Part III

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

And even though, because of his wound, Gregor had now lost much of his mobility, probably for good, and for the time being needed long, long minutes to cross his room, like an old invalid (crawling about up high was out of the question), he was given what was in his opinion completely sufficient compensation for this worsening of his condition, in that every evening toward dusk the living-room door, which he had taken to watching closely for an hour or two beforehand, was opened, so that, lying in the darkness of his room, invisible from the living room, he could see the whole family at the lamplit table and listen to their talk, with everyone’s permission, so to speak, and thus quite differently from before.

Of course these were no longer the lively conversations of former times, which Gregor had always thought of with a certain longing in the small hotel rooms when he had had to throw himself, exhausted, into the damp bedding. Now things were mostly very quiet. Soon after supper his father would fall asleep in his chair; his mother and sister would urge each other to be quiet; his mother, bent far forward under the light, sewed fine lingerie for a fashion shop; his sister, who had taken a job as a salesgirl, studied shorthand and French in the evenings, so as perhaps to get a better position someday. Sometimes his father woke up, and as if he had no idea that he had been asleep, said to Gregor’s mother, “How long you’ve been sewing again today!” and went right back to sleep, while mother and sister smiled wearily at each other.

With a kind of obstinacy his father refused to take off his attendant’s uniform even at home; and while his dressing gown hung uselessly on the coat hook, his father dozed fully dressed in his place, as if he were always ready for duty and were waiting even here for the voice of his superior. As a result the uniform, which had not been new to begin with, grew less and less clean in spite of all the care his mother and sister took, and Gregor often spent whole evenings looking at this garment, stained all over, gleaming with its constantly polished gold buttons, in which the old man slept, most uncomfortably and yet peacefully.

As soon as the clock struck ten, his mother would try to wake his father by speaking softly to him and then persuade him to go to bed, for the sleep he got here was no proper sleep, and his father, who had to report for duty at six, badly needed proper sleep. But with the obstinacy that had seized him ever since he had become an attendant, he always insisted on staying at the table longer, even though he regularly fell asleep, and besides, it then took the greatest effort to get him to exchange the chair for his bed. However much his mother and sister pressed him with little admonitions, he would slowly shake his head for a quarter of an hour at a time, keeping his eyes closed, and would not get up. His mother plucked at his father’s sleeve and whispered endearments into his ear, his sister left her homework to help her mother, but none of it worked on his father. He only sank deeper into his chair. Only when the women took him under the arms did he open his eyes, look by turns at mother and sister, and say, as he usually did, “What a life. So this is the peace of my old age.” And leaning on the two women, he would get up, laboriously, as if he were the greatest burden to himself, let the women lead him to the door, wave them away there, and go on by himself, while his mother hastily threw down her sewing and his sister her pen, so as to run after his father and go on helping him.

Who in this overworked and overtired family had time to look after Gregor more than was absolutely necessary? The household was cut back more and more; the maid was let go after all; a huge, bony cleaning woman with white hair fluttering around her head came mornings and evenings to do the heaviest work; everything else his mother took care of, on top of all her sewing. It even happened that various pieces of family jewelry, which his mother and sister had once worn so happily at parties and celebrations, were sold, as Gregor learned in the evening from the general discussion of the prices they had fetched. But the greatest lament was always that they could not leave this apartment, which was far too large for their present circumstances, since it was impossible to imagine how Gregor could be moved. But Gregor saw well enough that it was not only consideration for him that stood in the way of a move, for he could easily have been transported in a suitable crate with a few air holes; what mainly kept the family from moving was rather their complete hopelessness and the thought that they had been struck by a misfortune such as had struck no one else in their whole circle of relatives and acquaintances. What the world demands of poor people they did to the utmost: his father fetched breakfast for the junior bank clerks, his mother sacrificed herself for the underwear of strangers, his sister ran back and forth behind the counter at the customers’ command, but the family’s strength went no further than that. And the wound in Gregor’s back began to hurt as if it were new when his mother and sister, having put his father to bed, now came back, let their work lie, moved close together, and sat cheek to cheek; when his mother, pointing to Gregor’s room, now said, “Shut that door, Grete,” and when Gregor was in the dark again, while next door the women mingled their tears or even stared at the table, dry-eyed.

Gregor spent the nights and days almost entirely without sleep. Sometimes he thought that the next time the door opened he would take the family’s affairs in hand again just as before; in his thoughts there appeared again, after a long time, the boss and the chief clerk, the clerks and the apprentices, the porter who was so slow on the uptake, two or three friends from other firms, a chambermaid from a hotel in the provinces, a dear, fleeting memory, a cashier from a hat shop whom he had courted seriously but too slowly; they all appeared, mixed in with strangers or people he had already forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family, they were all inaccessible, and he was glad when they vanished. But then again he was in no mood at all to worry about his family; he was filled with nothing but rage at how badly he was cared for, and although he could not imagine anything he might have had an appetite for, he made plans for getting into the pantry to take what was his due, even if he was not hungry. No longer considering what might especially please Gregor, his sister, before she ran off to work in the morning and at noon, would hastily push some food or other into Gregor’s room with her foot, only to sweep it out in the evening with a swish of the broom, indifferent to whether it had perhaps only been tasted or (most often the case) had been left completely untouched. The tidying of the room, which she now always did in the evenings, could not have been done any faster. Streaks of dirt ran along the walls; here and there lay balls of dust and filth. At first, when his sister arrived, Gregor would station himself in the most telltale of these corners, so as to reproach her, in a way, by where he stood. But he could probably have stayed there for weeks without his sister mending her ways; she saw the dirt just as well as he did, but she had simply decided to leave it. At the same time, with a touchiness that was quite new in her and had in fact seized the whole family, she watched over her right to be the only one to tidy Gregor’s room. Once his mother had given Gregor’s room a thorough cleaning, which she had managed only after using several buckets of water (all that dampness, admittedly, upset Gregor too, and he lay spread out on the couch, embittered and motionless), but his mother did not escape punishment. For hardly had his sister noticed the change in Gregor’s room that evening when, deeply offended, she ran into the living room and, in spite of her mother’s imploringly raised hands, broke into a fit of weeping, which her parents (his father had, of course, been startled out of his chair) at first watched in astonishment and helplessness; until they too began to stir; his father turning to his right to reproach Gregor’s mother for not leaving the cleaning of Gregor’s room to Grete, and to his left, by contrast, to shout at Grete that she would never be allowed to clean Gregor’s room again; while his mother tried to drag his father, who was beside himself with agitation, into the bedroom; his sister, shaken with sobs, pounded the table with her little fists; and Gregor hissed loudly with rage because it occurred to no one to shut the door and spare him this sight and this noise.

But even if his sister, exhausted from her job, had grown tired of looking after Gregor as before, there was still no need at all for his mother to take her place, and Gregor need not have been neglected. For now there was the cleaning woman. This old widow, who with the help of her strong frame had probably survived the worst in her long life, felt no real revulsion toward Gregor. Without being in any way curious, she had once happened to open the door of Gregor’s room and, at the sight of Gregor, who, taken completely by surprise, began to run back and forth even though no one was chasing him, she had stopped short in amazement, her hands folded over her stomach. Since then she never failed, morning and evening, to open the door a little, briefly, and look in at Gregor. At first she also called him over to her, with words she probably thought were friendly, such as “Come over here, you old dung beetle!” or “Look at the old dung beetle!” To such overtures Gregor made no reply, but stayed motionless where he was, as if the door had not been opened at all. If only they had ordered this cleaning woman to clean his room every day, instead of letting her disturb him uselessly whenever she felt like it! Once, early in the morning—a heavy rain, perhaps already a sign of the coming spring, was beating against the panes—when the cleaning woman began again with her usual remarks, Gregor was so exasperated that he turned toward her as if to attack, slowly and feebly, to be sure. But the cleaning woman, instead of being afraid, simply lifted high in the air a chair that stood near the door, and as she stood there with her mouth wide open, it was clear that she intended to close her mouth only when the chair in her hand came crashing down on Gregor’s back. “Is that as far as you go?” she asked when Gregor turned around again, and calmly put the chair back in the corner.

Gregor now ate almost nothing at all. Only when he happened to pass the food set out for him would he take a bite into his mouth, as a game, hold it there for hours, and then mostly spit it out again. At first he thought it was grief over the state of his room that kept him from eating, but it was precisely with the changes in his room that he very soon made his peace. The family had got into the habit of putting things into this room that they could not find room for anywhere else, and there were many such things now, since one room of the apartment had been rented to three boarders. These serious gentlemen (all three had full beards, as Gregor once established through a crack in the door) were painfully intent on order, not only in their own room but, since they had now taken lodgings here, in the entire household, and therefore especially in the kitchen. Useless or, worse, dirty junk they could not stand. Besides, they had brought most of their own furnishings with them. For this reason many things had become superfluous which, though they could not be sold, the family did not want to throw away either. All these wandered into Gregor’s room. So did the ash bin and the garbage bin from the kitchen. Anything that happened to be of no use at the moment, the cleaning woman, who was always in a great hurry, simply flung into Gregor’s room; fortunately Gregor usually saw only the object in question and the hand that held it. The cleaning woman perhaps intended to come and get the things again when she had the time and the chance, or to throw them all out at once, but in fact they stayed wherever they had landed when first thrown, unless Gregor wound his way through the junk and set it moving, at first because he had to, since there was no other place free to crawl, but later with growing pleasure, although after such wanderings, tired to death and sad, he would again not stir for hours.

Since the boarders sometimes also had their supper at home in the common living room, the living-room door stayed shut on some evenings, but Gregor did without the open door quite easily; after all, on many evenings when it was open he had not made use of it, but had lain, without the family noticing, in the darkest corner of his room. Once, though, the cleaning woman had left the door to the living room slightly open, and it stayed open even when the boarders came in in the evening and the light was turned on. They sat down at the head of the table, where in former times his father, his mother, and Gregor had sat, unfolded their napkins, and took knife and fork in hand. At once his mother appeared in the doorway with a platter of meat, and right behind her his sister with a platter piled high with potatoes. The food gave off a thick steam. The boarders bent over the platters set before them as if they wanted to inspect them before eating, and in fact the one who sat in the middle, and who seemed to count as an authority for the other two, cut up a piece of meat while it was still on the platter, evidently to determine whether it was tender enough and whether it ought perhaps to be sent back to the kitchen. He was satisfied, and mother and sister, who had been watching anxiously, breathed a sigh of relief and began to smile.

The family themselves ate in the kitchen. Nevertheless, before going into the kitchen, his father came into this room and, with a single bow, cap in hand, made a circuit of the table. The boarders all rose and murmured something into their beards. When they were alone again, they ate in almost complete silence. It seemed strange to Gregor that out of all the various noises of eating he could keep picking out the sound of their chewing teeth, as if Gregor were to be shown by this that you needed teeth to eat, and that even with the finest toothless jaws you could do nothing. “I do have an appetite,” Gregor told himself anxiously, “but not for these things. How these boarders stuff themselves, and I’m perishing!”

That very evening—Gregor could not remember having heard the violin during all this time—its sound came from the kitchen. The boarders had already finished their supper; the one in the middle had pulled out a newspaper and given the other two a page each, and now they were leaning back, reading and smoking. When the violin began to play, they became attentive, got up, and went on tiptoe to the door of the front hall, where they stood pressed close together. They must have been heard from the kitchen, for his father called out, “Is the playing perhaps disagreeable to you, gentlemen? It can be stopped at once.” “On the contrary,” said the middle gentleman, “wouldn’t the young lady like to come in and join us and play here in the room, where it is so much more comfortable and cozy?” “Oh, by all means,” cried his father, as if he were the violinist. The gentlemen stepped back into the room and waited. Soon his father came in with the music stand, his mother with the music, and his sister with the violin. His sister calmly got everything ready for playing; his parents, who had never rented out rooms before and therefore overdid their politeness toward the boarders, did not even dare to sit down on their own chairs; his father leaned against the door, his right hand tucked between two buttons of his livery jacket, which he had buttoned up; his mother, though, was offered a chair by one of the gentlemen and, since she left the chair where the gentleman had happened to put it, sat off to one side in a corner.

His sister began to play; father and mother, each from their own side, followed the movements of her hands attentively. Gregor, drawn by the playing, had ventured a little farther forward and already had his head in the living room. He hardly wondered at how little consideration he had shown for the others lately; this consideration had once been his pride. And yet just now he would have had more reason than ever to hide, for because of the dust that lay everywhere in his room and flew up at the slightest movement, he too was covered with dust; threads, hairs, and scraps of food he dragged around with him on his back and sides; his indifference to everything was much too great for him to lie down on his back and rub himself against the carpet, as he had once done several times a day. And in spite of this condition, he felt no shyness about advancing a little way across the spotless floor of the living room.

Admittedly, no one was paying any attention to him either. The family was completely absorbed in the violin playing; the boarders, on the other hand, who at first, their hands in their trouser pockets, had stationed themselves much too close behind his sister’s music stand, so that they could all have read the music, which must surely have bothered his sister, soon withdrew to the window with lowered heads, talking in undertones, and stayed there, anxiously watched by his father. It now really looked all too plainly as if they had been disappointed in their expectation of hearing some beautiful or entertaining violin playing, as if they had had enough of the whole performance and were letting their peace be disturbed only out of politeness. In particular, the way they all blew the smoke of their cigars up into the air through their noses and mouths suggested great nervousness. And yet his sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was tilted to one side; her eyes followed the lines of music, searching and sad. Gregor crawled forward a little farther and held his head close to the floor, so as possibly to meet her eyes. Was he an animal, that music moved him so? He felt as if the way were opening before him to the unknown nourishment he longed for. He was determined to push his way forward to his sister, to tug at her skirt and so let her know that she should come into his room with her violin, for no one here appreciated her playing the way he would appreciate it. He would never let her out of his room again, at least not as long as he lived; for the first time his frightful shape would be of use to him; he would be at every door of his room at once and hiss at the attackers; his sister, though, should stay with him not by force but of her own free will; she should sit beside him on the couch and bend her ear down to him, and then he would confide to her that he had firmly intended to send her to the conservatory, and that, if this misfortune had not intervened, he would have told everyone so last Christmas—Christmas had surely come and gone by now?—without paying any attention to any objections. After this declaration his sister would burst into tears of emotion, and Gregor would raise himself up to her shoulder and kiss her neck, which, since she had started going to work, she wore bare, without a ribbon or collar.

“Mr. Samsa!” the middle gentleman called out to his father, and without wasting another word pointed his index finger at Gregor, who was slowly moving forward. The violin fell silent; the middle boarder first smiled at his friends, shaking his head, and then looked at Gregor again. His father seemed to think it more urgent to calm the boarders first, instead of driving Gregor away, even though they were not upset at all, and Gregor seemed to entertain them more than the violin playing had. He hurried over to them and, with arms outspread, tried to push them into their room and at the same time to block their view of Gregor with his body. Now they really did get a little angry, though you could no longer tell whether it was at his father’s behavior or at the realization, now dawning on them, that without knowing it they had had a neighbor like Gregor. They demanded explanations from his father, raised their arms in their turn, plucked nervously at their beards, and only slowly backed away toward their room. Meanwhile his sister had overcome the daze into which she had fallen when her playing was so suddenly broken off; after holding the violin and bow for a while in her limply hanging hands and going on looking at the music as if she were still playing, she had pulled herself together all at once, laid the instrument in the lap of her mother, who was still sitting in her chair, short of breath, her lungs laboring violently, and had run into the next room, which the boarders, pressed by her father, were now approaching more quickly. You could see the blankets and pillows on the beds flying up under his sister’s practiced hands and falling into order. Even before the gentlemen had reached the room, she had finished making the beds and slipped out. His father again seemed so gripped by his obstinacy that he forgot all the respect he did, after all, owe his tenants. He just kept pushing and pushing, until, right in the doorway of the room, the middle gentleman stamped his foot thunderously and so brought his father to a halt. “I hereby declare,” he said, raising his hand and looking around for the mother and sister too, “that in view of the disgusting conditions prevailing in this apartment and this family”—here he spat on the floor, curtly and decisively—“I am giving notice on my room immediately. Naturally I shall not pay the slightest thing for the days I have lived here, either; on the contrary, I shall consider whether I may not bring some claims against you, which, believe me, will be very easy to justify.” He stopped and looked straight ahead, as if he were expecting something. And in fact his two friends promptly chimed in with the words: “We too are giving notice immediately.” Thereupon he seized the door handle and shut the door with a bang.

His father tottered, groping with his hands, to his chair and let himself fall into it; it looked as if he were stretching out for his usual evening nap, but the heavy nodding of his head, which seemed to have lost all support, showed that he was not asleep at all. Gregor had been lying still all this time on the spot where the boarders had caught him. Disappointment at the failure of his plan, but perhaps also the weakness brought on by so much hunger, made it impossible for him to move. He feared, with a certain definiteness, that the very next moment everything would come crashing down on him at once, and he waited. He was not even startled by the violin, which slipped from under his mother’s trembling fingers, fell from her lap, and gave out a reverberating note.

“My dear parents,” said his sister, striking the table with her hand by way of introduction, “things can’t go on like this. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I do. I won’t pronounce my brother’s name in front of this monster, and so all I’ll say is: we have to try to get rid of it. We’ve done everything humanly possible to take care of it and put up with it; I don’t think anyone can reproach us in the least.”

“She’s right a thousand times over,” said his father to himself. His mother, who still could not get enough breath, began to cough hollowly into her hand, which she held in front of her mouth, with a crazed look in her eyes.

His sister hurried to her mother and held her forehead. His sister’s words seemed to have led his father to more definite thoughts; he had sat up straight and was playing with his attendant’s cap among the plates still standing on the table from the boarders’ supper, and now and then he looked over at Gregor, who lay still.

“We have to try to get rid of it,” his sister now said, addressing only his father, for his mother, coughing, heard nothing. “It’s going to kill you both, I can see it coming. When people have to work as hard as we all do, they can’t put up with this endless torment at home as well. I can’t stand it anymore either.” And she broke into such violent weeping that her tears ran down onto her mother’s face, from which she wiped them with mechanical movements of her hand.

“Child,” said his father with sympathy and with striking understanding, “but what are we to do?”

His sister only shrugged her shoulders as a sign of the helplessness that had now, while she wept, come over her, in contrast to her earlier certainty.

“If he understood us,” said his father, half asking; his sister, in the midst of her weeping, shook her hand vehemently as a sign that this was out of the question.

“If he understood us,” his father repeated, and by closing his eyes took in his sister’s conviction that this was impossible, “then perhaps we could come to some arrangement with him. But as it is—”

“It has to go,” cried his sister, “that’s the only way, Father. You just have to try to get rid of the idea that it’s Gregor. Our real misfortune is that we believed it for so long. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that it isn’t possible for human beings to live with such an animal, and he would have gone away of his own accord. Then we wouldn’t have a brother, but we could go on living and honor his memory. But as it is, this animal persecutes us, drives away the boarders, obviously wants to take over the whole apartment and make us spend the night in the street. Just look, Father,” she suddenly screamed, “he’s starting again!” And in a terror quite incomprehensible to Gregor, his sister even abandoned her mother, positively pushed herself off from her chair, as if she would rather sacrifice her mother than stay near Gregor, and hurried behind her father, who, upset merely by her behavior, stood up too and half raised his arms in front of her, as if to protect her.

But it did not even occur to Gregor to want to frighten anyone, least of all his sister. He had only begun to turn around in order to make his way back into his room, and that, admittedly, did look striking, since in his ailing condition he had to help himself with his head in making the difficult turns, lifting it many times and knocking it against the floor. He paused and looked around. His good intention seemed to have been recognized; it had only been a momentary fright. Now they all looked at him, silent and sad. His mother lay in her chair, her legs stretched out and pressed together, her eyes almost closing from exhaustion; his father and his sister sat side by side; his sister had put her hand around her father’s neck.

“Now perhaps I may turn around,” thought Gregor, and began his labor again. He could not suppress his panting from the effort and had to rest now and then as well. Otherwise no one was rushing him; it was all left to him. When he had completed the turn, he immediately began to make his way straight back. He was amazed at the great distance that separated him from his room, and could not understand at all how, weak as he was, he had covered the same distance a short while before almost without noticing. Intent only on crawling fast, he hardly noticed that no word, no exclamation from his family disturbed him. Only when he was already in the doorway did he turn his head, not all the way, for he felt his neck growing stiff; still, he saw that nothing behind him had changed, except that his sister had stood up. His last glance brushed his mother, who was now fast asleep.

Hardly was he inside his room when the door was hastily pushed shut, bolted, and locked. Gregor was so startled by the sudden noise behind him that his little legs gave way under him. It was his sister who had been in such a hurry. She had already been standing there upright, waiting; then she had sprung forward, light on her feet; Gregor had not heard her coming at all; and she cried “At last!” to her parents as she turned the key in the lock.

“And now?” Gregor asked himself, and looked around in the dark. He soon discovered that he could no longer move at all. He was not surprised at this; rather, it seemed unnatural to him that he had actually been able until now to get around on these thin little legs. Otherwise he felt relatively comfortable. True, he had pains all over his body, but it seemed to him that they were gradually growing fainter and fainter and would finally go away altogether. The rotten apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, which was entirely covered with soft dust, he hardly felt anymore. He thought back on his family with tenderness and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still lived to see the first glimmer of the general brightening outside the window. Then, without his willing it, his head sank all the way down, and from his nostrils his last breath streamed faintly out.

When the cleaning woman came early in the morning (out of sheer strength and haste she slammed all the doors, no matter how often she had been asked not to, so hard that once she had arrived there was no more quiet sleep anywhere in the apartment), she at first found nothing unusual on her customary brief visit to Gregor. She thought he was lying there so motionless on purpose, playing the injured party; she credited him with every conceivable kind of intelligence. Since she happened to be holding the long broom, she tried to tickle Gregor with it from the doorway. When that had no effect either, she grew annoyed and poked Gregor a little, and only when she had shoved him from his place without meeting any resistance did she take notice. When she soon realized the true state of affairs, her eyes grew wide and she whistled to herself, but she did not linger; she tore open the door of the bedroom and called loudly into the darkness: “Come and have a look, it’s croaked; there it lies, croaked for good and all!”

Mr. and Mrs. Samsa sat up in their marriage bed and had their hands full getting over the fright the cleaning woman had given them before they managed to take in what she was reporting. But then Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, each on their own side, climbed hastily out of bed; Mr. Samsa threw the blanket over his shoulders, Mrs. Samsa came out in nothing but her nightgown; and that was how they stepped into Gregor’s room. Meanwhile the door of the living room had opened too, where Grete had been sleeping since the boarders moved in; she was fully dressed, as if she had not slept at all, and her pale face seemed to prove it as well. “Dead?” said Mrs. Samsa, and looked up questioningly at the cleaning woman, although she could have examined everything herself, and could even have seen it without examining. “I should say so,” said the cleaning woman, and to prove it she pushed Gregor’s corpse a good way farther to one side with the broom. Mrs. Samsa made a movement as if she meant to hold back the broom, but did not do it. “Well,” said Mr. Samsa, “now we can thank God.” He crossed himself, and the three women followed his example. Grete, who did not take her eyes off the corpse, said, “Just look how thin he was. Well, he hadn’t eaten anything for such a long time. The food came out again just the way it went in.” And in fact Gregor’s body was completely flat and dry; you could really see it only now, when it was no longer raised up on its little legs and nothing else distracted the eye.

“Come in with us for a little while, Grete,” said Mrs. Samsa with a melancholy smile, and Grete, not without looking back at the corpse, followed her parents into the bedroom. The cleaning woman shut the door and opened the window wide. Although it was early in the morning, there was already a touch of mildness mixed in with the fresh air. It was, after all, already the end of March.

The three boarders came out of their room and looked around in astonishment for their breakfast; they had been forgotten. “Where is breakfast?” the middle gentleman asked the cleaning woman sullenly. She, however, put her finger to her lips and then hastily and silently beckoned to the gentlemen to come into Gregor’s room. They did come, and then stood around Gregor’s corpse, their hands in the pockets of their somewhat shabby little jackets, in the room, which was now quite light.

Then the bedroom door opened, and Mr. Samsa appeared in his livery, his wife on one arm, his daughter on the other. They all looked as if they had been crying a little; now and then Grete pressed her face against her father’s arm.

“Leave my apartment at once!” said Mr. Samsa, and pointed to the door without letting go of the women. “What do you mean?” said the middle gentleman, somewhat taken aback, and smiled sugarily. The two others held their hands behind their backs and kept rubbing them together, as if in gleeful anticipation of a big quarrel that was bound to turn out in their favor. “I mean exactly what I say,” answered Mr. Samsa, and, with his two companions, the three of them in a line, advanced on the boarder. The boarder at first stood still and looked at the floor, as if the things in his head were arranging themselves in a new order. “Then we’ll go,” he said, and looked up at Mr. Samsa as if, in a humility that had suddenly come over him, he needed fresh permission even for this decision. Mr. Samsa merely nodded at him briefly several times, his eyes wide. Thereupon the gentleman did in fact go at once, with long strides, into the front hall; his two friends had been listening for a little while now, their hands quite still, and now they positively skipped after him, as if afraid that Mr. Samsa might get into the front hall ahead of them and cut them off from their leader. In the front hall all three took their hats from the rack, drew their walking sticks from the umbrella stand, bowed silently, and left the apartment. With a mistrust that turned out to be completely unfounded, Mr. Samsa stepped out onto the landing with the two women; leaning on the railing, they watched the three gentlemen going down the long stairs, slowly, it is true, but steadily, disappearing on each floor at a certain turn of the stairwell and coming out again after a few moments; the lower they got, the more the Samsa family lost interest in them, and when a butcher’s boy, carrying his tray on his head with a proud bearing, came climbing up toward the gentlemen and then on past them, high above, Mr. Samsa and the women soon left the railing, and they all went back into their apartment, as if relieved.

They decided to spend this day resting and going for a walk; they had not only earned this break from work, they absolutely needed it. And so they sat down at the table and wrote three letters of excuse, Mr. Samsa to the management of his bank, Mrs. Samsa to her employer, and Grete to the proprietor of her shop. While they were writing, the cleaning woman came in to say that she was leaving, for her morning work was done. At first the three letter writers merely nodded without looking up; only when the cleaning woman still would not go away did they look up in annoyance. “Well?” asked Mr. Samsa. The cleaning woman stood smiling in the doorway, as if she had some great piece of good luck to announce to the family but would do so only if she were questioned thoroughly. The little ostrich feather standing almost upright on her hat, which had annoyed Mr. Samsa the whole time she had worked for them, swayed lightly in every direction. “So what is it you actually want?” asked Mrs. Samsa, whom the cleaning woman respected more than anyone else. “Well,” answered the cleaning woman, and could not go on right away for friendly laughter, “you needn’t worry about how to get rid of that stuff next door. It’s all taken care of.” Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent down over their letters as if they meant to go on writing; Mr. Samsa, who noticed that the cleaning woman was now about to start describing everything in detail, fended this off firmly with an outstretched hand. Since she was not allowed to tell her story, she remembered the great hurry she was in and, obviously offended, called out, “Bye-bye, everybody,” whirled around, and left the apartment with a terrible slamming of doors.

“She’ll be dismissed this evening,” said Mr. Samsa, but got no answer from either his wife or his daughter, for the cleaning woman seemed to have disturbed the peace they had only just gained. They got up, went to the window, and stayed there, holding each other close. Mr. Samsa turned around in his chair toward them and watched them quietly for a little while. Then he called out, “Come on over here, then. Leave the old business alone, once and for all. And show me a little consideration too.” The women obeyed him at once, hurried over to him, caressed him, and quickly finished their letters.

Then all three of them left the apartment together, which they had not done for months, and took the streetcar out into the open country beyond the city. The car, in which they were the only passengers, was flooded with warm sunshine. Leaning back comfortably in their seats, they discussed their prospects for the future, and it turned out that on closer inspection these were not bad at all, for all three of their jobs, which they had never really asked one another about, were extremely favorable and especially promising for later on. The greatest immediate improvement in their situation would of course come easily from moving; they now wanted to take a smaller and cheaper apartment, but one better located and altogether more practical than their present one, which Gregor had picked out. While they were talking in this way, it occurred to Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, almost at the same moment, as they watched their daughter growing livelier and livelier, how, in spite of all the caretaking that had left her cheeks pale, she had lately blossomed into a beautiful, voluptuous girl. Growing quieter, and communicating almost unconsciously through glances, they thought that it would soon be time to find her a good husband too. And it seemed to them a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions when, at the end of their ride, their daughter got up first and stretched her young body.