Till at last he found it.
It was a rat.
Oddly enough, a rat ...
When one day a large rat chanced to visit the torture chamber and scuttled along the wall, the hitherto steadfast roisterer shrank.
Skorabkowski tore the gag from his mouth. The uncorked Hooligan did not burst out with a yell but, watching the rat, remained silent. His devilish disgust and fear were stronger than he was. And the only thing that happened was that as the rat passed close by his feet in the stocks, the brigand gave a convulsive laugh an octave higher ...
At last! At last! How could God be thanked! He should drop to his knees in gratitude for this inconceivable grace! At last he had found a way! The appeals judge could not hold back his tears. For, by an inscrutable decree of Nature, even the strongest person has one single thing foreordained in this world that is stronger than him, that is above him and that he cannot tolerate! Some cannot tolerate primroses, others liver, while still others get hives from wild strawberries; but it was an astonishing thing that the murderer, who had not been enfeebled by torture with either little sticks or little pins, nor any of a thousand ingenious variations, who, it seemed, was stronger than anything—was afraid of a rat. He could not abide the rat! He was weaker than the rat. God alone knew why. Was it perhaps because the brigand, who murdered people like insects, was afraid to murder a rat—oh, he was not afraid of the rat itself—it was the rat’s death he was afraid of; he was revolted by it more than anything else; a rat’s death for him was infinitely loathsome, and he was unable to kill one, and no other death, of hog, or calf, or human, or worm, or chicken, or frog, was for him one thousandth part as terrible, repugnant, convulsive, slippery, rounded, and false as the death of a rat! And this was why the fearful thug was helpless in the face of the rodent—it was the only death that for him was unattainable, impossible. And thus at the sight of the rat he stiffened and shrank, growing visibly tighter and more constricted, and he trembled and shuddered. At last!
At last old Judge Korabkowski had become Hooligan’s master!
And from that moment on, he set the rat on him mercilessly.
With the rat on a leash he would draw close, shrinking the rogue and constricting him; or for a short second he would put the rat up his trouser leg and reduce his voice to a squeak; or he would make the brigand stiffen by holding the rat over him; or finally he would patter, hop and jump the rat around the ever-shrinking roisterer. The gag was no longer needed. The roisterer could no longer shout, let alone roar; and weeks, even months passed by in this fashion; and the old butler Ksawery, whose task it was to illuminate the pitiless rat with the aid of a candle, moaned and prayed quietly—and, his hair standing on end, with ice in his heart, the old servant begged the rat for mercy, cursing the absolute mercilessness of the rat, cursing the terrible and as it were irrevocable connections that are made in nature, cursing the boundlessness of the pitilessness. “Cursed be the rat and the young master and the house and the brigand’s nature and the judge’s nature and the rat’s nature; oh, cursed be their natures and cursed be Nature!” Years passed. The torments grew ever more intense, and by means of the rat Skorabkowski tightened ever further, without respite—and the tension rose, and rose, and rose.
And all the time—the rat.
Without a break—the rat.
Only—the rat.
The rat, and the rat, and the rat.
Till Ksawery, at the very limits of tension, lowered his head and rushed after the rat, which had slipped off the leash with a squeak and run away, pattering off into the depths, into a crack, into a cavity. Then the rushing servant went astray and collided with the judge, whose head was lowered ...
Skorabkowski, stretched to extremes of tension, had gone astray and lowered his head ...
And he rushed at Ksawery with head lowered. The crash took place in the cellar; there was a shattering of brains—aha! So Hooligan the brigand was free after eleven years and four months; his torturers lay lifeless. And the rat was gone! The bandit swallowed and thought to himself that he should make his way out—and with tiny movements of his body he set about freeing himself. At dawn the ruffian got out of the stocks, opened the door leading to a small verandah overgrown with vines, and escaped into freedom —that once great strapping fellow, now mightily shrunken. From the verandah he immediately bolted for the bushes and began to move through them across the dike—and in the meantime the sun rose above the horizon. All at once a shepherd in the distance called:
“Cow! Cow-ee!”
Hooligan instantly crouched behind a bush. Oh, he would gladly have curled up somewhere, crawled into a cavity, a crevice, an opening, a hole; he would have burrowed into the undergrowth and hidden his back and the rest of the surface of his body. The ruffian looked down. A light breeze blew over him, but he did not delight in it at all, he did not breathe it in and sigh—he just cautiously and intently gazed downward. He was preoccupied by one thought—what had happened to the rat? What had become of the rat that Ksawery had flushed into a crevice?
But the rat was gone.
All the same, Hooligan kept his eyes glued to the ground. He had grown too familiar with dread of the rat, he had had too much of the entire immeasurability of the rat’s horror, for the very absence of the rat not to be more important to him than all the sweetest voices and breezes in the world—no, the rest was merely ornament, only the rat or the absence of the rat was important! And the bandit’s ears listened for nothing else but tiny rustles akin to pattering, and his eyes noticed only shapes akin to that of a rat, and every few moments it seemed to him that now, now he could make it out ... now, now, he could sense it coming ... he could virtually hear and see that hop hop, that jump jump, that patter patter ...
But the rat was gone.
And yet it seemed impossible that the rodent, having been in such a close and terrifyingly painful relationship with his person for so many years, united with his person in a system of torment, accustomed to his person more than any animal had ever been accustomed to a human—it seemed impossible that the rodent (for one had to take into account the blind attachment of animals) could have broken away from him, disappeared, and abandoned him, just like that ...
But the rat was gone.
Then suddenly something elongated scurried swiftly past near a large patch of sunlight, then took cover ...
Could it be the rat?
The roisterer gazed around searchingly—he was not entirely sure—but again something pattered in the dry leaves.
And again—could it be the rat?
Almost certainly—it was the rat.
He stepped, while close behind him leaped
The faithful rat!
He skipped, and close behind him tripped
The faithful rat!
Hooligan rushed up to a tree and hid in a hollow, while the rat jumped into the brush and hid there. But the hollow did not offer sufficient protection; the unpredictable rodent, having emerged from the darkness of the cellars and blinded by the light of day, could have scampered under his feet and crawled up his trouser leg. For was it not so that the rat, scared and exposed, would desperately seek some hiding place, something familiar; and what could be more familiar to him than Hooligan’s trouser leg? What hole was he more accustomed to? And the brigand realized that the crevices and cavities he created, the holes and nooks that, like it or not, he had in his body and between his body and his clothes —these were what the rat desired, these were his hiding places. And so he tumbled out of the hollow and, driven by fear, fled into open space, in any old direction, and behind him (almost certainly) the rat scampered across the ground. Oh, to find a cavity, a hole, a crevice, a fissure, to protect his back, hide his legs, cover himself on all sides, prevent access to those holes, cavities, and crevices of his that were so inviting—and the brigand, having come out from under the earth, dashed on and on and on through meadows, groves, valleys, hills, fields, and dales, fleeing with his cavities, and behind him (probabl
y) dashed the rat. With his last remaining strength the bandit reached some cavity that presented itself to him; barely conscious, he crept into the hole, guarding his crevices, and wriggled into some straw. Only after a few minutes did he notice, half-crazed, that the hole into which he had crawled was a hole in the wooden wall of a shed—that he had crawled into a shed, or a barn. But at any moment the rat could crawl out of the straw and crawl into his armpit, or into a hole formed by the folds of his shirt; and so once again he poked his head out and looked around. But what was this? Was he dreaming or waking? Where on earth am I? Aha, this shed looks familiar! Who could that be, lying on the earth floor, on a pallet of straw, by the far wall? Heigh ho, it was Marysia, Marysia! Heigh ho, Marysia lay here, Marysia was resting, Marysia was sleeping, and breathing, oh, heigh heigh, Marysia, Maryśka! With a nonny no, Marysia! Shrunken, pervaded with rat to the core of his being, he fixed his eyes upon her, and could not believe it was her ... The girl lay asleep, mouth open, and Hooligan jumped up—and was just about to start singing, start roaring, like long ago—like once upon a time: “Marysia, Marysia ... heigh ho, Marysia, Marysia ...”
When suddenly a rat crawled out from one side.
A generously proportioned rat peeped out from beneath a beam, cautiously crept out onto the earth floor and gave a low hop not far from Marysia’s skirt.
So again there was a rat.
By Marysia—there was a rat.
This time it was no phantom but an indubitable, palpable rat; it was hopping four paces away from him on the earth floor. The brigand froze. It was probably a different rodent—not the one with which he had been tortured, a different one—but rats are so alike that he could not be completely certain. What was more, he was also unsure whether all the years of such painful association with one of these rodents had not left him with something that attracted rats in general. But worst of all he was terrified that out of fear he might hop by accident onto the rat, for then the rat out of fear might hop onto him—no, no, it was necessary to act cautiously, to reveal his presence as delicately as possible, to startle the rat just a tiny bit so it would take refuge in its hole once again. For God’s sake!—to avoid any violent movements, to resist panicking, not to succumb to that wild, subterranean, hopping-and-jumping unpredictability that is peculiar to those terrible, pattering, squeaking, long-tailed denizens of underground! The brigand identified the place where the rat’s cavity was probably to be found and set about preparing to startle it delicately and quietly; in almost complete silence, with only a slight rustle or at most a cough—when suddenly ... something enticed the rat to go up to the girl’s right knee. He crawled in there—and Hooligan froze—for the rat had touched her, the essence of the rat had rubbed against his girl, his Marysia—against Marysia!
And all at once this touch, this rubbing of the rat against Marysia, more dreadful than anything, caused the bandit ... to roar! He roared like long ago, at the top of his voice, to the entire world, he roared with his former, irresistible roar and flung himself on the rat; as he roared he leaped! He was no longer afraid; he leaped with a roar, with a roar he threw himself on the rat, with such a furious roar, so encased was he in his shout, that the rat would never in a million years break through that roar of his into his trouser leg! He no longer thought about the fact that he was cutting the rat off from its lair, but with a roar he flung himself on it from the front. Oh, Hooligan suddenly leaps, oh, the rat hops to one side, oh, there’s a dodge and a leap and a skip and a bound—and the lightning certainty of the roaring brigand that the rat would not evade him, that he had caught the rat, that he would kill the rat and that it was devoid of any lairs or holes! ... And I do not know if I should go on. Can my lips utter these most terrible things? Oh, they can, surely, for dread has no limits; on the contrary, there is a certain boundlessness of pitilessness, there is the fact that once dread starts to pile up, then piling up it piles up, it piles up piling up—without end, without limit, continuously; growing, it grows of its own accord beyond itself, mechanically. Oh, surely my lips will declare that the rat ... that the half-blinded rodent, terrified and hounded, driven crazy by the blind and absolute need for a cavity ... crawled into Marysia’s mouth, scrabbled and hopped into the half-open oral cavity of the woman as she slept with open mouth. And before Hooligan could clutch at himself convulsively, he saw it: the rat pushing into the mouth, in a panic trying to hide in his beloved’s oral cavity! O mechanisms!
While Marysia, half-conscious, awakened, entirely mechanically, at lightning speed closed her beloved jaws—and the mechanism of terror came to an end, the rat came to an end with its head bitten off from its body; the death of the rat had come.
There was no longer any rat.
But Hooligan was faced with the bitten-off death of the rat in the beloved oral cavity of Marysia his love. And with this he went.
He tripped, and close behind him skipped
A rat-death.
He leaped, while close behind him stepped
The rat’s death in Marysia’s oral cavity.
The Banquet
The meeting of the council ... the secret meeting of the council ... was being held in the gloomy, historic portrait hall, whose centuries-old power exceeded even the power of the council, overwhelming it with its magnitude. The immemorial portraits stared down dully and mutely from the ancient walls on the hieratic faces of the dignitaries, who stared in turn at the dry, ancient figure of the great chancellor and minister of state. Speaking drily, as he always did, the dry and powerful old man made no attempt to conceal his profound joy, and called on the ministers and undersecretaries of state there present to commemorate the historic moment by rising to their feet. For after many years of endeavors, the union of the king with Archduchess Renata Adelaide Christina was to come about; and Renata Adelaide had come to the royal court; and tomorrow at a court banquet the betrothed (who up till now had known each other only from portraits) would be introduced to one another—and this union, splendid in every regard, would intensify and would multiply into infinity the dignity and power of the Crown. The Crown! The Crown! And yet a painful unease, an acute concern, an anxiety even, furrowed the seasoned countenances of the ministers and undersecretaries of state, and something unspoken, something dramatic, lurked in their withered and age-old lips.
At the unanimous motion of the council the chancellor had called for a discussion ... yet silence, a dull and mute silence, seemed the principal mark of the discussion that ensued. First to request leave to speak was the minister of internal affairs; but when he was given the floor, he began to be silent, and was silent throughout his speech—after which he sat down. Next to speak was the minister of the court; but he too, having risen, was silent through all he had to say, after which he sat down. In the subsequent speeches, one minister after another requested the floor, rose, was silent, then sat down again, and the silence, the obstinate silence of the council—multiplied by the silence of the portraits and the silence of the walls—continually grew in power. The candles drooped. The chancellor presided steadfastly over the silence. Hours passed.
What was the cause of the silence? None of the statesmen could either admit, nor even think, the thought that on the one hand was inescapable and imposed itself with an irresistible force, yet on the other constituted nothing less than a crime of high treason. That was why they were silent. How could it be admitted, how could it be said, that the king ... the king was ... oh no, never, never in a million years, death was preferable rather ... that the king ... oh no, ah, no, oh no ... ha ... that the king was corrupt! The king was for sale! The king sold himself! In his brazen, base, insatiable cupidity the king was a traitor more corrupt than anyone else in history. A bribe-taker and traitor was the king! The king would sell his own majesty for pounds and ounces.
Suddenly the heavily carved doors of the room swung open, and King Slothbert appeared in the uniform of a general of the royal guard, a sword at his side and a large cocked hat on his head. The ministers
bowed low to the ruler, who threw his sword on the table and himself into an armchair and crossed his legs, looking around with his piercing little eyes.
By the very presence of the king the council of ministers was transformed into a royal council, and the royal council set about listening to the king’s pronouncement. In his pronouncement the king above all expressed his joy that his marriage to the archduchess was to come about, and conveyed his steadfast faith and hope that his royal person would win the love of the daughter of kings—yet he also emphasized the burden of responsibility that weighed upon his shoulders. And there was something so extremely corrupt in the king’s voice that the council shuddered in complete silence.
“We cannot hide the fact,” declared the king, “that for us participation in tomorrow’s banquet presents an arduous task ... for we shall have to exert ourselves mightily to ensure that a favorable impression is made on the archduchess ... nevertheless, we are prepared to do anything for the good of the Crown, especially if ... if ... um ... um ...”
The royal fingers drummed pointedly on the table, and the pronouncement became ever more confidential. There could no longer be any doubt. No less than a bribe was being demanded by the bribe-taker in the crown in return for his participation in the banquet. And all at once the king began to complain that these were hard times, that it wasn’t clear how one could make ends meet ... after which he giggled ... he giggled and winked confidentially at the chancellor and minister of state ... he winked and then giggled again ... he giggled and poked him in the side with his finger.