“Did you understand even a word?” the head clerk asked the parents. “He isn’t making fools of us?” “For God’s sake,” cried the mother, already weeping, “maybe he is seriously ill and we’re tormenting him. Grete! Grete!” she then screamed. “Mother?” called the sister from the other side. They were communicating across Gregor’s room. “You must go for the doctor immediately. Gregor is sick. Run for the doctor. Did you just hear Gregor speak?” “That was the voice of an animal,” said the head clerk, in a noticeably low tone compared to the mother’s shrieking. “Anna! Anna!” yelled the father through the foyer to the kitchen, clapping his hands, “go get a locksmith at once!” And already the two girls were running through the foyer with a rustling of skirts—how had the sister dressed so quickly?—and throwing open the house door. The door could not be heard closing; they must have left it open as is usual in houses visited by great misfortune.
Gregor had become much calmer however. Apparently his words were no longer understandable even though they were clear enough to him, clearer than before, perhaps because his ear had become accustomed to their sound. But at least it was now believed that all was not right with him and they were ready to help him. He felt cheered by the confidence and surety with which the first orders were met. He felt encircled by humanity again and he expected great and miraculous results from both the doctor and the locksmith, without truly distinguishing between them. In order to have the clearest voice possible for the decisive conversations to come, he coughed a little, taking pains to stifle the sound, as it may not have sounded like a human cough and he could no longer trust his own judgment about it. Meanwhile in the adjoining room it had become completely still. Maybe the parents were sitting at the table whispering with the head clerk, or maybe they were all leaning against the door, listening.
With the aid of the chair, Gregor slowly pushed himself to the door, then let go and threw himself against it and held himself upright—the pads of his little legs were slightly sticky—and rested there for a moment from his exertions. He then attempted to unlock it by taking the key into his mouth. Unfortunately he appeared to have no teeth—how then should he grasp the key?—but on the other hand his jaws were certainly very powerful, and with their help he got the key to move, ignoring the fact that he was somehow harming himself, because a brown fluid had come from his mouth, oozed over the key, and dripped onto the floor. “Do you hear that,” said the head clerk in the next room, “he’s turning the key.” This was a great encouragement to Gregor, but they should all, the mother and father too, have shouted: “Go, Gregor,” they should have shouted: “Keep going, keep going with that lock!” And imagining that they were intently following his every move, he obliviously clenched the key in his jaws with all the strength he could muster. In accordance with the progress of the key, he danced around the lock, holding himself up only by his mouth, and as needed he either hung on to the key or pressed his whole weight down against it. It was the sharp click of the lock finally snapping back that abruptly roused him. Breathing a sigh of relief, he said to himself: “So I didn’t need the locksmith after all,” and pressed his head against the handle in order to completely open the door.
Since he had to pull the door open in this way, it was opened quite wide while he himself still could not be seen. He first had to slowly circumnavigate one of the double doors and do it very carefully so as not to flop onto his back before entering the room. He was still busy with this involved maneuver and had no time to be distracted by anything else when he heard the head clerk burst out with a loud “Oh!”—it sounded like a gust of wind—and now he also saw the head clerk, standing closest to the door, pressing his hand against his open mouth and backing away slowly as if repelled by an invisible and relentless force. The mother—standing there, despite the presence of the head clerk, with her hair still undone and bristling all over—first looked at the father with clasped hands, then took two steps toward Gregor and fell down amid her billowing skirts, her face sinking out of sight onto her breast. The father, furiously shaking his fists as if willing Gregor to go back in his room, looked uncertainly around the living room, covered his eyes in his hands, and sobbed with great heaves of his powerful chest.