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The Translator and Editor SUSAN BERNOFSKY is the acclaimed translator of Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and Jenny Erpenbeck and the recipient of many awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize, and the Hermann Hesse Translation Prize. She teaches l...

The Translator and Editor SUSAN BERNOFSKY is the acclaimed translator of Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and Jenny Erpenbeck and the recipient of many awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize, and the Hermann Hesse Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation at Columbia University. MARK M. ANDERSON is Professor of Germanic Languages at Columbia University. He is the author of Kafka’s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle and the editor of Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics and the Fin de Siècle. He has written widely on literary modernism and has edited and translated postwar Austrian writers Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard. OceanofPDF.com  A NORTON CRITICAL EDITION Franz Kafka THE METAMORPHOSIS A NEW TRANSLATION TEXTS AND CONTEXTS CRITICISM Translated by SUSAN BERNOFSKY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Edited by MARK M. ANDERSON COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY OceanofPDF.com  Contents Cover The Translator and Editor Title Page List of Illustrations Dedication Preface Translator’s Note The Text of The Metamorphosis Texts and Contexts KAFKA From Wedding Preparations in the Country Kafka, Max Brod and Editors on The Metamorphosis KAFKA’S CONTEMPORARIES Leopold von Sacher-Masoch From Venus in Furs Friedrich Nietzsche From On the Use and Abuse of History From Thus Spoke Zarathustra Hugo von Hofmannsthal From [The Lord Chandos Letter] Rainer Maria Rilke Der Panther The Panther Archaïscher Torso Apollos Archaic Torso of Apollo Johannes V. Jensen The Condignog  Jakob von Uexküll From The Environment and Inner World of Animals Criticism Günther Anders From Franz Kafka Walter H. Sokel Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”: Rebellion and Punishment Nina Pelikan Straus Transforming Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” Mark M. Anderson Sliding Down the Evolutionary Ladder? Aesthetic Autonomy in The Metamorphosis Elizabeth Boa Creepy-Crawlies: The Metamorphosis and Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper Carolin Duttlinger From Photographic Metamorphoses Kári Driscoll (A) Is for Animal: Speech and Voice in Ovid and Kafka Dan Miron [A Few Raisins and Almonds] Kafka: A Chronology Selected Bibliography Copyright Norton Critical Editions: Modernist & Contemporary Eras OceanofPDF.com  Illustrations Cover of first edition of Die Verwandlung Facsimile image of first page of Die Verwandlung manuscript Alfred Kubin, The Past Forgotten OceanofPDF.com  For Josephine, in deepest gratitude OceanofPDF.com  Preface Reader’s Letter to Kafka, Berlin-Charlottenburg, April 10, 1917 Dear Sir, You have made me unhappy. I bought your “Metamorphosis” as a gift for my cousin. But she is incapable of understanding the story. My cousin gave it to her mother who doesn’t understand it either. Her mother gave the book to my other cousin, who also didn’t find an explanation. Now they have written to me: They expect me to explain the story to them since I am the Ph.D. in the family. But I am at a loss to explain it. Sir! I have spent months in the trenches exchanging blows with the Russians without batting an eyelash. But I could not stand losing my good name with my cousins. Only you can help me. You must do it since you are the one who landed me in this mess. So please tell me what my cousin should think about “Metamorphosis.” Most respectfully yours, Dr. Siegfried Wolff1 On the evening of November 17, 1912, a young employee of the Workmen’s Accident Insurance Agency, in Prague, sat down to work on a “troubling little story” that had occurred to him “in bed” the previous night. After spending the first part of the day in the office, he returned to the apartment he shared with his parents and three sisters, had lunch, napped, took a walk, and then did a series of strengthening and stretching calisthenics. This was his daily ritual before settling in for the evening—and often far into the night—to what he considered his true life, a life dedicated to writing. Then, whether acting on a long-meditated plan or following an obscure, sudden intuition, he set down the words of the first hammerlike sentence of what would become his most famous story and one of the defining works of modern imaginative fiction, The Metamorphosis, or more simply, “The Transformation”: “When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect.” Ever since, readers have been mesmerized, amused, puzzled, irritated, and unsettled by Gregor’s life-changing transformation. What does it mean? Where does it come from? How is it possible? The difficulty, if not the impossibility, of answering any of these questions is the key to the story’s success. For after this initial statement of narrative “fact,” a fact that “is no dream,” neither Gregor nor the narrator wastes any time trying to answer these questions. The plot develops in an implacably logical, straightforward fashion; characters are introduced and developed; time and place are otherwise coherent. In short, all the classical rules and conventions of realistic fiction are observed. And yet there is that inexplicable, genre-defying first sentence. Perhaps the effect of this sentence is what Kafka meant when he wrote, years earlier in a letter to a friend, that we did not need books to confirm what we thought we knew about the world; we needed “books that work like an axe” to chop away at the “frozen sea” inside us. That first sentence is not just a Nietzschean hammer, but an axe, perhaps like the axe that Raskolnikov wields against two defenseless women in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: a violent instrument used to assault an ossified sense of what is proper and true in literature as well as in life. The sharpness of its blade is directly related to the story’s ability to resist interpretation. Kafka never, to my knowledge, explained his story. The only hint we have that Gregor’s transformation was not an isolated, unpremeditated act of inspiration comes from an unfinished novel Kafka wrote a few years earlier, in which the protagonist, engaged to be married, sends his “clothed body” out into the world while he remains huddled up in bed “in the form of a large beetle.” Gregor Samsa, however, is not a beetle (Käfer), but an “insect” or a “vermin” (Ungeziefer, a proper German noun that is entomologically unspecific).2 Kafka famously forbade the publisher of the first edition of The Metamorphosis to represent Gregor in his transformed state in a cover illustration—“the insect itself cannot be drawn”—and to curious friends he allowed only that “strange things” were transpiring in the Kafka apartment or that the story represented an “indiscretion.” This edition of The Metamorphosis attempts to make sense of Kafka’s story as well as to acknowledge the impossibility of ever completely succeeding. Susan Bernofsky’s new translation gives us a more contemporary, American sense of Kafka’s text than the version that first brought it to English-speaking readers and remained in copyright for over six decades. Her version, like any translation, is also an interpretation, carried out rigorously through diction, syntax, rhythm, and sound. A selection from one of Kafka’s other stories and excerpts from his and his contemporaries’ diary entries and letters provide biographical context for the immediate circumstances of the story’s composition and publication. To this context I have added key scientific, cultural, and literary texts within Kafka’s orbit—texts that undoubtedly made a deep impression on him as well as ones that he probably didn’t know directly but were part of the broad shift in thinking that took place in his time. These texts, well known to specialists of German literature, have not previously been brought into dialogue with Kafka’s story for English- language readers. Finally, critical readings document important moments of the story’s reception, from Kafka’s lifetime until the present day. The volume concludes with a timeline of Kafka’s—and his story’s—life as well as a brief bibliography. The period in which Kafka conceived and wrote The Metamorphosis—roughly the decade before World War I— was turbulent and fertile for European science, philosophy, art, and literature. In particular, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud had profoundly altered the ways of thinking about the relations between humans and animals. In literature and art, iconoclastic modernist writers and artists sought to break with the norms of nineteenth-century realism. It is the period of the French Fauvists and Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon; of Adolf Loos’s polemic for an architecture without ornament; of the atonal musical works of Webern and Schoenberg; of Kandinsky’s manifesto for abstract or “spiritual” art; of Georg Heym’s Expressionist city poetry and Frank Wedekind’s sexually scandalous, gender-bending “Lulu” plays. It was also a time of extraordinary social ferment and conflict—of Otto Weininger’s widely publicized redefinition of both male and female sexuality; of Oscar Wilde’s trial and imprisonment as a homosexual; and of Alfred Dreyfuss’s trial and imprisonment as a Jewish traitor to France—all widely reported in the German-speaking press and of great interest to Kafka. Thomas Mann’s own great literary “indiscretion,” Death in Venice, is of the same year as Kafka’s story, as is Proust’s Swann’s Way. Kafka’s fraught Jewish identity—he never kept kosher or regularly attended synagogue, but frequented almost exclusively Jewish-German circles—was constantly tested and strengthened in an age of rabid nationalism, Jewish “self- hatred,” and anti-Semitism. In the panorama of modern European literature there is nothing quite like Gregor Samsa’s grotesque, bizarre, disgusting, yet profoundly human shape. But during Kafka’s time, both scientists and writers had published work on animals and insects that bear an interesting relation to The Metamorphosis. Common to all was the desire to contest the traditional anthropomorphic understanding of the relation between animals and humans. The Baltic-German biologist Jakob von Uexküll caused quite a stir in 1909 with his call for science to give up a human-centered perspective for “the standpoint of the animal, which must take absolute precedence”; his work attempted to explore the “inner world of animals,” especially the “lower,” simpler life-forms—such as the tick or the jellyfish. Uexküll also wrote for a nonspecialist audience and corresponded with writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, whose animal poems had already effected just such a reversal. Rilke’s well-known poem “The Panther” begins with the zoo animal’s perspective of his immediate caged environment, not ours, which hardly enters its consciousness. The eerie, fantastic drawings of Kafka’s Prague contemporary Alfred Kubin also draw on insect and animal amalgamations suggesting a horrifying proximity to human beings. Kafka knew Kubin personally and once confided his admiration for Kubin’s artwork and perhaps his 1909 novel The Other Side. Most pertinently for the young Kafka, the wunderkind poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote a fictional letter describing the language crisis of a Lord Chandos, whose silence coincides with an uncanny ability to flow into everyday objects and animals—the harrow in a field, a dog, a beetle swimming on the surface of water in a bucket. He even puts himself mentally and emotionally into the perspective of the rats in his cellar attempting to escape the poison he has set out for them. When Kafka was beginning to write, he virtually worshipped Hofmannsthal. The “Letter of Lord Chandos” is not so much a source as a springboard for Kafka’s writing, which, starting with Gregor Samsa’s transformation, again and again probes the question of what is human by way of animal figures. Though they cannot claim to fully represent the now vast secondary literature on Kafka’s masterpiece, the critical essays in this volume embody key moments in the one- hundred-year history of its interpretation. When Kafka died, in 1924, his work was virtually unknown; it might have disappeared forever if key interpreters including Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Theodor Adorno had not rescued it from the grip of the Nazis by making it known to French- and English-speaking audiences in the 1930s while in exile. The Jewish-German philosopher Günther Anders—who, like his then wife, Hannah Arendt, had fled to France in 1933—delivered a series of lectures on Kafka that he published as a small book after the war; the excerpts published here constitute one of the most penetrating analyses of Kafka’s use of language and “literalization” of metaphor. Walter Sokel—like Anders, a German-speaking Jew forced to emigrate during the Nazi period—taught German at Columbia University and became one of the earliest and most authoritative academic experts on Kafka. Written in the then current mode of New Criticism, which avoided overt historical and social analysis, his essay provides a close reading of the story’s psychology that shows the benefits of Gregor’s metamorphosis in the power struggle with his family. Nina Pelikan Straus’s essay is one of the earliest feminist readings of an author and a text that, as she notes, had been almost exclusively interpreted from a male point of view. She shifts attention away from Gregor to his sister, Grete, the “healthy” counterpart to her brother’s monstrosity, while also suggesting that the story embodies Kafka’s “fantasy of a gender role change.” My own essay situates Kafka’s story in the aestheticizing context of l’art pour l’art or Jugendstil, and argues that Gregor Samsa becomes a kind of modernist work of art, “abstract” and ultimately indecipherable. Elizabeth Boa takes Straus’s feminist reading further by focusing on gender and power relations; she also highlights the importance of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s scandalous depiction of sadomasochism in his novel Venus in Furs. The essay by Carolin Duttlinger comes from her book on photography and Kafka, which establishes a dialogue with the fields of visual and media studies; it also underscores the important connection between the story and Kafka’s correspondence with his fiancée, Felice Bauer. Kári Driscoll’s “(A) Is for Animals” represents the new work being done in animal studies, as well as helping us understand the story’s relation to Ovid’s tales of metamorphosis. Finally, Dan Miron is one of the world’s foremost experts on Yiddish and Hebrew literature; his remarks on Kafka’s relation to the Yiddish theater and to traditions of Hebrew as well as Yiddish literature are profound and fresh, and they extend earlier work on Kafka’s Jewish identity. I hope that the materials from Kafka’s biographical and historical context as well as the later critical readings will prove stimulating for a new generation of readers of this “little story.” Their insights should offer consolation for any interpretation’s inability to fully explain the origin or the meaning of that hammerlike first sentence, announcing Gregor Samsa’s new identity. 1. Translated by the editor of this Norton Critical Edition from Oxforder Quartheft 17 (Die Verwandlung), ed. Roland Reuss and Peter Staengle (Frankfurt: Stroemfeld, 2003). 2. See translator’s fuller description of this term on p. xvi. OceanofPDF.com  Translator’s Note Kafka’s celebrated novella The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) was written a century ago, in late 1912, during a period in which he was having difficulty making progress on his first novel. On November 17, 1912, Kafka wrote to his fiancée, Felice Bauer, that he was working on a story that “came to me in my misery lying in bed” and now was haunting him. He hoped to get it written down quickly —he hadn’t yet realized how long it would be—as he felt it would turn out best if he could write it in just one or two long sittings. But there were many interruptions, and he complained to Felice several times that the delays were damaging the story. Three weeks later it was finished, on December 7, though it would be another three years before the story saw print. As we know from Max Brod’s diary, Kafka read his “bug piece” (Wanzensache) aloud to friends on November 24, 1912 (the first section), and again on December 15. People starting talking about it, and Kafka received a query from publisher Kurt Wolff in March 1913 on the recommendation of Kafka’s friend Franz Werfel. Franz Blei, the literary editor of the new avant-garde journal Die weißen Blätter, expressed interest, and Robert Musil wrote as well, soliciting the novella for the more established Die neue Rundschau, though it was technically too long for the magazine’s format. But months passed before Kafka had a clean manuscript ready for submission, and then World War I intervened, causing further delays (Musil was called up to serve, and because of the war Blei decided to stop printing literary texts). In the spring of 1915, René Schickele took over as editor-in-chief of Die weißen Blätter, and with Max Brod’s help, Kafka placed the story there. It came out in October 1915, and then appeared in December 1915 (though dated 1916) as a slender volume published by Kurt Wolff Verlag in Leipzig. The story’s protagonist, Gregor Samsa, is the quintessential Kafka anti-hero. He has worked himself to the point of utter exhaustion to pay off his parents’ debts, and his grotesque metamorphosis is the physical manifestation of his abasement. What exactly is he transformed into? In Kafka’s correspondence with his publisher, he was adamant that the “insect” (Insekt) not be depicted on the jacket of the book. And although he and his friends used the word “bug” (Wanze) when referring casually to the story, the language that appears in the novella itself is carefully chosen to avoid specificity. The epithet ungeheueres Ungeziefer in the opening sentence poses one of the greatest challenges to the translator. Both the adjective ungeheuer (meaning “monstrous” or “huge”) and the noun Ungeziefer are negations—virtual nonentities—prefixed by un. Ungeziefer comes from the Middle High German ungezibere, a negation of the Old High German zebar (related to the Old English tīber), meaning “sacrifice” or “sacrificial animal.” An ungezibere, then, is an unclean animal unfit for sacrifice, and Ungeziefer describes the class of nasty creepy-crawly things. The word in German suggests primarily six-legged critters, though it otherwise resembles the English word “vermin” (which refers primarily to rodents). Ungeziefer is also used informally as the equivalent of “bug,” though the connotation is “dirty, nasty bug”—you wouldn’t apply the word to cute, helpful creatures like ladybugs. In my translation, Gregor is transformed into “some sort of monstrous insect” with “some sort of” added to blur the borders of the somewhat too specific “insect”; I think Kafka wanted us to see Gregor’s new body and condition with the same hazy focus with which Gregor himself discovers them. That same blurred focus applies to other aspects of the story. Although Vladimir Nabokov—with his penchant for exactitude—has mapped out the Samsa flat in some detail, I am far from certain that Kafka himself—with his penchant for the blurred perceptions of bewilderment—was much concerned with the apartment’s precise geography. How many rooms does this apartment have? Many, too many; just as Gregor, lying on his back in the story’s opening sentences, discovers he has “these many little legs” waving in the air above him. Both are physical correlatives of a life that has gotten out of hand. Kafka is not even particularly attentive to the continuity of his cast of characters. Early on in the story we see the maid give notice and flee, only to find her still working in the household several pages later and in fact doing all the cooking, since now it is the cook who quit. Except for the charwoman who plays a starring role in the penultimate scenes, the household help is just part of the furniture of the story, like the cabinet that gets shifted to another room. Even the main characters tend to appear categorically, named only by their functions: “father,” “mother,” “sister.” Only one of them gets a name, Grete (rhymes with beta), but even she is usually referred to only as “sister” throughout, until the decisive moment near the end when she becomes instead a “daughter.” By defining all these characters through their relationship to Gregor, Kafka slyly allows Gregor’s point of view to dominate the story even when he is not actually present in the scene being described. One leitmotif I was unable to preserve in translation is the theme of ruhig/unruhig. Ruhig denotes “calm,” “peaceful,” “quiet,” “tranquil,” “at ease,” and unruhig its opposite. Starting with the unruhigen Träumen (“troubled dreams”) in the first sentence, the narrative oscillates between untroubled and troubled, tranquil and harried, peaceful and unsettled. Since no one word in English fits well enough in all the contexts Kafka presents, I decided to translate the word in many different ways; but note when you are reading all these synonyms that you are watching a motif unfold. The post-metamorphosis activity that gives Gregor the greatest sense of freedom appears in my translation as “crawling”: he enjoys crawling around the walls and ceiling of his room. Ironically, the German verb kriechen (which also translates as “to creep”) has the additional meaning of “to cower.” To kriechen before someone is to act sycophantically toward him. In this sense, too, Gregor’s new physical state appears as a representation of his long- standing spiritual abjectness. Finally Gregor has only himself to blame for the wretchedness of his situation, since he has willingly accepted wretchedness as it was thrust upon him. Like other of Kafka’s doomed protagonists, he errs by failing to act, instead allowing himself to be acted upon. Gregor Samsa, giant bug, is a cartoon of the subaltern, a human being turned inside out. He has traded in his spine for an exoskeleton, but even this armorlike shell (“carapace” and “armor” are the same word in German, Panzer) is no defense once his suddenly powerful father starts pelting him with apples—an ironically biblical choice of weapon. Gregor is a salesman, but what he’s sold is himself: his own agency and dignity, making him a sellout through and through. For this reason I occasionally use the word “drummer” (commercial traveler) to describe his profession, referring back to another of his ilk, “a hardworking drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them.” That’s Willy Loman as described by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman (1949). The Metamorphosis is Kafka’s own Death of a Salesman, with all the sad, grubby tragedy, all the squalor. Like Willy Loman, Gregor is a suicide, though of a different sort: he dies a hunger artist, perishing of starvation because nothing tastes good to him anymore. And like Willy’s, Gregor’s death is the final service he performs for the benefit of his family. At the same time Kafka’s tragicomic tale—unlike Miller’s —is very often hilariously funny. I imagine Kafka laughing uproariously when reading the story to his friends. Gregor’s naïveté (one might also call it gullibility) combined with his earnestness and his tendency to sound somewhat overwrought in his assertions is perfectly risible. To bring out this side of the story, I’ve emphasized the slight tone of hysteria in Gregor’s voice wherever it seemed justified. The story is brutally comic in parts, and never more so than at the moment when it is revealed that—despite the fact that Gregor has been living more or less as an indentured servant to pay off his parents’ ancient debts—in fact the family has plenty of money; not enough to allow them to stop working altogether, but a proper little nest egg. And although they are described as poor, they are never too hard up not to retain the services of at least one domestic servant. One last translation problem in the story is the title itself. Unlike the English “metamorphosis,” the German word Verwandlung does not suggest a natural change of state associated with the animal kingdom such as the change from caterpillar to butterfly. Instead it is a word from fairy tales used to describe the transformation, say, of a girl’s seven brothers into swans. But the word “metamorphosis” refers to this, too; its first definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is “The action or process of changing in form, shape, or substance; esp. transformation by supernatural means.” This is the sense in which it’s used, for instance, in translations of Ovid. As a title for this rich, complex story, it strikes me as the most luminous, suggestive choice. Susan Bernofsky August 2013 OceanofPDF.com Cover of first edition of Die Verwandlung. Courtesy of the Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Facsimile image of first page of Die Verwandlung manuscript. MS Kafka 18A, fol. 1r. Courtesy of The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford. [Editor’s Note: The following offers a scrupulously literal translation of the beginning of Kafka’s story, keeping virtually all punctuation, syntax, mistakes, and deletions as they appear on the first page of the hand-written, German manuscript, which has been reproduced on the facing page. (The only exceptions concern minor spelling changes or corrections that would not make sense in English.) Although this seems to be a first draft, the text flows with a remarkable fluidity, with only one word change until the mention of the picture of the woman in fur; there Kafka hesitates, makes several changes to the appearance of both the frame and the woman, and then continues for several pages with virtually no stop. The relative lack of punctuation in the German original strengthens this impression of unimpeded narrative flow. Square brackets denote Kafka’s changes or deletions.] When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from [fr] uneasy dreams, he found himself in his bed transformed into a monstrous insect. He lay on his hard, carapace-like back and saw when he lifted his head a little, his arched brown stiffly segmented stomach, on top of which the bedcover could barely keep itself from completely sliding down. His many [pitifully] unusually thin legs in comparison with the rest of his body flickered helplessly before his eyes. “What has happened to me”—he thought. It was no dream, his room, a proper, merely somewhat too small human room lay calmly between the four quite familiar walls, above the table, on which an unpacked collection of fabric samples was spread out—[for] Samsa was a traveling salesman—hung [a] the picture that he [had] cut out [for himself] a short while ago from an illustrated magazine and [for which he had created] which he had put in an attractive [golden] gilt frame. It showed a [well-maintained] lady who sat upright decorated with a fur hat and a fur b[a]oa and raised a heavy fur muff into which her entire lower arm had disappeared toward the spectator. Gregor’s gaze directed itself then to the window and the dreary [win] weather—one heard raindrops beating on the lead sill—made him completely melancholy. “How would it be if I just slept a little more.… Alfred Kubin, The Past Forgotten (1901, pen and ink). Image courtesy of the Leopold Museum. © 2015 Eberhard Spangenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. OceanofPDF.com  The Text of THE METAMORPHOSIS OceanofPDF.com  I1 When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect.2 He was lying on his back—which was hard, like a carapace—and when he raised his head a little he saw his curved brown belly segmented by rigid arches atop which the blanket, already slipping, was just barely managing to cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared to the rest of him, waved helplessly before his eyes. “What in the world has happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream.3 His room, a proper human room,4 if admittedly rather too small, lay peacefully between the four familiar walls. Above the table, where an unpacked collection of cloth samples was arranged (Samsa was a traveling salesman), hung the picture he had recently clipped from a glossy magazine and placed in an attractive gilt frame. This picture showed a lady in a fur hat and fur boa who sat erect, holding out to the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her entire forearm had vanished.5 Gregor’s gaze then shifted to the window, where the bleak weather—raindrops could be heard striking the metal sill—made him feel quite melancholy. “What if I just go back to sleep for a little while and forget all this foolishness,” he thought, but this proved utterly impossible, for it was his habit to sleep on his right side, and in his present state he was unable to assume this position. No matter how forcefully he thrust himself onto his side, he kept rolling back. Perhaps a hundred times he attempted it, closing his eyes so as not to have to see those struggling legs, and relented only when he began to feel a faint dull ache in his side, unlike anything he’d ever felt before.  “Good Lord,” he thought, “what an exhausting profession I’ve chosen. Day in and day out on the road. Work like this is far more unsettling than business conducted at home, and then I have the agony of traveling itself to contend with: worrying about train connections, the irregular, unpalatable meals, and human intercourse6 that is constantly changing, never developing the least constancy or warmth. Devil take it all!” He felt a faint itch high up on his belly; still on his back, he laboriously edged himself over to the bedpost so he could raise his head more easily; identified the site of the itch: a cluster of tiny white dots he was unable to judge; and wanted to probe the spot with a leg, but drew it back again at once, for the touch sent cold shivers7 rippling through him. He slid back into his earlier position. “All this early rising,” he thought, “it’s enough to make one soft in the head. Human beings need their sleep. Other traveling salesmen live like harem girls. When I go back to the boardinghouse, for example, to copy out the morning’s commissions: why, these gentlemen may still be sitting at breakfast. I’d like to see my boss’s face if I tried that some time; he’d can me on the spot. Although who knows, maybe that would be the best thing for me. If I didn’t have to hold back for my parents’ sake, I’d have given notice long ago— I’d have marched right up to him and given him a piece of my mind. He’d have fallen right off his desk! And what an odd custom that is: perching high up atop one’s elevated desk and from this considerable height addressing one’s employee down below, especially as the latter is obliged to stand quite close because his boss is hard of hearing. Well, all hope is not yet lost; as soon as I’ve saved up enough money to pay back what my parents owe him8—another five or six years ought to be enough—I’ll most definitely do just that. This will be the great parting of ways. For the time being, though, I’ve got to get up, my train leaves at five.”  And he glanced over at the alarm clock ticking away atop the wardrobe. “Heavenly Father!”9 he thought. It was half past six, and the clock’s hands kept shifting calmly forward, in fact the half-hour had already passed, it was getting on toward six forty-five. Could the alarm have failed to ring? Even from the bed one could see it was properly set for four o’clock; it must have rung. Yes, but was it possible to sleep tranquilly through this furniture-shaking racket? Well, his sleep hadn’t been exactly tranquil, but no doubt that’s why it had been so sound. But what should he do now? The next train was at seven o’clock; to catch it, he would have to rush like a madman, and his sample case wasn’t even packed yet, and he himself felt far from agile or alert. And even if he managed to catch this train, his boss was certain to unleash a thunderstorm of invective upon his head, for the clerk who met the five o’clock train had no doubt long since reported Gregor’s absence. This clerk was the boss’s underling, a creature devoid of backbone and wit. What if he called in sick? But that would be mortifying and also suspicious, since Gregor had never once been ill in all his five years of service. No doubt his boss would come calling with the company doctor, would reproach Gregor’s parents for their son’s laziness, silencing all objections by referring them to this doctor, in whose opinion there existed only healthy individuals unwilling to work. And would the doctor be so terribly wrong in this instance? Aside from a mild drowsiness that was certainly superfluous after so many hours of sleep, Gregor felt perfectly fine; in fact, he was ravenous. While he was considering these matters with the greatest possible speed, yet still without managing to make up his mind to leave the bed (the clock was just striking a quarter to seven), a timid knock came at the door at the head of his bed. “Gregor,” the voice called—it was his mother—“it’s a quarter to seven. Didn’t you want to catch your train?” That gentle voice! Gregor flinched when he heard his own in response: it was unmistakably his old voice, but now it had been infiltrated as if from below by a tortured peeping sound10 that was impossible to suppress— leaving each word intact, comprehensible, but only for an instant before so completely annihilating it as it continued to reverberate that a person could not tell for sure whether his ears were deceiving him. Gregor had meant to give a proper response explaining everything, but under the circumstances he limited himself to saying, “Yes, thank you, Mother, I’m just getting up.” Because of the wooden door, the change in Gregor’s voice appeared not to be noticeable from the other side, for his mother was reassured by his response and shuffled off. But their brief conversation had alerted the other family members that Gregor was unexpectedly still at home, and already his father was knocking at one of the room’s side doors, softly, but with his fist: “Gregor, Gregor,” he called. “What’s the problem?” And after a short while he repeated his question in a deeper register: “Gregor! Gregor!” Meanwhile, at the other side door came his sister’s faint lament: “Gregor? Are you unwell? Do you need anything?” “Just a second,” Gregor answered in both directions at once, making an effort, by enunciating as clearly as possible and inserting long pauses between the individual words, to remove anything conspicuous from his voice. And in fact his father returned to his breakfast, but his sister whispered: “Gregor, open the door, I implore you.” But Gregor had no intention of opening the door; he praised the cautious habit he had acquired while traveling of locking all his doors at night, even at home. First he would get up calmly and undisturbed, he would get dressed and above all have breakfast, and only then would he consider his next steps, for all these supine contemplations, he suddenly realized, would yield no useful results. He recalled often having felt mild aches and pains in bed, caused perhaps by lying in an awkward position, and this pain had then proven to be a figment of his imagination the moment he got up; he was curious to see how this morning’s imaginings would gradually fade. The change in his voice was nothing more than the harbinger of a proper head cold, an occupational hazard among traveling salesmen; this he doubted not in the least. It was simple enough to rid himself of the blanket; he needed only puff himself up a bit, and it fell right off. But the rest proved difficult, not least because he was so exceedingly wide. He would have needed arms and hands to prop himself up; but instead all he had were these many little legs, variously in motion, that he was unable to control. If he tried to bend one leg, it would be the first to straighten; and when he finally succeeded in getting one leg to do his bidding, all the others went flailing about in an unnerving frenzy. “Enough of this lying about uselessly in bed,” Gregor said to himself. At first he tried to maneuver the lower part of his body out of the bed, but this lower part—which, by the way, he had not yet seen and couldn’t properly imagine—proved too unwieldy; it all went so slowly; and when at last, half-mad with impatience, he thrust himself recklessly forward with all his strength, it was in the wrong direction, and he slammed against the lower bedpost; the throbbing pain he felt instructed him that for now at least the lower part of his body was perhaps the most sensitive. So he decided to try leading instead with his upper body and carefully twisted his head toward the edge of the bed. This was easily accomplished, and in the end, despite his width and weight, the mass of his body slowly followed the turning of his head. But once his head was dangling in midair outside the bed, he was afraid to keep shifting forward like this, since if eventually he had to let himself fall in this position, it would be practically a miracle if his head escaped injury. And right now he had to keep his wits about him at all costs, even if it meant staying where he was. But when, sighing after redoubled efforts, he found himself lying there as before, watching his little legs engaged in their struggles, perhaps more flailingly now, and seeing no possible way to bring calm or order to this chaos, he told himself once more that he could not possibly remain lying here any longer and that the most sensible thing would be to sacrifice anything and everything as long as there remained even the slightest hope of liberating himself from the bed. Simultaneously, though, he continued to remind himself that calm consideration—indeed, the calmest consideration—was far preferable to resolutions seized on in despair. At such moments he fixed his eyes as sharply as possible on the window, but regrettably the view of the morning fog, which veiled even the far side of the narrow street, offered little by way of optimism and good spirits. “Seven o’clock already,” he said to himself as the clock struck once more, “already seven and still such dense fog.” And for a little while he lay there quietly, his breathing shallow, in the expectation, perhaps, that this perfect silence might possibly restore the real and ordinary state of things. Then he said to himself: “Before it strikes a quarter past seven, I must absolutely have gotten myself completely out of bed. Besides, by then someone will have come from the office to inquire after me, as the office opens before seven.” And he now set himself to rocking his body out of the bed as evenly as possible along his entire length. If he allowed himself to fall from the bed like this, his head—which he intended to lift up cleanly as he fell—would in all likelihood remain unharmed. His back seemed to be hard; surely it would sustain no damage as he fell to the rug. His greatest concern was what to do about the loud crash that would clearly result, no doubt calling forth not terror perhaps but certainly alarm behind each door. Nonetheless it would have to be ventured. By the time Gregor was already protruding halfway out of bed—this new method was more a game than a struggle,11 all he had to do was keep rocking sideways a little at a time—it occurred to him how simple things would be if only someone came to his aid. Two strong individuals —he was thinking of his father and the maidservant—would suffice; all they’d have to do was slip their arms beneath his curved back to scoop him out of bed, then crouch down with their burden and wait patiently for him to flip himself over onto the floor, where he hoped those tiny legs of his would take on some meaning. But even aside from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call for help? Despite his distress, he couldn’t help smiling at the thought. Already he’d reached the point where the vigorous rocking motion was making it almost impossible for him to keep his balance, and soon he would have to make up his mind and take the plunge, for a quarter after seven was only five minutes away—when the front doorbell rang. “It’s someone from the office,” he said to himself and nearly froze while his little legs went on scrabbling12 all the more frenetically. For a moment all was still. “They won’t answer,” Gregor said to himself, caught up in some deluded hope. But then of course, as always, the maid strode resolutely to the door and opened it. Gregor needed only hear the visitor’s first words of greeting to know who it was: the general manager13 himself. Why oh why was Gregor condemned to serve in a firm where even the most negligible falling short was enough to arouse the greatest possible suspicion? Was every last one of the firm’s employees a scoundrel, was there not a single loyal, devoted soul among them who would be driven mad by pangs of conscience should he fail to make the best possible use of even just a few morning hours for his employer’s benefit, such that his guilt would render him virtually incapable of rising from his bed? Would it really not have sufficed to send an apprentice to inquire—if indeed such inquiries were necessary at all—did the general manager have to come in person, and was it necessary to demonstrate to the entire innocent family that the investigation of this suspicious matter could be entrusted only to the general manager’s sharp intellect? And more because of the agitation aroused in Gregor by this train of thought than because of some proper resolution on his part, he swung himself out of bed with all his might. There was a loud thud, you couldn’t really call it a crash. The rug cushioned the impact a little, and since his back was more elastic than he’d thought, the resulting sound was muffled and not so obvious. But he hadn’t managed to hold his head up carefully enough and had bumped it; he turned it this way and that, pressing it against the rug in his vexation and pain. “Something just fell in there,” the general manager now said in the room on the left. Gregor tried to imagine whether anything like what he was now experiencing could ever befall the general manager; the possibility must certainly be admitted. But as if brusquely dismissing the question, the manager now took a few purposeful steps in the next room, making his patent leather boots creak. From the room on the right came the whisper of Gregor’s sister informing him: “Gregor, the general manager is here.” “I know,” Gregor murmured; but he didn’t dare raise his voice high enough for his sister to hear. “Gregor,” his father now said from the room on the left, “the general manager has come to inquire why you failed to depart by the early train. We don’t know what to tell him. Besides, he’d like to have a word with you in person. So please open the door. I’m sure he’ll be kind enough not to take offense at the untidiness of your room.” “Good morning, Herr Samsa,” the general manager now cried out in a friendly tone. “He isn’t well,” Gregor’s mother said to the general manager while his father was still having his say beside the door, “not well at all, take my word for it, sir. Why else would Gregor miss his train! The office is the only thing that boy ever thinks of. It really bothers me that he never goes out in the evening; he’s been back in the city an entire week now, but he’s spent every last evening at home. He just sits at the table with us, quietly reading the newspaper, or else studies the timetables. Even just doing woodworking projects seems to entertain him. He carved a little picture frame, for example, did it in two or three evenings with his fretsaw; you’ll be amazed how pretty it is; it’s hanging there in his room; you’ll see it in a minute when Gregor opens the door. Oh, and I’m so glad you paid us a visit, sir; on our own we’d never have managed to persuade Gregor to open up; he’s so stubborn; and surely he isn’t well, even though he denied it this morning.” “Be … right … there,” Gregor said, not moving, so as not to miss a single word of their conversation. “No other explanation, madam, is conceivable to me,” the general manager said. “Let us hope it is nothing grave. Though on the other hand I would note that, as businessmen—fortunately or unfortunately, as one will—we are very often obliged to suppress indispositions out of consideration for the firm.” “So are you ready to let the general manager in?” Gregor’s impatient father asked, knocking again at the door. “No,” Gregor responded. In the left-hand room horrified silence, while in the room on the right Gregor’s sister began to sob. Why didn’t his sister go to join the others? She must have just gotten out of bed and not yet begun to dress. And why was she crying? Because he wasn’t getting up and opening his door to the general manager, because he was in danger of losing his position, and because his boss would then start hounding his parents once more over their ancient debt? For the time being, all such worries were assuredly unnecessary. Gregor was still here, and abandoning his family was the farthest thing from his thoughts. At the moment, to be sure, he was lying on the rug, and no one familiar with his current state would seriously expect him to let the general manager in. But surely he wouldn’t be sent packing just like that because of so trivial an act of discourtesy, for which it would be simple enough to find an appropriate excuse later on. And it seemed to Gregor it would be far more sensible to just leave him in peace rather than disturbing him with all this weeping and cajoling. But the others were distressed by the uncertainty of it all; their behavior was understandable. “Herr Samsa,” the general manager now called out, raising his voice. “What has come over you? You barricade yourself in your room, you reply to queries only with yes and no, you cause your parents onerous, unnecessary worries, and you are neglecting—let me permit myself to note—your professional responsibilities in a truly unprecedented manner. I speak here in the name of your parents as well as your employer and in all seriousness must ask you for a clear and immediate explanation. I am astonished, utterly astonished. I have always known you as a calm, sensible person, and now it seems you’ve begun to permit yourself the most whimsical extravagances. To be sure, the boss did suggest one possible explanation for your absence this morning—it concerns the cash payments recently entrusted to your care—and truthfully, I all but gave him my word of honor that this explanation could not be correct. But confronted here with your incomprehensible obstinacy, I find myself losing any desire I might have had to come to your defense. And your position is anything but secure. It was originally my intention to discuss all this with you in a private conversation, but since you compel me to waste my time here, I do not know why your esteemed parents should not hear of it as well. In short: your productivity of late has been highly unsatisfactory; admittedly this is not the best season for drumming up business, we do acknowledge this; but a season in which no business at all is drummed up is something that does not, and indeed may not exist, Herr Samsa.” “But sir,” Gregor cried out, beside himself and forgetting all else in his agitation, “I shall open the door at once, this very instant. A slight indisposition, a fit of dizziness14 kept me from getting up. Even now I’m still in bed. But already I am feeling very much refreshed. Here, I’m getting up. Just a moment’s patience! It’s a bit more difficult than I thought. But already I’m feeling quite fine. How odd, the way such a thing can suddenly come over one.15 Yesterday evening I felt perfectly all right, my parents can attest to this, or rather: I did in fact feel a mild foreboding yesterday evening already. Surely it was noticeable to anyone looking at me. Why didn’t I send word to the office? But we always just assume we’ll be able to overcome these illnesses without staying home. Sir! Do be gentle with my parents. The allegations you make are unfounded, and no one has ever mentioned anything of the sort to me. Perhaps you haven’t yet looked over the most recent commissions I sent in. In any case, I’ll be back on the road in time for the eight o’clock train; these additional hours of rest have fortified me. Please do not allow me to detain you any longer, sir; I shall be at the office myself in no time; do be so good as to say I’m on my way and give my regards to the boss.” And while Gregor was hastily blurting out all of this, scarcely knowing what he said, he edged closer to the wardrobe with minimal effort, no doubt thanks to the practice he had already acquired while still in bed, and now he did his best to haul himself upright. Indeed, he really did want to open the door, to show himself and speak with the general manager; he was eager to learn what the others, who were so anxious to see him, would say when they finally laid eyes on him. If they recoiled in horror, Gregor could surrender all responsibility and rest easy. But if they accepted it all calmly, that meant he too had no reason to get himself worked up, and if he hurried, he could still make it to the station by eight. At first he couldn’t get a grip on the wardrobe’s smooth surface, but finally he gave a great heave and found himself standing upright; he no longer paid any heed to the pain in his lower body, ache as it might. Now he let himself drop against the back of a nearby chair, clinging to its edges with his little legs. And having thus attained control over himself, he fell silent, for now he could listen to the general manager. “Did you understand a single word?” the manager was asking Gregor’s parents. “Surely he isn’t trying to make fools of us?” “For heaven’s sake,” Gregor’s mother cried, already weeping, “he might be gravely ill, and here we are tormenting him. Grete! Grete!” she cried out. “Mother?” Gregor’s sister called from the other side. They were communicating through Gregor’s room. “You must go for the doctor at once. Gregor is ill. Quick, fetch the doctor. Did you hear him speaking just now?” “That was an animal’s voice,” the general manager said, speaking in noticeably subdued tones compared to the cries of Gregor’s mother. “Anna! Anna!” the father shouted into the kitchen through the vestibule, clapping his hands. “Run and fetch a locksmith, hurry!” And already the two girls were racing through the vestibule, their skirts rustling (how had Gregor’s sister possibly gotten dressed so quickly?), and flung open the front door. There was no sound of the door closing again; no doubt they had left it standing open, as one sees with apartments in which a great calamity16 has occurred. But Gregor was far less troubled now. Even though the others were no longer able to understand his words— though they had seemed to him clear enough, clearer than in the past, perhaps because his ear had grown accustomed to their sound—they were now convinced that things were not right with him and were prepared to offer help. The confidence and conviction with which these first arrangements had been made comforted him. He felt drawn once more into the circle of humankind and was expecting both the doctor and the locksmith—without properly differentiating between the two—to perform magnificent, astounding feats. So as to have as intelligible a voice as possible for the crucial discussions that lay ahead, he cleared his throat a little, making an effort to do this as discreetly as possible, since even this sound might differ from human throat-clearing, which he no longer trusted himself to judge. In the next room, meanwhile, all was quiet. Perhaps his parents sat whispering at the table with the general manager, or perhaps all of them were leaning against the door, listening. Gregor slowly pushed himself over to the door using the armchair, then let go and allowed himself to fall against the door, propping himself upright—the pads of his little legs turned out to be slightly sticky—and there he rested briefly from his exertions. Then he set about turning the key in the lock using his mouth. Unfortunately it seemed he had no real teeth—so how was he supposed to grasp the key?—but his jaws turned out to be surprisingly strong; and with their help he actually succeeded in causing the key to move, paying no heed to the fact that he was no doubt injuring himself in the process, for a brown fluid ran out of his mouth and down the key, dripping onto the floor. “Listen to that,” the general manager said in the next room, “he’s turning the key in the lock.” Gregor found these words most encouraging; but all of them should have been cheering him on, including his father and mother: “Come on, Gregor!” they should have shouted, “just keep at it, keep working on that lock!” And now, imagining all of them following his efforts with great suspense, he bit down on the key uncomprehendingly, with all the force he could muster. With each revolution of the key, he danced about the lock, holding himself upright using only his mouth and, as needed, either clinging to the key or using the entire weight of his body to press it down. The brighter sound of the lock finally springing open positively revived him. Sighing in relief, he said to himself: “I guess I didn’t need the locksmith after all,” and he laid his head upon the handle of the door to press it open. But he remained hidden from view as the door swung toward him, even after it was wide open. To be seen, he had to work his way slowly around one of the wings of the double door, a delicate operation if he wanted to avoid plopping down awkwardly on his back before he’d even entered the room. He was still occupied with this difficult maneuver and had no leisure to attend to anything else when he heard the general manager utter a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like wind howling—and now he saw him too, saw how the general manager, who was standing closest to the door, pressed his hand to his open mouth, slowly retreating, as though being driven back by an invisible, steady force. Gregor’s mother—who despite the general manager’s presence stood with her hair still undone from the night, wildly bristling—first looked over at his father, her hands clasped, then took two steps in Gregor’s direction before falling down in the midst of all her billowing skirts, her face vanishing completely where it sank to her bosom. Gregor’s father clenched his fist with a hostile grimace, as if he intended to thrust Gregor back into his room, then glanced uncertainly about the living room, shaded his eyes with his hands, and wept until his mighty chest shook.17 Gregor made no move to enter the room, instead he leaned from the inside against the wing of the door that was bolted fast, so that only half his body and the head inclined sideways above it could be seen as he peered across at the others. Meanwhile it had grown much lighter out; on the far side of the street, a section of the infinitely long, dark gray building opposite—a hospital—came into view with its regular windows punched into the facade;18 rain was still falling, but only in large drops that were separately visible and seemed to have been hurled one by one to the ground. An inordinate number of breakfast dishes crowded the table, for Gregor’s father considered breakfast the most important meal of the day and would drag it out for hours reading various newspapers. Straight ahead, on the opposite wall, hung a photograph of Gregor from his time in the military, showing him as a second lieutenant whose carefree smile as he rested his hand on his dagger commanded respect for his bearing and his uniform. The door to the vestibule was open, and since the front door was open as well, one could see all the way out to the landing and the head of the stairs leading down. “Well,” Gregor said, quite conscious of the fact that he was the only one who had retained his composure, “I shall get dressed at once, pack up my samples and be on my way. As for the rest of you, are you prepared to let me do so? You can see, sir”—he said, addressing the general manager —“I am not obstinate, nor a shirker; traveling is burdensome, but without it I could not live. Where are you going now, sir? To the office? Yes? Will you report all these things truthfully? A person can be incapable of working at the moment, but this is precisely the right time to recall his earlier accomplishments and consider that he will later, once the hindrance has been overcome, work all the more industriously and with greater focus. I am so dreadfully indebted to the boss, surely you’re aware of this. On the other hand, I have my parents and sister to think of. Truly I’m in a bind, but I shall work my way out of it. Don’t make things more difficult for me than they already are. Take my side at the office! No one loves us drummers, I know. Everyone thinks the salesmen rake in a king’s ransom while enjoying life’s pleasures. And there’s never any particular cause to reconsider this prejudice. But you, sir, have a far better grasp of the general circumstances than the rest of the staff, better even—if I may speak confidentially—than the boss himself, who in his role as businessman can easily err in his opinion to an employee’s disadvantage. And you no doubt know quite well that a drummer, who spends almost the entire year away from the office, can easily become the victim of gossip, happenstance and groundless complaints against which he cannot possibly defend himself, as he usually never even learns of them, or only when he has completed one of his journeys, exhausted, and then back at home is forced to observe the dire physical effects of causes that can no longer be identified. Please, sir, do not leave without saying something to show you agree with me at least to some small extent!” But the general manager had already turned away as soon as Gregor began to speak, and merely glanced back at him over a hunched shoulder, his mouth contorted. And during Gregor’s speech he did not stand still for a moment but instead continued to retreat—not letting Gregor out of his sight—in the direction of the door, but only gradually, as though it were secretly prohibited to exit this room. Already he was in the vestibule, and to judge by the abrupt motion with which he withdrew his foot from the living room for the last time, one might have supposed he’d just burned it. Having reached the vestibule, however, he stretched out his right hand, gesturing broadly in the direction of the stairs, as if some all but supernatural salvation awaited him there. Gregor realized he could not possibly allow the general manager to depart in his present frame of mind if his own position at the firm was not to be put in the gravest jeopardy. His parents didn’t fully comprehend his situation: over these long years they had formed the conviction that Gregor was provided for in this office for life, and besides they were so preoccupied with their present worries that they were bereft of all foresight. But Gregor had this foresight. The general manager would have to be detained, reasoned with, convinced and finally won over; after all, Gregor’s future and that of his family depended on it. If only his sister were here! She was clever; she had already begun to weep while Gregor was still lying quietly on his back. And surely the general manager, ever the ladies’ man, would have let himself be assuaged by her; she would have closed the front door of the apartment and talked him out of his fear in the vestibule. But his sister was not there, so Gregor himself would have to act. And without stopping to consider that he was not yet familiar with his current abilities with respect to locomotion, nor even taking into account the fact that this last speech of his had quite possibly—indeed probably—eluded comprehension, he let go of the door; forced his way through the opening; meant to walk over to where the general manager, already out on the landing, was foolishly clutching at the banister with both hands; but right away, groping in vain for something to catch hold of, he fell with a faint shriek upon his many little legs. No sooner had this occurred than he felt—for the first time all morning—a sense of physical well-being; his legs had solid ground beneath them; they obeyed his will perfectly, as he noted to his delight; they even strove to bear him wherever he wished; and already it seemed to him he would soon be delivered from all his sufferings. But as he lay there on the floor directly in front of his mother and not far from her, swaying with mobility held in check, she suddenly leapt up—rapt as she had appeared within her own contemplations—leapt high up into the air, her arms thrust wide, fingers spread, crying out: “Help me, for God’s sake, help!” her head cocked at an angle, as if to see Gregor better, but then, contradicting this, she senselessly retreated; but she had forgotten the table set for breakfast just behind her; sat down hurriedly upon it as soon as she reached it, as if absentmindedly; and didn’t seem to notice that the big overturned coffeepot beside her was pouring a thick stream of coffee on the rug.  “Mother, Mother,” Gregor said softly, gazing up at her. For a moment he had forgotten all about the general manager; on the other hand, he could not restrain himself, when he beheld this flowing coffee, from snapping his jaws several times. At this, the mother gave another shriek and fled from the table into the arms of Gregor’s father as he rushed to her aid. But Gregor had no time for his parents now; the general manager was already on the stairs; his chin propped on the banister, he looked back on the scene one last time. Gregor was just preparing to dash after him to be sure of catching up with him; but the manager must have sensed something, for he leapt down several steps at once and vanished; and the cry of horror he gave as he fled resounded through the stairwell. Unfortunately the manager’s flight now appeared to utterly discombobulate Gregor’s father, who up till then had been relatively composed, for instead of running after the manager himself or at least not hindering Gregor in his own pursuit, he seized the manager’s walking stick in one hand—it had been left lying on an armchair along with his overcoat and hat—with the other took up a large newspaper from the table, and set about driving Gregor back into his room with a great stamping of feet, brandishing both newspaper and stick. All Gregor’s entreaties were in vain, nor were they even understood, for as submissively as he might swivel his head, his father only stamped his feet all the more ferociously. Across the room, his mother had flung open a window despite the chilly weather, and, leaning out, she pressed her face into her hands far outside the window frame. Between street and stairwell, a powerful draft arose, the window curtains flew into the air, the newspapers on the table rustled, and a few pages scudded across the floor. Inexorably Gregor’s father drove him backward, uttering hissing sounds like a wild man. But Gregor had no practice at all in reverse locomotion, and his progress was very slow. If only he’d been permitted to turn around, he’d have been back in his room at once, but he was afraid of provoking his father’s fury with this time-consuming maneuver, and at any moment a fatal blow from the stick in his father’s hand might come crashing down on his back or head. In the end, though, he had no alternative: horrified, he realized he was incapable of controlling his direction; and so he began, with constant anxious glances back at his father, to turn around as quickly as he could, which in fact was rather slowly. Perhaps his father discerned his good intentions, for he did not hinder him in this operation but instead even guided his rotation here and there from a distance, using the tip of his stick. If only his father were not making that unbearable hissing noise! It made Gregor lose his head completely. He had already turned almost all the way around when—still with this hissing in his ear—he became confused and started turning back in the wrong direction. But when finally he succeeded in positioning his head in front of the doorway, it turned out that his body was too wide to fit through the opening. And of course in his father’s current state it could not possibly have occurred to him to open the door’s other wing to create an adequate passage. He was fixated on the notion that Gregor must disappear into his room as quickly as possible. Never would he have tolerated the complicated preparations necessary for Gregor to prop himself up so as possibly to pass through the door in an upright position. Instead, as though there were no obstacle at all, he now drove Gregor before him, raising a great din: what Gregor heard at his back no longer resembled the voice of merely a single father; it was do or die, and Gregor thrust himself— come what would—into the doorway. One side of his body tilted up, rising at an angle as he pressed forward, scraping his one flank raw and leaving ugly stains behind on the white door, and soon he was wedged tight, unable to move on his own; on one side, his little legs dangled trembling in midair, while on the other they were crushed painfully beneath him—then his father administered a powerful shove from behind, a genuinely liberating thrust that sent him flying, bleeding profusely, into the far reaches of his room. The door was banged shut with the stick, and then at last all was still. II Only as dusk was falling did Gregor wake from his heavy, faintlike sleep. He probably wouldn’t have slept much longer even without a disturbance, for he felt sufficiently rested and restored, but it seemed to him he had been woken by a fleeting step and the careful shutting of the door to the vestibule. The pallid gleam of the electric streetlamps touched the ceiling here and there and the upper edges of the furniture, but down where Gregor lay, all was dark. Slowly, groping awkwardly with his feelers, which he was only now learning to appreciate, he dragged himself toward the door, wanting to see what had happened. His left side felt like one long unpleasantly contracting scar, and he was forced to limp outright on his two rows of legs. One of these diminutive legs, incidentally, had suffered grievous injuries in the course of the morning’s events—it was almost miraculous only one had been injured—and now trailed lifelessly behind him. Not until he reached the door did he realize what in fact had lured him there: it was the smell of something edible. There stood a bowl filled with sweet milk in which little pieces of white bread were floating. He almost laughed with delight, for his hunger was now even more powerful than in the morning, and right away he dunked his head in the milk almost up to his eyes. But he quickly drew it out again in disappointment; it wasn’t just that eating was difficult thanks to his tender left side—and he couldn’t eat at all without his entire body becoming gaspingly involved —but beyond that: even though milk had always been his favorite drink, which is no doubt why his sister had brought him some, now it didn’t taste good to him at all, indeed it was almost with revulsion that he turned away from the bowl and crept back to the center of the room. In the living room, as Gregor saw through the crack, the gas had been lit, but while usually at this hour his father liked to read aloud from the afternoon paper to Gregor’s mother and sometimes his sister as well in a dramatic voice, now there was not a sound to be heard. Well, perhaps this customary reading aloud that his sister had often told and written him about had recently fallen out of practice. But even in the other rooms everything was so still, even though the apartment was surely not empty. “What a quiet life my family has been leading,” Gregor said to himself, and as he gazed fixedly into the darkness before him, he felt great pride at having been able to give his parents and sister a life like this in such a beautiful apartment. But what if all this tranquility, all this prosperity and contentment were now coming to a horrific end? So as not to get lost in such contemplations, Gregor set himself in motion, crawling back and forth across the room. Once in the course of this long evening one of the side doors was opened a tiny crack and then quickly shut again, and once the other one; someone must have felt an urge to enter and then been overcome by misgivings. Gregor now stationed himself just in front of the living room door, determined to somehow coax the hesitant visitor inside or at least find out who it was; but the door did not open again, and Gregor waited in vain. Before, when all the doors were locked, everyone kept trying to come in, and now that he had opened the one door and the others had apparently been opened during the day, no one came, and the keys were sticking in their locks from the outside.  It was late at night by the time the light in the living room went out, and now it was easy to ascertain that Gregor’s parents and sister had remained awake all this time, for all three of them could clearly be heard departing on tiptoe. Now it was unlikely anyone would come into Gregor’s room before morning; so he had plenty of time to ponder how best to reorder his life. But this high open room in which he was forced to lie flat on the floor distressed him, without his being able to determine the cause—after all, it was his room, which he had been living in for five years now19—and with a half-unconscious motion, and not without a twinge of shame, he scurried beneath the settee, where even though his back was a bit cramped and he could no longer raise his head, he at once felt right at home, his only regret being that his body was too wide across to be accommodated entirely beneath this piece of furniture. Here he remained the entire night, which he spent by turns dozing—though he was woken again and again by his hunger—and mulling over his worries and indistinct hopes, which however all led to the conclusion that, for the time being, he should behave calmly and, by employing patience and the utmost consideration, assist his family in enduring the inconveniences his current state inevitably forced him to impose on them. Early the next morning already, so early it was almost still night, Gregor had the opportunity to test the strength of these resolutions he had made, for from the vestibule his sister, almost completely clothed, opened his door and cast an anxious glance into the room. She didn’t immediately spot him, but when she noticed him beneath the settee— well, goodness, he had to be somewhere, it’s not as if he might have flown away—the sight so alarmed her that, unable to control herself, she slammed the door from the outside. But as if regretting this conduct, she opened it again at once and came in, walking on tiptoe as though she were entering the room of a gravely ill patient or even a stranger. Gregor, having slid his head to just beneath the edge of the settee, observed her. Would she see that he had left the milk standing, and not because of a lack of hunger, and would she bring him some other food more to his liking? If she failed to do so of her own accord, he would sooner starve than call this to her attention, though in fact he felt a nearly monstrous urge to scoot out from beneath the settee, throw himself at his sister’s feet, and beg her for something good to eat. But his sister immediately remarked with surprise that the bowl was still full, with just a little of its milk spilled on the floor around it, and she picked it up right away—not with her bare hands, to be sure, but with a rag—and carried it out of the room. Gregor was exceptionally curious to see what she would bring in its stead and mulled over various possibilities. But never would he have been able to predict what his sister in her kindness proceeded to do. To gauge his tastes, she brought him an entire assortment of foodstuffs, all spread out on an old newspaper. There were old, half-rotten vegetables; bones from the family supper the night before caked in a congealed white sauce; a few raisins and almonds; a piece of cheese Gregor had declared inedible two days before; a dry piece of bread; a slice of buttered bread; and a slice of bread with butter and salt. In addition, she placed beside this feast the bowl that apparently had been reserved for Gregor once and for all; it was now filled with water. And out of delicacy, since she knew Gregor would not eat in front of her, she quickly withdrew and even turned the key in the lock so that Gregor would understand he could make himself at home. Gregor’s little legs whirred as he now went to take his meal. His wounds, incidentally, seemed to have healed entirely in the meantime, for he no longer felt the least impairment; this was astonishing, for more than a month ago he had cut his finger just a tiny bit with a knife, and this wound had still been painful enough just the day before yesterday. “Might I be less fastidious than before?” he thought, already sucking greedily at the cheese, to which he’d found himself immediately, inexorably drawn, more than to any of the other items. Quickly, his eyes shedding tears of gratification, he devoured in swift succession: the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce; the fresh food, by contrast, did not taste good to him, in fact he could not even stand the smell of it and so dragged the things he wished to eat a little to one side.20 He had long since finished everything and was just lying indolently where he was when his sister slowly turned the key in the lock as a signal for him to withdraw. At once he gave a start, though he’d been on the point of nodding off, and he hurried back under the settee. But it cost him a great deal of willpower to remain there even for the short period of time his sister spent in the room, for the hearty meal he’d enjoyed had caused his abdomen to swell, and he could scarcely breathe in his confinement. In between little attacks of suffocation, he peered out with slightly bulging eyes as his sister, oblivious, used a broom to sweep up not only the remains of his meal but also the food he hadn’t even touched, as if these items too were no longer fit for consumption, then she hastily dumped everything in a bucket that she covered with a wooden lid before carrying it all out of the room again. She had scarcely turned her back when Gregor hauled himself out from under the settee, stretching and puffing up his body. This was how Gregor now received his food each day, once in the morning, when his parents and the maid were still asleep, and the second time after everyone had eaten lunch, for his parents would always nap a little afterward, and his sister would send the maid out on some errand or other. Surely they didn’t want Gregor to starve either, but perhaps it would have been too much for them to experience his meals through more than hearsay, or perhaps his sister wanted to spare them even this modest sorrow, for Lord knows they were suffering enough. Gregor never learned on what pretext the doctor and locksmith had been sent away that first morning, for since he himself could not be understood, it occurred to no one, not even his sister, that he could understand the others,21 so when his sister came to his room, he had to be content merely with hearing the sighs she heaved now and then and her words of supplication addressed to the saints. Only later, when she had started to grow accustomed to all of this—though of course it was impossible to become fully accustomed to circumstances like these—would Gregor sometimes catch a remark that was meant in a friendly way or could be interpreted as such. “He tucked right in today,” she would say when Gregor had found the food she left him particularly tasty, while in the opposite case, which gradually began to occur more and more often, she was in the habit of saying almost mournfully: “This time he didn’t touch a thing.” But while no news reached Gregor directly, he sometimes was able to overhear this and that from the rooms to either side of his, and whenever he heard voices, he would immediately run over to the door in question and press his entire body against it. Especially in the early days there was rarely a conversation that did not somehow, if only indirectly, refer to him. For two days, every mealtime was spent deliberating how the family should now comport itself; but even between meals this same discussion continued, for at least two members of the household were present at all times, since apparently no one wanted to remain at home alone, and of course leaving the apartment unattended was out of the question. What’s more, the maid had fallen on her knees before Gregor’s mother that very first day—it was not entirely clear what and how much she knew of what had occurred—begging to be released from the family’s service, and when she took her leave a quarter of an hour later, she tearfully thanked them for dismissing her, as though this were the greatest benefaction she had experienced at their hands, and without anyone asking this of her, she swore a solemn oath never to reveal anything at all to anyone. Now Gregor’s sister was forced to do the cooking in concert with his mother; to be sure, not much effort was involved, as no one did much eating. Again and again Gregor would hear one of them pressing the others to eat— always in vain, and never with any other response than “Thank you, I’ve had all I want,” or similar words. Perhaps they didn’t drink anything either. Often Gregor’s sister would ask her father if he wouldn’t like a beer, affectionately offering to fetch it herself, and when he did not respond, she would say, wishing to relieve him of all scruples, that she could send the porter’s wife22 for it as well, but then the father would utter a great “No,” and no one spoke of it any longer. Already in the course of the first day, Gregor’s father explained the family’s finances and prospects not only to Gregor’s mother but to his sister as well. Now and then he would get up from the table and, from his small Wertheim safe, which he had salvaged when his business collapsed five years23 before, extract some receipt or memorandum book. One could hear him opening the complicated lock and then bolting it shut again after removing the desired item. These explanations on his father’s part included the first bits of heartening news Gregor had heard since his captivity began. He had been under the impression that his father had retained nothing at all of his former firm’s holdings, or at least his father had never said anything to the contrary, and admittedly Gregor himself had never asked him about this. At the time, his only concern had been to do everything in his power to let the family forget, as quickly as possible, the mercantile catastrophe that had plunged all of them into a state of utter hopelessness. And so he had set to work with particular zeal and risen almost overnight from petty clerk to salesman, in which capacity of course he had a quite different earning potential, and his professional accomplishments, in the form of commissions, were immediately transformed into cash that could be plunked down on the table at home, before the eyes of his astonished, delighted family. Those had been lovely times, and never since had they been repeated, at least not with such glory, although Gregor later earned so much money that he was in a position to cover the expenses for the entire family, which he then did. All had grown accustomed to this arrangement, not just the family but Gregor as well: they gratefully accepted the money, and he was happy to provide it, but the exchange no longer felt particularly warm. Only Gregor’s sister had remained close to him all this time, and it was his secret plan to send her off to study at the Conservatory next year (unlike Gregor, she dearly loved music and could play the violin quite movingly), despite the considerable costs this would no doubt entail, money that could surely be brought in by other means. Often during the brief periods of time Gregor spent in town, the Conservatory would come up in his conversations with his sister, but only ever as a lovely dream whose realization was unthinkable, and their parents did not like to hear it mentioned even in this innocuous way; but Gregor was thinking the matter over with great determination and intended to make a formal announcement on Christmas Eve. Thoughts like these, utterly futile in his current state, passed through his head as he stood pressed against the door, eavesdropping. Sometimes general exhaustion made it impossible for him to go on listening, and he would carelessly let his head bump against the door, but then he would immediately hold his head still again, for even the faint sound this produced had been heard in the next room, causing everyone to fall silent. “I wonder what he’s getting up to now,” his father would say after a while, apparently facing the door, and only then would the interrupted conversation resume. Gregor now learned, and learned quite well (his father tended to repeat himself in his explanations, in part because it had been so long since he’d last concerned himself with such matters, in part because Gregor’s mother did not always understand everything the first time), that despite all their misfortunes, a small nest egg—really only a tiny one—still remained to them from before, and had even grown a little thanks to the untouched interest that had accumulated meanwhile. In addition, the money Gregor had brought home each month—he only ever kept a few gulden for himself—had not yet been entirely used up and had grown into a small capital. Behind his door, Gregor nodded eagerly, delighted at this unexpected prudence and thrift. To be sure, he might have used this surplus to pay off more of his father’s debts with his boss, and the day on which he would have been able to divest himself of his post would no longer have been nearly so far off, but as things stood, his father’s arrangements were no doubt for the best. Now this money was by no means sufficient to allow the family to live off the interest or anything of that sort; it might possibly have been enough to sustain the family for a year, two at most, but that’s all there was. So in fact it was the kind of sum one really shouldn’t touch, one to be set aside in case of emergency; the money to live on would have to be earned. Gregor’s father was admittedly in good health, but he was old and hadn’t worked in a full five years, and in any case he was supposed to avoid overtaxing himself; in those five years—the first holiday in his strenuous and yet unsuccessful life—he had put on a lot of weight and now lumbered as he walked. And was Gregor’s old mother now supposed to hold down a job, despite her asthma and the fact that it was already an exertion for her to cross from one end of the apartment to the other, for which reason she spent every second day gasping for breath on the sofa beside the open window? And was his sister to go out working, this child of seventeen whose lifestyle no one would begrudge her: dressing nicely, sleeping late, helping out around the house, taking part in a few modest entertainments, and above all, playing the violin? Whenever the family came to speak of the necessity of someone earning money, Gregor would let go of the door and throw himself down upon the cool leather sofa beside it, burning with shame and sorrow. Often he would lie there the entire long night, not sleeping for a moment, just scrabbling for hours against the leather. Or, not shunning the great effort it cost him to push an armchair over to the window, he would climb up the sill and, propped in the armchair, lean against the window, apparently lost in some sort of reverie of how liberating he’d always found it to gaze outside. For in truth he saw even the objects that were quite near at hand less and less clearly as the days progressed; the hospital across the way whose all too constant sight he had earlier reviled was now no longer even visible to him, and if he had not known perfectly well that he was a resident of Charlottenstrasse,24 a quiet but perfectly urban street, he might have imagined he was gazing out his window onto a desert in which the gray sky and the gray earth were indistinguishably conjoined. His attentive sister only had to see the armchair standing beside the window twice before she started pushing it back to its place there each time she tidied his room; indeed she even began leaving the window’s inner sash open. If only Gregor had been able to speak to his sister and thank her for all she was compelled to do for him, he would have found her ministrations easier to bear; as it was, he suffered beneath them. His sister, to be sure, did all she could to obscure the awkwardness of the situation, and the more time passed, the better she succeeded, of course, but Gregor came to see it all more and more clearly. Even the way she made her entrance jangled his nerves. The moment she came in, without even pausing to shut the door —although she always took such pains to shield the others from the sight of Gregor’s room—she would race straightaway to the window and fling it open with hasty hands as though she were on the point of suffocating, then remain standing there, however cold it might be, gulping in the air. All this racing and racket was inflicted on Gregor twice a day; he would be trembling beneath the settee, painfully aware that she would no doubt have willingly spared him this disruption if it were possible for her to endure being in the same room as Gregor with the window closed. Once—it must have been a month since Gregor’s metamorphosis, so there was no particular call for his sister to be startled by his appearance—she came into his room a little earlier than usual and discovered him, motionless and propped upright as if for horrific effect, gazing out the window. Gregor would not have found it surprising if she had chosen not to enter, since his position prevented her from opening the window right away, but she didn’t just not enter: she started in alarm and shut the door; a stranger might have thought Gregor had been lying in wait, meaning to bite her. Gregor naturally went and hid himself away beneath the settee, but he had to wait there until noon before his sister returned, and she seemed far more agitated than usual. From this he understood that his appearance was still unbearable to her and would remain so, and that she no doubt had to struggle to force herself not to run away at the sight of even the small part of his body that protruded from beneath the settee. In order to spare her even this sight, one day he carried the bedsheet over to the settee on his back—this labor cost him four hours—and arranged it in such a way that he was now completely covered, so that his sister would not be able to see him even if she bent down. If she considered the sheet unnecessary, she could have removed it, since it was clear enough that it could not possibly be considered a pleasure for Gregor to shut himself off so completely, but she left the sheet where it was, and Gregor even thought he glimpsed a grateful look when at one point he carefully lifted the sheet just a little with his head to see how his sister liked the new arrangement. During the first fortnight, Gregor’s parents could not bring themselves to enter his room, and often he heard them expressing their heartfelt appreciation of his sister’s labors, whereas earlier they had often been annoyed with her, since she had seemed to them a rather useless girl. But now both of them, father and mother alike, would often be waiting just outside Gregor’s door while his sister tidied up his room, and as soon as she emerged, she had to give a full report on what things looked like in the room, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this time, and whether perhaps any modest improvement could be seen. His mother, incidentally, had wanted to visit him relatively soon, but his father and sister held her back, appealing at first to her sense of reason as Gregor listened attentively, wholeheartedly approving. Later, though, she had to be held back by force, and when she then cried out: “Let me go to Gregor, he is my unhappy son! Can’t you understand that I must go to him?” then Gregor thought it would perhaps be good for his mother to visit him, not every day of course, but perhaps once a week; after all, she had a far better grasp of things than his sister, who despite her courage was still a child and, when it came right down to it, had perhaps only taken on this difficult task out of childish frivolity. Gregor’s wish to see his mother was soon fulfilled. During the day, Gregor avoided showing himself at the window, if only out of consideration for his parents, but there wasn’t much crawling he could do in the few square meters of space the floor provided, lying still was already difficult for him to endure during the night, eating had soon ceased to give him even the slightest pleasure, and so to divert himself he took up the habit of crawling back and forth across the walls and ceiling. He particularly liked hanging from the ceiling high above the room; it was completely different from lying on the floor; one could breathe more freely there; a gentle swaying motion rocked the body; and in the almost happy absentmindedness Gregor experienced, it might happen, to his own astonishment, that he would let go and crash to the floor. But now, of course, he had his body far better under control than before, and even as great a fall as this did him no harm. His sister immediately noticed the new entertainment Gregor had devised for himself—his peregrinations left behind sticky trails here and there—and she got it into her head to make it possible for Gregor to range as widely as possible by removing the furniture that impeded his movement, above all the wardrobe and desk. But she wasn’t able to do so on her own; she didn’t dare ask her father for help; the maid most certainly would not have helped her, for this girl of sixteen or so, though she had courageously remained in the household after the departure of the former cook, had at the same time requested the privilege of keeping the kitchen locked at all times and only opening the door upon particular request; and so the sister had no choice but to summon her mother one day when her father was out. The mother arrived with exclamations of feverish joy but fell silent at the door to Gregor’s room. At first, of course, Gregor’s sister checked to confirm that all in the room was as it should be; only then did she allow her mother to enter. With the utmost haste, Gregor had tugged the sheet down lower and in looser folds so that it really did look as if a bedsheet just happened to have been tossed over the settee. He also refrained from peering out from beneath the sheet this time; for the moment, he would resign himself to not seeing his mother and just be glad she had come. “It’s all right, come in, you won’t see him,” Gregor’s sister said, apparently leading her mother by the hand. Gregor now heard the sounds of these two weak women grappling with this in fact quite heavy old wardrobe, with his sister laying claim to the bulk of the work, not listening to the admonitions of her mother, who was afraid she would overtax herself. It took a very long time. After perhaps a quarter of an hour’s labor, Gregor’s mother said they should leave the wardrobe where it was after all; in the first place, it was too heavy—they would not finish before Gregor’s father came home, and by leaving the wardrobe in the middle of the room, they would prevent Gregor from moving around at all—and secondly, it wasn’t even clear they were doing him a favor by taking away the furniture. To her, it seemed the opposite was true: the sight of the empty wall positively oppressed her heart; and why should Gregor not experience this same sentiment, since after all he was long accustomed to having this furniture around him—wouldn’t he feel abandoned in an emptied-out room? “And is it not as if,” his mother concluded in a low voice—in fact, she had been whispering all along, as though she wished to avoid letting Gregor, whose exact whereabouts she did not know, hear so much as the sound of her voice, for she was convinced he could not understand her words —“and is it not as if by removing the furniture we would be showing that we are giving up all hope of a cure and are ruthlessly abandoning him to his own devices? I think it would be best if we try to keep the room in precisely the same state it was in before, so that when Gregor returns to us he will find everything unchanged, which will make it that much easier for him to forget all that has happened in the meantime.”  Hearing his mother’s words, Gregor realized that the absence of all direct human address, combined with the monotony of life in his family’s midst, must have muddled his understanding over the course of these two months, for he could not otherwise explain to himself how he could seriously have wished to have his room emptied out. Did he really want to have this warm room, comfortably furnished with family heirlooms, transformed into a cave or den—in which, to be sure, he would be able to crawl about unhindered in every direction, but at the price of simultaneously swiftly and completely forgetting his human past? He was already on the verge of forgetting, and only his mother’s voice, which he had gone so long now without hearing, had shaken him awake. Nothing should be removed; everything must remain; he was unwilling to forego the good influence this furniture had on his condition; and if the furniture got in the way of his practicing this mindless crawling about, this was by no means to his detriment, in fact, it was a great advantage. Unfortunately his sister was of a different opinion; she had developed the habit—not entirely without cause, to be sure—of presenting herself as the holder of particular expertise when discussing Gregor with her parents, and so now too her mother’s counsel was reason enough for her to insist on the removal not only of the wardrobe and desk, as she had originally been intending, but of every last bit of the room’s furnishings, with the exception of the indispensable settee. Naturally, it was not simply childish defiance and the hard-won self-assurance she had so unexpectedly acquired in recent weeks that dictated this demand; she had, in fact, observed that Gregor needed a great deal of space to crawl around in, while as far as anyone could see, he made no use whatever of the furniture. But perhaps the fanciful imagination of a girl of her age played a role as well, a sensibility always seeking its own gratification, and one which Grete now allowed to persuade her to render Gregor’s situation even more horrific than before, so as to be able to do even more for him than she had hitherto. For a room in which Gregor held sole dominion over empty walls was a place where no one other than Grete would ever dare to set foot. And so she held fast to her resolve despite the protests of her mother, who appeared troubled to the point of indecision even by the room in its present state; she soon fell silent and helped Gregor’s sister remove the wardrobe as best she could. Well, the wardrobe was something Gregor could do without if need be, but the desk would certainly have to stay. And no sooner had the women left the room with the cabinet, groaning as they pressed against its weight, than Gregor poked out his head from beneath the settee to see how he might, cautiously and as considerately as possible, intervene. But unfortunately his mother was the first to return while Grete was still in the next room, clasping the wardrobe in her arms and tipping it back and forth on her own—without, of course, moving it from the spot. But Gregor’s mother was unaccustomed to his appearance, it might have made her ill to catch a glimpse of him, and so Gregor in alarm withdrew as fast as he could to the far end of the settee, but it was too late to prevent the front edge of the bedsheet from stirring a little. This was enough to attract his mother’s notice. Startled, she froze for a moment, then went back to where Grete was. Although Gregor kept telling himself that nothing extraordinary was happening, just a few sticks of furniture being shifted about, he was soon forced to admit that all this coming and going on the part of the women, their little exclamations, the furniture scraping against the floor, had the combined effect of a tumultuous hubbub intensifying all around him, and no matter how tightly he drew his head and legs in and pressed his body against the floor, he soon was forced to consider that he would not be able to endure this much longer. They were clearing out his room; taking from him all that was de