The Meowmorphosis (5 page)

IN THIS WAY
Gregor got his food every day: once in the morning, when his parents and the servant girl were still asleep, and a second time after the common noon meal, for his parents were, as before, asleep then for a little while, and the servant girl was sent off by his sister on some errand or other. They certainly would not have wanted Gregor to starve to death, but perhaps they could not have endured finding out what he ate other than by hearsay. Perhaps his sister wanted to spare them what was possibly only a small grief, for they were really suffering quite enough already.

What sorts of excuses people had used on that first morning to get the doctor and the locksmith out of the house Gregor was completely unable to ascertain. Since they could not understand him, no one, not even his sister, thought that he might be able to understand others, and thus, when his sister was in her room, he had to be content with listening now and then to her sighs and invocations to the saints, her occasional kissing, smacking sounds, meant to entice him to her lap. Only later, when she had grown somewhat accustomed to everything—naturally there could never be any talk of her growing
completely
accustomed to it—Gregor sometimes caught a comment that sounded almost as though the situation were normal and no source of alarm. “Well, today it tasted good to him,” she said, if Gregor had really cleaned his plate; whereas, on the other
hand, when she insisted (as she did with increasing frequency) on bringing him bread and vegetables, cakes, candies and other unappetizing foodstuffs that were not fish or other soft meats, or even the milk he had been too injured to enjoy fully, his sister would say sadly, “Now everything has stopped again.”

But while Gregor could get no new information directly, he did hear a good deal from the room next door, and as soon as he heard voices, he would scurry right away to the appropriate door and press his entire body against it, purring and rubbing his cheek against the grain of the wood in a fashion he found most embarrassing yet a distinct source of pleasure. In the early days especially, there was no conversation that was not concerned with him in some way or other, even if only in secret. For two days, all the family’s meal-time discussions he could hear were about how people should now behave toward him; but they also talked about the same subject in the times between meals, for there were always at least two family members at home, since no one really wanted to remain there alone with him and they could not under any circumstances imagine leaving the apartment completely empty. In addition, on the very first day the servant girl—it was not completely clear what and how much she knew about what had happened—on her knees had begged his mother to let her go immediately, and when she said goodbye about fifteen minutes later, she thanked them
for the dismissal with tears in her eyes, as if she was receiving the greatest favor that people had shown her there, and, without anyone demanding it from her, she swore a fearful oath not to betray anyone, not even the slightest bit, if they would only allow her to stroke Gregor’s large, striped head just once, which she found adorable, yet terrifying.

Gregor endured this imposition as stoically as he was able; no others witnessed it, a fact for which he was glad, and again, he found that purring which he could neither control nor predict, rumbling up from his furry chest, even now growing broader and more stately.

Now his sister had to team up with his mother to do the cooking, although that didn’t create much trouble because people were eating almost nothing. Again and again Gregor listened as one of them vainly invited another one to eat and received no answer other than, “Thank you. I’ve had enough,” or something like that. And perhaps they had stopped having anything to drink, too. His sister often asked his father whether he wanted to have a beer and gladly offered to fetch it herself, and when his father was silent, she said, in order to remove any reservations he might have, that she could send the caretaker’s wife to get it. But then his father finally uttered a resounding “No,” and nothing more would be spoken about it.

ON THE FIRST DAY
of Gregor’s changed situation, his father had laid out all the financial circumstances and prospects to his mother and sister. From time to time since, the elder Mr. Samsa would stand up from the table, take the small lockbox salvaged from his business, which had collapsed five years previously, and pull out some document or notebook. (Gregor could hear the distinct sound of the box’s complicated lock opening and, after his father was done with it, closing and locking again.) These explanations by his father were the first somewhat enjoyable thing that Gregor had the chance to listen to since his imprisonment. Gregor had thought that no money at
all
remained from that business; at least, his father had told him nothing to contradict that view, and Gregor in any case hadn’t asked him about it. At the time, Gregor’s only concern had been to work as hard as he possibly could so that his family might forget as quickly as possible the financial misfortune that had brought them all into such a state of complete hopelessness. And so at that point he’d applied himself to his job with a special intensity and from an assistant had become, almost overnight, a traveling salesman, which naturally opened entirely different possibilities for earning money, as his successes at work were turned immediately into cash commissions, which could be brought home and set on the table in front of his astonished and delighted family.

Those had been beautiful days, and they had never come back afterward, at least not with the same splendor, despite that Gregor later earned so much money that he was in a position to bear the expenses of the entire family, which was precisely what he did. They had become quite accustomed to it, both the family and Gregor as well. They took the money with thanks, and he happily surrendered it—but as that arrangement continued, their warm family intimacy faded. Only Grete remained still close to Gregor, and it was his secret plan to send her next year to the conservatory, regardless of the great expense that necessarily involved and which would have to be made up in other ways. Unlike Gregor, she loved music very much and knew how to play the violin charmingly. Now and then during Gregor’s short stays at home, music school would come up in conversations with his sister, but always only as a beautiful dream whose realization was unimaginable, and their parents never listened to these innocent expectations with pleasure. But Gregor dwelled upon it with scrupulous consideration and intended to present his plan to Grete and his parents ceremoniously on Christmas.

In his present situation, he would recall such thoughts, recognizing their futility now, as he pushed himself right up against the door and listened to the others. Sometimes, in his general exhaustion, he couldn’t listen anymore and let his head droop
sleepily against the door, but he immediately pulled himself together, for even the small sound he made by this motion was heard outside and caused everyone to immediately fall silent. “There he goes again,” his father said after a while, clearly turning toward the door, and only then would the interrupted conversation gradually be resumed again.

Gregor found out clearly enough—for his father tended to repeat himself often in his explanations, partly because he had not concerned himself with these matters for a long time now, and partly also because his mother did not understand everything right away the first time—that, in spite of all the bad luck they’d suffered, a modest sum of money was still available from the old times, and the interest, which had not been touched, had in the intervening time gradually increased a bit. In addition, the money that Gregor had brought home every month—he had kept only a few florins for himself—had not been completely spent and had grown into a small capital amount. Gregor, behind his door, nodded eagerly, rejoicing over this unanticipated foresight and frugality. He even allowed himself a small, triumphant squeak, which he prayed went unheard. True, had he known of this excess money, he could have paid off more of his father’s debt to his employer, and the day on which he could be rid of his horrid job would have been a lot closer—but now things were doubtlessly better the way his
father had arranged them.

At the moment, however, this savings was not nearly enough to permit the family to live on the interest payments. Perhaps it would be enough to maintain them for a year or two at most, but that was all. Thus, it should ideally continue to be set aside for use as a last resort, in case of a true emergency; meanwhile, the money to live on would have to be earned. Now, Gregor’s father was old, and though he was a healthy man, he had not worked at all for five years and thus could not be counted on for very much. He had, in those five years—the first time off he’d ever had in his trouble-filled but unsuccessful life—put on a good deal of fat. And should Gregor’s old mother now work for money, a woman who suffered from asthma, exacerbated now by Gregor’s constant shedding of his fine fur and dander; a woman for whom just wandering through the apartment was a great strain, who spent every second day on the sofa by the open window laboring for breath? Or should his sister go to work to earn money, a girl who was still a seventeen-year-old child whose earlier lifestyle had been so very delightful that it had consisted of dressing herself nicely, sleeping in late, helping around the house, taking part in a few modest enjoyments, and, above all, playing the violin? When the options were laid out like that, Gregor went away from the door and threw himself on the cool leather sofa beside the door,
for he was quite hot from shame and sorrow.

Often he lay there all night long. He didn’t get a minute of sleep, just scratched on the leather for hours at a time. Finally, recalling the satisfaction that the sight of the street outside used to bring him, he undertook the difficult task of shoving a chair over to the window; then he crept up on the windowsill and, braced in the chair, leaned against the glass to look out.

With each passing day, Gregor found that he could see things with more and more clarity, even things a long distance away, especially in the dark: the hospital across the street, the all-too-frequent sight of which he had previously cursed, was visible clearly now, even to the colors of the beards of various patients, and if he had not been precisely aware that he lived in the quiet but completely urban Charlotte Street, he could have believed that from his window he was peering out at an astonishing painting, in which the clear heaven and the teeming earth had merged and were full of extraordinarily sharply drawn scenes and landscapes. His attentive sister must have observed a couple of times that the chair stood by the window, for thereafter, upon cleaning up the room, she made sure to push the chair back right against the window, and from now on she even left the inner casement open.

If Gregor had only been able to speak to his sister and thank her for everything that she had to do for him, he could
have tolerated her attentions more easily. Grete sought to cover up the awkwardness of everything as much as possible—particularly that of cleaning up his business, which was now messier than it once was. As time went by, she naturally got more successful at it. But with the passing of time, Gregor also came to understand everything more precisely. Even her entrance was terrible for him. As soon as she entered, she ran straight to him, squealing with delight and chasing him about the room, caring little whether he wished to be held or cosseted. She would shut the window, out of which he spent the better part of his time gazing, and shut the door so that he was quite trapped. She then set to her ministrations, winding her fingers in his long, bushy tail, scratching his ears, speaking nonsense and lifting him high into the air before producing her silver hairbrush and compelling him to lie uncomfortably upon his back while she brushed his tangled fur until it became quite glossy—a process Gregor found extraordinarily painful and annoying. With this fuss and noise she frightened Gregor twice every day, and thus the entire time between her visits he trembled under the couch, though he knew very well that she would certainly have spared him gladly if only he had been a little less handsome, furry, or enticing to the spirit of a young girl.

On one occasion—about a month had gone by since Gregor’s transformation, and there was now no particular reason
anymore for his sister to be startled at Gregor’s appearance—she arrived a little earlier than usual and came upon Gregor as he was still looking out the window, immobile and well positioned to frighten someone. It would not have come as a surprise to Gregor if she had not come in, since his position was preventing her from closing the window immediately, lest he fall out. But she not only stepped inside; she brought in a porcelain washtub, picked him up, and bathed him vigorously, ignoring his caterwauls of protest. A stranger really might have concluded from the expression on his face that Gregor wanted to bite her. Instead, the girl produced a rose-colored collar, with bells and bits of shiny material on it, as well as a large, bright buckle. Gregor’s heart quailed against the thing, but he could not resist his sister with any effectiveness as she seized his damp scruff and wrangled him into the thing with no ceremony whatsoever.

Of course, when it was done, Gregor immediately concealed himself under the couch and began frantically licking himself to remove any memory of the bath, any thought of the hideous collar, and he had to wait until the noon meal before Grete returned, though she seemed calmer than usual. From this he realized that his appearance was still constantly tempting to her and must remain tempting in future, and that she really had to exert a lot of self-control not to run toward the
slightest glimpse of even only that small part of his body which stuck out from under the couch. In order to spare himself, one day Gregor pulled the sheet onto his back and dragged it onto the couch—this task took him four hours—and arranged it in such a way that he was now completely concealed, so his sister, even if she bent down, could not see him. Of course she could remove it, but she left the sheet just as it was, catching his meaning, and Gregor believed he even caught a look of sorrow when, on one occasion, he carefully lifted up the sheet a little with his head to check, as his sister took stock of the new arrangement.