The Cannibal Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyes searched the face. “You are mistaken,” said the Duke and
     pushed on.
    There was no sound. It was years since the people had stopped talking,
     except for fragments of a sentence, “Madame Snow told me to die …” And these words were only
     uttered in the strictest of confidence and in the lowest voice, for they had all the same
     experience, yet expected an alien ear, waited for disbelieving eyes. Even when the butcher
     shop door slammed shut, it seemed to say, “Quiet. I am not really closed.” “Believe only in
     ten Gods,” most people said. “For Evil is a punctual being; our mothers and fathers founded
     the State; our prisons have since become empty; the Crown must pass from hand to hand; and
     Stintz is a good devil with our children. Our money will not burn forever; even the sow’s
     hoof is armed; one of our devils is just the time of day. We recall the rites of Wittenberg,
     and our tempestuous wives beat the fair young girls.” When they spoke of the darkness of the
     weather, or of the lack of clothes, they were referring to one of the ten Gods of Loss whom
     they could not trust. And when they spoke their lips hardly moved and they were unable to
     believe their own words, expecting some agent to rise out of the middle of the table and
     condemn or laugh. Of Nordic stock, they were silent, the tribal cry long dead from their
     rolling tongues.
    The Census-Taker moved away, drunken but conscious,
     fearing to make a sound. His belt sagged round his waist, his eyes rolled as with columns of
     figures. In the back of his mind he turned over a hatred for the Mayor, who had witnessed
     executions with his eyes closed. Pulling his cap more over his ears, he knocked softly on
     the door of the
Crooked Zeiturtg
, the town newspaper. At the end of every evening
     he stopped at the Paper, and it was then that his heart grew bright and the old excitement
     returned. Each letter in the plates of type was butchered into the next, all the plates had
     been smashed with hammers, and throughout the office was the smell of gum and the half-light
     from broken eye shades. The roll-top desks were smashed open and mice crawled over the
     bottles piled in the corners.
    Jutta’s husband had owned the Paper, but he was lost among thousands in
     Siberia, and I, Zizendorf, his friend, sat through every hour of the day thinking of the
     past. I too awaited this hour after midnight when my visitor would come, when I could cease
     thinking of lines of inverted print, and of the spoils I had found but had never seen again
     in Paris. I alone was editor, but my fingers were too blunt to punch the keys and I had no
     paper.
    “Good evening, Editor,” said the Census-Taker, “and how are you
     tonight?”
    “Sit down for a moment,” I said.
    We always talked for an hour, then left together. We drank together and our
     pale eyes took in the cobwebs and then we would think of songs now unsingable. But we knew
     that there was something to do after our few words. We could talk of nothing and yet there
     were smiles hidden under our faces. We adjusted our clothes, drank slowly and carefully,both knowing we would leave when the time was right.
    “Well, we still have no government,” I said. My eyes looked over the steel
     glasses.
    “My friend, I can only think of plenty tonight. I remember festive costumes
     and bright lights. But you are right, we have nothing.”
    We both smiled, legs stretched limply before us, smoke rising from saved
     cigarettes. The kerosene burned low and problems were as flimsy as its slight flames. We
     heard our own breathing. I sometimes thought of Jutta’s husband, who had been a good fellow,
     of spring and beerhalls, but more often I thought of the Pastor I had shot to death, of
     perfumes and earrings, and the keys that would not work, words that would not come. We heard
     the distant sound of the low water in the canal, felt our hunger growing stronger. The
     shadows grew larger in the