Page 35 - the-metamorphosis

her go immediately, and when she said good bye about fif-
teen minutes later, she thanked them for the dismissal with
tears in her eyes, as if she was receiving the greatest favour
which people had shown her there, and, without anyone de-
manding it from her, she swore a fearful oath not to betray
anyone, not even the slightest bit.
Now his sister had to team up with his mother to do the
cooking, although that didn’t create much trouble because
people were eating almost nothing. Again and again Gregor
listened as one of them vainly invited another one to eat and
received no answer other than ‘Thank you. I have enough’
or something like that. And perhaps they had stopped hav-
ing anything to drink, too. His sister often asked his father
whether he wanted to have a beer and gladly offered to fetch
it herself, and when his father was silent, she said, in order
to remove any reservations he might have, that she could
send the caretaker’s wife to get it. But then his father finally
said a resounding ‘No,’ and nothing more would be spoken
about it.
Already during the first day his father laid out all the
financial circumstances and prospects to his mother and
to his sister as well. From time to time he stood up from
the table and pulled out of the small lockbox salvaged from
his business, which had collapsed five years previously,
some document or other or some notebook. The sound was
audible as he opened up the complicated lock and, after re-
moving what he was looking for, locked it up again. These
explanations by his father were, in part, the first enjoyable
thing that Gregor had the chance to listen to since his im-

The Metamorphosis