[adapted]

by
Franz Kafka

Chapter 1

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from worried dreams, he found that in bed he was changed into a huge, dirty bug. He lay on his hard, armour-like back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, curved belly divided into stiff, bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, almost ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His many legs, very thin compared to the rest of his body, twitched helplessly before his eyes.

“What’s happened to me,” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a normal room for a person, only a bit too small, was quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table, on which an unpacked collection of cloth samples was spread out—Samsa was a travelling salesman—hung the picture which he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and put in a pretty gold frame. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and a fur scarf. She sat straight there, lifting up toward the viewer a thick fur hand warmer into which her whole lower arm had disappeared.

Gregor’s eyes then turned to the window. The bad weather—the raindrops were falling loudly down on the metal window sill—made him very sad. “Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all this nonsense,” he thought. But this was not possible at all, for he was used to sleeping on his right side, and in the state he was in he couldn’t get into this position. No matter how hard he pushed himself onto his right side, he always rolled again onto his back. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so that he would not have to see the wiggling legs, and stopped trying only when he began to feel a small, dull pain in his side which he had never felt before.

“O God,” he thought, “what a hard job I’ve chosen! Day after day, on the road. The stress of selling is much worse than the work at head office, and, besides that, I have to deal with the problems of travelling, the worries about catching trains, bad food at irregular times, temporary and always changing relationships with people, which never come from the heart. To hell with it all!” He felt a slight itch on the top of his belly. He slowly pushed himself on his back closer to the bed post so that he could lift his head more easily, found the itchy part, which was completely covered with small white spots—he did not know what to think of them and wanted to feel the place with a leg. But he pulled it back at once, because the touch felt like a cold shower all over him.

He slid back again into his old position. “Getting up early like this,” he thought, “makes a man quite stupid. A man must have his sleep. Other travelling salesmen live like women in a harem. For instance, when I come back to the hotel in the morning to write the orders I need, these men are just sitting down to breakfast. If I tried that with my boss, I’d be thrown out right away. Still, who knows if that might really be good for me? If I didn’t stop myself because of my parents, I would have quit a long time ago. I would have gone to the boss and told him exactly what I think from my heart. He would have fallen right off his desk! How strange it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employee from so high up. The boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to go very close to him. Anyway, I have not completely given up that hope yet. Once I have saved the money to pay off my parents’ debt to him—that should take another five or six years—I will do it for sure. Then I will make the big change. In any case, right now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o’clock.”

He looked over at the alarm clock ticking by the dresser. “Good God!” he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were moving quietly on. It was past the half hour, already almost quarter to. Could the alarm have failed to ring? He could see from the bed that it was set correctly for four o’clock. Certainly it had rung. Yes, but was it possible to sleep through that noise that made the furniture shake? Now, it’s true he hadn’t slept quietly, but clearly he had slept even more deeply. Still, what should he do now? The next train left at seven o’clock. To catch that one, he would have to rush. The sample collection wasn’t packed yet, and he really didn’t feel very fresh and active. And even if he caught the train, there was no avoiding a big argument with the boss, because the company’s errand boy would have waited for the five o’clock train and reported that he was absent long ago.

He was the boss’s servant, without courage or intelligence. Well then, what if he called in sick? But that would be very embarrassing and suspicious, because during his five years of service Gregor hadn’t been sick even once. The boss would certainly come with the doctor from the health insurance company and would blame his parents for their lazy son and stop all objections with the insurance doctor’s comments; to him everyone was completely healthy but really lazy about work. And besides, would the doctor in this case be totally wrong? Except for a very strong sleepiness after the long sleep, Gregor in fact felt quite well and even had a very strong appetite.

As he was thinking about all this very quickly, without being able to decide to get out of bed—the alarm clock was showing exactly a quarter to seven—there was a careful knock on the door by the head of the bed.

“Gregor,” a voice called—it was his mother!—“it’s quarter to seven. Don’t you want to get going?” The soft voice! Gregor was surprised when he heard his voice answer. It was clearly his old voice, but mixed with it, as if from below, was a painful squeak he could not stop, which made the words clear only for the first moment and then twisted them in the echo, so that people didn’t know if they had heard right. Gregor wanted to answer in detail and explain everything, but in this situation he only said, “Yes, yes, thank you mother. I’m getting up right away.”

Because of the wooden door, the change in Gregor’s voice was not really noticed outside, so his mother calmed down at this explanation and walked away slowly. However, because of the short conversation, the other family members realized that Gregor was unexpectedly still at home, and already his father was knocking on one side door, softly but with his fist. “Gregor, Gregor,” he called out, “what’s going on?” And, after a short time, he called again in a deeper voice: “Gregor! Gregor!” At the other side door, however, his sister knocked lightly. “Gregor? Are you all right? Do you need anything?” Gregor answered in both directions, “I’ll be ready right away.” He tried very hard to speak very clearly and by putting long pauses between the individual words to take away everything strange from his voice. His father turned back to his breakfast. But his sister whispered, “Gregor, open the door—please.” Gregor did not want to open the door, but was glad about his careful habit, learned from traveling, of locking all doors during the night, even at home.

First he wanted to stand up quietly and without anyone bothering him, get dressed, most of all have breakfast, and only then think about what to do next, because—he saw this clearly—by thinking about it in bed he would not find a good answer. He remembered that he had already often felt a small pain or other in bed, maybe the result of an uncomfortable way of lying, which later turned out to be only in his head when he stood up, and he wanted very much to see how his thoughts now would slowly go away. That the change in his voice was nothing more than the start of a real cold, an illness from his job as a traveling salesman, about that he had no doubt at all.

It was very easy to push the blanket aside. He only needed to lift himself a little, and it fell by itself. But to go on was hard, especially because he was so strangely wide. He needed arms and hands to push himself up. But instead of these, he had only many small legs which were always moving in many different ways, and also he could not control them. If he wanted to bend one of them, then it was the first to stretch out, and if he finally managed to do what he wanted with this leg, at the same time all the others, as if they were free, moved around in a way that hurt a lot. “But I must not stay in bed doing nothing,” said Gregor to himself.

At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower part of his body, but this lower part—which, by the way, he had not yet looked at and which he also couldn’t imagine clearly—was too hard to move. The attempt went so slowly. When, having become almost panicked, he finally threw himself forward with all his strength and without thinking, he chose the wrong direction, and he hit the lower post of the bed hard. The strong pain he felt showed him that the lower part of his body was at the moment probably the most sensitive.

So, he tried to get the top part of his body out of the bed first and turned his head carefully toward the edge of the bed. He did this easily, and even though it was wide and heavy his body at last slowly followed the turn of his head. But when he finally raised his head outside the bed, in the open air, he got worried about moving forward any further in this way, because if in the end he let himself fall like this, it would take a miracle to stop his head from getting hurt. And he must not faint now, no matter what. He preferred to stay in bed.

However, after a similar effort, while he lay there again, sighing as before, and once again saw his small legs fighting one another, maybe even worse than before, and didn’t see any way of making this wild movement quiet and orderly, he told himself again that he couldn’t possibly remain in bed and that it might be best to give up everything if there was even the smallest hope of getting himself out of bed by doing so. At the same time, however, he didn’t forget to remind himself now and then that calm—indeed the calmest—thinking might be better than the most confused choices. At such moments, he looked as carefully as he could toward the window, but sadly there was little comfort to get from a look at the morning mist, which hid even the other side of the narrow street. “It’s already seven o’clock,” he told himself at the latest ring of the alarm clock, “already seven o’clock and still so much fog.” And for a little while longer he lay quietly with weak breathing, as if perhaps waiting for normal and natural conditions to come back out of the complete stillness.

But then he said to himself, “Before it is a quarter past seven, whatever happens I must be completely out of bed. Also, by then someone from the office will come to ask about me, because the office will open before seven o’clock.” And then he tried to rock his whole body out of the bed with one steady motion. If he let himself fall out of the bed in this way, his head, which he planned to lift up quickly during the fall, would probably stay unhurt. His back seemed to be hard; nothing would really happen to it because of the fall. His biggest worry was the loud noise the fall must make and which would probably cause, if not fear, then at least concern on the other side of all the doors. However, it had to be tried.

As Gregor was trying to lift himself halfway out of bed—the new way was more like a game than hard work; he only needed to rock in a steady way—he realized how easy all this would be if someone came to help him. Two strong people—he thought of his father and the servant girl—would be enough. They would only have to put their arms under his curved back to get him out of the bed, to bend down with him, and then only be patient and careful so that he could finish the turn onto the floor, where his tiny legs would then, he hoped, have a purpose. Now, apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call out for help? In spite of all his trouble, he could not help smiling at this idea.

He had already reached the point where, by rocking harder, he kept his balance with difficulty, and very soon he would finally have to decide, for in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven. Then there was a ring at the apartment door. “That’s someone from the office,” he told himself, and he almost froze while his small legs only moved even faster. For one moment everything stayed still. “They aren’t opening,” Gregor said to himself, full of some silly hope. But of course then, as usual, the servant girl with her firm step went to the door and opened it. Gregor needed to hear only the first word of the visitor’s hello to know at once who it was, the manager himself. Why was Gregor the only one forced to work in a company where, at the smallest mistake, someone was at once blamed the most? Were all the workers then, all together, every one of them, bad people?

Was there then really no really hard-working person among them who, if he did not use just a couple of hours in the morning for office work, would feel very bad from guilt and really be unable to get out of bed? Was it really not enough to let a trainee ask questions, if such asking was even needed? Did the manager himself have to come, and, in the process, did it have to be shown to the whole innocent family that the check of this suspicious situation could be trusted only to the manager’s cleverness? And more because this idea made Gregor excited than because of a real decision, he swung himself with all his strength out of the bed. There was a loud thud, but not a real crash. The fall was softened a bit by the carpet and, also, his back could bend more than Gregor had thought. For that reason the soft noise was not quite so easy to notice. But he had not held his head up carefully enough and had hit it. He turned his head, annoyed and in pain, and rubbed it on the carpet.

“Something has fallen in there,” said the manager in the next room on the left. Gregor tried to imagine whether anything like what was happening to him today could also have happened at some time to the manager. At least one had to admit the possibility of such a thing. But, as if to give a quick answer to this question, the manager now, with a squeak of his shiny boots, took a few firm steps in the next room. From the room next door on the right the sister was whispering to tell Gregor: “Gregor, the manager is here.” “I know,” said Gregor to himself. But he did not dare to make his voice loud enough for his sister to hear.

“Gregor,” his father now said from the next room on the left, “Mr. Manager has come and is asking why you did not take the early train. We don’t know what we should tell him. Also, he wants to speak to you in person. So please open the door. He will be kind enough to excuse the mess in your room.”

In the middle of all this, the manager called out in a friendly way, “Good morning, Mr. Samsa.” “He is not well,” said his mother to the manager, while his father was still talking at the door, “He is not well, believe me, Mr. Manager. Otherwise how would Gregor miss a train? The young man thinks only about work. I’m almost angry that he never goes out at night. Right now he’s been in the city for eight days, but he’s been at home every evening. He sits here with us at the table and reads the newspaper quietly or looks at his travel plans. It’s quite a change for him to keep himself busy with woodwork. For example, he cut out a small frame over two or three evenings. You would be surprised how pretty it is. It’s hanging right inside the room. You’ll see it right away, as soon as Gregor opens the door. Anyway, I’m happy that you’re here, Mr. Manager. By ourselves, we could never make Gregor open the door. He’s so stubborn, and he’s certainly not well, although he said that was not true this morning.”

“I’m coming right away,” said Gregor slowly and carefully and didn’t move, so that he would not miss one word of the conversation. “My dear lady, I cannot explain it in any other way,” said the manager; “I hope it is nothing serious. On the other hand, I must also say that we business people, lucky or unlucky, however one sees it, very often simply have to get over a slight illness for work reasons.” “So can Mr. Manager come in to see you now?” asked his father impatiently and knocked once again on the door. “No,” said Gregor. In the room next door on the left a painful silence fell. In the room next door on the right the sister began to cry.

Why didn’t his sister go to the others? She’d probably just gotten up out of bed now and hadn’t even started to get dressed yet. Then why was she crying? Because he wasn’t getting up and wasn’t letting the manager in, because he might lose his job, and because then his boss would bother his parents once again with the old demands? Those were probably not necessary worries right now. Gregor was still here and wasn’t thinking at all about leaving his family. At the moment he was lying right there on the carpet, and no one who knew about his situation would have seriously asked him to let the manager in. But Gregor wouldn’t be fired right way because of this small impolite thing, for which he would find an easy and good excuse later on. It seemed to Gregor that it might be much better to leave him alone at the moment, instead of bothering him with crying and talking. But it was the uncertainty itself which upset the others and explained their behaviour.

“Mr. Samsa,” the manager was now shouting, his voice raised, “what’s the matter? You are locking yourself in your room, answer only with yes and no, are making serious and unnecessary troubles for your parents, and neglecting (I say this only by the way) your work duties in a truly unusual way. I am speaking here for your parents and your employer, and I am asking you very seriously for an immediate and clear explanation. I am amazed. I am amazed. I thought I knew you as a calm, sensible person, and now you seem suddenly to want to start acting in strange moods. The Chief told me earlier today a possible explanation for your neglect—it was about the collection of cash trusted to you a short while ago—but to tell the truth I almost promised him that this explanation could not be true. However, now I see here how unbelievably stubborn you are, and I am totally losing any wish to speak up for you at all. And your job is not safe at all. At first I planned to mention all this to you in private, but since you are making me waste my time here for nothing, I don’t know why your parents should not hear about this. Your work has also been very poor recently. Of course, it’s not the time of year to do great business, we know that, but a time of year for doing no business, there is no such thing at all, Mr. Samsa, and such a thing must never happen.”

“But Mr. Manager,” called Gregor, very upset and, in his worry, forgetting everything else, “I’m opening the door immediately, this very moment. A little sickness, feeling dizzy, has stopped me from getting up. I’m still lying in bed right now. But I’m feeling better once again. I’m in the middle of getting out of bed. Just please wait for a short moment! Things are not going as well as I thought. But things are all right. How suddenly this can hit someone! Only yesterday evening everything was fine with me. My parents of course know that. Actually just yesterday evening I had a small feeling. People must have seen that in me. Why have I not told that to the office? But people always think that they’ll get better without staying at home. Mr. Manager! Please be kind to my parents! There is really no reason for the complaints which you’re now making against me, and really nobody has said a word to me about that. Perhaps you have not read the latest orders which I sent. Besides, now I’m starting my trip on the eight o’clock train; a few hours of rest have made me stronger. Mr. Manager, do not stay. I will be at the office in person right away. Please say that and pass on my greetings to the Chief.”

While Gregor was saying all this quickly, not really knowing what he was saying, he had moved close to the dresser easily, probably because he had already tried it in bed, and now he was trying to lift himself up onto it. Actually, he wanted to open the door. He really wanted to let the manager see him and to talk with him. He very much wanted to see what the others who were now asking about him would say when they saw him. If they were surprised, then Gregor would not be to blame anymore and could be calm. But if they accepted everything quietly, then he would have no reason to get upset and, if he hurried, could really be at the station at around eight o’clock.

At first he slid down a few times on the smooth dresser. But at last he gave himself a last swing and stood up there. He no longer noticed the pain in his lower body, even if it still stung. Now he let himself fall against the back of a nearby chair, on the edge of it he supported himself with his thin arms and legs. By doing this he got control of himself and kept quiet, because he could now hear the manager.

“Did you understand a single word?” the manager asked the parents, “Is he making fun of us?” “For God’s sake,” cried the mother, already crying, “maybe he is very sick and we are making him upset. Grete! Grete!” she shouted then. “Mother?” called the sister from the other side. They could understand each other through Gregor’s room. “You must go to the doctor right away. Gregor is sick. Hurry to the doctor. Have you heard Gregor speak yet?” “That was an animal’s voice,” said the manager, very quietly compared to the mother’s cries.

“Anna! Anna!” shouted the father through the hall into the kitchen, clapping his hands, “get a locksmith right away!” The two young women were already running through the hall with skirts making a swishing sound—how had his sister got dressed so quickly?—and pulled open the doors of the apartment. One couldn’t hear the doors closing at all. They probably had left them open, as is usual in an apartment where a big bad event has happened.

However, Gregor had become much calmer. All right, people did not understand his words any more, although they seemed clear enough to him, clearer than before, perhaps because his ears had gotten used to them. But at least people now thought that something was wrong with him and were ready to help him. The confident way in which the first steps had been done made him feel good. He felt included once again among people and was expecting from both the doctor and the locksmith, without making a clear difference between them, great and surprising results. To make his voice as clear as possible for the important talk which was coming soon, he coughed a little, and he was careful to do this in a very quiet way, since it was possible that even this sound seemed different from a human cough. He no longer trusted himself to decide any more. At the same time in the next room it had become really quiet. Perhaps his parents were sitting with the manager at the table whispering; perhaps they were all leaning against the door listening.

Gregor pushed himself slowly toward the door, with the help of the chair, let go of it there, pressed himself against the door, held himself up against it—the ends of his small legs had a little sticky stuff on them—and rested there for a moment after his effort. Then he tried to turn the key in the lock with his mouth. Unfortunately it seemed that he had no real teeth. How then could he grab the key? But his jaws were naturally very strong; with their help he was able to get the key really moving. He didn’t notice that he was clearly hurting himself, because a brown liquid came out of his mouth, flowed over the key, and dripped onto the floor.

“Just listen for a moment,” said the manager in the next room; “he’s turning the key.” For Gregor that was a great help. But they all should have called out to him, including his father and mother, “Come on, Gregor,” they should have shouted; “keep going, keep working on the lock.” Imagining that all his efforts were being watched and that everyone was waiting nervously, he bit down hard on the key with all his strength. As the key turned more, he moved around the lock. Now he was keeping himself upright only with his mouth, and he had to hold on to the key or then push it down again with all his body weight, when needed. The clear click of the lock as it finally snapped really woke Gregor up. Breathing hard he said to himself, “So I didn’t need the locksmith,” and he put his head against the door handle to open the door completely.

Because he had to open the door like this, it was already open very wide, but he was not really visible yet. He first had to turn himself slowly around the edge of the door, very carefully, of course, if he didn’t want to fall clumsily on his back right at the doorway into the room. He was still busy with this hard movement and had no time to notice anything else, when he heard the manager shout a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like the wind whistling—and now he saw him, closest to the door, holding his hand against his open mouth and moving slowly back, as if an invisible steady force was pushing him away. His mother—even though the manager was there she was standing here with her hair sticking up, still messy from the night—was looking at his father with her hands held together. She then took two steps towards Gregor and fell down right in the middle of her skirts, which were spread out all around her, her face sank on her chest, completely hidden. His father tightened his fist with an angry look, as if he wanted to push Gregor back into his room, then looked around the living room in an unsure way, covered his eyes with his hands, and cried so that his strong chest shook.

At this moment Gregor did not take one step into the room, but leaned his body from the inside against the tightly locked door, so that only half his body could be seen, as well as his head, tilted to the side, with which he looked over at the others. Meanwhile it had become much brighter. On the other side of the street stood out clearly a part of the long grey-black house opposite—it was a hospital—with its plain, even windows breaking up the front. The rain was still falling, but only in large single drops, clearly and strongly thrown down one by one onto the ground. The breakfast dishes were piled around on the table, because for his father breakfast was the most important meal of the day, which he made last for hours by reading different newspapers. Directly across on the opposite wall hung a photograph of Gregor from the time of his army service; it was a picture of him as a lieutenant, as he, smiling and carefree, with his hand on his sword, demanded respect for his posture and uniform. The door to the hall was half open, and since the door to the apartment was also open, one could see out into the landing of the apartment and the beginning of the stairs going down.

“Now,” said Gregor, knowing very well that he was the only one who had stayed calm. “I’ll get dressed right away, pack up the collection of samples, and leave. You’ll let me go on my way, won’t you? You see, Mr. Manager, I am not stubborn, and I am happy to work. Travelling is tiring, but I couldn’t live without it. Where are you going, Mr. Manager? To the office? Really? Will you tell everything truthfully? A person can be unable to work for a short time, but that is exactly the best time to remember the earlier successes and to think that later, after the problems have been pushed aside, the person will work even more eagerly and harder. I really owe Mr. Chief so much—you know that very well. On the other hand, I am worried about my parents and my sister. I’m in trouble, but I’ll work my way out of it again. Don’t make things more difficult for me than they already are. Speak for me in the office! People don’t like travelling salesmen. I know that.

People think they earn lots of money and so live a good life. People do not even have any special reason to think about this idea more clearly. But you, Mr. Manager, you have a better view of what is involved than other people, even, I tell you in private, a better view than Mr. Chairman himself, who as the boss may judge carelessly in a way that harms an employee. You also know well enough that the travelling salesman who is away from the office almost the whole year can very easily become a victim of gossip, chance events, and complaints with no reason, which he cannot fight against, since most of the time he does not hear about them at all and only then, when he is tired after finishing a trip and at home, he feels in his own body the bad results, which cannot be fully followed back to their start. Mr. Manager, do not leave without saying a word telling me that you will at least admit that I am a little in the right!”

But at Gregor’s first words the manager had already turned away, and now he looked back at Gregor over his shaking shoulders with tight lips. While Gregor was talking he did not stand still for a moment but kept moving away towards the door, without taking his eyes off Gregor, but very slowly, as if there was a secret rule that he must not leave the room. He was already in the hall, and because of the sudden movement when he finally pulled his foot out of the living room, someone could think that he had just burned the bottom of his foot. In the hall, however, he stretched his right hand out away from his body toward the stairs, as if some really magical help was waiting for him there.

Gregor realized that he must not, no matter what, let the manager leave in this mood, especially if his job in the company was not to be put in serious danger. His parents did not understand all this very well. Over many years, they had come to believe that Gregor had a job for life in his company and, also, they had so much to do now with their problems that planning ahead was strange to them. But Gregor could plan ahead. The manager must be stopped, calmed down, convinced, and finally persuaded. The future of Gregor and his family really depended on this! If only his sister had been there! She was clever. She had already cried while Gregor was still lying quietly on his back. And the manager, who liked women, would certainly let her guide him. She would have closed the door to the apartment and made him stop being afraid in the hall. But the sister was not even there. Gregor must deal with it himself.

Without thinking that until now he did not know anything about how he could move now and that people had possibly, or even probably, once again not understood him, he left the side of the door, pushed himself through the opening, and wanted to go over to the manager, who was already holding tightly to the railing with both hands on the landing in a silly way. But as he looked for something to hold onto, with a small cry Gregor at once fell down onto his many little legs. As soon as this happened, he felt good in his body for the first time that morning. The small legs had hard floor under them; they worked perfectly, as he noticed with joy, and tried to carry him forward in the direction he wanted. Right away he believed that the final improvement of all his suffering was immediately close at hand.

But at the very moment when he lay on the floor, rocking gently, quite close and directly across from his mother, who, it seemed, had totally sunk into herself, she suddenly jumped right up with her arms spread wide and her fingers stretched out and cried out, “Help, for God’s sake, help!” She held her head bent down, as if she wanted to look at Gregor better, but ran back without thinking, which was the opposite of that, forgetting that behind her stood the table with all the dishes on it. When she reached the table, she sat down heavily on it, as if not thinking, and did not seem to notice at all that next to her coffee was pouring out onto the carpet in a full stream from the large container that was turned over.

“Mother,” said Gregor quietly, and looked over at her. For a moment the manager had gone completely from his mind. When he saw the coffee pouring, Gregor couldn’t stop himself from snapping his jaws in the air a few times. At that, his mother screamed again, hurried away from the table, and fell into the arms of his father, who was running towards her. But Gregor had no time right now for his parents—the manager was already on the stairs. His chin level with the handrail, the manager looked back for the last time. Gregor made his first move to catch up with him if he could. But the manager must have guessed something, because he jumped down over a few steps and disappeared, still shouting “Huh!” The sound rang through the whole stairway.

Now, sadly, the manager’s running away also seemed to confuse his father completely. Earlier he had been quite calm, because instead of running after the manager himself, or at least not stopping Gregor from his chase, with his right hand he grabbed hold of the manager’s cane, which he had left behind with his hat and coat on a chair. With his left hand, his father picked up a big newspaper from the table and, stamping his feet on the floor, he started to push Gregor back into his room by waving the cane and the newspaper. No request of Gregor’s helped at all; no request would even be understood. No matter how willing he was to turn his head politely, his father just stomped even harder with his feet.

Across the room from him his mother had opened a window, even though the weather was cool, and, leaning out with her hands on her cheeks, she stuck her face far outside the window. Between the alley and the stairwell a strong draft came up, the curtains on the window blew around, the newspapers on the table rustled, and individual sheets fell down lightly over the floor. The father kept moving forward without stopping, making hissing sounds, like a wild man. Now, Gregor had no practice at all in going backward—it was really very slow. If Gregor had only been allowed to turn himself around, he would have been in his room right away, but he was afraid to make his father impatient by the slow process of turning around, and at every moment he feared a deadly blow on his back or his head from the cane in his father’s hand. Finally Gregor had no other choice, for he noticed in horror that he still did not know how to keep his direction while going backward. And so he began, while constantly giving anxious sideways looks in his father’s direction, to turn himself around as quickly as possible, although in truth this was done very slowly. Perhaps his father noticed his good intentions, for he did not stop Gregor in this movement, but with the tip of the cane from a distance he even guided Gregor’s turning here and there.

If only his father had not hissed so terribly! Because of that, Gregor completely panicked. He was already almost completely turned around, when, with this hissing in his ear the whole time, he just made a mistake and turned himself back a little. But when he finally managed to get his head in front of the door opening, it was clear that his body was too wide to go through any more. Naturally his father, in his state of mind, did not think to open the other side of the door a little to make a space for Gregor to get through. His only thought was that Gregor must get into his room as quickly as possible. He would never have allowed the careful steps that Gregor needed to find his way and maybe get through the door. On the contrary, as if there was nothing in the way and with a strange noise, he now pushed Gregor forward.

Behind Gregor the sound now was not like the voice of only one father. Now it was really not a joke any more, and Gregor forced himself, no matter what, into the door. One side of his body was lifted up. He lay at an angle in the door opening. His one side was sore from the scraping. On the white door ugly spots were left. Soon he was stuck tight and would not have been able to move any more by himself. The tiny legs on one side hung shaking in the air above, and the ones on the other side were pushed painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one really strong push that freed him from behind, and he ran quickly, bleeding a lot, far into the inside of his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and finally it was quiet.

Chapter 2

Gregor first woke up from his heavy, faint-like sleep in the evening light. He would certainly have woken up soon after without any noise, because he felt rested enough and wide awake, although it seemed to him as if a quick step and a careful closing of the door to the hall had woken him. Light from the electric streetlights lay pale here and there on the ceiling and on the higher parts of the furniture, but under and around Gregor it was dark. He pushed himself slowly toward the door, still feeling around clumsily with his feelers, which he now found useful for the first time, to check what was happening there. His left side seemed like one single long, unpleasantly stretched scar, and he finally had to limp on his two rows of legs. Also, one small leg had been badly hurt during the morning incident—it was almost a miracle that only one had been hurt—and dragged behind like dead.

By the door he first noticed what had really led him there: it was the smell of something to eat. A bowl was there, filled with milk with sugar, in which tiny pieces of white bread were floating. He almost laughed with happiness, for he now was much more hungry than in the morning, and he immediately dipped his head almost up to and over his eyes down into the milk. But he soon pulled it back again in disappointment, not just because it was hard for him to eat because of his weak left side—he could eat only if his whole body, which was breathing fast, worked together—but also because the milk, which was usually his favourite drink and which his sister had surely put there for that reason, did not please him at all. He turned away from the bowl almost with dislike and crawled back into the middle of the room.

In the living room, as Gregor saw through the crack in the door, the gas light was on, but where, at this time on other days, his father usually read the afternoon newspaper out loud to his mother and sometimes also to his sister, now no sound could be heard. Now, maybe this reading out loud, which his sister had always talked and written to him about, had recently stopped being part of their usual routine. But it was so quiet all around, even though the apartment was certainly not empty. “What a quiet life the family lives,” said Gregor to himself and, as he stared hard in front of him into the dark, he felt very proud that he had been able to give such a life in a beautiful apartment like this to his parents and his sister. But how would things go if now all quiet, all comfort, all happiness ended in a terrible way? To stop himself from getting lost in such thoughts, Gregor decided to start moving, so he moved up and down in his room.

Once during the long evening one side door and then the other door was opened just a tiny crack and quickly closed again. Someone probably wanted to come in but then changed their mind. Gregor at once stood by the living room door, wanting to bring in the shy visitor somehow or at least to find out who it was. But now the door was not opened again, and Gregor waited, but no one came. Earlier, when the door had been locked, they had all wanted to come in to him; now, when he had opened one door and when the others had clearly been opened during the day, no one came any more, and the keys were left in the locks on the outside.

The light in the living room was turned off only late at night, and now it was easy to see that his parents and his sister had stayed awake all this time, because you could hear clearly as all three moved away on tiptoe. Now it was certain that no one would come in to Gregor any more until the morning. So, he had a long time to think without being disturbed about how he should change his life from the start. But the high, open room, in which he had to lie flat on the floor, made him nervous, and he could not understand the reason, because he had lived in the room for five years. With a half-unconscious turn and not without a little shame he hurried under the couch, where, even though his back was a little cramped and he could no longer lift up his head, he felt very comfortable and was sorry only that his body was too wide to fit completely under it.

There he remained the whole night, which he spent partly half asleep, out of which his hunger kept waking him suddenly, but partly in worry and dark hopes, which all made him think that for now he would have to stay calm and with patience and the greatest care for his family accept the troubles which in his present state he now had to cause them.