The Meowmorphosis (16 page)

On this particular evening, the violin sounded from the kitchen. Gregor couldn’t remember having heard it all through this period. The lodgers had by now ended their night meal; the middle one had pulled out a newspaper and handed a page each to the other two, and they were now leaning back, reading and smoking. When the violin started playing, they grew attentive; they got up and went on tiptoe to the kitchen door, at which they remained standing pressed up against one another. They must have been audible from the kitchen, because Gregor’s father called out, “Perhaps the gentlemen don’t like the playing? It can be stopped at once.” “On the contrary,” stated the lodger in the middle, “might the young woman not come into us and play in the room here, where it is really much more comfortable and cheerful?” “Oh, thank you!” cried out Gregor’s
father, as if he were the one playing the violin. The men stepped back into the room and waited. In a moment, Gregor’s father emerged with the music stand, his mother with the sheet music, and his sister with the violin. Grete calmly prepared everything for the recital. The parents—who had never before rented out a room and therefore were clearly overdoing their politeness to the lodgers—dared not sit on their own chairs. Gregor’s father leaned against the door, his right hand stuck between two buttons of his buttoned-up uniform. The mother, however, accepted a chair offered by one lodger; since she made sure to leave it where the gentleman had chanced to put it, she sat to one side in a corner.

Gregor’s sister began to play. His father and mother both followed attentively the movements of her hands. Gregor, attracted by the music, ventured to creep a little farther forward, now poking his head into the living room. He gave little thought to his lack of consideration for the others. Before, he would have taken their presence very seriously and would have felt at this moment all the more reason to hide away, because—as a result of the dust that lay all over his room and flew around with the slightest movement—he was totally covered in dirt. Stuck to his fur all over was dust, thread, hair, and specks of food. His indifference to everything was such that he could no longer be bothered to lie on his back and scratch it on the
carpet, as he frequently used to do. Now, in spite of his condition, Gregor felt no timidity about inching forward through his door onto the spotless floor of the living room.

In any case, no one paid him any attention. The family was all caught up in the violin playing. The lodgers, by contrast—who had promptly placed themselves, hands in their trouser pockets, behind the music stand, much too close to Gregor’s sister, so that they could all see the sheet music, something that must certainly bother the girl—soon drew back to the window, conversing in low voices with bowed heads, where they remained as Gregor’s father worriedly watched them. It seemed clear that their expectation of a beautifully entertaining violin recital had been disappointed, and it was now only out of politeness that they were allowing the continued interruption of their regular peace and quiet. Particularly, the way in which they all blew their cigar smoke out of their noses and mouths led one to conclude that they were quite irritated. And yet Gregor’s sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was turned to the side, her gaze followed the score intently and sadly. Gregor crept forward a little farther still, keeping his head close against the floor in order to be able to catch her gaze if possible. Was he fully an animal now, that music so captivated him? And of course it brought to mind the terrible song of the cat of his dreams, and the music of Josef K’s seven cats. For him it was as
if the way to the unknown nourishment he craved was revealing itself. He was determined to press forward right to his sister, to tug at her dress, and to indicate to her in this way that she might bring her violin into his room and cuddle him and press him to her breast once more. He would not struggle. No one here valued her recital as he did, as he wanted to. He did not wish to let her leave his room ever again, at least not as long as he lived. It occurred to him that his frightening appearance would for the first time become useful for him; he imagined guarding all the doors of his room simultaneously, snarling back at any attackers. Of course, his sister should not be compelled—no, she would remain with him voluntarily. She would sit next to him on the sofa, bend down her ear to him, and he would then confide in her that he absolutely intended to send her to the conservatory, and, indeed, if his misfortune had not arrived in the interim, he would have declared all this last Christmas—had Christmas really already come and gone?—and would have brooked no argument. After this explanation, his sister would break out in tears of emotion, and Gregor would lift himself up to her armpit and kiss her throat, which she, from the time she started going to work, had begun to leave exposed, wearning no ribbon or collar.

“Mr. Samsa,” called out the middle lodger to Gregor’s father, and, without uttering a further word, pointed his index
finger at Gregor, who was creeping slowly forward. The violin fell silent. The middle lodger smiled, first shaking his head once at his friends, and then looked down at Gregor once more. His father, rather than rushing to drive Gregor back again, seemed to consider it of prime importance to calm the lodgers—although they were not acting particularly upset, even though Gregor’s size was so great now that he could not fit on the large living room chair, for he would have crushed it entirely; perhaps, indeed,
because
of his size, Gregor seemed to fascinate the lodgers more than the violin recital had. His father hurried over to them and, with outstretched arms, tried to push them into their own room and simultaneously to block their view of Gregor with his own body. At this point they became really somewhat irritated, although it was impossible to tell whether that was because of his father’s behavior or because of the dawning realization that they had been living, without knowing it, alongside a neighbor like Gregor.

They demanded explanations from Gregor’s father, raised their arms to make their points, tugged agitatedly at their beards, and moved back toward their room quite slowly. Meanwhile, the utter lack of attention that had suddenly fallen upon Grete after the sudden breaking off of the recital overwhelmed her. She held onto the violin and bow in her limp hands for a little while, continuing to stare at the sheet music as if she was still
playing. Then, all at once, she pulled herself together, placed the instrument in her mother’s lap—the woman was still sitting in her chair, having trouble breathing, for her lungs were laboring, and Gregor’s labored in a mirror of hers, on account of his sister’s collar and his father’s flung yarn, he wheezed and coughed alongside his mother in distress—and ran into the next room, which the lodgers, pressured by his father, were nearing closer and closer. Gregor could see how, under his sister’s practiced hands, the sheets and pillows on the beds were quickly tidied and arranged. Even before the lodgers reached the room, she had finished fixing the beds and slipped out again—which was good, for their father seemed so gripped once again with his stubbornness that he was forgetting to treat his renter with the usual deference and respect. Instead, he pressed on and on until, at the door of the rented room, the middle gentleman stamped loudly with his foot and thus brought Gregor’s father to a standstill.

“I hereby declare,” the middle lodger said, raising his hand and casting his glance on both Gregor’s mother and sister, “that considering the disgraceful conditions prevailing in this apartment and family”—with this he spat decisively on the floor—“I immediately cancel my room. I will, of course, pay nothing at all for the days that I have lived here; on the contrary I shall think about whether or not I will initiate some sort of
action against you, something that—believe me—will be very easy to establish.” He fell silent and stared, as if he was waiting for something. His two friends suddenly joined in, discovering their own opinions: “We also give immediate notice.” At that they stepped into their room; the middle lodger seized the door handle, banged the door shut, and locked it.

How much easier things had been when Gregor was a kitten and small enough to pass, almost, somewhat, for a usual sort of beast who might live in a house.

His father groped his way to his chair and let himself fall in it. It looked as if he were stretching out for his usual evening snooze, but the heavy nodding of his head showed that he was not in fact sleeping at all. Gregor had lain motionless the entire time in the spot where the lodgers had caught him. His disappointment with the collapse of his plan to seduce his sister into loving him once more—and perhaps also weakness brought on by his severe hunger—made it impossible for him to move. He was certainly afraid that a general disaster would break upon him at any moment, and he waited. He was not even startled when the violin fell from his mother’s lap, out from under her trembling fingers, and gave off a reverberating tone.

“My dear parents,” said Gregor’s sister, banging her hand on the table by way of an introduction, “things cannot go on any longer in this way. Maybe if you don’t understand that, well,
I do. I will not utter my brother’s name in front of this monster, who sits in its own filth and wheezes and almost certainly has fleas and grows so large that soon even his room will not contain him, and thus I say only that we must try to get rid of it. We have tried what is humanly possible to take care of it and to be patient. I am quite sure that no one could possibly criticize us in the slightest.”

“She is right. A thousand times she is right,” said Gregor’s father. His mother, who was still incapable of breathing properly because of the dust and dander, began to cough numbly with her hand held up over her mouth and a manic expression in her eyes. Grete hurried over to her mother and held her forehead.

The girl’s words seemed to have led her father to certain reflections. He sat upright, played with his uniform hat among the plates—which still lay on the table from the lodgers’ evening meal—and glanced now and then at the motionless Gregor.

“We must get rid of it,” Gregor’s sister now said decisively to her father, for her mother, in her coughing fit, was not listening to anything. “It is killing you both. I see it coming. When people have to work as hard as we all do, they cannot also tolerate this endless torment at home. Such strangeness, to have a brother who vanished and left only an ungrateful furball in his place. I just can’t go on anymore.” And she broke out into such a crying fit that her tears splashed down onto her mother’s face.
She wiped them off her mother with mechanical motions of her hands.

“Child,” said the father sympathetically and with obvious appreciation, “then what should we do?”

Gregor’s sister only shrugged her shoulders, a sign of the hopelessness that, in contrast to her previous confidence, had come over her abruptly while she was crying.

“If only he understood us,” said Gregor’s father in a semi-questioning tone. Grete, in the midst of her sobbing, shook her hand energetically as a sign that there was no point thinking of that. “If he only understood us,” his father repeated, shutting his eyes to absorb the girl’s conviction upon the impossibility of this point, “then perhaps some compromise would be possible with him. But, as it is …”

“It must be gotten rid of,” cried Gregor’s sister. “That is the only way, Father. You must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we have believed this for so long, that is truly our real misfortune. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long ago realized that a communal life among human beings is not possible with such a stupid, dirty animal and would have gone away voluntarily, to be with his own kind. Then I would not have a brother, but we could go on living and honor his memory. But this animal plagues us. It drives away the lodgers, will obviously take over
the entire apartment and leave us to spend the night in the alley. Just look, Father,” she suddenly cried out, “he’s already starting up again.” With a fright that was totally incomprehensible to Gregor, his sister jumped back from their mother, pushed herself away from her chair, as if she would sooner sacrifice her mother than remain in Gregor’s vicinity, and rushed behind her father who, alarmed by her behavior, also stood up and half raised his arms in front of Gregor’s sister as though it were necessary to protect her.

But Gregor had no desire to create problems for anyone, certainly not for his sister. He had just started to turn himself around in order to crawl back into his room—quite a startling sight, since, as a result of his declining condition, he had to guide himself through the difficulty of turning around with his head, in this process trying to lift it but banging it against the floor several times. He could not help it—his neck spasmed and thrust him against the floor, and anyway his girth was getting much bigger now than the space in which he had to turn. He paused and looked around. His good intentions seemed to have been recognized; the fright had lasted only for a moment. Now they just looked at him in silence and sorrow. His mother lay in her chair, with her legs stretched out and pressed together, her eyes almost shut from weariness. His father and sister sat next to each other. Grete had set her hands around her father’s neck.

“Now perhaps I can actually turn myself around,” thought Gregor, and he began the task again. He couldn’t stop puffing at the effort and had to rest now and then. Clouds of his fur wafted toward his mother, and she began to cough again.

No one was urging him on. It was all left to him on his own. When he had completed turning around, he immediately made toward his door. He was astonished at the great distance that separated him from his room and could not at all understand how, in his weakness, he had covered the same distance a short time before, almost without noticing it. Intent now on trotting along quickly, he hardly paid any attention to the fact that not a single word or cry from his family interrupted him.

Only when he was already in the door did he turn his head to look behind him—not completely, because his neck was quite limited in its range of motion by the accursed collar. At any rate, he saw that behind him nothing had changed. Only his sister was standing. His last glimpse brushed over his mother, who now appeared completely asleep. Hardly was Gregor inside his room, however, when the door was pushed shut quickly, bolted fast, and barred. He was startled by the sudden commotion behind him—so much so that his little limbs bent double under him. It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She had stood up right away, waited, and then sprung forward nimbly; Gregor had not heard anything of
her approach. “Finally!” she cried out to her parents, as she turned the key in the lock.