'Go with the lady, Brute!'
'The chief, dished up as his excuse for the hundredth time, stuck in his throat.
Thérèse twisted her head round, and snorted triumphantly: 'Excuse me, what did I tell you?' Before they went out to lunch she would have liked to reward the chief with a grateful glance, but he had long since vanished into his office.
Brute's eyes had an evil gleam. Scornfully he fixed them on the starched skirt. He took good care not to look into hers. His melted butter voice would have tasted rancid. He knew it and was silent. Only when they reached the door and he stood back for her, did his arm and lips move, out of habit, and he said: 'By your leave, dear lady!'
CHAPTER VII
MOBILIZATION
From beggars and hawkers No. 24 Ehrlich Strasse had for many years been free. The caretaker, in his little box adjoining the entrance hall lay in wait day after day, ready to spring upon any passing derelict. People who counted on alms from this house held in mortal terror the oval peep-hole at the usual height, under which was written Porter. Passing it, they stooped low, as if bowing down in gratitude, for some particularly charitable gift. Their caution was vain. The caretaker troubled himself not at all about the ordinary peep-hole. He had seen them long before they crouched past it. He had his own tried and tested method. A retired policeman, he was sly and indispensable. He did indeed see them through a peep-hole but not the one against which they were on their guard.
Two feet from the floor he had bored in the wall of his little box a second peep-hole. Here, where no one suspected him, he kept watch, kneeling. The world for him consisted of trousers and skirts. He was well acquainted with all those worn in the house itself; aliens he graded according to their cut, value or distinction. He had grown as expert in this as he had been in former times over arrests. He seldom erred. When a suspect came in view, he reached out, still kneeling, with his short, stout arm for the door latch; another idea of his — it was fixed on upside down. The fury with which he leapt to his feet opened it. Then he rushed bellowing at the suspect and beat him within an inch of his life. On the first of every month, when his pension came, he allowed everyone free passage. Interested persons were well aware of this, and descended in swarms on the inmates of No. 24 Ehrlich Strasse, starved of beggars for a full month. Stragglers on the second and third days occasionally slipped through, or were at least not so painfully dealt with. From the fourth onwards only the very green tried their luck.
Kien had made friends with the caretaker after a slight incident. He had been coming back one evening from an unusual walk and it was already dark in the entrance hall. Suddenly someone bellowed at him:
'You sh—house you, off to the police with you!' The caretaker hurled himself out of his room and sprang at Kien s throat. It was very high up and difficult to reach. The man became aware of his clumsy misapprehension. He was ashamed; his trouser-prestige was at stake. With fawning friendliness he drew Kien into his room, revealed his secret patent to him and commanded his four canaries to sing. They were, however, unwilling. Kien began to understand to whom he owed his peace. (Some years ago now, all beggars had stopped ringing at his door bell.) The fellow, stocky and strong as a bear, stood there in the narrow space, close against him. He promised the man, who was after all efficient in his own Tine, a monthly gratuity. The'sum which he named was larger than the tips of all the other tenants put together. In the first flood of delight the caretaker would gladly have battered the walls of his little room to pulp with his red-haired fists. In this way he would have shown his patron how much he deserved his thanks, but he managed to hold his muscles in check, only bellowed: 'You can count on me, Professor!' and hurled open the door into the hall.
From this time forward no one in the house dared to speak of Kien by any other title than 'Professor', although in fact he was no such thing. New tenants were immediately informed of this prime condition on which alone the caretaker would tolerate their staying in the building.
Scarcely had Thérèse left the house for the whole day than Kien put the chain up on the door and asked himself what day of the month it was. It was the eighth, the first was well past, no beggars were to be feared. He needed more quiet to-day than usual. A ceremony was in prospect. For this reason he had sent Thérèse out of the house. Time was short; at six o'clock, when the shops closed, she would come back. His preparations alone needed hours. Much manual labour had to be done. During its performance he could write his address in his head. It was to be a miracle of learning, not too dry, not too popular, interwoven with topical allusions, summing up the experiences of a well-filled life, the sort of speech to which a man of about forty would listen gladly. To-day Kien was abandoning his silence.
He hung his coat and waistcoat over a chair and hurriedly rolled up his shirt sleeves. He despised clothes, but he was willing to defend even them against furniture. Then he threw himself towards the bed, laughedand showed it his teeth. It seemed foreign to him although he slept in it every night. In his imagination it had grown more squat and more vulgar, so long was it since he had last looked at it.
'How goes it, my friend?' he cried. 'You've recovered yourself I see!' He had been in high good humour since the previous day. 'But now, out with you! And quickly too!' He seized it with both hands by the top and pushed. The monstrosity did not budge. He pressed his shoulders to it; he hoped for more from a second attack. The bed merely creaked, evidently it was making fun of him. He panted and gasped, he shoved it with his knees. The exertion was too much for his feeble powers. He was overcome with trembling. He felt a great rage swell up in him, but he tried speaking it fair.
'Be a good boy!' he flattered, 'you shall come back again. It's only for to-day. I have to-day free. She's away from home. What are you afraid of? You're not going to be stolen!'
The words which he thus lavished on a piece of furniture cost him so much self-control that in the interim he forgot altogether about pushing. For a long time he tried to talk the bed into obedience, his arms wearily drooping at his sides; they ached cruelly. He assured the bed that he meant it no harm, it was only that he had no use for it at present. Could it not understand that? Who then had originally bought it? He had. Who had laid out money on it? He had, and with pleasure. Had he not until this very day always treated it with the greatest respect? Only out of respect had he deliberately disregarded it. A person is not always in the mood to show respect. But bygones are bygones and time heals all wounds. Could it reproach him with a single expression of dislike? Thoughts are free. He promised it a safe return to the site which it had already conquered for itself; he pledged his word to that; he took his oath on it!
In the end the bed might have given in. But Kien put into his words all the force of which he was capable. None was left over for his arms, none whatever. The bed stayed where it was, unmoved and mute. Kicn broke into anger. 'Shameless block of wood!' he cried. 'To whom then do you belong?' He thirsted to administer a reprimand to this insolent piece of furniture.
Then he remembered his powerful friend, the caretaker. On winged stilts he left the flat, devoured the stairs at a flight, as though there were a dozen or two instead of a hundred, and fetched from the little cell off the hall the biceps he did not himself possess.
'I need you !' His sound and shape reminded the caretaker of a trombone. He preferred a trumpet, he had one himself. But he liked percussion instruments best of all. He bellowed only: 'Ah, womenfolk!' and followed him. He was convinced the onslaught was to be on Kien's wife. In order to feel this more certainly he told himself she had already come home. He had seen her go out, through his spy-hole. He hated her because she had been a common housekeeper and now she was a professor's lady. In this matter of titles he was incorruptible, for he had once been a government servant; he stood by the consequences of having promoted Kien Professor. Since the death of his daughter, a consumptive, he had not thrashed a woman; he lived alone. His exacting profession left him no time over for women, and moreover unfitted him
for conquests. He sometimes happened to make a grab under a servant girl's skirt and pinch her thigh. But he performed this operation with such vigour as to destroy altogether his always rather ill-founded hopes. The beating stage never came. For years he had longed in vain tor an opportunity to smash up a nice piece of woman's flesh. He went first, banging his fists alternately against the wall and the banisters. In this way he got a little practice. The noise made the other tenants open their doors to contemplate the ill-assorted yet united pair, Kien in his shirt sleeves, the caretaker in his fists. No one dared to utter a word. Glances were exchanged only when they were safely past. When the caretaker was on his day not a midge dared buzz in the staircase and the boldest pin would not have dropped.
'Where is she?' he bellowed helpfully, when he got to the top. 'Now we've got it.'
He was directed into the study. The Professor remained standing on the threshold, pointed with grim pleasure his long index finger at the bed, and commanded: 'Throw it out!' The caretaker thrust his shoulders once or twice against it to test its resistance. He found it slight. Contemptuously he spat in his hands and put them in his pockets — he would not need them — thrust his head against the bed and in the twinkling of an eye had it outside. 'Heading the ball!' he explained. Five minutes later all the furniture out of all the rooms was outside in the passage. 'You've got plenty of books, anyway,' stumbled the helpful blockhead. He wanted to pause for breath without being noticed. So he spoke up simply, no louder than a person of normal strength. Then he went; from the staircase, having regained his breath, he bellowed suddenly back towards the flat: "When you want anything, Professor, rely on me!'
Kien was not in a hurry to answer. He even forgot to put the chain up on the door, and merely cast a glance at the enormous junk heap which lay higgledy-piggledy in the corridor, a pile of unconscious drunks. Not one of them could have said for certain whose legs were which. Had someone cracked a whip across their backs, they would have found themselves quickly enough. There lay his enemies, trampling on one another's toes and scratching their varnished heads bare.
Stealthily, so as not to profane his holy day with ugly noise, he drew the door of the room to oehind him. Greatly daring, he glided along his shelves and softly felt the backs of his books. He forced his eyes wide and rigidly open, so that they did not close out of habit. Ecstasy seized him, the ecstasy of joy and long-awaited consummation. In his first confusion he spoke words which were neither well composed nor intelligent. He trusted in them. Now they were all at home together again. They were persons of character. He loved them. He asked them to take nothing amiss. They had a right to be offended; had he not tried to assure himself of them by brute force? But he could not trust his eyes any longer, since he had had to make use of them in certain ways. He would confess these things only to them, to them he would confess everything. They could keep council. He misdoubted his eyes. He misdoubted many things. Doubts of this kind would make his enemies rejoice. He had many enemies. He would name no names. For to-day was a great day in the Lord. He would pass over these things. Reinstated in his rights, he could once more forgive and love.
As he paced up and down them the shelves grew longer, the library rose up again as of old, more inviolate, more withdrawn, so that his enemies appeared all the more ridiculous. How could they have dared to quarter this living body, this whole, by closing the doors? No tortures had prevailed against it. With hands bound, tortured week after horrifying week, it had remained in very truth unconquered. A sweet air coursed once again through the reunited limbs or a single body. They rejoiced in belonging once again to each other. The body breathed, the master of the body breathed too, deeply.
Only the doors on their hinges swayed to and fro. His solemn mood was disturbed by them. Coarse and crude, they interrupted the vista. There must be a draught from somewhere. He looked up, the skylights were open. With both arms he seized the first communicating door, lifted it off its hinges — how his strength had grown! — carried it out into the hall and laid it across the bed. The same thing happened to the other doors. Hung over the back of a chair which the caretaker had thrown out mistakenly — as it belonged to the writing desk — Kien noticed his jacket and waistcoat. So he had opened the ceremony in shirt sleeves. He felt a trifle embarrassed, dressed himself respectably again and returned, somewhat more soberly, to the library.
Abashed, he excused himself for his earlier behaviour. Excess of happiness had made him interrupt the programme of events. Mean spirits alone care nothing for the way they approach the beloved. A noble soul has no need to play the great man before her. What need is there to convince her of a self-evident love? Let the beloved enjoy protection without display. In a solemn moment let him take her to is heart, not in the flush of wine. True love is spoken at the altar alone.
This avowal was now Kien's plan. He pushed the faithful old ladder to a suitable place and climbed up with his back against the shelves; his head touched the ceiling, his extended legs — the ladder — reached the ground, and his eyes embraced the whole united extent of the library; then he addressed his beloved:
'For some time, more precisely, since the invasion of an alien power into our life, I have been labouring with the idea of placing our relationship on a firm foundation. Your survival is guaranteed by treaty; but we are, I take it, sage enough not to deceive ourselves as to the danger by which, in defiance of a legal treaty, you are threatened.
'There is no need for me to call to mind the ancient and glorious story of your sufferings. I shall single out one incident alone, to display in all its nakedness before your eyes, how closely love and hatred are interwoven. In the history of a certain country, a country honoured in equal measure by all of us here, a country in which you have yourselves been the object of the greatest respect, the most profound love, nay even of that religious veneration which is your due, in the history of this country, I say, one fearful event took place, a crime of legendary proportions, a crime perpetrated by a fiendish tyrant at the instigation of an adviser more fiendish than himself against you, my friends. In the year 213 before Christ, went out word from the Emperor of China, Shi Hoang Ti, a brutal usurper who had even dared to arrogate to himself the titles 'the first, the auspicious, the godlike', that every book in China was to be burnt. This loutish and superstitious criminal was himself too ill-educated to understand at its true value the meaning of books, on the evidence of which his tyranny was opposed. But his first minister Li Si, though himself suckled on books, a contemptible traitor, led him by means of a subtle manifesto to undertake this unspeakable measure. Nay, for the mere crime of speaking of China's classical lyrics or works of history, the death penalty was to be inflicted. Oral tradition was to be rooted out with the written word. Only a wretched minority of books was excluded from the order of general confiscation; you yourselves will readily supply the names of the varieties: works on medicine, pharmacy, fortune-telling, agriculture and forestry —a vulgar mob of practical handbooks.
'To this very day, I tell you, the smell of that burning stings my nostrils. Of what avail the merited fate which within three years closed in upon this barbarous Emperor i He indeed died but the dead books did not live again. They were burnt for all time. Albeit, let me recall the fate which a few years after the Emperor's death overtook the traitor Li Si. He was deprived by the Emperor's successor, who had penetrated his fiendish nature, of the office of first minister which he had enjoyed for thirty years. He was loaded with chains, thrown into prison, and sentenced to a bastinado of a thousand strokes. Not one blow was forgiven him. By means of this torture they brought him to confess his appalling crimes. Not only had he his hundred thousandfold massacre of books on his conscience but many other abominations. His later attempt to deny his confessions failed. In the market-place of the city of Hien Yang he was sawn in two, slowly, and by the ongitudinal method which is of longer duration. The last thought of this bloodthirsty beast was of hunting. Nor was he ashamed to burst into tears. His entire progeny, fr
om his sons to a seven-day-old greatgrandchild, were wiped out, women as well as men, but instead of suffering a just death by burning they were allowed to die by the sword. And in China, the land where the family is held in highest esteem, the land of ancestor worship and of long personal remembrance, no family was left to preserve the memory of Li Si, the mass murderer; history was to be his only memorial, that very history whose existence the wretch, who had died under the saw, had himself tried to wipe out.
'Each time I come upon the story of this burning of the books in a Chinese historian I never fail to follow it by rereading in every available source the tale of the exemplary end of Li Si, the mass murderer. Fortunately it has been described over and over again. Until I have seen him sawn in half before my eyes ten times at least I can neither rest nor close my eyes in slumber.
'Often I have asked myself, in deep sorrow, why had this unutterable thing to take place in China, the Promised Land of all scholars? Our enemies, quick to take advantage, cite the catastrophe of the year 213 in opposition to us when ever we point to the great revelation of China. We can only answer that even in that country the number of the educated is, compared to the mass of the population, small almost to vanishing point. It often happens that slime from the bog of illiteracy overwhelms at one and the same time both books and the learned men who are a part of them. In the whole world no land is free from the operation of natural phenomena. Why should we ask the impossible of China?
Auto-Da-Fé Page 11