you had not read. In this way I should—for I am a man and a writer—consider as essential every chapter you had skipped with unpardonable reader-levity.
I picture to myself how your wife asks: “Is there anything in that book?” And you answer, for instance—horribile auditu for me—with the wealth of words characteristic of married men:
“Hm . . . well . . . I don’t know yet.”
Why, then, barbarian, read on. The all-important thing is just at your gate. And I gaze at you with trembling lips, and measure the thickness of leaves turned over, and on your face I search for the reflection of the chapter that is so beautiful . . .
“No,” I say, “he has not got to it yet. Presently he will jump up, in ecstasy he will embrace something, perhaps his wife . . .”
But you read on. The “beautiful chapter” must be passed, I think. You have not jumped up at all, you have not embraced . . .
And ever thinner grows the volume of leaves under your right thumb, and ever more meagre grows my hope of that embrace . . . yes, faith! I had even made sure of a tear!
And you have read the novel through to “where they get each other,” and you say yawning—again a form of eloquence in the state of wedlock:
“Why . . . well! It’s a book that . . . hm! Well, they write such a lot nowadays!”
But know you not then, monster, tiger, European, reader, know you not then that you have just whiled away an hour chewing my spirit like a toothpick? Gnawing and biting flesh and bone of your own kindred? Cannibal, in it was my soul, my soul that you have chewed for the second time as a cow chews grass! It is my heart you have just swallowed as a delicacy! For in that book I had put both this heart and soul, and so many tears fell on the manuscript, and my blood oozed from my veins as I wrote on, and I gave you all this, and you bought it for a few pence . . . and you say: “hm!”
