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Page 2
Gregor answered to both sides: "I'm ready, now", making an
effort to remove all the strangeness from his voice by
enunciating very carefully and putting long pauses between
each, individual word. His father went back to his
breakfast, but his sister whispered: "Gregor, open the door,
I beg of you." Gregor, however, had no thought of opening
the door, and instead congratulated himself for his cautious
habit, acquired from his travelling, of locking all doors at
night even when he was at home.
The first thing he wanted to do was to get up in peace
without being disturbed, to get dressed, and most of all to
have his breakfast. Only then would he consider what to do
next, as he was well aware that he would not bring his
thoughts to any sensible conclusions by lying in bed. He
remembered that he had often felt a slight pain in bed,
perhaps caused by lying awkwardly, but that had always
turned out to be pure imagination and he wondered how his
imaginings would slowly resolve themselves today. He did
not have the slightest doubt that the change in his voice
was nothing more than the first sign of a serious cold,
which was an occupational hazard for travelling salesmen.
It was a simple matter to throw off the covers; he only had
to blow himself up a little and they fell off by themselves.
But it became difficult after that, especially as he was so
exceptionally broad. He would have used his arms and his
hands to push himself up; but instead of them he only had
all those little legs continuously moving in different
directions, and which he was moreover unable to control. If
he wanted to bend one of them, then that was the first one
that would stretch itself out; and if he finally managed to
do what he wanted with that leg, all the others seemed to be
set free and would move about painfully. "This is
something that can't be done in bed", Gregor said to
himself, "so don't keep trying to do it".
The first thing he wanted to do was get the lower part of
his body out of the bed, but he had never seen this lower
part, and could not imagine what it looked like; it turned
out to be too hard to move; it went so slowly; and finally,
almost in a frenzy, when he carelessly shoved himself
forwards with all the force he could gather, he chose the
wrong direction, hit hard against the lower bedpost, and
learned from the burning pain he felt that the lower part of
his body might well, at present, be the most sensitive.
So then he tried to get the top part of his body out of the
bed first, carefully turning his head to the side. This he
managed quite easily, and despite its breadth and its
weight, the bulk of his body eventually followed slowly in
the direction of the head. But when he had at last got his
head out of the bed and into the fresh air it occurred to
him that if he let himself fall it would be a miracle if his
head were not injured, so he became afraid to carry on
pushing himself forward the same way. And he could not
knock himself out now at any price; better to stay in bed
than lose consciousness.
It took just as much effort to get back to where he had been
earlier, but when he lay there sighing, and was once more
watching his legs as they struggled against each other even
harder than before, if that was possible, he could think of
no way of bringing peace and order to this chaos. He told
himself once more that it was not possible for him to stay
in bed and that the most sensible thing to do would be to
get free of it in whatever way he could at whatever
sacrifice. At the same time, though, he did not forget to
remind himself that calm consideration was much better than
rushing to desperate conclusions. At times like this he
would direct his eyes to the window and look out as clearly
as he could, but unfortunately, even the other side of the
narrow street was enveloped in morning fog and the view had
little confidence or cheer to offer him. "Seven o'clock,
already", he said to himself when the clock struck again,
"seven o'clock, and there's still a fog like this." And he
lay there quietly a while longer, breathing lightly as if he
perhaps expected the total stillness to bring things back to
their real and natural state.
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