The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man Read online

  With regular short rest periods, he was able to live this way for many years, in apparent glory, feted by the world, but nevertheless usually in a gloomy mood that became steadily gloomier because nobody would take it seriously. After all, what could they have comforted him with? What more could he wish for? And if occasionally he met some good-natured person who sympathized and tried to explain that his sadness was probably a consequence of hunger, it sometimes happened, especially if he was deep into a fasting period, that the hunger artist would react with a fit of rage, frightening the audience by rattling at his cage like an animal. But the impresario had a punishment he liked to employ for these outbursts. He apologized to the assembled public on the artist’s behalf and admitted that nothing could excuse his behaviour except the irritability caused by hunger, something well-fed people could hardly understand; then he came on to the claims made by the hunger artist—which, after all, also needed an explanation—that he would be able to fast for far longer than he did; the impresario praised the noble endeavour, the goodwill, the great self-denial that was certainly bound up in that claim; but then he refuted it simply enough, by showing photographs—which were also on sale—of the artist on his fortieth fast day, in bed, so enfeebled he was almost extinguished. This twisting of the facts, which was well known to the hunger artist but always unnerved him all over again, was too much for him. The consequences of prematurely ending the fast were being presented as the reason for doing so! Against that unreason, to fight against this world of unreason, was impossible. Every time this came up he would listen greedily at the bars, in good faith, but when the photographs appeared he would let go of the bars, sink back into the straw with a sigh, and the reassured spectators could come and view him again.

  When the people who witnessed these scenes thought back a couple of years later, they often found that they no longer understood what they’d been doing there. Because by then the collapse in public interest mentioned above had taken place; it happened suddenly; there may have been deeper reasons for it, but who cared enough to dig around for them; in any case, one day the pampered hunger artist found that the pleasure-seeking crowds had abandoned him and now preferred to go to other kinds of performance. Once again the impresario rushed him through half of Europe, to see whether here and there they might still find a flicker of the old interest; all in vain; as if in some secret pact, audiences everywhere had developed a downright aversion to performance fasting. Of course things like that couldn’t change overnight, and in retrospect they remembered several warning signs that had been insufficiently heeded or addressed amid the intoxication of fame, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Although it was certain that the art of fasting’s time would one day come again, that was no comfort to those living through this moment. What was the hunger artist supposed to do? He, who’d been celebrated by thousands, couldn’t start displaying himself in a booth at local fairs, and as for taking up another profession, the artist was not only too old, he was above all too fanatically devoted to his hunger. So he said goodbye to the impresario, who’d been his companion in an unparalleled career, and had himself taken on by a travelling circus; to spare his own feelings, he didn’t even look at the terms of the contract.

  A big circus with its myriad of people and animals and apparatuses, all complementing and offsetting one another, can find a use for anybody at any time, even a hunger artist, on appropriately modest terms of course, and moreover in this particular case it was not just the hunger artist himself who’d been hired, but also his famous old name; given the unique nature of this art form, which made no concessions to advancing age, you couldn’t have said that a veteran artist past his prime was retreating into a quiet circus job; on the contrary, the hunger artist assured them that he would fast just as well as he ever had, which was entirely credible, and went so far as to claim that, if he was allowed to have his way—something that was promised out of hand—he would astonish the world as he’d never been able to before, a claim that, in view of the fashions of the day, which the hunger artist forgot in his enthusiasm, elicited no more than a smile from the experts.

  Overall, however, even the hunger artist didn’t lose sight of the real state of affairs and took it as read that his cage wouldn’t be placed in the centre of the ring as a star attraction, but was found a home outside, in an actually very easily accessible spot just next to the menagerie. Big, colourfully painted signs framed the cage and announced what could be seen inside. In the intervals in the main show, when the audience streamed out to see the animals, it was almost inevitable that they passed by the hunger artist and paused there for a moment. They might have stayed there longer had it not been that the passage was narrow and that those pushing on from the back of the crowd, who didn’t understand this delay on the way to the eagerly anticipated menagerie, made any slower, quieter viewing impossible. That was why the viewing times, which he naturally looked forward to since they were the purpose of his life, also made him tremble. At first he could hardly wait for the intervals in the main show; he’d been exhilarated as he prepared to face the onrushing masses, but all too soon—even his most obstinate, almost conscious self-deception couldn’t withstand what he experienced—he became convinced that if you categorized these spectators by what they wanted to see, they were all, always and without exception, visitors to the menagerie. The first sight of them, from a distance, remained the most pleasant. When they had got up close, he was surrounded by a racket of shouting and swearing between the two groups that always formed, those—who soon became almost more painful to the hunger artist—who wanted to have a good look at him, not out of understanding, but on a whim or out of spite; and those who truly only wanted to get to the menagerie. Once the main bulk of them had gone by, there were always a few stragglers, who had nothing to prevent them stopping as long as they liked, but they hurried past with long strides, barely glancing sideways, to make sure they saw the animals in time. All too rarely did a father come past with his children, point his finger at the artist, explain what was going on, tell them how it had been years ago, when he’d gone to similar but incomparably grander performances; the children hadn’t been prepared by school or life to really understand—after all, what was fasting to them?—but in their bright, curious eyes he saw a sign of new, more favourable, times to come. Perhaps, the hunger artist then sometimes said to himself, it would be better after all if he wasn’t positioned so near the menagerie. His being there made the choice between him and the animals too easy for people, not to mention that the smell of the stalls, the animals’ restlessness at night, the slabs of raw meat being brought to the carnivores and the uproar at feeding time all upset and depressed him. But he didn’t dare take a grievance to the management; at the end of the day, he owed the animals the crowds of visitors who trooped past him and among whom one or two of the right sort might appear; and who knew where the management would stick him if he reminded them that he existed and that, strictly speaking, he was an obstacle on the way to the menagerie.

  A small obstacle though, an ever smaller obstacle. People grew used to the strangeness of a circus trying to attract attention with a hunger artist in this day and age, and with that his fate was sealed. He was free to fast as hard as he could, and did so, but nothing now could save him, and the public simply walked past. Try explaining the art of hunger! If someone doesn’t feel it, you can’t make them understand. The lovely signs on his cage grew dirty and illegible; they were torn down and no one thought to replace them; the little board displaying the number of days he’d fasted—which at first had been diligently updated every morning—had now long remained unchanged, because after a few weeks the attendants grew bored of even that small job; and so although the hunger artist fasted just as he’d dreamt of doing, and although he effortlessly succeeded in holding out ever longer, just as he’d predicted, no one counted the days, no one, not even the hunger artist himself, knew exactly how much he’d achieved, and his heart grew heavy. Now when someone
idling by happened to stop, to make fun of the number on the board and talk about it being a con, it was tantamount to the stupidest lie that indifference and malice could have concocted, because the hunger artist didn’t cheat, he did his work honestly, but the world cheated him of his reward.

  But many days again went by and this, too, came to an end. A supervisor noticed the cage and asked the attendants why this useful piece of equipment had been left standing around with nothing but some rotten straw inside it; no one could say, until someone looked at the board with the numbers and remembered the hunger artist. They poked through the straw with poles and found the artist underneath. “You’re still fasting?” asked the supervisor. “When are you finally going to stop?”

  “Forgive me, all of you,” whispered the hunger artist; only the supervisor, whose ear was to the bars, could hear him.

  “Of course,” said the supervisor, putting a finger to his temple to show his staff what condition the artist was in. “We forgive you.”

  “I always wanted you to admire my fasting,” said the hunger artist.

  “And we do admire it,” the supervisor said obligingly.

  “But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist.

  “All right, then we don’t admire it,” said the supervisor, “but why shouldn’t we admire it?”

  “Because I have to fast, I can’t help it,” said the hunger artist.

  “How about that,” said the supervisor. “So why can’t you help it?”

  “Because,” said the hunger artist, and he lifted his head a little, pursing his lips as if for a kiss, so he could speak right into the supervisor’s ear and make sure nothing was lost, “I couldn’t find a meal I would have liked to eat. If I’d found one, believe me, I wouldn’t have made a fuss, I’d have eaten till I was full, just like you or anyone else.” Those were his last words, but in his broken eyes there remained the firm, albeit no longer proud, conviction that he would go on fasting.

  “Get this cleared up!” said the supervisor, and they buried the hunger artist together with the straw. In the cage they put a young panther. Even the most stolid attendants felt the relief of seeing this wild animal throwing himself around the long-deserted cage. He lacked for nothing. The keepers brought him the food he liked as a matter of course; he didn’t even seem to miss his freedom; his glorious body, endowed almost to bursting with all it needed, seemed to carry its own freedom within itself; it seemed to lurk somewhere in the panther’s jaws; and the joy of life steamed out of his mouth with such force that the spectators felt they could barely hold their ground against it. But they braced themselves, crowded around the cage and never wanted to leave.

  THE TREES

  WE’RE LIKE TREE TRUNKS in the snow. They seem to stand on its surface, as if a little push would be enough to knock them over. No, you can’t do that, because they’re fixed firmly to the ground. But look, even that is illusory.

  THE NEW LAWYER

  WE’VE GOT A NEW LAWYER, a Dr Bucephalus. There’s not much in his appearance to remind you that he used to be Alexander of Macedon’s war horse. But if you know his background, there are a few things you notice. That said, I did recently see even a pretty simple-minded court usher admiring our lawyer with the practised eye of a regular racegoer as he bounded up the stairs, lifting his knees high and letting his steps ring out on the marble.

  In general, the office approves of Bucephalus having been taken on. With a surprising degree of sympathy, people say that the way society is arranged today puts Bucephalus in a difficult position and for that reason, as well as on account of his historical significance, we should be as accommodating as possible. Nowadays—this is something no one can deny—there is no Alexander the Great. It’s true that some people still know about killing; nor is the skill needed to spear a friend across the banqueting table wholly a lost art; there are plenty of people who find Macedonia too small and curse Philip, his father—but there is no one, no one, capable of leading us to India. Even in those days, the gates of India seemed unreachable, but the direction was given by the king’s sword. Today the gates are altogether elsewhere, higher and further off; no one is pointing the way; it’s true that lots of people have swords, but only to wave them about, and anyone who tries to follow them with his eyes ends up bewildered.

  That’s why it’s maybe best to do what Bucephalus has and bury yourself in the law books. Free, his sides no longer being gripped by his rider’s thighs, under restful lamplight far from the clamour of Alexander’s battles, he reads and turns the pages of our dusty old books.

  AN OLD JOURNAL

  IT SOMETIMES SEEMS as if the defence of our country has been quite badly neglected. Until recently, we never thought about it, and just got on with our business; but the events of the past few days have got us worried.

  I run a shoemaker’s on the square in front of the royal palace. I’d just opened my shop for the morning when I saw that that every street was guarded by armed men. They’re not our soldiers: it turns out they’re nomads from the north. In some way I can’t get my head around, they’ve pushed forward into the capital, even though it’s so far from the border. In any case, they’re here, and every morning it looks like there are more of them.

  Since they’re nomads, they camp under the open sky and look down on living in houses. They’re always busy sharpening their swords, filing their arrows and practising on horseback. They’ve turned this peaceful, painstakingly clean public square into a stable. We do sometimes try to go out of our shops to clear away at least the worst of the mess, but it’s a pointless effort and it puts us in danger of being trampled by the wild horses or injured by their riders’ whips.

  There’s no talking to the nomads. They don’t speak our language and barely have one of their own. The noises they use as speech make them sound like crows. All you hear these days is that crow-like croaking. Our way of life, our laws, are incomprehensible to them, and irrelevant. That must be why they’re also hostile to any attempt to communicate with sign language. You can talk till you sprain your jaw and gesture till you dislocate your wrists, they won’t have understood you and they will never understand you. They often just grimace; then you can see the whites of their eyes rolling and foam spilling out of their mouths, but they’re not trying to express anything, nor even to frighten you; they do it just because that’s how they are. What they need, they take. You can’t really say that they use force. When they appear, you step aside and let them have everything.