Auto-da-fé by Elias Canetti Page A

loses its terrors. He had been looking at Mexican pictorial writings only yesterday. One of them represented the sacrifice of a prisoner by two priests disguised as jaguars. His chance meeting with a blind man a few days before had made him think of Eratosthenes the aged librarian of Alexandria. The name of Alexandria would naturally provoke the recollection of the burning of the famous library. A certain medieval woodcut, whose ingenuousness always made him smile, depicted about thirty Jews on a burning pyre flaming to heaven yet obstinately screeching their prayers. He was a great admirer of Michelangelo; above all he admired his Last Judgment. In that picture sinners are being dragged to Hell by pitiless devils. One of the damned, the picture of terror and anguish, covers his cowardly flaccid face with his hands; devils are clutching at his legs but he has never seen the woes of other people and dare not look at his own now. On the height stands Christ, very un-Christlike, condemning the damned with muscular and mighty arm. From all these recollections sleep had concocted a dream.
    When Kien pushed the wash-trolley out of his bedroom he heard on an unexpectedly high note the exclamation: 'Up already!' Why did the creature speak so loud early in the morning when he was still almost asleep? Very true he had promised to lend her a book. A novel was the only thing worth considering for her. But no mind ever grew fat on a diet of novels. The pleasure which they occasionally offer is far too heavily paid for: they undermine the finest characters. They teach us to think ourselves into other men's places. Thus we acquire a taste for change. The personality becomes dissolved in pleasing figments of imagination. The reader learns to understand every point of view. Willingly he yields himself to the pursuit of other people's goals and loses sight of his own. Novels are so many wedges which the novelist, an actor with his pen, inserts into the closed personality of the reader. The better he calculates the size of the wedge and the strength of the resistance, so much the more completely does he crack open the personality of his victim. Novels should be prohibited by the State.
    At seven o'clock Kien once again opened his door. Thérèse was standing in front of it, as trusting and modest as always, her prominent left ear perhaps a trifle more crooked.
    'I make so bold,' she reminded him impertinently.
    What little blood Kien had rushed to his head. So she would stick to it, this cursed creature in her starched skirt, and exact what had once been thoughtlessly promised. 'You want that book,' he cried and his voice cracked. 'You shall have it.'
    He slammed the door in her face, strode with quivering steps into the third room, inserted one finger into the shelves and extracted The Trousers of Herr von Bredow . He had possessed this book from his earliest schooldays, had then lent it to all his classmates, and on account of the deplorable condition in which it had been ever since could not bear the sight of it. He looked with malice at its grease-spotted binding and sticky pages. Calm now, he went back to Thérèse and held the book close to her eyes.
    'That was unnecessary,' she said and pulled out from under her arm a thick bundle of paper, packing paper, as he now noticed for the first time. With some ceremony she selected a suitable piece and wrapped it round the book like a shawl round a baby. Then she selected a second piece of paper and said, 'A stitch in time saves nine'. When the second piece of paper did not lie smoothly enough, she tore it off and tried a third one.
    Kien followed her movements as though he were seeing her for the first time. He had underestimated her. She knew how to handle a book better than he did. This old thing was loathsome to him, but she wrapped it carefully up in two layers of paper. She kept the palms of her hands clear of the binding. She worked with her finger tips alone. Her fingers were not so