It was already late. A yellow street clock struck two. Shop doors were shuttered, the corrugated metal eyelids of windows lowered. Someone’s belated footsteps approached then faded away. Where to hide?
Half a keyboard up from the sidewalk bricks, the light of a swaying image lamp glowed crimson in the wind. Under the light, screwed into the wall, hung a rectangular collection box: FOR THE CHURCH.
The fingers had no choice; they scrabbled up the church’s craggy wall to a window ledge, then leapt down onto the sloping lid of the collection box. The slot in the lid was narrow, but the pianist’s nimble fingers were not famed for their fineness for nothing; they squeezed through the gap and . . .jumped. Inside it was dark, except for a faint crimson glint dropped in the box by the image lamp. Beside the glint was a crumpled and obliging banknote. Chilled to the bone, the fingers curled up in a corner of the metal box, covered themselves with the banknote, and lay still. Their stiff joints ached; their cracked and broken nails itched; the little finger was swollen and the ring’s thin band cut deep into the skin.
But weariness won out; the crimson glint swayed from side to side while the rain rat-tatted a familiar moto perpetuo on the roof of the box with sprightly drops. Through the slot, narrowing its emerald eyes, peered Sleep.
3
The fingers gave themselves a good shake, rubbed their numb joints, and tried to stretch out at full length on their hard bed. A crimson ray of dawn had entwined the lamp’s slowly fading glint.
The rain had fallen silent. Having jumped up once or twice and bumped against the ceiling, the fingers scrambled gingerly out of the slot and sat down on the damp slant of the collection-box roof.
An early-morning wind was dandling the leafless branches of the poplars. Below, puddles shimmered; above, clouds glowered.
As unusual as the situation was, the fingers’ long-established habit of practicing for an hour and a half every morning forced them to climb up onto the window ledge and run a methodical scales-like race from end to end, from right to left and left to right, until their joints were warm and supple.
Having finished their exercises, the fingers jumped back onto the collection box, sat down by the slot, and began dreaming about the recent but now torn-away past . . .
Lying under a warm satin quilt; morning ablutions in warm soapy water; then a pleasant stroll along the gently yielding keys; and then . . .and then the attendant fingers of the left hand dress them in a soft leather glove, fasten the snaps, and Dorn carries them forth, cradled in a pocket of his warm coat. Suddenly . . .the glove is pulled off and someone’s fine sweet-scented nails, trembling slightly, touch them. The fingers press themselves ardently to the pink nails and . . .
Suddenly a gnarled hand with dirty yellow nails knocked the abstracted fingers off the collection-box roof. The hand belonged to a weak-sighted old woman on her way home from the market. She had put down her basket full of parcels, come up to the box, and felt about with a trembling hand for the slot, meaning to contribute her meager mite. But just then something soft and alive had grabbed her finger, jerked back, and gone head over heels. She heard a rustling among the paper parcels—and suddenly, five human fingers without the human, flicking off flour, jumped out of the basket and shot down the sidewalk.
Dropping coins, the wary old woman crossed herself again and again and mumbled something with a toothless, quivering mouth.
From cobble to cobble, plunging through puddles and gutters, the fingers ran on and on.
Two small boys squatting by a gutter had just launched their toy boat with its paper sail when they noticed the fingers crouching nearby, preparing to jump across the noisy canal. The boys’ mouths fell open. Their abandoned sailboat ran aground on a cobble and capsized.
“Oh-ho-ho!” the boys whooped and gave chase.
Only an unparalleled pianistic fluency saved the fleeing fingers: Spraying spatters, tearing their tender epidermis on sharp-edged stones, they scampered at the speed of Beethoven’s Appassionata, and had there been under them not rough cobbles but ivory keys, all the greatest masters of passage-work and glissando would have been outdone and put to shame.
Suddenly from behind something growled, and an enormous sharp-clawed paw knocked the fugitive off its five feet; the fingers fell backward, banging their diamond ring against the sidewalk and throwing their bloodied nails up in the air.
The large fangs of a watchdog leered over them; mortally tired and writhing in pain, the fingers snapped at the dog’s nose and, having gained a second, rushed on, pursued by barks and yelps.
4
That night the fingers had to camp in the downspout of a drainpipe. Later, when it again began to rain, the exhausted waifs were sluiced out of the metal pipe—and forced to roam the dark pavement in search of a dry refuge.
In a dingy basement window a flame flickered. Picking their way along the wet sash, the poor fingers tapped shyly on the pane. Nobody came.
A hole in the glass had been papered over; the index finger ripped the paper, and the others climbed in after it. Onto the windowsill. In the room: not a sound. On the kitchen table, flat against the window: not a crumb. In the cast-iron stove on squat bow legs, grayish crimson coals were smoldering. On a hard plank bed, asleep in a huddled heap, were a woman and two children; thin faces, eyes hidden under wrinkled blue-gray lids, bodies under fusty rags.
But on the clean white pillowcase, picked out with yellow glints from the oil lamp, sat, smiling slyly, Sleep; he rubbed his emerald eyes with webbed, translucent paws and told the poor souls his fairy tales. His words made the stains on the walls bloom with pink blossoms, while the clothes hanging overhead began floating along the line like a succession of snow-white clouds.
The decorous fingers sat down on the edge of the table to listen; lulled by the sound of Sleep’s soft voice, they recalled the rolling course of Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, the mysterious leaps and appeals of Kreisleriana.
The fingers too wished to give the poor souls a present. Dorn’s diamond ring still glittered on the swollen pinkie; doubled up with pain, the fingers dug their broken nails under the gold band: Clink—and the ring came to rest on the table edge.
Time to go.
It was nearly morning. Sleep began to bustle about; he slipped down from the pillow, packed up his dreams, and was gone. The fingers followed suit; with a gentle rustle of the window’s torn paper, they were again on the pavement.
A wet spring snow of white stars was falling into puddles of slush.
The worn-out fingers had no strength left; huddled against a cold paving stone, pinched together, they fell asleep beneath the soft flights of white stars. In that same instant they heard the hardened ground beginning to rock like countless piano keys; crashing down on black and white, dropping the sun from their phalanges, rushing straight for the weary waifs, were ruthless and gigantic fingers.
5
A music critic came running into Dorn’s study clutching a newspaper.
“Look at this!”
On page eight, circled in red pencil, was the following notice:
FOUND
FIVE FINGERS
OF A RIGHT HAND
Inquire at: Dessingstrasse, 7, Apt. 54
Telephone: 3.45
Dorn dashed out into the vestibule and grabbed his coat off the hook, stuffing his awkward empty cuff into the right sleeve.
“Maestro, it’s too early,” the critic fussed. “One inquires ‘from 11 to 1,’ and now it’s only a quarter to ten. Besides . . .”
But Dorn was already flying down the stairs.
Half an hour later, when the pianist Heinrich Dorn saw his runaway fingers lying in a cardboard box lined with cotton wool, he began to cry; the fingers, still pinched together, lay motionless in a hideous lump. Their cracked and ulcerated skin was caked with mud. Their once-fine tips, now repulsively flattened, bore the yellow excrescences of calluses; the nails were broken and lacerated; dried blood was turning black under the bends of the joints.
“They’re dead,” gasped a white-lipped Dorn, reaching with the clumsy funnel of his right cuff for the motionless fingers. Just then the little finger twitched—but barely.
Dorn, his teeth madly chattering, brought his fingerless arm right up to the box; the fingers, tossing about and getting tangled in the whorls of cotton wool, half raised themselves up on their trembling and wobbling phalanges and suddenly, all aquiver, jumped inside the cuff.
Dorn laughed and cried at the same time; on his knees, sticking out of crisp white cuffs, two hands lay side by side: one with white, tapered, manicured fingers smelling of expensive cologne; the other brownish gray, calloused, and covered with abrasions.
Two weeks later Heinrich Dorn returned to the stage for the first in a famous cycle of concerts.
The pianist played differently somehow: Gone were the dazzling passages, the lightning glissandos and emphatic grace notes. The pianist’s fingers seemed disinclined to saunter down that short, seven-octave road paved with ivory keys. Then again there were moments when it seemed as though someone’s gigantic fingers—torn away from another keyboard, from another world—dropping the sun from their phalanges, were skipping along the skimpy, squeaky, rickety piano keys. And then thousands of ears leaned forward—on necks craning toward the stage.
But that was only at moments.
Connoisseurs, one after another, tiptoed out of the hall.
1922
THE UNBITTEN ELBOW
THIS WHOLE story would have remained hidden under the starched cuff and sleeve of a jacket, if not for the Weekly Review. The Weekly Review came up with a questionnaire (Your favorite writer? Your average weekly earnings? Your goal in life?) and sent it out to all subscribers. Among the thousands of completed forms (the Review had a huge circulation), the sorters found one, Form No. 11111, which, wander as it would from sorter to sorter, could not be sorted: On Form No. 11111, opposite “Average Earnings,” the respondent had written “0,” and opposite “Goal in Life,” in clear round letters, “To bite my elbow.”
The form was forwarded for clarification to the secretary; from the secretary it went before the round, black-rimmed spectacles of the editor. The editor jabbed his call button, a messenger scurried in then scurried out—and a minute later the form, folded in four, had slipped into the pocket of a reporter who had also received these verbal instructions: “Talk to him in a slightly playful tone and try to get to the bottom of this. What is it, a symbol or romantic irony? Well, anyway, you know what to do . . .”
The reporter assumed a knowing expression and promptly set off to the address written on the bottom of the form.
A tram took him as far as the last suburban stop; then the zigzags of a narrow staircase led him at length up to an attic; finally, he knocked on a door and waited for an answer. None came. Another knock, more waiting—and the reporter gave the door a push. It swung open and before his eyes there appeared a penurious room, walls crawling with bedbugs, a table, and a wooden stove bench. On the table lay an unfastened cuff; on the stove bench lay a man, his arm bared and his mouth edging past the crook of his elbow.
Buried in his task, the man had not heard the knocks on the door or the steps on the stairs; only the intruder’s loud voice made him raise his head. The reporter noticed several scratches and bite marks on No. 11111’s arm, a few inches from the sharp elbow now pointed at him. Unable to bear the sight of blood, he turned away saying, “You seem to be in earnest. That is, I mean to say, there’s no symbolism here, is there?”
“None.”
“And I suppose romantic irony has nothing to do with it either.”
“Pure anachronism,” the elbow-eater muttered, and again pressed his mouth to the scratches and scars.
“Stop! Please stop!” the reporter cried, shutting his eyes. “When I’ve gone, you can go right ahead. But for now won’t you allow your mouth to give me a short interview? Tell me, when did you begin . . .?” And his pencil began scratching in his notebook.
When he had finished, the reporter went out the door only to come straight back in.
“Now listen,” he said, “trying to bite your own elbow’s all very well, but you know it can’t be done. No one has ever succeeded; every attempt has ended in a fiasco. Have you thought about that, you strange man?”
In reply, two glazed eyes glowering beneath knitted brows and a curt “Lo posible es para los tontos.”[1]
The clapped-shut notebook sprang open.
“Forgive me, I’m not a linguist. Would you mind . . .”
But No. 11111, evidently unable to bear the separation any longer, had already reapplied his mouth to his badly bitten arm. Tearing his eyes and whole body away, the reporter sprinted down the zigzag stairs, hailed a taxi, and raced back to the office. The next issue of the Weekly Review ran an item with the headline: LO POSIBLE ES PARA LOS TONTOS.
Adopting a slightly playful tone, the piece described a naïve crackpot whose naïveté bordered on . . . On what, the Review did not say, ending instead with the pithy dictum of a forgotten Portuguese philosopher, intended to chasten and check all the sociopathic dreamers and fanatics searching in our realistic and sober century for the impossible and impracticable. This mysterious dictum, which doubled as the headline, was followed by a brief “Sapienti sat.”[2]
Random readers of the Weekly Review expressed interest in this bizarre story, two or three magazines reprinted it—but it would soon have been forgotten in memories and archives if not for the attack on the Weekly Review by the weightier Monthly Review. The next issue of that organ ran this item: WITHOUT A LEG TO STAND ON. The caustic author quoted the Weekly Review then went on to explain that the Portuguese dictum was in fact a Spanish proverb meaning: “The attainable is for fools.” To this the author appended a terse “et insapienti sat,”[3] and to that short “sat” a bracketed “sic.”
After that the Weekly Review had no choice but to point out—in a very long article in the very next issue, fighting “sat” with “sat”—that not everyone is blessed with a sense of irony: deserving of our pity was not this naïve attempt to do the undoable (all genius, after all, is naïve), not this fanatic of his own elbow, but that mercenary hireling, that creature in blinkers from the Monthly Review who, because he dealt solely with letters, understood everything literally.
Naturally, the Monthly Review was not going to take that lying down. Nor would the Weekly Review let its rival have the last word. In the bitter debate that ensued, the elbow fanatic came across as a cretin and a genius by turns, as a candidate now for a free bed in an insane asylum, now for a fortieth seat in the Academy of Sciences.
As a result, several hundred thousand readers of both reviews learned of No. 11111 and his attitude toward his elbow, but this debate did not excite much interest among a broader audience, especially given other, more compelling events at the time: two earthquakes and one chess match—every day two rather stupid fellows sat down to sixty-four squares (one looked like a butcher, the other like a clerk in a chic shop) and somehow fellows and squares became the focus of all intellectual interests, needs, and expectations. Meanwhile, in his small square room, not unlike a chessboard square, with his elbow pulled up to his teeth, No. 11111 waited, wooden and inert like a dead chessman, to be put in play.
The first person to make the elbow-eater a serious offer was the manager of a suburban circus in search of new acts to enliven the show. He was an enterprising sort, and an old issue of the Review that happened to catch his eye decided the elbow-eater’s immediate fate. The poor devil refused at first, but when the showman pointed out that this was the only way for him to live by his elbow, and that a living wage would allow him to refine his method and improve his technique, the downcast crackpot mumbled something like “uh-huh.”
This act—billed as ELBOW vs. MAN! WILL HE OR WON’T HE BITE IT? THREE TWO-MINUTE ROUNDS. REFEREE BELKS—was the finale. It followed the Lady with the Python, the Roman Gladiators, and the Flying Leap from Under the Dome. It went
like this: With the orchestra playing a march, the man would stride into the ring with one arm bared, his face rouged, and the scars around his funny bone carefully powdered white. The orchestra would stop playing—and the contest would begin; the man’s teeth would sink into his forearm and begin edging toward his elbow, inch by inch, closer and closer.
“Bluffer, you won’t bite it!”
“Look! Look! I think he bit it.”
“No, he didn’t. So near and yet . . .”
The champion’s neck, veins bulging, would continue to strain and stretch, his bloodshot eyes would bore into his elbow as blood dripped from his bites onto the sand; the spectators, armed with binoculars, would turn frantic, jumping out of their seats, stamping their feet, climbing over barriers, hooting, whistling, and screaming:
“Grab it with your teeth!”
“Go on, get that elbow!”
“Come on, elbow, come on! Don’t give in!”
“No fair! They’re in cahoots!”
After three rounds, the referee would declare the elbow the winner. And no one suspected—not the referee, not the impresario, not the departing crowd—that the man with his elbow bared would soon trade this circus stage for the world stage, that instead of a sandy circle some twenty yards in diameter, he would have at his feet the earth’s entire orbital plane.
It began like this: The fashionable speaker Eustace Kint, who rose to fame through the ears of elderly but wealthy ladies, was taken by friends after a birthday lunch—by chance, on a lark—to the circus. A professional philosopher, Kint caught the elbow-eater’s metaphysical meaning right off the bat. The very next morning he sat down to write an article on “The Principles of Unbitability.”
Kint, who only a few years before had trumped the tired motto “Back to Kant” with his new and now wildly popular “Forward to Kint,” wrote with elegant ease and rhetorical flourishes. (He once remarked, to thunderous applause, that “philosophers, when speaking to people about the world, see the world, but they do not see that their listeners, located in that same world, five steps away from them, are bored to tears.”) After a vivid description of the man-versus-elbow contest, Kint generalized the fact and, hypostatizing it, dubbed this act “metaphysics in action.”
Autobiography of a Corpse Page 15