Page 51 - the-metamorphosis

ceived him on the evenings of his return in a sleeping gown
and arm chair, totally incapable of standing up, who had
only lifted his arm as a sign of happiness, and who in their
rare strolls together a few Sundays a year and on the impor-
tant holidays made his way slowly forwards between Gregor
and his mother (who themselves moved slowly), always a
bit more slowly than them, bundled up in his old coat, all
the time setting down his walking stick carefully, and who,
when he had wanted to say something, almost always stood
still and gathered his entourage around him?
But now he was standing up really straight, dressed in a
tight fitting blue uniform with gold buttons, like the ones
servants wear in a banking company. Above the high stiff
collar of his jacket his firm double chin stuck out promi-
nently, beneath his bushy eyebrows the glance of his black
eyes was freshly penetrating and alert, his otherwise di-
sheveled white hair was combed down into a carefully exact
shining part. He threw his cap, on which a gold monogram
(apparently the symbol of the bank) was affixed, in an arc
across the entire room onto the sofa and moved, throwing
back the edge of the long coat of his uniform, with his hands
in his trouser pockets and a grim face, right up to Gregor.
He really didn’t know what he had in mind, but he raised
his foot uncommonly high anyway, and Gregor was aston-
ished at the gigantic size of his sole of his boot. However,
he did not linger on that point. For he knew from the first
day of his new life that as far as he was concerned his father
considered the greatest force the only appropriate response.
And so he scurried away from his father, stopped when his

0 The Metamorphosis