ONE morning, when some of the keepers of the zoological gardens went into the alligator’s cave, they found protruding from the animal’s jaws an elegantly dressed leg, and a foot clad in a patent-leather boot. They pulled at the leg and extracted a man; and it was none other than Alfons Csokor, the bank cashier, who was wont to spend his leisure hours inspecting the animals.
The alligator had been his favorite. He had fed it with buns, petted it, and finally established so close an intimacy with it that he would have entrusted it with the key of the cash-vault, which was under his care.
But one day that false friend ate him up, and they died of it, both cashier and alligator. Half an hour late a man and a woman were moaning in the alligator’s cave. The woman was the cashier’s wife, the man was the alligator’s keeper.
“You will never, never shed a tear again!” wailed the keeper, and stroked the stiff scales.*
“Who will take me to the Paris Exhibition?” sobbed the woman.
“That he should go and swallow a cashier!” said the keeper. “I’m sure I fed him very well. If he had only chosen some one who was lean, whom he could have swallowed without choking!”
The end of all the weeping was that the widow brought a suit of damages against the zoo. But the zoo, in its turn, brought a counter-suit against the widow, on the ground that 228 an alligator is more valuable, and more difficult to procure than a husband. The widow demanded the employment of expert testimony in the decision of these relative values. The government threatened a criminal investigation, in which several old alligators were to be brought up as witnesses. The authorities of the zoo declared that an alligator is an unintelligent animal; not so a cashier. It was therefore the latter’s duty to see that he was not swallowed, not the former’s to refrain (the opportunity being given) from swallowing.
At that time I was senior assistant in the law office of Dr. Bihalek, and my employer had entrusted the conduct of the case to me. We represented the widow. I protested against zoos in general, and alligators in particular, and described the widow’s grief in such moving terms, that my employer said to me:
“Look here, Kondor, a novelist was lost in you. Did you ever try your hand at literature.”
“To be sure. I once translated a cook-book.”
“Why did you not continue?”
“I am only taking a rest.”
“To work, then; to work, young man!”
And so I began, taking as my central theme the alligator, for with the intricacies of this subject I was now thoroughly well acquainted. Another might have written a humorous novel on this subject, but in literature I was an adherent of realism; and, according to the custom of this school, I went straight for my subject, went for it without mercy. On every page of the novel there was some gloomy thought, on every other page a gross offense against good taste. Children defied their parents, young men fell in love with their mothers-in-law; the houses were all dirty, and in them not a 229 single healthy human being could be found. Those were most fortunate who became insane. I was very proud of the novel, for I felt sure it would be forbidden in Austria, but would run through fifty editions in France. Upon the story proper I did not expend much effort, but treated with compensating fulness the inner life of the man, the woman, and the alligator. Whenever my flow of thought weakened, I would introduce endless irrelevant matter. There was a description of the building of a house that occupied a hundred pages.
When at last the work was complete, I went to submit it to a famous publisher known to be in sympathy with the realistic school. He asked me whether my novel was bad. With a modest smile I answered:
“On the contrary, I believe it is good, and will excite attention.”
“Then I can find no use for it.”
“No use for a good novel?”
“I should like to well enough, but the public won’t have it. People are deadly sick of these ‘good’ novels. The critics praise them, but no one buys them. But I tell you what you might do: write a bad novel.”
“By which you mean?”
“Here is a recipe. A couple of suicides, faithless women, perjured men, a great deal of myth, and a handful of secrets. I’ll have it illustrated, and print it in instalments at fifteen Kreutzers apiece.”
I consented to this plan, and wrote a blood-and-thunder story of the worst kind. I described the director of the zoo as an enemy of mankind, who imported the man-eating alligators of the Nile for his evil purposes. I depicted the widow as a scandalous flirt who drove her husband to death — 230 that is, into the alligator — by her faithlessness. Her husband was represented, of course, as a defaulting cashier. At the beginning of each instalment there was a picture, and what a picture! A dark night — a street corner — a man with somber cloak and dagger drawn! At the fifth instalment the widow sued me; at the sixth the director of the zoo.
My situation was comic enough. I was to buy the zoo a new alligator, and marry the widow. Upon these conditions alone was I to be forgiven, and the suit discontinued. Yes, there was a third condition: I was to discontinue my novel. But the instalments were sold in editions of twenty thousand, and I would have been a fool to discontinue it. Hence I married the widow. So she forgave me the libel, and, since she had a new husband, she forgave the zoo, which in turn forgave me.
The zoo still had no new alligator, and still held my wife responsible for the loss.
One day, taking part by chance in a great raffling and drawing of lots at the zoo, I won an elephant. I magnanimously presented the elephant to the zoo, which consented to cancel its claim against my wife.
I am now a happy man and novelist, but fearful suspicions arise in me whenever my wife proposes a walk in the zoo.
Elf.Ed. Note
* There was an long standing belief that spread to many countries that crocodiles — here applied to alligators, too — wept to lure victims within chomping range. Read the entry describing how this story led to the expression “crocodile tears,” on this site.
The legendary habit of these creatures appears to have begun in the Middle Ages, see the discussion by Flash on crying crocodiles off site at QI.
I BELONG to those inhabitants of Budapest who must spend the summer in the country on pain of not being received back into society in autumn. Heaven is my witness that I would rather remain in Budapest, and not depart by a hair’s 231 breadth from my accustomed ways; but at the very beginning of summer my wife watches how many blinds are down in the neighborhood, indicating that people have gone away for the summer. Then the little woman gets hold of me, smiles her sweetest smile, and says, “My dear, bring home a few pounds of moth-powder.” As soon as the children hear this they skip with delight, and cry, “Now we’re going to the country! Papa is going out for powder!”
Our stay in the country is preceded by an enormous washing of linen, a cleaning up of unheard-of dimensions, and a failure of the children’s appetite. My children do their mother the favor of looking pale and delicate at the very beginning of the summer. If they look so in winter I am accused of surreptitiously feeding them on sweets; but in summer they are held to be accustomed to that unhealthy diet. What they need is a change of air. “The doctor says so too!”
The doctor! Before that mandate all husbands are helpless. Of course, the doctor sends all his patients away, in order that he may himself go.
My wife carefully reads the newspaper accounts of the city’s health, but only in early summer. Thus, at breakfast she can tell me just how many cases of measles ands diphtheria there are in town, and how many of these have resulted fatally. Then she pets the children, and says, “If only we were out of this unhealthy town!”
“One day a new disease was reported in the paper. My wife exclaimed, “Frightful! A new disease, and all who get it have died of it.”
I looked into the paper. One case was reported, and that had indeed ended fatally. Such is the mind of a woman.
To avoid any misunderstanding, I wish to add that I never, 232 by word or act, give my wife reason to think that we are not going on our trip. It was an unbroken custom of ours to go. . . .
One year we went to a very fashionable Hungarian resort. There I had to fight four duels: one with a gentleman who stared at my wife, one with a gentleman at whose wife I stared, the third with the physician of the place, who gathered practice by forcing duels on the guests, and the fourth with the director of the place, because I remarked on the poor quality of the food.
The next year we went to a watering-place of the second class. There was nothing to eat and drink but bitter cheese and sweet milk. Furthermore, the town had a dispute with the manager of the summer hotel, and so the farmers drove their cattle across the promenade. Two months it was the chief business of my life to fight cows, and to this day if I meet a cow I give her a push, and if a cow meets me she runs.
The next summer we tried Budakezs. But there the guests held a fair every night for the benefit of Suabian children, for whom boots and shoes were to be procured, although they looked upon the articles with increased mistrust. . . .
And then in the autumn we come back, worn out, to our dear old Budapest, and sing the praises of our summer resort so vigorously that in the course of a fortnight we really begin to believe we have had a good time.
During the third week we commence reviling the capital, and next summer we flee to the country again.