A Hunger Artist | Page 5

artist, gave a
detailed explanation about what was going on here, and talked of
earlier years, when he had been present at similar but incomparably
more magnificent performances, and then the children, because they
had been inadequately prepared at school and in life, always stood
around still uncomprehendingly. What was fasting to them? But
nonetheless the brightness of the look in their searching eyes revealed
something of new and more gracious times coming. Perhaps, the
hunger artist said to himself sometimes, everything would be a little
better if his location were not quite so near the animal stalls. That way
it would be easy for people to make their choice, to say nothing of the
fact that he was very upset and constantly depressed by the stink from
the stalls, the animals' commotion at night, the pieces of raw meat
dragged past him for the carnivorous beasts, and the roars at feeding
time. But he did not dare to approach the administration about it. In any

case, he had the animals to thank for the crowds of visitors among
whom, here and there, there could be one destined for him. And who
knew where they would hide him if he wished to remind them of his
existence and, along with that, of the fact that, strictly speaking, he was
only an obstacle on the way to the menagerie.
A small obstacle, at any rate, a constantly diminishing obstacle. People
got used to the strange notion that in these times they would want to
pay attention to a hunger artist, and with this habitual awareness the
judgment on him was pronounced. He might fast as well as he could --
and he did -- but nothing could save him any more. People went
straight past him. Try to explain the art of fasting to anyone! If
someone doesn't feel it, then he cannot be made to understand it. The
beautiful signs became dirty and illegible. People tore them down, and
no one thought of replacing them. The small table with the number of
days the fasting had lasted, which early on had been carefully renewed
every day, remained unchanged for a long time, for after the first weeks
the staff grew tired of even this small task. And so the hunger artist
kept fasting on and on, as he once had dreamed about in earlier times,
and he had no difficulty succeeding in achieving what he had predicted
back then, but no one was counting the days -- no one, not even the
hunger artist himself, knew how great his achievement was by this
point, and his heart grew heavy. And when once in a while a person
strolling past stood there making fun of the old number and talking of a
swindle, that was in a sense the stupidest lie which indifference and
innate maliciousness could invent, for the hunger artist was not being
deceptive -- he was working honestly -- but the world was cheating him
of his reward.
Many days went by once more, and this, too, came to an end. Finally
the cage caught the attention of a supervisor, and he asked the attendant
why they had left this perfectly useful cage standing here unused with
rotting straw inside. Nobody knew, until one man, with the help of the
table with the number on it, remembered the hunger artist. They pushed
the straw around with a pole and found the hunger artist in there. "Are
you still fasting?" the supervisor asked. "When are you finally going to
stop?" "Forgive me everything," whispered the hunger artist. Only the

supervisor, who was pressing his ear up against the cage, understood
him. "Certainly," said the supervisor, tapping his forehead with his
finger in order to indicate to the spectators the state the hunger artist
was in, "we forgive you." "I always wanted you to admire my fasting,"
said the hunger artist. "But we do admire it," said the supervisor
obligingly. "But you shouldn't admire it," said the hunger artist. "Well
then, we don't admire it," said the supervisor, "but why shouldn't we
admire it?" "Because I had to fast. I can't do anything else," said the
hunger artist. "Just look at you," said the supervisor, "why can't you do
anything else?" "Because," said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little
and, with his lips pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the
supervisor's ear so that he wouldn't miss anything, "because I couldn't
find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not
have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart's
content, like you and everyone else." Those were his last words, but in
his failing eyes there was the firm, if no longer proud, conviction that
he was