Auto-da-fé (32 page)
Authors: Elias Canetti
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Literary Criticism, #German, #Novel, #European, #German fiction
Fischerle watched him proudly. He stood some little distance from his friend. He knew his way about the public pawnbroking establishment as well as about Heaven. He had come to reclaim a silver cigarette case on which he had never set eyes. He had won the pawn ticket from a crook whom he had beaten at chess two dozen times, and had it still carefully preserved in his pocket when he entered Kien's service. It was generally rumoured that the ticket was good for a brand new solid silver cigarette case, first quality stuff. Often and often Fischerle had managed to sell pawn tickets in the Theresianum to interested persons. Just as often, he had been forced to look on while his own and other people's treasures were redeemed. Besides his chief dream about becoming world chess champion, he carried a lesser one around in his head: He would dream of exchanging a pawn ticket of his very own, of paying down the full sum, interest and all, flat on the counter under the official's indifferent jaws, of waiting for his own property like other people at the redemption counter and of sniffing at and examining it when he had it, as if he had often before had it under his eyes and nose. Being a non-smoker he really had no use for a cigarette case, but one of his hours of fulfilment was at hand, and he asked Kien for a short time off. Although he explained what his reason was, Kien flatly refused it. He had absolute confidence in him, but since he had relieved him of half the library, he would take good care never to let him out of his sight. Scholars of the highest character have been known to become criminals for the sake of books. How great then must be the temptation for an intelligent being with a thirst for learning, who found himself for the first time under the pressure of books with all their fascination!
The division of the burden had happened in this way. When Fischerle began packing up the books in the morning, Kien could not understand now he had managed hitherto to carry them all. The meticulousness of his servant made him aware of the potential dangers through which he had come. Up to this time he had simply got up in the morning and sallied forth ready packed. It had not occurred to him to ask himself how the books, so carefully unloaded on the >revious evening, had found their way back into his head. He felt limself full, and set off. But Fischerle s incursion altered all that at a jlow. On the morning after the unsuccessful robbery, he crept towards Kien's bed like one on stilts, fervently urged him to exercise all possible care in getting up, and asked if he was to begin packing up again. As his manner was, he waited for no answer; ne dexterously lifted up the nearest pile and approached it to Kien's head as he still lay in bed. 'In with them!'he said. While Kien washed and dressed himself, the little fellow, who set no great store on washing, worked industriously away. Within half an hour he had emptied the first room. Kien purposely loitered over his dressing. He was turning over in his mind how he had usually managed his packing. But he couldn't remember. Strange, his memory seemed to be failing. As long as it only affected external things of this kind, it was of no consequence. But he must keep a close watch lest this loss of memory should extend into the scholastic sphere. That would be unthinkable. His memory was no less than a heaven-sent gift, a phenomenon; even as a schoolboy he had been examined by famous psychologists on the state of his memory. In one minute he had memorized it to sixty-five decimal places. The learned gentlemen — all and sundry — shook their heads. Perhaps he had overburdened his own head. Look only at the work in progress — pile after pile, parcel after parcel was loaded in; yet surely he ought to spare his head a little. You cannot replace a head; it can be developed as his had been developed, only once; any part of it destroyed is destroyed for ever. He sighed deeply and said: 'Yours is a light task, my dear Fischerle!' 'Tell you what,' the little fellow at once saw what he meant, 'I'll carry what s in the next room myself, Fischerle's got a head too. Or hasn't he?' 'Yes, but... ' "What, but... tell you what, you've hurt my feelings!' After long hesitation, Kien gave his consent. Fischerle had to swear honour bright that he had never stolen yet. Further, he lamented his innocence and said over and over again: 'But, mister, with this hump! How could a fellow steal?' For a moment, Kien dwelt on the idea of demanding a guarantee. But as not the strongest guarantee in the world would have availed anything in his own case against his inclination to books, he gave up the plan. He added, however, the statement: 'You are no doubt a fast runner?' Fischcrle saw through the trap and answered: "What would be the point of lying? When you take a step, I take half a one. At school I was always the worst runner.' He thought up the name of a school lest Kien should ask him: in fact he had never been to one. But Kien was wrestling with weightier problems. He was about to make the greatest gesture of trust of his entire life. 'I believe you !' he said simply. Fischerle was jubilant. 'See now, that's just what I mean!' The book pact was confirmed. As Kien's servant, the little man took the heavier naif. In the street he walked ahead, but never further than two small steps. The hump, which was there anyway, prevented the stooping pose, which he had put on for the occasion, from making its full effect. But his dragging footsteps spoke volumes.
Kien felt himself relieved. Head held high, he followed the man who had his confidence and turned his eyes neither to right nor to left. They remained fixed on the hump which, like that ofa camel, not so slowly but just as rhythmically, swayed up and down. From time to time he stretched out his arm to make sure that the tips of his fingers could still touch the hump. If this was no longer the case he hastened his step. In the event of any attempt to escape, he had laid his plans. He would grasp the hump in a grip of iron and hurl his body full length upon that of the criminal; he must however take especial care not to endanger the creature's head. When the experiment of stretching out his arm worked exactly — so exactly that he did not need either to hasten or slacken his pace — Kien would be suffused by a prickling sensation, exquisite and uplifting, such as is only given to men who can permit themselves the luxury of an absolute confidence in having ensured themselves against every disaster.
For two whole days he let things go on in this way, under the pretext of taking a rest after his recent exertions, of preparing himself for future efforts, of making a last investigation of the city for any undiscovered booksellers. His thoughts were free and joyful; he watched step by step the restoration of his memory; this first voluntary holiday which he had allowed himself since his university days was being passed in the company of a devoted creature, a friend, who prized highly the value or Intellect' — as he was in the habit of calling Education — who was willing to carry a respectable library about with him and yet would not of his own volition open a single one of those volumes, to read which he was inwardly burning; a creature malformed and on his own confession a poor runner, yet sturdy and muscular enough to justify himself as a porter. Almost Kien was tempted to believe in happiness, that contemptible life-goal of illiterates. If it came of itself, without being hunted for, if you did not hold it fast by force and treated it with a certain condescension, it was permissible to endure its presence for a few days.
When the third day of happiness broke; Fischerle asked for an hour's leave of absence. Kien liftecf his hand in order to strike his forehead. In other circumstances he would have done it. But, knowing the world as he did, he decided to keep silence and by diis means to unmask the treacherous plans of the dwarf— if he should have any. The story of the silver cigarette case he took for an impudent He. After he had uttered his 'no , first in numerous disguises, but gradually more and more clearly and angrily, he declared suddenly: 'Good, I shall accompany you!' The wretched deformity must be made to confess his vile design. He would go with him to the very counter and see with his own eyes this alleged pawn ticket and alleged cigarette case. Since neither existed, die rogue would fall on his knees, there before all the world, and implore him with tears for forgiveness. Fischerle noticed the suspicion and felt his honour insulted. Did he think him crazy; stealing books — and what books! Because he wants to go to America and he s working hard for his passage money, is he to be treated like a creature without a head on his shoulders?
On the way to the pawnbroking establishment he told Kien what it was like inside. He described the impressive building to him, with all its rooms from basement to attic. At the end, he suppressed the shadow of a sigh and said: 'About the books, better say nothing.' Kien's curiosity burst into name. He asked and asked until he had elicited every atom of the hideous truth from the dwarf, who was coyly concealing it. He believed him, for man is base; he doubted him, for the dwarf irritated him to-day. Fischcrle assumed tones of unmistakable significance. He described the way in which the books were taken in. A hog values them, a dog makes out the ticket, a woman shoves them into a dirty wrapper and scrawls a number on it. A decrepit old man, who time and again falls on the floor, carries them away. Your heart bleeds as you watch him out of sight. It would do you good to stand a bit longer at the glass door, till you've had your cry out and can go into the street again, being ashamed of having such red eyes; but the hog grunts: 'That's all', throws you out and slams the shutter down. Some soulful natures can't tear themselves away even then. Then the dog starts barking and you have to run; he bites, that one.
'But this is inhuman!' the cry escaped Kien. While the dwarf was talking, he had caught up with him, had walked beside him with death in his heart, and stood now stock still in the middle of the street they were crossing. 'It's just as I say!' Fischerle asserted with a break in his voice. He was thinking of the cuff on the ear, which the dog had dealt him when he had once come in, every single day for a week, to beg for an old book on chess. The pig stood by rolling with paunch and pleasure.
Fischerle said not a word more; he had had his vengeance. Kien was silent. When they reached their goal, he had lost all interest in the cigarette case. He watched Fischerle redeem it, and rub it repeatedly over his jacket. 'I wouldn't recognize it. What they do with the things, I don't know.' 'No.' 'How do I know if this is my case after all. 'All.' 'Tell you what, I'll have the law on them. All of them thieves and robben. I won't have it! I'm not a human being, I suppose; The poor have got a right, same as the rich!' He talked himself into such a fury that the people round about, who up to this had only stared at his hump, began to take notice of his words. The people, who in any
case thought they were being done in this establishment, sided with the humpback, whom nature had placed at an even greater disadvantage than their own, although not one of them believed that the pawn tickets had been muddled. Fischerle aroused a general murmur; he didn't believe his ears, people were actually listening to him. He talked on, the murmur grew louder, he could have screamed with delight; then a fat man next to him growled: 'Go and make a complaint, then!' Fischerle rubbed the case over quickly once or twice more, then opened it and croaked: "Well, I never. Tell you what. It is mine alright!' They forgave him the disappointment he had so irresponsibly caused; they didn't grudge him the right cigarette case, after all he was only a poor cripple. Another would not have escaped so lightly. As they left the room Kien asked: 'What was the cause of the disturbance?' Fischerle had to remind him what they had come for. He showed him the cigarette case again and again, until at last he saw it. The disappearance of a suspicion which, against his more recent discoveries, weighed little, made only a mild impression. 'Show me the way!' he commanded.
For a whole hour now he had stood; ashamed. Whither can this world be leading us? We stand, only too evidently, on the verge of catastrophe. Superstition trembles at the significant date A.D. iooo, or at comets. The sage, reverenced as a saint already by the ancient Indians, dismisses numbers, dates and comets to the devil and declares: our creeping corruption is this lack of piety with which men are infected; this is the poison by which we all shall perish. Woe to those who shall come after us! They are lost, they will inherit from us a million martyrs and the instruments of torture with which they must destroy a second million. No state can bear so many saints. In every town will be builded palaces to the Inquisition, like this one, six storeys high. Who can tell, perhaps the Americans build their pawnshops to touch the very sky. The prisoners, left to wait year after year for death by fire, languish on the thirtieth floor. O cruel mockery, a prison among the clouds'. Rescue, not lamentation? Deeds, not tears? How to go thither; How to discover the localities of these prisons? Blindly indeed do we walk through life. How little do we see of the fearful misery which lies about us? How would this blasphemy, this unredeemed, bestial, all-corrupting blasphemy have been uncovered, had not an accidentally encountered dwarf, with his heart in the right place, stammering with shame, speaking like one in a nightmare, collapsing almost under the burden of his own horrifying words, told the whole
story? He should serve as an example. He had never yet spoken to anyone. In his foul-smelling drinking den he sat silent, even at his chess-playing, he had this vision of wretchedness, branded for ever into his brain. He suffered instead of babbling. 'The Day of Reckoning will come,' he told himself. He waited; day after day he scanned the strangers who crossed the threshold of the café; he yearned almost to death for one man, one single heart, for one alone who could see and hear and feel. At last came that One. He followed him, he offered him his services, sleeping and waking he attended his commands, and when the moment came, he spoke. The paving stones did not melt at his words; not a house collapsed; the traffic did not stop. But that One to whom he spoke, his heart stopped: that One was Kien. He had heard, he had understood. He would take this heroic dwarf for his pattern; death to idle words; now to action!