Gregor’s labored breathing, from which he had now suffered for over a month—he had managed to chew off the ball of yarn, but a short length remained unreachably twisted in his collar, invisible to all beneath his tufting fur yet continuing as he grew larger and larger to pull the collar alarmingly tight against his throat—seemed by itself to have reminded his father that, in spite of Gregor’s inexplicable and often undignified appearance, Gregor was a member of the family, not a thing to be treated as an enemy, and that it was, on the contrary, a requirement of family duty to suppress one’s aversion to a son who could lick his hindquarters with acrobatic ease, and to endure—nothing else, just endure. And if, through his afflicted throat and tightened breath, Gregor had now apparently lost for good his ability to move with any ease, and for the time being needed many long minutes to crawl across his room, like an aged invalid—climbing up high, of course, had become unimaginable—nevertheless, he felt that for this worsening of his condition he was compensated satisfactorily, because every day toward evening, the door to the living room, on which he was now in the habit of keeping a sharp eye for an hour or two beforehand, was opened, so that he, lying down in the darkness of his room, invisible from the living room, could see the entire family at the illuminated table and listen to their conversation with, to at least some extent, their permission—a situation quite improved from what had been the arrangement before.
