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Authors: Elias Canetti
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Literary Criticism, #German, #Novel, #European, #German fiction
For the first time in his life Kien felt as though he were in the open street. Among the people whom he met, he differentiated men and women. The book shops which he passed held him up it is true, but by the very windows he had once avoided. Mountains of unseemly books did not disturb him. He read their titles, and walked on without even shaking his head. Dogs trotted across the pavement, met their own kind and snuffed at each other joyfully. He slackened his pace and looked at them in surprise. Close against his feet, a little packet fell to the ground. A lad pounced upon it, picked it up, banged into him and made no apology. Kien followed the fingers which were unfastening the little packet; a key appeared, on the crumpled paper there was writing. The reader grinned and looked up at the house. At a window on the fourth floor a girl was leaning out across a couple of mattresses hung out to air, she waved vigorously and disappeared as quickly as the key into the lad's pocket. "What can he want with the key, a burglar, the maid throws him the key, she is his sweetheart.' At the next turning stood an important booksellers; he passed by on the other side. At the opposite corner a policeman was talking passionately to a woman. Their words, which Kien saw from afar, attracted him; he wanted to hear them. When he was close enough they separated. 'Good-bye!' croaked the policeman. His red face shone even in the broad daylight. 'Au revoir! Au revoir! Inspector!' sputtered the woman. He was fat, she was plump; Kien could not forget the pair. As he was passing by the cathedral, warm, uncanny sounds reached his ears. He would have sung in the same key, had his voice, like his mood, been at his command. Suddenly a spot of dirt fell on him. Curious and startled, he looked up at the buttresses. Pigeons preened themselves and cooed, none was to blame for the dirt. For twenty years he had not heard these sounds; every day on his morning walk he passed this spot. Yet cooing was well known to him out of books. 'Quite so !' he said softly, and nodded as he always did when he found reality bearing out the printed original. To-day he did not enjoy sober verification. On the head of a Christ, who grew out of a column, sickly and thin, his face drawn with suffering, a pigeon had perched itself. She was not happy alone, this was noticed by a second pigeon who joined her. This Christ's suffering is too much for people; they think he has toothache. That is not the case; he can't bear life amongst these pigeons; they probably carry on like this the whole day. Then he thinks how lonely he is. He mustn't think of this, or he will never achieve anything. For whom would Christ have died, if he had thought of his loneliness on the cross? — Yes, he was indeed very lonely, his brother never wrote to him now. For some years he had answered no letter from Paris until his brother grew tired of it and stopped writing.
Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi
. Since women had become George's main interest he took himself for Jove. George was a lady's man, never alone; he could not bear to be alone, so he surrounded himself with women. A woman loved
him
too. Instead of staying with her, he had run away and was now complaining of his loneliness. Immediately he turned on his heel, and with long, hopeful steps walked through the same streets back to his home.
Compassion drove him along more swiftly than was good for his temper. He was the master of her fate. He could embitter and shorten the last years of this poor creature who had eaten her heart out in love for him. A compromise must be found. Her hopes are vain, he would never become a man of the world. His brother had fathered enough children, anyway. The posterity of the Kien family was already assured. Women are said to be uncritical, they cannot discriminate between people. For more than eight years she has lived with him in one flat. Christ would have been more easily seduced than he. Pigeons may betray the object of their lives, for they have none. A woman as well as his work — a crime against the nature of learning. He knows how to cherish her loyalty, within her limited powers she is quite useful. He hates thievery and embezzlement. Property is a matter not of greed but of order. He would never cry down anything in her favour. A woman, she had loved him in astonishing silence for eight long years. He had never noticed it. Only since her marriage her lips had overflowed with words. To escape her love, he will submit to her demands for his own sake. She fears the collapse of his bank; Good, he will tell her which it is, she knows it anyway, she cashed a cheque there once. She can then make inquiries whether the bank is a safe one. She wishes to give him her savings? Good, he will not object to this innocent pleasure; he will make a will, so that she may have a pretext for making hers. How little a human being needs to be happy. With this decision, he will satisfy her noisy and exaggerated love.
Yet to-day was one of his bad days. Secretly he hoped for failure. True love is never at rest and creates new cares even before the old ones are fully dead. He had never yet loved; he felt like a boy who knows nothing, but is about to know everything, and feels the same dark fear both of knowing and of not knowing. His head began to spin, he was chattering in his thoughts like a woman. Whatever thought occurred to him, he seized upon, without testing it, and then let go again without following it to its logical conclusion, because another, and not necessarily a better, thought had occurred to him. Two ideas dominated him, that of the loving, devoted woman, and that of the books, impatient for work. The nearer he was to his home, the more divided he was in himself. In his mind he knew what it was all about, and he was ashamed. He took love by the forelock and spoke harsh words to it, he seized on the ugliest of weapons: he brought Therese's skirt into the conflict. Her ignorance, her voice, her age, her phrases, her ears, all were effective, but the skirt tipped the halance. When Kien stood again before his door, the skirt lay shattered under the weight of the imminent books.
'How was its he said to himself. 'Lonely? I, lonely? And the books?' Every floor he climbed brought them nearer. From the entrance hall he called into the study: 'The National Bank!' Thérèse was standing before the writing desk. 'I will draw up my will !' he commanded and pushed her, more violently than had been his intention, aside. During his absence she had covered three beautiful clean sheets of paper with the word 'Will'. She pointed to them and tried to grin; out only a weak smile came. She wanted to say: 'I always say!' but her voice failed her. She all but fainted. The superior young man caught her in his arms and she came to herself again.
CHAPTER XI
JUDAS AND THE SAVIOUR
The will, as he had written it down, she first suspected to contain a slip of the pen, then a silly joke, and last of all a trap. The capital he still had in the bank might cover his housekeeping expenses for another two years.
When she first set eyes on the figure she remarked innocently that there was a nought missing. She was convinced he had made a slip in writing. While he made sure that it was the right figure, she was counting on ten times as much and was bitterly disappointed. Where had he hidden the fortune? She wanted to get the superior young man the most beautiful furniture shop in the whole town. The will would just buy one like that of
Gross and Mother
. That much she had already learnt about business; for weeks past while going to sleep, she had been reckoning up the price of furniture. She had foregone the idea of a factory of her own, because she knew nothing about those things and wanted to have a say in the shop. Now there she stood, stunned, because the firm of
Brute and Wife
— she insisted on this trade mark — would not have a bigger start than that of
Gross and Mother
. On the other hand the superior young man was the heart and soul of
Gross and Mother
, once this heart and soul was theirs, the business would thrive so that the greater part of the profits could be invested in it. They wouldn't need anything. That's what love does for you. In a couple of years
Gross and Mother
could pack up. At the very point when she imagined the little proprietor behind his glass door, sighing and scratching his bald head because the new, high class firm of
Brute and Wife
was taking away all his customers, Kien said:
'There's no nought missing. There was one twenty years ago.'
She didn't believe him and said half teasingly: 'Well, then what's become of all the beautiful money?'
He pointed mutely to the books. That part of the money which he had spent on his daily life, he suppressed; it was in fact very little; moreover he was ashamed of it.
Thérèse was tired of the joke and asserted with dignity: 'The rest you are sending to that new brother. Nine parts go to the brother before you die, one part to your wife, when you're dead.'
She had unmasked him. She expected him to be ashamed, to write down that disputed nought before it was too late. She wasn't to be put off with chicken feed. She wanted the lot. She felt herself to be the steward for the superior young man and secredy made use of his arguments.
Kien did not quite hear what she said, for he was still gazing at the books. At last out of a sense of duty, he ran his eyes over the document and with the words: 'To-morrow we will take it to my solicitor!' folded it up.
Thérèse withdrew so as not to lose her temper. She wanted to give him time to think it over. He must surely find out that such things aren't done. An old wife is a nearer relation than a new brother. She did not think about the capital invested in the books, because three-quarters of it already belonged to her. All that concerned her now was the fortune apart from the library. She must postpone the visit to the lawyer as long as she could. Once the will was there, it was all up with the capital. Respectable people don't make a new will every day. They'd be ashamed before the lawyer. Therefore it would be better to make the right will at once, then there'd be no need for a second.
Kien would willingly have gone through all the formalities at once. But to-day he had a certain respect for Thérèse, because she loved him. He knew that she, a poor illiterate, would take hours to draw up a legal document. He did not offer her help for that would have humiliated her. Her feelings deserved at least that respect. There was meaning only in his conciliatory gesture, if he didn t betray that he had seen through her. He was afraid she might begin to cry if he referred to her intended offering. So he sat down to work, put off all thoughts of the will and left the door into her bedroom open. With the greatest energy he threw himself into an old thesis: 'On the influence of the Pali Canon on the form of the Japanese Bussoku Sekitai.'
At lunch they watched each other openly and spoke not a word. She was estimating the prospects for the rectification of the will, he was examining her document for orthographical errors, which it would naturally contain. Should he rewrite it or only correct it? One or other of these measures would be essential. His delicacy had been not inconsiderably blunted by the few hours of work. Yet enough of it was left to make him postpone his decision on this point until the following day.
All night Thérèse lay awake with business worries. As long as her husband worked, until twelve o'clock, the waste of light was very bitter to her. Since she had come so near to the fulfilment of her wishes, each wasted halfpenny hurt her twice as much as before. She lay cautiously and lightly on the bed, for she had the intention of selling the beautiful bedroom suite for new in her own shop. Up to now not a scratch had been made on it; it upset her to think the things might have to be repolished. Her responsibility for the bed and fear lest she should harm it kept her awake even after Kien was asleep and all her sums had come out. She had nothing more to think of, she was bored, but to-morrow she would not be bored.
For the remaining hours of the night she was busy increasing the sums of money she would inherit, by her skilfulness in writing Os. Competing women were soon left behind. Several popped up where they had no business to. Not one had a starched skirt. Not one looked like thirty. The best of them was more than forty, but her Os were nothing to write home about and the superior young man kicked her out at once. Men didn't stare at her in the street. You've got enough money, you filthy slut, screamed Thérèse to the impudent baggage, why don't you starch your skirt? Too lazy to do a hand's turn, and stingy on top of it, anyone can do that. Then she turned to the superior young man and was grateful to him. She wanted to tell him his beautiful name — Brute did not suit him at all — but she had forgotten it. She got up softly, switched on the bedside lamp, fetched her inventory from the pocket of her skirt and looked until she found the name; it made all the electric light in the world seem cheap. In her excitement she nearly burst out aloud with 'Puda'. But a name like that ought to be whispered. She turned the light out again and lay down heavily on the bed. She forgot the forethought with which it had to be treated. Countless times she said to him 'Mr. Puda'. But he was clever as well as superior and would not allow himself to be interrupted at his work. He looked at the women one by one. Many of them pretended they were bent double under the weight of their noughts. 'Now mind,' said Thérèse, 'that's old age, not the noughts!' She always put truth above everything. Mr. Puda had a beautiful clean sheet of paper in front of him, where he wrote down all the noughts ever so neat. Everything about him was neat and clean. Then he would pass his loving eyes over the paper and say with that voice: 'Deeply regret, dear lady, quite out of the question, dear lady!' And there was the old thing, thrown out. The very idea, an old thing like her! But what are women coming to these days? A little money, and they think they can have the loveliest man.
Thérèse was most pleased when Mr. Puda discovered that one such fortune brought to him was bigger than all the others. Then he said: 'Well I never! Dear lady, pray be seated, dear lady.' Just think, what an old thing such a woman must be. But she sat down just the same. Soon he would say to her: 'My dear young lady!' Thérèse winced slightly. She waited until he opened his mouth, then stepped forward and came between them. In her right hand she held her sharpened pencil. She only said 'Excuse me, one moment.' And on the paper, at the end of her capital, she made a beautiful O. Hers was right at the very top; she was after all the first woman with capital whom he had met. She might have said something now; modestly she withdrew and was silent. Mr. Puda did the talking for her: 'Deeply regret, dear lady, quite out of the question, dear lady.' Many an old thing burst into tears. So near and yet so far, that's no fun. Mr. Puda was not affected by their tears. 'A woman should look like thirty,' he said, 'then she has a right to cry.' Thérèse understood whom he meant and was proud. Eight years people go to school nowadays and don't learn a thing. Why don t they learn to make Os?