Part I

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from restless dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back, which was as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-shaped brown belly, divided by arching ribs, on the crest of which the blanket, about to slide off altogether, could barely keep its hold. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the rest of his bulk, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

“What has happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper human room, only a little too small, lay quiet between its four familiar walls. Above the table, on which a sample collection of cloth goods lay unpacked and spread out (Samsa was a traveling salesman), hung the picture he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, fitted out with a fur hat and a fur stole, sitting upright and raising toward the viewer a heavy fur muff into which her whole forearm had disappeared.

Gregor’s eyes then turned to the window, and the dismal weather—you could hear raindrops striking the tin of the window ledge—made him quite melancholy. “What if I went on sleeping a little longer and forgot all this nonsense,” he thought, but that was entirely impossible, for he was used to sleeping on his right side and in his present state could not get himself into that position. However hard he flung himself onto his right side, he kept rocking back onto his back. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so as not to have to see his floundering legs, and he stopped only when he began to feel in his side a faint, dull ache he had never felt before.

“Oh God,” he thought, “what a grueling job I’ve picked! On the road day in, day out. The business worries are much greater than in the actual office back home, and on top of that I’m saddled with the torment of traveling, the anxiety over train connections, the bad and irregular meals, and human company that is always changing, never lasting, never growing warm. The devil take it all!” He felt a slight itch high up on his belly; slowly pushed himself on his back closer to the bedpost so that he could lift his head better; found the itching spot, which was covered with nothing but little white dots he could make no sense of; and tried to feel the place with one of his legs, but drew it back at once, for the touch sent cold shivers through him.

He slid back into his former position. “All this getting up early,” he thought, “turns a man into an idiot. A man has to have his sleep. Other salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I go back to the inn during the morning to write up the orders I’ve taken, these gentlemen are only just sitting down to breakfast. I should try that with my boss; I’d be thrown out on the spot. Who knows, though, whether that wouldn’t be a very good thing for me. If I didn’t hold back for my parents’ sake, I’d have given notice long ago, I’d have gone up to the boss and told him what I think of him from the bottom of my heart. He’d have fallen off his desk! It’s an odd habit too, sitting up on the desk and talking down from that height at the employee, who has to come right up close besides, because the boss is hard of hearing. Well, I haven’t given up hope entirely; once I’ve got the money together to pay off what my parents owe him—it should take another five or six years—I’ll do it, no question. Then I’ll make the clean break. For the time being, of course, I have to get up, because my train leaves at five.”

And he looked over at the alarm clock, which was ticking on the wardrobe. “Heavenly Father!” he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were moving calmly forward; it was even past the half hour, it was getting close to a quarter to seven. Could the alarm not have gone off? You could see from the bed that it was set correctly for four o’clock; surely it had gone off, too. Yes, but was it possible to sleep peacefully through that furniture-rattling ring? Well, he hadn’t slept peacefully, but probably all the more soundly for it. But what should he do now? The next train left at seven; to catch it he would have had to rush like a madman, and the samples weren’t packed yet, and he himself didn’t feel particularly fresh or lively. And even if he caught the train, there would be no avoiding a blowup from the boss, because the firm’s errand boy had waited for the five o’clock train and reported his absence long ago. The errand boy was the boss’s creature, without spine or brains. What if he called in sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious, because in his five years with the firm Gregor had not been sick even once. The boss would certainly come with the health-insurance doctor, would reproach his parents for their lazy son, and would cut off every objection by referring to the health-insurance doctor, for whom there exist only people who are perfectly healthy but averse to work. And would the doctor be so very wrong, in this case? Apart from a drowsiness that was really superfluous after so long a sleep, Gregor in fact felt quite well and even had an especially hearty appetite.

As he was turning all this over in the greatest haste, unable to make up his mind to leave the bed—the clock was just striking a quarter to seven—there came a cautious knock at the door by the head of his bed. “Gregor,” a voice called—it was his mother—“it’s a quarter to seven. Weren’t you going to leave?” That gentle voice! Gregor was startled when he heard his own voice answering; it was unmistakably his old voice, but mixed into it, as if from somewhere below, was an irrepressible, painful squeaking that left the words clear only for the first moment and then so wrecked them in their echo that you could not tell whether you had heard right. Gregor had meant to answer at length and explain everything, but under the circumstances he confined himself to saying, “Yes, yes, thank you, Mother, I’m getting up now.” Because of the wooden door, the change in Gregor’s voice probably could not be noticed outside, for his mother was satisfied with this answer and shuffled off. But the little exchange had made the other members of the family aware that Gregor, against all expectation, was still at home, and already his father was knocking at one of the side doors, weakly, but with his fist. “Gregor, Gregor,” he called, “what’s the matter?” And after a short while he warned him again in a deeper voice: “Gregor! Gregor!” At the other side door, however, his sister was softly lamenting: “Gregor? Aren’t you well? Do you need anything?” Gregor answered in both directions, “I’m all ready,” and tried, by the most careful pronunciation and by leaving long pauses between the words, to strip his voice of anything conspicuous. His father did go back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered, “Gregor, open the door, I beg you.” Gregor, however, had no intention of opening up, and instead congratulated himself on the precaution, adopted from his travels, of locking all the doors at night, even at home.

First he wanted to get up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed, and above all have breakfast, and only then think about what came next, for he could tell that in bed his brooding would never come to a sensible conclusion. He remembered having often felt some slight pain or other in bed, caused perhaps by lying awkwardly, which turned out to be pure imagination once he got up, and he was curious to see how today’s fancies would gradually dissolve. That the change in his voice was nothing but the forerunner of a bad cold, an occupational disease of traveling salesmen, he did not doubt in the least.

Throwing off the blanket was quite simple; he only had to puff himself up a little and it fell off by itself. But after that things got difficult, especially because he was so uncommonly wide. He would have needed arms and hands to raise himself; instead he had only all these little legs, which were constantly moving in every different way and which, what was more, he could not control. If he wanted to bend one of them, the first thing it did was stretch out; and if he finally succeeded in making this leg do what he wanted, all the others meanwhile were working away, as if let loose, in the most intense and painful agitation. “Just don’t lie around uselessly in bed,” Gregor told himself.

At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower part of his body, but this lower part, which, incidentally, he had not yet seen and of which he could form no clear idea, proved too hard to move; it went so slowly; and when at last, almost frantic, he gathered all his strength and recklessly shoved himself forward, he had chosen the wrong direction and banged hard into the bottom bedpost, and the burning pain he felt taught him that the lower part of his body was, at the moment, perhaps the most sensitive of all.

So he tried to get the upper part of his body out of bed first, and carefully turned his head toward the edge of the bed. This was easily done, and in spite of its width and weight the mass of his body finally followed the turn of his head, slowly. But when at last he was holding his head outside the bed in the open air, he grew afraid of advancing any further in this way, for if he finally let himself fall like that, it would take nothing short of a miracle for his head not to be injured. And he must not lose consciousness now, of all times, at any price; he would rather stay in bed.

But when, after the same effort, he lay there sighing just as before, and again saw his little legs fighting one another, if anything even worse than before, and could find no way of bringing calm and order to this anarchy, he told himself once more that he could not possibly stay in bed and that the most sensible thing was to sacrifice everything if there was even the slightest hope of freeing himself from the bed by doing so. At the same time, though, he did not forget to remind himself now and then that calm reflection, the calmest possible, was far better than desperate resolutions. At such moments he fixed his eyes as sharply as he could on the window, but unfortunately there was little confidence or cheer to be drawn from the sight of the morning fog, which shrouded even the other side of the narrow street. “Seven o’clock already,” he told himself as the alarm clock struck again, “seven o’clock already and still such a fog.” And for a little while he lay still, breathing faintly, as though perhaps he expected the complete silence to bring back the real and natural state of things.

But then he told himself: “Before it strikes a quarter past seven I absolutely must be completely out of bed. Besides, by then someone will have come from the firm to ask after me, because the office opens before seven.” And he now set about rocking his body out of the bed, the whole length of it, in a perfectly even rhythm. If he let himself fall out of bed this way, his head, which he meant to lift sharply as he fell, would probably stay unhurt. His back seemed to be hard; nothing would happen to it, probably, when it fell on the carpet. What worried him most was the thought of the loud crash there was bound to be, which would probably cause, if not alarm, then at least concern behind all the doors. But it had to be risked.

When Gregor was already sticking halfway out of the bed (the new method was more a game than an effort; he only had to keep rocking himself in jerks), it occurred to him how simple everything would be if someone came to help him. Two strong people—he thought of his father and the maid—would have been quite enough; they would only have had to push their arms under his arched back, peel him out of the bed that way, bend down with their load, and then carefully let him swing himself over onto the floor, where his little legs would then, he hoped, acquire some purpose. Well, quite apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call for help? In spite of all his distress, he could not suppress a smile at the thought.

He had already got so far that, rocking harder, he could hardly keep his balance any longer, and very soon now he would have to make up his mind for good, because in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven—when the doorbell of the apartment rang. “That’s someone from the firm,” he told himself, and almost froze, while his little legs only danced all the faster. For a moment everything stayed quiet. “They aren’t opening,” Gregor told himself, caught up in some absurd hope. But then, of course, the maid went to the door with her firm step as always and opened it. Gregor needed to hear only the visitor’s first word of greeting and he already knew who it was—the chief clerk himself. Why was Gregor of all people condemned to work for a firm where the slightest lapse at once aroused the gravest suspicion? Were all the employees, one and all, scoundrels? Was there not among them a single loyal, devoted man who, if he had failed to put even a couple of morning hours to use for the firm, was driven half mad by remorse and actually unable to leave his bed? Was it really not enough to send an apprentice to ask, if all this asking was necessary at all? Did the chief clerk have to come in person, and did the whole innocent family have to be shown in this way that the investigation of this suspicious affair could be entrusted only to the chief clerk’s intelligence? And more because of the agitation these reflections put him in than because of any proper decision, Gregor swung himself out of the bed with all his might. There was a loud thump, but it was not really a crash. The fall was softened a little by the carpet, and his back was also more elastic than Gregor had thought, which was why the dull sound was not so very noticeable. Only he had not held his head carefully enough and had banged it; he turned it and rubbed it on the carpet in anger and pain.

“Something fell in there,” said the chief clerk in the room to the left. Gregor tried to imagine whether something like what had happened to him today might not someday happen to the chief clerk as well; one really had to admit that it was possible. But as if in blunt reply to this question, the chief clerk now took a few firm steps in the next room and made his patent-leather boots creak. From the room to the right his sister whispered, to let Gregor know: “Gregor, the chief clerk is here.” “I know,” Gregor said to himself; but he did not dare raise his voice loud enough for his sister to hear.

“Gregor,” his father now said from the room to the left, “the chief clerk has come and wants to know why you didn’t leave on the early train. We don’t know what to tell him. Besides, he wants to speak to you personally. So please open the door. I’m sure he’ll be good enough to excuse the mess in your room.” “Good morning, Mr. Samsa,” the chief clerk called out pleasantly, breaking in. “He isn’t well,” his mother said to the chief clerk, while his father was still talking at the door, “he isn’t well, believe me, sir. How else would Gregor ever miss a train! The boy has nothing in his head but the business. It almost makes me cross that he never goes out in the evening; he’s been in town for a week now, and he was home every single evening. He sits there at the table with us and quietly reads the paper or studies train schedules. His idea of amusement is working with his fretsaw. For instance, over two or three evenings he carved a little frame; you’ll be amazed how pretty it is; it’s hanging in there in his room; you’ll see it as soon as Gregor opens the door. Anyway, I’m so glad you’re here, sir; on our own we’d never have got Gregor to open the door; he’s so stubborn; and he certainly isn’t well, even though he denied it this morning.” “I’m coming right away,” Gregor said slowly and deliberately, and did not move, so as not to lose a single word of the conversation. “I can’t explain it any other way either, madam,” said the chief clerk. “I hope it’s nothing serious. Though on the other hand I must say that we businessmen, unfortunately or fortunately, as you like, very often simply have to overcome a slight indisposition for the sake of business.” “So can the chief clerk come in to see you now?” asked his impatient father, and knocked on the door again. “No,” said Gregor. In the room to the left there fell an awkward silence; in the room to the right his sister began to sob.

Why didn’t his sister go and join the others? She had probably only just got out of bed and had not even started to dress. And why was she crying? Because he wasn’t getting up and wasn’t letting the chief clerk in, because he was in danger of losing his job, and because the boss would then start hounding his parents again with the old claims? For the time being these were surely needless worries. Gregor was still here and had not the slightest thought of abandoning his family. At the moment, granted, he was lying there on the carpet, and no one who knew his condition would seriously have demanded that he let the chief clerk in. But Gregor could hardly be dismissed on the spot for this small discourtesy, for which a suitable excuse would easily be found later on. And it seemed to Gregor that it would be much more sensible to leave him in peace now, instead of disturbing him with tears and pleading. But it was precisely the uncertainty that was distressing the others and excused their behavior.

“Mr. Samsa,” the chief clerk now called, raising his voice, “what is the matter? You barricade yourself in your room, answer only yes and no, cause your parents serious and unnecessary worry, and neglect—I mention this only in passing—your business duties in a truly unheard-of manner. I am speaking here in the name of your parents and of your employer, and I ask you, quite seriously, for an immediate and clear explanation. I am astonished, astonished. I thought I knew you as a calm, sensible person, and now you suddenly seem to want to start flaunting strange whims. This morning the head of the firm did hint to me at a possible explanation for your absence—it concerned the cash collections recently entrusted to you—but I very nearly gave my word of honor that this explanation could not be correct. Now, however, I see your incomprehensible obstinacy here, and I lose all desire to put in the slightest word for you. And your position is by no means the most secure. I originally intended to tell you all this in private, but since you are making me waste my time here for nothing, I don’t see why your respected parents shouldn’t hear it too. Your performance lately, then, has been very unsatisfactory; it is not the season for doing exceptional business, we recognize that; but a season for doing no business at all, Mr. Samsa, does not exist, must not exist.”

“But sir,” cried Gregor, beside himself, forgetting everything else in his agitation, “I’ll open up right away, this very moment. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has kept me from getting up. I’m still lying in bed. But I’m perfectly fresh again now. I’m just getting out of bed. Just a moment’s patience! It isn’t going as well as I thought. But I’m all right already. How a thing like that can just come over a person! Only last night I was perfectly fine, my parents know it, or rather, last night I already had a little premonition. Anyone should have been able to see it in my face. Why on earth didn’t I report it at the office! But you always think you’ll get through an illness without staying home. Sir! Spare my parents! There’s no reason for all the reproaches you’re making now; no one ever said a word to me about any of this. Perhaps you haven’t read the last orders I sent in. Anyway, I’ll still be leaving on my trip on the eight o’clock train; these few hours of rest have done me good. Don’t let me keep you, sir; I’ll be at the office myself shortly, and please be so kind as to tell them so, and give my respects to the head of the firm!”

And while Gregor was blurting all this out, hardly knowing what he was saying, he had moved easily toward the wardrobe, thanks probably to the practice he had already had in bed, and was now trying to raise himself up against it. He really did want to open the door, really did want to let himself be seen and to speak with the chief clerk; he was eager to find out what the others, who were now so insistent on seeing him, would say at the sight of him. If they were horrified, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be calm. But if they took it all calmly, then he too had no reason to get upset and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight. At first he slid off the smooth wardrobe a few times, but at last he gave himself a final heave and stood upright; he paid no attention anymore to the pains in his lower belly, however much they burned. Now he let himself fall against the back of a nearby chair and held on to its edges with his little legs. With that, though, he had also regained control of himself and fell silent, for now he could listen to the chief clerk.

“Did you understand a single word?” the chief clerk asked the parents. “He isn’t making fools of us, is he?” “For God’s sake,” cried his mother, already in tears, “maybe he’s seriously ill and we’re tormenting him. Grete! Grete!” she then screamed. “Mother?” his sister called from the other side. They were communicating through Gregor’s room. “You have to go to the doctor right away. Gregor is sick. Hurry, get the doctor. Did you hear Gregor talking just now?” “That was the voice of an animal,” said the chief clerk, strikingly quiet compared with the mother’s screaming. “Anna! Anna!” his father called through the front hall into the kitchen, clapping his hands. “Get a locksmith, right now!” And already the two girls were running through the front hall with rustling skirts—how had his sister got dressed so quickly?—and flinging open the front door of the apartment. You did not hear the door slam at all; they had probably left it open, as tends to happen in homes where some great misfortune has occurred.

Gregor, however, had become much calmer. So they could no longer understand his words, even though they had seemed clear enough to him, clearer than before, perhaps because his ear had grown used to them. But at least they now believed that something was not quite right with him, and were ready to help him. The confidence and assurance with which the first arrangements had been made did him good. He felt himself drawn once more into the circle of humankind, and from both of them, the doctor and the locksmith, without really distinguishing between them, he hoped for great and astonishing feats. In order to have as clear a voice as possible for the decisive discussions that were approaching, he coughed a little to clear his throat, taking care, though, to do so in a very muffled way, since even this noise might already sound different from a human cough, which he no longer trusted himself to judge. In the next room, meanwhile, it had become completely still. Perhaps his parents were sitting at the table with the chief clerk, whispering; perhaps they were all leaning against the door, listening.

Gregor slowly pushed himself toward the door along with the chair, let go of it there, threw himself against the door, and held himself upright against it (the pads of his little legs had a bit of something sticky on them), and there he rested for a moment from the exertion. But then he set about turning the key in the lock with his mouth. Unfortunately, it seemed that he had no real teeth—what was he supposed to grip the key with?—but his jaws, on the other hand, were certainly very strong; with their help he did in fact get the key moving, and paid no attention to the fact that he was undoubtedly doing himself some harm, for a brown liquid came out of his mouth, flowed over the key, and dripped onto the floor. “Just listen,” said the chief clerk in the next room, “he’s turning the key.” This was a great encouragement for Gregor; but they all should have called out to him, his father and mother too: “Come on, Gregor,” they should have called, “keep at it, keep at that lock!” And imagining that they were all following his efforts with suspense, he bit down on the key with all the strength he could muster, oblivious to everything else. As the key turned further, he danced around the lock; he was holding himself upright now only by his mouth, and as needed he hung on the key or pressed it down again with the whole weight of his body. The brighter click of the lock finally snapping back positively woke Gregor up. Breathing a sigh of relief, he told himself, “So I didn’t need the locksmith after all,” and laid his head on the handle to open the door all the way.

Since he had to open the door in this way, it was actually already wide open while he himself still could not be seen. First he had to turn himself slowly around the one wing of the door, and very carefully at that, if he did not want to fall flat on his back right at the threshold. He was still busy with this difficult maneuver and had no time to pay attention to anything else when he heard the chief clerk let out a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like the rushing of the wind—and now he saw him too: being the closest to the door, he was pressing his hand against his open mouth and slowly backing away, as if driven back by some invisible, steadily pressing force. His mother (in spite of the chief clerk’s presence she stood there with her hair still undone from the night and standing on end) first looked at his father with her hands clasped, then took two steps toward Gregor and sank down in the midst of her skirts, which spread out all around her, her face sunk out of sight on her breast. His father clenched his fist with a hostile expression, as if he meant to drive Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly around the living room, then shaded his eyes with his hands and wept until his mighty chest shook.

Gregor did not step into the room at all, but leaned against the inside of the door wing that was bolted shut, so that only half his body could be seen, and above it his head, tilted to one side, with which he peered across at the others. Meanwhile it had grown much lighter; on the other side of the street a section of the endless, gray-black building opposite—it was a hospital—stood out clearly, its regular windows breaking harshly through the facade; the rain was still coming down, but only in large drops, each one visible and each one, so it seemed, flung down to the ground separately. The breakfast dishes stood on the table in great abundance, for to his father breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and he would drag it out for hours reading various newspapers. On the wall directly opposite hung a photograph of Gregor from his army days, showing him as a lieutenant, his hand on his sword, smiling without a care, demanding respect for his bearing and his uniform. The door to the front hall was open, and since the front door of the apartment was open too, you could see out onto the landing and the top of the stairs leading down.

“Well,” said Gregor, well aware that he was the only one who had kept calm, “I’ll get dressed right away, pack up the samples, and be off. Will you, will you let me go? Well, sir, you can see I’m not stubborn, and I like my work; traveling is hard, but I couldn’t live without traveling. Where are you going, sir? To the office? Yes? Will you report everything truthfully? A man may be unable to work for the moment, but that’s precisely the right time to remember what he’s accomplished in the past and to consider that later, once the obstacle has been removed, he’s sure to work all the harder and with all the more concentration. I’m so very much obliged to the head of the firm, you know that perfectly well. On the other hand, I have my parents and my sister to worry about. I’m in a tight spot, but I’ll work my way out again. Only don’t make it harder for me than it already is. Take my side at the office! People don’t like a traveling salesman, I know. They think he earns a fortune and has a fine life of it. They just have no particular reason to think this prejudice through more carefully. But you, sir, you have a better view of how things stand than the rest of the staff, indeed, just between ourselves, a better view even than the head of the firm himself, who, in his capacity as owner, can easily let his judgment be swayed against an employee. You also know very well that the traveling salesman, who is away from the office almost all year round, can so easily become the victim of gossip, accidents, and groundless complaints, against which it is quite impossible for him to defend himself, since mostly he never hears a thing about them, and only when he has finished a trip, exhausted, does he feel at home, in his own body, the dire consequences, whose causes can no longer be traced. Sir, don’t go away without saying one word to show me that you think I’m right at least in some small part!”

But at Gregor’s very first words the chief clerk had already turned away, and only over his twitching shoulder did he look back at Gregor, his lips curled. And during Gregor’s speech he did not stand still for a moment, but, without taking his eyes off Gregor, edged toward the door, though only very gradually, as if there were some secret prohibition against leaving the room. He was already in the front hall, and from the sudden movement with which he pulled his foot out of the living room for the last time, you might have thought he had just burned the sole of it. In the front hall, though, he stretched his right hand far out in front of him toward the stairs, as if some positively unearthly deliverance were waiting for him there.

Gregor realized that he must on no account let the chief clerk go away in this mood, if his position with the firm was not to be put in the gravest danger. His parents did not understand all this so well; over the long years they had formed the conviction that Gregor was provided for in this firm for life, and besides, they had so much to do now with their immediate worries that they had lost all foresight. But Gregor had this foresight. The chief clerk had to be held back, calmed down, persuaded, and finally won over; Gregor’s future and his family’s depended on it, after all! 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 chief clerk, this ladies’ man, would surely have let himself be guided by her; she would have shut the front door and talked him out of his fright in the front hall. But his sister was simply not there; Gregor had to act himself. And without stopping to think that he did not yet know anything about his present powers of movement, without thinking either that his speech had possibly, indeed probably, not been understood again, he let go of the door wing; pushed himself through the opening; meant to go over to the chief clerk, who was already holding on to the railing of the landing with both hands in a ridiculous way; but at once, groping for a hold, he fell down with a little cry onto his many little legs. Hardly had this happened when, for the first time that morning, he felt a sense of physical well-being; his little legs had solid ground beneath them; they obeyed him perfectly, as he noticed to his joy; they even strove to carry him wherever he wanted to go; and he already believed that the final relief of all his suffering was at hand. But at that same moment, as he lay there on the floor, rocking with suppressed motion, not far at all from his mother and right in front of her, she, who had seemed so entirely sunk in herself, suddenly jumped up, her arms stretched wide, her fingers spread, crying, “Help, for God’s sake, help!”; held her head bent as if to see Gregor better, but, contradicting this, ran senselessly backward; had forgotten that the laid table stood behind her; sat down on it hastily, as if absentmindedly, when she reached it; and seemed not to notice at all that next to her the coffee was pouring out of the big overturned pot in a full stream onto the carpet.

“Mother, Mother,” said Gregor softly, and looked up at her. For a moment he had forgotten the chief clerk entirely; on the other hand, at the sight of the flowing coffee he could not keep himself from snapping his jaws several times at the empty air. At this his mother screamed again, fled from the table, and fell into the arms of his father, who was hurrying toward her. But Gregor had no time for his parents now; the chief clerk was already on the stairs; with his chin on the railing, he was looking back one last time. Gregor took a run at him to be as sure as possible of catching up; the chief clerk must have suspected something, for he leaped down several steps at once and vanished; but he was still shouting “Ugh!” and it echoed through the whole stairwell. Unfortunately this flight of the chief clerk now seemed to throw his father, who until then had been relatively composed, into complete confusion, for instead of running after the chief clerk himself, or at least not hindering Gregor in his pursuit, he seized in his right hand the chief clerk’s walking stick, which the man had left behind on a chair along with his hat and overcoat, took a large newspaper from the table with his left, and, stamping his feet, set about driving Gregor back into his room by waving the stick and the newspaper. No pleading of Gregor’s helped, no pleading was even understood; however humbly he turned his head, his father only stamped his feet harder. Across the room his mother had flung open a window despite the cool weather, and, leaning out, she pressed her face into her hands far outside the window. Between the lane and the stairwell a strong draft sprang up, the window curtains flew up, the newspapers on the table rustled, single sheets blew across the floor. Relentlessly his father pressed forward, uttering hissing noises like a savage. But Gregor had no practice at all yet in walking backward, and it really went very slowly. If only Gregor had been allowed to turn around, he would have been in his room at once, but he was afraid of making his father impatient with the time-consuming turn, and at any moment the stick in his father’s hand threatened him with a deadly blow on the back or the head. In the end, though, Gregor had no choice, for he noticed with horror that when he walked backward he could not even keep his direction; and so, with constant anxious sidelong glances at his father, he began to turn around as quickly as possible, which in reality was only very slowly. Perhaps his father noticed his good intentions, for he did not disturb him in this, but even directed the turning movement now and then from a distance with the tip of his stick. If only there hadn’t been this unbearable hissing of his father’s! It made Gregor lose his head entirely. He had almost turned all the way around when, always listening to this hissing, he even made a mistake and turned himself back a little. But when at last he had his head safely in front of the doorway, it turned out that his body was too wide to get through without further ado. In his present state, of course, it did not even remotely occur to his father to open the other wing of the door, say, to make enough room for Gregor to pass. His one fixed idea was that Gregor had to get into his room as fast as possible. Nor would he ever have allowed the elaborate preparations Gregor needed to raise himself upright and perhaps get through the door that way. Perhaps, as if there were no obstacle, he now drove Gregor forward with an extraordinary racket; behind Gregor it no longer sounded like the voice of just one single father; now it was really no joke anymore, and Gregor forced himself, come what may, into the doorway. One side of his body rose up, he lay at a slant in the doorway, one of his flanks was rubbed quite raw, ugly blotches were left on the white door, soon he was stuck fast and could no longer have moved by himself, the little legs on one side hung trembling up in the air, those on the other were pressed painfully to the floor—then his father gave him a powerful shove from behind, truly a release now, and he flew, bleeding heavily, far into his room. The door was slammed shut with the stick, and then at last it was quiet.