Metamorphosis | Page 3

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.
But then he said to himself: "Before it strikes quarter past seven I'll
definitely have to have got properly out of bed. And by then somebody
will have come round from work to ask what's happened to me as well,
as they open up at work before seven o'clock." And so he set himself to
the task of swinging the entire length of his body out of the bed all at
the same time. If he succeeded in falling out of bed in this way and kept
his head raised as he did so he could probably avoid injuring it. His
back seemed to be quite hard, and probably nothing would happen to it
falling onto the carpet. His main concern was for the loud