the chief clerk, but they would appear again in his thoughts,
the salesmen and the apprentices, that stupid teaboy, two or three
friends from other businesses, one of the chambermaids from a
provincial hotel, a tender memory that appeared and disappeared
again, a cashier from a hat shop for whom his attention had been
serious but too slow, - all of them appeared to him, mixed together
with strangers and others he had forgotten, but instead of helping
him and his family they were all of them inaccessible, and he was
glad when they disappeared. Other times he was not at all in the
mood to look after his family, he was filled with simple rage about
the lack of attention he was shown, and although he could think of
nothing he would have wanted, he made plans of how he could get into
the pantry where he could take all the things he was entitled to,
even if he was not hungry. Gregor's sister no longer thought about
how she could please him but would hurriedly push some food or other
into his room with her foot before she rushed out to work in the
morning and at midday, and in the evening she would sweep it away
again with the broom, indifferent as to whether it had been eaten or
- more often than not - had been left totally untouched. She still
cleared up the room in the evening, but now she could not have been
any quicker about it. Smears of dirt were left on the walls, here
and there were little balls of dust and filth. At first, Gregor
went into one of the worst of these places when his sister arrived
as a reproach to her, but he could have stayed there for weeks
without his sister doing anything about it; she could see the dirt
as well as he could but she had simply decided to leave him to it.
At the same time she became touchy in a way that was quite new for
her and which everyone in the family understood - cleaning up
Gregor's room was for her and her alone. Gregor's mother did once
thoroughly clean his room, and needed to use several bucketfuls of
water to do it - although that much dampness also made Gregor ill
and he lay flat on the couch, bitter and immobile. But his mother
was to be punished still more for what she had done, as hardly had
his sister arrived home in the evening than she noticed the change
in Gregor's room and, highly aggrieved, ran back into the living
room where, despite her mothers raised and imploring hands, she
broke into convulsive tears. Her father, of course, was startled
out of his c