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- 1222
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-28T02:25:21.974Z
- extracted_by
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- start_line
- 1164
- text
- not open the door if he did not want to chase his sister away, and she
had to stay with his mother; there was nothing for him to do but wait;
and, oppressed with anxiety and self-reproach, he began to crawl about,
he crawled over everything, walls, furniture, ceiling, and finally in
his confusion as the whole room began to spin around him he fell down
into the middle of the dinner table.
He lay there for a while, numb and immobile, all around him it was
quiet, maybe that was a good sign. Then there was someone at the door.
The maid, of course, had locked herself in her kitchen so that Grete
would have to go and answer it. His father had arrived home. “What’s
happened?” were his first words; Grete’s appearance must have made
everything clear to him. She answered him with subdued voice, and
openly pressed her face into his chest: “Mother’s fainted, but she’s
better now. Gregor got out.” “Just as I expected”, said his father,
“just as I always said, but you women wouldn’t listen, would you.” It
was clear to Gregor that Grete had not said enough and that his father
took it to mean that something bad had happened, that he was
responsible for some act of violence. That meant Gregor would now have
to try to calm his father, as he did not have the time to explain
things to him even if that had been possible. So he fled to the door of
his room and pressed himself against it so that his father, when he
came in from the hall, could see straight away that Gregor had the best
intentions and would go back into his room without delay, that it would
not be necessary to drive him back but that they had only to open the
door and he would disappear.
His father, though, was not in the mood to notice subtleties like that;
“Ah!”, he shouted as he came in, sounding as if he were both angry and
glad at the same time. Gregor drew his head back from the door and
lifted it towards his father. He really had not imagined his father the
way he stood there now; of late, with his new habit of crawling about,
he had neglected to pay attention to what was going on the rest of the
flat the way he had done before. He really ought to have expected
things to have changed, but still, still, was that really his father?
The same tired man as used to be laying there entombed in his bed when
Gregor came back from his business trips, who would receive him sitting
in the armchair in his nightgown when he came back in the evenings; who
was hardly even able to stand up but, as a sign of his pleasure, would
just raise his arms and who, on the couple of times a year when they
went for a walk together on a Sunday or public holiday wrapped up
tightly in his overcoat between Gregor and his mother, would always
labour his way forward a little more slowly than them, who were already
walking slowly for his sake; who would place his stick down carefully
and, if he wanted to say something would invariably stop and gather his
companions around him. He was standing up straight enough now; dressed
in a smart blue uniform with gold buttons, the sort worn by the
employees at the banking institute; above the high, stiff collar of the
coat his strong double-chin emerged; under the bushy eyebrows, his
piercing, dark eyes looked out fresh and alert; his normally unkempt
white hair was combed down painfully close to his scalp. He took his
cap, with its gold monogram from, probably, some bank, and threw it in
an arc right across the room onto the sofa, put his hands in his
trouser pockets, pushing back the bottom of his long uniform coat, and,
with look of determination, walked towards Gregor. He probably did not
even know himself what he had in mind, but nonetheless lifted his feet
unusually high. Gregor was amazed at the enormous size of the soles of
his boots, but wasted no time with that—he knew full well, right from
the first day of his new life, that his father thought it necessary to
- title
- Chunk 12