Metamorphosis and Other Stories (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

IN RECENT DECADES THERE has been a marked decline in the public’s interest in professional fasting. It was formerly very profitable to mount large, privately managed productions of this kind, while today this is entirely impossible. Those were different times. There was a time when the whole town was entranced by the hunger artist; during his fast, enthusiasm grew from day to day, everyone wanted to see the hunger artist at least once a day; during the latter stages people would reserve special seats in front of the small barred cage all day long, there were even night exhibitions by torchlight for a more extreme effect; on fine days the cage was carried out into the open and then it was a particular treat for children to see the hunger artist, while for the elders he was often mostly a joke in which they participated because it was fashionable; the children stood around in open-mouthed wonder, holding each other’s hands for security, and watching as he sat on the spread-out straw, spurning even a chair, a pale figure in black tricot,^o his ribs protruding hideously; sometimes he nodded politely, answering questions with a forced smile, occasionally proffering an arm through the bars for them to feel how skinny it was but then sinking down and retreating completely into himself, paying attention to nothing and no one, not even the all-important striking of the clock, which was the only piece of furniture in the cage, but staring straight ahead through narrowed eyes and taking an occasional sip from a glass of water to moisten his lips.

Aside from the milling spectators, there were also constant teams of watchmen selected by the public; oddly enough these were butchers more often than not, whose task it was to watch the hunger artist night and day, three at a time, so that he did not partake of somehow secreted nourishment. This was nothing more than a formality instituted to reassure the masses, because as initiates very well knew, during the period of the fast the hunger artist would under no circumstances, including duress, swallow the tiniest morsel; the honor of his profession forbade it. Of course, not every watchman was capable of comprehending this; frequently there were groups of night watchmen who were very lax in their duties and deliberately sat in a far corner absorbed in a card game with the obvious intention of allowing the hunger artist the opportunity of a little refreshment, which they assumed he could procure from some hidden stash. Nothing was more hateful to the hunger artist than watchmen like these, they made him miserable, they made his fast excruciatingly unbearable; sometimes he was able to overcome his weakness enough to sing during their watch for as long as he could to show these people how unjust their suspicions were. This was of little use, however; they only wondered at his skillful ability to eat while singing. He very much preferred the watchmen who sat right up against the bars and who were not satisfied by the dim night-lighting in the hall and so trained on him the beams of electric torches provided by the impresario. He was not at all disturbed by the harsh light, as he was unable to sleep in any case and he could always doze off a bit no matter the light or the hour, even when the hall was packed with noisy people. He was quite prepared to pass a sleepless night with such guards; he was happy to swap jokes with them, tell them stories from his nomadic life and listen to their stories in turn, anything to keep them awake and to show them again and again that there was nothing edible in his cage and that he was fasting as not one among them could fast. He was happiest however when morning came and a lavish breakfast was brought to them at his own expense; they threw themselves on it with the keen appetite of healthy men after the wearying night’s vigil. Of course there were people who even misconstrued this breakfast as a bribe for the guards, but that was really going too far, and when asked if they would take over the night watch without breakfast just for the sake of the cause, they slunk away but stuck to their insinuations nevertheless.

But suspicions of this nature are inseparable from fasting. No one was capable of spending all his days and nights keeping watch over the hunger artist, therefore no one person could be absolutely certain from firsthand knowledge that the fast had truly been constant and flawless; only the hunger artist himself could know that, and so at the same time only he could be a satisfied spectator of his own fast. And yet for other reasons he was never satisfied; perhaps it was not just the fasting that emaciated his body to such a point that many people regretfully could not attend his demonstrations because they could not bear the sight of him, perhaps he was so reduced through dissatisfaction with himself. For he alone knew what no other initiate knew: How easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world. Nor did he make a secret of this though no one believed him; at best they thought him modest, but mostly they chalked it up to publicity or thought him a fraud for whom fasting was easy because he had figured out some scam to make it easy and then had the audacity to more or less admit it. He was forced to endure all this and he even grew accustomed to it over the years, but his own dissatisfaction gnawed at him inwardly, and yet never, not after a single fasting period—one had to grant him that much—had he left his cage voluntarily. The impresario had fixed the maximum period of fasting at forty days, he would never allow a fast to exceed this limit even in great cities, and for good reason. Experience had proved that public interest in any town could be roused by steadily increased advertising for about forty days, but the public lost interest after that and a substantial drop in attendance was noted; naturally there were small variations in this between one town or country and another, but as a rule forty days was the prescribed limit. So on the fortieth day the flower-festooned cage was opened, an enthusiastic crowd of spectators filled the hall, a military band performed, two doctors entered the cage to take the necessary measurements of the hunger artist, announced these results to the audience through a megaphone, and finally two young ladies came forward, pleased to have been selected for the honor of assisting the hunger artist from the cage and down the first few steps toward a small table laden with a carefully prepared invalid’s meal. And at this very moment the hunger artist always turned stubborn. He would go so far as to surrender his bony arms to the outstretched hands of these so licitous ladies as they bent down to him, but stand up—that he would not do. Why stop now, after just forty days? He could have gone on longer, infinitely longer; why stop now when he was in his best fasting form, or rather, not yet in his best form? Why should he be robbed of the glory of fasting longer, not only for being the greatest hunger artist of all time, which he probably was already, but for surpassing his own record to achieve the inconceivable, because he felt his powers of fasting knew no bounds. Why did his public, who claimed to so admire him, have so little patience with him; if he could endure fasting longer, why couldn’t they endure it? And besides, he was tired, he was comfortable sitting in the straw, and now he was expected to haul himself up to his full height and proceed to a meal the mere thought of which nauseated him to such a point that only the presence of the ladies and enormous effort prevented him from expressing it. And he gazed up into the eyes of the ladies, who were seemingly so friendly but in reality so cruel, and shook his head, which felt too heavy for his enfeebled neck. But then, what always happened, happened again. The impresario came forward silently—the band music made speech impossible—he raised his arms over the hunger artist as if inviting heaven to look down upon its handiwork in the straw, this pathetic martyr, which the hunger artist certainly was but in a completely different sense; he grasped the hunger artist around his emaciated waist with exaggerated delicacy to accentuate the fragile condition he was in, and committed him—not without giving him a secret shake or two so that the hunger artist’s upper body and legs lolled and swayed about—to the care of the ladies, who had grown quite pale. Now the hunger artist submitted to everything, his head lay on his chest as if it had rolled there by chance and was inexplicably stopped, his body was hollowed out, some instinct of self-preservation squeezed his legs tight at the knees but they scraped at the ground as if it were not the solid earth they sought, and the entire weight of his body, however modest, was supported by one of the ladies, who looked around for help, panting a little—this was not how she had pictured her post of honor—first she craned her neck as far back as she could to prevent her face from touching the hunger artist, but then, when this was not successful and her more fortunate companion did not come to her aid but merely extended a trembling hand, which held the small bundle of bones that was the hunger artist’s hand, she burst into tears, much to the delight of the spectators, and had to be replaced by an attendant who was standing in readiness. Then came the meal, a tiny bit of which the impresario spooned into the virtually comatose hunger artist, amid cheerful patter designed to divert the audience’s attention from the artist’s condition; afterward a toast that the artist allegedly whispered to the impresario was drunk to the public, the band capped everything with a grand flourish, the crowd dispersed, and no one had any cause to be dissatisfied with the show; no one, that is, but the hunger artist, always only him.

So he lived for many years in apparent splendor and with regular periods of rest, honored by the world, yet despite all that, mostly in a black mood that grew all the darker because no one took it seriously. And indeed, how could he be comforted? What more could he wish for? And if once in a while a kind-hearted soul came along and felt sorry for him and tried to point out that his melancholia was probably due to his fasting, it sometimes happened, especially if the fast were well advanced, that the hunger artist responded with a furious outburst and began to rattle the bars of his cage alarmingly, like a beast. But the impresario had a method of punishment that he was fond of employing for these outbursts. He begged the assembled audience’s pardon for the artist’s behavior, which he admitted was to be excused only as an irritable condition brought on by the fasting, a condition incomprehensible to well-fed people, and then he would make the transition to the hunger artist’s equally outlandish claim that he was able to fast for much longer than he already had; he praised the high aspirations, the goodwill, and the great deal of self-denial undoubtedly implicit in this claim, but then he would seek to refute this claim simply enough by producing photographs, which were simultaneously offered for sale to the public, showing the artist on the fortieth day of a fast, lying on a bed, near dead from exhaustion. This perversion of the truth, though familiar to the hunger artist, always unnerved him anew and was too much for him. What was a consequence of the premature termination of his fast was presented here as its cause! To fight against this idiocy, this world of idiocy, was impossible. He stood clinging to the bars of his cage listening to the impresario in good faith time and time again but always let go as soon as the photographs appeared and sank back down onto his straw with a moan, and the reassured public could approach again and stare at him.

When the witnesses to such scenes reflected on them several years later, they often could not comprehend their own behavior. Meanwhile the aforementioned decline of public interest had already taken place; it seemed to happen almost overnight; there may have been deeper reasons for it, but who wanted to dig around for them; in any event, one day the pampered hunger artist found himself deserted by the crowds of pleasure seekers, who streamed past him toward other, more popular exhibitions. The impresario chased halfway across Europe with him one last time to see if the old interest were still alive here and there, all in vain; it was as if a secret pact had been made and everywhere there was evidence of a veritable revulsion for professional fasting. Naturally it could not realistically have happened so suddenly, and in retrospect a number of warning signs that were not adequately noted or sufficiently dealt with in the intoxication of success now came to mind, but it was too late at present to engage in any countermeasures. Of course fasting would make a comeback someday, but that was no comfort to the living. What was the hunger artist to do now? When he had been lauded by thousands he could never deign to appear as a sideshow in village fairs, and as for embarking on a different career, the hunger artist was not only too old but above all too fanatically devoted to fasting. So he took leave of the impresario, his partner throughout an unparalleled career, and found a position in a large circus; in order to spare his own feelings, he avoided reading the terms of his contract.

The hunger artist had not however lost his sense of fundamental reality and accepted it as a matter of course that his cage was not placed in the middle of the ring as a star attraction but outside by the stables in a spot that was, after all, still accessible. Large brightly painted placards framed his cage and proclaimed what was to be seen inside. When the public came pouring out during intermissions to see the animals, they almost inevitably passed the hunger artist’s cage and stopped there for a moment; they might have loitered longer if the crowds pressing them from behind in the narrow passageway, who did not understand the delay in seeing the keenly anticipated menagerie, did not render further contemplation unfeasible. This was also the reason why the hunger artist, who had naturally been looking forward to these visiting hours as the culmination of his life’s work, trembled at their prospect. At first he could hardly wait for the intermissions; he had delighted in watching the crowds surge toward him, until all too quickly it was firmly impressed upon him—and even the most obstinate and half-deliberate self-deception could not obscure the fact—that these people, judging from their actions at least, were again and again without exception on their way to visit the stables. And that first sight of them from a distance remained the most cherished. For as soon as they reached him he was promptly deafened by the shouting and cursing that welled up from the two contending factions, the ones that wanted to pause and stare at him—and the hunger artist soon found them the more distasteful of the two—out of no true interest but from nastiness and defiance, and the others, who only wanted to go straight to the animals. After the first rush was over, along came the stragglers, and although there was nothing to prevent them from stopping as long as they liked, these folks hurried by with long strides and nary a glance at him as they hastened to reach the stables in time. And all too rarely he had a stroke of luck when the father of a family arrived with his children, pointed to the hunger artist, and gave a detailed explanation of the phenomenon, telling tales of earlier years when he had attended similar but far grander exhibitions, and the children, since neither their lives nor their schools had sufficiently prepared them for this, remained uncomprehending—what was hunger to them?— but the gleam in their inquisitive eyes spoke of new and better and more merciful times to come. The hunger artist sometimes remarked to himself that perhaps things might look a little brighter if he were not located quite so near the stables. That made it too easy for people to choose their destination, not to mention how the stench of the stables, the restlessness of the animals at night, the conveyance of raw slabs of meat for the beasts of prey, and the roars at feeding time all continually oppressed him. But he did not dare complain to the management; after all he had the animals to thank for the numerous visitors who did pass his cage, among whom there always might be the one who was there just to see him, and lord knew where they might tuck him away if he called attention to his existence and thereby to the fact that, strictly speaking, he was no more than an obstacle in the path to the animals.

A slight obstacle to be sure, an obstacle growing slighter by the day. One has grown accustomed in this day and age to finding it strange to call attention to a hunger artist, and in accordance with this custom the verdict was carried against him. He might fast as well as only he could, and indeed he did, but nothing could save him, everyone passed him by. Just try to explain the art of fasting to someone! Without a feeling for it, one cannot be made to understand it. The colorful placards became dirty and illegible, they were torn down and no one thought to replace them; the little signboard tallying the number of days fasted, which was at first carefully altered each day, had long remained unchanged, for after the first few weeks the staff had already tired of even this small task, and so the hunger artist just fasted on as he had once dreamed of doing, and it was indeed no trouble for him, as he had always predicted, but no one counted the days, no one, not even the hunger artist himself, knew the extent of his achievement, and his spirits sank. And once in a while when a random passerby lingered, ridiculed the outdated number posted, and hinted at fraud, it was the stupidest lie in a sense, born of malice and brute indifference, for the hunger artist did not cheat; he worked with integrity, but the world cheated him of his reward.

However, many more days passed and that too came to an end. An overseer happened to notice the cage one day and asked the help why this perfectly useful cage with rotten straw in it was left unoccupied; no one knew the answer until someone, with the help of the signboard, recalled the hunger artist. They prodded the straw with sticks and found the hunger artist buried inside. “Are you still fasting?” asked the overseer. “When on earth do you plan on stopping?” “Forgive me, everyone,” rasped the hunger artist; only the overseer with his ear pressed against the bars could understand him. “By all means,” said the overseer, tapping his finger at the side of his forehead to indicate the hunger artist’s condition to the others, “we forgive you.” “I always wanted you to admire my fasting,” said the hunger artist. “And so we do admire it,” said the overseer accommodatingly. “But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist. “So then we don’t admire it,” said the overseer, “but why should we not admire it?” “Because I must fast, I cannot do otherwise,” answered the hunger artist. “What a character you are,” said the overseer, “and why can’t you do otherwise?” “Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and puckering his lips as if for a kiss, and he spoke directly into the overseer’s ear so that nothing would be missed, “because I could never find food I liked. Had I found it, believe me, I would never have created such a ruckus and would have stuffed myself like you and everyone else.” These were his last words, but in his glazing eyes there remained the firm if no longer proud conviction that he was still fasting.