The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man Page 3

  Anyway, yesterday evening at six I set off for where he lives; it was certainly past the usual time for going to see someone, but it needed to be looked at from a business angle, not as a social visit. N. was at home; they told me in the front room that he’d just come back in from a walk with his wife and gone in to see his son, who wasn’t well and was lying in bed. I was told to go through; I hesitated at first, but then that feeling was overruled by the desire to get this painful visit over as quickly as possible, and so, still in my hat and coat and carrying my sample case, I let myself be led through a dark corridor into a dimly lit room where a small group had gathered.

  I suppose out of instinct, the first thing I noticed was a sales rep I know all too well and who is also partly a competitor. He’d sneaked his way up here even before I had. He’d found a comfortable spot right beside the invalid’s bed, as if he were the doctor; in his lovely, fluffed-up, open jacket, he sat in his chair like he was in charge of the room; I’ve never met anyone so brazen; I thought the invalid might be thinking something similar as he lay there with fever-flushed cheeks and occasionally glanced up at him. Incidentally, he’s not young any more, the son, he’s a man my age with a short beard that’s become a little unkempt in his illness. Old man N. is big and broad-shouldered, and I was shocked to see that his slow suffering had made him gaunt, bent and uncertain. He was standing there just as he’d come in, still in his furs, and mumbling something at his son. His wife, small and fragile, albeit very animated, even if only towards him—she never looked at the rest of us—was busy helping him out of the furs, which was difficult because of the height difference between them, but she finally managed it. Perhaps the real difficulty was that N. was very impatient and kept reaching out his hands to demand the armchair, which his wife quickly pushed across to him once the furs were off. She took the furs away herself, even though she almost disappeared under them, and carried them out of the room.

  Now it seemed that my moment had come, or rather, it hadn’t come and was probably never going to come; but if I was going to attempt something, I had to do it right away because I had the feeling that the circumstances were only going to get even less conducive to a business conversation; settling in here until the end of time, which seemed to be the sales rep’s plan, was not my style; and it wasn’t as if I was going to hold back on his account. So without much ado I started to present my thinking, even though I noticed that N. wanted to speak to his son. Unfortunately, I’ve got this bad habit that, if I work myself up with talk—something that can happen very quickly and that happened even faster than usual in that sickroom—I stand up and start pacing up and down while I speak. It’s no bad thing when you’re in your own office, but in a stranger’s home it really is a bit much. I couldn’t get myself under control, especially because I didn’t have my usual cigarette to hand. Now, everyone’s got their bad habits, and I would say that at least mine aren’t as bad as the sales rep’s. What can you say about someone who, for example, slides his hat slowly back and forth across his knees, but then suddenly, for no reason, puts it on his head; he’d take it off again right away, as if there was some mistake, but then a moment later he had it on his head again, and he kept repeating this routine, on and off. A performance like that you have to say is unacceptable. But in this moment, it doesn’t bother me, I pace up and down, completely caught up in my affairs, and ignore him; some people might have been thrown entirely off their stride by that hat business. Anyway, in my eagerness I don’t pay any attention to these distractions; in fact, I don’t pay any to anyone; of course I can see what’s happening but, so long as I’m not finished and not hearing any objections, I somehow don’t register it. So for example, I noticed that N. wasn’t very receptive to what I was saying; he had his hands on the armrests and was shifting awkwardly from side to side, not looking at me, but staring blankly into space, and his expression was as indifferent as if not a single word I was saying, nor even the fact that I was there, was getting through to him. I did see this distracted behaviour, which was far from encouraging, but I carried on talking regardless, as if there were some chance that the very advantageous offers I was presenting—I shocked myself with the concessions I made, concessions no one had asked for—as if this might bring everything back onto an even keel. It also gave me a certain satisfaction to see that the rep, as I noticed in passing, had finally left his hat alone and crossed his arms in front of his chest; my presentation, which was naturally also aimed at him, seemed to have put a big hole in his plans. And with the sense of well-being I got from that, I might have gone on talking even longer if the son, who until then I’d disregarded as irrelevant, abruptly lifted himself up in bed and shook his fist at me until I stopped. He apparently wanted to say something, or show us something, but didn’t have the strength. At first I thought he was just a bit delirious, but when I inadvertently glanced across at old N., I started to understand.

  His eyes were open, glassy, bulging and only just still working, while he himself was shaking and leaning forward as if someone was pushing or hitting him in the back of the neck; his lower lip, his whole lower jaw, was hanging down loose away from his gums, his entire face seemed to be coming apart; he was still breathing, albeit heavily, but then he fell back into the chair as if liberated, closed his eyes, the expression of some great effort crossed his face at the last, and then he was gone. I quickly leapt over to him and took his cold, lifeless, shudder-inducing hand; there was no pulse. So, it was all over. An old man. May our own deaths come as easily. But there was so much that had to be done right now! And in this haste, what to do first? I looked around for help; but the son had pulled the covers over his head and you could hear his endless sobbing; the sales rep, cold as a frog, sat there in his chair, two steps from N., visibly determined to do nothing and wait for time to pass; so there was only me who might do something, and the thing to do was the hardest thing of all, namely to give his wife the news in some way she could take, that is, in some way that didn’t exist anywhere on earth.

  She brought in—she was still in her street clothes; she hadn’t yet had time to change—she brought in a nightshirt that had been warmed on the oven and that she wanted her husband to put on. “He’s fallen asleep,” she said, smiling and shaking her head, when she found us in this tableau. And with the boundless trust of the innocent, she picked up the same hand that I’d just touched with revulsion and shame, kissed it with marital playfulness and—while the three of us stared—N. shifted, yawned, let her put the nightshirt on him, tolerated with ironic annoyance her tender criticisms about having overexerted himself on the long walk, and, strangely enough, in order to give a different reason for having fallen asleep, said something about being bored. Then, so as not to catch a chill going through into the other room, he lay down for a moment in the bed next to his son; his head was bedded down next to his son’s feet on a couple of cushions his wife quickly brought over. After what had just happened, I didn’t think there was anything odd about it. Then he asked for the evening paper, took it despite the presence of his guests, but didn’t yet start reading, just glanced across the pages and told us, with astonishing acumen, some deeply uncomfortable truths about the offers we’d made, all the while making a gesture with his hand as if throwing us away and clicking his tongue to show us what a bad taste our behaviour had left in his mouth. The sales rep couldn’t stop himself from making a few poorly judged remarks; even his dull senses seemed to feel that, after what had just happened, things had to be brought back on track in some way, but with his crude manners that was never going to work. I said my goodbyes quickly; I was almost grateful to the rep for being there; without him I might not have had the decisiveness to leave so fast.

  In the hallway I met Frau N. Seeing the downtrodden figure she cut, I said straight out that she reminded me a little of my mother. And when she didn’t respond, I added, “Whatever you might say about it, she could work miracles. Things that we’d destroyed, she made whole again. I lost her when I was
still a child.” I’d intentionally spoken very slowly and clearly because I suspected the old woman was hard of hearing. But she must have been all but deaf, because she asked me in reply, “And how does my husband look to you?” From the few words we exchanged as I left, I also realized that she had me mixed up with the sales rep; I wanted to believe that she would otherwise have been a bit more forthcoming.

  Then I went down the stairs. The way down was harder than the way up had been, and that hadn’t been easy either. Oh, what futile paths we’re compelled to tread as we go about our business, and how much further we have to carry our burdens.

  BEFORE THE LAW

  BEFORE THE LAW there’s a gatekeeper. A man from the country comes up to this gatekeeper and asks to be admitted to the law. But the gatekeeper says that he can’t let him in right now. The man thinks it over and then asks whether he’ll be allowed to go in later. “It’s possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not at the moment.” Since the door to the law is open, as always, and since the gatekeeper has stepped to the side, the man bends forward to look through the entrance and see what’s in there. When the gatekeeper notices, he laughs and says, “If you’re that desperate, you could try going in even though I’ve told you not to. But bear in mind: I’m very strong. And I’m only the lowest-ranking gatekeeper. From room to room there are more gatekeepers, each stronger than the last. Just the sight of the third one is more than I can take.” The man from the country hadn’t expected so much difficulty; after all, the law should be available to anyone at any time, he thinks, but as he takes a closer look at the gatekeeper in his fur-lined coat, at his big, pointed nose, his long, thin, black Tartar-like beard, he decides that he’d actually rather wait until he gets permission to go in. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and has him sit down to one side of the door. He sits there for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in and tires out the gatekeeper with his pleas. The gatekeeper sometimes cross-examines him a little, asking him about where he comes from and many other things besides, but they’re detached questions, of the kind very grand people ask, and in the end he always says that he can’t let the man in yet. The man, who’d outfitted himself with all sorts of things for the journey, uses everything he has, no matter how valuable, to try and bribe the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper accepts it all, but says, “I’m just taking this so you don’t think there’s something you haven’t tried.” Over the course of these many years, the man watches the gatekeeper almost uninterruptedly. He forgets the other gatekeepers and begins to believe that this one is the only obstacle between him and the law. He curses his bad luck, loudly and recklessly for the first few years, then, later, when he gets old, he just grumbles under his breath. He becomes childish and, since he has studied the gatekeeper so long he’s familiar even with the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas to help him change the gatekeeper’s mind. Finally, the light in his eyes grows weak and he doesn’t know whether it’s really getting dark or just that his eyes are tricking him. But in this darkness he can’t miss the splendour that pours inextinguishably out of the door to the law. He doesn’t live much longer. Before he dies, all his experiences from these many years gather in his head to form a question that he’d never asked the gatekeeper before. He waves him closer because he can no longer lift his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to lean right down to him, since the size difference between them has grown much larger. “What is it you want to know now?” asks the gatekeeper. “You’re insatiable.”

  “Everybody wants the law,” says the man, “so why is it that in all this time no one apart from me has asked to be let in?”

  The gatekeeper can see that the man is near the end and, to get through to his failing hearing, he shouts at the top of his voice: “No one else could come in this way because this entrance was reserved only for you. I’ll go now and close it.”

  A HUNGER ARTIST

  IN THE PAST FEW DECADES public interest in the art of fasting has drastically declined. While it used to be very profitable to put on big, stand-alone exhibitions, doing so today would be completely impossible. It was another time. Back then, the whole city would get caught up in what the hunger artist was doing; the audience would grow and grow as the fast went on; everyone wanted to see him at least once a day; in the latter stages, you’d get fans who wanted to sit in front of the small cage from dawn till dusk; there were also viewings at night, with the effect heightened by flaming torches; on sunny days, the cage would be carried outside and children would be brought to see the hunger artist; whereas for adults he was often only a bit of fun, whom they went to see because it was fashionable, the children gazed at him in amazement, their mouths open, holding each other’s hands just in case something happened, while he, disdaining even a chair, sat on a scattering of straw, pale, in a black vest through which you could see his ribs sticking out, sometimes nodding politely, sometimes answering questions with an effortful smile, even stretching his arm out through the bars to let them feel how emaciated he was, then sinking back into himself, paying attention to nothing, not even the clock, which was the only furniture in his cage and struck the hours that were so important to him, but only staring into space with his eyes almost shut, and now and then sipping water from a tiny glass just to keep his lips wet.

  As well as the spectators, who came and went, there were also warders chosen by the public—strangely enough, they were usually butchers—whose job it was to watch the hunger artist day and night, always three at a time, so that he couldn’t secretly take a bite of food. But it was only a formality introduced to reassure the audiences, because those involved knew full well that during a fast the artist would never, under no circumstances, not even under duress, have eaten even the tiniest snack; the honour of his art forbade it. It’s true that not every warder could understand that; you sometimes got groups of warders who’d do a very lax job of watching the artist at night, intentionally sitting together in a remote corner of the room and engrossing themselves in a game of cards with the obvious intention of allowing the artist to gulp some small morsel that they imagined he’d be able to produce from somewhere. Nothing was more painful to the hunger artist than this kind of warder; they lowered his spirits; they made the hunger incredibly hard to bear; sometimes he gathered enough strength to sing during these watches, for as long as he could, to show these people how wrong they were to be suspicious of him. But it hardly helped; they just wondered about how he’d learnt to sing and eat at the same time. He much preferred the warders who sat up close against the bars, who weren’t satisfied by the dim lighting in the hall and fixed him with electric torches that the impresario provided. The harsh light didn’t bother him at all, he couldn’t fall properly asleep anyway, and he could always doze a little, regardless of how bright or what time it was, even when the hall was packed and noisy. With warders like these he was very willing to pass the night without any sleep; he was ready to joke around with them, to tell them stories from his nomadic life or to listen to their stories, anything to keep them awake and show them over and over again that there was nothing edible in his cage and that he was fasting as none of them ever could have. But he was at his happiest when morning came and they were brought an enormous breakfast, billed to him, which they threw themselves on with the appetite of healthy men who’d spent a long night at their posts. A few people managed to convince themselves that these breakfasts were an attempt to unduly influence the warders, but that really was going too far, and when they were asked whether they’d like to prove the point by taking the night watch themselves, without any breakfast, they made themselves scarce, albeit without giving up their scepticism.

  These, however, were merely some of the suspicions that were inseparable from the art of fasting. After all, no single person could spend every day and night uninterruptedly watching the artist, so no one could tell with his own eyes whether the artist really was fasting uninterruptedly, that is, flawlessly; only the hunger artist was in a position to know that; he himself was the
only spectator who could have been completely satisfied by his fast. But there were other considerations that meant satisfaction always eluded him. In fact, it was perhaps not even the fasting itself that emaciated him so much that some people had to stay away from the performances, to their regret, because they couldn’t bear to look at him; perhaps he was only so emaciated because of his dissatisfaction with himself. He alone knew something that even the most obsessive fans didn’t, namely how easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world. He didn’t try to hide it, but no one believed him; at best they thought him modest, but usually they assumed that he was looking for publicity or even that he was a cheat who found fasting easy because he’d found some means of making it easy, and now even had the chutzpah to more or less admit it. He had to put up with all this, had got used to it over the years, but on the inside this dissatisfaction was always gnawing at him and he had never, in no fast—he insisted on having a certificate stating this made out—he had never willingly left the cage. The maximum fasting time had been set by the impresario at forty days; he never let it go on beyond that, not even in the capital cities, and for good reason. Experience showed that, for about forty days, ever increasing publicity could whip up a city’s interest to greater and greater heights, but after that the audiences would start to dwindle and there would be a marked tailing off in the show’s popularity; of course there might be small differences between cities and countries, but as a rule it was true that forty days was the maximum. So on the fortieth day the door to the flower-bedecked cage was opened, a rapturous audience packed the amphitheatre, a brass band played, two doctors went into the cage to perform the necessary tests on the hunger artist, the results were relayed to the spectators through a megaphone, and last of all came two young ladies, who were very happy to have won the raffle and now wanted to lead the hunger artist out of the cage and down a couple of steps to a little table where a carefully prepared recovery meal had been laid out. And in that moment the hunger artist always resisted. Although he would willingly put his bony arms into the helpfully outstretched hands of the two ladies bending down to him, he didn’t want to get up. Why stop now after forty days of hunger? He could have held out much longer, indefinitely; why stop when he was at the peak, not even yet at the peak, of his fast? Why did they want to deny him the fame of fasting longer, of becoming not just the greatest hunger artist of all time, which he probably already was, but also of surpassing himself and carrying on into a performance that was beyond human understanding—because he could feel no limits to his capacity for hunger. Why did these crowds, who claimed to admire him so much, have so little patience with him; if he could hold out for longer, why shouldn’t they? Also he was tired and sitting comfortably on the straw, and they wanted him to get up and walk over to this meal, the mere thought of which made him feel nauseous, something he only suppressed, with difficulty, out of consideration for the ladies. And he looked up into the eyes of the ladies who seemed so friendly but were in reality so cruel, and shook his over-heavy head on his weak neck. But then happened what always happened. The impresario came and silently—the music made talking impossible—raised his arms above the hunger artist, as if inviting the heavens to look at his work here on the straw, this pitiable martyr, something the hunger artist certainly was, albeit in a quite different sense; he clasped the hunger artist around his thin waist, taking exaggerated care to show everyone what a fragile object he was handling, and—subtly shaking him a little so that the hunger artist’s legs and upper body swayed loosely back and forth—handed him over to the young ladies, who were now deathly pale. After that, the hunger artist acquiesced to everything; his head lay on his chest as if it had rolled there and inexplicably stopped; his torso had been hollowed out; his legs pressed themselves together at the knees as if in self-preservation, dragging along the ground as though it wasn’t real and the real ground was somewhere below it; and the whole, very small, weight of his body was deposited on one of the young ladies, who, appealing for help and hyperventilating—this was not how she’d imagined her honorary task—at first stretched out her neck as far as possible to keep at least her face from touching the hunger artist, then, when that didn’t work and her luckier companion didn’t help, made do with reaching out, trembling, to the artist’s hand and carrying that little packet of bones ahead of herself, the first young lady burst into tears, to the delighted laughter of the amphitheatre, and had to be relieved by an attendant who’d long been standing by for that very purpose. Then came the meal, a few scraps of which the impresario pushed into the hunger artist, who was in a half-sleep bordering on unconsciousness, while the impresario kept up an entertaining patter that was intended to distract attention from the state the artist was in; finally a toast was drunk to the audience, supposedly at the whispered suggestion of the artist; the band confirmed everything with a mighty flourish, people went their separate ways, and nobody had any right to be dissatisfied with what he’d seen, nobody, only the hunger artist, always only him.