hurry, and anything she
couldn’t use for the time being she would just chuck in there. He,
fortunately, would usually see no more than the object and the hand
that held it. The woman most likely meant to fetch the things back out
again when she had time and the opportunity, or to throw everything out
in one go, but what actually happened was that they were left where
they landed when they had first been thrown unless Gregor made his way
through the junk and moved it somewhere else. At first he moved it
because, with no other room free where he could crawl about, he was
forced to, but later on he came to enjoy it although moving about in
that way left him sad and tired to death, and he would remain immobile
for hours afterwards.
The gentlemen who rented the room would sometimes take their evening
meal at home in the living room that was used by everyone, and so the
door to this room was often kept closed in the evening. But Gregor
found it easy to give up having the door open, he had, after all, often
failed to make use of it when it was open and, without the family
having noticed it, lain in his room in its darkest corner. One time,
though, the charwoman left the door to the living room slightly open,
and it remained open when the gentlemen who rented the room came in in
the evening and the light was put on. They sat up at the table where,
formerly, Gregor had taken his meals with his father and mother, they
unfolded the serviettes and picked up their knives and forks. Gregor’s
mother immediately appeared in the doorway with a dish of meat and soon
behind her came his sister with a dish piled high with potatoes. The
food was steaming, and filled the room with its smell. The gentlemen
bent over the dishes set in front of them as if they wanted to test the
food before eating it, and the gentleman in the middle, who seemed to
count as an authority for the other two, did indeed cut off a piece of
meat while it was still in its dish, clearly wishing to establish
whether it was sufficiently cooked or whether it should be sent back to
the kitchen. It was to his satisfaction, and Gregor’s mother and
sister, who had been looking on anxiously, began to breathe again and
smiled.
The family themselves ate in the kitchen. Nonetheless, Gregor’s father
came into the living room before he went into the kitchen, bowed once
with his cap in his hand and did his round of the table. The gentlemen
stood as one, and mumbled something into their beards. Then, once they
were alone, they ate in near perfect silence. It seemed remarkable to
Gregor that above all the various noises of eating their chewing teeth
could still be heard, as if they had wanted to show Gregor that you
need teeth in order to eat and it was not possible to perform anything
with jaws that are toothless however nice they might be. “I’d like to
eat something”, said Gregor anxiously, “but not anything like they’re
eating. They do feed themselves. And here I am, dying!”
Throughout all this time, Gregor could not remember having heard the
violin being played, but this evening it began to be heard from the
kitchen. The three gentlemen had already finished their meal, the one
in the middle had produced a newspaper, given a page to each of the
others, and now they leant back in their chairs reading them and
smoking. When the violin began playing they became attentive, stood up
and went on tip-toe over to the door of the hallway where they stood
pressed against each other. Someone must have heard them in the
kitchen, as Gregor’s father called out: “Is the playing perhaps
unpleasant for the gentlemen? We can stop it straight away.” “On the
contrary”, said the middle gentleman, “would the young lady not like to
come in and play for us here in the room, where it is, after all, much
more cosy and comfortable?” “Oh yes, we’d love to”, called back
Gregor’s father as if he had been the violin player himself. The
gentlemen stepped back into the room and waited. Gregor’s father soon
appeared with the music stand, his mother with the music and his sister
with the violin. She calmly prepared everything for her to begin
playing; his parents, who had never rented a room out before and
therefore showed an exaggerated courtesy towards the three gentlemen,
did not even dare to sit on their own chairs; his father leant against
the door with his right hand pushed in between two buttons on his
uniform coat; his mother, though, was offered a seat by one of the
gentlemen and sat—leaving the chair where the gentleman happened to
have placed it—out of the way in a corner.
His sister began to play; father and mother paid close attention, one
on each side, to the movements of her hands. Drawn in by the playing,
Gregor had dared to come forward a little and already had his head in
the living room. Before, he had taken great pride in how considerate he
was but now it hardly occurred to him that he had become so thoughtless
about the others. What’s more, there was now all the more reason to
keep himself hidden as he was covered in the dust that lay everywhere
in his room and flew up at the slightest movement; he carried threads,
hairs, and remains of food about on his back and sides; he was much too
indifferent to everything now to lay on his back and wipe himself on
the carpet like he had used to do several times a day. And despite this
condition, he was not too shy to move forward a little onto the
immaculate floor of the living room.