Auto-Da-Fé

by Elias Canetti

  Extension of the library from four rooms to eight. That would be an improvement. You must develop yourself, you mustn't remain static. Forty is no age to speak of. How can a man retire at forty? It is two years since your last important purchase. This is how you grow rusty. There are other libraries too, not only yours. Poverty is disgusting. How fortunate that she loves me! She calls me Brute because I have been a brute to her. She thinks my eyes are beautiful. She thinks that all women run after me. I am indeed too brutish to her. If she did not love me she would keep her legacy to herself. There are men who let themselves be supported by their wives. How repulsive. I would sooner commit suicide. She may do whatever she likes for the library. Do books need to be fed? I think not. I pay the rent. Support means free food and lodging. I will pay the rent of the neighbouring flat too. She is stupid and uneducated but she has a dead relation. Callous? Why? I never knew the man. It would be pure hypocrisy to regret him. His death is no misfortune, his death has a deeper significance. Every human being fulfils some purpose, be it only for a moment. The purpose of this man was his death. Now he is dead. No pity will bring him back again. Strange coincidence! Into my very house comes this wealthy heiress as housekeeper. For eight years she quiedy performs her duties, suddenly, just before she inherits a million, I marry her. Scarcely have I discovered how deeply she loves me, when her rich bandmaster dies! A fortunate chance, undeserved, breaking in like a thief in the night. Illness was the turning point of my life, the end of straitened circumstances, of the oppressive small library in which I have hitherto lived.

  Is there then no difference between a man born in the moon and on the earth? Even if the moon were half as big as the earth — it is not merely a question of the gross sum of matter, the difference in size expresses itself in each single object. Thirty thousand new books! Each one a starting point for new thoughts and new work! What a revolution of present circumstances!

  In this moment Kien abandoned the conservative interpretation offered by evolutionary theory, to which he had hitherto subscribed, and marched with pages flying in to the camp of revolution. All progress is conditioned by sudden changes. The necessary proofs, itherto buried, as in every system of the evolutionists, hidden away beneath fig leaves, sprang into his consciousness immediately. An educated man has everything to hand, as soon as he needs it. The soul of an educated man is a superbly furnished armoury. This is rarely noticed because such people, on account of diat very education, do not often possess the courage to use it.

  One word, which Thérèse flung out with mingled joy and passion, wrenched Kien back to hard facts. 'Dowry' he heard and accepted the phrase with gratitude. Everything he needed for the historic moment seemed to fall into his lap. The legacy of capitalism, favoured and practised by his family for centuries, awoke in him with colossal strength, as though in a struggle of twenty-five years it had not been always the loser. Therese's love, the pillars of the approaching paradise, brought him a dowry. It was his right not to spurn it away. He had proved his honourable intentions by taking her to wife, without the slightest suspicion of this wealthy relative on the brink of the grave, when she was nothing but a poor girl. It would give her pleasure, now and again, but not too often, to take a brisk walk through the eight rooms of the newly arranged library. The feeling that a relation of hers had had his part in creating this magnificent institution would compensate her for the loss of her furniture shop.

  Filled with joy at the natural course his revolution was taking, Kien rubbed his long fingers. Not one single theoretical wall built itself in his path. The actual one dividing his own from the neighbouring flat would be pulled down. Negotiations with the neighbours must be opened at once. Putz the builder must be informed. He would have to start work to-morrow. The will must be proved immediately. Surely the solicitor could be seen to-day. When was the auction at old Silzinger's? The caretaker must go on some errands at once.

  Kien took one step forward and commanded: 'Fetch the caretaker!'

  Thérèse had got round again to the hungry doves and the crumbled bread. She reaffirmed this example of wastefulness, which irritated her housekeeper's thrift, and further enhanced her indignation with the words: 'That would be a fine thing!'

  But Kien would have no resistance. 'Fetch the caretaker! At once!'

  Thérèse noticed that he had said something. What had he got to say? He should let her have her say out. 'That would be a fine fining!' she repeated.

  'What would be a fine thing? Fetch the caretaker!'

  She had a grudge against this man, anyway, because of the tip he got. 'What's he got to do with it? He's not going to have any of it!'

  'I shall decide on that. I am the master in this house. He said this, not because it was necessary, but because he thought it salutary to show her that his mind was made up.

  'Excuse me, the money's mine.'

  In his heart, he had expected this answer. She would always remain the same ill-bred, uneducated person. He would yield only so far as his dignity must concede to his projects.

  'Nobody denies it. We need him. He must run some errands at once.'

  'It's a shame for the good money. That man gets a fortune.'

  'Keep calm. The million is assuredly ours.'

  Therese's mistrust became acute. He was trying to do her out of a bit more. Two thousand schillings he had snitched already.

  'And the 265,000?' said she, pausing at every figure with a meaning look.

  Now she must be won over swiftly and finally. 'The two hundred and sixty-five thousand belong to you alone.' He masked his lean features in a benefactor's fat smile; he was giving her a present, he took his thanks in advance and with pleasure.

  Thérèse began to sweat. 'It all belongs to me.'

  Why did she insist so much? He disguised his impatience in an official statement: 'I have already made it clear that no one disputes your claim. The matter is not at present under discussion.'

  'Excuse me, I know that myself. Black on white, that's what I say.'

  'We must co-operate in the organization of responsibilities arising from your legacy.'

  'Is that any business of yours?'

  'I ask you formally to accept my assistance.'

  'Ask, ask, ask. First bargaining, then begging, it's not right.'

  'My only fear is that you may be outwitted.'

  'People pretend they re saints.'

  'With a legacy of a million, it is not unheard of for false relations to make an appearance.'

  'But there's only the one.'

  'No wife? No children?'

  'I ask you, I'm not a fool!'

  'An incredible stroke of luck!'

  Luck? Thérèse was baffled. The creature gave his money away even before he was dead. What luck was there in that? Since he had been speaking she had a growing conviction that he was doing her. She watched his every word, a hundred headed Cerberus. She exerted herself to answer, sharp and crystal clear. A slip of the tongue and the rope was round your neck. The creature had read everything. He seemed to her at once the defendant and the counsel for the defence. Protecting her infant property, she developed forces which almost frightened her. All of a sudden she managed to put herself in someone else's position. She felt that his will, as far as he was concerned, was no stroke of luck. She suspected behind this word of his a brand new trap. He was hiding something from her. What do people hide? A property. The creature possessed more than he would admit. That third nought, the one she had missed, burnt the palm of her hand. She raised her arm as in sudden pain. She wanted to throw herself over the writing table, to pull out the will and with one forceful stroke clap that nought into its right place. But she knew how much was at stake and controlled herself. This was what she got for her modesty. Why was she such a fool? Modesty's stupid. Now she'd be clever again. She must get it out of him. Where has he hidden the rest? She'd ask him so that he wouldn't notice she was asking. Broad and vicious, the familiar smile reappeared on her face.

  'And what is h
appening to the rest of it?' She had reached the peak of her cunning. She didn't ask where he'd hidden the rest. He wouldn't have answered that one. She wanted him first of all to admit the rest.

  Kien gazed at her in gratitude and affection. Her resistance had been the merest pretence. He had suspected it all along. He found it almost noble of her to speak of the million, the greater portion, simply as the rest. Evidently such sudden changes from rudeness to affection were, for people of her kind, very typical. He put himself in her place, realized how this declaration of devotion had for a long time been on the tip of her tongue, and how she had only hesitated to come out with it in order to heighten its effect. She was crude, but loyal. He began to understand her even better than before. A pity she was so old; it was too late to try to make a human being of her. He wouldn't allow her to have moods of the kind he had experienced. Education must begin in this way. All the thanks he had intended for her and all the love directed to his new books, vanished from his face. He put on an expression of severity and growled, as if he was offended: 'The rest will be spent on enlarging my library.'

  Thérèse drew herself up, horrified and triumphant. Two admissions at one blow. His library! And she had the inventory in her pocket! So there was more. He had said so himself. She did not know on which side to begin her counter-attack first. Her hand, which had strayed involuntarily to her pocket, decided.

  "The books are mine!'

  'What?'

  'Three rooms belong to the wife, one belongs to the husband.'

  'We are now speaking of eight rooms. Four additional ones — those in the next flat, I mean. I need room to house the Silzinger Library. That alone contains twenty-two thousand volumes.'

  'And where's the money coming from?'

  Again! He was tired of these hints. 'From your legacy. There is no more to be said on that score.'

  'Not a penny.'

  'What, not a penny?'

  'The legacy belongs to me.'

  'But I have the disposal of it.'

  'A man's got to die first, he can dispose after.'

  'What is the meaning of this?'

  'I won't bargain!'

  What was this, what was this; Must he strike sterner chords? The eight-roomed library, of which he did not lose sight for a moment, gave him a last small residue of patience.

  'Our common interest is concerned in this matter.'

  'I want the rest!'

  'You cannot but appreciate ..."

  'Where is the rest?'

  'A wife must respect her husband.'

  'And her husband steals the rest from his wife.'

  'I ask a million for the acquisition of the Silzinger Library.'

  'Ask, ask, ask. I want the rest. I want all of it.

  'I am the master in this house.'

  'I'm the mistress.'

  'I present you with an ultimatum. I demand categorically a million for the acquisition

  'I want the rest! I want the rest!'

  'In three seconds. I shall count up to three

  'Anyone can count. I shall count too!'

  Both were almost crying with rage. With clenched teeth they both counted, screaming louder and louder: 'One! Two! Three!' The numbers burst out in small, double explosions, exactly together each time. Her numbers were big with the millions which the rest added to her fortune. His contained the new rooms. She would have gone on counting for ever, he counted up to three, and then four. Here he stopped. In rigid tension, stiffer than ever before, he walked up to her and bellowed —the caretaker's voice, his model, ringing in his ears: 'Your will at once.' The fingers of his right hand strove to form themselves into a fist and smote with all their force into the air. Thérèse paused in her counting; so — he had smashed her to pieces. She was indeed astonished. She had expected a life and death struggle. And now suddenly he gave in. Had she not been so taken up with the rest, she would hardly have known where she was. When people weren't robbing her any more, her anger evaporated. Her anger wasn't her everything. She sidled round her husband and approached the writing desk. He moved out of her way. Although he had smashed her to pieces, he was afraid she might return that blow, which had been meant for her, not the air. She had noticed no blow. She grabbed about among the papers, threw them shamelessly one on top of another and pulled one of them out.

  'How does — a strange will — come to be — among my papers?' He attempted to bellow this rather longer sentence, and could not therefore hurl it at his wife in one. Three times he paused for breath. Before he had finished, she answered: 'Excuse me, what strange will?' She unfolded it hurriedly, spread it out fine and smooth on the table, put ink and pen ready and made room politely for the owner of the rest. As he approached, still not perfectly reassured, his first glance fell on the figure. It seemed familiar to him, but the important thing was: it was right. During their argument a slight anxiety as to the stupidity of this illiterate had disturbed him, lest she should have read it wrongly. Contented, he turned his eyes to the upper half of the document, sat down and began to examine the will more minutely.

  Then he recognized his own will.

  Thérèse said: 'The best thing is, write it out over again.' She forgot the danger to which she was exposing her noughts. Her faith in their authenticity was as firmly impressed on her heart, as his in her love for him. He said: 'But this is my ..." She smiled: 'Excuse me, what did I... ' He stood up, furious. She explained: 'One man, one word.' Before he made a clutch at her throat he had understood. She was urging him to write. She was going to pay for a clean sheet of paper herself. He slumped down into the chair, as if he were gross and heavy. She wanted to know at last just how she stood.

  A few moments later they had understood each other for the first time.

  CHAPTER XIII

  BEATEN

  The malicious pleasure with which he proved to her, from the evidence, how little he still possessed, tided Thérèse over the worst moment. She would have disintegrated into her chief components — skirt, ears and sweat — had not her hatred for him, which he was now intensifying with pedantic zeal, become the surviving core of her being. He showed her how much he had inherited. He fetched all the bills for books out of the different drawers among which his varying moods had distributed them. His memory for the trivialities of everyday, usually such a nuisance to him, now had its uses. On the back of the spoilt will, he noted down the sums. Broken as she was, Thérèse counted them up in her head and rounded them up to a total. She wanted to know what was really left over. It became evident that the library had cost far more than a million. He was not in the least consoled by this surprising result; its unexpectedly high value did not compensate him for the collapse of the four new rooms. Revenge for the way in which she had cheated him was his only thought. During the whole of this tedious operation, he spoke not one syllable too many, and — for him a heavier task — not one too few. A misunderstanding was impossible. When the annihilating figure was calculated at last, he added in loud staccato tones, like a schoolboy repeating a lesson: 'I have spent the rest on single books and on daily expenses.

  At that Thérèse dissolved, flowing out of the door in a torrential stream, across the corridor into the kitchen. When it was time to go to bed she interrupted her crying, took off her starched skirt, laid it over a chair, sat down by the stove again and went on crying. The neighbouring bedroom, in which she had lived so happily for eight years as a housekeeper, invited her to sleep. But she did not think it respectable to end her mourning so soon, and did not move from her place.

  On the following day early she began to put into practice the decisions she had taken during her period of mourning. She locked the three rooms of the flat which belonged to her. The beautiful dream was over. People are like that, but after all she had three rooms and the books in them. She wouldn't touch the furniture until Kien died. It must be spared.