Authors: Elias Canetti
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Literary Criticism, #German, #Novel, #European, #German fiction
Reassured he went on: 'You can only make use of it in better-class professions,' he said, meaning the Stipendium; 'when she swore by the Holy Saints I moved in with her. Do you know how long ago that was? I can tell you because you're my friend; that was twenty years ago. Twenty years she's been scraping and saving, doesn't allow herself anything, doesn't allow me anything. Do you know what a monk is? No, you wouldn't know that because you're a Jew, we don't have monks among the Jews, monks, never mind, we live like monks, I'll tell you a better one, perhaps you'll understand it now since you don't understand much: we live like nuns, nuns are the wives of the monks, see? Every monk has a wife and she's called a nun. But you can't imagine how separately they live. That's the sort of marriage everyone would like, the Jews ought to have that kind too! And would you believe it, we haven't got that stipendium together yet ? Add it up now, you must be able to add! You'd give twenty schillings right away. But not everyone would give that. Nowadays a gentleman s a rarity. Who can afford such stupidity? You're my friend. Like the good chap you are, you say to yourself Fischerle must have his stipendium. If not, he'll be ruined. Can I let a man like Fischerle ruin himself? That would be a shame, no, I can't do a thing like that. What shall I do? I'll give his wife twenty schillings, she'll take me along with it and my fnend'll have his fun. There's nothing I wouldn't do for a friend. I'll prove it to you. You bring your wife here, until I got my stipendium that is, and I swear to you I m not a coward. D'you think I'm afraid of a woman? What harm can a woman do? Have you a wife?'
This was the first question to which Fischerle expected an answer. True he was as sure of the wife, whose existence he was questioning, as he was of his hump. But he longed for a game, he had oeen watched now for three hours and could bear it no longer. He was determined to bring the discussion to a practical conclusion. Kien was silent. What could he have said? His wife was his sore point; with the best intention in the -world nothing true could be said of her. He was, actually, neither married, nor single nor divorced. 'Have you a wife?' asked Fischerle a second time. But already it sounded threatening. Kien was worried about the truth. The same thing which had happened before over the book racket was happening again. Necessity makes liars of us all. 'I have not a wife!' he asserted with a smile which lit up his austerity. If he must lie, he would choose the pleasantest alternative. 'Then I'll give you mine!' burst out Fischerle. Had the man in the book racket hada wife, Fischerle's offer would have been differently worded: 'Then I'll make you a nice change from her.' Now he shouted loudly across the café: 'Are you coming, or not?'
She came. She was large, fat and round, and half a century old. She introduced herself by shrugging a shoulder in Fischerle's direction and adding, not without a breath of pride, 'My husband'. Kien stood up and bowed low. He was terrified of whatever was going to happen now. Aloud he said: 'Delighted!' To himself softly, inaudibly: 'Strumpet.' With this archaic word he reduced her to nothing. Fischerle said: 'Well then, sit down.' She obeyed. His nose reached up to her bosom. Nose and bosom leant side by side over the marble table. Suddenly the manikin burst out and rattled rapidly as if he had forgotten the most important thing: 'Book racket!'
Kien was again silent. The woman found him repulsive. She compared his boniness to her husband's hump and found the latter beautiful. Her rabbit-face always had something to say for himself. He wasn't born dumb. There was a time when he even talked to her. Now she was getting too old for him. He's quite right. It's not as though he goes with other girls. He's got a heart of gold, that kid. Everybody thinks they're still carrying on with each other. Every one of her girl friends is after him. You can't trust women. She's different. You can trust her. Men aren't to be trusted either. But you can trust Fischerle. Rather than have anything to do with a woman, he says, he'd have nothing to do with anyone. She agrees to everything. She doesn't want any of that. But he mustn't talk about it, that's all. He's so modest. He's never wanted a thing out of her. A pity he doesn't look after his clothes a bit more. Time and again you'd think he'd scrambled straight out of the dustbin. If that Ferdy hasn't given Mizzi an ultimatum: he'll wait another year for that motorbike she promised him. If she hasn't got it by the end of the year, sh— him if he doesn't find himself another girl. Now she's scraping and saving, but where's she going to get a motorbike from? Her rabbit-face wouldn't do a thing like that. The beautiful eyes he's got! He can't help his hump, can he?
Always when Fischerle found her a client she felt that he wanted to be rid of her and was grateful to him for his love. Later on she would find him too conceited again. But on the whole she was a contented creature, and in spite of her squalid life had little hate in her. That little was all for chess. While the other girls knew the first principles of the game, in all her life she had never understood why the different pieces had different moves. It disgusted her that the King should be so powerless. She'd teach that pert thing the queen a thing or two ! Why should she have it all her own way and the king not at all? Often she would watch the game tensely. A stranger would have judged her by her expression a pronounced connoisseur. In fact she was simply waiting for the queen to be taken. If that happened she burst into triumphant crooning and left the table at once. She shared her husband's hate for the stranger queen, and was jealous of the love with which he guarded his own. Her girl friends, more independent than she was, placed themselves at the top of the social hierarchy and called the queen the tart, the king the pimp. Only the Capitalist still clung to the existing order from whose lowest rank, by virtue of her regular gentleman, she had already climbed. She, who otherwise set the tone for the most outspoken jokes, would not join in against the king. As for the queen, 'tart was too good a name for her. The castles and the knights pleased her, because they looked like real ones, and when Fischerle's knight charged full gallop across the board she would laugh out loud in her calm husky voice. Twenty years after he had first come to her with his chessboard she would still ask him in all innocence why the casdes could not be left standing at the corners of the board where they had been at the beginning of the game; they looked ever so much nicer there. Fischerle spurned her woman's widessness and said not a word. When she bored him with her questions — she only wanted to hear him speak, she loved his croaking, nobody else had such a raven-voice — he would shut her up with some drastic assertion: 'Have I a hump or haven't I? And suppose I have? You can take yourself out sliding! Maybe that'll knock a little sense into your head.' His hump distressed her. She'd rather have overlooked it. She had a feeling as if she were answerable for the misshapenness of her child. As soon as he had discovered this trait in her, which seemed to him quite mad, he made use of it as blackmail. His hump was the one dangerous threat on which he could rely.
At this very moment she was gazing lovingly upon him. His hump compared to this skeleton was beautiful. She was happy that he had called her to his table. She gave herself no trouble at all with Kien. After a general silence she said: 'Well, what about it? How much will you give me?' Kien blushed. Fischerle went for her at once. 'Don't talk so silly! I won't have my friend insulted. He's got a head on his shoulders. He doesn't talk nonsense. Every word he turns over in his head a hundred times before he says it. If he says something it's worth saying. He's interested in my Stipendium and is going to make a voluntary contribution of twenty schillings.' 'Stipendium? Whatever's that?' 'Stipendium is a refined word!' Fischerle bawled. 'It comes from the French and means the same as capital in Jewish!' 'Capital? Who says I got capital?' His wife simply didn't catch on. Why on earth had he used a French word? He was determined to be in the right. He looked at his wife long and gravely, indicated Kien with his nose and declared pompously: 'He knows everything.' 'Everything?' 'That we're saving up for my chess championship.' 'I wouldn't dream of it! I don't earn that much. My name isn't Mizzi and you're not Ferdy. What do I get out of you? More kicks than ha'pence. You know what you are, do you? You're a cripple! Go and beg if you don't like it!' She called Kien to witness the crying injustice of it. The cheek of it! You wouldn't hardly credit it. A cripple like him! He ought to think himself lucky!'
Fischerle shrank down, he gave his game up for lost and only said mournfully to Kien: 'You be thankful you're not a married man. First we scrape and save twenty years every brass farthing and now she's blued the whole bloody Stipendium with her fancy boys.' For a moment this shameless lie took his wife's breath away. 'I swear,' she screamed as soon as she had recovered herself, 'in all these twenty years I haven't had a single man, only him!' Fischerle opened his hands to Kien in a gesture of resignation: 'A whore who never had a man!' At the word 'Whore' he raised his eyebrows. At this insult his wife burst into noisy crying. Her words grew incomprehensible but one had the impression that she was sobbing about a regular income. 'Now you can see yourself, she's admitting it.' Fischerle was regaining courage. 'Where do you think she gets a regular income from? From a gentleman who turns up every Monday. In my flat. Listen, a woman always tells lies, and why does a woman always tell lies? Because she's a liar! Now I ask you: Could you tell a lie? Could I tell a lie? Out of the question! And why? because we've got heads on our shoulders. Have you ever seen a man with a head on his shoulders who tells lies? I haven't!' His wife sobbed more and more loudly.
Kien agreed with all his heart. In his terror he had never asked himself whether Fischerle was telling the truth or lying. Since the woman had sat down at the table, he was relieved by every hostile gesture in her direction wherever it came from. Since she had asked him for a present he knew who it was he had before him; a second Thérèse. He knew nothing about the rituals of the place, but one thing he recognized clearly — this stainless spirit in a wretched body, had struggled for twenty years to lift itself out of the mire of its surroundings. Thérèse would not allow it. He was forced to impose enormous sacrifices on himself, never losing sight of his glorious goal — a free mind. Thérèse, no less determined, dragged him for ever back into the slime. He saves, not out of meanness, his is a generous soul; she wastes it again, so that he shall never escape her. He has clutched at one tiny corner of the world of the spirit and clings to it like a drowning man. Chess is his library. He only talks about rackets because any other kind of speech is forbidden here. But it is significant that he regards the book racket with such esteem. Kien pictured to himself the battle this down-trodden man fought for his own flat. He takes a book home to read it secretly, she tears it in pieces and scatters it to the winds. She forces him to let her use his home for her unspeakable purposes. Possibly she pays a servant, a spy, to keep the house clear of books when she is out. Books are forbidden, her own way of life is permitted. After a long struggle he succeeds in wringing from her the concession of a chessboard. She has confined him to the smallest room in the house. There he sits through the long nights and handling those wooden chessmen recovers his human dignity. He almost feels released when she is receiving these visits. During these hours he might be dead for her. Things must reach this pass with her before she will stop torturing him. But even then he listens unwillingly lest she should reappear, the worse for drink. She stinks of alcohol. She smokes. She flings open the door and with her clumsy foot kicks over the chessboard. Mr. Fischerle weeps like a little child. He had just reached the most interesting part of his book. He picks up the letters scattered all over the floor and turns his face away so that she shall not rejoice over his tears. He is a little hero. He has character. How often does the word 'Strumpet!' spring to his lips. He swallows it, she would not understand. She would long since have turned him out of the house, but she is waiting until he makes a will in her favour. Probably he is not rich. All the same he has enough for her to want to rob him of it. He has no intention of making this final sacrifice. Defending himself he keeps his roof over his head. Did he but know that he owed that roof to her speculations on his will! He must not be told. He could do himself an injury. He is not made of granite. His dwarfish constitution...
Never before had Kien felt himself enter so deeply into the mind of another man. He had been successful in freeing himself from Thérèse. He had struck at her with her own weapons, outwitted her and locked her in. Here she was again, sitting at his very table, making the same demands as before, nagging as before, and — the only alteration in her — had this time adopted a suitable profession. But her destructive activity was not directed at him, she took little notice of him, all her attention was directed at the man opposite, whom nature by a mistaken etymology had, moreover, fashioned as a cripple. Kien felt himself deeply indebted to this man. He must do something for him. He respected him. Had Mr. Fischerle not been of so delicate a sensibility he would have offered him money direct. No doubt he could make use of it. But he was as anxious not on any account to hurt his feelings, as he was anxious not to hurt his own. Possibly he might steer the conversation back to that point at which, with a woman's shamelessness, Thérèse had interrupted them?
He drew out his wallet, still crammed full of valuable banknotes. Holding it unusually long in his hand, he extracted from it all the banknotes and placidly counted them all over. Mr. Fischerle was to be persuaded by this that the offer about to be made to him was by no means a great sacrifice. When he reached the thirtieth-hundred schilling note Kien looked down at the little fellow. Possibly he was already mellowed enough for the offer to be dared, for who enjoys counting money? Fischerle was looking stealthily all about him; the only person for whom hè had no eyes at all was Kien counting his money, surely out of the delicacy of his feelings and his repulsion from filthy lucre. Kien was not to be discouraged, he went on counting, but loudly now in a clear high voice. Secretly he apologized to the little man for his insistence, for he noticed how much he hurt his ears. The dwarf wriggled restlessly on his chair. He laid his head down on the table so as to stop up at least one ear, the sensitive creature, then he pushed his wife's bosom about, what was he doing that for, he was making it broader; it was broad enough already, he was obscuring Kien's views. The woman let him do as he liked, she was silent now. Doubtless she was counting on the money. But she was making a mistake there. Thérèse would get nothing. When Kien had got to forty-five the little fellow's agonies had reached their peak. Imploringly he whispered: 'Pst ! Pst !' Kien softened. Should he spare him the gift after all, no, no, later he would be glad of it all the same, perhaps he would run away with it and rid himself of this Thérèse. At the number fifty-three Fischerle clutched his wife's face and croaked out like a madman: 'Can't you keep quiet? What are you after, you silly bitch? What d'you know about chess? I'll chessboard you ! I'll eat you alive ! Scram!' With every new figure he said something else; the woman seemed bewildered and made as if to go. This did not suit Kien at all. She had to be there when he gave the little fellow his present. She had to be angry at getting nothing herself, or her husband wouldn't enjoy it. Money alone meant little to him. He must hand it over to him before she went.