THE LIFE OF GEORGE SAMSA – METAFORFOSIS BY KAFKA

When mum walked into my room, she ran into a horrible brown splodge clinging to the picture on the wall.

As soon as she saw it, she fainted and fell on my sofa since she couldn’t stand such a repugnant appearance. My sister Grete ran to my room and found mum slumped into the sofa and her limbs hanging out. In the meantime, that thing was still stuck to the picture, and it kept moving its head while screaming.

It was screaming incessantly, making a deafening hissing sound which was getting more and more unbearable. It seemed that the beast was about to set upon into my sister. Terrified, Grete cried out the first thing that came to her mind.

And thus she finally pronounced the name of that repulsive bug on the wall. “Gregor!” Metamorphosis My name’s Gregor Samsa. One morning I woke up transformed into a monstrous bug.

I was lying on my bed, lying on my curved shell instead of my old spine. I realized it wasn’t a flexible back, because I could feel it was painfully tense when I tried to see my abdomen.

My abdomen was dark and divided up into several bow-like sections. It seemed hard and it secreted a kind of sweat which gave my abdomen a shiny appearance. My many scrawny legs were pointing towards the ceiling while all of them were shaking uncontrollably at the same time.

Sometimes that vibration even reached my head, making an unpleasant buzzing in my ears. My extremely thin legs were pathetic compared to the rest of the body, which was also too large for my bed and was even sticking out of the sides. I wanted to sleep for a while, but I wasn’t able to close my eyes like before.

My eyelids seemed to have been ripped off. Although I didn’t need to blink, it was something strange and truly uncomfortable to remain with my eyes wide open.

Furthermore I was used to sleeping on my side and I couldn’t get myself into this position with my new body. I tried to do it a few times but I always rolled again onto my round back.

Eventually I fell off my bed and my body hit the floor. At night, my family already knew what had happened to me. But they kept the strange situation a secret, as if I were just a leprosy patient or something like this.

In addition, Grete had even taken the responsibility to look after me from that moment on.

It took my sister all day to finally come into into my room. She walked in on her tiptoes and brought a bowl with pieces of bread swimming in milk. Because she knew milk had always been my favourite dinner. Grete didn’t know food for mammals wasn’t suitable for a coleopter like me, and in fact I wanted to throw up as soon as I tasted it.

So the next morning, she took the bowl away, which was still filled with milk, but a few moments later she came into my room again with different types of food, so that I could choose what I liked most.

I felt very proud of having such an observant sister, because she immediately realized that I had new eating habits. Otherwise, I’d starve to death. My sister didn’t use to make well-thought-out decisions, something usual at her age. And it’s true that she decided to take care of me from the start, performing my duties with great care. But the truth is that she’d have done it anyway, since mum and dad couldn’t face the situation and weren’t really willing to help.

In fact, Grete walked into my room twice a day, in the morning and at noon, because at that time dad and mum were sleeping. This way they’d never have to see my horrifying deformed body.

Now everytime Grete entered my bedroom, she always turned the key a few times in the lock, and then she opened the door slowly, as if she were giving me time to run and hide under my sofa.

Once I was under the sofa, I showed my bulging eyes, so I could see see my sister while she was in my bedroom. Grete always looked sideways at me with some disgust. However, that glance made me think about previous times.

I remembered when Grete and I used to talk, quite naively, about how wonderful it’d be for her to enrol on the conservatory to learn how to play the violin. Playing the violin had always been her biggest wish, and even though she hardly ever played it, it’s true that she was very fluent in doing so. Grete’s dream of learning music had never been anything but an innocent fantasy.

And my parents didn’t like the idea of us constantly talking about such an impossible dream for such a humble family like ours. But actually I had been saving a lot of money for a long time, and that Christmas I wanted to fulfill my sister’s long-awaited dream. Unfortunately it was almost Christmas and I knew it was impossible to tell her my secret. So she’ll never know what I tried to give her.

Some days passed after the transformation, although Grete still looked uncomfortable with my presence.

Even under the sofa, some limbs of my exoskeleton could be seen sticking out of the edges. So I decided to cover my sofa with a blanket to prevent her from seeing me. It took me four hours to do this, however some of my limbs were still visible, such as the feelers on my head.

They were quite long and they kept on shaking vigorously, as if they were telling Grete to look at me. Moreover, the constant movement of my powerful jaws produced foamy saliva which was dripping on the wooden floor, making a very annoying sound which wasn’t very loud.

And eventually my sister’s great curiosity forced her to look under the sofa over and over again. Every day, my room was getting more and more infested and the stench was getting more and more unbearable.

So Grete used to burst into my room and ran directly to the window, so that she could breathe at ease. I remember the mess she often made walking in and I awoke with a start many times, hitting my head on the edge of the sofa. She really didn’t make a big effort to hide her disgust with that sickening atmosphere. And she used to stand by the window for quite a while, even though it was a very cold winter. I was just shivering under the sofa.

However, Grete didn’t seem to be so cold, probably due to her unceasing cleaning while she was in my bedroom. I really wanted her to close the window as soon as possible, although I’d have never told her, because I’d rather be freezing to death than reproach my sister for anything.

One day, probably lured by the bright light coming from outside, I decided to drag my chair to the window in order to stand on it and look out through my window. I loved listening to the drops of melting frost hitting the windowsill at dawn, while seeing people rushing on the street.

The thing is that I only had to move the chair a couple of times so that Grete’d immediately noticed, and since then she always placed it by the window. Being only seventeen, my sister was already a very responsible girl. At night I used to approach the door to listen to the conversations Grete had with mum and dad while they were having dinner. They often asked my sister whether she had seen any improvement with me. Sometimes mum even expressed her desire to come into my bedroom to see me, just once.

I really wanted to see mum, and everytime I heard her say that she was going to come into my room, I quickly hid myselfand I kept staring at the door. But she was so terrified of me that she used to change her mind at the last moment. Then I felt so terribly sad that there was blood rushing to my headand sometimes it seemed that it was about to explode. So I always rubbed my face against the cold iron bars in my bed so I wouldn’t burn up. My family had made clear that I was considered an insignificant parasite. And they certainly believed that people can’t live with such an animal.

Everytime I thought about it, I could only hide myself under the sofa, as usual.

And I wished my sofa were a huge rock nobody could lift, and my bedroom were a huge chrysalis nobody could come in. Thus everyone would finally forget my horrible existence. The fleeting moments Grete spent with me were the only things that were important to me. I spent the whole day waiting for her to walk into my bedroom and when she eventually came in, I wanted to cry.

My stomach shrank and I had strange nausea of happiness inside me.

When I saw her walking through the door, my heart started racing and my mind was dreaming. Sometimes I dreamed about being able to get to her feet and pull her skirt so that she’d lean towards me.

I imagined myself reaching her neck to caress her face with my sensitive feelers and holding her tight with my legs to whisper in her ear, to thank her for everything she was doing for me.

Sometimes Grete left the window open when she went out, and then I jumped off the sofa and started running around the bedroom.

I even crawled back and forth across the walls with the help of a sticky substance on the ends of my legs. I got up to this mischief almost by instinct, and in doing so I left traces of the sticky substance and it didn’t take long for Grete to find them out. She immediately noticed I had developed a new game.

So she thought about removing every piece of furniture in my bedroom, except for the sofa, so I could have as much room as possible. But she couldn’t move such big pieces herself, so she needed mum’s help.

She insisted mum to finally go into my room. And together, they were removing pieces of furniture one after another. By the time I noticed, they had already taken almost every piece of furniture in my bedroom away.

The only thing left was the picture frame in the middle of the wall, with my favourite sketch.

Then I should have been pleased when I saw so much room to move around, but for some reason I left my wild instinct aside and climbed the wall up to the picture to prevent them from removing it.

It was then when mum walked into my bedroom and she ran into a horrible brown splodge clinging to the picture on the wall. As soon as she saw it, she fainted and fell on my sofa.

Because she couldn’t believe that that thing could be her son. Grete was finally able to take mum out of my room.

And I approached the door, which had been left open. It was getting dark and beyond the door there was only darkness. But suddenly dad showed up beyond the darkness.

He was holding a basket full of apples and he began to throw them at me. My father threw those apples at me with such cruelty and rage. He eventually hit my back, and I writhed in pain backwards. But dad went on throwing more and more apples at me.

That bizarre scene made me understand that I was just a miserable nuisance to my family. I should have spread the wings hidden in my shell and flown out the window. But the thought of trying made me shiver…

The days went by and that apple was still lodged in my shell. It was getting rotten and I felt like thousands of larvae were eating the skin on my back. Therefore I could only remain motionless on the floor, waiting Grete to come into my bedroom. But she never came in anymore, and the only thing I could get to see was her hand every time she threw my food from the door.

I had completely lost my appetite. And then my bedroom quickly turned into a big pile of food which was getting bigger and bigger every day. But my sister didn’t even come in to clean the scraps, and she didn’t seem to care about this at all. Early in the morning, Grete checked that the food had already reached the door.

So she finally came into my room and then she found my body lying completely flat and dry. My parents immediately came in and Grete stood between them. They were staring at their son and brother lying on the floor. “Look how skinny he was…”, said my sister while a nice light was falling on her and her parents. The three characters posed very close and they finally heaved a sigh of relief. And in the end Grete stretched her young body.