Auto-da-fé (59 page)

Kien woke up. In spite of his fatigue, he clenched his fists. He gnashed his teeth. No need for fear, they are still there. He must come to conclusions with them. Even the blood was a dream. The closet presses on him. It is narrow, sleeping here. He got up, threw up the peep-hole cover and calmed himself by looking at the great monotony outside. For it is only an idea that nothing is happening. If you can get used to the darkness, you can see all the trousers of the afternoon, an interminable parade; the intervening skirts have faded out. At night everyone wears trousers. A decree for the abolition of the female sex is in preparation. To-morrow the proclamation will be made public. The caretaker will proclaim it.
That
voice will be heard through the whole town, the whole country, every country, as far as the earth's atmosphere reaches; other planets will have to look after themselves, we are overburdened with women, evasion is punished by death, ignorance of the law is no protection. All Christian names to have masculine suffixes, history to be rewritten for schools. The select historical commission has an easy task: its chairman, Professor Kien. What have women produced in history? Children and intrigues!

Kien lies down again in bed. Wandering, he falls asleep. Wandering, he reaches the blue rock which he thought had been shattered. If the rock will not move, the dream can't go on, so he wakes immediately and leans down to the peep-hole. It is close at his side. This happens a dozen times in the night. Towards morning he transfers the peephole, his eye of monotony, his requiem, his joy, into his dream ibrary. He places several peepholes in each wall. Thus he would never have to look long for one. Wherever books are missing he builds little peep-holes, the Benedikt Pfaff system. He skilfully guides the course of his dreams; wherever he may have got to, he brings himself back on a lead to the library. Numberless peep-holes invite him to linger. He serves them, as he had learnt during the day, on bended knee; and he proves that without a doubt there are only trousers in the world, especially in the darkness. Differendy coloured skirts disappear. Starched blue rocks crumble. He must not get up. His dreams can be automatically regulated. Towards morning he sleeps, unconditionally, without aberrations. His head rests, deep in serious thought, on his writing desk.

The first pale light found him at work. At six, on his knees, he contemplated the twilight creeping slowly over the entrance hall. The stain on the opposite wall acquired its true character. Shadows, whose origin was dubious — of things, not of people, but of what things? — cast themselves on the tiles, developed into a grey of a dangerous and tacdess tinge, approaching a colour by the naming of which he had no intention of spoiling the young day. Without admitting its name, he requested the shadows, at first courteously, to disappear, or to assume another colour. They hesitated. He became insistent. Their hesitation had not escaped him. He decided on an ultimatum and threatened, if they disregarded it, to break ofFrelations. He had other means of pressure, he warned them, he was not defenceless, he would suddenly take them in the rear, and shatter at a single blow their pride and their haughtiness, their arrogance and insolence. How contemptible and absurd they were in any case; their existence depended on tiles. Tiles can be utterly shattered. A blow here, a blow there and their miserable little splinters would be left to sorrow and think — what about? — about whether it was just to torment an innocent creature who never did them an injury, but who, rising refreshed from sleep, was making ready to meet a day of decisive conflict? For to-day the disaster of yesterday was to be wiped out, annihilated, buried and forgotten.

The shadows quavered: those bright streaks which separated each from the other, grew broader and shone brightly. There was no doubt that Kien would have himself defeated his enemies. But at that moment a mighty pair of trousers came to his rescue and robbed him of the honour of victory. Two heavy legs walked across the tiles, and stood still. A powerful boot raised itself and lovingly sketched the outer opening of the peep-hole, so as not to hurt it, but simply to be reassured of its old familiar shape. The first boot withdrew, and a second permitted itself the same tenderness, in the opposite direction. Then the legs marched further, there was a noise, a jingling like that of a key, a screeching and creaking. The shadows moaned and vanished. Now it could be frankly admitted: they had been blue, literally blue. The clumsy creature walked back again. Thanks were owing to him. All the same, he could have managed without him. Shadows are shadows. They are thrown by an object. Move the object and the shadows moan and die. What object had been moved? The answer to that could only be given by the perpetrator. In came Benedikt Pfaff.

'What's that! Up already! A juicy good morning, Professor! You're the picture of industry. I've come for my oil can. Did you hear the street door groaning. On that bed, you sleep like a bear. A dormouse is nothing to it. We used to sleep three at a time in it, when my old woman was alive and my daughter, bless her. I'll give you a tip, as a friend and the father of this house, you stay here, where you are now! Then you'll see one of the marvels of nature as the saying is. A house getting up. All of them off to work. In a hurry they are, they sleep too late, all of them women and sluggards. If you're lucky, you'll see three pairs of legs at a time. An interesting spectacle! You can't know them all. Aha! you think to yourself, and all the time it's someone quite different. A great show! Save your laugh, I say, or you'll laugh yourself to death.'

Panting and red as a turkey with delight at his joke, he left Kien alone. That repulsive shadow with its many ugly streaks had originated then in the grille across the street door. You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic. Primitive man called each and all by the wrong name. One single and terrible web of magic surrounded him; where and when did he not feel threatened? Knowledge has freed us from superstitions and beliefs. Knowledge makes use always of the same names, preferably Graeco-Latin, and indicates by these names actual things. Misunderstandings are impossible. Who for instance could imagine anything else in a door than the door itself, and, at the uttermost, its shadow?

But the caretaker was right. Numerous trousers were leaving the house; at first plain ones, blunt, tended with very moderate care, revealing a minimum of trouser consciousness and maybe, as Kien hoped, some intelligence. The later it grew, the sharper the creases of the appearing trousers; and the haste with which they moved grew less. When one knife-edge came too close to another, he was afraid they might cut each other and called: 'Look out!' All kinds of distinguishing marks struck him; he did not shrink from naming the colours, the material, the value, the height from the ground, prospective holes, the breadth, the relation of trouser leg to boot, stains and their probable origin; in spite of the richness of the material he came to one or two conclusions. About ten o'clock as the house grew quiet, he attempted to form an estimate as to the age, character and profession of the wearers of what he saw. A systematic study of the classification of men by trousers seemed to him abundandy possible. He promised himself a small thesis on the subject; it would be completed easily in three days. Half joking he uttered a reproach against a certain scholar who was pursuing researches in the tailor's department. But the time he spent down there was lost; it was of no consequence what he did with it. He knew well why he had become so devoted to the peep-hole. Yesterday was over, yesterday
had
to be over. And this scholarly concentration was doing him infinite good.

But Kien does not admire them. He could ignore them, God knows it would be easy — a mere matter of will-power. Ignoring is in the blood of a learned man. Learning is the art of ignoring. But for a reason, near to his heart, he makes no use of his art. Women are illiterates, unendurable and stupid, a perpetual disturbance. How rich would the world be without them, a vast laboratory, an overfilled library, a heaven of intensive study, night and day! Yet justice compels him to admit one saving grace in all these women; they wear skirts, but not one is blue; as long and as far as Kien looks not one of the women of the house awakens in him the recollection of one who erstwhile would glide over diis very threshold and who, in the end and far too late, died by hunger the most wretched of deaths.

Towards one o'clock Benedikt Pfaff appeared and asked for money for dinner. He must fetch it from the café and had not a penny on him. The State paid him his pension regularly on the first of the month, not on the last. Kien asked for quiet. His days down here would be few and numbered. Soon he would be going back to his flat. Before then he wished to complete his researches at the peep-hole. A 'Charac-terology of Trousers' was in prospect together with an 'Appendix on Shoes'. He had no time to eat, to-morrow perhaps.

'What's that!' bellowed the caretaker. 'I won't have it! Professor, I'm asking you for your own good, hand over the money! In that interesting position a fellow can starve to death. I'm taking care of you.'

Kien rose and cast an exploratory glance at the trousers of the peacebreaker. 'If you please, will you kindly leave my — study at once!' He emphasized the 'my', made a short pause after it and threw out the 'study' as though it were an insult.

Pfaff's eyes started from his head. His fists itched. So as not to use them at once he rubbed his nose hard. Had the Professor gone mad?
His
study. Now what was he to do? Break his legs, smash in his skull, spatter his brains, or begin with one in the belly? Drag him up to that woman? That'd be a good one! She'd lock the murderer into the Uvatory, that's what she said. Chuck him out into the street? Smash down the wall and shut him in the back room where the heart of his late-lamented daughter was lost?

None of these things happened. At Pfaff's command Thérèse had cooked lunch; it was waiting upstairs; cost what it would — even the sweetest revenge — he must earn his share of it. He wouldn't have minded keeping a pub, it would have suited him as well as being in a circus. He drew a small shutter-lock out of his pocket, pushed Kien aside with one finger, bent down and locked the lid over his peep-hole.

'My hole's my own!' he bellowed. His fists were swelling again. 'Shurrup!' he told them, furious. Sulkily they withdrew into his pockets. There they lay, ready to pounce. They were hurt. They rubbed their hairs on the lining of his pockets and growled.

'What trousers!' Kien was thinking, 'what trousers!' One profession, an important one, he had missed in his morning's observations; the killer. Here was one — the very one who had this moment coldbloodedly obstructed his instrument of observation — who wore trousers typical of those which would be seen on such a criminal: crumpled, glimmering reddish with faded blood, kept in ugly motion from within, threadbare and greasy, clumsy, dark, repulsive. If beasts wore trousers, they would wear them like that.

'Dinner is ordered!' foamed the beast. 'What's ordered must be paid for!' Pfaffwhipped out a fist, opened it much against its will, and held out his flat hand. 'I'm not going to lose money, Professor, you don't know me! I won't stand any nonsense: I ask you for the last time! Think of your health! What'U become of you?'

Kien made no move.