Auto-da-fé by Elias Canetti Page B

coarse after all. He felt ashamed of himself and pleased with her. Should he fetch her something else? She deserved something less shabby. Still, for a beginning she could make do with this one. Even without encouragement she would soon be asking for another. For eight long years his library had been safe in her care; he had not known it.
    'I have to leave to-morrow,' he said suddenly, as she was smoothing down the paper cover with her knuckles. 'For some months.'
    'Then I shall be able to dust properly for once. Is an hour long enough;'
    'What would you do if a fire broke out?'
    She was horrified. She dropped the paper to the ground. The book remained in her hand. 'Gracious Heavens, save the books!'
    'But I am not really going away: I was only joking,' Kien smiled. Carried away by this picture of extreme devotion — himself absent and the books alone — he came closer to her and patted her on the shoulder with his. bony fingers, saying-in a tone almost friendly, 'You're a good creature.'
    'I must have a look what you've chosen for me,' she said, and the corners of her mouth seemed to reach out almost to her ears. She opened the book and read aloud, ' The Trousers ' — she interrupted herself but did not blush. Her face was bedewed with a light sweat.
    'Excuse me, Professor,' she exclaimed, and glided away, swiftly triumphant, towards her kitchen.
    During the ensuing days Kien exerted himself to recover his old power of concentration. He too knew moments when he was tired of his services to the written word and felt a secret desire for more of the company of human kind than his strength of character normally permitted. When he entered into open conflict with such temptations he wasted much time; they tended to grow stronger if he fought them. He had contrived a more ingenious method: he out-manoeuvred them. He did not pillow his head on the writing desk and lose himself in idle desires. He did not walk up and down the streets and enter into trivial conversations with fools. On the contrary he filled the library with the distinguished friends he had read. Mostly he inclined to the ancient Chinese. He commanded them to step out of the volume and the shelf to which they belonged, beckoned to them, offered them chairs, greeted them, threatened them, and according to his taste put their own words into their mouths and defended his own opinions against them until at length he had silenced them. When he entered into written controversy he found his words acquired from this practice an unexpected force. In this way he practiced speaking Chinese and took pride in the clever phrases which flowed from his lips so easily and so emphatically. If I go to the theatre (he thought) I hear a conversation in double-Dutch which is entertaining but not instructive, and in the end not even entertaining, only boring. Two or even three whole valuable hours must I sacrifice only to go to bed feeling irritated. My own dialogues do not go on so long and have meaning and balance. In this way he justified to himself the harmless game which might have seemed odd to a spectator.
    Sometimes Kien would meet, either in the street or in a bookshop, a barbarous fellow who amazed him by uttering a reasonable sentiment. In order to obliterate any impression which contradicted his contempt for the mass of mankind he would in such cases perform a small arithmetical calculation. How many words does this fellow speak in a single day? At a conservative reckoning ten thousand. Three of them* are not without sense. By chance I overheard those three. The other words which whirl through his head at a rate of several hundred thousand per day, which he thinks but does not even speak — one imbecility after another — are to be guessed merely by looking at his features; fortunately one does not have to listen to them.
    His housekeeper, however, spoke little, since she was always alone. At a flash, they seemed to have something in common; his thoughts recurred to it