Now his sister had to team up with his mother to do the cooking,
although that didn't create much trouble because people were eating
almost nothing. Again and again Gregor listened as one of them
vainly invited another one to eat and received no answer other than
"Thank you. I've had enough" or something like that. And perhaps
they had stopped having anything to drink, too. His sister often
asked his father whether he wanted to have a beer and gladly
offered to fetch it herself, and when his father was silent, she
said, in order to remove any reservations he might have, that she
could send the caretaker's wife to get it. But then his father
finally said a resounding "No," and nothing more would be spoken
about it.
Already during the first day his father laid out all the
financ
