AS GREGOR SAMSA AWOKE from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. 1 He lay on his hard armorlike back and when he raised his head a little he saw his vaulted brown belly divided into sections by stiff arches from whose height the coverlet had already slipped and was about to slide off completely. His many legs, which were pathetically thin compared to the rest of his bulk, flickered helplessly before his eyes.
“What has happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, if a little small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the desk, on which a collection of fabric samples was unpacked and spread out—Samsa was a traveling salesman—hung the picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, sitting upright, dressed in a fur hat and fur boa; her entire forearm had vanished into a thick fur muff which she held out to the viewer.2
Gregor’s gaze then shifted to the window, and the dreary weather—raindrops could be heard beating against the metal ledge of the window—made him quite melancholy. “What if I went back to sleep for a while and forgot all this foolishness,” he thought. However, this was totally impracticable, as he habitually slept on his right side, a position he could not get into in his present state; no matter how forcefully he heaved himself to the right, he rocked onto his back again. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes so as not to see his twitching legs, and stopped only when he felt a faint, dull ache start in his side, a pain which he had never experienced before.
“Oh God,” he thought, “what a grueling profession I picked! Traveling day in, day out. It is much more aggravating work than the actual business done at the home office, and then with the strain of constant travel as well: the worry over train connections, the bad and irregular meals, the steady stream of faces who never become anything closer than acquaintances. The Devil take it all!” He felt a slight itching up on his belly and inched on his back closer to the bedpost to better lift his head. He located the itching spot, which was surrounded by many tiny white dots that were incomprehensible to him, and tried to probe the area with one of his legs but immediately drew it back, for the touch sent an icy shiver through him.
He slid back into his former position. “This getting up so early,” he thought, “makes you totally stupid. A man needs sleep. Other traveling salesmen live like harem women. For example, when I come back to the hotel late in the morning to write up the new orders, these men are still sitting at breakfast. I should try that with my boss. I would be thrown out on the spot. Who knows, however, if that wouldn’t be for the best. If I were not holding back because of my parents, I would have quit long ago. I would go up to the boss and tell him my heartfelt opinion. He would be knocked off the desk. This too is a strange way to do things: He sits on top of the desk and from this height addresses the employees, who must step up very close because of the boss’s deafness. Well, I have not entirely given up hope, and as soon as I have saved the money to pay off the debt my parents owe him—it might still be another five or six years—I’ll definitely do it. Then I’ll cut myself free. For the time being, however, I must get up because my train leaves at five.”
And he looked at the alarm clock ticking on the bureau. “God Almighty!” he thought. It was half past six and the hands were steadily advancing, actually past the half hour and already closer to three quarters past. Did the alarm not ring? One could see from the bed that it was correctly set for four o’clock and so it must have gone off. Yes, but was it possible to sleep through that furniture-rattling ringing? Well, he hadn’t slept peacefully but probably all the sounder for it. But what should he do now? The next train left at seven o’clock, and in order to catch it he would have to rush around like mad, and the sample collection was still unpacked and he was not feeling particularly fresh and energetic. And even if he caught the train, a bawling out from the boss was inescapable, because the office messenger had arrived by the five o’clock train and reported his absence long ago; he was the boss’s creature, mindless and spineless. What if Gregor reported in sick? This would be extremely painful and suspicious, as he had not once been ill during his five-year employment. The boss would certainly come over with the health insurance doctor, reproach the parents for their lazy son, and cut off all excuses by referring to the health insurance doctor, for whom there were only healthy but work-shy people. And would he be so wrong in this case? Actually Gregor felt perfectly well, apart from a drowsiness that was superfluous after so long a sleep; in fact he even had a great appetite.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
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