All he wanted to do now was to get up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed, and, most important, eat breakfast, and only then consider what to do next, because, as he was well aware, in bed he could never think anything through to a reasonable conclusion. He recalled how he had often felt slight pains in bed, perhaps due to lying in an awkward position, pains that proved imaginary when he got up, and he was eager to see how today’s illusion would gradually dissolve. He had no doubt that the change in his voice was nothing more than the presentiment of a severe cold, an ailment common among traveling salesmen.
The coverlet was easy to throw off; he needed only to puff himself up and it fell off by itself. But then things became much more difficult, especially since he was excessively wide. He would have needed arms and hands to prop himself up, instead of which he had only the many little legs that continually waved every which way and which he could not control at all. If he wanted to bend one, it was the first to stretch itself out, and if he finally succeeded in getting this leg to do what he wanted, the others in the meantime, as if set free, waved all the more wildly in painful and frenzied agitation. “There’s no use staying in bed,” Gregor said to himself.
First he attempted to get the lower part of his body out of bed, but this lower part, which he had not yet seen and about which he could form no clear picture, proved too onerous to move. It shifted so slowly, and when he had finally become nearly frantic, he gathered his energy and lunged forward, without restraint, in the wrong direction and so slammed against the lower bedpost; the searing pain that shot through his body informed him that the lower part of his body was perhaps the most sensitive at present.
He then tried to get the top part of his body out first, and cautiously moved his head toward the edge of the bed. This went smoothly enough, and despite its girth and mass the bulk of his body slowly followed the direction of his head. But when he finally got his head free over the bedside, he became leery of continuing in this vein, because if he fell it would be a miracle if he did not hurt his head. And he must not, especially now, lose consciousness at any price; better to stay in bed.
But when he had repeated his former efforts and once more lay sighing and watching his puny legs struggle against each other, possibly even more viciously, and had found no way to bring peace and order to this random motion, he again told himself that he could not possibly stay in bed and that the logical recourse was to risk everything in the mere hope of freeing himself from the bed. But at the same time he did not forget to remind himself periodically that better than rash decisions was cool, indeed the very coolest, deliberation. In these moments, he fixed his gaze as firmly as possible on the window, but unfortunately the sight of the morning fog, which had even obscured the other side of the narrow street, offered little in the way of cheer or encouragement. “Seven o’clock already,” he said to himself at the new chiming of the alarm clock, “seven o’clock already and still such thick fog.” And for a little while he lay still, breathing lightly as if he expected total repose would restore everything to its normal and unquestionable state.
But then he said to himself: “Before a quarter past seven I absolutely must be out of bed. Besides, by that time someone from the office will have come to ask about me, because the office opens before seven o’clock.” And now he began rocking the whole length of his body in a steady rhythm in order to pitch it out of the bed. If he dropped from the bed in this way, he could probably protect his head by lifting it sharply as he fell. His back seemed to be hard, so it would not be harmed by the fall to the carpet. His greatest concern was for the loud crash he was likely to make, provoking fear if not terror behind all the doors. Still, it must be risked.