Fish and The Monk arrive late to World Literature together. He leads her to her chair by the elbow and helps her get settled. Dr. Austerlitz glances at Fish for a moment and frowns. Then he goes back to making grammatical connections between Rilke and Kafka. He is explaining the syntactical structure of their sentences, and the differences between the English translations and the original German. Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt. I try to make eye contact with Fish, but she is looking down. All around us, kids are taking notes, scribbling furiously like little drones. Dr. Austerlitz lectures about subordinate clauses and the various and layered meanings of words like Ungeziefer, which could mean cockroach or dung beetle or vermin, but could also mean the symbolic separation between a human being and the order of his natural world.
According to Dr. Austerlitz, Kafka uses The Metamorphosis to struggle with the theme of the natural versus the unnatural. He looks in the mirror and sees something unrecognizable. This makes sense to me. My mother’s face, for instance, was always moving and shifting in life, emotions flickering around her eyes and mouth and cheeks as thoughts occurred to her, like clouds across a sky, but in the coffin, her face was still and the blood had drained from her cheeks and her lips had already grown thin and grim. As a result, her face in death was almost but not entirely devoid of human characteristics, it looked instead like a mask, a terrible experiment in de-animation.
“You see,” says Dr. Austerlitz, prowling between the rows and wiggling his bony fingers as though he were a tremendous insect, “Gregor Samsa is transformed both physically and metaphysically. But this is not the kind of metamorphosis that happens in nature—the pupa into an insect, the caterpillar into a butterfly. What happens to Gregor Samsa is hideous and unnatural. He has forgotten what it means to be human. Do you agree with this?” He is standing beside my desk, obviously expecting me to say something.
Even though they were the same cheekbones, the same bridge of the nose, the same skin, the same hair, the woman in the coffin looked nothing like my mother at all. The effect of these anomalies was both terrifying and profoundly disappointing, because instead of seeing my mother’s face, I saw this monstrous caricature with colorless lips and waxy skin.
“Mr. Friedman, do you see Gregor Samsa’s tragedy as natural or unnatural?”
I don’t answer.
“Natural or unnatural?” Dr. Austerlitz says, louder this time.
I still don’t answer. I look over at Fish.
“Mr. Friedman. I am asking you a question. Listen to me. And answer, please. Is Gregor Samsa’s tragedy natural or is it unnatural?” He practically screams these words into my face.
“Natural,” I whisper, surprising myself.
“Excuse me? I didn’t hear you,” says Dr. Austerlitz.
“Natural,” I say again, louder this time.
“Why natural?” says Dr. Austerlitz. “He has changed into a cockroach. How can this be natural? Explain.”
I stand up at my seat.
“Because sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror and you just don’t believe what you’re seeing. Sometimes you think you have become so horrible and cowardly and pathetic, you think there isn’t anything human about yourself.”
My heart is beating and I am breathing hard.
“You think that it’s unnatural, like turning into a cockroach. But it’s not. We all feel reprehensible sometimes. We can’t believe what we’ve become. But that disgust is part of being human. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” says Dr. Austerlitz, almost smiling. “Yes, I do. Very good, Mr. Friedman.”
I sit down.
The Monk is staring at me.
“Does anyone want to respond to this?”
More hands go up. We discuss this point for the rest of the class.
I do not put my head down on the desk even though the tumor is shouting.
At the end of class, The Monk helps Fish from her seat and leads her out the door. He walks her past me, his arm around her shoulders. I gather my books and make my way to the door.
I hug the books to my chest.
“Mr. Friedman,” says Mr. Austerlitz. He puts his hand on my shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Nice job,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say.
The Monk whispers something to Fish and heads off down the hall alone. Fish is leaning against the wall by the water fountain arranging her folders in her backpack.
“Hey,” I say.
She watches The Monk disappear.
My heart is pounding.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
She shrugs.
“I’m glad they checked you out,” I say. “I was worried.”
“I think they wanted to call someone about my mom, but I convinced them I was fine. I don’t want any trouble. All I need is another reason for her to be mad at me. So what happened to you? I was looking for you when I got out of the nurse’s office. Where did you go?”
“I didn’t want to get in the way,” I tell her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” says Fish.
“I figured you didn’t need me waiting around for you. It just seemed like The Monk had everything under control.”
Fish frowns. “You really don’t know me at all, do you?” she says.
“I don’t know anyone,” I say. “I don’t even know myself.”
“Well, whose fault is that?” says Fish.
I have no answers.
She sighs and heads off down the hall toward Cage’s class without me.
I watch her go, ashamed of the monstrous vermin I have become.