Auto-Da-Fé

by Elias Canetti

  The situation was clear to him at the first glance, he was still standing on the threshold of the study. She had put the ladder on top of the body as an afterthought. You couldn't catch him with a trick like that. He knew his way about.

  'Gentlemen, I go immediately to the site of the crime. I turn to the murderess and I say: "Help me to lift this ladder!" Don't imagine, gentlemen, that I can't lift a ladder by myself — he shows his biceps —

  I wanted to take note of the defendant's face. The face is the key to everything. You can read it all there. Men make faces.'

  In the very midst of his discourse he noticed that die ladder was moving. He started. For one moment he was sorry the Professor was still alive. His dying words threatened to deprive the witness for the prosecution of a great part of his glory. With official strides he gained the ladder and lifted it with one hand.

  Kien was just coming to himself, writhing with pain. He tried to stand up but could not.

  'He's nothing like dead!' bellowed the caretaker, quite himself again, and helped him to his feet.

  Thérèse could not believe her eyes. Only when Kien, strangely shrunken but still overtopping his supporter, was actually standing in front of her, saying in a weak voice 'That wretched ladder!' did she grasp that he was alive.

  'Now that's the limit!' she shrieked. "Who ever heard of such goings on! A respectable man, indeed! I ask you! What will people think of us!'

  'Shut up, sh—house!' the caretaker interrupted her frenzied lament. 'Fetch the doctor! I'll put him to bed!'

  He slung the lean Professor over his shoulder and carried him into the hall, where, among all the other furniture, the bed was standing. While he was being undressed Kien was persistently asserting: 'I was never unconscious, I was never unconscious.' He would not accept the fact that he had lost his senses for a short time. 'Where are the muscles to this clothes prop;' the caretaker was asking himself and shaking his head. Pity for the miserable skeleton made him forget the glorious trial scene or his dream.

  Thérèse meanwhile had gone for the doctor. In the street she gradually calmed down. Three rooms belonged to her, she had that in writing. Only now and again she sobbed softly to herself:

  'What next, being alive when you're dead, whatever next?'

  CHAPTER IX

  THE BED OF SICKNESS

  For a full six weeks after his serious fall Kien lay in bed. After one of his visits, the doctor drew his wife aside and explained:

  'It all depends on your nursing, whether your husband lives or dies. I can say nothing definite yet. I am still in the dark as to the true constitution of this strange case. Why did you not send for me sooner? Health is not a joking matter!'

  'My husband always looked like that,' countered Thérèse. 'Nothing s ever gone wrong with him. I've known him for more than eight years. Where would doctors be if nobody was ever ill!'

  This statement satisfied the doctor. He knew his patient was in the best of hands.

  Kien did not feel at all comfortable in bed. Contrary to his will, the doors had been closed again, and only the one into the neighbouring room, in which Thérèse now slept, remained open. He wanted to know what was going on in the rest of the library. At first he was too weak to lift himself up. Later, despite violent shooting pains, he managed to bend the upper part of his body so far forward that he could see a part of the opposite wall in the adjoining room. Not very much seemed to have altered in that direction. Once he dragged himself out of bed and tottered to the threshold. Full of joyful anticipation, he hit his head against the edge of the door frame even before he had looked through it. He collapsed and fainted away. Thérèse found him soon after and to punish him for his disobedience let him lie there for another two hours. Then she shoved him back towards the bed, lifted him on to it and tied his legs firmly together with a strong cord.

  She was on the whole perfectly satisfied with the life she was now leading. The new bedroom suite looked well. In remembrance of the superior young man she had a certain tenderness for it and was happy to sit among it. She had locked up the two other rooms and carried the keys in a secret pocket which she had sewed into her skirt for this purpose. In this way she always had at least a part of her property with her. She went in to her husband whenever she wanted; she had to nurse him, it was her right. She did in fact nurse him, day in day out she nursed him, following the instructions of the intelligent and trustful doctor. In the meantime she had looked through the interior of the writing desk and found no will. From her husband's delirium she learnt of a brother. Since he had been concealed until this moment, she believed all the more readily in his fraudulent existence. This brother simply lived to do her down, when it was a matter of her own hard-earned inheritance. Her husband had betrayed himself in his fever. She would not forgive him for being alive when he was dead, but she was ready to overlook it, since he still had his will to make. Wherever she was, she always seemed to be with him. For she talked all day long so loudly that he could hear her everywhere. He was weak, and must, as the doctor had advised him, not open his mouth. He could not interrupt her when she had something to say. During a few weeks she perfected her method of speech; everything which came into her head she spoke out at once. She enriched her vocabulary with expressions which she had thought often enough in the past but which had never actually crossed her lips. She was only silent on subjects connected with lus death. She hinted at his crime in general terms:

  'A man doesn't deserve so many sacrifices from a woman. A woman does everything for her husband, what docs her husband do for her; A man seems to think he's the only person in the world. A woman has to stand up for herself and show him his plain duty. A mistake can be put right. Where there's a will there's a way. It would be much better if each party had to make a will at the registry office, so that one party wouldn t starve if the other party were to die. We've all got to die some day, that's life. Everything in its right place, that's what I say. I don't hold with children, that's what I'm here for. I'm human too. Love doesn't pay the bills. When all's said and done man and wife belong together. Not that a wife bears a grudge. Work, work, work, morning, noon and night. I have to keep an eye on him all day long. He may have another of his attacks, and all the trouble falls on me.'

  When she had reached the end, she began at the beginning. Several dozen times every day, she said the same thing. He knew her speech, word for word, by heart. At each pause between her sentences he knew which variant she was about to select. The litany drove all thoughts out of his head. His ears, which he had at first sought to accustom to some movement of defence, became inured to a series of useless convulsions in rhythm. Flaccid and inert as he lay there, his fingers could not find their way to the ears which they should have stopped. One night he grew lids to his ears, he opened and closed them as he pleased, just as with his eyes. He tried them out a hundred times and laughed. They fitted exactly, they were soundproof, they grew as if they had been ordered and were complete at once. Out of sheer joy he pinched them. Then he woke up, his earlids had become ordinary bedclothes and he had dreamed. How unfair, he thought; I can close my mouth whenever I like, as tight as I like, and what has a mouth to say? It is there for taking in nourishment, yet it is well defended, but ears — ears are a prey to every onslaught.

  When Thérèse came over to his bed, he pretended to be asleep. If she was in a good temper she said, softly: 'He's asleep !' If she was in a bad temper, she shouted loudly: 'The cheek of it!' She herself had no control whatever over her moods. They depended on the place in the monologue at which she happened to stop. She lived now entirely in her words. She said: 'A mistake can always be put right, where there's a will there's a way,' and grinned. Even if he who was to put the mistake right was fast asleep — she must nurse him back to health, and then there'd be a will and a way. Afterwards he could die again. But if, just at that moment, a man was thinking he was the only person in the world, then his sleep infuriated her the more. She proved to him on these occasions that she
too was human, and woke him up with her 'The cheek of it !' Hourly she inquired into the state of his bank balance and whether all his money was in one bank. Everything need not be left in a single bank. She quite agreed, some should be here and some there.

  His suspicion that she had an eye on his books had considerably lessened since the unlucky day of which he thought most unwillingly. He understood exactly what it was that she wanted of him: a will, a will, in which he disposed of money only. For that very reason she remained a total mystery to him, well as he knew her from her first to her last word. She was sixteen years older than he; as far as anyone could tell she would die long before he did. What was the value of money of which one thing only was certain: she would never gain possession of it. If, equally unreasonably, she had been grasping for his books, she might have been sure of some sympathy, despite his natural hostility towards her. Her eternal drilling on the nerve of money was a riddle to him. Money was the most impersonal, most inarticulate, most characterless object which he could imagine. How easily, without merit or effort, he had inherited it.

  Sometimes his curiosity got the better of him and made him open his eyes, when he had only just closed them at the approaching footstep of his wife. He hoped for some change in her, some unfamiliar gesture, some new look, some native sound, which would betray to him why she spoke so unceasingly of money and wills. He felt at his best when he could relegate her to the one category where there was room for everything which he was unable, for all his education and understanding, to explain. Of lunatics he had a crude and simple idea; he defined them as those who do the most contradictory things yet have the same word for all. According to this definition Thérèse was — in contradistinction to himself—decidedly mad.

  The caretaker, who came daily to visit the Professor, was of a different opinion. He had nothing whatever to expect from the woman. Fears for his little monthly something grew within him. He was sure of the juicy titbit so long as the Professor lived. But who could rely on a woman? He shattered the normal routine of his day and every morning, for a full hour sat at the Professor's bedside, personally inspecting the position.

  Thérèse led him silently in and — she thought him common — left the room at once. Before he sat down he glared contemptuously at the chair. Then he said 'Me on that chair!' or he fondled its back pityingly. As long as he was sitting on it, the chair quaked and creaked like a sinking ship. The caretaker had forgotten how to sit. In front of his peep-hole, he knelt. For hitting, he stood up. For sleeping, he lay down. He had no time over for sitting. Should the chair fall silent for a moment, he became uneasy and cast an anxious glance at his thighs. No, they hadn't grown thinner. They would have done for a show. Only when he could hear them again at work would he go on with his interrupted discourse.

  'Women ought to be beaten to death. The whole lot of them. I know them. I'm fifty-nine. Twenty-three years I was a married man. Almost half my life. Married to the same old woman. I know women. They're all criminals. You just add up the poisoners, Professor, you've got books, have a good look at them. Women haven't any guts. I know all about it. When a man tries anything on with me, I smash his face in so he has something to remember me by, you sh—, I say, you dirty little sh—, how dare you? Now you try that with a woman. They run, that's what they do, I'd back my punch against anyone's, look here now, you won't see a better pair of fists. I can say what I like to a woman, she won't move an inch. Why won't she? Because she's frightened. Why's she frightened? Because she's got no guts! I've beaten a woman up a treat, you ought to have seen it. My old woman now, she was black and blue to the end of her days. My poor daughter, God rest her, I was that fond of her, there was a woman for you now, as the saying is, I started on her when she was that high. "Here," says I to my old woman — set up a screeching she did if I laid a hand on the kiddy — "if she marries, she'll go to a man. Now she's little, she'd better learn something about it. If not, she'll be running off and leaving him. I won't let her have a man who doesn't know how to use his hands. Some miserable beggar. A man ought to know how to use his hands. I'm all for fists, I am." Now d'you think it was any good, talking to her like that? Not bloody likely! The old woman got in front of the kid, and I had to give it to them both. Because womenfolk can't interfere with me. Not me. You must have heard what a screeching those two set up. Everybody was up, we had the whole house listening to us. They've all got respect for me in this house. You stop, I said, and maybe I'll stop too. Then they'd be as quiet as you like for a bit. Then I'd sample a bit to see if they'd start up again. Mousy quiet, that's how it had to be. I'd just give 'em one or two righthanders. I couldn't stop sudden. I'd got to keep me hand in, see? It's an art, that's what I say. You have to study it. I've got a colleague now, first thing, he hits below the belt. His man crumples up at once and can't feel another thing. That's right says my colleague, now I can beat him up till I'm sick of it. Well, I say, what do I get out of it if he can't feel anydiing? I'm against hitting a man when he's down, he can't appreciate it. That's my motto, all along. What I say is a man must learn how to use his fists so that he never knocks the object out. Unconsciousness must not supervene. That's what I call beating up. Any fool can knock a man out. That's nothing. Now look, I do that, and spatter your brains out. You don't believe me? I'm not conceited. Any fool can do that. See here, Professor, you can do it as well as anyone. Maybe to-day's not the best time to start, with you on your death bed....'

  Kien saw the fists growing at the recapitulation of the heroic deeds which they had achieved. They were larger than the man to whom they belonged. Soon they filled the entire room. Their red hairs grew with them. They dusted the books vigorously. The fists stormed into the next room and suffocated Thérèse in bed, where she was suddenly lying. At some point one of the fists encountered her skirt, which broke into pieces with stupendous clatter. It's a pleasure to be alive! cried Kien with flashing voice. He himself was too insignificant and thin to have anything to fear. He took the precaution of making himself even smaller. He was as thin as the sheet. Not a fist in the world could have had anything against him.

  The trusty, well-made creature fulfilled its duty with speed. It had not been there more than a quarter of an hour and already Thérèse had been annihilated. Nothing could stand up to this force. But then it would forget to go; for no apparent purpose it would stay three-quarters of an hour longer. It did no harm to the books, but all the same gradually it became annoying to Kien. A fist should not talk so much, otherwise you cannot fail to notice that it has nothing to say. Its purpose is to strike. Having struck it should go away, or at least be silent. But it didn't bother about the nerves or the desires of an invalid; it emphatically enlarged on the subject of its one and only quality. At first it paid a little consideration to Kien and dilated on the criminal class of womankind. But, alas, when it had exhausted womankind, all that was left was a fist, in se. It was as strong as in the flower of its youth, and yet had already reached an age much and gladly given to detailed recapitulation. And so Kien was to leam its entire glorious history. Had he closed his eyes, it would have pounded him to a pulp. Even earlids would have served him little; no stopper could avail him against such bellowing.

  The visit was not half done and Kien ached with old and long forgotten pains. Even as a child he had not been steady on his legs. It was as if he had never rightly learnt to walk. In the gymnasium he regularly fell off the bars to the ground. Despite his long legs he was the worst runner in the class. The teachers considered his physical feebleness as unnatural. In all other subjects he was, thanks to his memory, first. But what good was that? Nobody really respected him because of his ridiculous appearance. Countless feet were stuck out in his path, and he tripped religiously over them all. In the winter he was used as a snow man. They threw him down in the snow and rolled him over until his body acquired almost normal thickness. These were his coldest but also his softest falls. He had very mixed memories of them. His whole life had been an unbroken chain of falls. He
had recovered; he suffered from no personal wounds. But his heart grew heavy and despairing when there began to unroll in his brain a list which he usually kept wholly and strictly secret. It was the list of innocent books which he had caused to fall; this was the true record of his sins, a catalogue most carefully kept in which the day and hour of each occasion was exactly set down. Then he saw the angelic trumpeters of the Last Judgment, twelve caretakers like his own, with cheeks blown out, and sinewy arms. Out of their trumpets the text of the catalogue burst upon his ears. In the midst of his terror Kien had to smile at the poor trumpeters of Michelangelo. They were cowering piteously in a corner; their trumpets they had hidden away behind them. Faced with such fine fellows as these caretakers, they laid down their long weapons abashed.

  In the catalogue of fallen books, there figured as No. 39 a stout antique volume on Arms and Tactics of the Landsknechts. Scarcely had it curvetted off the ladder, with fearful crash, than the trumpeting caretakers were transformed into landsknechts. A vast inspiration surged up in Kien. The caretaker was a landsknecht, what else? His stocky appearance, his deafening voice, his loyalty for pay, his foolhardy courage which shrank from nothing, not even from women, his brag and bluster which yet said nothing — a landsknecht in the flesh!