Chapter III · I

Gregor’s severe wound, from which he suffered for over a month—the apple remained embedded in his flesh as a visible reminder, since no one dared to remove it—seemed to have reminded even the father that Gregor, despite his present sad and repulsive form, was a member of the family, who must not be treated like an enemy, but toward whom the commandment of family duty dictated that one swallow one’s disgust and endure, nothing but endure.

And even if, through his wound, Gregor had now lost some of his mobility, probably forever, and for the time being required long, long minutes like an old invalid to cross his room—crawling up high was out of the question—he received for this worsening of his condition what he considered completely sufficient compensation in that, toward evening, the living-room door, which he was accustomed to watch closely an hour or two beforehand, was always opened, so that, lying in the darkness of his room, invisible from the living room, he was permitted to see the whole family at the illuminated table and to listen to their conversation, as it were with general consent, thus quite differently from before.

To be sure, these were no longer the lively conversations of former times, of which Gregor had always thought with a certain longing in the small hotel rooms when he had had to cast himself, exhausted, into the damp bedding. Things were mostly very quiet now. The father would fall asleep in his armchair soon after supper; the mother and sister urged each other to silence; the mother, leaning far forward under the light, sewed delicate underwear for a fashion shop; the sister, who had taken a position as a salesgirl, studied shorthand and French in the evening, in order perhaps to obtain a better post at some future time. Sometimes the father woke up, and as if he did not know at all that he had been asleep, said to the mother: “How long you have been sewing again today!” and immediately fell asleep once more, while mother and sister smiled wearily at each other.

With a kind of obstinacy, the father refused to take off his servant’s uniform even at home; and while the dressing gown hung useless on the peg, the father slumbered fully dressed in his place, as if he were always ready for service and awaiting even here the voice of his superior. In consequence, the uniform, which had not been new to begin with, lost its cleanliness despite all the care of mother and sister, and Gregor often gazed for entire evenings at this garment, covered all over with stains, gleaming with its constantly polished gold buttons, in which the old man slept most uncomfortably and yet peacefully.

As soon as the clock struck ten, the mother tried to wake the father with gentle urging and then persuade him to go to bed, for this was no real sleep here, and the father, who had to go on duty at six o’clock, was sorely in need of it. But in the obstinacy that had seized him since he had become a servant, he always insisted on remaining longer at the table, even though he regularly fell asleep, and then was only with the greatest difficulty to be moved to exchange the armchair for his bed. No matter how much mother and sister pressed him with small admonitions, for a quarter of an hour he would slowly shake his head, keep his eyes shut, and refuse to get up. The mother tugged at his sleeve, whispered fond words into his ear, the sister left her work to help the mother, but none of it took effect with the father. He only sank deeper into his armchair. Not until the women took him under the arms did he open his eyes, look back and forth between mother and sister, and say as he was accustomed: “This is a life. This is the peace of my old age.” And leaning upon the two women, he rose, cumbrously, as if he were the greatest burden to himself, let the women lead him to the door, waved them away there, and proceeded on his own, while the mother hastily cast aside her sewing, the sister her pen, in order to run after the father and be of further assistance to him.

Who in this overworked and exhausted family had time to attend to Gregor more than was strictly necessary? The household expenses were curtailed more and more; the maid was dismissed after all; an enormous, bony charwoman with white hair fluttering about her head came morning and evening to do the heaviest work; everything else was attended to by the mother alongside her copious sewing. It even happened that various pieces of family jewelry, which the mother and sister had once worn with utter delight at entertainments and festivities, were sold, as Gregor learned in the evening from the general discussion of the prices fetched. But the greatest complaint was always that they could not leave this apartment, which was far too large for their present circumstances, since it was inconceivable how Gregor was to be moved. Gregor, however, saw quite clearly that it was not mere consideration for him that prevented a move, for he could easily have been transported in a suitable crate with a few air holes; what mainly kept the family from changing their lodging was rather their complete despair and the thought that they had been struck by a misfortune unlike anyone else among their whole circle of relatives and acquaintances. What the world demands of poor people they fulfilled to the utmost: the father fetched breakfast for the petty bank officials, the mother sacrificed herself for the linen of strangers, the sister ran back and forth behind the counter at the behest of customers, but the family’s strength could reach no further. And the wound in his back began to pain Gregor afresh when mother and sister, having put the father to bed, now returned, left their work lying, drew close together, sat there cheek to cheek; when the mother, pointing to Gregor’s room, said: “Shut the door there, Grete,” and Gregor was left once more in the dark, while next door the women mingled their tears or, without any tears, stared blankly at the table.

Gregor spent his nights and days almost entirely without sleep. Sometimes he thought of taking the family’s affairs in hand again, just as he used to, the next time the door opened; into his thoughts, after a long absence, reappeared the chief and the manager, the clerks and the apprentices, the errand boy who was so dense, two or three friends from other firms, a chambermaid in a provincial hotel—a sweet, fleeting memory—a cashier in a milliner’s shop whom he had courted earnestly but too slowly—they all appeared mingled with strangers or people already forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family, they were one and all inaccessible, and he was glad when they faded away. Then again he was in no mood at all to worry about his family; he was filled with sheer fury over the wretched care he received, and although he could not imagine anything that might tempt his appetite, he nevertheless made plans for how he might get into the pantry to take what was, after all, his due, even if he was not hungry. Without giving any more thought to what might please Gregor in particular, the sister, before hurrying off to work morning and noon, would hastily kick some dish or other into Gregor’s room, only to sweep it out again in the evening with a swing of the broom, indifferent to whether the food had perhaps merely been tasted or—as was most often the case—left completely untouched. The cleaning of the room, which she now always attended to in the evenings, could not possibly have been done any faster. Streaks of dirt ran along the walls, heaps of dust and rubbish lay here and there. In the beginning, whenever his sister arrived, Gregor would position himself in particularly conspicuous corners of this sort, as if to reprove her by taking such a stand. But he might well have remained there for weeks without his sister mending her ways; she saw the dirt just as clearly as he did, but she had simply made up her mind to leave it be. At the same time, with a touchiness entirely new to her, which had indeed seized the whole family, she watched jealously to ensure that the cleaning of Gregor’s room remained reserved for her alone. Once the mother had subjected Gregor’s room to a major cleaning, which she managed only after using several buckets of water—the excessive moisture, to be sure, distressed Gregor as well, and he lay sprawled, bitter and motionless, on the sofa—yet punishment was not spared the mother. For hardly had the sister noticed the change in Gregor’s room that evening when, mortally offended, she ran into the living room and, despite the mother’s beseechingly raised hands, burst into a fit of weeping, which the parents—the father having naturally been startled from his armchair—at first watched in astonishment and helplessness; until they too began to stir; the father on the right reproaching the mother for not leaving the cleaning of Gregor’s room to the sister; on the left shouting at the sister that she would never again be permitted to clean Gregor’s room; while the mother tried to drag the father, who was beside himself with agitation, into the bedroom; the sister, shaken by sobs, pounded the table with her little fists; and Gregor hissed loudly with rage because no one had thought to shut the door and spare him this spectacle and noise.

Yet even if the sister, exhausted by her daily work, had grown weary of looking after Gregor as she had done before, the mother would by no means have had to take her place, nor would Gregor have needed to be neglected. For now there was the charwoman. This old widow, who in her long life must have weathered the worst with the help of her robust bony frame, felt no real revulsion toward Gregor. Without being in the least inquisitive, she had once happened to open the door to Gregor’s room, and at the sight of Gregor, who, utterly astonished, began scurrying to and fro although no one was chasing him, she had stopped short in wonder, her hands folded across her apron. Since then, she never failed to open the door a crack, morning and evening, and peer in at Gregor. At first she would also call him to her with words she likely considered friendly, such as, “Come over here, old dung beetle!” or “Just look at the old dung beetle!” To such addresses Gregor made no reply, but remained motionless in his place as if the door had not been opened at all. If only this charwoman, instead of being allowed to disturb him uselessly at her whim, had been ordered to clean his room daily! Once, early in the morning—a heavy rain, perhaps already a sign of the approaching spring, was lashing against the windowpanes—Gregor grew so bitter when the charwoman began her phrases again that he turned upon her as if to attack, though slowly and infirmly. But the charwoman, instead of being afraid, merely hoisted high a chair that stood near the door, and as she stood there with her mouth wide open, her intention was clear: not to close her mouth until the chair in her hands had come crashing down upon Gregor’s back. “So that’s as far as it goes, then?” she asked as Gregor turned back around, and she calmly set the chair back in the corner.

Gregor now ate almost nothing at all. Only when he happened to pass by the food laid out for him would he take a bite into his mouth for sport, hold it there for hours, and then usually spit it out again. At first he thought it was grief over the state of his room that kept him from eating, but he soon reconciled himself to the changes in the room. People had formed the habit of putting into this room things that could not be accommodated elsewhere, and there were now many such things, since one room of the apartment had been rented out to three lodgers. These grave gentlemen—all three had full beards, as Gregor once observed through a crack in the door—were meticulously devoted to neatness, not only in their room, but, having taken up quarters here, throughout the whole household, and especially in the kitchen. They could not abide useless or, worse still, dirty rubbish. Moreover, they had brought most of their own furnishings with them. For this reason, many articles had become superfluous that were not saleable yet which no one wanted to throw away. All these migrated into Gregor’s room. So, too, did the ash box and the garbage bin from the kitchen. Anything that was momentarily unusable was simply flung into Gregor’s room by the charwoman, who was always in a great hurry; fortunately, Gregor mostly saw only the object in question and the hand holding it. The charwoman may have had the intention of retrieving the items when time and opportunity permitted, or of throwing them all out at once, but in fact they remained lying wherever they had landed at the first fling, unless Gregor wound his way through the junk and set it in motion—at first out of necessity, because there was no other space left for crawling, but later with growing pleasure, although after such wanderings, dead-tired and mournful, he would once again remain motionless for hours.

Since the lodgers sometimes also took their evening meal at home in the common living room, the living-room door remained closed on certain evenings, but Gregor easily resigned himself to its remaining shut, for he had already failed to take advantage of several evenings when it had been open, lying instead in the darkest corner of his room without the family’s noticing. Once, however, the charwoman had left the door to the living room slightly ajar, and it remained so even when the lodgers entered in the evening and the lamp was lit. They sat down at the head of the table, where in former times the father, the mother, and Gregor had sat, unfolded their napkins, and took up knife and fork. Immediately the mother appeared in the doorway with a platter of meat, and close behind her the sister with a dish heaped high with potatoes. The food gave off thick clouds of steam. The lodgers leaned over the dishes set before them as if wishing to examine them before eating, and in fact the one who sat in the middle and seemed to be regarded by the other two as an authority carved a piece of meat while it was still on the platter, evidently to ascertain whether it was tender enough and whether it should not perhaps be sent back to the kitchen. He was satisfied, and mother and sister, who had been watching tensely, began to smile with relief.

The family itself ate in the kitchen. Even so, before going into the kitchen, the father came into this room and, cap in hand, made a circuit of the table with a single bow. The lodgers all rose and murmured something into their beards. When they were alone again, they ate in almost complete silence. It seemed strange to Gregor that, amid all the manifold noises of eating, their chewing teeth could continually be heard, as though Gregor were to be shown that one needed teeth to eat, and that even with the finest toothless jaws one could accomplish nothing. “I do have an appetite,” Gregor said to himself anxiously, “but not for these things. How these lodgers nourish themselves, and I am perishing!”