The Meowmorphosis Read Online Free PDF Page A

understand how to maintain his attention on one thing when he desired so many things at once. And so he began, amid constant anxious sideways glances in his father’s direction, to turn himself around as quickly as possible, although in truth this was only done at a leisurely, unconcerned pace that any man might find infuriating. But Gregor found himself unable to move any other way. Perhaps his father noticed his goodintentions, for he did not disrupt Gregor in this motion, but with the tip of the cane like a pointer he even directed Gregor’s sauntering movement here and there.
    If only his father would not hiss so unbearably! Because of that Gregor totally lost his head. He was already almost within his own room, when, with this hissing constantly in his ear, he just couldn’t help turning back a little, to hiss in return, as a cat’s honor demanded. Gregor did so, and immediately regretted it. He’d been successful in squeezing partway through the half-open door, but now it became clear that his body was too wide to go through any farther. He had already grown quite alarmingly huge and rotund, larger and furrier than any reasonable person might expect a kitten of only a few hours’ age, or indeed an adult cat of any description. Naturally his father, in his present mental state, had no idea of opening the door wider to create a comfortable passage for Gregor to get through. His single fixed thought was that Gregor must get into his room as
quickly
as possible. He would never have allowed the elaborate preparations that Gregor required to consider the door, consider himself, groom his whiskers, rub his cheeks against the jamb, further consider the nature of both doors and salesmen, and finally sniff at the air of his room, to see if it offered suitable napping opportunities, and thus perhaps, at the end of it all, get through the door. On the contrary, as if there were no obstacle and with apeculiar noise, he now forced Gregor forward. Behind Gregor, the sound at this point was no longer like the voice of just one man. Now it was truly no joke, and Gregor forced himself, come what might, into the door.
    The left side of his velvety, chubby body was lifted up. He lay at an angle in the door opening. His one flank was sore from the scraping. On the white door bits of fur were left clinging. Soon he was stuck fast and could not move anymore on his own. The white paws on his left hung twitching in the air above, and the right ones were pushed painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one really strong liberating push from behind, and he sprang, his pride wounded severely, far into the interior of his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and finally it was quiet.

II.
    Gregor woke from a heavy sleep in the evening twilight. He would certainly have woken up soon in any case, for he felt well rested and wide awake, but it seemed to him that, in fact, it had been a hurried step and a cautious closing of his door that had aroused him.
    Light from the electric streetlamps outside lay pale here and there on the ceiling and on the higher parts of the furniture, but on the floor, around Gregor, it was dark. He pushed himself slowly toward the door, his whiskers twitching, which he now learned to value for the first time, for they allowed him to check what was happening out there in the shadows. His entire left side felt like one long unpleasantly stretched scar, andhe really had to hobble on his three good legs, because, in addition, one poor paw had been seriously wounded in the course of the morning incident—it was almost a miracle that only one had been hurt!—and dragged lifelessly behind.
    By the door he spotted that which had enticed him into motion: the smell of something to eat. A bowl stood there, filled with milk, in which swam tiny pieces of white bread. He almost laughed with joy, for his hunger now was much greater than it had been in the morning, and he immediately plunged half his face into the