The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka Page A

room. I could understand your aversion to him perfectly well, my friend has his quirks. But then you got along with him quite well later on. At the time I felt very proud that you were listening to him, nodding and asking him questions. If you think about it, you're bound to remember. He used to tell us the most incredible stories of the Russian Revolution. Like the time he was on a business trip to Kiev, and during a riot he saw a priest on a balcony who had cut a broad bloody cross into his palm and raised it, appealing to the mob. You've even repeated this story once or twice."
    Meanwhile Georg had successfully eased his father back into the chair and carefully removed the socks and the long woolen underclothes he wore over his linen underwear. At the sight of these rather soiled undergarments he reproached himself for neglecting his father. It would certainly have been his duty to ensure that his father had clean clothes. So far he had not explicitly discussed his father's future with his fiancée, for they had both tacitly assumed that he would remain on in the old house by himself. But Georg now resolved, with swift and firm determination, to move his father into his new household with him. It almost seemed, on closer inspection, that the care his father would get there might come too late.
    He carried his father to bed in his arms. During the few steps to the bed he noticed, with an awful feeling, that his father was playing with his watch chain as he curled against Georg's chest. He could not lay him down right away because he clutched the watch chain so fiercely.
    But no sooner was he in bed than all seemed well. He covered himself up and then drew the blankets especially high over his shoulders. He looked up at Georg with a not unfriendly gaze.
    "You are beginning to remember him, aren't you?" asked Georg, giving him an encouraging nod.
    "Am I well covered now?" his father asked, as if he could not check to see whether his feet were covered or not.
    "So you're already quite snug in bed," remarked Georg, and he tucked the blankets more closely around him.
    "Am I well covered?" his father repeated, and seemed to be keenly interested in the answer.
    "Don't worry, you're all covered up."
    "No!" shouted his father, so loudly that the answer slammed back into the question, throwing off the blankets with such force that they unfurled completely for a moment in the air, and then springing to his feet in bed. He had only one hand on the ceiling to steady himself. "You wanted to cover me up, I know it, you little cretin, but I'm not covered up yet. And even if I'm at the end of my strength, it's still enough for you, more than enough for you. Yes, I know your friend. He would have been the son after my own heart. That's why you've been cheating him all these years. Why else? Do you think I haven't wept for him? And that's why you lock yourself up in your office, the chief is busy, mustn't be disturbed—so you can write your deceitful little letters to Russia. But fortunately no one has to teach a father to see through his son. And just when you thought you had him down, all the way down, so far down you can sit your backside on him and he won't move, then my fine son decides to get himself married!"
    Georg stared up at the monstrous specter of his father. His friend in St. Petersburg, whom his father suddenly knew so well, wrenched his heart as never before. He imagined him lost in the vastness of Russia. He pictured him standing in the doorway of his empty, plundered warehouse. He could barely stand amid the wreck of his showcases, his ruined wares, and the falling gas brackets. Why did he have to move so far away?
    "Now listen to me!" his father cried, and Georg, nearly half frantic, ran to the bed to absorb everything, but stopped midway there.
    "Because she lifted her skirts," his father started simpering, "because she pulled up her skirts like this, the nasty little goose," and demonstrated by hiking his shirt high