Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

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Notice by Luarna Ediciones

This book is in the public domain becausethe copyrights have expired under Spanish law.

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2) Luarna has only adapted the work tomake it easily viewable on common six-inch readers.

3) To all effects, this book must not be con-sidered to have been published byLuarna.

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I

One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke fromtroubled dreams, he found himself transformedin his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on hisarmour-like back, and if he lifted his head alittle he could see his brown belly, slightlydomed and divided by arches into stiff sections.The bedding was hardly able to cover it andseemed ready to slide off any moment. Hismany legs, pitifully thin compared with thesize of the rest of him, waved about helplesslyas he looked.

"What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn'ta dream. His room, a proper human room al-though a little too small, lay peacefully betweenits four familiar walls. A collection of textilesamples lay spread out on the table - Samsawas a travelling salesman - and above it therehung a picture that he had recently cut out of

an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice,gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with afur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising aheavy fur muff that covered the whole of herlower arm towards the viewer.

Gregor then turned to look out the window atthe dull weather. Drops of rain could be heardhitting the pane, which made him feel quitesad. "How about if I sleep a little bit longer andforget all this nonsense", he thought, but thatwas something he was unable to do because hewas used to sleeping on his right, and in hispresent state couldn't get into that position.However hard he threw himself onto his right,he always rolled back to where he was. Hemust have tried it a hundred times, shut hiseyes so that he wouldn't have to look at thefloundering legs, and only stopped when hebegan to feel a mild, dull pain there that he hadnever felt before.

"Oh, God", he thought, "what a strenuous ca-reer it is that I've chosen! Travelling day in andday out. Doing business like this takes muchmore effort than doing your own business athome, and on top of that there's the curse oftravelling, worries about making train connec-tions, bad and irregular food, contact with dif-ferent people all the time so that you can neverget to know anyone or become friendly withthem. It can all go to Hell!" He felt a slight itchup on his belly; pushed himself slowly up onhis back towards the headboard so that hecould lift his head better; found where the itchwas, and saw that it was covered with lots oflittle white spots which he didn't know what tomake of; and when he tried to feel the placewith one of his legs he drew it quickly backbecause as soon as he touched it he was over-come by a cold shudder.

He slid back into his former position. "Gettingup early all the time", he thought, "it makes you

stupid. You've got to get enough sleep. Othertravelling salesmen live a life of luxury. Forinstance, whenever I go back to the guest houseduring the morning to copy out the contract,these gentlemen are always still sitting thereeating their breakfasts. I ought to just try thatwith my boss; I'd get kicked out on the spot.But who knows, maybe that would be the bestthing for me. If I didn't have my parents tothink about I'd have given in my notice a longtime ago, I'd have gone up to the boss and toldhim just what I think, tell him everything Iwould, let him know just what I feel. He'd fallright off his desk! And it's a funny sort of busi-ness to be sitting up there at your desk, talkingdown at your subordinates from up there, es-pecially when you have to go right up closebecause the boss is hard of hearing. Well,there's still some hope; once I've got the moneytogether to pay off my parents' debt to him -another five or six years I suppose - that's defi-nitely what I'll do. That's when I'll make the big

change. First of all though, I've got to get up,my train leaves at five."

And he looked over at the alarm clock, tickingon the chest of drawers. "God in Heaven!" hethought. It was half past six and the handswere quietly moving forwards, it was evenlater than half past, more like quarter to seven.Had the alarm clock not rung? He could seefrom the bed that it had been set for fouro'clock as it should have been; it certainly musthave rung. Yes, but was it possible to quietlysleep through that furniture-rattling noise?True, he had not slept peacefully, but probablyall the more deeply because of that. Whatshould he do now? The next train went atseven; if he were to catch that he would have torush like mad and the collection of samples wasstill not packed, and he did not at all feel par-ticularly fresh and lively. And even if he didcatch the train he would not avoid his boss'sanger as the office assistant would have been

there to see the five o'clock train go, he wouldhave put in his report about Gregor's not beingthere a long time ago. The office assistant wasthe boss's man, spineless, and with no under-standing. What about if he reported sick? Butthat would be extremely strained and suspi-cious as in fifteen years of service Gregor hadnever once yet been ill. His boss would cer-tainly come round with the doctor from themedical insurance company, accuse his parentsof having a lazy son, and accept the doctor'srecommendation not to make any claim as thedoctor believed that no-one was ever ill but thatmany were workshy. And what's more, wouldhe have been entirely wrong in this case?Gregor did in fact, apart from excessive sleepi-ness after sleeping for so long, feel completelywell and even felt much hungrier than usual.

He was still hurriedly thinking all this through,unable to decide to get out of the bed, when theclock struck quarter to seven. There was a cau-

tious knock at the door near his head. "Gregor",somebody called - it was his mother - "it's quar-ter to seven. Didn't you want to go some-where?" That gentle voice! Gregor was shockedwhen he heard his own voice answering, itcould hardly be recognised as the voice he hadhad before. As if from deep inside him, therewas a painful and uncontrollable squeakingmixed in with it, the words could be made outat first but then there was a sort of echo whichmade them unclear, leaving the hearer unsurewhether he had heard properly or not. Gregorhad wanted to give a full answer and explaineverything, but in the circumstances contentedhimself with saying: "Yes, mother, yes, thank-you, I'm getting up now." The change inGregor's voice probably could not be noticedoutside through the wooden door, as hismother was satisfied with this explanation andshuffled away. But this short conversationmade the other members of the family awarethat Gregor, against their expectations was still

at home, and soon his father came knocking atone of the side doors, gently, but with his fist."Gregor, Gregor", he called, "what's wrong?"And after a short while he called again with awarning deepness in his voice: "Gregor!Gregor!" At the other side door his sister cameplaintively: "Gregor? Aren't you well? Do youneed anything?" Gregor answered to bothsides: "I'm ready, now", making an effort toremove all the strangeness from his voice byenunciating very carefully and putting longpauses between each, individual word. Hisfather went back to his breakfast, but his sisterwhispered: "Gregor, open the door, I beg ofyou." Gregor, however, had no thought ofopening the door, and instead congratulatedhimself for his cautious habit, acquired from histravelling, of locking all doors at night evenwhen he was at home.

The first thing he wanted to do was to get up inpeace without being disturbed, to get dressed,

and most of all to have his breakfast. Only thenwould he consider what to do next, as he waswell aware that he would not bring histhoughts to any sensible conclusions by lying inbed. He remembered that he had often felt aslight pain in bed, perhaps caused by lyingawkwardly, but that had always turned out tobe pure imagination and he wondered how hisimaginings would slowly resolve themselvestoday. He did not have the slightest doubt thatthe change in his voice was nothing more thanthe first sign of a serious cold, which was anoccupational hazard for travelling salesmen.

It was a simple matter to throw off the covers;he only had to blow himself up a little and theyfell off by themselves. But it became difficultafter that, especially as he was so exceptionallybroad. He would have used his arms and hishands to push himself up; but instead of themhe only had all those little legs continuouslymoving in different directions, and which he

was moreover unable to control. If he wantedto bend one of them, then that was the first onethat would stretch itself out; and if he finallymanaged to do what he wanted with that leg,all the others seemed to be set free and wouldmove about painfully. "This is something thatcan't be done in bed", Gregor said to himself,"so don't keep trying to do it".

The first thing he wanted to do was get the lo-wer part of his body out of the bed, but he hadnever seen this lower part, and could not imag-ine what it looked like; it turned out to be toohard to move; it went so slowly; and finally,almost in a frenzy, when he carelessly shovedhimself forwards with all the force he couldgather, he chose the wrong direction, hit hardagainst the lower bedpost, and learned fromthe burning pain he felt that the lower part ofhis body might well, at present, be the mostsensitive.

So then he tried to get the top part of his bodyout of the bed first, carefully turning his headto the side. This he managed quite easily, anddespite its breadth and its weight, the bulk ofhis body eventually followed slowly in the di-rection of the head. But when he had at last gothis head out of the bed and into the fresh air itoccurred to him that if he let himself fall itwould be a miracle if his head were not injured,so he became afraid to carry on pushing him-self forward the same way. And he could notknock himself out now at any price; better tostay in bed than lose consciousness.

It took just as much effort to get back to wherehe had been earlier, but when he lay there sigh-ing, and was once more watching his legs asthey struggled against each other even harderthan before, if that was possible, he could thinkof no way of bringing peace and order to thischaos. He told himself once more that it wasnot possible for him to stay in bed and that the

most sensible thing to do would be to get freeof it in whatever way he could at whatever sac-rifice. At the same time, though, he did not for-get to remind himself that calm considerationwas much better than rushing to desperate con-clusions. At times like this he would direct hiseyes to the window and look out as clearly ashe could, but unfortunately, even the other sideof the narrow street was enveloped in morningfog and the view had little confidence or cheerto offer him. "Seven o'clock, already", he said tohimself when the clock struck again, "seveno'clock, and there's still a fog like this." And helay there quietly a while longer, breathinglightly as if he perhaps expected the total still-ness to bring things back to their real and natu-ral state.

But then he said to himself: "Before it strikesquarter past seven I'll definitely have to havegot properly out of bed. And by then some-body will have come round from work to ask

what's happened to me as well, as they open upat work before seven o'clock." And so he sethimself to the task of swinging the entire lengthof his body out of the bed all at the same time.If he succeeded in falling out of bed in this wayand kept his head raised as he did so he couldprobably avoid injuring it. His back seemed tobe quite hard, and probably nothing wouldhappen to it falling onto the carpet. His mainconcern was for the loud noise he was bound tomake, and which even through all the doorswould probably raise concern if not alarm. Butit was something that had to be risked.

When Gregor was already sticking half way outof the bed - the new method was more of a ga-me than an effort, all he had to do was rockback and forth - it occurred to him how simpleeverything would be if somebody came to helphim. Two strong people - he had his father andthe maid in mind - would have been more thanenough; they would only have to push their

arms under the dome of his back, peel himaway from the bed, bend down with the loadand then be patient and careful as he swangover onto the floor, where, hopefully, the littlelegs would find a use. Should he really call forhelp though, even apart from the fact that allthe doors were locked? Despite all the difficultyhe was in, he could not suppress a smile at thisthought.

After a while he had already moved so faracross that it would have been hard for him tokeep his balance if he rocked too hard. The timewas now ten past seven and he would have tomake a final decision very soon. Then therewas a ring at the door of the flat. "That'll besomeone from work", he said to himself, andfroze very still, although his little legs only be-came all the more lively as they danced around.For a moment everything remained quiet."They're not opening the door", Gregor said tohimself, caught in some nonsensical hope. But

then of course, the maid's firm steps went to thedoor as ever and opened it. Gregor only neededto hear the visitor's first words of greeting andhe knew who it was - the chief clerk himself.Why did Gregor have to be the only one con-demned to work for a company where theyimmediately became highly suspicious at theslightest shortcoming? Were all employees,every one of them, louts, was there not one ofthem who was faithful and devoted who wouldgo so mad with pangs of conscience that hecouldn't get out of bed if he didn't spend atleast a couple of hours in the morning on com-pany business? Was it really not enough to letone of the trainees make enquiries - assumingenquiries were even necessary - did the chiefclerk have to come himself, and did they haveto show the whole, innocent family that thiswas so suspicious that only the chief clerkcould be trusted to have the wisdom to investi-gate it? And more because these thoughts hadmade him upset than through any proper deci-

sion, he swang himself with all his force out ofthe bed. There was a loud thump, but it wasn'treally a loud noise. His fall was softened a littleby the carpet, and Gregor's back was also moreelastic than he had thought, which made thesound muffled and not too noticeable. He hadnot held his head carefully enough, though,and hit it as he fell; annoyed and in pain, heturned it and rubbed it against the carpet.

"Something's fallen down in there", said thechief clerk in the room on the left. Gregor triedto imagine whether something of the sort thathad happened to him today could ever happento the chief clerk too; you had to concede that itwas possible. But as if in gruff reply to thisquestion, the chief clerk's firm footsteps in hishighly polished boots could now be heard inthe adjoining room. From the room on his right,Gregor's sister whispered to him to let himknow: "Gregor, the chief clerk is here." "Yes, Iknow", said Gregor to himself; but without dar-

ing to raise his voice loud enough for his sisterto hear him.

"Gregor", said his father now from the room tohis left, "the chief clerk has come round andwants to know why you didn't leave on theearly train. We don't know what to say to him.And anyway, he wants to speak to you person-ally. So please open up this door. I'm sure he'llbe good enough to forgive the untidiness ofyour room." Then the chief clerk called "Goodmorning, Mr. Samsa". "He isn't well", said hismother to the chief clerk, while his father con-tinued to speak through the door. "He isn'twell, please believe me. Why else wouldGregor have missed a train! The lad only everthinks about the business. It nearly makes mecross the way he never goes out in the eve-nings; he's been in town for a week now butstayed home every evening. He sits with us inthe kitchen and just reads the paper or studiestrain timetables. His idea of relaxation is work-

ing with his fretsaw. He's made a little frame,for instance, it only took him two or three eve-nings, you'll be amazed how nice it is; it's hang-ing up in his room; you'll see it as soon asGregor opens the door. Anyway, I'm gladyou're here; we wouldn't have been able to getGregor to open the door by ourselves; he's sostubborn; and I'm sure he isn't well, he said thismorning that he is, but he isn't." "I'll be there ina moment", said Gregor slowly and thought-fully, but without moving so that he would notmiss any word of the conversation. "Well I can'tthink of any other way of explaining it, Mrs.Samsa", said the chief clerk, "I hope it's nothingserious. But on the other hand, I must say thatif we people in commerce ever become slightlyunwell then, fortunately or unfortunately asyou like, we simply have to overcome it be-cause of business considerations." "Can thechief clerk come in to see you now then?",asked his father impatiently, knocking at thedoor again. "No", said Gregor. In the room on

his right there followed a painful silence; in theroom on his left his sister began to cry.

So why did his sister not go and join the others?She had probably only just got up and had noteven begun to get dressed. And why was shecrying? Was it because he had not got up, andhad not let the chief clerk in, because he was indanger of losing his job and if that happenedhis boss would once more pursue their parentswith the same demands as before? There wasno need to worry about things like that yet.Gregor was still there and had not the slightestintention of abandoning his family. For thetime being he just lay there on the carpet, andno-one who knew the condition he was inwould seriously have expected him to let thechief clerk in. It was only a minor discourtesy,and a suitable excuse could easily be found forit later on, it was not something for whichGregor could be sacked on the spot. And itseemed to Gregor much more sensible to leave

him now in peace instead of disturbing himwith talking at him and crying. But the othersdidn't know what was happening, they wereworried, that would excuse their behaviour.

The chief clerk now raised his voice, "Mr. Sam-sa", he called to him, "what is wrong? You bar-ricade yourself in your room, give us no morethan yes or no for an answer, you are causingserious and unnecessary concern to your par-ents and you fail - and I mention this just by theway - you fail to carry out your business dutiesin a way that is quite unheard of. I'm speakinghere on behalf of your parents and of your em-ployer, and really must request a clear and im-mediate explanation. I am astonished, quiteastonished. I thought I knew you as a calm andsensible person, and now you suddenly seemto be showing off with peculiar whims. Thismorning, your employer did suggest a possiblereason for your failure to appear, it's true - ithad to do with the money that was recently

entrusted to you - but I came near to giving himmy word of honour that that could not be theright explanation. But now that I see your in-comprehensible stubbornness I no longer feelany wish whatsoever to intercede on your be-half. And nor is your position all that secure. Ihad originally intended to say all this to you inprivate, but since you cause me to waste mytime here for no good reason I don't see whyyour parents should not also learn of it. Yourturnover has been very unsatisfactory of late; Igrant you that it's not the time of year to doespecially good business, we recognise that; butthere simply is no time of year to do no busi-ness at all, Mr. Samsa, we cannot allow there tobe."

"But Sir", called Gregor, beside himself andforgetting all else in the excitement, "I'll openup immediately, just a moment. I'm slightlyunwell, an attack of dizziness, I haven't beenable to get up. I'm still in bed now. I'm quite

fresh again now, though. I'm just getting out ofbed. Just a moment. Be patient! It's not quite aseasy as I'd thought. I'm quite alright now,though. It's shocking, what can suddenly hap-pen to a person! I was quite alright last night,my parents know about it, perhaps better thanme, I had a small symptom of it last night al-ready. They must have noticed it. I don't knowwhy I didn't let you know at work! But youalways think you can get over an illness with-out staying at home. Please, don't make myparents suffer! There's no basis for any of theaccusations you're making; nobody's ever saida word to me about any of these things. Maybeyou haven't read the latest contracts I sent in.I'll set off with the eight o'clock train, as well,these few hours of rest have given me strength.You don't need to wait, sir; I'll be in the officesoon after you, and please be so good as to tellthat to the boss and recommend me to him!"

And while Gregor gushed out these words,hardly knowing what he was saying, he madehis way over to the chest of drawers - this waseasily done, probably because of the practise hehad already had in bed - where he now tried toget himself upright. He really did want to openthe door, really did want to let them see himand to speak with the chief clerk; the otherswere being so insistent, and he was curious tolearn what they would say when they caughtsight of him. If they were shocked then itwould no longer be Gregor's responsibility andhe could rest. If, however, they took everythingcalmly he would still have no reason to be up-set, and if he hurried he really could be at thestation for eight o'clock. The first few times hetried to climb up on the smooth chest of draw-ers he just slid down again, but he finally gavehimself one last swing and stood there upright;the lower part of his body was in serious painbut he no longer gave any attention to it. Nowhe let himself fall against the back of a nearby

chair and held tightly to the edges of it with hislittle legs. By now he had also calmed down,and kept quiet so that he could listen to whatthe chief clerk was saying.

"Did you understand a word of all that?" thechief clerk asked his parents, "surely he's nottrying to make fools of us". "Oh, God!" calledhis mother, who was already in tears, "he couldbe seriously ill and we're making him suffer.Grete! Grete!" she then cried. "Mother?" his sis-ter called from the other side. They communi-cated across Gregor's room. "You'll have to gofor the doctor straight away. Gregor is ill.Quick, get the doctor. Did you hear the wayGregor spoke just now?" "That was the voice ofan animal", said the chief clerk, with a calmnessthat was in contrast with his mother's screams."Anna! Anna!" his father called into the kitchenthrough the entrance hall, clapping his hands,"get a locksmith here, now!" And the two girls,their skirts swishing, immediately ran out

through the hall, wrenching open the frontdoor of the flat as they went. How had his sis-ter managed to get dressed so quickly? Therewas no sound of the door banging shut again;they must have left it open; people often do inhomes where something awful has happened.

Gregor, in contrast, had become much calmer.So they couldn't understand his words anymore, although they seemed clear enough tohim, clearer than before - perhaps his ears hadbecome used to the sound. They had realised,though, that there was something wrong withhim, and were ready to help. The first responseto his situation had been confident and wise,and that made him feel better. He felt that hehad been drawn back in among people, andfrom the doctor and the locksmith he expectedgreat and surprising achievements - althoughhe did not really distinguish one from theother. Whatever was said next would be cru-cial, so, in order to make his voice as clear as

possible, he coughed a little, but taking care todo this not too loudly as even this might wellsound different from the way that a humancoughs and he was no longer sure he couldjudge this for himself. Meanwhile, it had be-come very quiet in the next room. Perhaps hisparents were sat at the table whispering withthe chief clerk, or perhaps they were all pressedagainst the door and listening.

Gregor slowly pushed his way over to the doorwith the chair. Once there he let go of it andthrew himself onto the door, holding himselfupright against it using the adhesive on the tipsof his legs. He rested there a little while to re-cover from the effort involved and then sethimself to the task of turning the key in the lockwith his mouth. He seemed, unfortunately, tohave no proper teeth - how was he, then, tograsp the key? - but the lack of teeth was, ofcourse, made up for with a very strong jaw;using the jaw, he really was able to start the key

turning, ignoring the fact that he must havebeen causing some kind of damage as a brownfluid came from his mouth, flowed over the keyand dripped onto the floor. "Listen", said thechief clerk in the next room, "he's turning thekey." Gregor was greatly encouraged by this;but they all should have been calling to him, hisfather and his mother too: "Well done, Gregor",they should have cried, "keep at it, keep hold ofthe lock!" And with the idea that they were allexcitedly following his efforts, he bit on the keywith all his strength, paying no attention to thepain he was causing himself. As the key turnedround he turned around the lock with it, onlyholding himself upright with his mouth, andhung onto the key or pushed it down againwith the whole weight of his body as needed.The clear sound of the lock as it snapped backwas Gregor's sign that he could break his con-centration, and as he regained his breath hesaid to himself: "So, I didn't need the locksmith

after all". Then he lay his head on the handle ofthe door to open it completely.

Because he had to open the door in this way, itwas already wide open before he could be seen.He had first to slowly turn himself around oneof the double doors, and he had to do it verycarefully if he did not want to fall flat on hisback before entering the room. He was still oc-cupied with this difficult movement, unable topay attention to anything else, when he heardthe chief clerk exclaim a loud "Oh!", whichsounded like the soughing of the wind. Now healso saw him - he was the nearest to the door -his hand pressed against his open mouth andslowly retreating as if driven by a steady andinvisible force. Gregor's mother, her hair stilldishevelled from bed despite the chief clerk'sbeing there, looked at his father. Then she un-folded her arms, took two steps forward to-wards Gregor and sank down onto the floorinto her skirts that spread themselves out

around her as her head disappeared down ontoher breast. His father looked hostile, andclenched his fists as if wanting to knock Gregorback into his room. Then he looked uncertainlyround the living room, covered his eyes withhis hands and wept so that his powerful chestshook.

So Gregor did not go into the room, but leantagainst the inside of the other door which wasstill held bolted in place. In this way only halfof his body could be seen, along with his headabove it which he leant over to one side as hepeered out at the others. Meanwhile the dayhad become much lighter; part of the endless,grey-black building on the other side of thestreet - which was a hospital - could be seenquite clearly with the austere and regular lineof windows piercing its façade; the rain wasstill falling, now throwing down large, individ-ual droplets which hit the ground one at a time.The washing up from breakfast lay on the table;

there was so much of it because, for Gregor'sfather, breakfast was the most important mealof the day and he would stretch it out for sev-eral hours as he sat reading a number of differ-ent newspapers. On the wall exactly oppositethere was photograph of Gregor when he was alieutenant in the army, his sword in his handand a carefree smile on his face as he calledforth respect for his uniform and bearing. Thedoor to the entrance hall was open and as thefront door of the flat was also open he could seeonto the landing and the stairs where they be-gan their way down below.

"Now, then", said Gregor, well aware that hewas the only one to have kept calm, "I'll getdressed straight away now, pack up my sam-ples and set off. Will you please just let meleave? You can see", he said to the chief clerk,"that I'm not stubborn and like I like to do myjob; being a commercial traveller is arduous butwithout travelling I couldn't earn my living. So

where are you going, in to the office? Yes? Willyou report everything accurately, then? It'squite possible for someone to be temporarilyunable to work, but that's just the right time toremember what's been achieved in the past andconsider that later on, once the difficulty hasbeen removed, he will certainly work with allthe more diligence and concentration. You'rewell aware that I'm seriously in debt to ouremployer as well as having to look after myparents and my sister, so that I'm trapped in adifficult situation, but I will work my way outof it again. Please don't make things any harderfor me than they are already, and don't takesides against me at the office. I know that no-body likes the travellers. They think we earn anenormous wage as well as having a soft time ofit. That's just prejudice but they have no par-ticular reason to think better it. But you, sir,you have a better overview than the rest of thestaff, in fact, if I can say this in confidence, abetter overview than the boss himself - it's very

easy for a businessman like him to make mis-takes about his employees and judge themmore harshly than he should. And you're alsowell aware that we travellers spend almost thewhole year away from the office, so that we canvery easily fall victim to gossip and chance andgroundless complaints, and it's almost impos-sible to defend yourself from that sort of thing,we don't usually even hear about them, or if atall it's when we arrive back home exhaustedfrom a trip, and that's when we feel the harmfuleffects of what's been going on without evenknowing what caused them. Please, don't goaway, at least first say something to show thatyou grant that I'm at least partly right!"

But the chief clerk had turned away as soon asGregor had started to speak, and, with protrud-ing lips, only stared back at him over his trem-bling shoulders as he left. He did not keep stillfor a moment while Gregor was speaking, butmoved steadily towards the door without tak-

ing his eyes off him. He moved very gradually,as if there had been some secret prohibition onleaving the room. It was only when he hadreached the entrance hall that he made a sud-den movement, drew his foot from the livingroom, and rushed forward in a panic. In thehall, he stretched his right hand far out towardsthe stairway as if out there, there were somesupernatural force waiting to save him.

Gregor realised that it was out of the questionto let the chief clerk go away in this mood if hisposition in the firm was not to be put into ex-treme danger. That was something his parentsdid not understand very well; over the years,they had become convinced that this job wouldprovide for Gregor for his entire life, and be-sides, they had so much to worry about at pre-sent that they had lost sight of any thought forthe future. Gregor, though, did think about thefuture. The chief clerk had to be held back,calmed down, convinced and finally won over;

the future of Gregor and his family dependedon it! If only his sister were here! She was cle-ver; she was already in tears while Gregor wasstill lying peacefully on his back. And the chiefclerk was a lover of women, surely she couldpersuade him; she would close the front doorin the entrance hall and talk him out of hisshocked state. But his sister was not there, Gre-gor would have to do the job himself. And wit-hout considering that he still was not familiarwith how well he could move about in his pre-sent state, or that his speech still might not - orprobably would not - be understood, he let goof the door; pushed himself through the open-ing; tried to reach the chief clerk on the landingwho, ridiculously, was holding on to the banis-ter with both hands; but Gregor fell immedi-ately over and, with a little scream as he soughtsomething to hold onto, landed on his numer-ous little legs. Hardly had that happened than,for the first time that day, he began to feel al-right with his body; the little legs had the solid

ground under them; to his pleasure, they didexactly as he told them; they were even makingthe effort to carry him where he wanted to go;and he was soon believing that all his sorrowswould soon be finally at an end. He held backthe urge to move but swayed from side to sideas he crouched there on the floor. His motherwas not far away in front of him and seemed, atfirst, quite engrossed in herself, but then shesuddenly jumped up with her arms out-stretched and her fingers spread shouting:"Help, for pity's sake, Help!" The way she heldher head suggested she wanted to see Gregorbetter, but the unthinking way she was hurry-ing backwards showed that she did not; shehad forgotten that the table was behind herwith all the breakfast things on it; when shereached the table she sat quickly down on itwithout knowing what she was doing; withouteven seeming to notice that the coffee pot hadbeen knocked over and a gush of coffee waspouring down onto the carpet.

"Mother, mother", said Gregor gently, lookingup at her. He had completely forgotten thechief clerk for the moment, but could not helphimself snapping in the air with his jaws at thesight of the flow of coffee. That set his motherscreaming anew, she fled from the table andinto the arms of his father as he rushed towardsher. Gregor, though, had no time to spare forhis parents now; the chief clerk had alreadyreached the stairs; with his chin on the banister,he looked back for the last time. Gregor made arun for him; he wanted to be sure of reachinghim; the chief clerk must have expected some-thing, as he leapt down several steps at onceand disappeared; his shouts resounding allaround the staircase. The flight of the chiefclerk seemed, unfortunately, to put Gregor'sfather into a panic as well. Until then he hadbeen relatively self controlled, but now, insteadof running after the chief clerk himself, or atleast not impeding Gregor as he ran after him,Gregor's father seized the chief clerk's stick in

his right hand (the chief clerk had left it behindon a chair, along with his hat and overcoat),picked up a large newspaper from the tablewith his left, and used them to drive Gregorback into his room, stamping his foot at him ashe went. Gregor's appeals to his father were ofno help, his appeals were simply not under-stood, however much he humbly turned hishead his father merely stamped his foot all theharder. Across the room, despite the chillyweather, Gregor's mother had pulled open awindow, leant far out of it and pressed herhands to her face. A strong draught of air flewin from the street towards the stairway, thecurtains flew up, the newspapers on the tablefluttered and some of them were blown ontothe floor. Nothing would stop Gregor's fatheras he drove him back, making hissing noises athim like a wild man. Gregor had never had anypractice in moving backwards and was onlyable to go very slowly. If Gregor had only beenallowed to turn round he would have been

back in his room straight away, but he wasafraid that if he took the time to do that his fa-ther would become impatient, and there wasthe threat of a lethal blow to his back or headfrom the stick in his father's hand any moment.Eventually, though, Gregor realised that he hadno choice as he saw, to his disgust, that he wasquite incapable of going backwards in astraight line; so he began, as quickly as possibleand with frequent anxious glances at his father,to turn himself round. It went very slowly, butperhaps his father was able to see his good in-tentions as he did nothing to hinder him, in factnow and then he used the tip of his stick to givedirections from a distance as to which way toturn. If only his father would stop that unbear-able hissing! It was making Gregor quite con-fused. When he had nearly finished turninground, still listening to that hissing, he made amistake and turned himself back a little theway he had just come. He was pleased when hefinally had his head in front of the doorway,

but then saw that it was too narrow, and hisbody was too broad to get through it withoutfurther difficulty. In his present mood, it obvi-ously did not occur to his father to open theother of the double doors so that Gregor wouldhave enough space to get through. He was me-rely fixed on the idea that Gregor should be gotback into his room as quickly as possible. Norwould he ever have allowed Gregor the time toget himself upright as preparation for gettingthrough the doorway. What he did, makingmore noise than ever, was to drive Gregor for-wards all the harder as if there had been noth-ing in the way; it sounded to Gregor as if therewas now more than one father behind him; itwas not a pleasant experience, and Gregorpushed himself into the doorway without re-gard for what might happen. One side of hisbody lifted itself, he lay at an angle in thedoorway, one flank scraped on the white doorand was painfully injured, leaving vile brownflecks on it, soon he was stuck fast and would

not have been able to move at all by himself,the little legs along one side hung quivering inthe air while those on the other side were pres-sed painfully against the ground. Then his fa-ther gave him a hefty shove from behind whichreleased him from where he was held and senthim flying, and heavily bleeding, deep into hisroom. The door was slammed shut with thestick, then, finally, all was quiet.

II

It was not until it was getting dark that eveningthat Gregor awoke from his deep and coma-likesleep. He would have woken soon afterwardsanyway even if he hadn't been disturbed, as hehad had enough sleep and felt fully rested. Buthe had the impression that some hurried stepsand the sound of the door leading into the frontroom being carefully shut had woken him. Thelight from the electric street lamps shone palelyhere and there onto the ceiling and tops of the

furniture, but down below, where Gregor was,it was dark. He pushed himself over to thedoor, feeling his way clumsily with his anten-nae - of which he was now beginning to learnthe value - in order to see what had been hap-pening there. The whole of his left side seemedlike one, painfully stretched scar, and he lim-ped badly on his two rows of legs. One of thelegs had been badly injured in the events ofthat morning - it was nearly a miracle that onlyone of them had been - and dragged along life-lessly.

It was only when he had reached the door thathe realised what it actually was that had drawnhim over to it; it was the smell of something toeat. By the door there was a dish filled withsweetened milk with little pieces of white breadfloating in it. He was so pleased he almost laug-hed, as he was even hungrier than he had beenthat morning, and immediately dipped hishead into the milk, nearly covering his eyes

with it. But he soon drew his head back againin disappointment; not only did the pain in histender left side make it difficult to eat the food -he was only able to eat if his whole body wor-ked together as a snuffling whole - but the milkdid not taste at all nice. Milk like this was nor-mally his favourite drink, and his sister hadcertainly left it there for him because of that,but he turned, almost against his own will,away from the dish and crawled back into thecentre of the room.

Through the crack in the door, Gregor couldsee that the gas had been lit in the living room.His father at this time would normally be satwith his evening paper, reading it out in a loudvoice to Gregor's mother, and sometimes to hissister, but there was now not a sound to beheard. Gregor's sister would often write andtell him about this reading, but maybe his fa-ther had lost the habit in recent times. It was soquiet all around too, even though there must

have been somebody in the flat. "What a quietlife it is the family lead", said Gregor to himself,and, gazing into the darkness, felt a great pridethat he was able to provide a life like that insuch a nice home for his sister and parents. Butwhat now, if all this peace and wealth and com-fort should come to a horrible and frighteningend? That was something that Gregor did notwant to think about too much, so he started tomove about, crawling up and down the room.

Once during that long evening, the door on oneside of the room was opened very slightly andhurriedly closed again; later on the door on theother side did the same; it seemed that some-one needed to enter the room but thought bet-ter of it. Gregor went and waited immediatelyby the door, resolved either to bring the timor-ous visitor into the room in some way or atleast to find out who it was; but the door wasopened no more that night and Gregor waitedin vain. The previous morning while the doors

were locked everyone had wanted to get inthere to him, but now, now that he had openedup one of the doors and the other had clearlybeen unlocked some time during the day, no-one came, and the keys were in the other sides.

It was not until late at night that the gaslight inthe living room was put out, and now it waseasy to see that parents and sister had stayedawake all that time, as they all could be dis-tinctly heard as they went away together ontip-toe. It was clear that no-one would comeinto Gregor's room any more until morning;that gave him plenty of time to think undis-turbed about how he would have to re-arrangehis life. For some reason, the tall, empty roomwhere he was forced to remain made him feeluneasy as he lay there flat on the floor, eventhough he had been living in it for five years.Hardly aware of what he was doing other thana slight feeling of shame, he hurried under thecouch. It pressed down on his back a little, and

he was no longer able to lift his head, but henonetheless felt immediately at ease and hisonly regret was that his body was too broad toget it all underneath.

He spent the whole night there. Some of thetime he passed in a light sleep, although hefrequently woke from it in alarm because of hishunger, and some of the time was spent in wor-ries and vague hopes which, however, alwaysled to the same conclusion: for the time beinghe must remain calm, he must show patienceand the greatest consideration so that his fam-ily could bear the unpleasantness that he, in hispresent condition, was forced to impose onthem.

Gregor soon had the opportunity to test thestrength of his decisions, as early the next mor-ning, almost before the night had ended, hissister, nearly fully dressed, opened the doorfrom the front room and looked anxiously in.She did not see him straight away, but when

she did notice him under the couch - he had tobe somewhere, for God's sake, he couldn't haveflown away - she was so shocked that she lostcontrol of herself and slammed the door shutagain from outside. But she seemed to regrether behaviour, as she opened the door againstraight away and came in on tip-toe as if enter-ing the room of someone seriously ill or even ofa stranger. Gregor had pushed his head for-ward, right to the edge of the couch, and wat-ched her. Would she notice that he had left themilk as it was, realise that it was not from anylack of hunger and bring him in some otherfood that was more suitable? If she didn't do itherself he would rather go hungry than drawher attention to it, although he did feel a terri-ble urge to rush forward from under the couch,throw himself at his sister's feet and beg her forsomething good to eat. However, his sister no-ticed the full dish immediately and looked at itand the few drops of milk splashed around itwith some surprise. She immediately picked it

up - using a rag, not her bare hands - and car-ried it out. Gregor was extremely curious as towhat she would bring in its place, imaginingthe wildest possibilities, but he never couldhave guessed what his sister, in her goodness,actually did bring. In order to test his taste, shebrought him a whole selection of things, allspread out on an old newspaper. There wereold, half-rotten vegetables; bones from the eve-ning meal, covered in white sauce that had go-ne hard; a few raisins and almonds; some chee-se that Gregor had declared inedible two daysbefore; a dry roll and some bread spread withbutter and salt. As well as all that she had pou-red some water into the dish, which had pro-bably been permanently set aside for Gregor'suse, and placed it beside them. Then, out ofconsideration for Gregor's feelings, as she knewthat he would not eat in front of her, she hur-ried out again and even turned the key in thelock so that Gregor would know he could makethings as comfortable for himself as he liked.

Gregor's little legs whirred, at last he could eat.What's more, his injuries must already havecompletely healed as he found no difficulty inmoving. This amazed him, as more than amonth earlier he had cut his finger slightly witha knife, he thought of how his finger had stillhurt the day before yesterday. "Am I less sensi-tive than I used to be, then?", he thought, andwas already sucking greedily at the cheesewhich had immediately, almost compellingly,attracted him much more than the other foodson the newspaper. Quickly one after another,his eyes watering with pleasure, he consumedthe cheese, the vegetables and the sauce; thefresh foods, on the other hand, he didn't like atall, and even dragged the things he did want toeat a little way away from them because hecouldn't stand the smell. Long after he had fin-ished eating and lay lethargic in the same place,his sister slowly turned the key in the lock as asign to him that he should withdraw. He wasimmediately startled, although he had been

half asleep, and he hurried back under thecouch. But he needed great self-control to staythere even for the short time that his sister wasin the room, as eating so much food hadrounded out his body a little and he couldhardly breathe in that narrow space. Half suf-focating, he watched with bulging eyes as hissister unselfconsciously took a broom andswept up the left-overs, mixing them in withthe food he had not even touched at all as if itcould not be used any more. She quickly drop-ped it all into a bin, closed it with its woodenlid, and carried everything out. She had hardlyturned her back before Gregor came out againfrom under the couch and stretched himself.

This was how Gregor received his food eachday now, once in the morning while his parentsand the maid were still asleep, and the secondtime after everyone had eaten their meal atmidday as his parents would sleep for a littlewhile then as well, and Gregor's sister would

send the maid away on some errand. Gregor'sfather and mother certainly did not want himto starve either, but perhaps it would have beenmore than they could stand to have any moreexperience of his feeding than being told aboutit, and perhaps his sister wanted to spare themwhat distress she could as they were indeedsuffering enough.

It was impossible for Gregor to find out whatthey had told the doctor and the locksmith thatfirst morning to get them out of the flat. As no-body could understand him, nobody, not evenhis sister, thought that he could understandthem, so he had to be content to hear his sister'ssighs and appeals to the saints as she movedabout his room. It was only later, when she hadbecome a little more used to everything - therewas, of course, no question of her ever becom-ing fully used to the situation - that Gregorwould sometimes catch a friendly comment, orat least a comment that could be construed as

friendly. "He's enjoyed his dinner today", shemight say when he had diligently cleared awayall the food left for him, or if he left most of it,which slowly became more and more frequent,she would often say, sadly, "now everything'sjust been left there again".

Although Gregor wasn't able to hear any newsdirectly he did listen to much of what was saidin the next rooms, and whenever he heard any-one speaking he would scurry straight to theappropriate door and press his whole bodyagainst it. There was seldom any conversation,especially at first, that was not about him insome way, even if only in secret. For two wholedays, all the talk at every mealtime was aboutwhat they should do now; but even betweenmeals they spoke about the same subject asthere were always at least two members of thefamily at home - nobody wanted to be at homeby themselves and it was out of the question toleave the flat entirely empty. And on the very

first day the maid had fallen to her knees andbegged Gregor's mother to let her go withoutdelay. It was not very clear how much sheknew of what had happened but she left withina quarter of an hour, tearfully thanking Gre-gor's mother for her dismissal as if she had do-ne her an enormous service. She even sworeemphatically not to tell anyone the slightestabout what had happened, even though no-onehad asked that of her.

Now Gregor's sister also had to help his motherwith the cooking; although that was not somuch bother as no-one ate very much. Gregoroften heard how one of them would unsuccess-fully urge another to eat, and receive no moreanswer than "no thanks, I've had enough" orsomething similar. No-one drank very mucheither. His sister would sometimes ask his fa-ther whether he would like a beer, hoping forthe chance to go and fetch it herself. When hisfather then said nothing she would add, so that

he would not feel selfish, that she could sendthe housekeeper for it, but then his fatherwould close the matter with a big, loud "No",and no more would be said.

Even before the first day had come to an end,his father had explained to Gregor's motherand sister what their finances and prospectswere. Now and then he stood up from the tableand took some receipt or document from thelittle cash box he had saved from his businesswhen it had collapsed five years earlier. Gregorheard how he opened the complicated lock andthen closed it again after he had taken the itemhe wanted. What he heard his father say wassome of the first good news that Gregor heardsince he had first been incarcerated in his room.He had thought that nothing at all remainedfrom his father's business, at least he had nevertold him anything different, and Gregor hadnever asked him about it anyway. Their busi-ness misfortune had reduced the family to a

state of total despair, and Gregor's only concernat that time had been to arrange things so thatthey could all forget about it as quickly as pos-sible. So then he started working especiallyhard, with a fiery vigour that raised him from ajunior salesman to a travelling representativealmost overnight, bringing with it the chance toearn money in quite different ways. Gregorconverted his success at work straight into cashthat he could lay on the table at home for thebenefit of his astonished and delighted family.They had been good times and they had nevercome again, at least not with the same splen-dour, even though Gregor had later earned somuch that he was in a position to bear the costsof the whole family, and did bear them. Theyhad even got used to it, both Gregor and thefamily, they took the money with gratitude andhe was glad to provide it, although there wasno longer much warm affection given in return.Gregor only remained close to his sister now.Unlike him, she was very fond of music and a

gifted and expressive violinist, it was his secretplan to send her to the conservatory next yeareven though it would cause great expense thatwould have to be made up for in some otherway. During Gregor's short periods in town,conversation with his sister would often turn tothe conservatory but it was only ever men-tioned as a lovely dream that could never berealised. Their parents did not like to hear thisinnocent talk, but Gregor thought about it quitehard and decided he would let them knowwhat he planned with a grand announcementof it on Christmas day.

That was the sort of totally pointless thing thatwent through his mind in his present state,pressed upright against the door and listening.There were times when he simply became tootired to continue listening, when his headwould fall wearily against the door and hewould pull it up again with a start, as even theslightest noise he caused would be heard next

door and they would all go silent. "What's thathe's doing now", his father would say after awhile, clearly having gone over to the door,and only then would the interrupted conversa-tion slowly be taken up again.

When explaining things, his father repeatedhimself several times, partly because it was along time since he had been occupied with the-se matters himself and partly because Gregor'smother did not understand everything firsttime. From these repeated explanations Gregorlearned, to his pleasure, that despite all theirmisfortunes there was still some money avail-able from the old days. It was not a lot, but ithad not been touched in the meantime and so-me interest had accumulated. Besides that, theyhad not been using up all the money that Gre-gor had been bringing home every month, kee-ping only a little for himself, so that that, too,had been accumulating. Behind the door, Gre-gor nodded with enthusiasm in his pleasure at

this unexpected thrift and caution. He couldactually have used this surplus money to re-duce his father's debt to his boss, and the daywhen he could have freed himself from that jobwould have come much closer, but now it wascertainly better the way his father had donethings.

This money, however, was certainly notenough to enable the family to live off the in-terest; it was enough to maintain them for, per-haps, one or two years, no more. That's to say,it was money that should not really be touchedbut set aside for emergencies; money to live onhad to be earned. His father was healthy butold, and lacking in self confidence. During thefive years that he had not been working - thefirst holiday in a life that had been full of strainand no success - he had put on a lot of weightand become very slow and clumsy. WouldGregor's elderly mother now have to go andearn money? She suffered from asthma and it

was a strain for her just to move about thehome, every other day would be spent strug-gling for breath on the sofa by the open win-dow. Would his sister have to go and earn mo-ney? She was still a child of seventeen, her lifeup till then had been very enviable, consistingof wearing nice clothes, sleeping late, helpingout in the business, joining in with a few mod-est pleasures and most of all playing the violin.Whenever they began to talk of the need toearn money, Gregor would always first let goof the door and then throw himself onto thecool, leather sofa next to it, as he became quitehot with shame and regret.

He would often lie there the whole nightthrough, not sleeping a wink but scratching atthe leather for hours on end. Or he might go toall the effort of pushing a chair to the window,climbing up onto the sill and, propped up inthe chair, leaning on the window to stare out ofit. He had used to feel a great sense of freedom

from doing this, but doing it now was obvi-ously something more remembered than ex-perienced, as what he actually saw in this waywas becoming less distinct every day, eventhings that were quite near; he had used tocurse the ever-present view of the hospitalacross the street, but now he could not see it atall, and if he had not known that he lived inCharlottenstrasse, which was a quiet street de-spite being in the middle of the city, he couldhave thought that he was looking out the win-dow at a barren waste where the grey sky andthe grey earth mingled inseparably. His obser-vant sister only needed to notice the chair twicebefore she would always push it back to itsexact position by the window after she hadtidied up the room, and even left the inner paneof the window open from then on.

If Gregor had only been able to speak to hissister and thank her for all that she had to dofor him it would have been easier for him to

bear it; but as it was it caused him pain. Hissister, naturally, tried as far as possible to pre-tend there was nothing burdensome about it,and the longer it went on, of course, the bettershe was able to do so, but as time went by Gre-gor was also able to see through it all so muchbetter. It had even become very unpleasant forhim, now, whenever she entered the room. Nosooner had she come in than she would quicklyclose the door as a precaution so that no-onewould have to suffer the view into Gregor'sroom, then she would go straight to the win-dow and pull it hurriedly open almost as if shewere suffocating. Even if it was cold, she wouldstay at the window breathing deeply for a littlewhile. She would alarm Gregor twice a daywith this running about and noise making; hewould stay under the couch shivering the who-le while, knowing full well that she would cer-tainly have liked to spare him this ordeal, but itwas impossible for her to be in the same roomwith him with the windows closed.

One day, about a month after Gregor's trans-formation when his sister no longer had anyparticular reason to be shocked at his appear-ance, she came into the room a little earlier thanusual and found him still staring out the win-dow, motionless, and just where he would bemost horrible. In itself, his sister's not cominginto the room would have been no surprise forGregor as it would have been difficult for her toimmediately open the window while he wasstill there, but not only did she not come in, shewent straight back and closed the door behindher, a stranger would have thought he hadthreatened her and tried to bite her. Gregorwent straight to hide himself under the couch,of course, but he had to wait until midday be-fore his sister came back and she seemed muchmore uneasy than usual. It made him realisethat she still found his appearance unbearableand would continue to do so, she probablyeven had to overcome the urge to flee when shesaw the little bit of him that protruded from

under the couch. One day, in order to spare hereven this sight, he spent four hours carrying thebedsheet over to the couch on his back and ar-ranged it so that he was completely coveredand his sister would not be able to see him evenif she bent down. If she did not think this sheetwas necessary then all she had to do was take itoff again, as it was clear enough that it was nopleasure for Gregor to cut himself off so com-pletely. She left the sheet where it was. Gregoreven thought he glimpsed a look of gratitudeone time when he carefully looked out fromunder the sheet to see how his sister liked thenew arrangement.

For the first fourteen days, Gregor's parentscould not bring themselves to come into theroom to see him. He would often hear them sayhow they appreciated all the new work his sis-ter was doing even though, before, they hadseen her as a girl who was somewhat uselessand frequently been annoyed with her. But

now the two of them, father and mother, wouldoften both wait outside the door of Gregor'sroom while his sister tidied up in there, and assoon as she went out again she would have totell them exactly how everything looked, whatGregor had eaten, how he had behaved thistime and whether, perhaps, any slight im-provement could be seen. His mother alsowanted to go in and visit Gregor relatively soonbut his father and sister at first persuaded heragainst it. Gregor listened very closely to allthis, and approved fully. Later, though, she hadto be held back by force, which made her callout: "Let me go and see Gregor, he is my unfor-tunate son! Can't you understand I have to seehim?", and Gregor would think to himself thatmaybe it would be better if his mother came in,not every day of course, but one day a week,perhaps; she could understand everythingmuch better than his sister who, for all her cou-rage, was still just a child after all, and really

might not have had an adult's appreciation ofthe burdensome job she had taken on.

Gregor's wish to see his mother was soon real-ised. Out of consideration for his parents, Gre-gor wanted to avoid being seen at the windowduring the day, the few square meters of thefloor did not give him much room to crawlabout, it was hard to just lie quietly through thenight, his food soon stopped giving him anypleasure at all, and so, to entertain himself, hegot into the habit of crawling up and down thewalls and ceiling. He was especially fond ofhanging from the ceiling; it was quite differentfrom lying on the floor; he could breathe morefreely; his body had a light swing to it; and upthere, relaxed and almost happy, it might hap-pen that he would surprise even himself byletting go of the ceiling and landing on the floorwith a crash. But now, of course, he had farbetter control of his body than before and, evenwith a fall as great as that, caused himself no

damage. Very soon his sister noticed Gregor'snew way of entertaining himself - he had, afterall, left traces of the adhesive from his feet as hecrawled about - and got it into her head to ma-ke it as easy as possible for him by removingthe furniture that got in his way, especially thechest of drawers and the desk. Now, this wasnot something that she would be able to do byherself; she did not dare to ask for help fromher father; the sixteen year old maid had car-ried on bravely since the cook had left but shecertainly would not have helped in this, shehad even asked to be allowed to keep the kit-chen locked at all times and never to have toopen the door unless it was especially impor-tant; so his sister had no choice but to choosesome time when Gregor's father was not thereand fetch his mother to help her. As she ap-proached the room, Gregor could hear his mot-her express her joy, but once at the door shewent silent. First, of course, his sister came inand looked round to see that everything in the

room was alright; and only then did she let hermother enter. Gregor had hurriedly pulled thesheet down lower over the couch and put morefolds into it so that everything really looked asif it had just been thrown down by chance. Gre-gor also refrained, this time, from spying outfrom under the sheet; he gave up the chance tosee his mother until later and was simply gladthat she had come. "You can come in, he can'tbe seen", said his sister, obviously leading herin by the hand. The old chest of drawers wastoo heavy for a pair of feeble women to be hea-ving about, but Gregor listened as they pushedit from its place, his sister always taking on theheaviest part of the work for herself and ignor-ing her mother's warnings that she wouldstrain herself. This lasted a very long time. Af-ter labouring at it for fifteen minutes or morehis mother said it would be better to leave thechest where it was, for one thing it was tooheavy for them to get the job finished beforeGregor's father got home and leaving it in the

middle of the room it would be in his way evenmore, and for another thing it wasn't even surethat taking the furniture away would really beany help to him. She thought just the opposite;the sight of the bare walls saddened her right toher heart; and why wouldn't Gregor feel thesame way about it, he'd been used to this furni-ture in his room for a long time and it wouldmake him feel abandoned to be in an emptyroom like that. Then, quietly, almost whisper-ing as if wanting Gregor (whose whereaboutsshe did not know) to hear not even the tone ofher voice, as she was convinced that he did notunderstand her words, she added "and by tak-ing the furniture away, won't it seem like we'reshowing that we've given up all hope of im-provement and we're abandoning him to copefor himself? I think it'd be best to leave theroom exactly the way it was before so thatwhen Gregor comes back to us again he'll findeverything unchanged and he'll be able to for-get the time in between all the easier".

Hearing these words from his mother madeGregor realise that the lack of any direct humancommunication, along with the monotonouslife led by the family during these two months,must have made him confused - he could thinkof no other way of explaining to himself whyhe had seriously wanted his room emptied out.Had he really wanted to transform his roominto a cave, a warm room fitted out with thenice furniture he had inherited? That wouldhave let him crawl around unimpeded in anydirection, but it would also have let him quic-kly forget his past when he had still been hu-man. He had come very close to forgetting, andit had only been the voice of his mother, un-heard for so long, that had shaken him out of it.Nothing should be removed; everything had tostay; he could not do without the good influ-ence the furniture had on his condition; and ifthe furniture made it difficult for him to crawlabout mindlessly that was not a loss but a greatadvantage.

His sister, unfortunately, did not agree; she hadbecome used to the idea, not without reason,that she was Gregor's spokesman to his parentsabout the things that concerned him. Thismeant that his mother's advice now was suffi-cient reason for her to insist on removing notonly the chest of drawers and the desk, as shehad thought at first, but all the furniture apartfrom the all-important couch. It was more thanchildish perversity, of course, or the unex-pected confidence she had recently acquired,that made her insist; she had indeed noticedthat Gregor needed a lot of room to crawl aboutin, whereas the furniture, as far as anyonecould see, was of no use to him at all. Girls ofthat age, though, do become enthusiastic aboutthings and feel they must get their way when-ever they can. Perhaps this was what temptedGrete to make Gregor's situation seem evenmore shocking than it was so that she could doeven more for him. Grete would probably bethe only one who would dare enter a room

dominated by Gregor crawling about the barewalls by himself.

So she refused to let her mother dissuade her.Gregor's mother already looked uneasy in hisroom, she soon stopped speaking and helpedGregor's sister to get the chest of drawers outwith what strength she had. The chest of draw-ers was something that Gregor could do with-out if he had to, but the writing desk had tostay. Hardly had the two women pushed thechest of drawers, groaning, out of the roomthan Gregor poked his head out from under thecouch to see what he could do about it. Hemeant to be as careful and considerate as hecould, but, unfortunately, it was his motherwho came back first while Grete in the nextroom had her arms round the chest, pushingand pulling at it from side to side by herselfwithout, of course, moving it an inch. His mot-her was not used to the sight of Gregor, hemight have made her ill, so Gregor hurried

backwards to the far end of the couch. In hisstartlement, though, he was not able to preventthe sheet at its front from moving a little. It wasenough to attract his mother's attention. Shestood very still, remained there a moment, andthen went back out to Grete.

Gregor kept trying to assure himself that noth-ing unusual was happening, it was just a fewpieces of furniture being moved after all, but hesoon had to admit that the women going to andfro, their little calls to each other, the scrapingof the furniture on the floor, all these thingsmade him feel as if he were being assailed fromall sides. With his head and legs pulled inagainst him and his body pressed to the floor,he was forced to admit to himself that he couldnot stand all of this much longer. They wereemptying his room out; taking away everythingthat was dear to him; they had already takenout the chest containing his fretsaw and othertools; now they threatened to remove the writ-

ing desk with its place clearly worn into thefloor, the desk where he had done his home-work as a business trainee, at high school, evenwhile he had been at infant school - he reallycould not wait any longer to see whether thetwo women's intentions were good. He hadnearly forgotten they were there anyway, asthey were now too tired to say anything whilethey worked and he could only hear their feetas they stepped heavily on the floor.

So, while the women were leant against thedesk in the other room catching their breath, hesallied out, changed direction four times notknowing what he should save first before hisattention was suddenly caught by the pictureon the wall - which was already denuded ofeverything else that had been on it - of the ladydressed in copious fur. He hurried up onto thepicture and pressed himself against its glass, itheld him firmly and felt good on his hot belly.This picture at least, now totally covered by

Gregor, would certainly be taken away by no-one. He turned his head to face the door intothe living room so that he could watch the wo-men when they came back.

They had not allowed themselves a long restand came back quite soon; Grete had put herarm around her mother and was nearly carry-ing her. "What shall we take now, then?", saidGrete and looked around. Her eyes met thoseof Gregor on the wall. Perhaps only becauseher mother was there, she remained calm, benther face to her so that she would not lookround and said, albeit hurriedly and with atremor in her voice: "Come on, let's go back inthe living room for a while?" Gregor could seewhat Grete had in mind, she wanted to take hermother somewhere safe and then chase himdown from the wall. Well, she could certainlytry it! He sat unyielding on his picture. Hewould rather jump at Grete's face.

But Grete's words had made her mother quiteworried, she stepped to one side, saw the enor-mous brown patch against the flowers of thewallpaper, and before she even realised it wasGregor that she saw screamed: "Oh God, ohGod!" Arms outstretched, she fell onto thecouch as if she had given up everything andstayed there immobile. "Gregor!" shouted hissister, glowering at him and shaking her fist.That was the first word she had spoken to himdirectly since his transformation. She ran intothe other room to fetch some kind of smellingsalts to bring her mother out of her faint; Gre-gor wanted to help too - he could save his pic-ture later, although he stuck fast to the glassand had to pull himself off by force; then he,too, ran into the next room as if he could advisehis sister like in the old days; but he had to juststand behind her doing nothing; she was look-ing into various bottles, he startled her whenshe turned round; a bottle fell to the groundand broke; a splinter cut Gregor's face, some

kind of caustic medicine splashed all over him;now, without delaying any longer, Grete tookhold of all the bottles she could and ran withthem in to her mother; she slammed the doorshut with her foot. So now Gregor was shut outfrom his mother, who, because of him, might benear to death; he could not open the door if hedid not want to chase his sister away, and shehad to stay with his mother; there was nothingfor him to do but wait; and, oppressed withanxiety and self-reproach, he began to crawlabout, he crawled over everything, walls, furni-ture, ceiling, and finally in his confusion as thewhole room began to spin around him he felldown into the middle of the dinner table.

He lay there for a while, numb and immobile,all around him it was quiet, maybe that was agood sign. Then there was someone at the door.The maid, of course, had locked herself in herkitchen so that Grete would have to go andanswer it. His father had arrived home. "What's

happened?" were his first words; Grete's ap-pearance must have made everything clear tohim. She answered him with subdued voice,and openly pressed her face into his chest:"Mother's fainted, but she's better now. Gregorgot out." "Just as I expected", said his father,"just as I always said, but you women wouldn'tlisten, would you." It was clear to Gregor thatGrete had not said enough and that his fathertook it to mean that something bad had hap-pened, that he was responsible for some act ofviolence. That meant Gregor would now haveto try to calm his father, as he did not have thetime to explain things to him even if that hadbeen possible. So he fled to the door of hisroom and pressed himself against it so that hisfather, when he came in from the hall, could seestraight away that Gregor had the best inten-tions and would go back into his room withoutdelay, that it would not be necessary to drivehim back but that they had only to open thedoor and he would disappear.

His father, though, was not in the mood to no-tice subtleties like that; "Ah!", he shouted as hecame in, sounding as if he were both angry andglad at the same time. Gregor drew his headback from the door and lifted it towards hisfather. He really had not imagined his fatherthe way he stood there now; of late, with hisnew habit of crawling about, he had neglectedto pay attention to what was going on the restof the flat the way he had done before. He rea-lly ought to have expected things to have chan-ged, but still, still, was that really his father?The same tired man as used to be laying thereentombed in his bed when Gregor came backfrom his business trips, who would receive himsitting in the armchair in his nightgown whenhe came back in the evenings; who was hardlyeven able to stand up but, as a sign of his plea-sure, would just raise his arms and who, on thecouple of times a year when they went for awalk together on a Sunday or public holidaywrapped up tightly in his overcoat between

Gregor and his mother, would always labourhis way forward a little more slowly than them,who were already walking slowly for his sake;who would place his stick down carefully and,if he wanted to say something would invaria-bly stop and gather his companions aroundhim. He was standing up straight enough now;dressed in a smart blue uniform with gold but-tons, the sort worn by the employees at thebanking institute; above the high, stiff collar ofthe coat his strong double-chin emerged; underthe bushy eyebrows, his piercing, dark eyeslooked out fresh and alert; his normally un-kempt white hair was combed down painfullyclose to his scalp. He took his cap, with its goldmonogram from, probably, some bank, andthrew it in an arc right across the room onto thesofa, put his hands in his trouser pockets, push-ing back the bottom of his long uniform coat,and, with look of determination, walked to-wards Gregor. He probably did not even knowhimself what he had in mind, but nonetheless

lifted his feet unusually high. Gregor was ama-zed at the enormous size of the soles of hisboots, but wasted no time with that - he knewfull well, right from the first day of his new life,that his father thought it necessary to always beextremely strict with him. And so he ran up tohis father, stopped when his father stopped,scurried forwards again when he moved, evenslightly. In this way they went round the roomseveral times without anything decisive hap-pening, without even giving the impression ofa chase as everything went so slowly. Gregorremained all this time on the floor, largely be-cause he feared his father might see it as espe-cially provoking if he fled onto the wall or ceil-ing. Whatever he did, Gregor had to admit thathe certainly would not be able to keep up thisrunning about for long, as for each step his fa-ther took he had to carry out countless move-ments. He became noticeably short of breath,even in his earlier life his lungs had not beenvery reliable. Now, as he lurched about in his

efforts to muster all the strength he could forrunning he could hardly keep his eyes open;his thoughts became too slow for him to thinkof any other way of saving himself than run-ning; he almost forgot that the walls were therefor him to use although, here, they were con-cealed behind carefully carved furniture full ofnotches and protrusions - then, right besidehim, lightly tossed, something flew down androlled in front of him. It was an apple; then an-other one immediately flew at him; Gregorfroze in shock; there was no longer any point inrunning as his father had decided to bombardhim. He had filled his pockets with fruit fromthe bowl on the sideboard and now, withouteven taking the time for careful aim, threw oneapple after another. These little, red apples ro-lled about on the floor, knocking into each ot-her as if they had electric motors. An applethrown without much force glanced againstGregor's back and slid off without doing anyharm. Another one however, immediately fol-

lowing it, hit squarely and lodged in his back;Gregor wanted to drag himself away, as if hecould remove the surprising, the incrediblepain by changing his position; but he felt as ifnailed to the spot and spread himself out, allhis senses in confusion. The last thing he sawwas the door of his room being pulled open, hissister was screaming, his mother ran out infront of her in her blouse (as his sister had ta-ken off some of her clothes after she had faintedto make it easier for her to breathe), she ran tohis father, her skirts unfastened and sliding oneafter another to the ground, stumbling over theskirts she pushed herself to his father, her armsaround him, uniting herself with him totally -now Gregor lost his ability to see anything - herhands behind his father's head begging him tospare Gregor's life.

III

No-one dared to remove the apple lodged inGregor's flesh, so it remained there as a visiblereminder of his injury. He had suffered it therefor more than a month, and his condition see-med serious enough to remind even his fatherthat Gregor, despite his current sad and revolt-ing form, was a family member who could notbe treated as an enemy. On the contrary, as afamily there was a duty to swallow any revul-sion for him and to be patient, just to be patient.

Because of his injuries, Gregor had lost much ofhis mobility - probably permanently. He hadbeen reduced to the condition of an ancientinvalid and it took him long, long minutes tocrawl across his room - crawling over the ceil-ing was out of the question - but this deteriora-tion in his condition was fully (in his opinion)made up for by the door to the living room be-

ing left open every evening. He got into thehabit of closely watching it for one or twohours before it was opened and then, lying inthe darkness of his room where he could not beseen from the living room, he could watch thefamily in the light of the dinner table and listento their conversation - with everyone's permis-sion, in a way, and thus quite differently frombefore.

They no longer held the lively conversations ofearlier times, of course, the ones that Gregoralways thought about with longing when hewas tired and getting into the damp bed in so-me small hotel room. All of them were usuallyvery quiet nowadays. Soon after dinner, hisfather would go to sleep in his chair; his motherand sister would urge each other to be quiet;his mother, bent deeply under the lamp, wouldsew fancy underwear for a fashion shop; hissister, who had taken a sales job, learned short-hand and French in the evenings so that she

might be able to get a better position later on.Sometimes his father would wake up and sayto Gregor's mother "you're doing so much sew-ing again today!", as if he did not know that hehad been dozing - and then he would go backto sleep again while mother and sister wouldexchange a tired grin.

With a kind of stubbornness, Gregor's fatherrefused to take his uniform off even at home;while his nightgown hung unused on its pegGregor's father would slumber where he was,fully dressed, as if always ready to serve andexpecting to hear the voice of his superior evenhere. The uniform had not been new to startwith, but as a result of this it slowly becameeven shabbier despite the efforts of Gregor'smother and sister to look after it. Gregor wouldoften spend the whole evening looking at allthe stains on this coat, with its gold buttonsalways kept polished and shiny, while the old

man in it would sleep, highly uncomfortablebut peaceful.

As soon as it struck ten, Gregor's mother wouldspeak gently to his father to wake him and tryto persuade him to go to bed, as he couldn'tsleep properly where he was and he really hadto get his sleep if he was to be up at six to get towork. But since he had been in work he hadbecome more obstinate and would always in-sist on staying longer at the table, even thoughhe regularly fell asleep and it was then harderthan ever to persuade him to exchange thechair for his bed. Then, however much motherand sister would importune him with little re-proaches and warnings he would keep slowlyshaking his head for a quarter of an hour withhis eyes closed and refusing to get up. Gregor'smother would tug at his sleeve, whisper en-dearments into his ear, Gregor's sister wouldleave her work to help her mother, but nothingwould have any effect on him. He would just

sink deeper into his chair. Only when the twowomen took him under the arms he wouldabruptly open his eyes, look at them one afterthe other and say: "What a life! This is whatpeace I get in my old age!" And supported bythe two women he would lift himself up care-fully as if he were carrying the greatest loadhimself, let the women take him to the door,send them off and carry on by himself whileGregor's mother would throw down her needleand his sister her pen so that they could runafter his father and continue being of help tohim.

Who, in this tired and overworked family,would have had time to give more attention toGregor than was absolutely necessary? Thehousehold budget became even smaller; so nowthe maid was dismissed; an enormous, thick-boned charwoman with white hair that flappedaround her head came every morning and eve-ning to do the heaviest work; everything else

was looked after by Gregor's mother on top ofthe large amount of sewing work she did. Gre-gor even learned, listening to the evening con-versation about what price they had hoped for,that several items of jewellery belonging to thefamily had been sold, even though both motherand sister had been very fond of wearing themat functions and celebrations. But the loudestcomplaint was that although the flat was muchtoo big for their present circumstances, theycould not move out of it, there was no imagin-able way of transferring Gregor to the new ad-dress. He could see quite well, though, thatthere were more reasons than consideration forhim that made it difficult for them to move, itwould have been quite easy to transport him inany suitable crate with a few air holes in it; themain thing holding the family back from theirdecision to move was much more to do withtheir total despair, and the thought that theyhad been struck with a misfortune unlike any-thing experienced by anyone else they knew or

were related to. They carried out absolutelyeverything that the world expects from poorpeople, Gregor's father brought bank employ-ees their breakfast, his mother sacrificed herselfby washing clothes for strangers, his sister ranback and forth behind her desk at the behest ofthe customers, but they just did not have thestrength to do any more. And the injury in Gre-gor's back began to hurt as much as when itwas new. After they had come back from tak-ing his father to bed Gregor's mother and sisterwould now leave their work where it was andsit close together, cheek to cheek; his motherwould point to Gregor's room and say "Closethat door, Grete", and then, when he was in thedark again, they would sit in the next room andtheir tears would mingle, or they would simplysit there staring dry-eyed at the table.

Gregor hardly slept at all, either night or day.Sometimes he would think of taking over thefamily's affairs, just like before, the next time

the door was opened; he had long forgottenabout his boss and the chief clerk, but theywould appear again in his thoughts, the sales-men and the apprentices, that stupid teaboy,two or three friends from other businesses, oneof the chambermaids from a provincial hotel, atender memory that appeared and disappearedagain, a cashier from a hat shop for whom hisattention had been serious but too slow, - all ofthem appeared to him, mixed together withstrangers and others he had forgotten, but in-stead of helping him and his family they wereall of them inaccessible, and he was glad whenthey disappeared. Other times he was not at allin the mood to look after his family, he wasfilled with simple rage about the lack of atten-tion he was shown, and although he couldthink of nothing he would have wanted, hemade plans of how he could get into the pantrywhere he could take all the things he was enti-tled to, even if he was not hungry. Gregor'ssister no longer thought about how she could

please him but would hurriedly push somefood or other into his room with her foot beforeshe rushed out to work in the morning and atmidday, and in the evening she would sweep itaway again with the broom, indifferent as towhether it had been eaten or - more often thannot - had been left totally untouched. She stillcleared up the room in the evening, but nowshe could not have been any quicker about it.Smears of dirt were left on the walls, here andthere were little balls of dust and filth. At first,Gregor went into one of the worst of these pla-ces when his sister arrived as a reproach to her,but he could have stayed there for weeks with-out his sister doing anything about it; she couldsee the dirt as well as he could but she hadsimply decided to leave him to it. At the sametime she became touchy in a way that was quitenew for her and which everyone in the familyunderstood - cleaning up Gregor's room wasfor her and her alone. Gregor's mother did oncethoroughly clean his room, and needed to use

several bucketfuls of water to do it - althoughthat much dampness also made Gregor ill andhe lay flat on the couch, bitter and immobile.But his mother was to be punished still morefor what she had done, as hardly had his sisterarrived home in the evening than she noticedthe change in Gregor's room and, highly ag-grieved, ran back into the living room where,despite her mothers raised and imploringhands, she broke into convulsive tears. Herfather, of course, was startled out of his chairand the two parents looked on astonished andhelpless; then they, too, became agitated; Gre-gor's father, standing to the right of his mother,accused her of not leaving the cleaning of Gre-gor's room to his sister; from her left, Gregor'ssister screamed at her that she was never toclean Gregor's room again; while his mothertried to draw his father, who was beside him-self with anger, into the bedroom; his sister,quaking with tears, thumped on the table withher small fists; and Gregor hissed in anger that

no-one had even thought of closing the door tosave him the sight of this and all its noise.

Gregor's sister was exhausted from going out towork, and looking after Gregor as she had donebefore was even more work for her, but even sohis mother ought certainly not to have takenher place. Gregor, on the other hand, ought notto be neglected. Now, though, the charwomanwas here. This elderly widow, with a robustbone structure that made her able to withstandthe hardest of things in her long life, wasn'treally repelled by Gregor. Just by chance oneday, rather than any real curiosity, she openedthe door to Gregor's room and found herselfface to face with him. He was taken totally bysurprise, no-one was chasing him but he beganto rush to and fro while she just stood there inamazement with her hands crossed in front ofher. From then on she never failed to open thedoor slightly every evening and morning andlook briefly in on him. At first she would call to

him as she did so with words that she probablyconsidered friendly, such as "come on then, youold dung-beetle!", or "look at the old dung-beetle there!" Gregor never responded to beingspoken to in that way, but just remained wherehe was without moving as if the door had ne-ver even been opened. If only they had told thischarwoman to clean up his room every dayinstead of letting her disturb him for no reasonwhenever she felt like it! One day, early in themorning while a heavy rain struck the win-dowpanes, perhaps indicating that spring wascoming, she began to speak to him in that wayonce again. Gregor was so resentful of it that hestarted to move toward her, he was slow andinfirm, but it was like a kind of attack. Insteadof being afraid, the charwoman just lifted upone of the chairs from near the door and stoodthere with her mouth open, clearly intendingnot to close her mouth until the chair in herhand had been slammed down into Gregor'sback. "Aren't you coming any closer, then?", she

asked when Gregor turned round again, andshe calmly put the chair back in the corner.

Gregor had almost entirely stopped eating.Only if he happened to find himself next to thefood that had been prepared for him he mighttake some of it into his mouth to play with it,leave it there a few hours and then, more oftenthan not, spit it out again. At first he thought itwas distress at the state of his room that stop-ped him eating, but he had soon got used to thechanges made there. They had got into thehabit of putting things into this room that theyhad no room for anywhere else, and there werenow many such things as one of the rooms inthe flat had been rented out to three gentlemen.These earnest gentlemen - all three of them hadfull beards, as Gregor learned peering throughthe crack in the door one day - were painfullyinsistent on things' being tidy. This meant notonly in their own room but, since they had ta-ken a room in this establishment, in the entire

flat and especially in the kitchen. Unnecessaryclutter was something they could not tolerate,especially if it was dirty. They had moreoverbrought most of their own furnishings andequipment with them. For this reason, manythings had become superfluous which, al-though they could not be sold, the family didnot wish to discard. All these things found theirway into Gregor's room. The dustbins from thekitchen found their way in there too. The char-woman was always in a hurry, and anythingshe couldn't use for the time being she wouldjust chuck in there. He, fortunately, would usu-ally see no more than the object and the handthat held it. The woman most likely meant tofetch the things back out again when she hadtime and the opportunity, or to throw every-thing out in one go, but what actually hap-pened was that they were left where theylanded when they had first been thrown unlessGregor made his way through the junk andmoved it somewhere else. At first he moved it

because, with no other room free where hecould crawl about, he was forced to, but lateron he came to enjoy it although moving aboutin the way left him sad and tired to death andhe would remain immobile for hours after-wards.

The gentlemen who rented the room wouldsometimes take their evening meal at home inthe living room that was used by everyone, andso the door to this room was often kept closedin the evening. But Gregor found it easy to giveup having the door open, he had, after all, oftenfailed to make use of it when it was open and,without the family having noticed it, lain in hisroom in its darkest corner. One time, though,the charwoman left the door to the living roomslightly open, and it remained open when thegentlemen who rented the room came in in theevening and the light was put on. They sat upat the table where, formerly, Gregor had takenhis meals with his father and mother, they un-

folded the serviettes and picked up their knivesand forks. Gregor's mother immediately ap-peared in the doorway with a dish of meat andsoon behind her came his sister with a dishpiled high with potatoes. The food was steam-ing, and filled the room with its smell. The gen-tlemen bent over the dishes set in front of themas if they wanted to test the food before eatingit, and the gentleman in the middle, whoseemed to count as an authority for the othertwo, did indeed cut off a piece of meat while itwas still in its dish, clearly wishing to establishwhether it was sufficiently cooked or whether itshould be sent back to the kitchen. It was to hissatisfaction, and Gregor's mother and sister,who had been looking on anxiously, began tobreathe again and smiled.

The family themselves ate in the kitchen. None-theless, Gregor's father came into the livingroom before he went into the kitchen, bowedonce with his cap in his hand and did his round

of the table. The gentlemen stood as one, andmumbled something into their beards. Then,once they were alone, they ate in near perfectsilence. It seemed remarkable to Gregor thatabove all the various noises of eating their che-wing teeth could still be heard, as if they hadwanted to Show Gregor that you need teeth inorder to eat and it was not possible to performanything with jaws that are toothless howevernice they might be. "I'd like to eat something",said Gregor anxiously, "but not anything likethey're eating. They do feed themselves. Andhere I am, dying!"

Throughout all this time, Gregor could not re-member having heard the violin being played,but this evening it began to be heard from thekitchen. The three gentlemen had already fin-ished their meal, the one in the middle had pro-duced a newspaper, given a page to each of theothers, and now they leant back in their chairsreading them and smoking. When the violin

began playing they became attentive, stood upand went on tip-toe over to the door of the hall-way where they stood pressed against eachother. Someone must have heard them in thekitchen, as Gregor's father called out: "Is theplaying perhaps unpleasant for the gentlemen?We can stop it straight away." "On the con-trary", said the middle gentleman, "would theyoung lady not like to come in and play for ushere in the room, where it is, after all, muchmore cosy and comfortable?" "Oh yes, we'dlove to", called back Gregor's father as if he hadbeen the violin player himself. The gentlemenstepped back into the room and waited. Gre-gor's father soon appeared with the musicstand, his mother with the music and his sisterwith the violin. She calmly prepared everythingfor her to begin playing; his parents, who hadnever rented a room out before and thereforeshowed an exaggerated courtesy towards thethree gentlemen, did not even dare to sit ontheir own chairs; his father leant against the

door with his right hand pushed in betweentwo buttons on his uniform coat; his mother,though, was offered a seat by one of the gen-tlemen and sat - leaving the chair where thegentleman happened to have placed it - out ofthe way in a corner.

His sister began to play; father and mother paidclose attention, one on each side, to the move-ments of her hands. Drawn in by the playing,Gregor had dared to come forward a little andalready had his head in the living room. Before,he had taken great pride in how considerate hewas but now it hardly occurred to him that hehad become so thoughtless about the others.What's more, there was now all the more rea-son to keep himself hidden as he was coveredin the dust that lay everywhere in his room andflew up at the slightest movement; he carriedthreads, hairs, and remains of food about on hisback and sides; he was much too indifferent toeverything now to lay on his back and wipe

himself on the carpet like he had used to doseveral times a day. And despite this condition,he was not too shy to move forward a little on-to the immaculate floor of the living room.

No-one noticed him, though. The family wastotally preoccupied with the violin playing; atfirst, the three gentlemen had put their handsin their pockets and come up far too close be-hind the music stand to look at all the notesbeing played, and they must have disturbedGregor's sister, but soon, in contrast with thefamily, they withdrew back to the windowwith their heads sunk and talking to each otherat half volume, and they stayed by the windowwhile Gregor's father observed them anxiously.It really now seemed very obvious that theyhad expected to hear some beautiful or enter-taining violin playing but had been disap-pointed, that they had had enough of the wholeperformance and it was only now out of polite-ness that they allowed their peace to be dis-

turbed. It was especially unnerving, the waythey all blew the smoke from their cigarettesupwards from their mouth and noses. Yet Gre-gor's sister was playing so beautifully. Her facewas leant to one side, following the lines ofmusic with a careful and melancholy expres-sion. Gregor crawled a little further forward,keeping his head close to the ground so that hecould meet her eyes if the chance came. Was hean animal if music could captivate him so? Itseemed to him that he was being shown theway to the unknown nourishment he had beenyearning for. He was determined to make hisway forward to his sister and tug at her skirt toshow her she might come into his room withher violin, as no-one appreciated her playinghere as much as he would. He never wanted tolet her out of his room, not while he lived,anyway; his shocking appearance should, foronce, be of some use to him; he wanted to be atevery door of his room at once to hiss and spitat the attackers; his sister should not be forced

to stay with him, though, but stay of her ownfree will; she would sit beside him on the couchwith her ear bent down to him while he toldher how he had always intended to send her tothe conservatory, how he would have told eve-ryone about it last Christmas - had Christmasreally come and gone already? - if this misfor-tune hadn't got in the way, and refuse to letanyone dissuade him from it. On hearing allthis, his sister would break out in tears of emo-tion, and Gregor would climb up to her shoul-der and kiss her neck, which, since she hadbeen going out to work, she had kept free wit-hout any necklace or collar.

"Mr. Samsa!", shouted the middle gentleman toGregor's father, pointing, without wasting anymore words, with his forefinger at Gregor as heslowly moved forward. The violin went silent,the middle of the three gentlemen first smiledat his two friends, shaking his head, and thenlooked back at Gregor. His father seemed to

think it more important to calm the three gen-tlemen before driving Gregor out, even thoughthey were not at all upset and seemed to thinkGregor was more entertaining that the violinplaying had been. He rushed up to them withhis arms spread out and attempted to drivethem back into their room at the same time astrying to block their view of Gregor with hisbody. Now they did become a little annoyed,and it was not clear whether it was his father'sbehaviour that annoyed them or the dawningrealisation that they had had a neighbour likeGregor in the next room without knowing it.They asked Gregor's father for explanations,raised their arms like he had, tugged excitedlyat their beards and moved back towards theirroom only very slowly. Meanwhile Gregor'ssister had overcome the despair she had falleninto when her playing was suddenly inter-rupted. She had let her hands drop and let vio-lin and bow hang limply for a while but con-tinued to look at the music as if still playing,

but then she suddenly pulled herself together,lay the instrument on her mother's lap who stillsat laboriously struggling for breath where shewas, and ran into the next room which, underpressure from her father, the three gentlemenwere more quickly moving toward. Under hissister's experienced hand, the pillows and cov-ers on the beds flew up and were put into orderand she had already finished making the bedsand slipped out again before the three gentle-men had reached the room. Gregor's fatherseemed so obsessed with what he was doingthat he forgot all the respect he owed to histenants. He urged them and pressed them until,when he was already at the door of the room,the middle of the three gentlemen shouted likethunder and stamped his foot and therebybrought Gregor's father to a halt. "I declare hereand now", he said, raising his hand and glanc-ing at Gregor's mother and sister to gain theirattention too, "that with regard to the repug-nant conditions that prevail in this flat and with

this family" - here he looked briefly but deci-sively at the floor - "I give immediate notice onmy room. For the days that I have been livinghere I will, of course, pay nothing at all, on thecontrary I will consider whether to proceedwith some kind of action for damages fromyou, and believe me it would be very easy toset out the grounds for such an action." He wassilent and looked straight ahead as if waitingfor something. And indeed, his two friendsjoined in with the words: "And we also giveimmediate notice." With that, he took hold ofthe door handle and slammed the door.

Gregor's father staggered back to his seat, feel-ing his way with his hands, and fell into it; itlooked as if he was stretching himself out forhis usual evening nap but from the uncon-trolled way his head kept nodding it could beseen that he was not sleeping at all. Throughoutall this, Gregor had lain still where the threegentlemen had first seen him. His disappoint-

ment at the failure of his plan, and perhaps alsobecause he was weak from hunger, made itimpossible for him to move. He was sure thateveryone would turn on him any moment, andhe waited. He was not even startled out of thisstate when the violin on his mother's lap fellfrom her trembling fingers and landed loudlyon the floor.

"Father, Mother", said his sister, hitting the ta-ble with her hand as introduction, "we can'tcarry on like this. Maybe you can't see it, but Ican. I don't want to call this monster my brot-her, all I can say is: we have to try and get rid ofit. We've done all that's humanly possible tolook after it and be patient, I don't think anyonecould accuse us of doing anything wrong."

"She's absolutely right", said Gregor's father tohimself. His mother, who still had not had timeto catch her breath, began to cough dully, herhand held out in front of her and a derangedexpression in her eyes.

Gregor's sister rushed to his mother and puther hand on her forehead. Her words seemedto give Gregor's father some more definiteideas. He sat upright, played with his uniformcap between the plates left by the three gentle-men after their meal, and occasionally lookeddown at Gregor as he lay there immobile.

"We have to try and get rid of it", said Gregor'ssister, now speaking only to her father, as hermother was too occupied with coughing to lis-ten, "it'll be the death of both of you, I can see itcoming. We can't all work as hard as we haveto and then come home to be tortured like this,we can't endure it. I can't endure it any more."And she broke out so heavily in tears that theyflowed down the face of her mother, and shewiped them away with mechanical hand mo-vements.

"My child", said her father with sympathy andobvious understanding, "what are we to do?"

His sister just shrugged her shoulders as a signof the helplessness and tears that had takenhold of her, displacing her earlier certainty.

"If he could just understand us", said his fatheralmost as a question; his sister shook her handvigorously through her tears as a sign that ofthat there was no question.

"If he could just understand us", repeated Gre-gor's father, closing his eyes in acceptance ofhis sister's certainty that that was quite impos-sible, "then perhaps we could come to somekind of arrangement with him. But as it is ..."

"It's got to go", shouted his sister, "that's theonly way, Father. You've got to get rid of theidea that that's Gregor. We've only harmedourselves by believing it for so long. How canthat be Gregor? If it were Gregor he wouldhave seen long ago that it's not possible forhuman beings to live with an animal like thatand he would have gone of his own free will.

We wouldn't have a brother any more, then,but we could carry on with our lives and re-member him with respect. As it is this animal ispersecuting us, it's driven out our tenants, itobviously wants to take over the whole flat andforce us to sleep on the streets. Father, look, justlook", she suddenly screamed, "he's startingagain!" In her alarm, which was totally beyondGregor's comprehension, his sister even aban-doned his mother as she pushed herself vigor-ously out of her chair as if more willing to sac-rifice her own mother than stay anywhere nearGregor. She rushed over to behind her father,who had become excited merely because shewas and stood up half raising his hands in frontof Gregor's sister as if to protect her.

But Gregor had had no intention of frighteninganyone, least of all his sister. All he had donewas begin to turn round so that he could goback into his room, although that was in itselfquite startling as his pain-wracked condition

meant that turning round required a great dealof effort and he was using his head to help him-self do it, repeatedly raising it and striking itagainst the floor. He stopped and lookedround. They seemed to have realised his goodintention and had only been alarmed briefly.Now they all looked at him in unhappy silence.His mother lay in her chair with her legs stret-ched out and pressed against each other, hereyes nearly closed with exhaustion; his sistersat next to his father with her arms around hisneck.

"Maybe now they'll let me turn round", thoughtGregor and went back to work. He could nothelp panting loudly with the effort and hadsometimes to stop and take a rest. No-one wasmaking him rush any more, everything was leftup to him. As soon as he had finally finishedturning round he began to move straightahead. He was amazed at the great distancethat separated him from his room, and could

not understand how he had covered that dis-tance in his weak state a little while before andalmost without noticing it. He concentrated oncrawling as fast as he could and hardly noticedthat there was not a word, not any cry, from hisfamily to distract him. He did not turn his headuntil he had reached the doorway. He did notturn it all the way round as he felt his neck be-coming stiff, but it was nonetheless enough tosee that nothing behind him had changed, onlyhis sister had stood up. With his last glance hesaw that his mother had now fallen completelyasleep.

He was hardly inside his room before the doorwas hurriedly shut, bolted and locked. Thesudden noise behind Gregor so startled himthat his little legs collapsed under him. It washis sister who had been in so much of a rush.She had been standing there waiting andsprung forward lightly, Gregor had not heardher coming at all, and as she turned the key in

the lock she said loudly to her parents "Atlast!".

"What now, then?", Gregor asked himself as helooked round in the darkness. He soon madethe discovery that he could no longer move atall. This was no surprise to him, it seemed rat-her that being able to actually move around onthose spindly little legs until then was unnatu-ral. He also felt relatively comfortable. It is truethat his entire body was aching, but the painseemed to be slowly getting weaker and wea-ker and would finally disappear altogether. Hecould already hardly feel the decayed apple inhis back or the inflamed area around it, whichwas entirely covered in white dust. He thoughtback of his family with emotion and love. If itwas possible, he felt that he must go away evenmore strongly than his sister. He remained inthis state of empty and peaceful ruminationuntil he heard the clock tower strike three inthe morning. He watched as it slowly began to

get light everywhere outside the window too.Then, without his willing it, his head sankdown completely, and his last breath flowedweakly from his nostrils.

When the cleaner came in early in the morning- they'd often asked her not to keep slammingthe doors but with her strength and in herhurry she still did, so that everyone in the flatknew when she'd arrived and from then on itwas impossible to sleep in peace - she made herusual brief look in on Gregor and at first foundnothing special. She thought he was laying the-re so still on purpose, playing the martyr; sheattributed all possible understanding to him.She happened to be holding the long broom inher hand, so she tried to tickle Gregor with itfrom the doorway. When she had no successwith that she tried to make a nuisance of herselfand poked at him a little, and only when shefound she could shove him across the floorwith no resistance at all did she start to pay

attention. She soon realised what had reallyhappened, opened her eyes wide, whistled toherself, but did not waste time to yank open thebedroom doors and shout loudly into the dark-ness of the bedrooms: "Come and 'ave a look atthis, it's dead, just lying there, stone dead!"

Mr. and Mrs. Samsa sat upright there in theirmarriage bed and had to make an effort to getover the shock caused by the cleaner beforethey could grasp what she was saying. Butthen, each from his own side, they hurried outof bed. Mr. Samsa threw the blanket over hisshoulders, Mrs. Samsa just came out in hernightdress; and that is how they went into Gre-gor's room. On the way they opened the doorto the living room where Grete had been sleep-ing since the three gentlemen had moved in;she was fully dressed as if she had never beenasleep, and the paleness of her face seemed toconfirm this. "Dead?", asked Mrs. Samsa, look-ing at the charwoman enquiringly, even though

she could have checked for herself and couldhave known it even without checking. "That'swhat I said", replied the cleaner, and to prove itshe gave Gregor's body another shove with thebroom, sending it sideways across the floor.Mrs. Samsa made a movement as if she wantedto hold back the broom, but did not complete it."Now then", said Mr. Samsa, "let's give thanksto God for that". He crossed himself, and thethree women followed his example. Grete, whohad not taken her eyes from the corpse, said:"Just look how thin he was. He didn't eat any-thing for so long. The food came out again justthe same as when it went in". Gregor's bodywas indeed completely dried up and flat, theyhad not seen it until then, but now he was notlifted up on his little legs, nor did he do any-thing to make them look away.

"Grete, come with us in here for a little while",said Mrs. Samsa with a pained smile, and Gretefollowed her parents into the bedroom but not

without looking back at the body. The cleanershut the door and opened the window wide.Although it was still early in the morning thefresh air had something of warmth mixed inwith it. It was already the end of March, afterall.

The three gentlemen stepped out of their roomand looked round in amazement for theirbreakfasts; they had been forgotten about."Where is our breakfast?", the middle gentle-man asked the cleaner irritably. She just put herfinger on her lips and made a quick and silentsign to the men that they might like to comeinto Gregor's room. They did so, and stoodaround Gregor's corpse with their hands in thepockets of their well-worn coats. It was nowquite light in the room.

Then the door of the bedroom opened and Mr.Samsa appeared in his uniform with his wifeon one arm and his daughter on the other. All

of them had been crying a little; Grete now andthen pressed her face against her father's arm.

"Leave my home. Now!", said Mr. Samsa, indi-cating the door and without letting the womenfrom him. "What do you mean?", asked themiddle of the three gentlemen somewhat dis-concerted, and he smiled sweetly. The othertwo held their hands behind their backs andcontinually rubbed them together in gleefulanticipation of a loud quarrel which could onlyend in their favour. "I mean just what I said",answered Mr. Samsa, and, with his two com-panions, went in a straight line towards theman. At first, he stood there still, looking at theground as if the contents of his head were rear-ranging themselves into new positions. "Al-right, we'll go then", he said, and looked up atMr. Samsa as if he had been suddenly over-come with humility and wanted permissionagain from Mr. Samsa for his decision. Mr.Samsa merely opened his eyes wide and briefly

nodded to him several times. At that, andwithout delay, the man actually did take longstrides into the front hallway; his two friendshad stopped rubbing their hands some timebefore and had been listening to what was be-ing said. Now they jumped off after their friendas if taken with a sudden fear that Mr. Samsamight go into the hallway in front of them andbreak the connection with their leader. Oncethere, all three took their hats from the stand,took their sticks from the holder, bowed with-out a word and left the premises. Mr. Samsaand the two women followed them out onto thelanding; but they had had no reason to mistrustthe men' intentions and as they leaned over thelanding they saw how the three gentlemen ma-de slow but steady progress down the manysteps. As they turned the corner on each floorthey disappeared and would reappear a fewmoments later; the further down they went, themore that the Samsa family lost interest inthem; when a butcher's boy, proud of posture

with his tray on his head, passed them on hisway up and came nearer than they were, Mr.Samsa and the women came away from thelanding and went, as if relieved, back into theflat.

They decided the best way to make use of thatday was for relaxation and to go for a walk; notonly had they earned a break from work butthey were in serious need of it. So they sat atthe table and wrote three letters of excusal, Mr.Samsa to his employers, Mrs. Samsa to her con-tractor and Grete to her principal. The cleanercame in while they were writing to tell themshe was going, she'd finished her work for thatmorning. The three of them at first just noddedwithout looking up from what they were writ-ing, and it was only when the cleaner still didnot seem to want to leave that they looked upin irritation. "Well?", asked Mr. Samsa. Thecharwoman stood in the doorway with a smileon her face as if she had some tremendous

good news to report, but would only do it if shewas clearly asked to. The almost vertical littleostrich feather on her hat, which had beensource of irritation to Mr. Samsa all the timeshe had been working for them, swayed gentlyin all directions. "What is it you want then?",asked Mrs. Samsa, whom the cleaner had themost respect for. "Yes", she answered, andbroke into a friendly laugh that made her un-able to speak straight away, "well then, thatthing in there, you needn't worry about howyou're going to get rid of it. That's all beensorted out." Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent downover their letters as if intent on continuing withwhat they were writing; Mr. Samsa saw thatthe cleaner wanted to start describing every-thing in detail but, with outstretched hand, hemade it quite clear that she was not to. So, asshe was prevented from telling them all aboutit, she suddenly remembered what a hurry shewas in and, clearly peeved, called out "Cheerio

then, everyone", turned round sharply and left,slamming the door terribly as she went.

"Tonight she gets sacked", said Mr. Samsa, buthe received no reply from either his wife or hisdaughter as the charwoman seemed to havedestroyed the peace they had only just gained.They got up and went over to the windowwhere they remained with their arms aroundeach other. Mr. Samsa twisted round in hischair to look at them and sat there watching fora while. Then he called out: "Come here, then.Let's forget about all that old stuff, shall we.Come and give me a bit of attention". The twowomen immediately did as he said, hurryingover to him where they kissed him and huggedhim and then they quickly finished their letters.

After that, the three of them left the flat to-gether, which was something they had notdone for months, and took the tram out to theopen country outside the town. They had thetram, filled with warm sunshine, all to them-

selves. Leant back comfortably on their seats,they discussed their prospects and found thaton closer examination they were not at all bad -until then they had never asked each otherabout their work but all three had jobs whichwere very good and held particularly goodpromise for the future. The greatest improve-ment for the time being, of course, would beachieved quite easily by moving house; whatthey needed now was a flat that was smallerand cheaper than the current one which hadbeen chosen by Gregor, one that was in a betterlocation and, most of all, more practical. All thetime, Grete was becoming livelier. With all theworry they had been having of late her cheekshad become pale, but, while they were talking,Mr. and Mrs. Samsa were struck, almost simul-taneously, with the thought of how theirdaughter was blossoming into a well built andbeautiful young lady. They became quieter. Justfrom each other's glance and almost withoutknowing it they agreed that it would soon be

time to find a good man for her. And, as if inconfirmation of their new dreams and goodintentions, as soon as they reached their desti-nation Grete was the first to get up and stretchout her young body.