hair and the two parents looked on astonished and
helpless; then they, too, became agitated; Gregor's father, standing
to the right of his mother, accused her of not leaving the cleaning
of Gregor's room to his sister; from her left, Gregor's sister
screamed at her that she was never to clean Gregor's room again;
while his mother tried to draw his father, who was beside himself
with anger, into the bedroom; his sister, quaking with tears,
thumped on the table with her small fists; and Gregor hissed in
anger that no-one had even thought of closing the door to save him
the sight of this and all its noise.

Gregor's sister was exhausted from going out to work, and looking
after Gregor as she had done before was even more work for her, but
even so his mother ought certainly not to have taken her place.
Gregor, on the other hand, ought not to be neglected. Now, though,
the charwoman was here. This elderly widow, with a robust bone
structure that made her able to withstand the hardest of things in
her long life, wasn't really repelled by Gregor. Just by chance one
day, rather than any real curiosity, she opened the door to Gregor's
room and found herself face to face with him. He was taken totally
by surprise, no-one was chasing him but he began to rush to and fro
while she just stood there in amazement with her hands crossed in
front of her. From then on she never failed to open the door
slightly every evening and morning and look briefly in on him. At
first she would call to him as she did so with words that she
probably considered friendly, such as "come on then, you old
dung-beetle!", or "look at the old dung-beetle there!" Gregor never
responded to being spoken to in that way, but just remained where he
was without moving as if the door had never even been opened. If
only they had told this charwoman to clean up his room every day
instead of letting her disturb him for no reason whenever she felt
like it! One day, early in the morning while a heavy rain struck the
windowpanes, perhaps indicating that spring was coming, she began to
speak to him in that way once again. Gregor was so resentful of it
that he started to move toward her, he was slow and infirm, but it
was like a kind of attack. Instead of being afraid, the charwoman
just lifted up one of the chairs from near the door and stood there
with her mouth open, clearly intending not to close her mouth until
the chair in her hand had been slammed down into