The Metamorphosis — Episode 1

When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He lay on his back, which was hard as armour, and when he raised his head a little he saw his belly, domed and brown and divided into stiff arched segments, on top of which the blanket, ready to slide off altogether, could barely keep its hold. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the rest of him, waved helplessly before his eyes.

"What has happened to me?" he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper human room, only rather too small, lay quietly between its four familiar walls. Above the table, on which a collection of cloth samples lay unpacked and spread out — Samsa was a travelling salesman — hung the picture he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady in a fur hat and fur stole, sitting upright and holding out towards the viewer a heavy fur muff into which her whole forearm had disappeared.

Gregor's eyes turned to the window, and the dull weather — you could hear raindrops striking the metal sill — made him quite melancholy. "What if I slept a little longer and forgot all this nonsense," he thought; but that was entirely impossible, because he was used to sleeping on his right side, and in his present condition he could not get himself into that position. However hard he threw himself to the right, he rocked back onto his back. He tried it a hundred times, shutting his eyes so as not to see the struggling legs, and only gave up when he began to feel, in his side, a faint dull ache he had never felt before.

"Oh God," he thought, "what an exhausting job I've chosen. Day in, day out on the road. The worries of the business are far greater than in the office at home, and on top of that there is this plague of travelling: the anxiety about train connections, the bad, irregular meals, the human contact that is always changing, never lasting, never warm. The devil take it all!" He slid back into his previous position. "This early rising," he thought, "makes a man completely stupid. A man must have his sleep. If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I'd have given notice long ago; I'd have gone up to the chief and told him what I think, from the bottom of my heart. He'd have fallen off his desk! It's a strange habit, too, sitting up on the desk and talking down to the staff from a height — and since the chief is hard of hearing, you have to step right up close. Well, the hope is not entirely gone. Once I've saved the money to pay off what my parents owe him — another five or six years, perhaps — I'll do it without fail. That will be the great break. For the moment, though, I must get up, because my train leaves at five."

And he looked across at the alarm clock ticking on the chest of drawers. "Heavenly Father!" he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were moving calmly on; it was past the half hour, it was getting on for a quarter to seven. Had the alarm not rung? From the bed you could see that it was correctly set for four; certainly it had rung. But was it possible to sleep peacefully through that furniture-shaking noise? Well, he had not slept peacefully, but no doubt all the more deeply. What was he to do now? The next train went at seven; to catch it he would have had to hurry like a madman, the samples were not yet packed, and he did not feel especially fresh or mobile. And even if he caught it, there was no avoiding a thunderstorm from the chief, because the office boy had waited at the five o'clock train and long since reported that he had missed it. What if he reported sick? But that would be extremely awkward and suspicious, for in five years of service Gregor had not once been ill. The chief would certainly come round with the doctor from the health insurance, would reproach his parents for their lazy son, and would cut short every objection by pointing to the doctor, for whom there existed only perfectly healthy people who were afraid of work. And would he be so very wrong, in this case? Apart from a drowsiness that was really unnecessary after such a long sleep, Gregor felt perfectly well, and was in fact remarkably hungry.

As he was turning all this over in the greatest haste, without being able to make up his mind to leave the bed — the clock was just striking a quarter to seven — there was a cautious knock on the door at the head of his bed. "Gregor," called a voice — 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 answer. It was unmistakably his old voice, but into it there crept, as if from below, a painful squeaking that could not be suppressed, and that left the words clear only for a first instant before it distorted them in the echo, so that you could not tell whether you had heard them correctly. Gregor had wanted to answer at length and explain everything, but in the circumstances he confined himself to: "Yes, yes, thank you, Mother, I'm getting up now." Through the wooden door the change in his voice was evidently not noticeable outside, because his mother was satisfied with this and shuffled away. But the little exchange had made the rest 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, softly, but with his fist. "Gregor, Gregor," he called, "what's the matter?" And after a little while he warned him again, in a deeper voice: "Gregor! Gregor!" At the other side door his sister was pleading quietly: "Gregor? Aren't you well? Do you need anything?" To both sides Gregor answered, "I'm just ready," and took pains, by pronouncing each word with the greatest care and leaving long pauses between them, to take anything unusual out of his voice. His father went back to his breakfast, but his sister whispered: "Gregor, open the door, I beg you." Gregor had no intention of opening it, and was grateful for the habit he had picked up from travelling of locking every door 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, because — this much he saw — lying in bed, his thinking would come to no sensible conclusion. That the change in his voice was nothing more than the first sign of a heavy cold, the occupational disease of travelling salesmen, he did not doubt in the least.

Throwing off the blanket was quite simple; he only needed to puff himself up a little and it fell by itself. But after that it became difficult, especially because he was so uncommonly wide. He would have needed arms and hands to raise himself; instead he had only these many little legs, which were in ceaseless and varied motion and which, moreover, he could not control. If he tried to bend one, it was the first to stretch out; and if he finally succeeded in making that leg do what he wanted, all the others meanwhile worked away as if set free, in a state of the highest and most painful excitement. "Just don't waste time in bed," Gregor told himself. He tried the lower part of his body first, but it proved too hard to move, and when at last, almost wild, he shoved himself forward with all his strength, he struck the bottom bedpost violently; the burning pain taught him that the lower part of his body was, for the moment, perhaps the most sensitive. So he tried the upper part, and turned his head carefully towards the edge of the bed. But when at last he held his head out over the edge, in the open air, he was afraid to go on, because if he let himself fall like that, it would take a miracle for his head not to be hurt. And whatever happened, he must not lose consciousness now; he would rather stay in bed.

"Before it strikes a quarter past seven," he said to himself, "I must be completely out of this bed. Besides, by then someone will have come from the office to ask about me, because the office opens before seven." And he set about rocking the whole length of his body out of the bed with an even swing. His back seemed to be hard; nothing would happen to it in a fall onto the carpet. His greatest worry was the loud crash it was bound to make, which behind every door would cause, if not alarm, then at least concern. But it had to be risked. When he was already halfway out — the new method was more of a game than an effort — it struck him how simple everything would be if someone came to help. Two strong people — he thought of his father and the maid — would have been quite enough. Well, quite apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really have called for help? In spite of all his distress, he could not suppress a smile at the thought.

He had reached the point where he could hardly keep his balance, and very soon he would have to make up his mind for good, because in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven — when the doorbell rang. "That is someone from the office," he said to himself, and almost froze, while his little legs only danced the faster. For a moment everything was still. "They're not opening," Gregor told himself, caught in some senseless hope. But then, of course, the maid went to the door with her firm step, as always, and opened it. Gregor needed only to hear the visitor's first word of greeting and he knew who it was — the chief clerk himself. Why was Gregor alone condemned to serve in a firm where the smallest lapse at once aroused the gravest suspicion? Were all the employees, every one of them, scoundrels? Was it really not enough to send an apprentice to enquire — if enquiries were needed at all — did the chief clerk have to come himself, and did the whole innocent family have to be shown that the investigation of this suspicious affair could be entrusted to no lesser intelligence than the chief clerk's? And more because of the agitation these thoughts put him into than because of any real decision, Gregor swung himself out of bed with all his might. There was a loud thump, but not a real crash. Only his head he had not held carefully enough, and he had knocked it; he twisted it round and rubbed it on the carpet in irritation and pain.

"Something fell in there," said the chief clerk in the room on the left. "Gregor," said his father, "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. He will be good enough to excuse the untidiness of your room." "Good morning, Mr Samsa," the chief clerk called in, pleasantly. "He isn't well," said his mother to the chief clerk, while his father was still talking at the door, "he isn't well, believe me, sir. How else would Gregor miss a train? The boy has nothing in his head but the business. It almost annoys me that he never goes out in the evenings; he's been in town a week now, and every evening he's been at home. He sits at the table with us and reads the paper quietly, or studies timetables. His one amusement is a little fretwork; he carved a small frame over two or three evenings — you'll be amazed how pretty it is. We could never have got Gregor to open the door on our own; he's so stubborn; and he certainly isn't well, even though he denied it this morning." "I'm just coming," said Gregor slowly and deliberately, not moving, so as not to lose a word of the conversation. "So can the chief clerk come in to you now?" asked his impatient father, knocking again. "No," said Gregor. In the room on the left there was a painful silence; in the room on the right his sister began to sob.

"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 duties to the firm in a really unheard-of manner. I speak here in the name of your parents and of your chief, and I ask you in all seriousness for an immediate and clear explanation. I am astonished, astonished. I thought I knew you as a calm, sensible man, and now you suddenly seem to want to start parading strange moods. The chief did hint to me this morning at a possible explanation for your absence — it concerned the cash collections recently entrusted to you — but I practically gave my word of honour that this explanation could not be true. Now, however, I see your incomprehensible obstinacy here, and I lose all desire whatever to put in a word for you. And your position is by no means the most secure. Your work lately has been very unsatisfactory; it is not the season for doing special business, we admit that; but a season for doing no business at all does not exist, Mr Samsa, and must not exist."

"But sir," cried Gregor, beside himself and forgetting everything else in his agitation, "I'll open the door at once, this instant. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has kept me from getting up. I'm still in bed now. But I'm quite fresh again already. I'm just getting out of bed. Only one moment's patience! It isn't going as well as I thought. But I'm all right. How suddenly a thing like this can strike a person! Only last night I was perfectly well, my parents know that — or rather, last night I already had a slight premonition. Sir! Spare my parents! There is no ground for all the reproaches you are making; nobody has said a word to me about them. Perhaps you haven't read the last orders I sent in. Anyway, I'll be travelling on the eight o'clock train; these few hours' rest have done me good. Don't let me keep you, sir; I'll be at the office myself directly, and be so kind as to say so, and to give my respects to the chief!" And while Gregor was hastily blurting all this out, hardly knowing what he said, he had moved easily — thanks, no doubt, to the practice he had gained in bed — to the chest of drawers, and was trying to raise himself upright against it. He really did mean to open the door, really did mean to show himself and speak to the chief clerk; he was eager to learn what the others, who wanted so badly to see him, would say at the sight of him. If they were frightened, then Gregor had no more responsibility and could be calm. If they took it all calmly, then he too had no reason to get excited, and, if he hurried, could really be at the station by eight. At first he slid off the smooth chest a few times, but at last he gave himself a final swing and stood upright; then he let himself fall against the back of a nearby chair, holding onto its edges with his little legs. With that he had gained control of himself, and fell silent, for now he could hear the chief clerk.

"Did you understand a single word?" the chief clerk asked the parents. "He isn't making fools of us, surely?" "For God's sake," cried his mother, already in tears, "perhaps he's seriously ill, and we're tormenting him. Grete! Grete!" she shouted. "Mother?" called his sister from the other side. They were calling to each other through Gregor's room. "You must go for the doctor this minute. Gregor is ill. Quick, the doctor. Did you hear Gregor speak just now?" "That was the voice of an animal," said the chief clerk, strikingly quietly beside the mother's shouting. "Anna! Anna!" his father called through the hall into the kitchen, clapping his hands. "Fetch a locksmith at once!" And already the two girls were running through the hall with rustling skirts — how had his sister dressed so quickly? — and tearing open the front door. There was no sound of it closing; they had evidently left it open, as people do in homes where a great misfortune has happened.

Gregor, however, had grown much calmer. So his words were no longer understood, though to him they had seemed clear enough, clearer than before, perhaps because his ear had grown used to them. But at least people now believed that something was not quite right with him, and were ready to help. The confidence and assurance with which the first arrangements had been made did him good. He felt drawn back into the human circle, and expected great and surprising things from both the doctor and the locksmith, without really distinguishing between them. He pushed himself slowly to the door 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 little sticky substance on them — and rested there a moment from the effort. 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 to grip the key with? — but his jaws, to make up for it, were certainly very strong; with their help he really did get the key moving, paying no attention to the fact that he was undoubtedly doing himself some harm, for a brown liquid came out of his mouth, ran over the key and dripped onto the floor. "Do you hear that?" said the chief clerk in the next room. "He's turning the key." That was a great encouragement to Gregor; but they should all have called out to him, his father and mother too: "Go on, Gregor," they should have called, "keep at it, get a grip on that lock!" And imagining that all of them were following his efforts with suspense, he bit into the key, mindlessly, with all the strength he could gather. As the key turned, he danced round the lock; he was holding himself up now by his mouth alone, and as needed he hung from the key or pressed it down again with the whole weight of his body. The brighter click of the lock as it finally snapped back positively woke Gregor up. With a sigh of relief he said to himself, "So I didn't need the locksmith after all," and laid his head on the handle to open the door fully.

Since he had to open the door in this way, it was in fact already quite wide open before he himself could be seen. He first had to turn himself slowly round the one leaf of the door, and very carefully, if he was not to fall flat on his back right at the entrance to the room. He was still busy with this difficult movement, and had no time to attend to anything else, when he heard the chief clerk let out a loud "Oh!" — it sounded like the wind rushing — and now he saw him too, the nearest to the door, press his hand to his open mouth and slowly retreat, as if driven back by an invisible, steadily working force. His mother — she stood there, despite the presence of the chief clerk, with her hair still undone from the night and standing on end — looked first at his father with folded hands, then took two steps towards Gregor and sank down in the middle of her skirts as they spread around her, her face sunk quite out of sight on her breast. His father clenched his fist with a hostile expression, as if to push Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly round the living room, shaded his eyes with his hands and wept until his powerful chest shook.

Gregor did not enter the room at all now, but leaned from inside against the bolted leaf of the door, so that only half his body could be seen, with his head tilted sideways above it, peering across at the others. It had grown much lighter meanwhile; across the street a section of the endless grey-black building opposite stood out clearly — it was a hospital — with its regular windows breaking hard through the front; the rain was still falling, but only in large, separately visible drops, flung down one at a time onto the ground. The breakfast things stood on the table in lavish numbers, because for his father breakfast was the most important meal of the day, which he stretched out for hours over various newspapers. Directly on the opposite wall hung a photograph of Gregor from his army days, showing him as a lieutenant, hand on sword, smiling carelessly, demanding respect for his bearing and his uniform. The door to the hall was open, and since the front door was open too, you could see out onto the landing and the top of the stairs going down.

"Now," said Gregor, well aware that he was the only one who had kept calm, "I'll get dressed at once, pack the samples and leave. Will you, will you let me go? Now, sir, you see I'm not obstinate and I'm glad to work; travelling is hard, but I couldn't live without it. Where are you going, sir? To the office? Yes? Will you report everything truthfully? A man may be unfit to work for the moment, but that is exactly the time to remember what he did before, and to consider that later, once the obstacle is out of the way, he will certainly work all the harder. I owe the chief so much, you know that very well. On the other hand I have my parents and my sister to think of. I'm in a tight spot, but I'll work my way out of it again. Only don't make it harder for me than it already is. Take my side at the office! Nobody loves the travelling salesman, I know. They think he earns a fortune and lives a fine life into the bargain. Sir, don't go without saying a word to show me that you agree with me at least in some small part!"

But the chief clerk had turned away at Gregor's very first words, and only looked back at him over his twitching shoulder, with pouting lips. And during Gregor's speech he did not stand still for a moment, but withdrew towards the door, without taking his eyes off Gregor, yet very gradually, as if there were a secret ban on leaving the room. He was already in the 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. In the hall, though, he stretched his right hand far out towards the stairs, as if some positively supernatural deliverance were waiting for him there.

Gregor saw that he must on no account let the chief clerk leave in this mood, if his position in the firm was not to be placed in the utmost 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 with the worries of the moment that they had lost all foresight. But Gregor had that foresight. The chief clerk had to be held back, calmed, convinced and finally won over; the future of Gregor and his family depended on it! If only his sister had been here! She was clever; she had already cried when Gregor was still lying quietly on his back. But his sister was not there; Gregor himself had to act. And without considering that he did not yet know his present powers of movement, without considering either that his speech had possibly — indeed probably — not been understood again, he let go of the door; pushed himself through the opening; meant to go to the chief clerk, who was already, absurdly, holding onto the banister on the landing with both hands; but at once, seeking something to hold, he fell with a small cry onto his many little legs. Hardly had this happened than he felt, for the first time that morning, a physical well-being; the little legs had firm ground beneath them; they obeyed perfectly, as he noticed to his joy; they even strove to carry him wherever he wished; and already he believed that the final recovery from all his suffering was at hand. But at the same moment, as he lay rocking on the floor not far from his mother and directly opposite her, she — who had seemed so completely lost in herself — leapt up all at once, arms flung wide, fingers spread, and cried: "Help, for God's sake, help!" She held her head bent as if to see Gregor better, but, contradicting this, ran senselessly backwards; had forgotten that the laid table was behind her; sat down on it hastily when she reached it, as if absent-mindedly; and seemed not to notice at all that beside her the big coffee pot had been knocked over and the coffee was pouring in a full stream onto the carpet.

"Mother, Mother," said Gregor softly, looking up at her. For a moment the chief clerk had gone entirely out of his mind; on the other hand, at the sight of the flowing coffee, he could not stop himself snapping his jaws several times at the empty air. At that his mother screamed again, fled from the table and fell into the arms of his father, who was hurrying towards her. But Gregor had no time for his parents now; the chief clerk was already on the stairs; with his chin on the banister, he looked back one last time. Gregor made a run to be as sure as possible of catching him; the chief clerk must have sensed something, for he leapt several steps at once and vanished; "Ugh!" he cried, though, and it rang through the whole stairwell. Unfortunately the chief clerk's flight seemed now 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 the pursuit, he seized with his right hand the chief clerk's stick, which he had left behind on a chair 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 from Gregor helped, no pleading was understood; however humbly he turned his head, his father only stamped his feet the harder. Across the room his mother, in spite of the cold weather, had thrown a window open, and, leaning out, pressed her face into her hands far outside it. Between the street and the stairwell a strong draught sprang up, the curtains flew, the newspapers on the table rustled, single sheets drifted across the floor. Relentlessly his father drove him on, hissing like a savage.

Now Gregor had no practice at all in walking backwards; it really went very slowly. If only he had been allowed to turn round, 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 every moment the stick in his father's hand threatened him with the fatal blow to the back or the head. In the end, however, Gregor had no choice, for he noticed with horror that walking backwards he could not even keep direction; and so, with constant anxious sideways glances at his father, he began to turn round as quickly as he could, which was in reality only very slowly. Perhaps his father noticed his good will, for he did not interfere, but even directed the turning movement now and then from a distance with the tip of his stick. If only there had not been that unbearable hissing! It made Gregor lose his head entirely. He was almost completely turned round when, still attending to that hissing, he made a mistake and turned back a little. But when at last he had his head happily in front of the doorway, it turned out that his body was too wide to get through without further ado. His father, in his present state, naturally did not have the remotest idea of, say, opening the other leaf of the door to give Gregor room enough to pass. His one fixed idea was that Gregor must get into his room as fast as possible. He drove Gregor forward now with extra noise, as if there were no obstacle at all; behind Gregor it no longer sounded like the voice of merely one father; now it was really no joke any more, and Gregor forced himself into the doorway, come what might. One side of his body rose up, he lay at an angle in the opening, one flank was rubbed quite raw, ugly stains were left on the white door, soon he was stuck fast and could not have moved on his own, the little legs on one side hung trembling in the air, those on the other were pressed painfully to the floor — then his father gave him a powerful shove from behind, a truly liberating one 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.