Die Verwandlung (part 2)

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

"Mr. Samsa," the general manager called out with a raised voice, "what is wrong?  You're barricading yourself in your room, giving us yes and no answers, causing your parents serious and unnecessary concern, as well as neglecting − I just mention this in passing − your work obligations in an unprecedented manner.  I speak now in the name of your parents and your boss and ask you very earnestly for an immediate and unambiguous explanation.  I am just astounded, astounded.  I took you for a peaceful, reasonable person, and now you suddenly want to start parading around making strange sounds.  This morning the boss suggested a possible explanation for your behavior, and it had to do with the debt collection tasks recently entrusted to you.  But I practically gave him my word that this couldn't be the reason.  Now, however, I am witness to your unbelievable stubbornness and have completely lost any desire I might have had to stick up for you.  And your job is not exactly the most secure.  I originally had the intention of telling you all this in private, but since you've made me waste my time here waiting, I don't see why your parents shouldn't learn about your indiscretion.  Your contributions recently have also been less than satisfactory.  It's true that now's not high season for particular types of business transactions, we are well aware of that.  Yet there is no such thing as a season for no business transactions, Mr. Samsa, as well there shouldn't be."

"But sir," shouted Gregor, beside himself with agitation and forgetting everything else.  "I'll open up in just a moment, right away.  A light bout of ill health and dizziness prevented me from getting up.  I'm still in bed, you see, but I'll be fresh and ready to go in no time.  I'm just getting out of bed now!  Just a moment, be patient!  I'm still not doing as well as I thought.  But I'm alright.  How these things can just knock you off your feet!  Yesterday evening I was doing fine, as my parents know, or better said: yesterday I had a premonition of what was about to occur.  You could have seen it on my face.  Why didn't I just report it to the office!  But one always thinks that one can get over an illness without staying home.  General manager, sir, please spare my parents!  There is no reason for you to reprimand me; no one has breathed a word of this to me.  Perhaps you have yet to read the most recent contracts that I sent in.  By the way, I'll be traveling on the eight o'clock train; these couple of hours have really made me stronger.  Please don't wait around, sir, I'll be at work very soon, and please be good enough to give my regards to the boss!"

And while Gregor spat all this out in haste, hardly aware of what he was saying, he had slowly inched his way towards the chest owing to his having practiced this movement in bed, and was now trying to straighten himself up against it.  He really did want to open the door, have himself be seen and speak with the general manager; he was eager to find out what the others who had so longed to see him would say upon his appearance.  If they were frightened then Gregor was no longer responsible and could be calm.  If they were to take everything the right way, then he really wouldn't have any reason to get worked up and could in fact be, if he hurried, at the train station at eight.

He initially slid off the smooth chest a few times, but finally, with one last heave, he was able to stand upright.  He no longer paid any attention to the pain in his lower stomach, regardless of how badly it burned.  He leaned against the back of a chair in his vicinity and propped his legs up securely on the chair's edge.  Thus he achieved some measure of mastery over his body and immediately fell quiet because he could hear the general manager talking.

"Did you understand a word of that?" the general manager asked his parents.  "He's not making a fool of us, is he?"  "For God's sake," yelled his mother, already in tears.  "He may be seriously ill, and we're torturing him. Grete! Grete!" she then screamed.  "Yes, mother?" his sister called out from the other side.  They were communicating through Gregor's room.  "You must go to the doctor's this very minute.  Gregor is ill.  Rush off and fetch the doctor.  Didn't you hear Gregor talking?"  "That was the voice of an animal," said the general manager in tones noticeably softer than the mother's screaming.

"Anna! Anna!" his father screamed through the antechamber into the kitchen and clapped his hands.  "Get a locksmith, and make it quick!"  And soon both women, their skirts rustling through the antechamber − how did his sister get dressed so quickly? − ripped open the apartment doors.  You could not even hear the doors slam shut; they had probably left them open, as tends to happen in homes which have incurred a great misfortune.

Yet Gregor had become much calmer.  It was true that his words were no longer intelligible, even if they were coming to him more clearly than before, perhaps thanks to the acclimation of his hearing.  But all the same, it was still believed that something was wrong with him and that he should be helped.  The assurance and certainty with which these decisions were made did him some good.  Once again he felt incorporated into human circles and expected outstanding and surprising services from both the doctor and locksmith without distinguishing them from one another too much.  In order to have the clearest possible voice for the upcoming discussions, he cleared his throat a bit, in any case with some effort towards discretion in the event that this sound also might not resemble a human cough − a distinction which he no longer felt capable of making.  In the meantime it had gotten rather quiet in the adjacent room.  Perhaps his parents were sitting at the table and whispering to the general manager; perhaps they were all leaning against the door and listening.

Slowly, Gregor pushed himself with the chair to the door, let the chair go, threw himself against the door, held himself up straight against it − the balls of his legs had a bit of sticky substance − and rested there a while from the strain.  Then he tried feverishly to extract the key from the lock with his mouth.  Unfortunately it turned out that he had no teeth.  How then was he going to grab the key?  But for that purpose he had particularly powerful jaws.  Using them he was able to start moving the key, inattentive to the fact that he was undoubtedly doing himself some harm since a brown liquid began flowing from his mouth, flowing over the key and falling in drops on the floor.

"Do you hear that?" said the general manager from the adjacent room.  "He's turning the key."  That statement provided Gregor with a great deal of encouragement, although everyone should have called out to him at this point, even his mother and father: "Up now, Gregor," they should have said, "keep moving towards that lock, that lock!"  And imagining that every one of his movements would be plagued by tension, he engaged himself senselessly with the key with all the force he could muster.  With every progression and turn, the key danced around the lock; he held himself up only with his mouth and, whenever needed, hung onto the key or pushed down on it again with the entire weight of his body.  The clear, clean sound as the lock finally snapped back was what woke Gregor up for real.  Exhaling, he said to himself: "Looks like I didn't need a locksmith after all," and he lay his head on the handle to open the door completely.

Since he had to open the door this way, it was already wide open and kept him hidden.  He still had to work his way slowly around the wing of the door, and was very careful not to fall on his back right before anyone came into the room.  Each laborious movement still monopolized his efforts and he had no time to pay attention to anything else.  It was then that he heard the general manager blurt out a loud "Oh!" − it sounded like the wind blowing through − and now he saw how the general manager, the first person at the door, was holding his hand against his open mouth and slowly retreating as if driven back by an unseen and relentless force.  His mother − she was standing here, despite the presence of the general manager, with her hair still loose and bristling high above her head from the night before − then looked to his father with her hands folded, took two steps towards Gregor and fell right down on her skirts spreading out around her, her head lost deep in her breast.  His father balled his hand into a fist and assumed a hostile expression as if he wanted to shove Gregor back in his room.  Then he looked around the living room hesitatingly, covered his eyes with his hands, and began to cry so violently that his breast shook.   

Now Gregor did not enter the room at all, but leaned back inside on the secured wing of the door with only half of his body visible and his head tilted to the side peering over at the others.  In the meantime it had become much brighter.  A clear outline of the endless grey-black house across the street could now be seen − it was a hospital − with its uniform windows protruding from the front façade.  The rain was still falling but now in large, individually visible drops which also hit the earth one by one.  The breakfast dishes were piled up on the table since, for Gregor's father, breakfast was the most important meal of the day and what kept him going through his hours of reading newspapers.  On the opposite wall hung a picture of Gregor from his army days, when he was a lieutenant smiling insouciantly, his hand on a dagger, his uniform and posture demanding respect.  The door to the antechamber was open and one could see, since the living room door was also open, out onto the vestibule of the apartment and the beginning of the descending staircase.

"Now," said Gregor, quite aware of the fact that he was the only one who had remained calm, "I'm going to get dressed, pack up the collection of samples, and head out.  Will you, will you let me head off to work?  Now, general manager, sir, you see that I am not stubborn and I like to work.  Traveling is burdensome, true enough, but I could not live without traveling.  Where are you going, then, sir?  To work?  Yes?  Will you be good enough to report everything factually, the way you saw it?  A person can be unable to work for a spell and that is the time that one has to think about that person's previous contributions and consider that later, once the obstacle has been overcome, the person will resume his work with even more diligence and concentration.  As you know, I am so indebted to our boss, you do know that, right?  On the other hand, I do worry about my parents and sister.  I'm in a rut, but I'm going to work my way out of it.  Please don't make it any harder for me than it already is.  Please take my side at work!  Travelers are not loved or appreciated, that much I know.  The popular perception of the traveler is that he makes a king's ransom and leads an all-too-sweet life.  And people have no particular inducement to think otherwise.  But you, sir, you, general manager, you have a much broader view on matters than the rest of the staff; I would even say you have a better perspective than the boss himself since in his capacity as entrepreneur he often errs all too quickly to the disadvantage of the employee.  You are also well aware that travelers, being almost the whole year out of the office, are susceptible to gossip, contingencies, and complaints with no basis in fact, against which it is impossible to defend themselves.  Impossible because they usually don't learn of what's being said and if they do, it's only when they come back home, exhausted from a trip and every inch of their body feels the nefarious consequences whose causes are no longer transparent.  General manager, sir, do not leave here without saying something that shows you agree with me on some fundamental level!"

But the general manager had already turned away during Gregor's first words and was now looking over his twitching shoulder at Gregor, his lips bulging.  And while Gregor spoke he was not still for a single moment; instead he kept warping himself against the door without taking his eyes off Gregor.  All this was accomplished very gradually as if obeying a secret commandment to leave the room.  He was already in the antechamber, and with the sudden movement he made with his foot to get out of the living room, one could have thought that he had burned his soles.  In the antechamber, however, he stretched out his right hand towards the staircase as if in that corner there awaited him some celestial redemption.       

Gregor realized that he should not let the general manager leave in such a state, not with his job at the firm in such great danger.  His parents didn't quite understand that; over the years they had convinced themselves that Gregor was set for life in this company, and, anyway, they were so concerned by what was going on right now that any foresight was lost.  But this foresight had not eluded Gregor.  The general manager had to be stopped, calmed down, persuaded and ultimately won over: the future of Gregor and his family depended on it!  If only his sister were here!  She was clever; she had already cried when Gregor was lying peacefully on his back.  And certainly the general manager, that womanizer, would have allowed himself to dally with her; but she would have shut the apartment door and talked him out of his fear in the antechamber.  But, as it were, his sister was not there so Gregor had to act on his own.

And without thinking about the fact that he did not know anything about his current capacity for movement, nor about the possibility that his speech had been misunderstood − indeed, this was likely − he left the wing of the door.  He pushed himself through the opening and wanted to go up to the general manager who was already in the vestibule clinging ridiculously to the railing with both hands.  But trying to stop, he immediately fell down with a mild cry on his four legs.  Hardly had this happened when his body experienced a feeling of well-being for the first time this morning.  His legs had solid ground beneath them, and they complied fully, as he noticed to his great satisfaction; he even tried to lead them where he wanted to go.  And soon enough he came to believe that an improvement in his condition was imminent.  At that same moment, however, as he wobbled gingerly not far from his mother lying on the floor, she jumped up all at once, no longer so crumpled and collapsed.  Then she screamed, her arms stretched out wide, her fingers splayed: "Help, for God's sake help!"  She bent her head as if she wanted to see Gregor better, but  then, in contradiction to that action, she scurried backwards.  Here she forgot that behind her was a table all set for meals, and out of absent-mindedness she sat down at the table with some haste as if she had just arrived.  She did not even seem to notice that near here, a knocked over pot of coffee was gushing in full force onto the rug.

"Mother, mother," said Gregor softly, and looked up at her.  For a moment he forgot completely about the general manager; yet upon sight of the flowing coffee he could not help himself from snapping his jaws at the empty air in front of him.  This provoked more screaming by his mother, who fled from the table into the arms of his father rushing to meet her.  But Gregor had no time for his parents right now: the general manager was already on the staircase.  His chin on the railing, he looked back for the last time.  Gregor got a running start so as to catch up to him as quickly as possible, but the general manager must have sensed something since he leapt over several steps and disappeared.  "Huh!" he screamed, and it echoed throughout the stairwell.  Unfortunately this escape now seemed to throw the father, who until now had been relatively composed, into a complete state of agitation: instead of running after the general manager himself, or at least not impeding Gregor in the latter's attempts to catch up to him, he seized the general manager's walking stick with his right hand (the general manager had left his stick, hat and overcoat on an armchair), used his left hand to grab a thick newspaper from the table and tried, by stomping his feet and waving the stick and newspaper, to drive Gregor back into his room.  No plea on Gregor's part helped his cause; no plea was understood.  The more ashamedly his head turned, the stronger came the stomps of his father's feet.    

Upstairs, despite the cold weather, his mother had opened a window.  Leaning out far outside the window, she pressed her face into her hands.  Between the street and the stairwell a powerful draft emerged, the window curtains flew up, the newspapers on the table rustled, and individual pages wafted down to the floor.  His father persisted mercilessly emitting hissing noises like a savage.  Gregor had had no practice in going backwards and was moving extremely slowly.  Had he turned around he would have been right back in his room, but he feared that the time-consuming turn would make his father impatient, and there was the unending threat of a deadly blow on the head or back from the stick in his father's hand.  Ultimately, however, Gregor had no alternative (this repulsed him greatly) since walking backwards did not even allow him to maintain a certain direction.  And so he began with constantly fearful looks at his father to turn himself around as quickly as he could, which in reality was a very slow process indeed.  Perhaps here his father noticed his good intentions because he made no effort to disturb him in such a maneuver and instead directed him here and there with the tip of his stick.

If only he could have done away with that unbearable hissing!  This was making Gregor absolutely crazy.  He had almost turned himself completely around when, still privy to the hissing, he got confused and reversed course just a little bit.  But as his head finally and happily arrived at the threshold of the door, he saw that his body was too wide to go any further.  Given his state of mind at that moment, his father also did not think of opening the other wing of the door so that Gregor would have enough space to pass.  His one monomaniacal thought was simply to have Gregor retreat into his room as quickly as possible.  Nor would he ever have allowed Gregor the necessary preparations for him to stand up straight and potentially get through the door in this way.  Rather, he continued to make a lot of noise urging Gregor on as if there were no obstacles.  Now the noise behind Gregor no longer seemed like the voice of his only father; now there was no longer any fun or amusement in any of this; and Gregor forced himself, come what may, into the door.  One side of his body came up and he was wedged deep in the opening of the door; one of his flanks had been rubbed raw and hideous spots remained on the white door, and soon he was stuck.  By himself he could no longer move anywhere: on one side his legs hung quivering in the air; on the other, his legs were pressed painfully to the floor.  Then from behind his father smacked him so hard that he came free and fled, bleeding heavily, back into his room.  Another blow hit the door, and then at last all was quiet.

Die Verwandlung (part 1)

The first part to the famous story ("The Metamorphosis") by this great writer.  You can read the original here.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from some unsettling dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect.  Lying on his back as hard as armor he raised his head to see his cambered brown stomach divided into arc-like bracings.  From this height he could hardly reach the bedcover which was ready to slide all the way down.  His many legs, pathetically thin in comparison to the rest of his girth, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

"What's happened to me?" he thought.  This was no dream.  His room, a proper if somewhat small habitation, was situated between four familiar walls.  Hanging above the table on which he had spread his collection of sample draperies − Samsa was a traveling salesman − was a picture that he had recently cut out of a magazine and hung in a pretty golden frame.  An observer of the picture would have noticed a lady in a fur hat and fur boa sitting up straight with a heavy fur muff which completely enveloped her forearm.

Gregor's eyes then wandered towards the window: the overcast weather − raindrops could be heard beating the window sill − made him very pensive and sad.  "What if I slept a little longer and forgot about all these stupidities," he thought.  But that was quite impossible, accustomed as he was to sleeping on his right side, because in his present state he could not get himself into that position.  However hard he tried to throw himself onto his right side, he always fell back onto his spine.  He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so as not to see his floundering legs, and he only stopped once he began to feel a light, numb pain in his side.  "Oh God," he thought, "what a stressful job I have!  Day in, day out, always on the road.  The tribulations of work are far greater than those of home, and I'm constantly exposed to the hassle of traveling, to worrying about making my train connections, to the irregular and second-rate meals, and to the ever-changing, never permanent return home, which never seems to become any more humane.  To hell with all of this!"  He felt a light itch on top of his stomach; he pushed himself onto his back closer to the bedpost so that he could raise his head more easily; he found the place that itched, covered in little white spots that made no sense, and then wanted to scratch the area with his leg.  But right as he touched it he immediately snapped back, overcome by chills.

He slid back into his previous position.  "This getting up early business," he thought, "makes one stupid.  People need their sleep.  Other travelers live like harem women.  When I in the course of the morning, for example, come back to the inn to sign those endless contracts, they've just started their breakfasts.  I should take that up with the boss; and if I did, I'd be fired on the spot.  Besides, who knows whether that actually might not be the best thing for me.  If I weren't so restrained because of my parents, I would have quit ages ago.  I would have gone to see the boss and told him just what I thought of him without holding back.  And he would have fallen off his chair!  Anyway, he has that odd way of sitting in his chair and talking down to his employees, who have to get so close to him because he's hard of hearing.  Now, all is not lost.  Once I have enough money to pay off my parents' debt to him − another five or six years should do it − I'll quit right away.  That will be the next great step.  For the time being, however, I do need to get up since my train leaves at five."

He looked over at the alarm clock ticking on the chest.  "Heavens!" he thought.  It was already six-thirty, and the hands of the clock were moving at their normal pace, almost halfway past the minute, almost three-quarters past.  Shouldn't the alarm have gone off?  You could see from the bed that the alarm had been set for four; it certainly must have gone off, then.  Yes, but was it possible to sleep through its furniture-rattling ring?  Now it was true that he hadn't slept that peacefully, but somehow he had slept more soundly.  But what should he do now?  The next train was leaving at seven; to make it, he would have to rush like no one's business, and his samples were not packed up, and he himself did not feel particularly fresh or mobile.  And even if he were to catch the train, there was no way he would be able to avoid the boss's wrath since his business partner had waited for the five o'clock train and must have long since reported his absence to his boss.  He was his boss's monstrous creation this business partner, spineless and unreasonable.  How about if he were to call in sick?  That would be very embarrassing and suspicious since Gregor had never called in sick once in his five years of service.  The boss would surely come by with the health care provider's physician, reprimand his parents for having such a lazy son, and then eliminate all possible excuses by tipping off the physician, for whom the world was composed only of healthy if work-shy people.  And would he, in this particular case, be so wrong?  As it were, apart from some sleepiness because he had rested for so long, Gregor felt quite good and was even very hungry.

As he mulled all of this over at lightning speed without making up his mind whether or not to leave his bed and the alarm clock struck six forty-five, there was a knock at the door near the headboard of his bed. 

"Gregor," said someone.  It was his mother.  "It's six forty-five.  Shouldn't you be leaving?"  That gentle voice!  Gregor was shocked when he heard his own voice in response, which sounded nothing like his normal voice, completely unrecognizable in fact, now combined with an irrepressible, painful squeak which only made the beginning of each word intelligible and then distorted everything with such an echo that one didn't know whether one had heard the words correctly.  Gregor had wanted to answer in detail and explain everything, but owing to the circumstances he limited himself to saying: "Yes, yes, thank you, mother.  I'm already up."  By virtue of the wooden door the change in Gregor's voice could not be perceived, as evidenced by the fact that the mother seemed appeased by this explanation and shuffled off.  But from their brief conversation all the other family members became aware that Gregor, contrary to expectations, was still at home.  Soon thereafter his father knocked on the side door weakly with his fist.  "Gregor, Gregor," he called, "what's going on?"  And after a short while, he urged him on again, his voice now deeper: "Gregor!  Gregor!"  At the other side door his sister then wailed lightly: "Gregor?  Are you not well?  Do you need anything?"  To both sides Gregor then answered: "I'm all set," and made an effort to remove everything noticeable from his voice by using meticulous pronunciation and long pauses between individual words.  His father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered: "Gregor, open up, I beseech you."  But Gregor had no thoughts of opening the door, and instead praised his habit acquired from so much traveling of locking all doors to the house during the night. 

He then wanted to get up peacefully and undisturbed, get dressed and, first and foremost, have some breakfast; only after all that did he want to think about the rest of his day.  He understood that he would come to no reasonable conclusions if he continued lying in bed and thinking.  He remembered often feeling some light pain from lying in bed in an awkward position, pain that when he got up turned out to be just his imagination, and he was anxious to see how today's thoughts and ideas would gradually disappear.  And he had no doubts that the change in his voice was nothing more than the precursor of a mild cold, which, for travelers, came with the territory.

Throwing off the bed cover was very easy: he only needed to inflate himself and the blanket fell off by itself.  But further progress was more difficult, especially since he was so ridiculously wide.  Normally he would have used his arms and legs to get up, but now he only had four legs which were in varied and uninterrupted movement and which he could not control.  When he wanted to buckle one of them, it was the first one that he extended, and finally he was able to carry out what he wanted, and all the others worked in the meantime as if set free, in great and painful commotion.  "Just staying in bed is completely useless," Gregor said to himself.

Initially he wanted to get out of bed starting with his lower body.  Yet his lower body, which he had yet to inspect and of which he still had no clear impression, proved to be too heavy to move.  He was moving so slowly!  And when, now almost crazed, he finally pushed himself forward with all his strength without taking into consideration what he was doing, it turned out that he was heading in the wrong direction and he ended up slamming into the lower bedpost.  The burning pain taught him that, for the moment at least, the lower part of his body was the most sensitive.

From here he tried to get his upper body out of bed, and carefully turned his head towards the edge of the bed; this he managed with little difficulty, and despite its breadth and weight, his body mass slowly followed the turn of his head.  But when he finally held his head off the bed in the open air, he got scared about moving forward in this manner, since if he eventually were to fall it would take a miracle for him not to injure his head.  And he could in no way afford to lose his senses now.  No, he would rather stay in bed.

Yet after much effort and many sighs, he was still lying in exactly the same position.  His legs, he noticed, were still struggling with one another in even greater frustration and there seemed to be no chance of instilling some order to this randomness.  It was impossible to stay in bed, he said to himself: the most rational thing to do was sacrifice everything to get himself out even if there was almost no hope.  At the same time, he did not forget that careful planning was far better than making desperate and rash decisions.  In such moments he focused his attention on the window, but unfortunately there was little cheerfulness or assurance to be culled from gazing at the morning fog cloaking the other side of the narrow street.  "Seven o'clock already," he said as the alarm went off again.  "Seven o'clock and still this much fog."  And for a while he lay there short of breath and still, as if he expected utter silence to return things to their true and obvious state.

Then, however, he said to himself: "I absolutely have to get out of bed before seven-fifteen.  In any case, by that point someone from work will have come to ask about me, since business opens before seven."  And now he tried with one great effort to wriggle his whole body mass completely out of bed.  If he were to fall out of bed like that, he would lift his head rather sharply and keep it from getting injured.  His back seemed to be hard, so falling on the rug would not do it any harm.  His biggest worry was the noise his impact would make.  Most likely it would raise either fear or concern behind every door, but he had to risk it all the same.

As Gregor was already halfway out of bed − this new method was more of a game than an exertion, as he kept needing to wriggle backwards − it occurred to him how simple matters would be if someone just came to help him.  Two strong people, and here he thought of his father and the maid, would have been enough. They simply would have placed their arms beneath his cambered back and peeled him out of bed, bent over with his full weight in their hands and then been especially careful and patient that he made it over to the floor, where, he hoped, his legs would finally have some use. Now apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really have called for help? Despite his desperate situation he had to smile at such a thought.

As his violent wriggling was about to make him lose his balance − and soon he had to make a decision once and for all since in five minutes it would be seven-fifteen − someone rang at the front door. "That’s someone from work," he said to himself and went almost completely stiff as his legs danced even faster. For a moment everything was still. "They’re not opening the door," Gregor said to himself, seized by a senseless hope. But then, of course, the maid’s powerful steps made their way to the door, which she opened. It took only one word from the visitor to tip Gregor off as to who had come: it was the general manager himself. Why oh why was Gregor fated to serve in a firm that assumed the worst suspicions at the smallest of absences? Were then all employees a bunch of blackguards? Was there no good and honest man among them who, even if he hadn’t used a couple of morning work hours to benefit the firm, became silly owing to his conscience’s remorse and was not in any condition to get out of bed? Was it really not enough to have an apprentice come and ask about him (if such questions were necessary to begin with)?  Did the general manager himself have to turn up? And did his whole innocent family have to be exposed to the fact that the investigation of this suspicious affair could be only entrusted to the general manager’s judgment?  And owing to this agitation which had gotten Gregor all worked up rather than any kind of decision, Gregor swung himself with all his might out of bed. There was a loud thump, not really a crash.  The fall was cushioned somewhat by the rug, but his back was also more elastic than he had thought.  For that reason the sound at impact was muffled and not that noticeable.  It was only his head that he had been unable to hold upright, and he banged it hard.  Then he turned and rubbed it in the carpet out of annoyance and pain.  "Something in there just fell down," said the general manager in the adjacent room on the left.  Gregor tried to think whether something similar to what happened to him today could also happen to the general manager, and concluded that one had to admit the possibility of such an occurrence.  But as if in brute response to this question, the general manager now took a couple of distinct steps in the adjacent room and let his polished boots creak.  From the adjacent room on the right his sister whispered so that Gregor could understand: "Gregor, the general manager is here."  "I know," Gregor said to himself; but he did not dare say that loud enough for his sister to hear.

"Gregor," it was his father speaking now from the adjacent room on the left.  "The general manager has come and is enquiring as to why you didn't leave on the early train.  We don't know what we should tell him.  Moreover, he would like to speak with you personally.  So please open the door.  He will certainly be kind enough as to excuse the disorder in your room."

While Gregor's father was talking, the general manager called out amicably: "Good morning, Mr. Samsa." "He's not well," said his mother to the general manager as his father kept on talking at the door, "he's not well, believe me, sir.  How could Gregor miss a train otherwise?  The boy has nothing on his mind except business.  I almost get frustrated that he never goes out in the evening; now he's been in town for eight days and every evening he's stayed home.  He sits at the table and reads the newspaper or studies timetables.  Working with a fretsaw is already a form of diversion for him.  For example, in two or three nights he made a small frame.  You'd be astounded at how pretty it is; it's hanging in his room.  You'll see it right away when Gregor opens up.  In any case, I'm happy that you're here, sir.  Alone we'd have never gotten Gregor to open the door.  He's so stubborn, and he's certainly not well although he denied that this morning."

"I'll be right there," said Gregor slowly and carefully, not moving so as not to miss a word of the conversations outside.  "I can't explain it in any other way, either, madam," said the general manager, "hopefully it's nothing serious.  On the other hand, I have to say that we business folk − for better or for worse − often have to overcome a mild case of ill health for business reasons."  "So can the general manager come in already?" asked his father impatiently, knocking again on the door.  "No," said Gregor.  In the adjacent room on the left reigned embarrassing quiet; in the room on the right his sister began to sob.

Why didn't his sister go over to the rest of them?  Probably because she had just gotten out of bed and hadn't started to get dressed.  Why then was she crying?  Because he wasn't getting up and letting the general manager in, because he was in danger of losing his job, and because his boss would then go back to harassing his parents about what they owed him?  For the time being those were unnecessary concerns.  Gregor was still here and was not thinking in the least about abandoning his family.  At the moment he was lying on the rug and no one who might have known of his condition would have seriously expected him to let the general manager in.  Yet Gregor could not simply be dismissed for this small impoliteness for which he would have to find an excuse later.  Gregor thought that for now it seemed much more reasonable to leave him in peace instead of crying and nagging him with requests.  But it was this lack of knowledge that urged the others on and which excused their behavior.

Almanac of Fall

While a resident of Berlin, I often made my way over to the library of a particular  French institute up on scenic Kurfürstendamm (unable to extricate myself from its email list, I can report that the institute is still running smoothly).  That year was also the centennial of a certain French author’s birth, and posters of him and his equally renowned companion littered the institute’s wall space.  His work, however, has never found permanent property on my shelves: my experimentation encompassed one lugubrious novel, his autobiography, some literary criticism involving spheres and cubes, and then this play, all of which — well, the less said about them, the better.  That same year, the films of this Hungarian director first shimmered across my radar, although his name had not been wholly unfamiliar.  So it was with no small irony that a review warned me, just as preparations had been made to take in his first major film, that Tarr was inspired by Huis clos (this bit of information still graces the Netflix sleeve).  Smiling at the trivial coincidence, I proceeded in the hope that it might surpass its rather moribund forerunner.  And, wonderful to relate, it most certainly does.

 

There are five characters in Almanac of Fall: Hédi, an attractive woman of about sixty and puller of the purse-strings; János, her parasitic, violent, and absolutely worthless son; Anna, a frisky and manipulative nurse hired to give Hédi her daily injections (often filmed at very close range); Tibor, an old drunk and debtor who has let life have its way with him; and Miklós, a learned but bitter man who cannot seem to understand what he could possibly be doing with these miscreants.  This volatile quintet lives together in a large apartment that no one seems to leave, or, for that matter, to be able to leave.  The attendant claustrophobia, almost like that of an apocalyptic bomb shelter, is real and stifling and gives us the distinct impression of being underground even if there are windows and, at times, light.  Despite this curious conceit no one appears to wonder why there is "no exit," although the characters all take turns screaming, grabbing each other by the shoulders or collar, and saying “get out" (easily the film's most frequently repeated line).  In other words, we are looking at a picture of hell.     

 

Hell or limbo, to be more specific.  Or some combination of the two, which then must be hell, because hell can be combined with anything and still be hell (to drive the point home, the film's epigraph is from Pushkin's poem "Demons").  Here each person continues to grapple with problems he or she presumably had when "alive": Hédi is worried about her money and her rat of an offspring; János continues his rampage of boozing and whoring, although the latter can now only be carried out with Anna; Anna is looking for ways to get both money and sex; Tibor, pickled round the clock, is still calling his creditors and asking for extensions, and even produces a pawnshop receipt although we're not quite clear about how he procured it; and Miklós continues hemming and hawing his way through the mysteries of the universe while occasionally manning the piano.  At one point late in the film, he asks Hédi the question we have been asking ourselves all along: "Are we alive or not?  What is this leading to?"  After both of them understand they have no answer, he then adds the following observation:

Everyone shapes peace and quiet to his own image and thinks it’s good.  There’s only one peace.  And if there are two of them, then one of them isn’t peace. 

Peace is what Miklós wants, but he certainly can't speak for everyone.  In this hell—limbo there is no possibility of engaging in anything except one's worst habits.  There is also no salvation, because there can only be one type of salvation and these characters are obviously not so lucky.  The comparisons to Huis clos are, on a basic level, well-founded: there, three characters (excluding a valet who plays the part of a prison warden) are trapped in a room — an adulterer, an adulteress, and a manipulative lesbian who tries to ingratiate herself with each of them —  with the main difference being that they are fully aware they do not belong "in camera."  The names of the characters share syllables (Garcin, Inès,  Estelle), so that, in the end, they are inexorably chained to one another as punishment for all eternity, inducing Garcin to utter the play's most famous line.

 

Tarr made this film in 1985 at the precocious age of thirty (the same age at which his cinematic ancestor produced his first masterpiece) in a Hungary that, while recalcitrant, was far from free.  Like so many young aesthetes, Tarr envisions an artistic work of beauty as a composite of key moments that reveal truths about the characters.  Plot, as he himself has stated, is merely a contrivance; nothing really happens and people simply "flee from one state to another."  This approach would suggest an episodic structure, but somehow the scenes in Almanac of Fall all seem to hang together.  Monologues or dialogues are alternated with wordless scenes with odd, almost kitschy music in the background that reminds the viewer of the situation's banality.  In one scene a seated Hédi receives her shot while everyone else, almost glamorously clad, stands around impatiently as if waiting to hear the terms of her will and testament.  In another, Hédi is seen talking on the phone before a massive wall mirror, which really makes it look like she’s handling both ends of the conversation, especially since the mirror is so positioned as to render the reflection’s mouth only rarely visible.  Many critics have rightly marveled at a struggle filmed from beneath what appears to be a glass floor (Tarr makes sure we can observe the characters caged from any angle).  But the last scene, in which one of them finally leaves, may well be the best.  Hédi starts singing a Hungarian version of this famous song, and an event takes place because she concedes that it is long overdue.  And, for the first time, some of the characters actually look pleased.  At least now there are only four of them.  

The Dancing Men

          What one man can invent another can discover.

                                                              Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"

We should not be surprised at the recent uptick of books about codes (some, if not most, of dubious aesthetic value), nor should we be foolish enough to attribute this trend to a development in the world's interest in arcane knowledge.  The opposite, as it were, is true.  The majority of us work very hard trying to weave all the aspects of our life into a tapestry as beautiful as the one we hope one dark day will garnish our sinking coffin.  And when we do choose to escape to a realm of pure delight, we want that realm to succor the same ideals that we nurture in our collective bosom.  Now I am not belittling the everyday – there is no reason to fight it.  But where we came from, where on earth or beyond we may be going, and what this life could possibly mean should not yield as facile and pellucid a solution as the repair of an office appliance or, after burrowing through a mountain of paperwork, the retrieval of a missing document.  Yet this is precisely the direction the lives of so many who cannot be bothered to worry about existence are taking.  More often than not, it is the banality of survival that devours them, that proves time and again that philosophy is a luxury of the rich, and the stitches and knots we gaze upon in the starry sky should be easily resolved in a short novel that explains everything by means of a conspiracy or plot in which all of human history is strapped together in a lie.  Everything we believe in is a lie, but a planet billions of miles away is the truth, all we have to do is stare at the firmament until it all becomes justifiable in our ignorant skulls.  There is little that can be done for you if you find this line of thinking appealing; if, however, you sense an almost indecipherable pattern that undergirds the layers of our reality, you might enjoy this clever tale.

Our sleuthing duo is visited by a certain Hilton Cubitt, a member of the landed gentry whose family was extremely famous in the county of Norfolk.  Cubitt recently married an American by the name of Elsie Patrick who was visiting the old country for reasons that will become appreciably clearer as the story unfolds.  Some men would shy away from women like Elsie Patrick – unrefined, tomboyish, and beholden to a checkered past – but Cubitt does not count himself among them.  No, some men would deem a warning such as the following a decisive criterion in breaking off any engagement:

I have had some very disagreeable associations in my life ... I wish to forget all about them.  I would rather never allude to the past, for it is very painful to me.  If you take me, Hilton, you will take a woman who has nothing that she need be personally ashamed of; but you will have to be content with my word for it, and to allow me to be silent as to all that passed up to the time when I became yours.  If these conditions are too hard, then go back to Norfolk, and leave me to the lonely life in which you found me.

The passage above might well have been pasted from any nineteenth-century harlequin romance; and it is indeed this sentimental attachment that plagues Cubitt, "a fine creature, this man of the Old English soil – simple, straight and gentle, with his great, earnest blue eyes and broad, comely face ... [whose] love for his wife and his trust in her shone in his features," and induces Holmes to come to his aid.  It took only a year of marriage before Elsie began to receive mail from the United States, and then a series of childlike symbols resembling slightly varied dancing stick figures.  Holmes detects a code and, from Elsie's reaction ("she turned deadly white, read the letter, and threw it in the fire"), a threat.  Soon the same mysterious characters are found written in chalk on the actual windows of the Cubitt estate, then in the tool shed nearby, and Holmes, "the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject [of] secret writings" in which he catalogs and analyzes "one hundred and sixty separate ciphers," gathers as many samples of this curious language as he can before mounting his riposte.

The story remains notorious among Holmesians for two reasons: the tragic fate of the good Cubitt, a man far too ethical, forgiving and noble-minded to walk among the ruffians of his time, and the double-pronged nature of the crimes that are committed.  Holmes is not only called upon to break the code – if it is a code after all and not just "the mere random sketches of children" – he is also entrusted with one of the first locked-room mysteries on record, a conundrum that would become one of detective fiction's greatest phenomena in the first half of the twentieth century as exemplified by the works of this Anglo-American (although the very first occurrence may well be this novel).  We may impute Holmes's statement about what man can invent and discover as an unfortunate dreg of his arrogance, and yet such boasting has been constant throughout man's invention and reinvention of the same ideas, shapes and systems.  What is even more amazing than Holmes's arrogance is that of modern-day scientists who consider their work impenetrable and the brilliance of the Ancients a potpourri of legend, myth and superstition.  So many manmade laws – and that term should be used as loosely as possible – are unbreakable because they cannot be refuted by any logic since they themselves redefine logic to suit their needs, a violation that you will never find in nature.  Perhaps that is because what is not invented by men shall remain a mystery until death.

The Last King of Scotland

Were this film to aim at historical accuracy, its subject would be a Dutchman generally known to scholars by this name.  An ideally cinema–ripe monarch, he had a short but eventful reign, even participated in a glorious revolution, and to this day is still eulogized by some Protestants for his unwavering valor in the face of Catholic ambitions.  In the right hands, one can imagine how heroic all these acts would become.  William’s incitement of the Dutch masses to lynch the De Witt brothers, the only peacetime political assassination in the Netherlands for 330 years until the 2002 killing of Pim Fortuyn, would be tactfully omitted.  In its place we would get some ludicrous confrontation with the Sun King, and a detailed account of the busy happenings of June 29-30, 1688.  There would also be melodrama galore with Mary, William’s wife, co–regent, first cousin, and co–conspirator (truly a couple with a lot in common), and tears of reptilian anguish at William’s coronation after her young death.  He would end his days as so many despots do, coughing and repenting half–heartedly in a bed the size of one of his peasants' shanties as his two toadiest advisers walk slowly arm–in–arm through his bedroom's massive double doors and grieve humanity’s loss of yet another great man.  We have seen many such movies.  They appeal to the particular mind who likes his history like his cocktails: that is, mixed with an inordinate number of artificial ingredients that please the palate, make his head spin, and confound him as to what exactly he might have consumed.  For better or worse, the historical novel continues simultaneously to entertain and misinform.  It will always be a surefire means to evoke emotion and stifle indifference towards all kinds of interesting facts and personages.  Herein lies its main goodness, if I may call it that: we learn of something that happened in the past and then choose to investigate its actual details.  In this and perhaps only this respect, such novels may be justifiably commended.  

The book and film The Last King of Scotland are based on the reign of this Ugandan dictator and former boxer whose name has come to be synonymous with evildoing.  Statistics vary, but they are revolting in all their versions.  Amin’s reign was also short and eventful, and much was made of his personality since people tend to be impressed by loudmouthed bullies who speak well and carry a big stick.  I suspect that many champions of the downtrodden were also enamored with the fact that Africa suddenly had a larger–than–life, charismatic leader who completely disrespected the mores of Europe, especially those of the British colonialists under whose rule Amin was born.  And countless were the former British subjects who must have cackled in Schadenfreude as the sun set on the Great Empire and the last tattered Union jacks slipped quietly over a tropical horizon.  But the Scots have always been stuck on the same island as England, and have never quite managed to shake themselves loose (despite the recent election of this man as Prime Minister).  Could there be, Amin probably asked himself, a more demagogic self–appellation than King of the Scots?  Yes, the King of Scotland, because that implies both nation and territory.  Having leafed through the book, I cannot say I know it.  It is inspired by the life and machinations of this Briton, who counseled both Amin and the man he overthrew and replaced (and who would return the favor), Milton Obote.  The film, which garnered Forest Whitaker a trophy case of much–deserved hardware, including an Academy Award, has a very simple storyline.  Our lodestar is Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish physician (James McAvoy) looking for a bit of adventure (it is, after all, the 1970s).  To be more specific, he is looking for any way out of cold and dreary Edinburgh.  He picks Africa, eventually meeting Amin on a rough stretch of Ugandan road when the latter is in need of a doctor.  Amin first thinks he is British and is pleased to learn of his more northern roots.  Amin claims he loves Scotland, owing in no small part to the fact that he and the Scots share a common oppressor.  A Faustian pact is struck and Dr. Garrigan becomes Dr. Garrigan, personal physician to the King of Scotland himself.

It is strange how no one seems to have learned that the Devil, or any of his various manifestations in human form, never allows you to pay your debts back when you're ready to do so.  What he wants instead is loyalty, blind loyalty, so that his power may never be questioned, and Amin is generous, warm, and confiding, so that he may never be charged with being too distant.  He tells Garrigan everything about his politics, his wives (including one that catches Garrigan’s eye), his hobbies, and the evergreen future of a free Uganda.  He also, in weak moments (Whitaker is fabulous at shifting tones at the drop of an army boot), tells Garrigan about the naughty things he has had to do in order to attain such a position of leadership.  Compromises, broken vows, unfortunate casualties.  Of course what he tells him is a bunch of codswallop, but he has confessed his sins to his priest and so his soul is clean.  What more can you expect from a man who tries to do good but commits atrocities?  A familiar formula, and one prescinding from the lack in Amin’s country of everything except atrocities.  What is perhaps most telling is that Garrigan does not walk the path of the damned with conviction.  He never really believes that Amin has good intentions, nor is he fully aware of how sticky his employer’s web truly is.  Garrigan just hopes that things will boil over and he will be able to return to Scotland, or anywhere except hot and dangerous Uganda, in one piece.  That he involves himself with one of Amin’s wives is testimony not only of his stupidity, but of his general disbelief that any of this could actually be happening.  “You think this is a game?” asks Amin in a magnificent scene late in the film.  “We are real.  This is real.”  The we, by the way, is all of Uganda.  And it’s horrible to think that only then does Garrigan understand he is no longer leaning back on his bed in his parents’ house in Scotland and dreaming of an Africa he knows nothing about.