“Mr. Samsa, are your parents in? I think it’s better if I talk to them.”
“They seem to have gone out on an errand,” Samsa said.
“An errand?” she said, appalled. “In the midst of these troubles?”
“I really have no idea. When I woke up this morning, everyone was gone,” Samsa said.
“Good grief,” the young woman said. She heaved a long sigh. “We did tell them that someone would come at this time today.”
“I’m terribly sorry.”
The woman stood there for a moment. Then, slowly, her arched eyebrow descended, and she looked at the black walking stick in Samsa’s left hand. “Are your legs bothering you, Gregor Samsa?”
“Yes, a little,” he prevaricated.
Once again, the woman writhed suddenly. Samsa had no idea what this action meant or what its purpose was. Yet he was drawn by instinct to the complex sequence of movements.
“Well, what’s to be done,” the woman said in a tone of resignation. “Let’s take a look at those doors on the second floor. I came over the bridge and all the way across town through this terrible upheaval to get here. Risked my life, in fact. So it wouldn’t make much sense to say, ‘Oh, really, no one is here? I’ll come back later,’ would it?”
This terrible upheaval? Samsa couldn’t grasp what she was talking about. What awful change was taking place? But he decided not to ask for details. Better to avoid exposing his ignorance even further.
Back bent, the young woman took the heavy black bag in her right hand and toiled up the stairs, much like a crawling insect. Samsa labored after her, his hand on the railing. Her creeping gait aroused his sympathy—it reminded him of something.
The woman stood at the top of the steps and surveyed the hallway. “So,” she said, “one of these four doors probably has a broken lock, right?”
Samsa’s face reddened. “Yes,” he said. “One of these. It could be the one at the end of the hall on the left, possibly,” he said, faltering. This was the door to the bare room in which he had woken that morning.
“It could be,” the woman said in a voice as lifeless as an extinguished bonfire. “Possibly.” She turned around to examine Samsa’s face.
“Somehow or other,” Samsa said.
The woman sighed again. “Gregor Samsa,” she said dryly. “You are a true joy to talk to. Such a rich vocabulary, and you always get to the point.” Then her tone changed. “But no matter. Let’s check the door on the left at the end of the hall first.”
The woman went to the door. She turned the knob back and forth and pushed, and it opened inward. The room was as it had been before: only a bed with a bare mattress that was less than clean. This was the mattress he had woken on that morning as Gregor Samsa. It had been no dream. The floor bare and cold. Boards nailed across the window. The woman must have noticed all this, but she showed no sign of surprise. Her demeanor suggested that similar rooms could be found all over the city.
She squatted down, opened the black bag, pulled out a white flannel cloth, and spread it on the floor. Then she took out a number of tools, which she lined up carefully on the cloth, like an inquisitor displaying the sinister instruments of his trade before some poor martyr.
Selecting a wire of medium thickness, she inserted it into the lock and, with a practiced hand, manipulated it from a variety of angles. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration, her ears alert for the slightest sound. Next, she chose a thinner wire and repeated the process. Her face grew somber, and her mouth twisted into a ruthless shape, like a Chinese sword. She took a large flashlight and, with a black look in her eyes, began to examine the lock in detail.
“Do you have the key for this lock?” she asked Samsa.
“I haven’t the slightest idea where the key is,” he answered honestly.
“Ah, Gregor Samsa, sometimes you make me want to die,” she said.
After that, she quite ignored him. She selected a screwdriver from the tools lined up on the cloth and proceeded to remove the lock from the door. Her movements were slow and cautious. She paused from time to time to twist and writhe about as she had before.
While he stood behind her, watching her move in that fashion, Samsa’s own body began to respond in a strange way. He was growing hot all over, and his nostrils were flaring. His mouth was so dry that he produced a loud gulp whenever he swallowed. His earlobes itched. And his sexual organ, which had dangled in such a sloppy way until that point, began to stiffen and expand. As it rose, a bulge developed at the front of his gown. He was in the dark, however, as to what that might signify.
Having extracted the lock, the young woman took it to the window to inspect in the sunlight that shone between the boards. She poked it with a thin wire and gave it a hard shake to see how it sounded, her face glum and her lips pursed. Finally, she sighed again and turned to face Samsa.
“The insides are shot,” the woman said. “It’s kaput. This is the one, just like you said.”
“That’s good,” Samsa said.
“No, it’s not,” the woman said. “There’s no way I can repair it here on the spot. It’s a special kind of lock. I’ll have to take it back and let my father or one of my older brothers work on it. They may be able to fix it. I’m just an apprentice—I can only handle regular locks.”
“I see,” Samsa said. So this young woman had a father and several brothers. A whole family of locksmiths.
“Actually, one of them was supposed to come today, but because of the commotion going on out there they sent me instead. The city is riddled with checkpoints.” She looked back down at the lock in her hands. “But how did the lock get broken like this? It’s weird. Someone must have gouged out the insides with a special kind of tool. There’s no other way to explain it.”
Again she writhed. Her arms rotated as if she were a swimmer practicing a new stroke. He found the action mesmerizing and very exciting.
Samsa made up his mind. “May I ask you a question?” he said.
“A question?” she said, casting him a dubious glance. “I can’t imagine what, but go ahead.”
“Why do you twist about like that every so often?”
She looked at Samsa with her lips slightly parted. “Twist about?” She thought for a moment. “You mean like this?” She demonstrated the motion for him.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“My brassiere doesn’t fit,” she said dourly. “That’s all.”
“Brassiere?” Samsa said in a dull voice. It was a word he couldn’t call up from his memory.
“A brassiere. You know what that is, don’t you?” the woman said. “Or do you find it strange that hunchback women wear brassieres? Do you think it’s presumptuous of us?”
“Hunchback?” Samsa said. Yet another word that was sucked into that vast emptiness he carried within. He had no idea what she was talking about. Still, he knew that he should say something.
“No, I don’t think so at all,” he mumbled.
“Listen up. We hunchbacks have two breasts, just like other women, and we have to use a brassiere to support them. We can’t walk around like cows with our udders swinging.”
“Of course not.” Samsa was lost.
“But brassieres aren’t designed for us—they get loose. We’re built differently from regular women, right? So we have to twist around every so often to put them back in place. Hunchbacks have more problems than you can imagine. Is that why you’ve been staring at me from behind? Is that how you get your kicks?”
“No, not at all. I was just curious why you were doing that.”
So, he inferred, a brassiere was an apparatus designed to hold the breasts in place, and a hunchback was a person with this woman’s particular build. There was so much in this world that he had to learn.
“Are you sure you’re not making fun of me?” the woman asked.
“I’m not making fun of you.”
The woman cocked her head and looked up at Samsa. She could tell that he was speaking the truth—the
re didn’t seem to be any malice in him. He was just a little weak in the head, that was all. Age about thirty. As well as being lame, he seemed to be intellectually challenged. But he was from a good family, and his manners were impeccable. He was nice-looking, too, but thin as a rail with too-big ears and a pasty complexion.
It was then that she noticed the protuberance pushing out the lower part of his gown.
“What the hell is that?” she said stonily. “What’s that bulge doing there?”
Samsa looked down at the front of his gown. His organ was really very swollen. He could surmise from her tone that its condition was somehow inappropriate.
“I get it,” she spat out. “You’re wondering what it would be like to fuck a hunchback, aren’t you?”
“Fuck?” he said. One more word he couldn’t place.
“You imagine that, since a hunchback is bent at the waist, you can just take her from the rear with no problem, right?” the woman said. “Believe me, there are lots of perverts like you around, who seem to think that we’ll let you do what you want because we’re hunchbacks. Well, think again, buster. We’re not that easy!”
“I’m very confused,” Samsa said. “If I have displeased you in some way, I am truly sorry. I apologize. Please forgive me. I meant no harm. I’ve been unwell, and there are so many things I don’t understand.”
“All right, I get the picture.” She sighed. “You’re a little slow, right? But your wiener is in great shape. Those are the breaks, I guess.”
“I’m sorry,” Samsa said again.
“Forget it.” She relented. “I’ve got four no-good brothers at home, and since I was a little girl they’ve shown me everything. They treat it like a big joke. Mean buggers, all of them. So I’m not kidding when I say I know the score.”
She squatted to put her tools back in the bag, wrapping the broken lock in the flannel and gently placing it alongside.
“I’m taking the lock home with me,” she said, standing up. “Tell your parents. We’ll either fix it or replace it. If we have to get a new one, though, it may take some time, things being the way they are. Don’t forget to tell them, okay? Do you follow me? Will you remember?”
“I’ll tell them,” Samsa said.
She walked slowly down the staircase, Samsa trailing behind. They made quite a study in contrasts: she looked as if she were crawling on all fours, while he tilted backward in a most unnatural way. Yet their pace was identical. Samsa was trying hard to quell his “bulge,” but the thing just wouldn’t return to its former state. Watching her movements from behind as she descended the stairs made his heart pound. Hot, fresh blood coursed through his veins. The stubborn bulge persisted.
“As I told you before, my father or one of my brothers was supposed to come today,” the woman said when they reached the front door. “But the streets are crawling with soldiers and tanks. There are checkpoints on all the bridges, and people are being rounded up. That’s why the men in my family can’t go out. Once you get arrested, there’s no telling when you’ll return. That’s why I was sent. All the way across Prague, alone. ‘No one will notice a hunchbackgirl,’ they said.”
“Tanks?” Samsa murmured.
“Yeah, lots of them. Tanks with cannons and machine guns. Your cannon is impressive,” she said, pointing at the bulge beneath his gown, “but these cannons are bigger and harder, and a lot more lethal. Let’s hope everyone in your family makes it back safely. You honestly have no clue where they went, do you?”
Samsa shook his head no. He had no idea.
Samsa decided to take the bull by the horns. “Would it be possible to meet again?” he said.
The young woman craned her head at Samsa. “Are you saying you want to see me again?”
“Yes. I want to see you one more time.”
“With your thing sticking out like that?”
Samsa looked down again at the bulge. “I don’t know how to explain it, but that has nothing to do with my feelings. It must be some kind of heart problem.”
“No kidding,” she said, impressed. “A heart problem, you say. That’s an interesting way to look at it. Never heard that one before.”
“You see, it’s out of my control.”
“And it has nothing to do with fucking?”
“Fucking isn’t on my mind. Really.”
“So let me get this straight. When your thing grows big and hard like that, it’s not your mind but your heart that’s causing it?”
Samsa nodded in assent.
“Swear to God?” the woman said.
“God,” Samsa echoed. Another word he couldn’t remember having heard before. He fell silent.
The woman gave a weary shake of her head. She twisted and turned again to adjust her brassiere. “Forget it. It seems God left Prague a few days ago. Let’s forget about Him.”
“So can I see you again?” Samsa asked.
The girl raised an eyebrow. A new look came over her face—her eyes seemed fixed on some distant and misty landscape. “You really want to see me again?”
Samsa nodded.
“What would we do?”
“We could talk together.”
“About what?” the woman asked.
“About lots of things.”
“Just talk?”
“There is so much I want to ask you,” Samsa said.
“About what?”
“About this world. About you. About me.”
The young woman thought for a moment. “So it’s not all about you shoving that in me?”
“No, not at all,” Samsa said without hesitation. “I feel like there are so many things we need to talk about. Tanks, for example. And God. And brassieres. And locks.”
Another silence fell over the two of them.
“I don’t know,” the woman said at last. She shook her head slowly, but the chill in her voice was less noticeable. “You’re better brought up than me. And I doubt your parents would be thrilled to see their precious son involved with a hunchback from the wrong side of town. Even if that son is lame and a little slow. On top of that, our city is overflowing with foreign tanks and troops. Who knows what lies ahead.”
Samsa certainly had no idea what lay ahead. He was in the dark about everything: the future, of course, but the present and the past as well. What was right, and what was wrong? Just learning how to dress was a riddle.
“At any rate, I’ll come back this way in a few days,” the hunchbacked young woman said. “If we can fix it, I’ll bring the lock, and if we can’t I’ll return it to you anyway. You’ll be charged for the service call, of course. If you’re here, then we can see each other. Whether we’ll be able to have that long talk or not I don’t know. But if I were you I’d keep that bulge hidden from your parents. In the real world, you don’t get compliments for exposing that kind of thing.”
Samsa nodded. He wasn’t at all clear, though, how that kind of thing could be kept out of sight.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” the woman said in a pensive voice. “Everything is blowing up around us, but there are still those who care about a broken lock, and others who are dutiful enough to try to fix it…But maybe that’s the way it should be. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.”
The woman looked up at Samsa’s face. She raised one of her eyebrows. “I don’t mean to pry, but what was going on in that room on the second floor? Why did your parents need such a big lock for a room that held nothing but a bed, and why did it bother them so much when the lock got broken? And what about those boards nailed across the window? Was something locked up in there—is that it?”
Samsa shook his head. If someone or something had been shut up in there, it must have been him. But why had that been necessary? He hadn’t a clue.
“I guess there’s no point in asking you,” the woman said. “Well, I’ve got to go. They’ll worry about me if I’m late. Pray that I make it across town in one piece. Th
at the soldiers will overlook a poor little hunchbacked girl. That none of them is perverted. We’re being fucked over enough as it is.”
“I will pray,” Samsa said. But he had no idea what “perverted” meant. Or “pray,” for that matter.
The woman picked up her black bag and, still bent over, headed for the door.
“Will I see you again?” Samsa asked one last time.
“If you think of someone enough, you’re sure to meet them again,” she said in parting. This time there was real warmth in her voice.
“Look out for birds,” he called after her. She turned and nodded. Then she walked out to the street.
—
Samsa watched through the crack in the curtains as her hunched form set off across the cobblestones. She moved awkwardly but with surprising speed. He found her every gesture charming. She reminded him of a water strider that had left the water to scamper about on dry land. As far as he could tell, walking the way she did made a lot more sense than wobbling around upright on two legs.
She had not been out of sight long when he noticed that his genitals had returned to their soft and shrunken state. That brief and violent bulge had, at some point, vanished. Now his organ dangled between his legs like an innocent fruit, peaceful and defenseless. His balls rested comfortably in their sac. Readjusting the belt of his gown, he sat down at the dining room table and drank what remained of his cold coffee.
The people who lived here had gone somewhere else. He didn’t know who they were, but he imagined that they were his family. Something had happened all of a sudden, and they had left. Perhaps they would never return. What did “the world is falling apart” mean? Gregor Samsa had no idea. Foreign troops, checkpoints, tanks—everything was wrapped in mystery.
The only thing he knew for certain was that he wanted to see that hunchbacked girl again. To sit face-to-face and talk to his heart’s content. To unravel the riddles of the world with her. He wanted to watch from every angle the way she twisted and writhed when she adjusted her brassiere. If possible, he wanted to run his hands over her body. To touch her soft skin and feel her warmth with his fingertips. To walk side by side with her up and down the staircases of the world.