The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  As he heard his mother’s words Gregor realized that the lack of all immediate human contact, together with the monotonous life surrounded by the family over the course of these two months, must have confused his understanding, because otherwise he could not explain to himself how he, in all seriousness, could have been so keen to have his room emptied. Was he really eager to let the warm room, comfortably furnished with pieces he had inherited, be turned into a cavern in which he would, of course, then be able to crawl about in all directions without disturbance, but at the same time with a quick and complete forgetting of his human past as well? Was he then at this point already on the verge of forgetting and was it only the voice of his mother, which he had not heard for a long time, that had aroused him? Nothing was to be removed—everything must remain. In his condition he could not function without the beneficial influences of his furniture. And if the furniture prevented him from carrying out his senseless crawling about all over the place, then there was no harm in that, but rather a great benefit.

  But his sister unfortunately thought otherwise. She had grown accustomed, certainly not without justification, to acting as a special expert when discussing matters concerning Gregor with their parents, and so now the mother’s advice was for his sister sufficient reason to insist on the removal, not only of the chest of drawers and the writing desk, which were the only items she had thought about at first, but also of all the rest of the furniture, with the exception of the indispensable couch. Of course, it was not only childish defiance and her recent very unexpected and hard-won self-confidence which led her to this demand. She had also actually observed that Gregor needed a great deal of room to creep about; the furniture, on the other hand, as far as one could see, was not the slightest use. But perhaps the enthusiastic sensibility of young women of her age also played a role. This feeling sought release at every opportunity, and with it Grete now felt tempted by the desire to make Gregor’s situation even more terrifying, so that then she would be able to do even more for him than she had up to now. For surely no one except Grete would ever trust themselves to enter a room in which Gregor ruled the empty walls all by himself.

  And so she did not let herself be dissuaded from her decision by her mother, who in her sheer agitation seemed uncertain of herself in the room as it was. She soon fell quiet, and helped his sister with all the energy she could muster to get the chest of drawers out of the room. Now, Gregor could still do without the chest of drawers if need be, but the writing desk really had to stay. And scarcely had the women left the room with the chest of drawers, groaning as they pushed it, when Gregor stuck his head out from under the sofa to see how he could intervene, cautiously and with as much consideration as possible. But unfortunately it was his mother who came back into the room first; Grete had her arms wrapped around the chest of drawers in the next room and was rocking it back and forth by herself, of course without moving it from its position. But his mother was not used to the sight of Gregor; just seeing him could have made her ill, and so, frightened, Gregor scurried backward right to the other end of the sofa. However, he could no longer prevent the front of the sheet from moving a little. That was enough to catch his mother’s attention. She came to a halt, stood still for a moment, and then went back to Grete.

  Although Gregor kept repeating to himself over and over that really nothing unusual was going on, that only a few pieces of furniture were being rearranged, he soon had to admit to himself that the movements of the women to and fro, their quiet conversations, and the scraping of the furniture on the floor affected him like a great commotion stirred up on all sides. He was pulling in his head and legs and pressing his body into the floor so firmly that he had to tell himself unequivocally he would not be able to endure all this much longer. They were cleaning out his room, taking away from him everything he cherished; they had already dragged out the chest of drawers in which the fret saw and other tools were kept, and they were now loosening the writing desk which was fixed tight to the floor, the desk on which he, as a business student, as a high school student, indeed even as an elementary school student, had written out his assignments. At that moment he really did not have any more time to consider the good intentions of the two women, whose existence he had in any case almost forgotten, because in their exhaustion they were working really silently; the heavy stumbling of their feet was the only sound to be heard.

  And so he scuttled out—the women were just propping themselves up on the writing desk in the next room in order to take a short breather. He changed the direction of his path four times. He really did not know what he should rescue first. Then he saw hanging conspicuously on an otherwise empty wall the picture of the woman dressed in nothing but fur. He quickly scurried up over it and pressed himself against the glass which held it in place and which made his hot abdomen feel good. At least this picture, which Gregor for the moment completely concealed—surely no one would now take this away. He twisted his head toward the door of the living room to observe the women as they came back in.

  They had not allowed themselves very much rest and were coming back right away. Grete had placed her arm around her mother and held her tightly. “So what shall we take now?” said Grete and looked around her. Then her glance met Gregor’s from the wall. She kept her composure only because her mother was there. She bent her face toward her mother in order to prevent her from looking around, and said, although in a trembling voice and too quickly, “Come, wouldn’t it be better to go back to the living room for just another moment?” Grete’s purpose was clear to Gregor: she wanted to take his mother to a safe place and then chase him down from the wall. Well, let her just try! He squatted on his picture and did not hand it over. He would sooner spring into Grete’s face.

  But Grete’s words had immediately made the mother very uneasy. She walked to the side, caught sight of the enormous brown splotch on the flowered wallpaper, and, before she became truly aware that what she was looking at was Gregor, screamed out in a high-pitched raw voice “Oh God, oh God” and fell with outstretched arms, as if she was surrendering everything, down onto the couch. She lay there motionless. “Gregor, you…” cried out his sister with a raised fist and an urgent glare. Since his transformation these were the first words she had directed right at him. She ran into the room next door to bring some spirits—anything with which she could revive her mother from her fainting spell. Gregor wanted to help as well—there was time enough to save the picture—but he was stuck fast on the glass and had to tear himself loose forcibly. Then he too scurried into the next room, as if he could give his sister some advice, as in earlier times. He had to stand there idly behind her, while she rummaged about among various small bottles. Still, she was frightened when she turned around. A bottle fell onto the floor and shattered. A splinter of glass wounded Gregor in the face, and some corrosive medicine or other dripped over him. Now, without lingering any longer, Grete took as many small bottles as she could hold and ran with them in to her mother. She slammed the door shut with her foot. Gregor was now shut off from his mother, who was perhaps near death, thanks to him. He could not open the door; he did not want to chase away his sister, who had to remain with the mother. At this point he had nothing to do but wait. Overwhelmed with self-reproach and worry, he began to creep and crawl over everything: walls, furniture, and ceiling. Finally, in his despair, as the entire room started to spin around him, he fell onto the middle of the large table.

  A short time elapsed. Gregor lay there limply. All around was still. Perhaps that was a good sign. Then there was a ring at the door. The servant girl was naturally shut up in her kitchen, and therefore Grete had to go to open the door. His father had arrived. “What’s happened?” were his first words. Grete’s appearance had told him everything. Grete replied with a dull voice; evidently she was pressing her face against her father’s chest: “Mother fainted, but she’s getting better now. Gregor has broken loose.” “Yes, I expected that,” said his
father, “I always warned you of that, but you women don’t want to listen.” It was clear to Gregor that the father had badly misunderstood Grete’s all-too-brief message and was assuming that Gregor had committed some violent crime or other. Thus, Gregor now had to find his father to calm him down, for he had neither the time nor the ability to explain things to him. And so he rushed away to the door of his room and pushed himself against it, so that his father could see right away as he entered from the hall that Gregor fully intended to return at once to his room, that it was not necessary to drive him back, but that one only needed to open the door, and he would disappear immediately.

  But his father was not in the mood to observe such niceties. “Ah!” he yelled as soon as he entered, with a tone as if he were at once angry and pleased. Gregor pulled his head back from the door and raised it in the direction of his father. He had not really pictured his father as he now stood there. Of course, what with his new style of creeping all around, he had in the past while neglected to pay attention to what was going on in the rest of the apartment, as he had used to do; he really should have grasped the fact that he would encounter different conditions. And yet, and yet, was that still his father? Was that the same man who had lain exhausted and buried in bed in earlier days when Gregor was setting out on a business trip; who had received him on the evenings of his return in a sleeping gown and arm-chair, totally incapable of standing up; who had only lifted his arms as a sign of happiness; and who in their rare strolls together a few Sundays a year and on the most important holidays made his way slowly forward between Gregor and his mother—who themselves moved slowly—even a bit more slowly than them, bundled up in his old coat, working hard to move forward and always setting down his walking stick carefully; and who, when he had wanted to say something, had almost always stood still and gathered his entourage around him? Now he was standing up really straight, dressed in a tight-fitting blue uniform with gold buttons, like the ones doormen wear in a banking company. Above the high stiff collar of his jacket his firm double chin stuck out prominently, beneath his bushy eyebrows the glance of his black eyes was fresh and alert, and his usually disheveled white hair was combed down into a shining and carefully exact part. He threw his cap, on which a gold monogram, probably the symbol of a bank, was affixed, in an arc across the entire room onto the sofa and, thrusting back the edges of the long coat of his uniform, with his hands in his trouser pockets and a grim face, moved right up to Gregor. He really did not know what he had in mind, but he raised his feet uncommonly high anyway, and Gregor was astonished at the gigantic size of the soles of his boots. Gregor did not linger on that point; he had known even from the first day of his new life that, as far as he was concerned, his father considered the only appropriate response to be the most forceful one. And so he scurried away from his father, stopped when his father remained standing, and scampered forward again when his father stirred a little. In this way they made their way around the room repeatedly, without anything decisive taking place. In fact, because of the slow pace, it did not look like a chase. Gregor remained on the floor for the time being, especially since he was afraid that his father could interpret a flight up onto the wall or the ceiling as an act of real malice. At any event, Gregor had to tell himself that he could not keep up this running around for a long time, because whenever his father took a single step, he had to go through a large number of movements. Already he was starting to feel short of breath, just as in his earlier days when his lungs had been quite unreliable. As he now staggered around in this way, trying to gather all his energy for running, hardly able to keep his eyes open and feeling so listless that he had no notion at all of any escape other than by running and had almost already forgotten that the walls were available to him, although here they were obstructed by carefully carved furniture full of sharp points and spikes—at that moment something or other thrown casually flew close by and rolled in front of him. It was an apple. Immediately a second one flew after it. Gregor stood still in fright. Further running away was useless, for his father had decided to bombard him. From the fruit bowl on the sideboard his father had filled his pockets, and now, without for the moment taking accurate aim, he was throwing apple after apple. These small red apples were rolling around on the floor, as if electrified, and colliding with each other. A weakly thrown apple grazed Gregor’s back but skidded off harmlessly. However, another thrown immediately after that one drove into his back really hard. Gregor wanted to drag himself onward, as if he could make the unexpected and incredible pain go away if he changed his position. But he felt as if he was nailed in place and lay stretched out, completely confused in all his senses. Only with his final glance did he notice how the door of his room was pulled open; and how, right in front of his screaming sister, his mother ran out in her underbodice (for his sister had loosened her clothing in order to give her some freedom to breathe in her fainting spell); and how his mother then ran up to his father—on the way her loosened petticoats slipping toward the floor one after the other—and how, tripping over them, she hurled herself onto the father and, throwing her arms around him, in complete union with him—but at this moment Gregor’s powers of sight gave way—as her hands reached around the father’s neck, and she begged him to spare Gregor’s life.

  III

  Gregor’s serious wound, from which he suffered for over a month—since no one ventured to remove the apple, it remained in his flesh as a visible reminder—seemed by itself to have reminded the father that, in spite of Gregor’s present unhappy and hateful appearance, he was a member of the family and should not be treated as an enemy. It was, on the contrary, a requirement of family duty to suppress one’s aversion and to endure—nothing else, just endure.

  If, through his wound, Gregor had now also apparently lost for good his ability to move and for the time being needed many, many minutes to crawl across his room, like an aged invalid—so far as creeping up high was concerned, that was unimaginable—nevertheless, for this worsening of his condition, in his view he did get completely satisfactory compensation, because every day toward evening the door to the living room, which he was in the habit of keeping a sharp eye on even one or two hours beforehand, was opened, so that he, lying down in the darkness of his room, invisible from the living room, could see the entire family at the illuminated table and listen to their conversation, to a certain extent with their common permission, a situation quite different from what had happened before.

  Of course, it was no longer the animated social interaction of former times—of the sort which Gregor had always thought about with a certain longing in small hotel rooms, when, tired out, he had had to throw himself into the damp bedclothes. For the most part what went on now was only very quiet. After the evening meal, the father soon fell asleep in his armchair. The mother and sister warned each other to be quiet. Bent far over the light, the mother sewed fine undergarments for a fashion shop. The sister, who had taken on a job as a salesgirl, in the evening studied stenography and French, so as perhaps to obtain a better position later on. Sometimes the father woke up and, as if he was quite ignorant that he had been asleep, said to the mother, “How long you have been sewing again today!” and went right back to sleep, while the mother and the sister smiled tiredly to each other.

  With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take off his servant’s uniform even at home, and while his sleeping gown hung unused on the coat hook, the father dozed completely dressed in his place, as if he was always ready for his responsibility and even here was waiting for the voice of his superior. As a result, in spite of all the care from the mother and sister, his uniform, which even at the start was not new, grew dirty, and Gregor looked, often for the entire evening, at this clothing, with stains all over it and with its gold buttons always polished, in which the old man, though he must have been very uncomfortable, nonetheless was sleeping peacefully.