Auto-Da-Fé

by Elias Canetti

  Among the men hurrying to work women forced their obstinate and unpleasing way. Already early in the morning they were on their feet. They came back soon, and thus counted twice over. Presumably they had been shopping. He heard 'Good mornings' and superfluous compliments. Even the most cutting trousers let themselves be held up. They expressed their masculine subservience in various ways. One clicked his heels with violence, a noisy pain struck on Kien's low-lying ears. Others rocked themselves round on their toes, two bent their knees. With others, the knife-edge creases began to tremble slighdy. An unscrupulous inclination betrayed itself in the shape of the angular corner made by trousers and floor. One man, one single man Kien hoped to see, who would show aversion to a woman, who would form an obtuse angle with the floor. No such man came. Think only of the hour: these men had but just escaped their beds, and their legal wives; the whole house was married. Day and work opened out before them. They were hurrying to leave. Their very legs imparted a sense of freshness and determination to the spectator. What possibilities! What strength! No mental exertions awaited them, but life, discipline; subordination; entrusted duties; well-known purposes; a network, an achievement, the passage of their time, distributed as they themselves had wished to distribute it. And what did they meet in the entrance hall; The wife, the daughter, the cook of some neighbour — nor was it chance that brought them together. The women arranged it so; from behind the doors of the flats they stalked their prey; scarcely had they heard the footfall of the man they had condemned to their love, than they glided after him, before him, alongside him, little Cleopatras, each ready with every lie, flattering, wheedling, aquiver for attention, promising their guilty favours, mercilessly scratching the surface of the fair, full day to which the men were bound, strong and ready, honourably to partition their time. For these men are debauched, they live in the schools of their wives; they hate their wives naturally, but instead of generalizing that hatred, they run after the next woman. One of them smiles, and they stand stock still. How they abase themselves, put off their plans, dangle their legs, waste their time, bargain for trivial pleasures! They take off their hats so courteously as to take your breath and sight away. If the hat should fall on the floor, behold a grovelling hand comes after it; a grinning face follows. Two seconds ago that face was still grave. The intruder has succeeded; she has robbed a man of his gravity. The women of the house have laid their ambush immediately in front of the peep-hole. Even in their secrets they must be admired by some diird party.

  But Kien does not admire them. He could ignore them, God knows it would be easy — a mere matter of will-power. Ignoring is in the blood of a learned man. Learning is the art of ignoring. But for a reason, near to his heart, he makes no use of his art. Women are illiterates, unendurable and stupid, a perpetual disturbance. How rich would the world be without them, a vast laboratory, an overfilled library, a heaven of intensive study, night and day! Yet justice compels him to admit one saving grace in all these women; they wear skirts, but not one is blue; as long and as far as Kien looks not one of the women of the house awakens in him the recollection of one who erstwhile would glide over diis very threshold and who, in the end and far too late, died by hunger the most wretched of deaths.

  Towards one o'clock Benedikt Pfaff appeared and asked for money for dinner. He must fetch it from the café and had not a penny on him. The State paid him his pension regularly on the first of the month, not on the last. Kien asked for quiet. His days down here would be few and numbered. Soon he would be going back to his flat. Before then he wished to complete his researches at the peep-hole. A 'Charac-terology of Trousers' was in prospect together with an 'Appendix on Shoes'. He had no time to eat, to-morrow perhaps.

  'What's that!' bellowed the caretaker. 'I won't have it! Professor, I'm asking you for your own good, hand over the money! In that interesting position a fellow can starve to death. I'm taking care of you.'

  Kien rose and cast an exploratory glance at the trousers of the peacebreaker. 'If you please, will you kindly leave my — study at once!' He emphasized the 'my', made a short pause after it and threw out the 'study' as though it were an insult.

  Pfaff's eyes started from his head. His fists itched. So as not to use them at once he rubbed his nose hard. Had the Professor gone mad? His study. Now what was he to do? Break his legs, smash in his skull, spatter his brains, or begin with one in the belly? Drag him up to that woman? That'd be a good one! She'd lock the murderer into the Uvatory, that's what she said. Chuck him out into the street? Smash down the wall and shut him in the back room where the heart of his late-lamented daughter was lost?

  None of these things happened. At Pfaff's command Thérèse had cooked lunch; it was waiting upstairs; cost what it would — even the sweetest revenge — he must earn his share of it. He wouldn't have minded keeping a pub, it would have suited him as well as being in a circus. He drew a small shutter-lock out of his pocket, pushed Kien aside with one finger, bent down and locked the lid over his peep-hole.

  'My hole's my own!' he bellowed. His fists were swelling again. 'Shurrup!' he told them, furious. Sulkily they withdrew into his pockets. There they lay, ready to pounce. They were hurt. They rubbed their hairs on the lining of his pockets and growled.

  'What trousers!' Kien was thinking, 'what trousers!' One profession, an important one, he had missed in his morning's observations; the killer. Here was one — the very one who had this moment coldbloodedly obstructed his instrument of observation — who wore trousers typical of those which would be seen on such a criminal: crumpled, glimmering reddish with faded blood, kept in ugly motion from within, threadbare and greasy, clumsy, dark, repulsive. If beasts wore trousers, they would wear them like that.

  'Dinner is ordered!' foamed the beast. 'What's ordered must be paid for!' Pfaffwhipped out a fist, opened it much against its will, and held out his flat hand. 'I'm not going to lose money, Professor, you don't know me! I won't stand any nonsense: I ask you for the last time! Think of your health! What'U become of you?'

  Kien made no move.

  'Then I shall have to search you!' He arrested him, said, "What a scarecrow!' threw the scarecrow on the bed, and looked through all its pockets, carefully counted the money he found, took out a reasonable sum for a meal, not a penny more, called himself, for his honesty, a good fellow and ended menacingly: 'I'll send you your dinner. You don't deserve my company. The ingratitude of the man. I'll shave that off. I warn you! My hole'll stay shut. That's justice. All those trousers have made a crook of you. I must watch out. If you behave proper I'll open it again to-morrow, out of pure consideration and kind-heartedness. That's how I am. Be good now! At four you'll get your coffee. At seven you'll have a light supper. You'll pay when it comes! Or would you rather pay now?'

  Kien had just replaced himself on his feet, but he was laid down flat once more. So as to settle the matter once for afl, Pfaff worked out the Professor's keep for a week; for a policeman his arithmetic was not bad, at the third attempt the sum seemed correct, as it was a large one, he took charge of it, wrote under the calculation: 'Received with thanks, Benedikt Pfaff, Retired police constable,' slipped the piece of paper, because it was his own, carefully under the pillow, only then cleared his throat and spat (pardy to show his disappointment in the Professor, partly at the disappointment of his fists, so long idle), and went out. The door remained whole. But he locked it on the outside.

  Another lock interested Kien more. He wrenched at the lid of the peep-hole; he loosened it a little but it didn't come off. He turned out the closet for keys. Perhaps one would fit. Under the bed there was nothing, he broke open the cupboard. Inside were old uniforms, a bugle, unused boxing gloves, a tightly tied parcel of clean, freshly ironed women's underclothes (all white), a service revolver, ammunition and photographs, which he looked through out of loathing rather than curiosity. A father was seated with legs astraddle, his right hand held a small woman prisoner; with his left he pressed a three-year-old child to him; she floated shy
ly about his knee. On the back he read in fat, noisy letters: 'Ginger the Cat with wife and daughter.' At that moment it struck Kien that the caretaker had been married a very long time before his wife died. The picture showed him in the midst of his married life. Filled with cruel pleasure, he crossed out the words 'Ginger the Cat' and wrote 'Murderer' above, put back the photograph on top, on the same side as the uniforms, which, to judge by their condition, were often used, and closed the cupboard.

  A key! A key! A key! My kingdom for a key! He felt as if he had a halter through every pore of his skin, as if someone had twisted all the halters into one rope and the strong, bulky, awkward thing was stretched through the peep-hole into the corridor, where a whole regiment of trousers were tugging at it. 'I come, I come,' gasped Kien, 'but I'm being stopped!' In despair he threw himself on the bed. He recalled what he had seen. Man after man passed before him. He called them all back; he would not forgive them their submission to the women and hurled a full complement of reproaches at their heads. He had enough to study and to think over. He must keep his mind occupied! He placed four Japanese Genii before the portals of his mind, formidable monsters, devouring, terrible. They knew what must not cross the threshold. Only what advanced the safety of the mind might pass.

  Essential to pass in review a number of highly venerated theories. Even learning has its weaker points. The foundation of all true learning is doubt. Descartes had proved that. Why for instance do physics take into account three primary colours? No one would deny the importance of red. A thousand proofs bear witness to its elemental significance. It might be argued against yellow that, in the spectrum, it comes perilously near to green. But green, which is generally held to be the result of mixing yellow with an unmentionable colour — green must be cautiously considered, although there is a presumption that it is a healing colour. Let us reverse the argument! A colour which is beneficial to the eye cannot be made up of component parts of which one is the most disturbing, most hideous, and most meaningless that can be thought of. Green contains no blue. Let us calmly speak the word, it is merely a word, nothing more, emphatically not a primary colour. Clearly there is a secret somewhere in the spectrum, an element foreign to us, which, next to yellow, plays its part in creating green. Students of physics should make it a duty to find out. They have more important things to do. Daily they flood the world with new rays, all or them from the invisible spectrum. For the problem of our actual light they have found a stock solution. The third primary colour, the missing one, the one we know only by its results, not by its appearance, is — so they say — blue. Take a word at random, fit it into a problem and the problem is solved. So that no one can see through the trick, they choose a disreputable and generally discredited word; naturally enough men hesitate before they submit such a word to microscopic examination. It stinks, they tell themselves, and give a wide berth to anything which seems blue. Men are cowards. When a decision should be taken they would rather bargain a dozen times over it; maybe they can lie it away. Thus up to this very day they have believed in the existence of a chimerical colour, with a more rock-like faith than they have in God. There is no blue. Blue is an invention of the physicists. If there were blue, the hair of a typical murderer would be this colour. What is the caretaker's name? The Blue Cat? On the contrary: 'Ginger the Cat, the Red Cat!'

  The logical argument against the existence of blue is further strengthened by the empirical. With closed eyes, Kien sought some image which in the general opinion would be described as blue. He saw the sea. A pleasing light rises from it, tree-tops with the wind passing over them. Not in vain do poets, standing upon a summit, compare the woods below them to the sea. They do it again and again. They cannot avoid certain similes. There is a deeper reason for this. Poets are men of the senses. They see the wood. It is green. In their recollection another image wakens, no less vast, no less green: the sea. So the sea is green. Over it is the vault of the sky. It is full of clouds — they are black and heavy. A storm is rising. But it cannot break. Nowhere is the sky blue. The day passes. How the hours hasten! Why? Who is chasing them? May not a man see the skies before nightfall, see their accursed colour? It is a lie. Towards evening the clouds part. A sharp red breaks through. Where is the blue? Everywhere it burns, red, red, red! Then night comes. One more successful revelation. No one doubted the red.

  Kien laughs. Whatever he sets his hand to succeeds, submits to his proofs. A benevolent wisdom is given to him even in sleep. True, he is not asleep. He is only pretending! If he opens lus eyes, they fall on the locked peep-hole. He will spare himself a purposeless annoyance. He despises the murderer. As soon as he permits him his rightful place again, that is as soon as he takes the lock off the peep-hole and apologizes for his impertinence, Kien will open his eyes. Not a moment before.

  'I ask you, murderer!' a certain voice interrupts him.

  'Quiet!' he commanded. Reflecting on the colour blue, he had neglected a certain voice. He must extinguish it, like the irrevocable skirt. He closed his eyes even tighter and commanded again: 'Quiet.'

  'I ask you, here's your dinner.'

  'Nonsense! The caretaker is sending in my dinner.' Contemptuously, he pursed his lips.

  'That's why, he sent me. I had to. Did I want to come?'

  The voice appeared indignant. A small trick would enforce its silence. 'I want no dinner!' He rubbed his fingers. He did that well. He entered into her stupidity. A formidable debater, he would drive her step by step into a corner.

  'I don't care. I'll drop it! A shame for the beautiful dinner. I ask you, whose money is it? Someone else's.'

  The voice permitted itself flippant intonations. It seemed to feel at home here. It behaved itself as if it had been resuscitated from the common pit. An artist had put the pieces together, a great artist, a genius. He knew how to inform corpses with their own old tones of voice.

  'By all means, drop the non-existent dinner! For there is one thing, my dear corpse, which I must tell you. I am not afraid. Those times are past. I will tear every shred off the body of a ghost! I still hear no dinner falling. Perhaps I have failed to apprehend the noise. Nor do I see any fragments. I am aware that eating is done from plates. China, they say, is britde. Or am I under a misapprehension? Let me advise you now to invent some story of unbreakable china. Corpses are full of invention. I am waiting! I am waiting!' Kien grinned. His cruel irony delighted him.

  'I ask you, there's nothing in that! Eyes are for seeing. Anyone can be blind!'

  'I shall open my eyes, and when I do not see you, you can sink into the ground with shame. I have played fair until now. I have indeed partly taken you seriously. But when I see, what, out of consideration for you, I have not wanted to see, namely that you speak without being here, then it is all over with you. I will open my eyes wide enough to astonish you. I will put my fingers through where your face would be if you had a face. My eyes do not open easily: they are tired of seeing nothing, but when once they are open, woe to you! The look I am preparing knows no mercy. Patience a little longer! I will wait a little for I am sorry for you. Vanish, rather, of your own accord! I will allow you an honourable retreat. I will count ten and my head will be empty. Must we have more blood? We are civilized beings. Better for you to go of your own accord, believe me! Moreover, this closet belongs to a murderer. I give you fair warning. If he comes he will strike you dead!'

  'You don't do me in!' screamed the voice. 'Your first wife, yes; not me!'

  Heavy objects began to fall on Kien. If anyone were there he would have thought that eating utensils had been thrown at him. He knew better. He saw nothing, although he kept his eyes closed, a condition highly favourable to hallucinations. He smelt food. His sense of smell had turned traitor. Once again his ears vibrated with wild abuse. He did not listen carefully. But in every sentence the word 'Murderer!' was reiterated. His lids valiantly stood their ground. About his eyes his muscles contracted sharply. Poor, sick ears! Something liquid trickled down his chest. 'I'm off!' shrieked
the voice, and again someone was listening to every word, 'that's all the dinner you'll get. Murderers can starve. Then respectable people can stay alive. Locked up, you are, anyway. Like a wild beast! The whole bed's in a mess. The tenants'U be wanting to know about it. The house says he's mad. I say: murderer. I'm off now. A shame for all my trouble! The closet stinks. What can I do about it? It was a good dinner. There's another room behind this. Murderers ought to be walled up! I'm off.'