There he stayed the whole night, sometimes dozing but then waking up with a start from hunger pains; sometimes he worried and entertained vague hopes, but it all led him to the same conclusion: For now he must lie low and try, through patience and the greatest consideration, to help his family bear the inconvenience he was bound to cause them in his present condition.
So early in the morning that it was almost still night, Gregor had an opportunity to test the strength of his new resolutions, because the sister, nearly fully dressed, opened the door from the foyer and eagerly peered in. She did not immediately find him, but when she noticed him underneath the sofa—well, he had to be somewhere, he couldn’t have just flown away—she was so startled that, unable to control herself, she slammed the door shut from the outside. But, as if regretting her behavior, she instantly reopened it and tiptoed in as though she were visiting someone seriously ill or even a stranger. Gregor had pushed his head forward to the edge of the sofa and was watching her. Would she notice that he had left the milk untouched not from any lack of hunger and bring something he liked better? If she did not do so on her own, he would rather starve than bring it to her attention, although he was extremely hard-pressed not to dart out from under the sofa and throw himself at her feet to beg for something good to eat. But the sister immediately and with surprise noticed the bowl, still full except for a little milk that had spilled around it, and promptly picked it up, not with bare hands of course but with a rag, and carried it out. Gregor was exceedingly curious as to what she would bring instead, and he advanced all sorts of theories. But he could never have guessed what in the goodness of her heart the sister actually did. To find out his likes and dislikes, she brought him a wide selection all spread out on an old newspaper. There were old, half-rotten vegetables, bones covered with congealed white sauce from supper the night before, some raisins and almonds, a cheese that Gregor had declared inedible two days before, dry bread, bread with butter, and bread with butter and salt. Beside this she set down the bowl, now presumably reserved for Gregor’s exclusive use, which she had filled with water. And it was out of delicacy, knowing Gregor would not eat in her presence, that she hurriedly removed herself and even turned the key in the lock to indicate to Gregor that he was free to indulge himself as comfortably as he pleased. Gregor’s little legs whizzed toward the food. His wounds must have already been fully healed, he felt no more injury; he marveled at this and thought about when he had cut his finger with a knife over a month ago and how this wound had still bothered him just the day before yesterday. “Have I become less sensitive?” he thought, sucking greedily at the cheese, to which he was initially and primarily drawn before all the other food. With tears of gratitude he quickly devoured, one after the other, the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce; the fresh food on the other hand did not appeal to him and he even dragged what he did want to eat a bit farther away. He had long finished with everything and lay drowsily on the same spot when the sister, to signify her return, slowly turned the key in the lock. This jerked him into action, as he was dozing, and he rushed back under the sofa. But he truly had to force himself, even for the short time that the sister was in the room, to stay beneath the sofa, because he had bloated slightly from the large meal and he could barely breathe in such strict confinement. In between minor bouts of suffocation, he watched with bulging eyes as the unsuspecting sister swept up not only the remaining scraps but even what Gregor had not touched, as if they now had no more use, and dumped it all quickly into a bucket that she covered with a wooden lid and carried away. Hardly had she turned her back when Gregor came out from under the sofa, stretched, and puffed himself out.