Free Auto-da-fé by Elias Canetti Page B

that children learnt too little. I read out to her a paragraph of Arai Hakuseki. She was quite carried away. That was how she first betrayed herself. Who knows how otherwise I could have guessed her feeling for books. At that moment we were drawn together. Probably she only meant to remind me ofthat. She is still the same. Her views on children have not altered since then. My friends are her friends. My enemies will be her enemies. The brief speech of an innocent mina. She had no conception of any other relationship. I must be careful. She might be frightened. I shall act very cautiously. How shall Ï open the subject to her? It is difficult to speak of it. I have no books on it. Buy one? What would the bookseller think? I am not that kind of man. Send someone for it? But who? She herself— for shame — my own wife! How can I be so cowardly. I must try myself. I, myself. But Suppose she is unwilling. Suppose she screams. The people in the other flats — the caretaker — the police — the mob. But they can do nothing to me. I am married to her. I have a right. How disgusting! How came I to think of it? I am the one whom that cobbler has infected. Shame on ou. After forty years. And now to behave in this way. I shall spare her. Children last. If I only knew what she meant. Sphinx.
    The mother of the four children stood up. 'Look out!' she urged them, and shepherded them forward on her left. On the right, on Therese's side, she exposed herself only, a valiant commander. Contrary to Kien's expectation, she bobbed her head at her enemy, greeted her affably and said: 'You're the lucky one, still single,' and laughed, her gold teeth glittering a parting signal. Only when she had gone did Thérèse explode, screaming in a voice of fury, 'I ask you, my husband, I ask you, my husband! No children for us! I ask you, my husband!' She pointed at him, she pulled at his arm. I must calm her, he thought. The scene was painful to him, she needed his protection, she screamed and screamed. At last he drew himself to his full height and spoke out before their fellow-travellers: 'Yes,' he said. She had been insulted, she had to defend herself. Her counter-attack was as coarse as the attack had been. She was not to blame. Thérèse relaxed in her seat. No one, not even the gentleman next to her for whom she had saved the seat, took her part. The world was corrupt with kindness to children. Two stops further the Kiens got out. Thérèse went first. Suddenly he heard someone saying just behind him: 'Her skirt is the best thing about her.' 'What a bulwark!' 'Poor fellow!' "What can you expect, the old starch box.' They were all laughing. The conductor and Thérèse, already peacefully on the outer platform, had heard nothing. But the conductor was laughing. In the street Thérèse received her husband joyfully: 'A jolly fellow!' she observed. The jolly fellow leaned out of the moving tram, put his hand to his mouth and bellowed two incomprehensible syllables. He was shaking all over, doubtless with laughter. Thérèse waved and excused herself, seeing his astonished look, with the words: 'He'll be falling out in a minute.'
    But Kien was surreptitiously contemplating the skirt. It was even bluer than usual and had been more stiffly starched. Her skirt was a part of her, as the mussel shell is a part of the mussel. Let no one try to force open the closed shell of a mussel. A gigantic mussel as huge as this dress. They have to be trodden on, to be trampled into slime and splinters, as he had once done when he was a child at the seaside. The mussel yielded not a chink. He had never seen one naked. What kind of an animal did the shell enclose with such impenetrable strength; He wanted to know, at once: he had the hard, stiff-necked thing between his hands, he tortured it with fingers and finger-nails; the mussel tortured him back. He vowed not to stir a step from the place until he had broken it open. The mussel took a different vow. She would not