- end_line
- 1121
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T20:59:33.331Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1061
- text
- forget his past when he had still been human. He had come very close to
forgetting, and it had only been the voice of his mother, unheard for
so long, that had shaken him out of it. Nothing should be removed;
everything had to stay; he could not do without the good influence the
furniture had on his condition; and if the furniture made it difficult
for him to crawl about mindlessly that was not a loss but a great
advantage.
His sister, unfortunately, did not agree; she had become used to the
idea, not without reason, that she was Gregor’s spokesman to his
parents about the things that concerned him. This meant that his
mother’s advice now was sufficient reason for her to insist on removing
not only the chest of drawers and the desk, as she had thought at
first, but all the furniture apart from the all-important couch. It was
more than childish perversity, of course, or the unexpected confidence
she had recently acquired, that made her insist; she had indeed noticed
that Gregor needed a lot of room to crawl about in, whereas the
furniture, as far as anyone could see, was of no use to him at all.
Girls of that age, though, do become enthusiastic about things and feel
they must get their way whenever they can. Perhaps this was what
tempted Grete to make Gregor’s situation seem even more shocking than
it was so that she could do even more for him. Grete would probably be
the only one who would dare enter a room dominated by Gregor crawling
about the bare walls by himself.
So she refused to let her mother dissuade her. Gregor’s mother already
looked uneasy in his room, she soon stopped speaking and helped
Gregor’s sister to get the chest of drawers out with what strength she
had. The chest of drawers was something that Gregor could do without if
he had to, but the writing desk had to stay. Hardly had the two women
pushed the chest of drawers, groaning, out of the room than Gregor
poked his head out from under the couch to see what he could do about
it. He meant to be as careful and considerate as he could, but,
unfortunately, it was his mother who came back first while Grete in the
next room had her arms round the chest, pushing and pulling at it from
side to side by herself without, of course, moving it an inch. His
mother was not used to the sight of Gregor, he might have made her ill,
so Gregor hurried backwards to the far end of the couch. In his
startlement, though, he was not able to prevent the sheet at its front
from moving a little. It was enough to attract his mother’s attention.
She stood very still, remained there a moment, and then went back out
to Grete.
Gregor kept trying to assure himself that nothing unusual was
happening, it was just a few pieces of furniture being moved after all,
but he soon had to admit that the women going to and fro, their little
calls to each other, the scraping of the furniture on the floor, all
these things made him feel as if he were being assailed from all sides.
With his head and legs pulled in against him and his body pressed to
the floor, he was forced to admit to himself that he could not stand
all of this much longer. They were emptying his room out; taking away
everything that was dear to him; they had already taken out the chest
containing his fretsaw and other tools; now they threatened to remove
the writing desk with its place clearly worn into the floor, the desk
where he had done his homework as a business trainee, at high school,
even while he had been at infant school—he really could not wait any
longer to see whether the two women’s intentions were good. He had
nearly forgotten they were there anyway, as they were now too tired to
say anything while they worked and he could only hear their feet as
they stepped heavily on the floor.
- title
- Chunk 8