The Sons (12 page)

In this manner Gregor was fed, once in the early morning while his parents and the maid were still asleep, and a second time after they had all had their midday meal, for
then his parents took a short nap and the girl could be sent out on some errand or other by his sister. Not that they would have wanted him to starve, of course, but perhaps they could not have endured learning more about his feeding than from hearsay; perhaps too his sister wanted to spare them such little anxieties wherever possible, since they had quite enough to bear as it was.

Under what pretext the doctor and the locksmith had been gotten rid of on that first morning Gregor could not discover, for since what he said was not understood by the others it never occurred to any of them, not even his sister, that he could understand what they said, and so whenever his sister came into his room he had to content himself with hearing her utter only a sigh now and then and an occasional appeal to the saints. Later on, when she had gotten a little used to the situation—of course she could never get completely used to it—Gregor would occasionally catch a remark which was kindly meant or could be so interpreted. “Well, he liked his dinner today,” she would say when Gregor had gobbled down all of his food; and when he had not eaten, which gradually happened more and more often, she would say almost sadly: “Everything’s been left untouched again.”

But although Gregor could get no news directly, he overheard a lot from the neighboring rooms, and as soon as voices were audible, he would run to the door of whichever room it was and press his whole body against it. In the first few days especially there was no conversation that did not concern him somehow, even if only indirectly. For two whole days there were family consultations at every mealtime about what should be done; but also between meals the same subject was discussed, for there were always at least two members of the family at home, since no one wanted to be alone in the apartment and to leave it altogether empty was unthinkable. And on the very first of these days the
cook—it was not quite clear what and how much she knew of the situation—fell on her knees before his mother and begged permission to leave, and when she departed a quarter of an hour later gave thanks for her release with tears in her eyes as if this were the greatest blessing that could ever be conferred on her, and without any prompting swore a solemn oath that she would never say a single word to anyone about what had happened.

Now Gregor’s sister had to do the cooking too with her mother’s help; true, this did not amount to much, for they ate scarcely anything. Gregor was always hearing one of the family vainly urging another to eat and getting no answer but “Thanks, I’ve had all I want,” or something similar. Nor did they seem to be drinking anything either. Time and again his sister kept asking his father if he wouldn’t like some beer and kindly offered to go and fetch it herself, and when he didn’t answer suggested that she could ask the concierge to fetch it, so that he need feel no sense of obligation, but then a loud “No” came from his father and no more was said about it.

In the course of that very first day Gregor’s father explained the family’s financial position and prospects to both his mother and his sister. Now and then he rose from the table to get some document or notebook out of the small safe he had rescued from the collapse of his business five years earlier. One could hear him opening the complicated lock and taking papers out and shutting it again. These explanations were the first cheerful information Gregor had heard since his imprisonment. He had been of the opinion that nothing at all was left over from his father’s business, at least his father had never said anything to the contrary, and of course he had not asked him directly. At that time Gregor’s sole desire was to do his utmost to help the family to forget as soon as possible the catastrophe that had overwhelmed the business and thrown them all into a state of complete de
spair. And so he had set to work with unusual ardor and almost overnight had become a traveling salesman instead of a little clerk, with of course much greater chances of earning money, and his success was immediately transformed into hard cash which he could lay on the table before his amazed and happy family. These had been fine times, and they had never recurred, at least not with the same sense of glory, although later on Gregor had earned so much money that he was able to meet the expenses of the whole household and did so. They had simply gotten used to it, both the family and Gregor; the money was gratefully accepted and gladly given, but there was no special outpouring of warm feeling. With his sister alone had he remained intimate, and it was a secret plan of his that she, who, unlike himself, loved music and could play the violin movingly, should be sent next year to study at the Conservatory, despite the great expense that would entail and which would have to be made up in some other way. During his brief visits home the Conservatory was often mentioned in the talks he had with his sister, but always merely as a beautiful dream which could never come true, and his parents discouraged even these innocent references to it; yet Gregor had made up his mind firmly about it and meant to announce the fact with due solemnity on Christmas Day.

Such were the thoughts, completely futile in his present condition, that went through his head as he stood glued upright to the door and listening. Sometimes out of sheer weariness he could no longer pay attention and accidentally let his head fall against the door, but he always pulled himself together again at once, for even the slight sound his head made was audible next door and brought all conversation to a stop. “What can he be doing now?” his father would say after a while, obviously turning toward the door, and only then would the interrupted conversation gradually start up again.

Gregor was now informed as amply as he could wish—for his father tended to repeat himself in his explanations, partly because it was a long time since he had dealt with such matters and partly because his mother could not always grasp things at once—that a certain amount of money, not all that much really, had survived the wreck of their fortunes and had even increased a little because the dividends had not been touched meanwhile. And besides that, the money Gregor brought home every month—he had kept only a few thalers for himself—had never been quite used up and now amounted to a substantial sum. Behind the door Gregor nodded his head eagerly, delighted by this evidence of unexpected thrift and foresight. True, he could really have paid off some more of his father’s debts to the head of his firm with this extra money, and thus brought much nearer the day on which he could quit his job, but doubtless it was better the way his father had arranged it.

Yet this capital was by no means sufficient to let the family live on the interest from it; for one year, perhaps, or at the most two, they could live on the principal, that was all. It was simply a sum that ought not to be touched and should be kept for a rainy day; money for living expenses would have to be earned. Now his father was still healthy enough but an old man, and he had done no work for the past five years and could not be expected to exert himself; during these five years, the first years of leisure in his laborious though unsuccessful life, he had put on a lot of weight and become sluggish. And Gregor’s old mother, how was she to earn a living with her asthma, which troubled her even when she walked through the apartment and kept her lying on a sofa every other day panting for breath beside an open window? And was his sister to earn her bread, she who was still a child of seventeen and whose life hitherto had been so pleasant, consisting as it did in dressing herself nicely, sleeping long, helping with the housework, going
out to a few modest entertainments, and above all playing the violin? At first whenever the need for earning money was mentioned Gregor let go of the door and threw himself down on the cool leather sofa beside it, he felt so hot with shame and grief.

Often he just lay there the long nights through without sleeping at all, scrabbling for hours on the leather. Or he worked himself up to the great effort of pushing an armchair to the window, then crawled up over the window-sill and, braced against the chair, leaned against the windowpanes, obviously in some recollection of the sense of freedom that looking out of a window always used to give him. For, in reality, day-by-day things that were only a little distance away were growing dimmer to his sight; the hospital across the street, which he used to curse for being all too often before his eyes, was now quite beyond his range of vision, and if he had not known that he lived on Charlotte Street, a quiet street but still a city street, he might have believed that his window looked out on a desert waste where gray sky and gray land blended indistinguishably into each other. His quick-witted sister only needed to observe twice that the armchair stood by the window; after that whenever she had tidied the room she always pushed the chair back to the same place at the window and even left the inner casements open.

If he could have spoken to her and thanked her for all she had to do for him, he could have endured her ministrations better; as it was, they pained him. She certainly tried to make as light as possible of whatever was disagreeable in her task, and as time went on she succeeded, of course, more and more, but time also allowed Gregor to see through things better too. The very way she came in distressed him. Hardly was she in the room when she rushed straight to the window, without even taking time to shut the door, careful as she was usually to shield the sight of Gregor’s room from the others, and as if she were about to suffocate tore the
windows open with impatient hands, standing then in the open draft for a while even in the bitterest cold and drawing deep breaths. This rushing around and banging of hers upset Gregor twice a day; he would crouch trembling under the sofa all the while, knowing quite well that she would certainly have spared him such a disturbance had she found it at all possible to stay in his presence without opening the window.

On one occasion, about a month after Gregor’s metamorphosis, when there was surely no reason for her to be still startled at his appearance, she came a little earlier than usual and found him gazing out of the window, quite motionless, and thus the perfect figure of terror. Gregor would not have been surprised had she not come in at all, for she could not immediately open the window while he was there, but not only did she retreat, she jumped back as if in alarm and slammed the door shut; a stranger might well have thought that he had been lying in wait for her there, planning to bite her. Of course he hid himself under the sofa at once, but he had to wait until midday before she came again, and she seemed more ill at ease than usual. This made him realize how repulsive the sight of him still was to her, and that it was bound to go on being repulsive, and what an effort it must cost her not to run away even from the sight of the small portion of his body that stuck out from under the sofa. In order to spare her that, therefore, one day he carried a sheet on his back to the sofa—it cost him four hours’ labor—and arranged it there in such a way as to hide himself completely, so that even if she were to bend down she could not see him. Had she considered the sheet unnecessary, she would certainly have stripped it off the sofa again, for it was clear enough that this total confinement of himself had not been undertaken just for his own pleasure, but she left it where it was, and Gregor even imagined that he caught a grateful look in her eye when he lifted the sheet
carefully a very little with his head to see how she was taking the new arrangement.

For the first two weeks his parents could not bring themselves to enter his room, and he often heard them expressing their appreciation of his sister’s activities, whereas formerly they had frequently been annoyed with her for being as they thought a somewhat useless girl. But now both of them often waited outside the door, his father and his mother, while his sister tidied his room, and as soon as she came out she had to tell them exactly how things were in the room, what Gregor had eaten, how he had conducted himself this time, and whether there was not perhaps some slight improvement in his condition. His mother, moreover, began relatively soon to want to visit him, but his father and sister dissuaded her at first with arguments which Gregor listened to very attentively and altogether approved. Later, however, she had to be held back by force, and when she cried out, “Let me in to see Gregor, he is my unfortunate son! Can’t you understand that I must go to him?” Gregor thought that it might be well to have her come in, not every day, of course, but perhaps once a week; she understood things, after all, much better than his sister, who was only a child despite her courage and when all was said and done had perhaps taken on so difficult a task merely out of childish frivolity.

Gregor’s desire to see his mother was soon fulfilled. During the daytime he did not want to show himself at the window, out of consideration for his parents, but he could not crawl very far around the few square yards of floor space he had, nor could he bear lying quietly at rest all during the night; in addition he was fast losing any interest he had ever taken in food, so for mere recreation he had formed the habit of crawling crisscross over the walls and ceiling. He especially enjoyed hanging suspended from the ceiling; it was altogether different from lying on the floor; one could
breathe more freely; one’s body swung and rocked lightly; and in the almost blissful absorption induced by this suspension it could happen, to his own surprise, that he let go and fell plop onto the floor. Yet he now had his body much better under control than formerly, and even such a big fall did him no harm. His sister noticed at once the new distraction Gregor had found for himself—he left behind traces of the sticky stuff from his pads wherever he crawled—and she got the idea in her head of giving him as wide a field as possible to crawl around in and of removing the pieces of furniture that hindered him, above all the chest of drawers and the writing desk. But that was more than she could manage all by herself; she did not dare ask her father to help her; and as for the maid, a girl of sixteen who had had the courage to stay on after the cook’s departure, she could not be asked to help, for she had begged as a special favor that she might keep the kitchen door locked and open it only on a definite summons; so there was nothing left but to turn to her mother one day when her father was out. And the mother did come, with exclamations of excitement and joy, which, however, died away at the door of Gregor’s room. Gregor’s sister, of course, went in first to see that everything was in order before letting his mother enter. In great haste Gregor had pulled the sheet lower than usual and arranged it more in folds so that it really looked as if it had been thrown casually over the sofa. And this time he did not peer out from under it; he denied himself the pleasure of seeing his mother on this first occasion and was only glad that she had come at all. “Come in, he’s out of sight,” said his sister, obviously leading her mother in by the hand. Gregor could now hear the two frail women struggling to shift the heavy old chest from its place, and his sister insisting on doing the greater part of the work herself without listening to the admonitions of her mother, who feared she might overstrain herself. It took a long time. After at least a quarter of an
hour’s tugging his mother said that the chest had better be left right where they had found it, for in the first place it was too heavy and could never be removed before his father came home, and with the chest halfway in the middle of the room like this it would only hamper Gregor’s movements, while in the second place it was not at all certain that removing the furniture would be doing Gregor a favor. She was inclined to think the contrary; the sight of the naked wall made her own heart heavy, and why shouldn’t Gregor have the same feeling, considering that he had been used to his furniture for so long and might feel forlorn without it. “And doesn’t it look,” his mother concluded in a low voice—in fact she had been almost whispering all the time as if to avoid letting Gregor, whose exact whereabouts she did not know, hear even the sounds of her voice, for she was convinced that he could not understand her words—“doesn’t it look as if we were showing him, by taking away his furniture, that we have given up hope of his ever getting better and are just thoughtlessly leaving him to himself? I think it would be best to keep his room exactly as it has always been, so that when he comes back to us he will find everything unchanged and be able to forget all the more easily what has happened in the meantime.”