The sudden commotion at his back gave him such a frightful start that his little legs gave way beneath him. It was his sister who had hurried thus. She had already been standing there upright and waiting, then pounced so lightfootedly Gregor didn’t hear her approach, and she cried out, “Finally!” to her parents as she turned the key in the lock.

“And now?” Gregor wondered, looking around in the dark. He soon made the discovery that he was no longer capable of moving at all. He wasn’t surprised at this; on the contrary, it struck him as unnatural that he had actually until now been able to support himself on those thin little legs. As for the rest, he felt relatively at ease. Admittedly his entire body was racked with pain, but it seemed to him as if it was gradually becoming weaker and weaker and in the end would fade away altogether. Already he could scarcely feel the rotting apple in his back, nor the inflamed area surrounding it, both now enveloped in soft dust. He thought back on his family with tenderness and love. His opinion that he must by all means disappear was possibly even more emphatic than that of his sister. He remained in this state of empty, peaceful reflection until the clocktower struck the third hour of morning. He watched as everything began to lighten outside his window. Then his head sank all the way to the floor without volition and from his nostrils his last breath faintly streamed.

When the charwoman arrived early the next morning, slamming the doors so loudly in her strength and haste—often as she’d been asked to avoid this—that sleep was out of the question anywhere in the apartment after her arrival, her usual cursory visit to Gregor’s room revealed at first nothing out of the ordinary. She thought he was lying there so motionless on purpose, feigning indignation; she considered him perfectly capable of rational thought. Since she happened to be holding the long broom in her hand, she tried tickling Gregor with it from the doorway. When even this had no effect, she grew vexed and began to poke Gregor a little, and only when she had actually shifted him from the spot where he lay with no resistance at all were her suspicions roused. When soon thereafter the facts of the matter became clear to her, she gawked in surprise, gave a low whistle, then without further delay flung open the door of the bedroom and in a loud voice shouted into the darkness: “Come have a look, it’s gone and croaked—just lying there, dead as a doornail!”

The Samsa couple shot upright in their marital bed and first had to struggle to recover from their shock at the charwoman’s conduct before they were able to grasp her words. But then Herr and Frau Samsa hurriedly got out of bed, one on either side, Herr Samsa threw the blanket about his shoulders while Frau Samsa emerged wearing only her nightdress; in this state, they entered Gregor’s room. Meanwhile the door to the living room, where Grete had been sleeping since the lodgers’ arrival, had opened as well; she was fully dressed, as though she had not slept at all, as even the pallor of her cheeks seemed to prove. “Dead?” Frau Samsa asked, looking questioningly up at the charwoman, although she herself was free to investigate and, indeed, could see how things stood even without investigation. “I should say so,” the charwoman said, and by way of proof, pushed Gregor’s corpse quite some way to the side with her broom. Frau Samsa made a gesture as though she wanted to hold back the broom but didn’t. “Well,” Herr Samsa said, “now we can thank God.” He crossed himself, and the three women followed his example. Grete, who did not take her eyes off the corpse for a moment, said: “Just look how skinny he was. He went such a long time without eating anything at all. All the food that went into his room would come out again just as before.” And indeed Gregor’s body was completely flat and dry, which hadn’t really been noticeable until now when he was no longer raised up on those little legs and nothing else remained to distract the gaze.

“Grete, come sit with us for a bit,” Frau Samsa said with a melancholy smile, and Grete, glancing back at the corpse, followed her parents into their bedroom. The charwoman shut the door and opened the window wide. Despite the early morning, the crisp air was already tempered by a certain mildness: after all, it was already the end of March.

The three lodgers now emerged from their room and looked about in astonishment for their breakfast; they had been forgotten. “Where’s breakfast?” the one in the middle asked the charwoman peevishly. But she just put a finger to her lips and then quickly, without a word, beckoned the lodgers into Gregor’s room.