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- 1312
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-28T02:25:26.306Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1265
- text
- III
No-one dared to remove the apple lodged in Gregor’s flesh, so it
remained there as a visible reminder of his injury. He had suffered it
there for more than a month, and his condition seemed serious enough to
remind even his father that Gregor, despite his current sad and
revolting form, was a family member who could not be treated as an
enemy. On the contrary, as a family there was a duty to swallow any
revulsion for him and to be patient, just to be patient.
Because of his injuries, Gregor had lost much of his mobility—probably
permanently. He had been reduced to the condition of an ancient invalid
and it took him long, long minutes to crawl across his room—crawling
over the ceiling was out of the question—but this deterioration in his
condition was fully (in his opinion) made up for by the door to the
living room being left open every evening. He got into the habit of
closely watching it for one or two hours before it was opened and then,
lying in the darkness of his room where he could not be seen from the
living room, he could watch the family in the light of the dinner table
and listen to their conversation—with everyone’s permission, in a way,
and thus quite differently from before.
They no longer held the lively conversations of earlier times, of
course, the ones that Gregor always thought about with longing when he
was tired and getting into the damp bed in some small hotel room. All
of them were usually very quiet nowadays. Soon after dinner, his father
would go to sleep in his chair; his mother and sister would urge each
other to be quiet; his mother, bent deeply under the lamp, would sew
fancy underwear for a fashion shop; his sister, who had taken a sales
job, learned shorthand and French in the evenings so that she might be
able to get a better position later on. Sometimes his father would wake
up and say to Gregor’s mother “you’re doing so much sewing again
today!”, as if he did not know that he had been dozing—and then he
would go back to sleep again while mother and sister would exchange a
tired grin.
With a kind of stubbornness, Gregor’s father refused to take his
uniform off even at home; while his nightgown hung unused on its peg
Gregor’s father would slumber where he was, fully dressed, as if always
ready to serve and expecting to hear the voice of his superior even
here. The uniform had not been new to start with, but as a result of
this it slowly became even shabbier despite the efforts of Gregor’s
mother and sister to look after it. Gregor would often spend the whole
evening looking at all the stains on this coat, with its gold buttons
always kept polished and shiny, while the old man in it would sleep,
highly uncomfortable but peaceful.
- title
- Chunk 1