The Door (Part I)

I

One morning, Gregor Samsa woke from unsettling dreams to find himself changed, in his bed, into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his hard back, armored as it were, and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domed brown belly, divided into stiff arched segments, on top of which the blanket, about to slide off altogether, could barely keep its hold. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the rest of him, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

"What has happened to me?" he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper human room, if a little too small, lay quietly between its four familiar walls. Above the table, on which a collection of cloth samples was spread out, for 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 in a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and holding out to the viewer a heavy fur muff into which her whole forearm had disappeared.

Gregor's gaze then turned to the window, and the dreary weather, he could hear raindrops striking the tin of the window ledge, made him quite melancholy. "How would it be if I slept a little longer and forgot all this nonsense," he thought; but that was quite impossible, for he was used to sleeping on his right side, and in his present state he could not get into that position. However hard he flung himself onto his right side, he always rocked back onto his back.

"Oh God," he thought, "what a strenuous job I've chosen! Traveling, day in, day out. The worries about connections, the bad, irregular meals, human contact that is always changing, never lasting, never becoming intimate. To the devil with it all!" If he had not had to hold back for his parents' sake, he would have given notice long ago. He would have gone to the chief and told him exactly what he thought of him, and the man would have fallen off his desk. But his parents owed the chief money; once he had paid off the debt, which might take another five or six years, he would cut himself loose. For the present, though, he had to get up, since his train left at five.

He looked at the alarm clock ticking on the chest of drawers. "Heavenly Father!" he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were moving quietly on; it was even past half past, it was nearly a quarter to seven. Had the alarm not rung? The next train went at seven; to catch it he would have to hurry like mad, and the samples were not yet packed, and he himself did not feel particularly fresh or lively. And even if he caught it, he could not avoid a scene with the chief, for the office boy had been waiting at the five o'clock train and would long since have reported his absence. What if he reported sick? That would be extremely awkward and suspicious, for in five years of service Gregor had not been ill once.

There was a cautious knock at the door near the head of his bed. "Gregor," a voice called, it was his mother, "it's a quarter to seven. Didn't you want to catch the train?" That gentle voice! Gregor was shocked when he heard his own voice answering. It was unmistakably his own, but there was mixed into it, as if from below, an irrepressible painful squeaking, which left the words clear only for the first moment, and then so distorted them that one could not be sure one had heard them right. "Yes, yes, thank you, mother, I'm getting up now." The wooden door evidently kept the change in his voice from being noticed outside, for his mother was satisfied and shuffled away.

But now his father was knocking at one side door, softly, with his fist. "Gregor, Gregor, what's the matter?" And at the other side door his sister was whispering: "Gregor? Aren't you well? Do you need anything?" He answered both of them, taking great care to pronounce every word clearly and to leave long pauses between them. His sister begged him to open the door, but he had no intention of doing so; he was grateful for the cautious habit, acquired on his travels, of locking all his doors at night, even at home.

Getting out of bed proved terribly difficult. His many little legs moved continuously in every direction and he could not control them. He tried to get out lower body first, but this lower part, which he had not yet seen and could not quite imagine, was hard to move. He tried head first, and managed to turn his head toward the edge of the bed; but he feared that if he let himself fall like that, he would injure his head. He rocked his whole body to and fro, and at last, with a strong swing, he was about to tip over when the doorbell rang.

"It's someone from the firm," he said to himself, and almost froze. It was the chief clerk himself. Why was Gregor condemned to work for a firm where the slightest lapse at once aroused the greatest suspicion? He swung himself out of bed with all his strength, and fell to the floor with a loud thud, though the carpet softened the fall.

"Something fell in there," said the chief clerk in the next room. Then his father: "Gregor, the chief clerk is here. He wants to know why you didn't catch the early train. He also wants to speak to you personally. So please open the door. He will be good enough to forgive the untidiness of the room."

And the chief clerk spoke to him through the door, coldly, in a voice that grew sharper and sharper. He was astonished; he had thought Gregor a quiet, reasonable person. He had come on behalf of the chief. Gregor's performance lately had been very unsatisfactory. And there were hints, which the chief clerk had not believed, about money that had been entrusted to Gregor. He would not go on like this any longer.

"But sir," cried Gregor, beside himself, forgetting everything else in his agitation, "I'll open the door this minute. A slight indisposition, a fit of dizziness, has prevented me from getting up. I'm still lying in bed. But I feel quite fresh again. I'll catch the eight o'clock train." And while he was blurting all this out, he had pushed himself toward the chest of drawers and, holding on to it, raised himself upright.

"Did you understand a word of that?" the chief clerk asked his parents. "He isn't making fools of us, is he?" "Oh God," cried his mother, already in tears, "perhaps he is seriously ill. Grete! Grete! Go to the doctor at once!" "That was the voice of an animal," said the chief clerk, conspicuously quietly, compared with the shouting of the mother.

Gregor, however, had become much calmer. They no longer understood his words, though they had seemed clear enough to him. But at least people now believed that something was wrong with him, and were ready to help. He felt himself drawn back into the human circle.

He pushed himself slowly toward the door, holding onto it, and began to turn the key in the lock with his mouth. He seemed, unfortunately, to have no real teeth; but his jaws were very strong, and with their help he did manage to set the key turning, ignoring the fact that he was injuring himself, for a brown liquid came out of his mouth and dripped onto the floor. "Listen," said the chief clerk in the next room, "he's turning the key." That was a great encouragement to Gregor. With a final effort he turned it, and the lock clicked open.

Since he had to open the door in this way, it was quite wide open before he himself could be seen. He had first to edge slowly round the one leaf of the door. And then he heard the chief clerk utter a loud "Oh!", it sounded like the wind whistling, and saw him, the nearest to the door, press his hand to his open mouth and slowly retreat, as if driven by an invisible, steady force. His mother looked at his father, took two steps toward Gregor, and collapsed amid her spreading skirts, her face sunk on her breast. His father clenched his fist with a hostile expression, as if he wanted to knock Gregor back into his room, then looked uncertainly round the living room, covered his eyes with his hands and wept, so that his mighty chest shook.

Outside, the day had grown much lighter. On the breakfast table there was a large number of dishes, for breakfast was the most important meal of the day for his father, who lingered over it for hours reading various newspapers. On the wall hung a photograph of Gregor from his military service, as a lieutenant, his hand on his sword, smiling carelessly, demanding respect for his bearing and his uniform.

"Well," said Gregor, and he was quite aware that he was the only one who had kept calm, "I'll get dressed at once, pack my samples, and set off. Will you allow me to go? You see, sir, I'm not obstinate, and I like my work. Traveling is hard, but I couldn't live without it." But the chief clerk had already turned away at Gregor's first words, and stared at him over his twitching shoulder with his mouth open. He kept backing toward the door, never taking his eyes off Gregor, as if there were some secret prohibition against leaving the room. Once in the hall, he made a sudden movement, as if he had burned the sole of his foot, and fled down the stairs.

Gregor saw that he must not under any circumstances let the chief clerk go in this frame of mind, or his position with the firm would be in the gravest danger. He wanted to follow him, and let go of the door, and fell, with a little cry, onto his many little legs. And for the first time that morning he felt a sense of physical well-being; his little legs had firm ground under them, they obeyed him perfectly, and even strove to carry him wherever he wanted. But his mother, who had seemed so completely sunk in herself, sprang up with outstretched arms and cried, "Help, for God's sake, help!", and backed into the table and upset the coffee pot, so that the coffee poured out onto the carpet.

The chief clerk was gone. And his father, who had kept so calm, seized in his right hand the chief clerk's walking stick, which had been left behind on a chair with his hat and coat, picked up a large newspaper from the table with his left, and, stamping his feet, began to drive Gregor back into his room by waving the stick and the newspaper. No pleading helped. His father stamped and hissed like a savage. Gregor had not yet learned to walk backward, and he was terribly slow; he was afraid that at any moment he would receive a fatal blow on his back or head from the stick. He tried to turn round and get through the door, but he was too broad. One side of his body rose, he lay crooked in the doorway, one flank was scraped raw, and ugly blotches remained on the white door; he was stuck and could not move by himself. And then his father gave him a strong push from behind which was truly his deliverance, and he flew, bleeding heavily, far into his room. The door was slammed shut with the stick, and then at last there was silence.

(End of Episode 1 — continued in Episode 2: The Apple)