MetamorphosisAge-adapted version

One morning, Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams and found himself transformed into a large, hard insect. He lay on his back in bed, with a round, brown belly in stiff segments that glinted faintly under the crumpled bedding. His many, thin legs waved helplessly in the air without him being able to control them.

He felt the armor on his back and a strange, odd weight throughout his body. “What has happened to me?” he thought, clinging to the hope that it was just a strange dream.

The room was still as always. The window, the table with fabric samples, his suitcase, everything was there. Above the table hung the picture he was so proud of, a lady in fur with a large muff. It was nicely framed in gold. On the wall directly opposite the bed hung a photograph of Gregor himself, from when he was a lieutenant: stiff uniform, sword in hand, a small, brave smile.

Outside, the rain drummed quietly against the windowpane. A gray morning, the kind that made him feel especially heavy in body.

He used to sleep on his right side, but now he kept rolling back onto his back every time he tried. He tried again and again, closing his eyes to avoid seeing his legs like splayed wheels. Finally, he gave up when a new pain throbbed somewhere he didn't recognize.

He tried to think as usual. He was a traveling salesman, and the first thing he thought of was the train. The five o'clock train.

The seven o'clock train if everything went wrong. And the boss—the chief clerk—who always kept an eye on anyone who came late. He had to copy contracts, follow up with customers, and he was tired of cities, guesthouses, and strange faces. His thoughts ran fast and in circles. “If I didn't have to pay off my parents' debt, I would have quit long ago,” he thought, “but I have to hold out another five or six years. Then everything will be different.”

The alarm clock stood on the chest of drawers, ticking loudly. Half past six. Then quarter to seven.

Hadn't the clock rung? He became frightened and irritated at the same time. As he listened, everything seemed quiet and normal in the apartment except for his heart, which was beating too fast. “Gregor?”

There was a gentle knock on the door near his head. His mother's soft voice flowed through the crack in the door. She reminded him of the time: “It's quarter to seven. Weren't you going somewhere?”

He wanted to answer calmly, but his voice didn't come out as usual. It was mushy, like scraping against metal, and the words had a strange squeak to them. He was surprised himself. “Yes, Mother, I'm getting up now,” he said slowly, word by word, so it would sound right. He hoped they didn't notice that his voice wasn't as before.

His father knocked more firmly on the other door, with his fist. “Gregor, what's the matter?” His sister Grete whispered from her room: “Are you not well? Do you need anything?” He answered both sides, trying to sound normal.

Neither door was unlocked, because he had a habit of locking all of them at night, even at home.

Now that habit seemed like a good idea. He decided to get up, get dressed, and then have breakfast. After that he would find out what had happened. He tried to puff himself up a little to get the cover off.

It worked. But getting his body up was something entirely different. He no longer had arms, only these legs that wouldn't cooperate. When he bent one, it stretched out. When he got one in place, another sprang loose.

He quickly realized he couldn't do this in bed. He decided to tip the lower part of his body over the edge.

But he couldn't see that part and didn't know how heavy it was. When he finally, in sheer desperation, pushed with all his might, he hit the bedpost hard. It burned in him, and he realized that the lower part was more sensitive than he had thought. So he tried the opposite: he got his head down from the pillow and over the edge of the bed. That was easier. His body followed slowly, segment by segment, but he didn't dare let go.

If he fell headfirst, something might break. He lay there rocking back and forth, so slightly that it matched the ticking of the clock, which was now approaching seven. He would catch the next train. He had to.

Then the apartment doorbell rang. Gregor froze. The maid opened—her steady, quick steps were unmistakable. And when he heard the greeting, he knew who the visitor was: the chief clerk himself.

Of course. With them, the slightest delay was viewed with suspicion. Why did he have to work there of all places? He grew angry, and perhaps that was why he finally pushed himself out of bed.

He fell heavily. A muffled thud. The carpet absorbed some of the sound. His head hit the floor, and he rubbed it irritably and shamefully, as if rubbing could undo what had happened.

“Something fell,” said the chief clerk in the living room. His father shouted that the boss was there and told Gregor to open up. His mother assured the chief clerk that her son was always dutiful, that he was probably just a little unwell.

Grete cried. The chief clerk raised his voice. He spoke of duties, of figures that weren't good enough, that Gregor might have done something wrong with the money entrusted to him. Gregor grew hot and shouted that he would open up immediately. He was just dizzy. He would catch the eight o'clock train. “Don't let my parents suffer!” he pleaded.

He clung to the dresser, slid down, climbed back up again, found support against a chair. He coughed to clear his throat, but it sounded different inside him than it probably did from outside. He had to open the door, show himself, make the chief clerk understand. Whatever happened then would at least be truer than this hiding. He pressed himself against the door and fumbled for the key.

He had no teeth anymore, it seemed, but his jaw was strong.

He took the key in his mouth and turned it slowly, while a brown liquid ran from his mouth, down the key and dripped onto the floor. "Listen, he's turning the key," said the chief clerk. Gregor clenched his teeth – or what was in their place – concentrated so his whole body hung on the key. The lock gave way with a snap, and he whispered to himself, almost satisfied, "So I didn't need the locksmith after all."

He put his head over the door handle and opened it. The door opened slowly inward, and he had to turn around the door frame to avoid falling backward. When he was finally visible, he heard an "Ah!" from the chief clerk, as if someone had opened a window in a storm. The chief clerk held his hand to his mouth and backed away slowly, as if drawn by an invisible thread.

The mother took two steps toward Gregor and collapsed on the floor, folded up in her skirts. The father clenched his fists and looked as if he could strike him back with his glare alone.

Gregor himself stood leaning askew against the other door wing, so that only half his body and his head stuck out. Outside it was raining in large, clear drops. On the wall behind the family hung the photograph of him as a lieutenant.

On the table stood the remains of breakfast. In the doorway to the hallway he could see straight out to the stairs. Everything familiar – and yet entirely new. He tried to speak calmly: he would get dressed, pack the samples, and go to the office. He asked the chief clerk to tell the boss he would come.

He reminded him how much he owed his employer, about the parents and sister he supported. The chief clerk barely looked at him. He retreated all the way to the hallway, turned abruptly, and ran as if the stairs were a rescue. He stretched his hand far forward toward the railing, as if reaching for some invisible force. "No!" thought Gregor. If the chief clerk left in that state, everything was lost. He let go of the door, tried to hurry after him, but fell and landed on all his little legs. Strangely, it felt good.

His legs found grip, lifted him steadily, did his bidding, almost eagerly.

He stood swaying a bit, ready to run, when his mother screamed again. She backed straight into the breakfast table, nearly sat on it, and coffee spilled over the rug in a brown river. Gregor lifted his head and clenched his jaws as the sound of the liquid made him snap at the air – it was like a new reflex.

The mother fled into the father's arms. The chief clerk jumped two and three steps at a time. When Gregor ran after him, the father suddenly roared. He grabbed the chief clerk's cane that was left behind, and a large newspaper from the table, and began to drive Gregor back with stamping and hissing.

Gregor begged, turned his head humbly, but his father did not understand him. The mother had thrown open the window, the cold wind blew in, the curtains flapped. The father grew wilder from the hissing of his own mouth. Gregor tried to back up, but he had never practiced it.

He went crookedly, balanced poorly. He decided to turn around in the doorway, and did so slowly, under the father's stiff pointing with the tip of the cane. When his head was finally in front of the doorway, it was too narrow. He was too wide. The father did not think to open the other wing.

He just pushed, roared, and stomped. Gregor pressed himself forward and felt one flank scrape against the white-painted door, ache through the shell, and leave brown spots. The legs on the left side gave way in the air, those on the right were squeezed against the floor. Suddenly he received a violent push from behind.

His body came loose with a jerk and fell into the room. Blood trickled. The door was slammed shut. Then everything was quiet. When he woke again, it was dusk.

The electric streetlights cast pale patches on the ceiling, but down on the floor it was almost completely dark. His left side felt like a long, taut scar. One of his legs hung dead after the event. From the door he smelled milk. Someone had set down a bowl of sweetened milk with pieces of white bread for him.

He was almost happy, because milk had always been his favorite. He plunged his head into the bowl and nearly got his eyes in, but pulled it back up abruptly.

It didn't taste good. He was still hungry, but his body didn't want it. He turned away, almost of his own accord, and crawled back toward the middle of the room.

Milk was for humans. What did he want now? Later Grete came, early, cautiously. At first she slammed the door in sheer fright when she saw him under the sofa, then she opened it again and entered on tiptoe. She had put on almost everything.

She looked at the bowl of milk and the pieces of bread, studied the gray spots around, and understood. She carried the bowl out with a cloth, as if she didn't want to touch anything with her hands.

When she came back, she had a whole assortment on an old newspaper: rotting vegetables, bones with congealed white sauce, some raisins and almonds, a piece of sharp cheese he had thrown away a few days ago, a dry bun, and a slice of bread with butter and salt.

Next to it she placed a small bowl of water. Then she closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock, as if to say: Eat in peace. Gregor crept forward as soon as the key had turned. He was surprised how quickly the injury felt less dangerous. He hadn't been able to touch the milk, but now he threw himself greedily over the strong-smelling food.

The cheese smell drew him like a magnet. He devoured the cheese with his eyes watering from comfort. The vegetables and sauce too. The fresh things he loathed; he even pushed what he wanted a little away from the rest to avoid the smell. When he was full, he lay sluggishly in the same spot.

When the key later turned slowly in the lock again, he darted under the sofa out of pure reflex. He could barely breathe there; he had become round from all he had eaten, and the space was tight. But when Grete came in and hastily swept together the leftovers with a broom, letting the clean and the untouched go into the same bucket – as if everything was trash – he understood that she too wanted to do this quickly, without thinking, and preferably without looking at him.

Thus the days went by. Grete came early and late, put in food, quickly opened the window and stood there catching her breath as if she were suffocating, then closed it again. She did what she thought was right, and he felt both gratitude and pangs of pain at each swift movement.

To spare her, he began to pull a sheet over himself when he lay under the sofa, so she wouldn't have to see him. That sheet became a habit.

At the same time, he longed to be seen as the person he had been. But how could that happen? So he began to listen. Every evening, through the cracks in the door, he heard the others' voices.

His father quietly explained what they had in the small cash box from the old days. He opened the lock, took out papers, put them back. Gregor nodded to himself, as if someone could see him through the door.

Yes, there was a little left, with interest.

Some of what Gregor had given month after month had also been saved. Not much, but enough for them to get by for a while.

He felt relief and shame at the same time. Relief that everything didn't stand or fall on him, shame that he was now a burden anyway.

He thought of his sister. She liked music, played the violin so nicely. He had dreamed of sending her to the conservatory. At Christmas, he had planned to say it out loud, in front of their parents, so everyone understood that he was serious. Now she sat in the next room writing and reading, studying French and stenography to get a better job.

Their mother sewed fine lingerie for a fashion shop, bent under the lamp. Their father, in a blue uniform with shiny buttons from the bank, came home, ate in silence, dozed in his chair, and refused to take off his uniform, as if he always had to be ready.

The buttons gleamed, but the coat got more stains. Gregor could stare for hours at those shiny buttons while his father slept restlessly, head nodding.

After about a month, Gregor discovered a new thing about his body. Crawling on the ceiling gave him peace. Up there, he hung and swayed a little, breathing better. His sister saw the tracks – sticky footprints – and guessed he liked having space. She decided the furniture had to go.

The chest of drawers, the desk – everything in the way. Their mother hesitated. She whispered that maybe he would feel abandoned if the walls became bare.

After all, he had lived in this room as a human. Was it right to remove the traces of that time?

The words hit Gregor like cold water. He had begun to forget, but now he felt how much the furniture meant. They held onto him, like threads back to what had been him. Nevertheless, they began. Their father wasn't home, and the maid didn't want to help.

Mother and sister pushed and groaned. The chest of drawers was heavy; they could barely get it out. Gregor barely stuck his head out from behind the sheet to see, but when his mother came back first, he started and jerked back; the sheet revealed a glimpse of him, and she stood still, completely motionless, before creeping out again.

They breathed, scraped, and dragged furniture. Sound by sound cut into Gregor's head.

When they wanted to take the desk, he couldn't hold himself back. The desk that had carried his homework, all the work through school and apprenticeship, could not disappear. He crawled quickly and without a plan. Then he saw the picture of the lady in fur, hanging in its frame. He hurried up onto the glass, pressed his belly against the cold, smooth surface.

"This at least not!" he thought. He would not give up everything he had kept. Grete came in with their mother leaning to the side.

She saw him straight away, clinging to the picture. She stayed calm for her mother's sake, tilted her head to shield her mother's view, and whispered that they should take a break in the dining room. Their mother suddenly saw the spot on the wallpaper – not the picture, but

Gregor – and screamed. She collapsed on the sofa, white around the mouth. Grete ran for smelling salts. Gregor jumped down and wanted to help, but he only knocked over bottles, broke one, and the stinging liquid burned his face. Grete got their mother out.

The door slammed. He crawled around confusedly, ceiling and walls swapping places, and suddenly he fell heavily onto the dining table. The front door opened. Their father came home. He probably thought something terrible had happened, and partly he was right.

Gregor crawled toward his room to show that he wanted to go back in, to be as little trouble as possible. Their father did not see that, or did not care. He was changed. No longer the exhausted man who could barely rise when Gregor came home earlier. Now he stood straight-backed, hair combed tightly, the blue uniform coat tight over his belly, gold buttons shiny.

He walked with raised knees and large soles. They circled the room. Gregor soon became breathless, stayed on the floor so as not to provoke by fleeing up the ceiling.

He only dreamed of getting into his room and closing the door. Then came the first blow. Something small hit his back and rolled. An apple. His father had pockets full and threw them without aiming. One apple grazed him. The next penetrated the shell and lodged itself. The pain shot through his entire body.

He froze. His mother came running, blouse half-open, skirts slipping off in her haste. She threw herself in front of her father, arms around him, crying and begging.

Black spots danced before Gregor's eyes, and his vision vanished as if someone had blown out a candle. The apple remained stuck in his back. No one dared to remove it. The wound around it became inflamed.

From then on, everything was harder. He crawled more slowly, the ceiling was no longer possible. But every evening the family left the door to the living room open. In the darkness there, unseen, he watched them.

His father sat sleeping, his mother sewed, Grete did her homework. They hardly spoke to each other. They were tired.

Before ten, his mother tried to get his father to bed. He refused, like a stubborn boy, until both of them had to take him by the arms. "What a life," he groaned, as they helped him out.

Gregor looked at the shiny buttons and the new, ugly stains. It was bitter and strangely peaceful at the same time.

The maid they now had—an older, strong woman with white hair—didn't care much about Gregor. One day she suddenly opened the door and stood looking at him for a long time without screaming. Occasionally she called out something that was probably meant kindly, but to him sounded like strange exhortations, and then she left the door ajar. It didn't bother him. He was no longer so easily frightened, either by glances or sounds.

The apartment became more cramped.

The family had to save, and they rented out a room to three gentlemen. They had full beards and walked as if they owned everything. They were meticulous about order. The kitchen had to shine.

Things the family no longer had room for were pushed into Gregor's room: chairs, crates, a bucket of garbage. The cleaning woman threw things in, probably thinking she would take them out later. Thus his room became a storage room. Gregor had to climb over crates to get from place to place, and occasionally he lay exhausted for hours after a short round. He hardly cared anymore.

One evening the lodgers ate in the living room. Gregor's mother came in with a large plate of meat. Soon after, Grete came with potatoes. The three gentlemen stood close to the music stand, looking at the sheet music as if they were inspecting a machine.

They chewed with great eagerness and pretended not to see the family.

Gregor heard the sounds of their teeth over the cutlery. He suddenly felt a strange hunger, not for meat and potatoes, but for something he couldn't explain. Afterwards, the violin began to play from the kitchen. The music filled the living room, even through the door to his room. The three gentlemen stood at the doorway as if considering shutting it out.

His father called out asking if it was disturbing, but the gentleman in the middle replied politely that the young lady could certainly play in the living room. So they came back in, and the family did as they said.

Grete positioned herself at the music stand. His father dared not sit, his mother was given a chair they had moved into a kind of corner. Grete began to play.

The sound did something to Gregor. He ventured closer, his head all the way into the living room, even though he was dirty and dusty after all the days in the clutter. No one noticed him at first. Grete's face was bent and concentrated. The soft, undulating tone settled in the room.

For the first time in a long while, Gregor felt something touched him as a human. Was he an animal if music could still move him? He wanted to crawl to his sister, tug at her skirt, get her to come into his room and play just for him.

There he would guard her at all doors. He would finally tell her, whether she understood him or not, that he had always intended to send her to the conservatory.

At Christmas he had envisioned the great moment. Everything was ready, if only this misfortune hadn't taken him. But now the lodgers discovered him. "Mr. Samsa!" said the gentleman in the middle sternly, pointing at Gregor, who stood halfway out on the living room floor. The violin fell silent. His father hurried over to shield them, as if he could hide Gregor behind his own body.

The three looked at each other skeptically, tugged at their beards, and went back toward their room. Before they disappeared, the gentleman in the middle made a short speech. He gave notice on the room immediately. He spoke of "disgusting conditions," and that he intended to demand compensation.

The other two said in unison that they also gave notice at once. His father staggered back to the chair, as if his legs had suddenly stopped working. His mother dropped the violin from her lap; it thudded against the floor. Then Grete slammed her hand on the table.

"We can't go on like this," she said quietly and firmly. "I refuse to call this my brother. We've done everything. We have to get rid of it."

His father nodded slowly, as if he finally understood something he had tried not to hear. His mother coughed and held her hands in front of her. "If he could understand us," said his father.

Grete shook her head. "If he were Gregor, he would have left on his own. He wouldn't have let us fall apart." The words stung Gregor like small, sharp needles, but they also carried a kind of truth he couldn't bear to think about.

He began to turn around. It was heavy and painful, for the apple in his back still gnawed. He used his head to push himself around, had to rest between each small movement. The others stood still. They no longer screamed.

They let him be. When he had finally turned, he dragged himself slowly toward his room. The distance seemed endless. He couldn't understand that he had gone that way earlier in the evening. Only when he was inside did he hear the key turn.

Grete had been standing ready and locked it immediately. "Finally," she said, and her breath was heavy, both from crying and relief.

It became quiet. Gregor noticed how unnatural it really was that he could move on those small legs. Now it felt right to lie still.

The pain slowly subsided. The apple in his back was still there, but it was as if it were far away. His whole body was covered in fine white dust that had settled during the days of clutter. His thoughts became softer. He remembered his family, but not with shame and worry.

He thought warmly of them. He felt that the desire to disappear became as strong in him as in his sister. When he heard the third stroke of the church bells—it must have been early morning—the light grew weaker and weaker in his head.

The last breath left him softly through the small openings where his nose once had been. The cleaning woman came as usual with slamming doors.

She looked in and saw him lying still, thought at first he was playing dead. She tickled him with the broom, then pushed a little harder. When he slid across the floor without resistance, she whistled. She called out into the apartment that the "thing" was dead, "stone dead!"

Mr. and Mrs. Samsa rushed out from the bedroom. They had to make an effort to fully wake up first, but then they both came in. Grete was already standing in the doorway, fully dressed as if she hadn't slept at all.

The mother whispered, “Dead?” and stretched out her hand. The father crossed himself.

Grete, who hadn't taken her eyes off the body, said quietly, “Look how thin he is. He hasn't eaten.”

The body was completely flat, dried out. It was strange that no one had noticed it before.

They went out and closed the door. The cleaning woman opened the window wide; a gentle air streamed in, as if spring were right outside. It was the end of March.

The three lodgers came out of their room and demanded their breakfast. The cleaning woman put her finger to her lips and waved them into Gregor's room instead. They stood around the body with their hands in their coat pockets and looked.

Then the door to the parents' room opened. The father came out in his uniform, the mother took his arm, Grete the other. They looked as if all three had been crying.

“Leave my home. Now,” said the father. The lodgers looked confused, grabbed their hats and canes, and left. The father, mother, and Grete leaned over the railing and watched them disappear down the stairs, floor by floor. When a butcher's boy came up with a tray on his head, they went back in and closed the door.

They decided to rest. Everyone wrote a letter: the father to his boss, the mother to the woman who gave her sewing work, Grete to the principal. The cleaning woman stuck her head in again and smiled in a way that made them tired. She told them, without being asked, that the 'thing' was taken care of.

They waved her away with a gesture. “She gets fired tonight,” said the father. No one answered. The air in the room had become lighter, but there was a weariness in it too, as if the walls had to breathe out after everything they had witnessed.

Later, all three of them went out together, for the first time in a long while. They sat on the tram and let themselves be carried out of the city, toward a brighter landscape. The sun was warm on the seats. They talked quietly about the future. It wasn't so dark after all.

The father had gotten a steady job he could keep; the mother had several customers who needed her; Grete had work with opportunities for more. They could move to a smaller, brighter apartment. They no longer needed to live in the big, expensive apartment that Gregor had once chosen because he earned so well.

They could choose a home where the three of them fit, where everything was easier to manage. They looked at Grete, who sat facing the window. She had been pale and quiet for a long time, but now a fresh color lay in her face. The parents had the same thought, almost at the same time: she was becoming a beautiful young woman. They grew quieter, their glances met, and in them lay a new, cautious joy over something that could come.

When the tram stopped, Grete stood up and stretched, as if she had grown taller during the ride. She stretched her arms, her young body outlined clearly against the bright day. The father and mother stood up with her. They got off, and it was as if the city behind them breathed out one more time.

They walked on calmly, without talking much. It was enough to feel that they were walking together.

All that long time from when Gregor woke up as something no one could understand, until he placed himself to die in silence, had been filled with voices talking past each other. He had wanted to work, pay off the debt, have fixed trains and appointments, but suddenly he had been something else. His voice sounded strange even to him. He had tried to hold on to things—a picture, a table, a habit—as if they could hold him back, but slowly they slipped away.

Yet there had been moments when someone came close to him: Grete's first bowl of milk, even though he couldn't drink; the sheet she left so he could hide; mother's whispered words about the furniture and memories; father's shiny buttons that said the world, despite everything, went on in its stiff forms.

He had longed for music, for his sister's violin, like an unknown nourishment his body still recognized. And when the three gentlemen, with beards and newspapers, with the sound of teeth, turned away from the notes, he understood one more thing: that what had fed him last was not meant for that room.

He had pulled himself away, heavy and yet light, and found a stop where everything was finally quiet. Afterwards, another movement began, slower but warmer. The father stopped shaking his head at the table and no longer slept in the chair because he didn't dare get up. The mother stroked the soft folds of the fabrics she sewed with slightly lighter hands.

Grete no longer had to run with flustered breath between the kitchen and the customer counter and Gregor's door.

She could, for the first time in a long while, open a window without covering her mouth. From everything they said to each other on the tram, it was not just a pause they were taking. It was the first step in a life that would carry them forward. They no longer needed to whisper outside Gregor's door to ask how he was doing. The door was gone, and with it a silence that no one could fill while he lived.

But if someone were to walk past the old apartment and see a white mark on a door frame, a brown stain on a white door, they might have guessed that a family had lived there who long tried to be good to each other while the world around them changed too fast.

They hadn't always succeeded. They had shouted and cried and doubted. They had chased and hidden. They had fled from the neighbor's gaze with the wrong kind of politeness.

But when the three of them sat together on the tram, it no longer mattered who had done what first. What mattered was that they could divide the day among themselves, as one shares bread, and that Grete, who once played the violin for three cold men with newspapers and cigarette smoke, would soon play for someone who listened.

If one were to tell the story as a twelve-year-old could bear it, one could say that Gregor woke up to a life he hadn't chosen, and no one around him chose it either. He tried to dive back into the old with lists, trains, contracts, orders from the chief clerk, and fixed meals. His body refused. Time refused. The others refused and nodded past each other.

He was pushed through a door that was too narrow, the mark remained on the wood. He was hit by apples thrown more out of fear than hatred. He found joy in old cheese and nausea from milk, and in a corner of it all there was music. It showed him one last time a direction he could not go, but which was still there, like a faint path behind the window on a rainy day.

When he left, it was not as a punishment. It was like giving up a burden that was too heavy for everyone.

In the end, the mother and father and daughter sat together. They felt each other's shoulders and knees, no longer to hold anyone back, but to hold together. Anew, it could matter how they placed a chair at a table, not to block a door or hinder glances, but to sit.

And maybe, when the sun warmed a little more and a violin sounded through another window one day, someone would lift their gaze and not flinch, but draw nearer to hear better. Thus everything could begin again, in a quieter way, in a home where there was room enough for three.

No one asked anymore what the five o'clock train meant. No one listened for the ticking of an alarm clock set for four. No one recited contracts aloud to convince a chief clerk. Their new language was slower.

There was sleep that was not abruptly broken, cheese left in peace on a plate, a uniform finally hung on a hook when evening came. And there were two parents who looked at their daughter and no longer thought about how her steps fit into the timetable of another man, but about how her own feet carried her where she needed to go.

In that could lie a small, almost invisible memory of the one who carried them before everything collapsed. Not as a threatening shadow, but as a quiet light you do not always see, yet which still makes the room livable.

Thus it ended and began. A family lost a son and brother whom they could not bear to look in the face. They won each other back, stiff and weary, but alive.

He who once lay awake at night planning a Christmas gift no one received found at least the music before the end.

And when Grete later stood by a window in a smaller, brighter apartment tuning her violin, she could perhaps, on rare occasions, feel something that passed through the air and touched the strings, just long enough for her to smile and tighten her bow with a slightly surer hand.