Auto-Da-Fé

by Elias Canetti

  Kien spoke more softly. Now and again he felt for his tie to pull it straight; faced with serious problems this was always his gesture. It looked to the spectators as if he didn't know that he had nothing on but his shirt. The Inspector's hand felt involuntarily for his pocket mirror; he almost held it up for the gentleman. He appreciated a well-tied tie: but the gendeman was only a common thief 'You may well believe that I am the victim of an hallucination. I am not generally subject to them. Scholarship demands a clear head, I would not read an X for U, or take any other letter for its fellow. But recently I have been through much; yesterday I had news of my wife's death. You are aware of the circumstances. On her account I have the honour to find myself among you. Since then thoughts of my trial have ceaselessly occupied my mind. To-day, when I went to the Theresianum, I encountered my murdered wife. She was accompanied by our caretaker, a very good friend of mine. He had followed her, as my representative, to her last resting place; I was myself unable to attend. Do not regard me as unduly hard-hearted. There are women whom it is impossible to forget. I will admit the whole truth to you: I deliberately avoided her funeral, it would have been too much for me. I trust you understand me; were you never yourself married; Her skirt was torn in pieces and devoured by a bloodhound. It is however conceivable that she possessed two. Ascending the stairs, she brushed against me. She was carrying a parcel which I presumed to contain my own books. I love my library. You must understand, I am speaking of the largest privately-owned library in the town. For some time I have been compelled to neglect it. I was occupied with errands of mercy. My wire's murder kept me away from home; how many weeks it is I cannot precisely calculate since I left the house. But I have made good use of the time; time is knowledge, knowledge is order. Beside the accumulation of a small head-library I turned my attention, as above mentioned, to errands of mercy. I redeem books from the stake. I know of a hog who lives on books, but do not let us speak of him. I refer you to the speech I shall make in my own defence, on which occasion I propose to make certain public revelations. I ask for your help ! She does not move from her place. Liberate me from this hallucination! I am not generally subject to them. She has been following me, I fear, for more than an hour. Let us first be clear in our facts; I will make your task of helping me the easier. I see you all, you sec me. Even so clearly, the murdered woman stands at my side. All my senses have betrayed me, not my eyes alone. Do as I will, I hear the crackling of her skirt, I can feel it, it smells of starch; she moves her head in the very manner in which she moved it living, she even speaks; a few moments ago she said, "I ask you"; you must know that her vocabulary contained not above fifty words, in spite of which she talked no less than most people. I implore your help! Prove to me that she is dead.'

  The spectators began to make words of his sounds. They became accustomed to his manner, and listened perplexed; one clutched at another in order to hear better. He spoke like an educated man, he was confessing a murder. As a body they could not believe in his murder, though each of them singly would have taken it to be true. Against whom did he want protection? In his shirt they let him alone; he was afraid. Even the Inspector felt powerless; he preferred to say nothing, his phrases would not have sounded literary enough. The criminal was well-connected. Perhaps he was not a criminal at all. Thérèse was astonished that she had never noticed anything. So he'd been married when she came into his service, and she'd always thought he was a bachelor; she'd known there was a mystery, the mystery was his first wife, he'd murdered her, still waters are murderers, so that was why he never spoke, and because his first wife had had a skirt like hers, he'd married her for love. She cast about for proofs; between six and seven in the morning he was busy all by himself, everything was hidden away until he had smuggled all the bits out of the house, the very idea, she could remember it all. So that was why he'd run off and left her, he'd been afraid she'd tell the whole story. Thieves are murderers, she always said; Mr. Brute would be surprised.

  The caretaker was seized with terror; the shoulders, on which he was leaning, swayed. The Professor was taking deferred vengeance on him, when everybody had forgotten all about his daughter. The Professor was talking about a wife, but he meant his daughter. The caretaker kept seeing her too, but she wasn't there, was she? The Professor wanted to make a fool of him, but the others didn't fall for the trick. The heart of gold was letting him down; what's that! how mistaken one can be in people! In his sorrow he restrained himself. The Professor's accusations were too insubstantial; he knew his colleagues. He hadn't yet remembered that it was he who had promoted Kien Professor and he contemplated his degradation only as a final measure.

  After his repeated appeal for help — he had spoken calmly but it was a despairing entreaty — Kien waited. The dead silence was agreeable to him. Even Thérèse was silent. He wished she would vanish. Perhaps she would vanish now she was silent. She did not. Since no one came to meet him, he assumed the initiative himself, to cure himself of his hallucination. He was well aware of his duty to learning. He sighed, deeply he sighed, for who would not feel shame at having to call in the help of others? Murder was comprehensible; that murder he could defend; only its consequence, this hallucination, he feared so deeply. If the court declared him not responsible for his actions, he would commit suicide on the spot. He smiled, so as to ingratiate himself with his listeners; later on they would certainly be called as witnesses. The more friendly and sensible his words to them, the less important would his hallucination appear. He elevated them to the rank of educated men.

  'Psychology to-day is part of every profession pursued by — educated men.' Polite as he was, he prefaced these 'educated men' with a brief pause. 'I have not fallen a victim to a woman as you, perhaps, are thinking. My acquittal is a foregone conclusion. You see in me, almost certainly, the greatest living authority on sinology. But even greater men have suffered from hallucinations. The peculiarity of men of critical temperament consists in the energy with which they concentrate on the object of their choice. For the last hour I have been thinking so intensely and so exclusively of this figment of my brain, that I cannot now expel it. Convince yourselves, gentlemen, how reasonably I myself judge of it! May I earnestly request you to take thé following measures: Withdraw a few steps, all of you! Form up in single file! Let each approach me singly in a straight line! I hope hereby to convince myself that you will find no obstacle in the way, here, here, or here. Here I myself come into contact with a skirt, the woman inside it has been murdered, she is so like the murdered woman as to be mistaken for her, at present she is silent, but earlier she had the voice of the murdered woman too; this baffles me. I need a clear head. I shall conduct my own defence. I need no one. Lawyers are criminals; they lie. I live for truth. I know, this truth is a lie; help me; I know she must vanish. Help me, this skirt disturbs me. I hated her skirt even before the bloodhound ate it, and must I see it again now?'

  He had seized on Thérèse; not tentatively, but with all his strength he clutched at her skirt, he pushed her from him, he drew her to him, he enclosed her in his long, lean arms. She let him have his way. He only wanted to embrace her. Before they are hanged, murderers are allowed a last meal. Murder, she wouldn't have guessed. Now she knew: so thin and all those books with everything in them. He turned her round once on her axis and forewent the embrace. This made her angry. He glared at her from an inch off. He stroked her dress with all ten fingers. He put out his tongue and snuffled with his nose. Tears came into his eyes with the effort. 'I suffer from this hallucination!' he admitted, gasping. The listeners inferred sobs from his tears.

  'Don't cry, sir!' said one: he was a father himself, his eldest boy brought home top marks in German composition every day. The Inspector felt envious. The man in the shirt, whom he had undressed himself, suddenly seemed to him very well-dressed. 'All right, all right,' he grumbled. He thought of ways for transposing into a sterner key. To ease his task, he threw a glance at the shabby clothes on the table. The policeman with a
memory asked: "Why didn't you say something before?' He had not forgotten all that had happened. His question was purely rhetorical; he only asked it so as to remind people of his genius, as his colleagues called it, from time to time, particularly when things w;re quiet. The remaining, less developed characters, were still either listening or laughing. They were divided between curiosity and satisfaction. They felt happy, but did not know it. At these rare moments they forgot their duty, even their dignity, like many people at a theatre of established reputation. The playing-time was short. They would have liked more for their money. Kien spoke and performed, he took great pains. It was clear how seriously he took his profession. He earned his money with the sweat of his brow. No actor could have done better. In forty years he had not said so much about himself, as now in twenty minutes. His gestures were convincing. Almost, the spectators applauded. When he began to handle the woman, they were all benevolently willing to credit him with the murder. For a street performer he seemed too well-connected; for the theatre, his calves were too wretched. They would have been ready to argue that he was a decayed star, but they were too busy watching him and enjoying the mingled feelings which his art induced in diem.

  Thérèse was annoyed with him. As she imagined that the greedy eyes of the men, all of them, men, were intended for her, she accepted his flatteries for a while. He himself was repulsive to her. What good was he to her? He was feeble and thin, couldn't play the man, men don't do such things. He was a murderer of course, but she wasn't afraid, she knew him, he was a coward. But she felt that the murderer's blissful interlude was becoming to her; he was under her spell and she kept quiet. The caretaker's shrewdness had vanished. He noticed that his daughter was not the pivot of the Professor's tale, and became absorbed in the movement of his legs. If only a beggar like that would pass within focus of his peep-hole! He would snap his legs like matchsticks. A man should have calves, or be ashamed. What did he go dangling round that old bitch for? She wasn't worth courting. She ought to leave him in peace and pull no more pretty faces. She'd put a spell on the poor Professor all right! Writhing in the toils of love, as the saying is. A gentleman too! His colleagues in the force ought to help him put on his trousers again. A stranger might come in at any moment and see he had no calves. That'd be a shame for the whole force. He ought to stop talking, no one here can understand such clever stuff; he always talks too clever. Mostly he doesn't talk at all. To-day he's got the bit between his teeth. What's it all in aid of Suddenly Kien drew himself up. He swarmed up Thérèse to his full height Scarcely had he overtopped her — he was a head taller — than he began to laugh. 'She hasn't grown!' he said and laughed, 'she hasn't grown!'

  He had in fact decided to rid himself of this mirage by measuring himself against it. How could he reach the head of the pseudo-Therese? He saw her, a gigantic size, before him. He would stretch himself, he would stand on tiptoe and if she was still taller then he could say with absolute justification: 'In reality she was always a head smaller during the whole of her lifetime; therefore this object is a mirage!'

  But just as he had shot up, as agile as an ape, his cunning experiment dwindled to Therese's old size. He did not worry; on the contrary, could there have been a better proof of his famous accuracy; Even his imagination was accurate! He laughed. A scholar of his stamp was not lost. Humanity suffers from inaccuracy. Several milliards of ordinary human beings had lived without meaning and died without meaning. A thousand accurate ones, at the outside a thousand, had built up knowledge. To let one of the upper thousand die before his time, would be little less than race-suicide. He laughed heartily. He imagined the hallucinations of ordinary fellows, like those surrounding him. Thérèse would have been too tall for any of them; in all probability she would have touched the ceiling. They would have cried with terror and turned to others for help. They lived among hallucinations; they did not even know how to form a lucid sentence. It was necessary to guess what they were thinking of, if it interested you; far better not to trouble your head with it. Among them, you felt as in a madhouse. Whether they laughed or cried, they were always grotesquely masked; they were incurable, one as cowardly as another; not one of diem would have murdered Thérèse; they would have let themselves be plagued to death by her. They were even afraid of helping him because he was a murderer?, Who but he knew the motives he had had for the deed? At his trial, after his great speech, this miserable species would acquit him. He had reason to laugh, who else had been born with a memory like his? Memory was the pre-condition of scientific accuracy. He would examine this mirage until he had convinced himself of what it really was. He had followed trails no less dangerous, imperfect texts, missing lines. He could recall no occasion on which he had failed. No problem he had undertaken had ever been left unsolved. Even this murder he must needs regard as a task accomplished. It took more than a mere hallucination to shatter Kien; the hallucination ran the greater risk, even if it were of flesh and blood. He was hard. Thérèse had not spoken for a long time. He had his laugh out. Then he set to work again.

  As his courage and confidence grew, the quality of his performance diminished. When he began to laugh the spectators still found him amusing. A moment ago he had been sobbing bitterly; the contrast was brilliant. 'How he does it ! ' one of them exclaimed. ' Sunshine after rain,' replied his neighbour. Then they all grew grave. The Inspector clutched at his nose. He appreciated art but he preferred genuine laughter. The man with a memory drew attention to the fact that this was the first time he had heard the gentleman laugh. 'Talking wouldn't do no good!' bellowed the caretaker. The father of the bright schoolboy didn't share this view! 'You'd better talk, Mister!' he cautioned him. Kien did not obey. 'It's all in your own interest,' the father added. He spoke the truth. The attention of the spectators slackened rapidly. The prisoner went on laughing too long. They were already familiar with his comic figure. The Inspector was ashamed of himself; he, who had all but got his Matric, to let himself be imposed on by a man because he spouted sentences like a book. The thief must have learnt them by heart, a dangerous blackmailer. You couldn't get round him like that. Thought he'd get away with robbery and being in possession of false papers, if he made up something about murder. An experienced organ of the law was up to those little tricks. He had more than his share of impudence if he thought he could laugh in this situation. It would soon end in tears, and not crocodile tears either.

  The man with the memory was carefully sorting out all the thief's lies for the subsequent interrogation. There were over a dozen people there, and certainly not one of them had noticed anything. His memory was what they all relied on. He sighed aloud. He got no extra pay for his indispensable services. He did more than all the others put together. Not one of them was worth anything. He was the life and soul of the whole sub-station. The Inspector relied on him. He carried the burden. Everyone envied him. Just as if his promotion was already in the bag. But they knew very well why he never got promotion. His senior officers were afraid of his genius. While he counted up, with the help of his fingers, the various assertions made by the delinquent, the proud father cautioned Kien for the last time. He conceded that he might be unable to speak, but said: 'You'd better then, Mister!' He had a very important feeling that laughter in school earns no "Very good'. Almost everyone had by now let go of his neighbour. Some detached themselves from the circle. The ring and the tension broke. Even the less independent minds began to form opinions of their own. The man whose glass of water had been rejected, remembered it. The two who had acted as props for the caretaker became suddenly aware of him, and would have liked to knock his block off for his confiding insolence. He himself bellowed: 'The man talks too much !' When Kien once again became absorbed in his examination, it was too late. Only a new and striking performance would have saved him. He had the effrontery to give an encore. Thérèse felt that the crossfire of admiration had burnt out. 'Please, I've had enough!' she said. He wasn't even a man.

  Kien heard her voice and started. She an
nihilated his hopes; he had never expected this. He had thought that the rest of her, like her voice, would gradually vanish. He had just stiffened his fingers so as to pass them through the mirage. Last of all, he calculated, his eyes would cease to deceive him; optical illusions are the most obstinate of all. And then she spoke. He had not misheard. She said 'please'. He must begin again at the beginning; what injustice, his great work put back for years, he told himself, and stood frozen, just as the voice had struck him, with his back bent and the fingers of both hands rigidly extended, close against her. Instead of speaking, he was silent, he had forgotten how to cry and even how to laugh; he did nothing. Thus he threw away the last remnants of sympathy.

  'Clown!' yelled the Inspector. He trusted himself again to intervene, but he pronounced the word in English: the educated impression Kien had made on him was indestructible. He looked round him, to see if he was understood. The man with a memory transposed the word into the German pronunciation. He knew what it meant, but declared that the Inspector's was the correct form. From this moment he was under suspicion of secretly knowing English. The Inspector waited a moment to see the effect of his clown on the prisoner. He feared another sentence straight out of a book and was constructing an answer of the same kind. 'You seem to think that none of the servants of the state here present have devoted themselves to high studies.' It was a good sentence. He clutched at his nose. But Kien prevented him from bringing it out; he grew furious and screeched: 'You seem to think, that none of the servants here present have had any relations with Matric.'