Once, approximately a month after Gregor’s transformation, when there was no reason for the sister to be especially alarmed at his appearance, she came a little earlier than usual and caught Gregor perfectly still, gazing out the window, thus giving him a particularly frightful aspect. It would not have surprised Gregor if she had not come in, as his position prevented her from immediately opening the window, but not only did she not enter, she actually jumped back and shut the door; a stranger could easily have thought Gregor had been lying in wait for her and meant to bite her. Gregor naturally hid himself at once under the sofa but had to wait until noon for the sister’s return, and then she seemed much more uneasy than usual. He concluded that the sight of him was still repulsive to her and was bound to remain repulsive, and that she must have exercised great self-control not to take flight at the sight of even the smallest portion of his body protruding from under the couch. To spare her from even these glimpses, he dragged the sheet to the sofa on his back one day—this required four hours’ work—and laid it in such a way as to conceal himself entirely, so the sister could not see him even if she stooped down. If she did not find the sheet necessary, she certainly could have removed it, because it was clear enough that Gregor could not possibly be pleased by his total confinement, but she left the sheet as it was, and Gregor imagined he caught a grateful look once when he cautiously raised the sheet a little with his head to see how the sister was taking the new arrangement.
During the first two weeks, the parents could not bring themselves to enter his room and he often heard them praising the efforts of the sister, whereas earlier they had frequently been annoyed with her because she appeared to them to be a somewhat useless girl. Now, however, both the father and the mother often waited outside Gregor’s room while the sister cleaned up inside, and as soon as she stepped out she had to report fully to them on exactly how the room looked, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this time, and whether perhaps some slight improvement was noticeable. Incidentally, the mother wanted to visit Gregor relatively soon but the father and the sister put her off with logical arguments that Gregor listened to very attentively and approved of wholeheartedly. But later she had to be held back by force, and when she cried out: “Let me go to Gregor, he’s my unfortunate son! Can’t you understand that I must go to him?” Gregor then thought that it would perhaps be beneficial if the mother did come in, not every day of course, but maybe once a week; she understood everything much better than the sister, who for all her pluck was still just a child and may have ultimately undertaken such a difficult task out of childish recklessness.
Gregor’s desire to see the mother was soon fulfilled. During the daytime Gregor did not want to show himself at the window, if only out of consideration for his parents, but he could not crawl around very far in the few square meters of floor, nor could he bear to lie still even at night, and eating gave him scant pleasure, so as a distraction he acquired the habit of crawling crisscross over the walls and ceiling. He especially liked hanging from the ceiling; it was entirely different from lying on the floor, he could breathe more freely and a mild tingling ran through his body, and in the near joyful oblivion in which Gregor found himself up there he could, to his own surprise, lose hold and plunge to the floor. But naturally he now had much more control over his body than before and was not harmed by even so great a fall. The sister immediately noticed Gregor’s newfound entertainment—after all he did leave behind the sticky traces of his crawling here and there—and she got it into her head to allow Gregor the widest crawling space possible by the removal of the furniture that hindered him, namely the bureau and the desk. She was not, however, able to do this alone; she did not dare ask for the father’s help and the maid would certainly not help her because, although she, a girl of about sixteen, had had the courage to stay on after the cook’s departure, she had asked for the privilege of keeping the kitchen door locked at all times and opening it only upon specific requests. This left the sister no choice but to ask the mother at a time when the father was out. The mother did come with exclamations of excited delight but fell silent outside the door to Gregor’s room. Naturally the sister first checked to see that everything was in order in the room and only then admitted the mother. Gregor had very hastily pulled the sheet down lower in tighter folds so that it really looked like a sheet casually thrown over the couch. He refrained from peeking out from under the sheet this time, renouncing this very first sight of his mother, and was only glad she had come at all. “Come in, you can’t see him,” said the sister, evidently leading the mother by the hand. Gregor now heard the two frail women pushing the extremely heavy old bureau from its place and the sister taking on most of the work, not heeding the warnings of the mother, who feared she might overexert herself. It took a very long time. After struggling for a good quarter of an hour, the mother declared that they had better leave the bureau where it was; first, it was just too heavy, they would not be finished before the father’s arrival, and Gregor’s every movement would be hindered with the bureau in the middle of the room, and second, it was not at all certain that removing the furniture was doing Gregor any great service. It seemed to her that the opposite was true: The look of the empty wall was heartrending, and wouldn’t Gregor feel that same way since he had been used to the furniture for so long and might feel bereft in the empty room. “And doesn’t it look,” concluded the mother very softly, in fact she practically whispered the whole time as if, not knowing Gregor’s precise whereabouts, she did not want him to hear even the sound of her voice, as she was convinced that he could not understand the words, “and doesn’t it look, by removing all the furniture, like we’ve abandoned all hope of his recovery and are callously leaving him completely on his own? I think it would be best if we tried to keep the room exactly as it was before, so that when Gregor comes back to us he can find everything unchanged and forget that much more easily what happened in the meantime.”