The Meowmorphosis Read Online Free PDF Page B

again and walked in on her tiptoes, as if she was creeping up upon someone and wishing to pounce upon them. Gregor had pushed his head forward just to the edge of the couch to look at her when she exclaimed and fell upon him, gathering up his bulk into her arms, and all in secret nuzzling and speaking sweetly to him. Yet he could not enjoy her attentions, which in any event were far too familiar for his taste. He was too hungry to be petted and fawned over thus. Would she not notice that he had left the milk standing, not indeed from any lack of hunger, that it was now warm and stale, and would she bring in something else for him to eat? Something like meat, wet and soft, as his heart truly desired? If she did not do it on her own, he would sooner starve to death than call her attention to the fact, although he had a really powerful urge to claw free and abase himself at his sister’s feet, and beg her for something or other good and juicy to eat.
    Finally his sister ceased cuddling his large white paws, which he endured most patiently, and noticed with astonishment that the bowl was still full, with only a little milk spilled around it. She set him on the couch and picked it up immediately,although not with her bare hands but with a rag, and took it out of the room. Gregor immediately began imagining what she would bring next—but he never could have predicted what his sister, out of the goodness of her heart, in fact did. She brought him, to test his taste, an
entire selection,
all spread out on an old newspaper. There were shredded bits of liver left over from breakfast; chicken still on the bone from the evening meal, smeared with a white sauce; some raisins and almonds; kippers that Gregor had declared inedible two days earlier; a slice of dry bread; and a slice of salted bread smeared with butter. In addition to all this, she put down a bowl—which Gregor supposed had been designated as his alone—into which she had poured some water. And out of her delicacy of feeling, since she knew that he would not eat in front of her, she went away very quickly and even turned the key in the lock, so that Gregor would understand that he could make himself as comfortable as he wished. Gregor’s small limbs quivered: The time for eating had come! His wounds must, in any case, have healed overnight; he felt no handicap on that score. He was astonished at that and thought about how more than a month ago he had cut his finger slightly with a knife and how this wound had still hurt even the day before yesterday.
    “Am I now going to be less sensitive,” he thought, already sucking greedily on the kippers, which had strongly attractedhim right away, more than all the other foods. Quickly and with his eyes watering with satisfaction, he ate one after the other: the liver, the chicken, and the sauce. The bread and fruit, by contrast, didn’t taste good to him. He couldn’t bear the smell and even carried the things he wanted to eat a little distance away. By the time his sister slowly turned the key as a sign that he should withdraw, he was long finished and now lay lazily in the same spot. The noise immediately startled him, despite that he was already almost asleep, and he scurried back again under the couch. But it cost him great self-control to remain under the couch, even for the short time his sister was in the room, because his body had filled out somewhat on account of the rich meal, and in the narrow space there he could scarcely breathe. Amid minor attacks of asphyxiation, he looked at her with somewhat protruding, limpid eyes, as his unsuspecting sister swept up with a broom not just the remnants, but even the foods that Gregor had not touched at all, as if these were also now useless, and as she dumped everything quickly into a bucket, which she closed with a wooden lid, and then carried all of it out of the room. She had hardly turned around before Gregor had already dragged himself out from the couch, stretched out,