The Metamorphosis and Other Stories (9 page)

"She'll be dismissed tonight," said Herr Samsa, receiving no reply from either his wife or daughter, for the charwoman had dismantled their barely maintained composure. They got up, went to the window, and stayed there hugging each other. Herr Samsa turned in his chair and quietly watched them a little while. Then he called: "Come now, come over here. Put the past to rest. And have a little consideration for me too." The women promptly obeyed him, caressed him, and hurriedly finished their letters.

Then all three left the apartment together, which they had not done in months, and took a trolley to the countryside on the outskirts of town. Their trolley car had no other passengers and was flooded with warm sunshine. Leaning back comfortably in their seats, they discussed their prospects for the future and concluded, on closer inspection, that these were not at all bad; for all three had jobs which, although they had never really questioned each other about this, were entirely satisfactory and seemed to be particularly promising. The greatest immediate amelioration of their circumstances would easily come to fruition with a change of residence: They wanted to take some place smaller and less expensive but better situated and more efficiently designed than the apartment they had, which had been Gregor's choice. It occurred almost simultaneously to both Herr and Frau Samsa, while they were conversing and looking at their increasingly vivacious daughter, that despite the recent sorrows that had paled her cheeks, she had blossomed into a pretty and voluptuous young woman. Growing quieter and almost unconsciously communicating through exchanged glances, they thought it was time to find her a good husband. And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions that at their journey's end their daughter jumped to her feet and stretched her young body.

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The Judgment

IT WAS A SUNDAY MORNING AT THE peak of spring. Georg Bendemann, a young businessman, sat in his own room on the second floor of one of the low, shabbily constructed houses that stretched alongside the river in an extensive row, almost indistinguishable from each other except in height and color. He had just finished writing a letter to a childhood friend who now lived abroad, he fiddled with the letter as he languidly sealed it, and then, with his elbow propped up on the writing desk, gazed out the window at the river, the bridge, and the faintly green hills on the far bank.

He recalled how his friend, disgruntled by his prospects at home, had more or less fled to Russia. Now he ran a business in St. Petersburg that started off very well but had long since faltered, as the friend bitterly complained during his increasingly rare visits. And so he was pointlessly grinding himself down in a foreign country, an unfamiliar full beard barely hiding the face Georg had known so well since childhood and a sallow complexion indicating an advancing disease. By his own account he had no real contact with the local colony of his countrymen and virtually no social intercourse with the Russian families and so resigned himself to becoming an incurable bachelor.

What could one write to such a man, a man who had obviously gone astray and who was certainly to be pitied but could not be helped? Should he be advised to come home, to transplant his life and resume all the old friendships—nothing prevented this—and generally rely on the help of friends? But all this would mean to him, and the more tactfully it was put the more offensive it would be, was that his every effort had been for naught and he should finally abandon them, that he should return home and suffer being viewed by everyone as the prodigal returned forever, that only his friends had any understanding of things, and that he was a big child who must simply listen to those friends who had remained home and been successful. And after all, could one be assured that there would be any purpose to all this certain pain inflicted upon him? Perhaps it would be impossible to coax him home at all—he himself said that he no longer understood the goings-on here at home—and so he would remain banished despite everything, embittered by his friends' advice and further alienated from them. But if he did actually follow their advice and then could not get along at home—not out of malice but through force of circumstance—either with his friends or without them, suffering the humiliation of becoming truly friendless and homeless, would it not be better for him to stay abroad, just as he was? Could one really imagine, considering the circumstances, that he could make a successful go of it back here?

For these reasons it was impossible to send any of the real news, if one wanted to keep up a correspondence at all, that one would nonchalantly reveal to the most casual acquaintance. It was more than three years since the friend's last visit, a circumstance he ineffectually blamed on Russia's uncertain political situation, which apparently would not permit even the shortest trip of a small business man while hundreds of thousands of Russians peacefully traveled the world over. In the course of these three years, however, much had changed in Georg's own life. The news of his mother's death—she died two years ago and Georg had since been living with his elderly father—had reached the friend, who sent a letter expressing his condolences so dryly that it could be concluded that the grief over such an event could not be felt from such a distance. But since that time Georg had tackled his business, as well as everything else, with more fervor. Perhaps his father had insisted on running the business his own way during the mother's lifetime and prevented Georg from making his own mark; perhaps his father, while still working, had become less active since her death; perhaps—and indeed this was most probable—accidental good fortune had played a far more important role, but whatever the cause, the business had grown quite dramatically during these two years: The personnel had been doubled, the profits had increased fivefold, and there was undoubtedly further prosperity just around the corner.

But Georg's friend had no inkling of this change. Earlier, perhaps the letter of condolence was the last time, he had tried to lure Georg into emigrating to Russia and expounded upon the prospects that St. Petersburg offered in precisely Georg's line of business. The figures he quoted were minuscule compared to the scale Georg's business had assumed. But Georg was not inclined to write of his commercial success to his friend, and were he to do so now, it would appear especially peculiar.

So Georg always confined himself to relating the trivial matters that randomly arise from a disorganized memory on a reflective Sunday. His sole desire was to leave intact the picture of the hometown the friend must have constructed over the years and had come to accept. Thus it happened that Georg had informed his friend in three fairly widely spaced letters about the engagement of an inconsequential person to an equally inconsequential girl until, quite contrary to his intentions, the friend became interested in this noteworthy event.

Yet Georg preferred writing about these sorts of things rather than admit that he himself had gotten engaged a month ago to a Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family. He often spoke of his friend to his fiancée and the strange relationship that had developed from their correspondence. "So he won't be coming to our wedding," she said, "and yet I have the right to meet all your friends." "I don't want to trouble him," Georg replied; "please understand me, he would probably come, at least I think so, but he would feel obligated and hurt and he might even envy me; at any rate he'd feel dejected and, with no other recourse, he'd have to go back alone. Alone—do you know what that is?" "Yes, but might he not learn of our marriage some other way?" "I can't help that of course, but it's unlikely considering his circumstances." "If you have such friends, Georg, you should never have even gotten engaged." "Well, we both have that cross to bear, but now I wouldn't have it any other way." And when, breathing quickly under his kisses, she still protested with: "It really does offend me," he decided there wouldn't be much harm in telling his friend everything. "This is how I am and so this is how he must take me," he said to himself "I can't fashion myself into a different person who might be better suited to be his friend."

And in the long letter he had written that Sunday morning, he did in fact announce to his friend his engagement with the following words: "I have saved the best news for last. I have become engaged to a Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family that only settled here long after your departure, so that you most likely don't know them. There will be time to tell you more about my fiancée later, but for today suffice it to say that I am very happy and that, insofar as our own relationship is concerned, the only difference is that you have exchanged a quite ordinary friend for a happy one. Furthermore, in my fiancée, who sends her warm regards and who will shortly be writing to you personally, you will acquire a sincere friend, a not wholly unimportant thing for a bachelor. I know there is much to keep you from visiting us, but wouldn't my wedding be precisely the right occasion for overcoming these obstacles? Be that as it may, do as you see fit, all other considerations aside."

Georg had been sitting at his writing desk with this letter in his hand for a long time, his face turned to the window. With a vacant smile, he had barely acknowledged the greeting of an acquaintance passing in the street below.

He finally tucked the letter into his pocket, left his room, crossed a little passageway, and entered his father's room, which he had not set foot in for months. Indeed, there was usually no cause for him to do so, since he saw his father regularly at the office; middays they always dined together at a restaurant, and although they fended for themselves in the evening, they usually—unless Georg, as was most often the case, went out with friends or, more recently, visited his fiancée—sat for a while, each with his own newspaper, in their common living room.

Georg was shocked to see how dark his father's room was even on this sunny morning. The high wall towering on the other side of the narrow courtyard really cast quite a shadow. His father was sitting by the window in a corner elaborately decorated with mementos of Georg's late mother, reading a newspaper held up at an angle from his eyes to compensate for some deficiency in his vision. The remains of his breakfast, not much of which seemed to have been eaten, stood on the table.

"Ah, Georg!" said his father, and promptly rose to meet him. His heavy dressing gown swung open as he walked and the skirts flapped around him.—"My father is still such a giant," Georg remarked to himself.

"It's unbearbly dark in here," he then said.

"Yes, it certainly is dark," his father agreed.

"And you've shut the window too?"

"I prefer it like this."

"Well, it's quite warm outside," said Georg, almost as an addendum to his previous comment, and sat down.

His father cleared away the breakfast dishes and put them on a chest.

"I only wanted to tell you," continued Georg, blankly mesmerized by the old man's movements, "that I've written to St. Petersburg of my engagement." He drew the letter out of his pocket a little, then let it drop back down.

"To St. Petersburg?" the father asked.

"To my friend there," said Georg, seeking his father's eye.—"He's so different at the office," he thought, "sitting here so expansively with his arms crossed over his chest."

"Yes. To your friend," the father emphasized.

"Well, you know, Father, that I didn't want to tell him about my engagement at first. Out of consideration for him, no other reason. You know yourself he's a difficult man. I said to myself that, however unlikely, considering his solitary life, he might hear of my engagement some other way. I can't stop that, but he wasn't going to hear it from me."

"And now you've reconsidered?" asked his father, placing the huge newspaper on the windowsill and his spectacles on top of it, then covering them with his hand.

"Yes, now I've reconsidered. If he is a good friend of mine, I said to myself, then my happy engagement should also make him happy. And so then I didn't hesitate any longer to tell him. But before I posted it, I did want to let you know."

"Georg," said his father, opening wide his toothless mouth, "listen to me! You've come to me with this matter to consult me. No doubt that's to your credit. But it is nothing, less than nothing, if you do not tell me the whole truth. I don't want to stir up inappropriate matters here. Since the death of our dear mother, certain unpleasant things have occurred. Perhaps the time to speak of them will come too and perhaps it will come sooner than we think. At the office there is much that escapes me, perhaps things aren't exactly being kept from me—I won't assume they are being kept from me—but I'm not up to it any longer: My memory's failing and I can't keep track of so many things anymore. First of all, that's the course of nature, and second, I was hit harder than you by the death of our precious mother.—But since we're just talking about this, this letter, I beg of you, Georg, don't lie to me. It's a trivial matter, barely worth one's breath, so don't lie to me. Do you really have this friend in St. Petersburg?"

Georg stood up, embarrassed. "Never mind my friends. A thousand friends cannot replace my father. Do you know what I think? You're not taking good enough care of yourself. But your age demands it. You know very well that you are indispensable to me at the office, but if the business is going to endanger your health, then tomorrow I'll shut it down for good. But that won't do. We have to make changes in your daily routine. From the ground up. You sit here in the dark while the living room is streaming with light. You pick at your breakfast instead of nourishing yourself properly. You sit by a closed window when the air would do you so much good. No, Father! I will fetch the doctor and we will follow his instructions. We'll switch rooms, you'll take the front room and I'll take this one. It won't be any different for you, we'll move all your things in there. But all in due time, just lie down in bed for a bit now, you really need to rest. Come, I'll help you undress, you'll see, I know how. Or would you rather go straight to the front room and lie down in my bed for now? That would be the most sensible thing."