Konundrum: Selected Prose of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka

Author:Franz Kafka [Kafka, Franz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780914671527
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2016-10-31T23:00:00+00:00

TRANSFORMED

I

Waking one morning from restless dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous bug. He lay on his hard, shell-like back, and saw, upon raising his head a little, that his vaulted brown belly was bedecked with curved stripes, on the crest of which his blanket, perilously close to falling, could hardly still hold. His many legs, looking pitifully spindly in contrast to his body mass, kicked up a storm before his helpless eyes.

“What happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His bedroom, a bona fide, albeit somewhat cramped, human room, was lodged perfectly peacefully between four familiar walls. Above the table, bestrewn with a spread-out collection of cloth samples – Samsa was a traveling salesman – hung the picture he had cut out of an illustrated magazine and mounted in a handsome gilded frame. The picture showed a lady seated erect, in a fur hat and fur boa, her forearms practically buried in a heavy fur muffler lifted toward the spectator.

Gregor’s gaze turned next out the window, and the dismal weather – raindrops struck the window frame – made him feel altogether melancholy. “Why don’t I sleep a little longer and forget all this madness,” he thought, but that was absolutely impossible, since he was accustomed to sleeping on his right side and given his present condition could not manage to so position himself. He summoned up all his strength to fling himself onto his right side, but kept rocking back to the same supine position. He tried some hundred times, closed his eyes so as not to have to see his fidgeting little legs, and gave up only when he started feeling a light, dull pain in the side which he had never felt before.

“Dear God,” he thought to himself, “what an exhausting profession I’ve picked! Day in, day out, always traveling. Professional headaches on the road are much greater than those you have to deal with at the home office, on top of which I have to tackle the hassles of travel, the worries about train connections, the irregular, bad meals, the ever-changing, never lasting, never warm and cozy human contact. To hell with it all!” He felt a slight itch above on his belly; shimmied on his back ever closer to the bedpost so as to be able to raise his head; spotted the itchy spot that was covered with a lot of little white spots of indeterminate origin; and wanted to touch the spot with his leg, but immediately drew his leg back, since touching it made a cold shudder run down his spine.

He slid back into his former position. “This early waking,” he thought, “makes you completely imbecilic. Man needs his sleep. Other travelers live like harem women. When, for instance, I return to the hotel restaurant late in the morning to transcribe my new orders, those guys are just sitting down to breakfast. I ought to try that with my boss; why, I’d be fired on the spot.

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