Gregor held back from spying
out from under the sheet. Thus, he refrained from looking
at his mother this time and was just happy that she had
come. ‘Come on; he is not visible,’ said his sister, and
evidently led his mother by the hand. Now Gregor
listened as these two weak women shifted the still heavy
old chest of drawers from its position, and as his sister
constantly took on herself the greatest part of the work,
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53 of 96
without listening to the warnings of his mother who was
afraid that she would strain herself. The work lasted a long
time. After about a quarter of an hour had already gone by
his mother said that it would be better if they left the chest
of drawers where it was, because, in the first place, it was
too heavy: they would not be finished before his father’s
arrival, and with the chest of drawers in the middle of the
room it would block all Gregor’s pathways, but, in the
second place, it might not be certain that Gregor would be
pleased with the removal of the furniture. To her the
reverse seemed to be true; the sight of the empty walls
pierced her right to the heart, and why should Gregor not
feel the same, since he had been accustomed to the room
furnishings for a long time and in an empty room would
thus feel himself abandoned.
‘And is it not the case,’ his mother concluded very
quietly, almost whispering as if she wished to prevent
Gregor, whose exact location she really didn’t know, from
hearing even the sound of her voice (for she was
convinced that he did not understand her words), ‘and
isn’t it a fact that by removing the furniture we’re showing
that we’re giving up all hope of an improvement and are
leaving him to his own resources without any
consideration? I think it would be best if we tried to keep
the room exactly in the condition in which it was before,
so that, when Gregor returns to us, he finds everything
unchanged and can forget the intervening time all the
more easily.’
As he heard his mother’s words Gregor realized that the
lack of all immediate human contact, together with the
monotonous life surrounded by the family over the course
of these two months must have confused his
understanding, because otherwise he couldn’t explain to
himself that he in all seriousness could’ve been so keen to
have his room emptied. Was he really eager to let the
warm room, comfortably furnished with pieces he had
inherited, be turned into a cavern in which he would, of
course, then be able to crawl about in all directions
without disturbance, but at the same time with a quick
and complete forgetting of his human past as well? Was he
then at this point already on the verge of forgetting and
was it only the voice of his mother, which he had not
heard for along time, that had aroused him? Nothing was
to be removed; everything must remain. In his condition
he couldn’t function without the beneficial influences of
his furniture. And if the furniture prevented him from
carrying out his senseless crawling about all over the place,
then there was no harm in that, but rather a great benefit.