Auto-Da-Fé

by Elias Canetti

  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!

  Without looking up he released his hold on the banisters and placed himself squarely in the middle of the narrow stairs. At once he felt a push. His thoughts moved spontaneously into deeds. He looked the poor sinner squarely in die eyes and asked:

  'What do you want?'

  The poor sinner, a half-starved student, was carrying a heavy briefcase under his arm. He owned a copy of Schiller's Works and it was his first visit to the establishment. As these volumes were much thumbed and he himself over his large cars in debt, he was shyly making a first entry. On the staircase the last drop of courage had drained out of his minuscule head. Why must he go on with his studies: Father and mother, and all the aunts and uncles were more for business — he took one step forward and cannoned into a stern personage, obviously a director of this place — who fixed him with a piercing eye and in a cutting voice demanded:

  'What do you want?'

  'I... er I wanted the book section.'

  'I am the book section.'

  The student, who had a respect for professors and similar apparitions because all his life long he had been an object of contempt to them, and for books no less, because he had so few, felt for his hat to take it off. Then he remembered that he had none.

  'What do you intend to do upstairs?' asked Kien threateningly.

  'Oh .. . er ... only Schiller.'

  'Show me!'

  The student did not dare refuse his brief-case. He knew that nobody would buy that Schiller off him. But Schiller was his only hope for the next few days. He did not want to bury his hope so soon. Kien took the case from him with a vigorous jerk. Fischerle tried to make signals to his master and uttered over and over again 'Pst! Pst!' The boldness of a robbery on the open stairway impressed him. The book racket was maybe smarter than he had thought. Maybe he only pretended to be mad. All the same, you couldn't get away with it on the open stairs. Behind the student's back he gesticulated wildly with his hands and simultaneously took his precautions for a timely escape. Kien opened the brief-case and looked carefully at the Schiller. 'Eight volumes,' he ascertained, 'the edition is worthless in itself and its condition is a scandal!' The student's ears flushed fiery red. "What do you want for it? I mean how much — money?' The repulsive word came out at last, but only after hesitation. The student remembered from his halcyon childhood, passed chiefly in his father's shop, that prices should be given at the highest possible rate so as to allow a margin for bargaining. 'Thirty-two schillings it cost me, new.' He imitated the structure of his father's phrases and his tone of voice. Kien took out his note case, extrac
ted thirty schillings, completed the sum with two coins, which he took from his purse, handed the total sum to the student and said: 'Never repeat this action, my friend! Believe me, no mortal man is worth his weight in books!' He gave him the briefcase back, still full, and shook him warmly by the hand. The student was in a hurry, he cursed the formalities which detained him. He was already at the glass door — Fischerle, completely baffled, had made way for him —when Kien called after him: 'Why Schiller? You should read the original. You should read Immanuel Kant!' 'Original yourself !' the student grinned in his thoughts, and ran for it as fast as his legs would carry him.

  Fischerle's excitement knew no bounds. He was almost crying. He clutched Kien by his trouser buttons — his waistcoat was too high — and crowed: 'Tell you what, what do you think this is? Plumb crazy, that's what it is! Either a fellow has money, or else he hasn't. If he has, he doesn't throw it about; if he hasn't he doesn't throw it about anyway. A crime, that's what it is. Ought to be ashamed of yourself, a big chap like you!'

  Kien was not listening to his words. He was content with what he had done. Fischerle pulled at his trousers for so long, that at last the perpetrator of the crime became aware of him. He guessed the dumb reproach, as he called it, in the behaviour of the little man and to pacify him told him of the mental aberrations in which the life of die inhabitants of exotic countries is so rich.

  Rich men of China, who are anxious for their welfare in the next world, were in the habit of giving great sums of money for the preservation of crocodiles, pigs, tortoises, and other animals at Buddhist monasteries. Special ponds and preserves were laid out for the animals, and the monks had no other work than to keep and feed them; woe to them if one of these endowed crocodiles were to come to any harm. A gentle and natural death was permitted even to the fattest pig and the reward for his good work would go to the noble benefactor. So much was left over for the monks that all of them could live on it. Should you visit a shrine in Japan, you will find children with imprisoned birds squatting all along the roadside, one small cage close against the next. The little creatures, which are trained to do it, beat their wings and utter loud chirpings. Buddhist pilgrims going that way take pity on them for their soul's sake. For a sm?ll ransom, the children open the cage doors and let the birds go free. This ransoming of animals is a general practice there. What docs it matter to the pilgrims as they go on their way that the tame birds are all lured back again into their cages by their owners? One and the same bird serves ten, a hundred or a thousand times during its life: captivity as an object for the mercy of pilgrims. And these know well enough — apart from a few peasants and extremely ignorant exceptions—just what happens to the birds as soon as their backs are turned. The real fate of the animals is indifferent to them.

  'It is easy to see why this should be so,' Kien drew the moral of the story. 'It is a matter of mere beasts. These must of necessity be indifferent to us. Their own stupidity condemns them. Why do they not fly away? Why do they not even hop away if their wings have been cut? Why do they let themselves be lured back again? Their animal stupidity be on their own heads! Yet in itself this ransoming of the animals has, like every superstition, a deeper meaning. The effect of such a deed on the men who perform it depends naturally on what they select to ransom. Let us take books, genuine, intelligent books instead of these absurd and stupid animals, and the act which you perform for them achieves high moral value. You will thereby redeem the wayward sinner who had sought refuge in hell itself. Rest assured, this Schiller will not be dragged a second time to the slaughter house. By reforming this man who, in the present state of our law — or lawlessness rather — is permitted freely to dispose of books as if they were animals, slaves or labourers, you will also render the lot of his books more endurable. On reaching home a man who has been recalled to his duty in this fashion, may very well fall on his knees before those whom he had hitherto held for his servants (although spiritually regarded, he should have been theirs) and vow to treat them better. Even should the man be so hard-hearted as to make no amends — at least his victims will have been ransomed from Hell. Do you know what that means — the burning of a library? Think, man, a library on fire on the sixth floor ! Imagine it only ! Tens of thousands of volumes — millions of pages — milliards of printed letters — each one of these in flames — each one of these imploring, crying, shrieking for help — it would split the eardrums, it would crack the heart — but no more of that! I am happier now than I have been for years. Let us continue on the path on which we have begun. Our widow's mite for the alleviation of universal misery is small, but we must cast it in. If a man should say: alone I am too weak, then nothing would be done, and misery would devour further. I have boundless confidence in you. Earlier, you were injured because I had not imparted my plan to you. It only took recognizable shape in that moment when Schiller's Works uttered their dumb appeal. I had no time to inform you of it. Instead, I will give you now the two watchwords under which our campaign is to be carried out: Action, not lamentation! Deeds, not tears! How much money have you?'

  Fischerle, who had at first interrupted Kien's recital with angry interjections such as 'What are the Japs to me?' 'Why no goldfish?' and had repeatedly referred to the pious pilgrims as a gang of crooks, but who had nevertheless listened to every single word, grew calmer as the speech ended on the widow's mite and the plan of campaign. He was carefully considering how he should insure himself against the loss of his passage-money to America; it belonged to him, he had even had it in his hand, he had only given it back temporarily and as a precaution. At which moment Kien's question: 'How much money have you?' brought him crashing out of the clouds. He clenched his teeth and was silent, only out of business considerations be it understood, otherwise he'd have given him a piece of his mind. The meaning of all this play-acting began to grow clear to him. This grand gentleman was regretting the reward which Fischerle had honourably obtained. He was too cowardly to steal the money back at night. Not that he could have found it. Fischerle stowed it away when he was asleep, rolled into a tight bundle, between his legs. What was the fine gentleman up to, the so-called scholar and librarian, though in fact not even in the book racket, nothing more nor less than a crook who was only walking about free as air because he had the good luck not to have a hump? What was he up to? That time when he got out of the Stars of Heaven he was glad to have that money back — Lord knew where he'd stolen it from. He was afraid Fischerle would loose the others on to him, so he handed over the reward quick. But simply to get this ten per cent back, he had said grandly, 'You shall come into my service'. And what did he do, the swindler! He pretended to be offhis head. You've got to hand him that, he does it a treat. Fischerle fell in with it. A whole hour he plays the fool here until a chap comes along with books. He hands him over thirty-two schillings as pleased as Punch and expects thirty times as much from Fischerle. A creature with all that capital, and grudges a poor pickpocket his little bit of reward. How petty all these fine gentlemen are! Fischerle had no words for it. He hadn't expected it of him. Not from a fellow who was crackers, anyway. Not that he's under any obligation to be really crackers, well and good, but that's no reason to be mean. Fischerle will pay him out alright. The stories he can tell! The creature's got a head on his shoulders. You can see the difference straight away between a poor pickpocket and one of your better-class swindlers. In the hotels they fall for it at once. Fischerle pretty nearly fell for it himself.

  While he was at once boiling with hate and overwhelmed with admiration, Kien took his arm confidingly and said: 'You're not angry with me any more, are you? How much money have you? We must stand by one another!'

  'Scum!' thought Fischerle to himself, 'you're up to your tricks alright, but I know a trick or two!' Aloud he said: 'Maybe thirty schillings.' The rest was very well hidden.

  'That is a small sum. But it is better than nothing.' Kien had forgotten that he had given the little fellow a big sum of money only a few days back. He accepted F
ischerle's mite at once, thanked him, with deep emotion, for so much self-sacrifice and had all but promised him a reward in the Hereafter.

  From this moment the two were engaged in a life and death struggle with each other, of which one of them remained in total ignorance. The other, feeling himself less gifted at play-acting, took over the production and hoped in this way to countervail his disadvantage.

  Morning after morning Kien took his stand in the entrance hall of the building. Even before it opened he was pacing up and down outside the Theresianum sharply observing all who passed. When one of them stopped, he went close up to him and asked: "What do you want here*' Not the rudest or most ribald retort sufficed to distract him. His success was his justification. Those who passed through this street before nine o'clock glanced merely out of curiosity at the notice-boards outside on which the date and place of the next auction was set out, together with the objects to be sold. Timorous persons took him for a private detective, guarding the treasures of the Theresianum, and hurried out of range to avoid a conflict with him. The indifferent often failed to register his inquiry until they were a street or two further off. The bold were indignant and, contrary to their usual custom, tarried long and immobile in front of the notice boards. He let them alone but he impressed their features on his memory. He took them for men on whose conscience their sin hung heavy, who had come to reconnoitre the land before coming back, perhaps an hour later, with the scapegoat under their arm. The fact that they never came back he attributed to his implacable stare. On the stroke of the hour he presented himself in the small entrance lobby of the annexe. Who ever should push open the glass door must see at once the haggard figure, straight as a candlestick, next to the window, and, in order to reach the staircase, must pass in front of it. When Kien addressed anyone his features altered not a fraction. Only his lips moved, like two sharp-edged knives. His first task was to ransom the unhappy books, his second to reform a bestial mankind. He was learned in books, but in men, he was forced to concede, far less. He determined therefore to become learned in men too.