Sitting motionless and staring into space late one night in the sumptuous Café Stefanie in Munich was an old man of the most remarkable appearance. The threadbare tie, that had taken on a life of its own, and the massive domed forehead with hair flowing down to the back of his neck indicated a distinguished scholar.
The old gentleman possessed little in the way of worldly goods, apart from a sparse silver Vandyke, which, from its source among seven warts on his chin, just reached down to that point of his waistcoat where unworldly thinkers generally have a button missing.
If truth be told, that was the sum total of his worldly possessions. When, therefore, the snappily dressed professional gentleman with the pince-nez and black waxed moustache at the corner table diagonally opposite, who up to that point had devoured a portion of cold salmon, lifting each mouthful to his lips on the point of his knife (each time a diamond the size of a cherry glinted on his elegantly extended little finger) and now and then casting protuberantly searching glances in his direction — when, therefore, this gentleman wiped his lips, stood up, crossed the almost empty café, bowed and said, ‘Would you be interested in a game of chess, sir? At one mark per game, perhaps?’ Paupersum’s reaction was all the more eager.
Vivid phantasmagoria of all kinds of opulence and indulgence appeared before the scholar’s mind’s eye and even as an inner voice whispered, ‘God must have sent me this chump,’ his lips were already commanding the waiter, who had just come bustling up and set off, as was his wont, a range of faults in the electric light bulbs, ‘Julius! A chessboard. ’
‘If I’m not mistaken, it’s Dr Paupersum I have the pleasure of addressing?’ was the opening conversational gambit of the professional gentleman with the waxed moustache.
‘Job … yes, er, yes, Job Paupersum,’ the scholar admitted abstractedly, for he was spellbound by the magnificence of the whopping great emerald, in the shape of a car headlamp, on the tie-pin adorning the throat of his opponent. Only the arrival of the chessboard released him from the spell and in no time at all the pieces were set up, the loose knights fixed with spittle and the missing castle replaced by a bent matchstick.
After his third move the professional gentleman divested himself of his pince-nez, adopted the classical thinker’s pose and fell into brooding lucubration.
‘He must be trying to find the most stupid move on the board. I can’t think why else he’s taking so long,’ Paupersum muttered to himself, staring absent-mindedly at the lady in lurid green silk, the only other living being in the room apart from himself and the professional gentleman, who was sitting in solitary splendour on the sofa, like the goddess on the front page of Over Land and Sea, attacking a plate of cream horns, her cool woman’s heart secure behind a hundred pounds of fat.
‘I give up,’ the gentleman with the emerald headlamp finally announced, pushed the pieces together, produced a gold case from somewhere inside his jacket, fished out a visiting card and handed it to Paupersum, who read:
Zenon Savanievski
Impresario for Freak Shows
‘Hmm. Yeees. Hmm — for freaks hmm — for freaks.’ For a while Paupersum kept repeating the word vacuously, then, his mind on building up capital, he raised his voice and asked, ‘But don’t you fancy a few more games?’
‘Certainly. Of course. As many as you like,’ the professional gentleman said politely, ‘but shouldn’t we discuss some more lucrative business first?’
‘Some more — more lucrative business?’ the scholar exclaimed, faint wrinkles of suspicion appearing at the corners of his eyes.
‘I happen to have heard —’ the impresario went on, ordering with graphic gestures a bottle of wine and one glass from the waiter, ‘— quite by chance I happen to have heard that despite your eminence as a scientist you have no position at the moment?’
‘Oh yes I have. I spend the day wrapping comforts for the troops and putting stamps on them.’
‘And that keeps body and soul together?’
‘Only insofar as licking the stamps provides a certain amount of carbohydrates for my organism.’
‘But then why don’t you make use of your knowledge of languages instead? As an interpreter in a prisoner-of-war camp, for example?’
‘Because I’ve only learnt Old Korean, regional variants of Spanish, Urdu, three Eskimo languages together with a few dozen dialects of Swahili and at the moment we are unfortunately not at war with those peoples.’
‘Serves you right for not learning French, Russian, English and Serbian,’ the impresario muttered.
‘If I had, it would just mean the war would have broken out with the Eskimos instead of the French,’ the scholar objected.
‘Really? Hmm.’
‘Yes, my dear sir, there’s no hmm about it, that’s the way things are.’
‘Personally, in your situation, Herr Doktor, I’d have tried to place articles on the war with some newspaper or other. All made up, of course, you wouldn’t have to leave your study.’
‘I’ve tried that,’ the old man wailed, ‘reports from the front, concise and factual, touchingly simple in tone, but —’
‘Are you crazy?’ the impresario broke in. ‘Reports from the front concise and simple in tone?! When you write reports from the front you pull out all the stops. You should have —’
Dr Paupersum dismissed his advice with a wave of the hand. ‘I’ve tried everything humanly possible. When it was impossible to find a publisher for my book On the Probable Use of Sand for Blotting in Prehistoric China, an exhaustive four-volume treatment of the subject, I turned to chemistry’ — simply watching the other man drink the wine loosened Dr Paupersum’s tongue — ‘and quickly invented a new way of hardening steel…’
‘Well that must have brought in the money!’ the impresario exclaimed.
‘No. A manufacturer I showed my invention advised me not to bother patenting it (later on he patented it himself). He said you could only earn money with small inventions that didn’t attract your colleagues’ notice and arouse their envy. I took his advice and invented the famous folding confirmation chalice with automatic rising bottom to make it easier for the Methodist missionaries to convert savage tribes.’
‘And?’
‘I was sent to prison for two years for blasphemy.’
‘Go on, Herr Doktor,’ the impresario said encouragingly, ‘this is all fascinating.’
‘Oh, I could go on for days about hopes that came to nothing. For example, in order to get a scholarship a well-known patron of science had announced, I spent several years studying in the Museum of Ethnology. The result was a book that attracted a great deal of attention: How, According to the Shape of the Palate in Peruvian Mummies, the Incas Would Probably have Pronounced the Word Huitzitopochtli, if the Word had been Current in Peru instead of in Mexico.’
‘And were you awarded the scholarship?’
‘No. The patron of science told me — this was before the war — that at the moment he was short of money. Moreover, he was a pacifist and had to save up because the most important thing was to consolidate Germany’s good relations with France in order to preserve the humanitarian work and ideals that had been established at such great effort.’
‘But then when the war broke out you’d have prospects of getting the scholarship?’
‘No. He said said that now he had to save more than ever so he could make his own small contribution to making sure the old enemy was vanquished for good.’
‘Well, I’m sure your luck’ll be in once the war’s over, Herr Doktor.’
‘No. Then he’ll say he really has to save so that all the humanitarian work and ideals, that have been destroyed, can be built up again and good relations between the nations can be re-established once more.’
The impresario thought for a long while, then asked in sympathetic tones, ‘How is it you’ve never shot yourself?’
‘Shot myself? To earn money?’
‘No, no. I mean … er, well … I mean it’s remarkable that you’ve never lost heart, that you keep going back into the fray.’
At once Paupersum became restless. A fearful flicker animated his expression, which up to that point had been fixed, as if carved from wood. A similar wild glint, a look of agony, of profound, mute hopelessness, can be seen in the eyes of frightened animals on the edge of the cliff, with their pursuers behind them, before they plunge into the abyss so as not to fall into the hands of their tormentors. Twitching, as if with repressed sobs, his skinny fingers scrabbled round on the table, seeming to look for something to hold on to. The crease running from his nose to his mouth suddenly lengthened and stiffened, twisting his lips as if he were fighting against paralysis. He swallowed a few times.
‘Ah, now I know,’ — the words came haltingly, as if he had to struggle to stop himself slurring them — ‘now I know, you’re selling insurance. I’ve spent half my life trying to avoid meeting someone like you.’ (In vain the impresario tried to interrupt, and raised both his hands and eyebrows in protest.) ‘You’re implying I should take out insurance and then find some way of killing myself so that — yes, so that my child at least can live and won’t have to starve to death with me. Don’t say anything. Do you think I don’t know that nothing can be kept secret from you people? You’ve dug invisible passages from house to house and you peer, beady-eyed, into the rooms where there’s money to be made, so that you know everything about us: where a child’s been born, how many pennies this or that man has in his purse, whether he’s thinking of getting married or going on a dangerous journey. You keep tabs on us and you sell each other our addresses. And you, you look into my heart and read the thought that has been eating away at me for ten long years. Do you think I’m such a miserable egoist that I wouldn’t have long since taken out insurance and shot myself for my daughter’s sake — off my own bat and without any of you, who intend to cheat us and cheat your own company, who cheat here, there and everywhere, telling me how to do it so that nothing would come out? Do you think I don’t know that when … when the deed’s done you’d be off in a flash to tell them — for another cut, of course: “It’s a case of suicide, you don’t need to pay out.” Do you think I can’t see — as everyone can — my dear daughter’s hands getting whiter and whiter and more transparent with every day that passes, do you think I don’t know what it means when she has dry, feverish lips and coughs during the night? Even if I were a scoundrel like you people, in order to buy medicine and nourishing food I’d have long since… But I know what would happen, the money would never be paid out and… and then… no, no, it doesn’t bear thinking about!’
Again the impresario tried to interrupt to allay the suspicion he was an insurance broker, but his courage failed him when the scholar clenched his fist threateningly.
After a series of gesticulations which were totally incomprehensible, Dr Paupersum muttered, ‘No, I must consider some other way of finding help,’ — it was clearly the end of a train of thought that had been going through his mind — ‘the business with the Ambras giants, for example.’
‘The Ambras giants! That’s it! That’s what I wanted to ask you about.’ Now there was no stopping the impresario. ‘What is this business with the Ambras giants? I know you once wrote an article about them. But why aren’t you drinking, Herr Doktor? Julius, quick, another glass.’
Immediately Dr Paupersum was once more the scholar.
‘The Ambras giants,’ he said in a voice now devoid of emotion, ‘were misshapen people with immense hands and feet. The only place they occurred was the Tyrolean village of Ambras, which suggested it was a very rare form of disease caused by a pathogen which would only be found in that one place, since it obviously didn’t thrive elsewhere. But I was the first person to prove that the pathogen was to be found in a local spring, which in the meantime has almost dried up. Certain experiments I carried out indicate that I could prove this by using myself as a guinea pig; within a few months my own body — despite my advanced age — would show similar and even more extreme malformations.’
‘Such as?’ the impresario asked eagerly.
‘My nose would undoubtedly grow longer by eight or nine inches and start to resemble a trunk, perhaps somewhat like that of the South American capybara, my ears would expand to the size of plates, and in three months at most my hands would be the size of an average palm leaf (lodoicea sechellarum), whilst my feet would unfortunately scarcely exceed the dimensions of the lid of a 100-litre barrel. My theoretical calculations concerning the expected bulbous growths on the knees, in the manner of the Central European bracket fungus, are still in progress so I cannot absolutely guarantee —’
‘Enough, enough! You’re the man for me,’ the impresario broke in breathlessly. ‘No, please don’t interrupt. To put it in a nutshell: are you willing to carry out the experiment on yourself if I guarantee you a yearly income of half a million, with an advance of a few thousand — well, let’s say… let’s say five hundred marks?’
Dr Paupersum was struck dumb. He closed his eyes. Five hundred marks! Was there that much money in the world?
For a few minutes he visualised himself transformed into an antediluvian monstrosity with a long trunk; already he could hear a negro, in the gaudy attire of a fairground barker, bawling out at a sweaty, beer-sodden crowd, ‘Roll up, roll up, ladies an’ gen’lmen! Only a measly ten pfennigs to see the most ’ideous monster of the century!’ Then he saw his darling daughter, restored to health, dressed in white silk, blissfully kneeling at the altar, the bridal wreath round her hair, the whole church radiant with light, the statue of the Virgin resplendent… and… and… suddenly his heart stood still for a moment: he would have to hide behind a pillar, he couldn’t kiss his daughter again, couldn’t even let her see him in the distance to give her his blessing from afar, he, the most repulsive being in the whole wide world. If he did, he would scare the bridegroom away! From now on he would have to be a creature of the dusk, avoiding the light, carefully keeping himself hidden by day. But what did that matter? Not a jot if only his daughter could once more be healthy. And happy! And rich! He fell into a silent ecstasy. Five hundred marks! Five hundred marks!
The impresario, interpreting the long silence as indicating that Paupersum couldn’t make up his mind, started to deploy all his powers of persuasion: ‘Listen to me, Herr Doktor. Don’t say “no”. That would be turning your back on Fortune when she’s smiling on you. Your whole life has taken a wrong direction. Why? You’ve crammed your head full of learning. Learning’s a load of nonsense. Look at me. Have I ever bothered with learning? That’s something for people who’re born rich — and they don’t really need it. A man should be humble and, well, what you might call stupid, then Nature will look kindly on him. After all, Nature’s stupid too. Did you ever see a stupid man going bankrupt? You should have worked on the talents your Good Fairy gave you at birth. Or have you perhaps never looked in a mirror? A man with your appearance — even now, without having tasted the Ambras drinking water — could have been making a decent living as a clown for years. My God, the signs Mother Nature gives are so obvious even a child can understand them. Or are you perhaps afraid that as a freak you’d have no friends to talk to? I can tell I’ve put together a sizeable ensemble — and all people from the top drawer. There’s an old gentleman, for example, who was born with no arms or legs. I’m going to exhibit him to Her Majesty the Queen of Italy as a Belgian infant who’s been mutilated by the German generals.’
Dr Paupersum had only taken in the last couple of sentences. ‘What’s all this nonsense?’ he snapped. ‘First you say he’s an old gentleman, then you’re going to exhibit him as a Belgian infant!’
‘That only increases the attraction!’ the impresario countered. ‘I simply tell them he aged so rapidly out of horror at having to watch his mother being eaten alive by a Prussian uhlan.’
‘Yes, well, if you say so,’ said Dr Paupersum cautiously, disconcerted by the impresario’s quick-wittedness. ‘But tell me one thing: how do you propose to exhibit me before I’ve got a trunk, feet like dustbin lids and so on?’
‘Nothing simpler. I’ll smuggle you to Paris via Switzerland on a false passport. There you’ll be put in a cage where you’ll have to roar like a bull every five minutes and eat a few live grass snakes three times a day — don’t worry, we’ll manage, it just sounds a bit revolting. Then in the evening we’ll put on a special show: an actor masquerading as an explorer will demonstrate how he captured you with his lasso in the Berlin jungle. And outside there’ll be a poster with: “Genuine German Professor! Guaranteed!” After all, that’s the truth, I won’t have anything to do with fraud. “Live for the first time in France!” And so on. My friend d’Annunzio will be happy to compose the text, he’ll give it the right poetic pizzazz.’
‘But what if the war should be over by then?’ Paupersum objected. ‘With my bad luck…’
The impresario smiled. ‘Don’t you worry, Herr Doktor, the day will never come when a Frenchman won’t believe anything that’s to the detriment of the Germans. Not in a thousand years.’
Was that an earthquake? No, it was just the trainee waiter dropping a tin tray full of glasses as a musical prelude to his night shift.
Somewhat flustered, Dr Paupersum looked round the café. The goddess from Over Land and Sea had disappeared. Her place on the sofa had been taken by an incorrigible theatre critic who, mentally panning a premiere that was to take place in a week’s time, licked his forefinger to pick up a few breadcrumbs off the table and chewed them up with his front teeth, giving a good imitation of a polecat as he did so.
It gradually dawned on Dr Paupersum that he was sitting with his back to the rest of the café and had presumably been doing so all the time, so he must have seen everything he had just experienced in the large wall mirror, from which his own face was now staring at him pensively. The snappily dressed gentleman was still there too and he really was eating cold salmon — with his knife, of course — but he was sitting right over there in the corner, not at Paupersum’s table.
‘How did I come to be in the Café Stefanie?’ he asked himself.
He couldn’t remember.
Then he slowly worked it out: ‘It comes from starving all the time and then seeing other people eating salmon and drinking wine with it. My self split in two for a while, it’s not unknown and perfectly natural. Suddenly it’s as if we’re among the audience in the theatre and performing on the stage at the same time. And the roles we play are made out of the things we’ve read and heard and — secretly — hoped. Oh, yes, hope is a cruel playwright indeed! We imagine conversations we think we’re having, we see ourselves make gestures until the outside world grows thin and everything around us takes on different, delusory forms. We don’t think the words and phrases that come out of our brain in the way they usually do; they come wrapped in observations and explanations, as in a short story. A strange thing, this “self”. Sometimes it falls apart like a bundle of sticks when you untie the string…’ Again Dr Paupersum found his lips were murmuring, ‘How did I come to be in the Café Stefanie?’
Suddenly all his brooding vanished as a cry of delight swept through him. ‘But I’ve won a mark at chess! A whole mark! Now my daughter will get well again. Quick, a bottle of red wine, and some milk and —”
Wild with excitement, he searched through his pockets. As he did so his eye fell on the black armband round his sleeve and at once he remembered the awful, naked truth: his daughter had died during the night.
He clasped his head in his hands. Yes, died. Now he knew how he came to be in the café — he had come from the graveyard, from the funeral. They had buried her that afternoon. Hastily, soullessly, sullenly. Because it had rained so hard.
And then he had wandered round the streets, for hours on end, gritting his teeth, desperately listening to the clatter of his heels and counting, counting, from one to a hundred, then starting again, to stop himself going mad from the idea that his feet might unwittingly take him back home, back to his bare room with the pauper’s bed where she had died and which was now empty. Somehow or other he must have ended up here. Somehow or other.
He clutched the edge of the table to stop himself collapsing. Disjointed words and phrases kept popping up in his scholarly mind: ‘Hmm, yes, I should have… blood… transfusions. I should have transferred blood to her from my veins… blood from my veins…’ he repeated mechanically a few times. Then a sudden thought gave him a start: ‘But I can’t leave my child all by herself, out there in the wet night.’ He wanted to scream it out loud, but all that came was a low whimper.
Another thought jolted him: ‘Roses, a bouquet of roses, that was her last wish. I won a mark at chess, so at least I can buy her a bouquet of roses.’ He rummaged through his pockets again and dashed out, hatless, into the darkness, in pursuit of one last, faint will-o-the-wisp.
The next morning they found him on his daughter’s grave. Dead. His hands thrust deep into the earth. He had slashed his wrists and his blood had trickled down to the girl sleeping below.
His pale face shone proudly with the peace that can never be disturbed by hope again.