Auto-da-fé (60 page)
Authors: Elias Canetti
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Literary Criticism, #German, #Novel, #European, #German fiction
'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 shyly 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.'
Suddenly all was still. Another man would have rejoiced at once. Kien waited. He counted up to sixty. The stillness continued. He repeated a sermon of the Buddha, in the original Pali, not one of his longest dicta. But he omitted not a syllable and religiously declaimed all the repetitive phrases. Now let us half open our left eye, he said very softly, all is still, he who fears now is a coward. The right eye follows. Both gaze out into an empty closet. On the bed are strewn several plates, a tray and cutlery, on the floor a broken glass. A piece of beef is there, and his suit is smeared with spinach. He is wet to the skin with soup. It all smells normal and genuine. Who can have brought it? There was no one here. He goes to the door. It is locked. He rattles it, in vain. Who can have locked him in? The caretaker, when he left. The spinach is an illusion. He washes it away. The splinters of glass he gathers together. His grief cuts him. Blood flows. Is he to doubt the reality of his own blood? History tells us of the strangest errors. There should be a knife with the dinner things. To prove it, he carefully cuts off— although it is sharp and very painful — the little finger of his left hand. A great deal more blood begins to flow. He wraps his injured hand in a white handkerchief which is hanging down from the bed. The handkerchief turns out to be a napkin. In the corner he reads his own monogram. How did this get here? It seems as though someone had thrown into the room, through the roof, walls and locked door, a cooked dinner. The windows are unbroken. He tries the meat. It has the right taste. He feels ill, he feels hungry, he eats it all up. Holding his breath, stiff and quivering, he senses how each morsel finds its way down his alimentary tubes. Someone must have crept in while he was lying with closed eyes on the bed. He listens. So as to miss nothing, he lifts his finger. Then he looks under the bed and in the cupboard. He finds nobody. Someone has been here without speaking a word, and has gone away again: afraid. The canaries did not sing. Why do people keep these animals? He has done them no harm. Since he has ived here, he has let them alone. They have betrayed him. Flames flicker before his eyes. Suddenly the canaries start up. He threatens them with his bandaged fist. He looks at them: the birds are blue. They are mocking him. He pulls one after another out of the cage and presses their throats until they are strangled. Triumphant, he opens the window and throws the corpses into the street. His little finger, a fifth corpse, he tosses after them. Scarcely has he thus expelled everything blue from the room when the walls begin to dance. Their violent movement dissolves in blue spots. They are skirts, he whispers and creeps under the bed. He had begun to doubt his reason.
CHAPTER III
A MADHOUSE
On an excitingly warm evening late in March the famous psychiatrist George Kien paced the rooms of his Paris Institute. The windows were open wide. Between the patients a stubborn contest was in progress for the limited space close to the bars. One head banged another. Abuse was bandied about. Almost all were suffering from the unfamiliar air which all day long they had been — some of them literally — gulping and swallowing in the garden. When the attendants had brought them back to the dormitories they were discontented. They wanted more air. Not one would admit to being tired. Until it was time for sleep they were still breathing at the window bars the last dregs of the evening. Here they felt themselves to be even closer to the air which filled their light, lofty rooms.
Not even the Professor, whom they loved because he was beautiful and kind, distracted them at their occupation. At other times when it was rumoured he was coming, the greater number of the patients in a dormitory would run in a body to meet him. Usually they strove for some contact with him, either by touch or voice, just as to-day they strove for places at the window. The loadiing which so many of them felt for the Institute where they thought themselves confined, was never vented on the youthful Professor. It was only two years since he had become in name the director of the extensive Institute which he had in fact directed before, as the good angel of a diabolical superior. Those patients who thought that they had been detained by force, or who in fact had been, ascribed the blame to that all-powerful, although now dead, predecessor.
This latter had embraced official psychiatry with the obstinacy of a madman. He took it for his real work in life, to use the vast material at his disposal to support the accepted terminology. Typical cases, in his sense of the word, robbed him of his sleep. He clung to the infallibility of the system and hated doubters. Human beings, especially nerve cases and criminals, were nothing to him. He allowed them a certain right to existence. They provided experiences which authorities could use to build up the science. He himself was an authority. On die value of such constructive mind he would — although a surly man of few words — make long and vehement speeches to which his assistant Georges Kien, under compulsion and burning with shame at his narrow-mindedness, must listen from beginning to end and from end to beginning, hour after hour, standing to attention. When a milder and a more severe opinion were in opposition, his predecessor would decide for the more severe. To patients who wearied him on his every round with the same old story, he would say: 'I know all that.' To his wife he complained bitterly of the professional necessity of having to deal with people not responsible for their actions. To her moreover he revealed his most secret thoughts about the essence of insanity, which he did not publish only because they were too simple and crude for the system and therefore dangerous. Madness, he said with great emphasis, and looked at his wife with penetrating and accusing gaze (she blushed), madness is the disease which attacks those very people who think only of themselves. Mental disease is the punishment of egoism. Thus asylums are always full of the scum of the earth. Prisons perform the same task, but science requires asylums for its experimental material. He had nothing else to say to his wife. She was thirty years younger than him and cast a glow over the evening of his life. His first wife had run away before he could shut her up — as he had done with his second — in his own institute; she was an incurable egoist. His third, against whom he had nothing save his own jealousy, loved George Kien.
