A Hunger Artist | Page 3

artist
around his thin waist, in the process wanting with his exaggerated
caution to make people believe that here he had to deal with something
fragile, and handed him over -- not without secretly shaking him a little,

so that the hunger artist's legs and upper body swung back and forth
uncontrollably -- to the women, who had in the meantime turned as
pale as death. At this point, the hunger artist endured everything. His
head lay on his chest -- it was as if it had inexplicably rolled around
and just stopped there -- his body was arched back, his legs, in an
impulse of self-preservation, pressed themselves together at the knees,
but scraped the ground, as if they were not really on the floor but were
looking for the real ground, and the entire weight of his body,
admittedly very small, lay against one of the women, who appealed for
help with flustered breath, for she had not imagined her post of honour
would be like this, and then stretched her neck as far as possible, to
keep her face from the least contact with the hunger artist, but then,
when she couldn't manage this and her more fortunate companion didn't
come to her assistance but trembled and remained content to hold in
front of her the hunger artist's hand, that small bundle of knuckles, she
broke into tears, to the delighted laughter of the auditorium, and had to
be relieved by an attendant who had been standing ready for some time.
Then came the meal. The impresario put a little food into mouth of the
hunger artist, now half unconscious, as if fainting, and kept up a
cheerful patter designed to divert attention away from the hunger
artist's condition. Then a toast was proposed to the public, which was
supposedly whispered to the impresario by the hunger artist, the
orchestra confirmed everything with a great fanfare, people dispersed,
and no one had the right to be dissatisfied with the event, no one except
the hunger artist -- he was always the only one.
He lived this way, taking small regular breaks, for many years,
apparently in the spotlight, honoured by the world, but for all that his
mood was usually gloomy, and it kept growing gloomier all the time,
because no one understood how to take him seriously. But how was he
to find consolation? What was there left for him to wish for? And if a
good-natured man who felt sorry for him ever wanted to explain to him
that his sadness probably came from his fasting, then it could happen
that the hunger artist responded with an outburst of rage and began to
shake the bars like an animal, frightening everyone. But the impresario
had a way of punishing moments like this, something he was happy to
use. He would make an apology for the hunger artist to the assembled

public, conceding that the irritability had been provoked only by his
fasting, something quite intelligible to well-fed people and capable of
excusing the behaviour of the hunger artist without further explanation.
From there he would move on to speak about the equally hard to
understand claim of the hunger artist that he could go on fasting for
much longer than he was doing. He would praise the lofty striving, the
good will, and the great self-denial no doubt contained in this claim,
but then would try to contradict it simply by producing photographs,
which were also on sale, for in the pictures one could see the hunger
artist on the fortieth day of his fast, in bed, almost dead from
exhaustion. Although the hunger artist was very familiar with this
perversion of the truth, it always strained his nerves again and was too
much for him. What was a result of the premature ending of the fast
people were now proposing as its cause! It was impossible to fight
against this lack of understanding, against this world of
misunderstanding. In good faith he always listened eagerly to the
impresario at the bars of his cage, but each time, once the photographs
came out, he would let go of the bars and, with a sigh, sink back into
the straw, and a reassured public could come up again and view him.
When those who had witnessed such scenes thought back on them a
few years later, often they were unable to understand themselves. For in
the meantime that change mentioned above had set it. It happened
almost immediately. There may have been more profound reasons for it,
but who bothered to discover what they were? At any rate, one day the
pampered hunger artist saw himself abandoned by the crowd of
pleasure seekers, who preferred to stream to other attractions. The
impresario chased around half of Europe one