I.2

[What is this, you may wonder? Explanation and beginning of the series can be found here]

This part was harder than I expected.  I find Gregor's thoughts to be complex to the point of confusion sometimes.  He speaks and thinks with detailed imagery, almost stream-of-consciousness at times. Translating his thoughts is an exercise in understanding.

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Gregor

It's possible, thought Gregor, provided that one isn't in danger, to see the pale, standing pines as a curtain.  Like this: an open assembly of lightly colored poles, from which matte green flags motionlessly fluttered under a gray sky until they united into a transparent green wall.  The practically black, macadamed street seemed like a seam between the two halves of the curtain, and one undid it while bicycling along.  After a few minutes, the curtain opens and reveals a scene of city and sea coast.

But since his life was in danger, thought Gregor, nothing was like anything else.  The objects comprised themselves in their names, fully and completely.  Outwardly, they revealed nothing of themselves.

So there were just solid things: forest, bicycle, street.  Where the woods ended, one finds the city and the coast -- no backdrop for a game, but rather the stage for a menace that freezes over everything in inalterable reality.  A house is a house, a wave a wave, neither more nor less.

Just on the other side of this menace, seven miles removed from the coast on a ship to Sweden -- if there should be a ship to Sweden -- would the sea, for example, be comparable to a bird wing, a wing of icy ultramarine that the late autumn scandanavians flew around.  Until then the sea was nothing more than the sea, a turbulent mass that one had to see firsthand to know if it were suitable to allow an escape.

No, thought Gregor, whether or not I flee doesn't depend upon anything about the sea.  The sea will allow passage.  It depends upon sailors and captains, upon swedish and danish seafolk, upon their courage or their greed, and if there are no swedish or danish seafolk then it depends upon the comrades in Rerik--upon them with their fishing trawlers, it depends upon their looks and thoughts, namely that their looks aim for adventure, and their thoughts can manage an easy sail-setting motion.

It would be easier, thought Gregor, to be dependent upon the sea, instead of upon men.