The Meowmorphosis Read Online Free PDF

milk. But he soon drew it back again, because it was difficult for him to eat on account of his delicate left side—he could eat only if his entire body was comfortable, which it presently was not. He turned away from the bowl sadly and crept back into the middle of the room.
    In the living room, as Gregor saw through the crack in the door, the gas was lit, but where, on other occasions at this time of day, his father was accustomed to read the afternoon newspaper in a loud voice to his mother and sometimes also to his sister, at the moment no sound was audible. Now, perhaps this reading aloud—which he had never been home to see himself, but of which his sister had always told him—had recently fallen out of their general routine. But everything was so
still,
despite that the apartment was certainly not empty. “What a quiet life the family leads,” Gregor said to himself, and as hestared ahead into the darkness, he felt a great pride that he had been able to provide such a life in a beautiful apartment like this for his parents and his sister. But what if, now, all tranquility, all prosperity, all contentment was to come to a horrible end? In order not to lose himself in such thoughts, Gregor preferred to set himself moving, so he bent and began to thoroughly lick his hind leg in the middle of his room.
    Once during the course of the long evening, one side door—and then the other door—opened just a tiny crack and quickly closed again. Someone presumably had wanted to come in but had then thought better of it. Gregor immediately took up a position by the living room door, determined to bring in the hesitant visitor somehow or other or at least to find out who it might be. But he waited in vain; the door was not opened again. Earlier, when the door had been locked, they had all wanted to come in to him; now, when he had opened one door and when the others had obviously been opened during the day, no one came anymore, and the keys were stuck in the locks on the outside.
    The light in the living room was turned off only late at night, and now it was easy to establish that his parents and his sister had stayed awake all this time, for one could hear clearly as all three moved away on tiptoe. So now it was certain that no one would come into Gregor anymore until the morning.Thus, he had a long time to think undisturbed about how he should reorganize his life from scratch. There in the high, open room, he felt compelled by some unknown instinct to crouch on the floor, his haunches drawn up and his paws tucked under his white, fluffy chest. He purred deeply, and yet the room made him anxious, without his being able to figure out the reason, for he had lived there for five years. With a sudden, half-unconscious springing to action, but not without a bit of shame, he scurried under the couch, where, in spite of the fact that his back was a little cramped and he could no longer lift up his head, he felt very comfortable.
    There he remained the entire night, which he spent partly in a state of semi-sleep, out of which his hunger constantly woke him with a start, but partly in a state of worry and murky hopes, which all led to the conclusion that for the time being he would have to keep calm and—with patience and the greatest consideration for his family—tolerate the troubles that in his present condition he was now forced to cause them.
    EARLY IN THE MORNING —scarcely past night, really—Gregor had an opportunity to test the power of the decisions he had just made, for his sister Grete, almost fully dressed, opened the door from the hall into his room and looked eagerly inside. She did not find him immediately, but when she noticedhim under the couch—God, he had to be
somewhere
or other, for he could hardly fly away!—she got such a shock that, without being able to control herself, she slammed the door shut once again from the outside. However, as if she was sorry for her behavior, she immediately opened the door