The Oracle of the Dog

A dog is a devil of a ritualist.  He is as particular about the precise routine of a game as a child is about the precise repetition of a fairy-tale.  In this case something had gone wrong with the game.  He came back to complain seriously of the conduct of the stick.  Never had a thing happened before.  Never had an eminent and distinguished dog been so treated by a rotten old walking-stick.

If you know a lot about dogs (I happen to have grown up with cats), you might be able to divine the secret to this story from the quote above.  The circumstances involve the murder of Colonel Druce, one of those Anglo−Indians who still seem to pepper our imagination with a particular flavor, in his isolated summerhouse on the Yorkshire coast.  A bevy of suspects slip in and out of view: the Colonel’s solicitor, Mr. Aubrey Traill; Dr. Valentine, a foreign neighbor who might just be a expatriated Marquis; Janet Druce, the daughter of the deceased and Valentine’s lover; Donald Druce, her brother; Herbert and Harry Druce, nephews of the deceased; and Patrick Floyd, the Colonel’s ingenious and startlingly arrogant American secretary.  All of them had motives and opportunities (given to us in piecemeal form owing to the brevity of their literary existence), as well as comments on what actually happened.  There is also one other witness who might know much more than anyone else.  Unfortunately all he can do is bark or howl.

 The titular canine is Nox, a big retriever as black as the Latin night for which he is named.  He is also the companion of a young, fair−haired man called Fiennes.  Fiennes was strolling on the coast with Nox and the colonel’s nephews when he heard “a faint and far−off shriek” that indicated, they would soon learn, the discovery of the colonel’s still−warm corpse.  Being a dog lover and of a very modern temperament, Fiennes thinks the “Invisible Murder Case,” as the humdrum press has dubbed it, of special interest precisely because of the reaction of his four−legged friend.  As he tells us and a certain cassock−clad sleuth:

We were … doing nothing in particular — throwing stones for the dog and throwing sticks into the sea for him to swim after …. And then the curious thing happened.  Nox had just brought back Herbert’s walking−stick out of the sea and his brother had thrown his in also.  The dog swam out again, but just about what must have been the stroke of the half−hour, he stopped swimming.  He came back again on to the shore and stood in front of us.  Then he suddenly threw up his head and sent up a howl or wail of woe, if ever I heard one in the world.

Nox, enjoying his starring role, does not stop there.  Upon sight of Traill (who, in a wonderful description, “had a rather grave face and a fine grave manner, but every now and then … seemed to remember to smile”) shortly thereafter, the retriever barks at him “madly, murderously, volleying out curses that were almost verbal in their dreadful distinctiveness of hatred.”  It is this last comment that provokes the otherwise demure Father Brown to vituperate Fiennes for searching for superstitions like the proverbial birds of ill omen.  From there, Fiennes is obliged to provide details untainted with the sludge of poppycock fortune tellers and repeat them slowly until the priest, busy preparing a lecture on the encyclical Rerum novarum, comes to see exactly how the crime might have been committed.

The story is a curious member of the Father Brown collection for three reasons: its length, its unnecessary abstruseness, and the vitriolic way in which the protagonist and amateur detective is permitted to lash out against “heathen humanitarians.”  A wealth of asides and tangential observations informs every page and one forgets, at moments, that we reading about a small British priest and the impossible mysteries that are foisted upon him for our pleasure.  Father Brown himself becomes an aside, a banshee full of pedantic wit and steam that devolves into a life lesson about personalities, which is always the case in Chesterton.  The man most admired (and envied) by Fiennes in his account is undoubtedly Floyd, whose tall thinness, spastic know−it−all impertinence, and boundless energy are so clearly inherited from this detective obsessed with empirical evidence that even Fiennes notices the similarity.  But it is not similarities that we are after.  Similarities do not explain why perfectly rational people do the wildest things, even when they sense they will not get away with it, and others with almost every opportunity do not seize the moment even when they sense they will never have it again.  As much as we might hope to find evidence in the smallest microcosms of our universe we would still do well to instruct ourselves through observing all varieties of behavior in our fellow species: how they act, what they say, what their goals and ambitions are in life, and what they think is right and wrong.  And, sometimes, it even pays to notice the differences in other, somewhat less evolved species.

Die Verwandlung (part 6)

The conclusion to "The Metamorphosis."  You can read the original here.

That very evening − Gregor did not remember having heard the violin this whole time − the violin resounded from the kitchen.  The occupants had already finished their supper, the middle one having taken out a newspaper and given the others each a page to read, and now all three were leaning back and smoking.  As the violin began to play they became attentive, got up from the table and went on their tiptoes to the door to the antechamber, where they all stood crowded on top of one another.  They must have been heard from the kitchen because his father then called out: "Is the violin playing bothering you gentlemen?  It can be stopped right away if you so choose."  "On the contrary," said the middle occupant, "wouldn't the young lady like to come over and play for us in this room which is cozier and much more comfortable?"  "Our pleasure," said his father, as if he were the violinist.  The occupants went back into the room and waited.  Soon his father came in with the music stand, followed by his mother with the notes and his sister with the violin.  His sister then got everything ready to play; her parents, who had never before rented out a room and thus expressed exaggerated courtesy towards the occupants, did not even dare sit on their own chairs.  Instead, his father leaned back against the door, his right hand wedged between two buttons of his livery uniform, while his mother had a chair offered to her by one of the occupants and sat down precisely in that random place where the occupant had set the chair, off in a corner on the side.

His sister began to play.  Each on one side, father and mother followed with great interest the movements of her hands.  Attracted by the playing Gregor had edged forward a little bit and already had his head in the living room.  He was hardly surprised by the fact that the others had paid him so little attention as of late; of such attention he used to be so proud.  And for that reason he would have had even more incentive to hide since, on account of the dust which lay all over his room was swept up like a sandstorm at the slightest movement, he was also completely covered in dust.  Threads, hair, and the remains of food all coated his back and sides.  Yet his indifference was far too great for him to do what he used to do many times a day, namely lie on his back and scrape off any residue onto the carpet; and despite his present state he had no qualms about setting foot on the immaculate living room floor.

In any case, no one noticed him.  His family was completely enthralled by his sister's violin playing.  The occupants, however, had placed their hands in their pant pockets and were standing much too close to his sister's music stand so that, in fact, they could see all the notes being played, which must have undoubtedly bothered her.  They pulled back suddenly and, their heads bowed in half-muttered conversation, went over to the window where they remained under the concerned eye of his father.  One had the unshakeable impression that the occupants were disappointed in what was supposed to be a beautiful or at least entertaining violin performance, that they were quite fed up with the whole matter and that they now said nothing to discourage her purely out of politeness.  Especially the way all of them were blowing smoke out their noses and mouths up into the air suggested very fragile nerves.  But his sister was playing so beautifully.  Her face was bent to the side and her eyes, observant and sad, stayed on her notes.  Gregor crawled forward a bit and held his head close to the floor trying to meet her gaze.  Was he an animal because music charmed him so?  To him all this seemed to be the way to desirable yet unknown nourishment.  He made up his mind to crawl over to his sister, pull on her skirt, and thereby signal to her that she could come play her violin in his room because no one here appreciated her playing more than he did.  He did not want to let her out of his room any more, at least not as long as he was alive.  His horrible form would finally be of some use; he wanted to be at all the doors of his room at the same time and hiss and growl at his attackers.  But his sister should not be forced to come into his room: she should want to do so of her own freewill.  She should sit next to him on the canopy, lower her ear to him, and then he could confide in her that he had the solid intention of sending her to the conservatory and that had it not been for their misfortune, he would have told everyone this past Christmas − was Christmas actually over? − without paying any mind to their objections.  After this declaration his sister would begin to sob, so touched would she be, and Gregor would stand up to the level of her shoulders and kiss her neck which, since she had been working in the store, was cloaked by neither necklace nor collar.

"Mr. Samsa!" the middle occupant called out to his father and pointed, without wasting another word, with his finger at the slowly advancing Gregor.  The violin went dead; at first, the middle occupant smiled and shook his head at his friends and then took another look at Gregor.  His father thought it was more important to calm the occupants than to drive Gregor back, although they were not at all agitated and Gregor seemed to entertain them more than the violin playing.  He ran over to them and tried with open arms to force them back into their room, at the same time blocking their view of Gregor with his body.  Now they had become a bit annoyed with the whole business; one didn't know whether it was owing to his father's behavior or to the knowledge that all this time they had had a neighbor like Gregor.  They demanded an explanation from his father, raised their arms as well, yanked nervously on their beards and only slowly made their way back into their room.  Meanwhile his sister recovered from the astonishment that ended her performance; her listless hands had held her violin and bow and her eyes had continued to read the notes as if she were still playing.  Now she pulled herself together, placed the instrument on her mother's lap − her mother was almost hyperventilating in her seat − and went into the next room which the occupants, driven back by her father, were approaching ever faster.  One could see how the sister's trained hands brought order to the bed covers and pillows as they flew in the air, and she was done with making the beds and had slipped out of the room before the occupants even got there.  Her father seemed so beholden to his own ideas that he forgot every drachma of respect that he owed his tenants.  He just kept pushing them further and further back until the middle occupant slammed his foot into the door to the occupants' room, which made his father stop in his tracks.  "I hereby declare," said the middle occupant, raising his hand and checking to see whether mother and sister were looking on, "that in consideration of the revolting familial and living conditions," and here he spat decisively on the floor, "I am giving up my room immediately.  Of course, I do not intend to pay a cent for the days I have spent here.  On the contrary, I will need to think about whether I may not want to bring some charges − some very easily justifiable charges, believe me − against you."  He fell silent and looked directly in front of him as if waiting for something.  And indeed, his two friends then chimed in with the words: "We are also leaving right away."  On this note he grabbed the door handle and slammed the door shut.

Groping and staggering his way back, his father fell down onto the seat of his chair.  It looked as if he were stretching out for one of his habitual evening naps; yet the powerful nodding of his almost unhinged head revealed that he was not sleeping at all.  Gregor had been lying there the whole time, perfectly still, in the spot in which the occupant had caught sight of him.  The disappointment over the failure of his plan as well as, perhaps, the weakness brought on by such severe hunger made it impossible for him to move.  At least for the next moment or two, he felt with a certain definitiveness an oncoming collapse and waited for it to hit him.  Not even the violin, which his mother's trembling fingers had let fall from her lap, crashing with a resounding tone, could startle him.

"Dear Parents," said his sister and slammed her fist into the table as a form of introduction.  "It cannot go on like this.  You might not realize it, but I certainly do. I will not utter my brother's name in the presence of this monstrosity, and hence I say bluntly that we must rid ourselves of it.  We have done everything humanly possible to take care of it and endure its ways, and I do not think that anyone can foist the slightest reproof upon us."  "She's completely and utterly right," his father muttered to himself.  Still finding it difficult to breathe, his mother held her hand before her mouth and began coughing drily with an insane expression in her eyes.  His sister hurried over and placed her hands on her forehead, while the words of his sister seemed to have led his father into an another arena of thoughts.  As such, he sat up straight, played with his tip change between the plates which still sat there from the occupants' supper, and looked straight at Gregor, who was still not moving.

“We have to try to get rid of it,” his sister then said, only to his father since her mother could hear nothing over her cough.  “It’ll kill us both, I see it coming.  When one has to work as hard as we all do, one can’t put up with this endless torture at home.  I can’t take it any more.”  And she burst into such a violent fit of sobbing that her tears cascaded onto the face of her mother, who wiped them away with some mechanical movements.”

“Child,” said her father compassionately and with noticeable understanding, “what should we do, then?”

His sister shrugged her shoulders as a sign of perplexity, quite in contrast to her previous attitude and a stance she had adopted while crying.  “If he only could understand us,” said his father, almost asking a question; his sister, still crying heavily, waved her hand as a sign that this could not be possible.  “If he could only understand us,” repeated his father and closed his eyes in acceptance of his sister’s conviction that this was simply impossible, “then perhaps some agreement with him might be possible.  But as it is −”

“We must get rid of it,” said his sister, “that’s the only way, Father.  You simply have to let go of the idea that it’s Gregor.  That’s what we’ve believed all this time, and that has been our own ill luck.  But how can it be Gregor?  If it were Gregor he would have long since realized that it’s not possible for such a beast to live together with human beings and would have left of his own freewill.  Then we would have no brother but could at least go on with our lives and cherish and honor his memory.  But all this beast does is harass us and drive out our tenants; he clearly wants to take over the whole apartment and let us spend the night on the street.  Just look now, Father!” she screamed suddenly.  “He’s at it again!”  And scared for a reason wholly unknown to Gregor, his sister left her mother, got up melodramatically from her seat as if she would rather sacrifice her mother than remain in Gregor’s vicinity, and scurried behind her father who, agitated by her behavior, also stood up and raised his arms in front of her like some kind of shield.

But Gregor had no intention of scaring anyone, much less his sister.  He had just begun to turn around to go back to his room, which became rather noticeable since he had to use his head to help with the difficult turns.  He lifted his head again and again only to have it fall back on the floor.  Then he stopped and took a look around.  His good will seemed to have been acknowledged; it was only a momentary fright.  Now everyone was silent and sad as they looked at him.  His mother was lying with her legs stretched out and pressed together in her seat, her eyes almost closing out of exhaustion, while his father and sister were sitting next to each other with her sister's hand on the nape of her father's neck.  "Perhaps now I should turn around," thought Gregor and began his work anew.  Yet he could not suppress his huffing and puffing as he strained himself and had to rest every so often and catch his breath.

As it were, no one was urging him on: he was left to his own devices.  Once he had completed turning around he immediately began to walk straight back to his room; the huge distance separating him from the door was astounding, and he simply could not understand how, in his weak condition, he had just covered the same ground without even noticing.  Now he concentrated on crawling fast and hardly noticed that he was not disturbed in his efforts by a single word or call from his family.

Only once he was already in the door did he turn his head − not completely, since his neck felt stiff − and saw that nothing behind him had changed; his sister had gotten up, but nothing else.  His last glance in that direction was towards his mother who by now was completely asleep.

Hardly had Gregor gotten inside his room when the door was hastily slammed shut, bolted and locked behind him, scaring him so much that his legs buckled.  It was his sister who had run up to the door.  She had already been standing and waiting, then sprung forward nimbly − Gregor had not heard her coming at all − and screamed out "finally!" to her parents as she turned the key in the lock.

"Now what?" Gregor asked himself and looked around in the darkness.  He soon discovered that he could no longer move.  But this did not surprise him; rather, it seemed quite unnatural that he had actually been able to make it this far on those thin legs of his.  Anyway, he felt relatively well.  Although he had pain throughout his body, it seemed to be getting weaker and weaker as if, one day, it would simply disappear.  He hardly felt any more the rotten apple in his back or his cankerous surroundings, covered entirely in white dust.  Love and emotion ruled the memories of his family.  His conclusion that he had to leave might have been even more resolute than the sister's.  And he remained in this state of empty and peaceful contemplation until the tower clock struck the third hour of morning; then he experienced the first hours of general brightness outside in front of the pool.  Then his head sank down against his will and from his nostrils came forth his last breath.

Early the next morning when the maid came − despite that she had been asked countless times to avoid doing so, she slammed all the doors closed in the apartment, so that no more peaceful sleep was possible − she initially found nothing out of the ordinary during her brief and habitual visit to Gregor's room.  She thought he was intentionally lying there without moving and pretending to be ashamed or offended; there was no sort of logic of which she didn't think him capable.  Yet while she happened to be holding her long broom in her hands, she tried to tickle Gregor away from the door.  When this proved wholly unsuccessful she got annoyed and gave a slight kick.  Only when she had managed to knock him from his place without the slightest resistance did she suddenly become more alert.  She soon discovered the real state of affairs, and whistled to herself as her eyes got very big, but did not waste much time before ripping open the door to the bedroom and projecting her loud voice into the darkness: "Take a look, all of you, he croaked!  He's just lying there, dead as a doornail!"

The Samsas sat up in their conjugal bed; their shock was distorted by the maid's loudness before they understood what her announcement meant.  Then, however, both Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, one on each side, got out of bed as quickly as they could.  Mr. Samsa threw the covers over his shoulders; Mrs. Samsa came with only a nightshirt on, and thus garbed they entered Gregor's room.  Meanwhile, the door to the living room had been opened; this was where Grete had been sleeping since the occupants moved in. She was completely dressed as if she hadn't slept at all, evidenced also by her chalk-white face.  "Dead?" said Mrs. Samsa and looked inquisitively at the maid, even though she could have verified everything herself and come to the same conclusion, in fact, without verifying anything.  "That's what I think," said the maid and knocked Gregor's corpse off to the side with her broom as proof.  Mrs. Samsa gestured as if she wanted to stop the broom, but did not.  "Well," said Mr. Samsa, "now we can thank God."  He crossed himself and the three women followed his example.  Grete, who could not turn her eyes away from the body, then said:  "Just look how emaciated he was.  He hadn't eaten anything for so long. The food left the way it was brought in."  And indeed, Gregor's body was flat and dry.  Only now was this evident, since he was no longer raised up on his legs and nothing else distracted one's view.

"Come in here with us for a while, Grete," said Mrs. Samsa with a wistful smile, and Grete walked into the bedroom behind her parents without looking back at the body.  The maid closed the door and opened the window completely.  Despite the early morning, the fresh air was already mixed with mildness.  It was already the end of March.

The three occupants stepped out of their room and glanced around for their breakfast with an amazed look on their faces.  The family had forgotten about them.  "Where is our breakfast?" the middle occupant asked the maid testily.  But she only placed her finger to her lips and quickly and silently signaled to the men that they could enter Gregor's room.  And they came and stood there, hands in the pockets of their somewhat worn gowns, around Gregor's body in the now very bright room.

Then the door to the bedroom opened and Mr. Samsa appeared in his livery with one arm around his mother and one around his daughter.  All of them were crying, if only a bit; Grete would occasionally press her face into her father's arm.  "Leave my apartment immediately!" said Mr. Samsa and pointed towards the door without letting go of the two women.  "What do you mean by that?" said the middle occupant somewhat taken back and smiled sweetly.  The two others kept their hands in their gowns and rubbed them together constantly as if in anticipation of a huge fight that would be resolved in their favor.  "I mean it just the way I say it," answered Mr. Samsa and, accompanied by his two women, went in a straight line towards the middle occupant.  The middle occupant stood there quite still and looked at the floor as if the ideas in his head were assuming a new order.  "Then we'll be going," he said and, suddenly overcome with humility, looked at Mr. Samsa as if asking for additional permission for this decision.  His eyes large and round, Mr. Samsa simply nodded a few times.  Thereupon the middle occupant proceeded with long strides into the antechamber; his two friends had since stopped rubbing their hands together and trotted in after him as if in fear that Mr. Samsa might enter the antechamber before them and cut off their connection to their leader.  In the antechamber all three of them took their hats from the clothes rack, pulled their canes out of the bin, bowed silently and left the apartment.  Then in a, as it turned out, wholly unfounded display of suspiciousness, Mr. Samsa and the two women stepped out to the vestibule, leaned on the railing and watched the three occupants slowly but surely go down the steps, disappear at every floor in a particular bend of the stairwell, and reappear a few seconds later.  The deeper they went, the less they interested the Samsas.  And then as a butcher's apprentice walked up towards and then past them with his barrow proudly on the back of his head, Mr. Samsa and the women left the railing and returned much relieved to their apartment.

They decided to spend that day resting and walking; not only had they earned a respite from their work, they also needed it desperately.  And so they sat down at the table and wrote letters to excuse themselves from their jobs; Mr. Samsa to his management, Mrs. Samsa to her client and Grete to her immediate supervisor.  While they were writing the maid came in to say that she was leaving since her morning work was done.  The three of them continued writing and just nodded without even looking up until the maid still did not want to leave, at which point everyone got annoyed.  "Well?" said Mr. Samsa.  The maid stood smiling in the threshold of the door as if she had great news to report to the family, but wouldn't do so unless she were asked repeatedly.  The small, almost upright feather in her hat which had annoyed Mr. Samsa for nearly her entire time there swayed gently in all directions.  "So what do you really want?" said Mrs. Samsa, for whom the maid had the most respect.  "Yes," answered the maid, who could not go on right away because she was laughing amicably, "I wanted to let you know that you didn't have to worry about all the stuff in the next room.  Everything's already taken care of."  Mrs. Samsa and Grete went back to work on their letters, or so it seemed; Mr. Samsa, however, who had noticed that the maid now wanted to go into detail about everything, waved her off decisively with his hand.  Since she wasn't allowed to continue with her story she remembered that she was in a rush and, a bit hurt, called out to everyone: "Farewell to all!"  Then she turned around wildly and left the apartment with a horrific slam of the door.

"She'll be fired this evening," said Mr. Samsa, although he received no response from either his wife or daughter because the maid seemed yet again to have disturbed their hard-won peace.  They got up, went over to the window and remained there draped over one another.  Mr. Samsa spun in his seat towards them and watched them silently for a while.  Then he said: "Alright, come over here. Enough of your old tricks. Come over here and pay me a little attention."  The women obeyed him immediately, rushed over and caressed him and then hastily finished their letters.

Then all three of them left the apartment together, something they hadn't done in months, and took an electric light rail to the countryside outside the city.  The car in which they sat seemed gorged on warm sunshine.  Sitting comfortably in their seats, they began talking about their prospects in the future, and it turned out that upon closer inspection these were not so bad after all.  All three of them were employed although they had hardly inquired about each other's jobs, profitable jobs whose prospects were promising.  Of course, the greatest improvement right at this moment would involve changing apartments: they wanted a smaller and cheaper place, yet one better located and more practical than the one they were in at present, the one picked out by Gregor.  As they continued to converse, Mr. and Mrs. Samsa looked at their now much livelier daughter and almost simultaneously reached the same conclusion: despite all the trouble in recent weeks which had made her cheeks so pale, she had now bloomed into a lovely and voluptuous young woman.  Exchanging glances and understanding one another almost unwittingly, they fell silent and thought that it was now time to find her a good man.  And when they reached their stop, their daughter got up first and, as if confirming their new dreams and good prospects, stretched forth her young body.

Die Verwandlung (part 5)

Part five of "The Metamorphosis."  You can read the original German here.

Gregor's serious injury, from which he suffered for over a month − the apple sat deep in his flesh, visible and impregnable, since no one dared remove it − seemed to remind even his father that despite the sad and disgusting shape of the current Gregor, his son was still a member of the family whom one should not treat as an enemy.  He was owed the commandment of family, for whom one had to swallow one's reluctance and endure, simply endure.  And even if Gregor had probably incurred a permanent loss of movement due to his injury and took long minutes to crawl across the room − crawling upwards was now out of the question − the worsening of his condition, in his opinion, was sufficiently compensated by the opening of the living room doors every day towards evening, the same doors he used to watch attentively for one or two hours.  Thus, lying in the darkness of his room, invisible from the living room, Gregor could now see the whole family at the lamp-lit table, as well as listen to their conversations, albeit with general consent − a vast change from before.

Gone were, of course, the lively chats of yesteryear which had filled Gregor's thoughts with longing as he threw himself exhausted into the moist beddings of a small hotel room.  Quiet and stillness prevailed; his father would have an after-dinner nap in his chair; mother and sister admonished one another into silence; bent forward under the light, his mother would sew some fine clothes for a fashion boutique; and his sister, who had accepted a job as saleswoman, would practice stenography and French in the hopes of someday obtaining an even better job.  His father would wake up as if he had never been sleeping and say to his mother: "Still sewing?  You've been sewing all day!"  Then he would fall right back asleep to the tired smiles of his wife and daughter.

With something akin to obstinance, his father did not remove his uniform at home.  And as his nightgown hung uselessly on the clothes hook, his father slept fully dressed in his seat, seemingly ready for work at the beck and call of his superior.  As such, the uniform, not new to begin with, lost much of its sheen regardless of the two women's efforts, and many an evening did Gregor spend casting his eyes over the stained uniform, its gold buttons still pristinely polished, in which the old man slept uncomfortably if peacefully.

As soon as the clock struck ten, his mother would try to rouse his father with gentle suggestions, whispering in his ear and mentioning his bed, for all this was hardly the sleep his father desperately needed to be able to report to work at six.  But in his obstinance as a newly working man he insisted on remaining at the table although he fell asleep regularly, and only the greatest of efforts could compel him to trade his chair for a bed.  Fifteen minutes of admonition and reprimand were answered with head-shaking, closed eyes and a refusal to get up.  His mother would take him by the arm, reprimand him without being too pushy, whisper sweet nothings to him, and his sister would stop her homework and help her mother out, all for naught.  He would simply sink deeper into his seat.  Only when he was grabbed under the arms did he bat his eyes open and look at the two women in turn with the comment: "This is a life.  This is the quiet of my older days."  And leaning on both of them he raised himself up with some difficulty as if this were the greatest of burdens, let the women lead him to the door, waved them off as they got there and finished the journey by himself.  Which didn't prevent them, of course, from throwing down their needle and pen and running after him in case he needed help.

With everyone so worn out and exhausted, who had time to see to Gregor more than what was absolutely necessary?  The household kept getting smaller: the maid was let go; mornings and evenings came a massive, bony woman with white hair that flapped around her head.  She did the hardest work; everything else was taken care of by his mother in addition to all her sewing.  Even family jewels which his mother and sister had been delighted to wear to parties and events were sold off, with Gregor's having learned of the price received during the regular evening discussions.  Yet the most resounding complaint concerned the oversized apartment which, given the current circumstances, they could not leave since there was no conceivable way Gregor could be moved elsewhere.  Gregor realized full well, however, that consideration towards him was not what prevented them from relocating because he could have easily been transported in a crate with a couple of air holes.  What really held them back was their utter hopelessness and the thought that, of all their relatives and friends, they were the only ones burdened with such misfortune.

They tried as hard as they could to do what the world demanded of poor people: his father got breakfast for the petty bank officials; his mother sacrificed herself for the laundry of strangers; his sister scurried to and from her desk at her customers' command; but their strength went no further.  And the wound in Gregor's back began to hurt him again whenever his mother and sister, after having put his father to bed, would come back, put their work down, and sit down together, almost huddling cheek to cheek; whenever his mother would say, pointing to Gregor's room: "Go ahead and close the door, Grete"; and whenever Gregor was enveloped again by the darkness while the women sat in the next room mixing their tears, or sitting without crying and staring at the table.

Gregor spent both day and night almost entirely without sleep.  Sometimes he thought of again taking family matters into his own hands the next time the door opened; to the labyrinth of his thoughts returned the general manager and his boss, commission salesmen and apprentices, the dim-witted page, two or three friends from other firms, a chambermaid from a hotel out in the provinces − a cherished and fleeting memory − a cashier from a hat store whom he had seriously if too slowly courted.  All these people seemed immingled with strangers or others that he had forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family, they were all collectively unapproachable, and he was happy when they disappeared.

But then he was no longer in the mood to provide for his family; he was filled only with anger at the poor attention he was receiving.  And although he could not think of anything that he found appetizing, he concocted schemes whereby he would slip into the pantry to take whatever was owed to him despite his lack of hunger.  Now no longer thinking what would be nice to do for Gregor, his sister would hastily kick a plate of food across the floor into Gregor's room before she ran out the door in the morning and at noontime, and in the evening sweep up with a broom whatever remained, indifferent as to whether Gregor had just tried, or − the most common scenario − not touched the food at all.  Cleaning his room, which she had always done in the evening, could not have been more needed at this point.  Strips of dirt covered the walls, and here and there lay balls of dust and refuse.  Initially Gregor placed himself at a specific angle to the door upon his sister's arrival to show her that he was unpleased with the state of his room.  But he could have waited there a whole week without her doing anything to improve the situation.  She saw all the dirt just like he did, but had simply decided to leave it be.

In fact she had grown sensitive to the notion, of which the rest of the family was duly aware, that cleaning up Gregor's room was her task and hers alone.  One time her mother had subjected Gregor's room to a massive cleaning made possible only through the use of numerous pails of water.  All this moisture made Gregor quite sick and he lay there spread out and unmoving on the canopy, bitter at this turn of events.  Nor was the mother spared; for that evening hardly had his sister noticed the change when she, extremely hurt, ran into the room and broke into a sobbing fit despite the mother's raised hands beseeching her not to worry.  This fit astonished both parents − her father, of course, woke suddenly in his seat − and they looked on helplessly before getting agitated themselves.  On the right side, his father began reprimanding his mother about not leaving the cleaning to his sister; on the left, his sister screamed that she would never again clean Gregor's room.  Then his mother tried to drag his father, who was beside himself in agitation, off to the bedroom; shaking from all her tears, his sister now began banging away on the table with her dainty fists; and Gregor, enraged, began to hiss since no one thought of closing the door and sparing him this noise and sight.

But even if his sister, exhausted as she was from her office job, had become sick of taking care of Gregor, there was no way she needed to have her mother to step in for her and Gregor certainly did not need to be neglected.  There was the maid for that.  This old widow who had managed to survive the most troubling of times in her long life due to her powerful bone structure had no particular aversion to Gregor.  Without being curious in any way, she had once accidentally opened the door to Gregor's room and come into Gregor's line of vision.  He was completely surprised although no one was hounding him, and began running back and forth, which led her to stand perfectly still, her hands folded upon her lap in astonishment.  Since that time she never missed an opportunity to open the door a bit in the morning and evening and take a look in at Gregor.  In the beginning she would call him over to her with words that she probably thought were kind such as: "Come over here, you old dung beetle!" or "Look at that old dung beetle!"  So addressed, Gregor did not respond at all but remained unmoving in his spot as if the door had never been opened.  If only they had told the maid to clean his room instead of uselessly letting her bother him according to her mood!  Early one morning as the maid began her volley of epithets − heavy rain, perhaps a sign of the coming spring, was pounding the window pane − Gregor was so upset that he actually turned towards her slowly and decrepitly as if readying himself to attack.  But instead of being afraid, the old woman found a chair near the door, lifted it up high, and stood there with her mouth agape to make her intentions clear: she would only close her mouth once she had slammed the chair into Gregor's back.  "So that's all you'll be trying?" she asked as Gregor turned back around, whereupon she calmly placed the chair back in the corner.  Now Gregor was practically no longer eating.  Only when he happened to come over to the food, he would take a bite in his mouth as a sort of game.  There he would hold it for hours on end and then spit most of it back out.  He initially thought that his mourning over the state of his room prevented him from eating; but he quickly reconciled himself to the changes.  In this room his family had gotten accustomed to storing things that they couldn't keep anywhere else, and there were many of these things since one of the rooms had been rented out to three occupants.  These stoic gentlemen − all three of them had full beards, as Gregor was able to ascertain through the door crack − were almost embarrassingly keen on order, not only in their room since they had just rented it out, but also in the entire apartment and especially in the kitchen.  They could not bear the sight of dirty or unuseful things.  What is more, they had for the most part brought their own furniture.  For this reason many items suddenly became superfluous and could not be easily resold, although throwing them out was not a solution, either.  All these items found their way into Gregor's room.  This included an ember chest and the trash can from the kitchen.  What was not usable at this very moment was simply slid into Gregor's room by the maid, who always seemed to be in a rush.  Normally, Gregor was lucky enough only to see the item in question and the hand that held it.  Perhaps the maid's intention was to recover these items at the appropriate time and opportunity, or ultimately to throw them all out together.  Nevertheless, as long as Gregor did not wind his way through them and knock them in motion − he was almost forced to do so since no other space remained for him to crawl about − they remained in the place they had been first cast.  Gregor's enthusiasm for such shenanigans grew over time, although afterwards he would not move for hours since he was so tired and so sad.

Since the occupants often took their supper at home in their shared room, the living room door remained shut on many evenings.  Yet it was easy for Gregor to do without the open doors; after all, there had been so many evenings when he had made no use of them whatsoever and had remained, without anyone of his family noticing, lying in the darkest corner of his room.  One time, however, the maid had left the door to the living room slightly ajar, and it was still open as the occupants arrived that evening and turned on the light.  They sat up at the table where once Gregor and his parents had sat, unfolded their napkins and took up their forks and knives.  Immediately at the door appeared his mother with a bowl of meat; right behind her came his sister with a bowl piled high with potatoes.  The food was steaming, almost thick with smoke.  The occupants bent over to take a look at the bowls in front of them as if they wanted to inspect them before their meal.  And indeed, the one sitting in the middle, who seemed for the two others to be the leader, cut a piece of meat still in the bowl for the clear purpose of determining whether it was brittle enough or whether it shouldn't be sent back to the kitchen.  He was satisfied and Gregor's mother and sister, who had been looking on anxiously, began to smile in relief.

The family itself ate in the kitchen.  Nevertheless, before coming into the kitchen, his father would go into the room where his guests were seated, make a single bow, and walk around the table, his cap in his hand.  The occupants would get up in unison and mutter something into their beards.  Once they were alone again they ate in almost complete silence.  To Gregor it seemed rather peculiar that of all the sounds that emanated from the dinner table, it was only their chewing teeth that he heard, as if they were trying to show Gregor that one needed teeth to eat, and that the most splendid of toothless jaws would not be up to this simple task.  "I am indeed hungry," Gregor said to himself, full of worry, "but not for these things.  How these occupants eat while I die!"

Die Verwandlung (part 4)

The fourth part to Kafka's tale ("The Metamorphosis"). You can read the original here.

For the first fourteen days his parents could not bring themselves to go into his room.  He often heard how they fully acknowledged his sister's current tasks, whereas hitherto they had only been annoyed because she seemed to be a quite useless young girl.  Now, however, both his father and mother would wait in front of Gregor's room as the sister was cleaning up; and hardly had she left the room when she was obliged to relate how the room looked, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this time around, and whether she had noticed any kind of improvement.  His mother, as it were, wanted to visit Gregor relatively soon, but his father and sister initially tried to persuade her that this was unreasonable.  Listening attentively, Gregor overheard all the reasons why they were hesitant and completely agreed.  Eventually force had to be used to hold his mother back, which was when she called out: "Let me go see Gregor!  After all, he's my wretched son!  Do both of you not understand that I have to see him?"  At this point Gregor thought it might be good were his mother to come in − not every day, of course, but perhaps once a week.  She understood everything much better than his sister who, despite her efforts, was still nothing more than a child who ultimately might have taken on such a difficult task out of childish giddiness. 

Gregor's wish to see his mother was soon granted.  During the daytime Gregor did not want to show himself at the window out of his consideration towards his parents.  That said, he could not crawl around the floor too much given the room's small dimensions; being still and quiet was particularly difficult at night; food did not give him the slightest pleasure or satisfaction; and so, he absentmindedly developed the habit of crawling all over the walls and ceiling.  He particularly liked hanging from the ceiling; it was completely different from sitting on the floor.  Here you could breathe more freely; here a faint vibration rushed through him; and in his almost happy state of absentmindedness up there, it was possible that he could surprise himself by letting go and crashing to the floor.  But now, of course, he had far greater control of his body than he had at the beginning and such a fall would no longer hurt him.  His sister immediately noticed his new pastime − traces of his natural adhesive were scattered wherever he crawled − and she got the idea into her head of facilitating Gregor's crawling as much as possible, including moving furniture such as the chest and desk that were in his way.  Yet she could not do all this alone; she didn't dare ask her father for help; the maid would certainly not have helped at all, since the sixteen-year-old had persevered bravely following the dismissal of the former cook and had asked as a favor that everyone keep the kitchen closed and open it only upon special request.  His sister had therefore no recourse but to fetch her mother one time when her father wasn't around.  With cries of joy his mother came up to the door but then fell quiet as she was about to enter the room.  Of course, first she looked at his sister to see whether everything in the room was alright, then his sister let her enter the room.  In great haste Gregor had deepened and put more folds in the sheet, and the whole thing now looked like a sheet thrown over a canopy.  This time Gregor refrained from spying from beneath the sheet; this time he did without seeing his mother and was just glad that she had come.  "Come in, you can't see him," said his sister and apparently took her mother by the hand.  What Gregor now heard were two weak women moving a rather heavy old chest and his sister bearing the brunt of the work without heeding any of her mother's warnings since her mother feared she would overwork herself.  It took quite a while.  After a good fifteen minutes his mother said that they should probably just leave the chest where it was.  In the first place, she said, it was too heavy and they would never be done barricading the middle of Gregor's room with the chest before Father got home.  In the second place, it was not at all clear that they were doing Gregor a favor by moving the furniture; the opposite, in fact, seemed to be true, and the sight of the empty wall aggrieved her heart.  And why wouldn't Gregor feel that way since he was long accustomed to the furniture and would feel desolate in an empty room?

"And isn't," his mother concluded gently, almost in a whisper so that Gregor, whose precise location she did not know, might not even hear her voice; that he couldn't understand her words she was still fully convinced.  "Isn't our removal of the furniture an indication that we've given up all hope of improvement and are thoughtlessly leaving him to his own devices?  I think it would be best to try to keep this room in exactly the state it was in before, so that when Gregor comes back to us he'll find everything unchanged and will be able to forget the intermediate time all the more quickly." 

Upon hearing these words from his mother Gregor realized that, in the last two months, the lack of direct human contact combined with the monotonous life at home with his family must have confounded his reason; his earnest desire to have his room emptied out could not be explained otherwise.  Did he really wish to let the warm confines of his cozily furnished room replete with heritage pieces be metamorphosized into a hollow in which he could crawl in every which direction undisturbed, and simultaneously endure the rapid and thorough obliteration of his human past?  Had he not been already quite close to forgetting it all, if jolted out of this oblivion by his mother's long since unheard voice?  Nothing then should be removed.  Everything should be kept as it was.  He could not do without the good effects the furniture had on his condition.  And if the furniture hindered his senseless crawling about, it was no loss but a rather substantial benefit.  But unfortunately his sister was of another opinion; she had grown accustomed, not unjustifiably, to representing Gregor's interests in any discussions with her parents, and her mother's advice was enough for her to insist on the removal of not only the chest and desk − the things she had first thought of − but also of all the furniture with the exception of the indispensable canopy.  This decision, of course, was nothing more than the product of childish defiance and recent, unexpected and hard-won self-confidence.  She had also actually observed that Gregor needed a lot of space to crawl about; of the furniture, on the other hand, he did not seem to have any use.  

Perhaps it was the enthusiasm typical of girls her age, enthusiasm that sought gratification at every opportunity, that tempted Grete to make Gregor's situation more terrifying so that she could do even more for him.  No one except Grete would ever have dared enter a room whose empty walls were ruled by Gregor alone.  And she did not let her mother dissuade her from her decision.  Even when her mother seemed unsure of the loud unrest in the room; even when her mother soon fell silent and helped her, as much as her strength allowed, to get the chest out of the way.  And hardly had the two women, moaning under the weight, left the room with the chest when Gregor stuck his head out from under the canopy to see how he could take action as carefully and considerately as possible.  But unfortunately it was his mother who came back first while Grete wrapped her arms around the chest and swung back and forth without, of course, moving it an inch.  Yet his mother was not accustomed to seeing Gregor, his sight could have made her ill, and so Gregor hurried back in fright to the other end of the canopy, but could no longer keep the sheet from moving forward a bit.  That was enough to make his mother notice.  She stumbled, stood still for a moment, then went back to Grete.

Despite Gregor's repeating to himself that nothing out of the ordinary was occurring, just some furniture being moved, he would soon have to admit that this to and fro by the women, their calls to each other, the furniture scratching the floor, oppressed him from all sides like some unfathomably loud commotion.  So Gregor drew in his head and legs, pushed his body on the floor, and inevitably had to tell himself that he would not be able to take much more of this.  They cleaned out his room; they took everything that meant something to him; they had already carried out the chest in which he kept his fretsaw and other tools; now they were unscrewing from deep in the floor the desk on which he as a trade school student, a secondary school student, and even a primary school pupil had done his homework.  He no longer had any time to verify the noble intentions of these two women whose existence he had almost forgotten as they were exhausted, working in silence, and one could only hear their heavy fumbling steps.

It was here that he emerged − the women were taking a breather in the other room, leaning on the desk − changed direction four times, not really knowing what he should save first.  On the already near-empty wall he caught sight of the picture of the woman regaled in furs, then quickly crawled up and pressed his face to the picture glass that held him securely and did his warm belly good.  This picture, at least, this one picture completely covered up by Gregor, no one would be able to take away.  He turned his head towards the living room door to watch for the women's return.

They had not given themselves much of a chance to rest and were coming right back.  Grete had her arm around her mother, almost carrying her.  "What should we take now?" said Grete and took a look around.  Then their gazes met on the wall at Gregor.  Trembling and imprudent, and maintaining her composure only because of her mother's presence, Grete bent her face towards her mother to keep her from casting her eyes about the room.  "Come now, why don't we go to the living room for a moment?"  For Gregor, Grete's intention was clear: she wanted to get her mother to safety and then get him down off the wall.  Well, she could always try!  He sat on his picture and would not give it up.  He would have preferred to jump onto Grete's face.

But Grete's words had already upset her mother substantially.  She stepped to the side, gazed upon the gigantic brown spot on the flowery wallpaper, and called out in a raw, shrill voice as if she had realized that what she was looking at was Gregor: "Oh God, oh God!"  Then she fell, her arms spread wide as if she were surrendering everything she had, onto the canopy and lay very still.  "You, Gregor!" screamed his sister, with her fist raised and a somewhat crazed expression.  These were the first words she had said directly to him since his metamorphosis. She ran into the adjacent room to fetch some essence with which she could revive her mother.  Gregor also wanted to help − there would still be time to save the picture.  So he followed her into the next room as if he wanted to give her some advice as he used to do, but he had to sit behind her idly as she rummaged through various flasks and bottles.  And she got a scare when she turned around; one flask fell to the ground and shattered, with a shard injuring Gregor in the face, and he was encircled by the fumes of some escharotic drug.  Meanwhile Grete gathered up as many bottles as she could and ran over to her mother, slamming the door shut with her foot. Gregor was now sealed off from his mother, his mother who because of him might be near death.  He was not permitted to open the door and did not want to harass his sister since she had to stay with their mother.  There was nothing left for him to do but wait.  And spurred on by concern and self-reproach, he began crawling over everything − walls, furniture, even the ceiling − and finally, in his despair, as the whole room seemed to spin around him, tumbled down onto the large table.

A short while passed and Gregor was still lying there, weary and motionless.  Around him all was still; perhaps this was a good sign.  Then someone rang the doorbell.  The maid was, of course, still locked in her kitchen and so Grete had to go get the door.  Their father had come.  "What happened?" were his first words; but Grete's appearance told him everything he needed to know.  Grete answered in a dull voice, apparently pressing her face in her father's chest: "Mother fainted, but she's doing better.  Gregor is loose."  "I expected that," said her father, "I always told you that, but you women never wanted to listen."

To Gregor it was clear that his father had badly misinterpreted Grete's all-too-brief report.  His father assumed that Gregor must have committed some act of violence.  Therefore Gregor now had to try to appease his father, since he had neither the time nor opportunity to explain matters in full.  And so he raced over to the door of his room and pushed himself against it so that his father could see immediately upon entering that Gregor had only the best intentions, the intention to return to his room and that it was not necessary to beat him back.  All one had to do was open the door and he would disappear.

But his father was not in the mood for such subtleties.  "Ah!" he screamed as he entered in a tone that seemed both furious and happy.  Gregor pulled his head back from the door and raised it towards his father.  He had never really imagined his father the way he stood before him now.  His father had missed his recent crawling about since he was seeing to matters in the rest of the apartment, and ought to have bargained on the eventuality that the situation would change.  And yet, and yet, was this really his father?  The same man who lay in bed dead tired when Gregor would come back from a business trip; the same man who would receive Gregor upon his return home in a nightgown, sitting in a recliner; the same man who was not even capable of getting up and could only demonstrate his happiness by waving his arms; the same man who, on those rare Sunday and holiday strolls together with Gregor and his mother (who walked, as it were, rather slowly to begin with), was always a little slower, wrapped up in his old coat, working his way forward with his carefully placed cane, and if he wanted to say something, then always stopping and assembling everyone around him?

But now his father looked dashing.  He was garbed in a well-cut blue uniform with gold buttons like bank employees tended to wear; above the coat's high starched collar you could see his strong double chin; under his bushy eyebrows his dark eyes had a fresh and darting gleam; his normally disheveled white hair had been combed back into an embarrassingly precise and shiny part.  He threw down his loose change on which a gold monogram, probably that of a bank, was incused, all over the room and onto the arch of the canopy.  With his hands in his pant pockets and his long coattails pushed back, he then went up to Gregor with a dogged look on his face.

His father's intention was not clear, perhaps not even to himself.  He kept lifting his feet unusually high off the ground and Gregor was stunned by the huge size of the soles of his boots.  But he did not linger in these movements, and already on the first day of his new life Gregor understood full well that his father believed that only austerity would be appropriate in dealing with Gregor.  So he ran in front of his father, stopping when his father stood still, and rushing on forwards whenever his father budged.  In this way they went around the room a few times without anything decisive occurring, and without the need for the whole affair, owing to its slow tempo, to resemble some kind of hunt.  For that reason Gregor remained temporarily on the floor, fearing in addition that his father would take a scamper to the walls or ceiling as a definite sign of evil.  In any case, Gregor had to admit he could not keep this up for too long, since he needed a plethora of movements for every one step of his father's.

Soon, his shortness of breath became more noticeable, just as in his younger years when his lungs would always betray him.  He could barely keep his eyes open as he lurched forward, trying to gather all his strength.  In this state of numbness he could think of no other method of saving himself than running; and he had almost forgotten that the walls were available, walls obstructed by carefully carved furniture full of jagged edges.  Then something flew down next to him, jerking and sliding somewhat, and rolled out in front of his eyes.  It was an apple.  A second one flew down at him and Gregor froze in fear.  Moving about any more was useless because his father had decided to bombard him.

His father had filled his pockets from the fruit bowl sitting on the credenza and was now throwing, without so much as aiming, apple after apple in Gregor's general direction.  These small red apples rolled as if electrified all around the floor, colliding into one another.  And one weakly tossed apple grazed Gregor's back then slid off harmlessly; an immediately subsequent apple, however, hit him squarely in the back.  Gregor wanted to keep moving as if movement would cause the surprising and unbelievable pain to fade, but he felt nailed down, his senses in complete disarray, and he stretched himself out flat.  His last look told him that the door to his room had been ripped open and his mother had rushed in followed by his screaming sister.  His mother was in a nightshirt since his sister had already undressed her to let her breathe more easily after her fainting spell.  Then he saw his mother run up to his father, her skirts sliding in her path to the floor one after another; he saw her stumbling over her skirts, forcing her way to his father and putting her arms around him, uniting with him completely and absolutely; then he saw − and here Gregor's vision failed him − her, her hands on the back of his father's head, begging him to spare Gregor's life.

Die Verwandlung (part 3)

Kafka's tale ("The Metamorphosis") continues.  You can read the original here.

Twilight had already fallen when Gregor awoke from a deep slumber, almost as if he had fainted.  Had he slept any later he would have woken up peacefully since he felt sufficiently rested, but it seemed that a quick step and a careful lock of the door leading to the antechamber had woken him up.  The electric street lamps cast a pale sheen here and there on the room's ceiling and on the upper part of the furniture, but below, near Gregor, all was dark.  Still groping around awkwardly with his feelers which he had just learned to appreciate, he slowly made his way to the door to see what had happened.  His left side boasted one long, unpleasantly painful scar, forcing him to limp on his two sets of legs.  One of his legs had been seriously injured during the morning's attacks − quite a miracle that this had happened to only one leg − and was being dragged lifelessly behind him.  Only when he reached the door did he see what had lured him over: it was the smell of something edible.  In front of him sat a bowl filled with sweet milk in which small pieces of white bread were floating.  He almost laughed out of joy since he was even hungrier than he had been that morning, and soon he was face deep in the bowl of milk.  But he withdrew just as quickly in disappointment, and not only because his sensitive left side gave him some difficulty eating (and he could only eat when his whole wheezing body worked as a unit).  He did not at all like the milk, otherwise his favorite drink and one obviously prepared for him by his sister, and turned away almost reluctantly from the bowl and crawled back to the middle of the room.

Through the door crack Gregor saw that the gas had been turned on in the living room.  But instead of the usual scene at this time − his father propounding in loud tones to his mother and sometimes even his sister details from the afternoon papers − now he heard no sound.  Perhaps they were getting unaccustomed to having these sessions about which his sister always spoke and wrote to him.   But all around it was so quiet and still although the apartment could not have been empty.  "What a quiet life my family leads," Gregor said to himself.  And staring into the surrounding darkness, he suddenly felt very proud that his parents and his sister had been able to make such a life for themselves in such a beautiful apartment.  What if all this tranquility, well-being, and contentment should now meet a horrific end?  So as not to lose himself to such thoughts, Gregor decided it was better to move about and began crawling up and down the room.

During the long evening, each of the side doors was opened just a crack one time and then quickly shut.  Someone must have wanted permission to come in but had too many reservations.  Having made up his mind to let in the hesitant visitor or at least find out who it was, Gregor now stopped right in front of the door to the living room.  But the door was not opened any more and Gregor just waited in vain.  Early on, when the doors had been locked, they had all wanted to come in.  Now that he had opened one door and the others had obviously been opened during the course of the day, no one came by any more and the keys sat in the outside part of the locks.     

Only much later at night did the light in the living room come on again.  His parents and sister had obviously been up this whole time since one could hear them moving away on their tiptoes.  It was clear that no one would come visit Gregor until the morning, so he had plenty of time to ponder undisturbed how he should reorder his life.  But this large room with high ceilings in which he had been forced to lie flat on his stomach scared him.  Without, it should be said, any good reason since he had lived in this room for five years now.  He made a half-conscious turn and not unshamefully scurried under the canopy, where despite the fact that his back was a little squeezed and he could not raise his head any more, he immediately felt very cozy.  His only regret was that his body was too wide to be covered entirely by the canopy.

There he stayed the whole night, some of which he spent half-asleep frightened by his recurring hunger, some of which was devoted to worries and unclear hopes.  Hopes which led him to conclude, however, that for the time being he ought to be good and use patience and supreme tact to mollify the unpleasantries which, like it or not, he had caused his family. 

Early the next morning, it was almost still night, Gregor had the opportunity to put his new resolutions into practice.  From the direction of the antechamber the door opened and his sister, almost completely dressed, peered in with some eagerness.  She didn't find him right away; but when she finally noticed him under the canopy − God, he had to be somewhere, he couldn't have gotten loose and fled, could he? − she had such a fright that without being able to control herself, she slammed the door shut from the outside.  Apparently regretting her behavior, she immediately opened the door again and entered on her tiptoes as if visiting a stranger or someone seriously ill.  Gregor had pushed his head forward to the edge of the canopy and looked at her.  Would she notice that he hadn't touched the milk, and not from any lack of hunger, and would she bring him some other food that that was more to his taste?  If she didn't, he would prefer to starve than have her notice although he truly had the urge to throw off the canopy, throw himself at his sister's feet and beg her for something good to eat.  But the sister noticed the still-full bowl, with a bit of milk spilled around it, and was immediately hurt.  She picked the bowl up not with her bare hands but with some rags and carried it out.  Gregor was extremely curious to know what she would bring him instead and plagued himself with the widest variety of thoughts about the matter.   Yet he would never have guessed what the sister, out of the goodness of her own heart, actually ended up doing.  She brought him an entire selection of items spread out on an old newspaper.  There were some half-rotten vegetables; bones from supper covered in a solid white sauce; some raisins and almonds; cheese that Gregor had deemed inedible a couple of days before; dry bread, buttered bread, and salted bread.  Moreover, next to all these delicacies she placed the bowl that was probably to be Gregor's forever and which she had filled with water.  And out of tenderness, because she knew that Gregor would not eat in front of her, she removed herself as quickly as she could and even turned the key so that Gregor could make himself as comfortable as he wanted.  Gregor's legs buzzed as it came time to eat.  His wounds must have completely healed in the meantime; he no longer felt any kind of hindrance, was rather stunned by all this and thought about how, about a month before, he had nicked his finger with a knife and how the day before yesterday this wound still had still hurt him. 

"Should I somehow be less sensitive now?" he thought, and greedily sucked on the cheese to which he had been more emphatically and immediately drawn than to any of the other foods.  One after another, with great speed and almost tear-filled eyes, he consumed the cheese, vegetables and sauce; the fresh foods, on the other hand, he did not like, not even being able to tolerate their smell, and he separated the foods he wanted by pulling them a short distance away from the rest.  He was long since done and lying lazily in that same spot when his sister began turning the key slowly as a sign that he should step back.  That scared him although he was almost asleep and he raced back under the canopy.  But it cost him a great deal of self-control, as well as the short time the sister was in the room, to stay underneath the canopy since his stomach had gotten a bit round from the hearty meal and it was so tight under there he could hardly breathe.  Choking slightly and with his eyes protruding, he saw how his unsuspecting sister swept up with a broom not only the remains of what Gregor had eaten, but also what he hadn't touched as if it had no further use, shook it all together in a pail, covered it with a wooden lid and took everything out the room.  Hardly had she turned around when Gregor scooted out from under the canopy and stretched and inflated himself.    

This was how Gregor got his food every day, once in the morning while his parents and the maid were still sleeping, and a second time after lunch since his parents tended to nap after lunch, and the maid was sent away on some errand by his sister.  They certainly did not wish for Gregor to starve; yet perhaps they could not have endured knowing about his food other than by word of mouth; perhaps his sister just wanted to spare them a small amount of mourning since they were clearly suffering enough as it was.

Gregor would never know what excuses were used that first morning to get rid of the doctor and locksmith.  Owing to the fact that Gregor was not intelligible, no one suspected, not even his sister, that Gregor could understand the others.  And so whenever she was in his room, he had to content himself with listening to her sighs and calls to the Holy Fathers.  Only later − once he had grown more accustomed to everything, getting completely accustomed to everything was out of the question − Gregor would sometimes hear a remark that was meant as friendly or at least could be taken that way.  "Today he liked the food," she said whenever Gregor cleaned his plate; whereas whenever the opposite occurred she would repeat, almost sadly, "he didn't touch anything again."

Although Gregor never found out any information directly, he heard many things from the adjacent rooms, and whenever he heard voices he immediately ran over to the corresponding door and pushed his whole body up to it.  Especially initially there were no conversations, even secretly, that were not somehow about Gregor.  For two days at every meal the family talked about what to do; but the same subject was also discussed between meals since there were always at least two family members at home and no one, of course, wanted to stay at home alone or completely abandon the apartment.  That first day even the maid − it was not completely clear what and how much she knew about what had happened − had beseeched his mother to fire her on the spot.  And a quarter of an hour later when she left in tears, she was thankful for her dismissal as the greatest act of kindness that anyone had ever done for her and swore, without being asked, never to tell anyone the slightest thing about what had happened.

Now his sister and mother also had to do the cooking together; in any case, it was not too laborious since practically no one ate anything.  Time and again Gregor heard one of them inviting another to eat, but in vain, as there was no response apart from "Thanks, I've had enough," or something of the kind.  Often his sister would ask his father whether he wanted a beer, and volunteer sincerely to get it herself.  When his father would say nothing, she would say to allay his doubts that she could also send the concierge, and he would finally utter a big "no" and no one would bring up the subject any more.      

Already in the course of that first day his father went over the state of the family finances and their prospects with both his mother and sister.  Now and then he would get up from the table and fetch a receipt or notebook from the small Wertheim cash box which he had saved after the collapse of his business five years ago.  You could hear how the complicated lock was opened and then closed again once the desired item was removed.  These declarations by his father composed the first happy news that Gregor had heard since his captivity began.  He was convinced that his father did not have the slightest amount left from that business − at least, his father had never said anything to convince him otherwise − and Gregor had never asked him about it.  Gregor's only concern at that time was to do everything in his power to make the family forget as quickly as possible about this business disaster which had brought hopelessness upon them.  And so he had begun to work at that time with particular ardor and went from being a small commission salesman to a traveler practically overnight.  A traveler whose earning potential was, of course, far different from that of a salesman and whose work success immediately metamorphosized into cash payments which could be brought home and laid on the table before an amazed and delighted family.  These had been fine and happy times − and they had never returned, at least not to that degree, despite the fact that Gregor would later earn so much money that he could and did cover all the expenses of the entire family.  Everyone had gotten used to it, both the family and Gregor, and he was all too happy to deliver the money which was accepted with gratitude, but any kind of special warmth was no longer there.  Only his sister had remained close with Gregor, and he had forged a secret plan to send her to conservatory next year − regardless of the costs that such study would require, and which would be secured by some other means − because she, in contrast to Gregor, loved music and had some mastery of the violin.  Often during his brief visits to the city, she would mention the conservatory to him, but only as a beautiful dream in whose fruition one could not really believe.  His parents did not even like hearing these innocent discussions.  But Gregor thought very decisively about the matter and intended to make a ceremonious declaration on Christmas Eve.

Such thoughts, so useless in his current state, went through his head as he stayed glued to the door listening.  Sometimes, out of general fatigue, he simply could not listen any more and let his head drop carelessly against the door, then immediately raised it again since even the slight noise that this caused was heard next door and made everyone fall completely silent.  "What is he doing now," said his father after a while, likely facing the door, and then the interrupted conversation resumed.

Gregor now got his fill of his father's declarations − since his father tended to repeat himself quite often, partially because he himself had not dealt with these matters in a long time and partially because his mother did not understand everything the first time around − that despite the financial disaster a very small fortune had remained, which had increased recently owing to the untouched interest earned.  Moreover, there was the money that Gregor brought home every month − he had kept only a few guilders for himself − which had not been fully procured and had accumulated a small amount of capital.  Behind his door Gregor nodded eagerly, happy about this unexpected carefulness and frugality.  As it were, he could have used this extra money to chip away at his father's debt to the boss, and he would be a day closer to being able to quit his job.  But now things were undoubtedly better the way his father had set them up.

Now this money was in no way enough for the family to live off the interest; it might have been enough to keep the family for one, maybe two years at the most, but not any longer than that.  Thus it was an amount that one should not touch, to be kept in the event of an emergency.  But the money for daily living needed to be earned.  His father was an older but healthy man who had not worked in five years and in any case could not be expected to do too much.  In those five years, his first vacation in his stress-filled and yet unsuccessful life, he had put on quite a bit of weight and was now rather lumbering.  And should his old mother now be asked to earn some money, his old mother who suffered from asthma, for whom sauntering through the apartment required great effort, and who spent every other day on the sofa next to an open window because she was short of breath?  And should his sister be asked to be the breadwinner, his sister who was still just a child at seventeen, whose life hitherto one could not begrudge her, a life of dressing well, sleeping long, helping out with household tasks, a few indulgences here and there, and, most of all, playing the violin?  And whenever they spoke of the need to make money, Gregor always left the door and threw himself onto the cool leather sofa near the door because he was burning with grief and shame.          

He often lay there the whole night through, not sleeping a wink and only staring for hours at the leather.  Or he spared no effort to push an armchair towards the window, crawl up the wall breastwork and, solidly in the seat, lean against the window lost in some memory of how pleasant it used to be for him to look out the window.  Indeed, from day to day he saw things in close proximity less and less clearly: the hospital across the street whose ineluctable presence he had cursed now fell outside his range of vision.  And if he had not known for a fact that he lived in the quiet but completely urban Charlottenstraße, he might have thought that he was looking out his window into a desert in which the grey sky and grey earth were indistinguishable.  Only twice did his attentive sister see the armchair standing at the window as she moved the armchair back from the window after she had cleaned up the room, and even left the inner window sash open.

If Gregor could have only spoken with his sister and thanked her for everything that she had to do for him then he would have taken her services much better; but as it were, they made him suffer.  His sister was obviously trying to cover up the embarrassment of the whole matter as much as she could, and the longer it went on the better, of course, she got at it − but Gregor was able to see things much more clearly.  Her entrance was already for him a source of horror.  Hardly would she come in the door when she would go back and make sure the door was shut, so desperately did she want to spare the others a look into Gregor's room.  She would then go up to the window, rip it open as if stifled or choking, and stay there a while breathing deeply if it wasn't too cold.  These sounds and movements scared Gregor twice a day.  And the whole time she was there he shivered under the canopy and knew full well that she would have certainly spared him all this if she had only been able to stay in that room, Gregor's room, with the window closed.  

Once, about a month after Gregor's metamorphosis had taken place, with there no longer being any particular reason for his sister to be shocked by his appearance, she came in a bit earlier than usual and caught Gregor, unmoving and so frightening, looking out the window.  It would not have surprised Gregor had she not come in since his positioning prevented her from opening the window right away.  But not only did she come in, she went right back out and closed the door.  A stranger would have immediately thought that Gregor had waylaid her and wanted to bite her.  Gregor, of course, did not hesitate to scurry beneath the canopy, but he had to wait until noon for his sister to come back, and she seemed less at ease than usual.  He understood that his appearance was now even more unbearable, that it would continue to be something she could not endure, and that she would have to exert a great deal of self-control not to run away at the sight of even the smallest part of his body protruding from beneath the canopy.  In order to spare her even this view, one day he put the sheet from the canopy on his back − a task that took him four hours − and organized it in such a way that he was now completely covered, and his sister could not see him even when she bent over.  Had she not thought this sheet necessary she could of course have removed it, since closing himself off like that could not have been to Gregor's enjoyment.  Yet it was quite clear that she left things as they were.  And once, when he cautiously aired the sheet a bit with his head so as to see how his sister liked this new setup, Gregor even thought he perceived a thankful look.