Aside from the milling spectators, there were also constant teams of watchmen selected by the public; oddly enough these were butchers more often than not, whose task it was to watch the hunger artist night and day, three at a time, so that he did not partake of somehow secreted nourishment. This was nothing more than a formality instituted to reassure the masses, because as initiates very well knew, during the period of the fast the hunger artist would under no circumstances, including duress, swallow the tiniest morsel; the honor of his profession forbade it. Of course, not every watchman was capable of comprehending this; frequently there were groups of night watchmen who were very lax in their duties and deliberately sat in a far corner absorbed in a card game with the obvious intention of allowing the hunger artist the opportunity of a little refreshment, which they assumed he could procure from some hidden stash. Nothing was more hateful to the hunger artist than watchmen like these, they made him miserable, they made his fast excruciatingly unbearable; sometimes he was able to overcome his weakness enough to sing during their watch for as long as he could to show these people how unjust their suspicions were. This was of little use, however; they only wondered at his skillful ability to eat while singing. He very much preferred the watchmen who sat right up against the bars and who were not satisfied by the dim night-lighting in the hall and so trained on him the beams of electric torches provided by the impresario. He was not at all disturbed by the harsh light, as he was unable to sleep in any case and he could always doze off a bit no matter the light or the hour, even when the hall was packed with noisy people. He was quite prepared to pass a sleepless night with such guards; he was happy to swap jokes with them, tell them stories from his nomadic life and listen to their stories in turn, anything to keep them awake and to show them again and again that there was nothing edible in his cage and that he was fasting as not one among them could fast. He was happiest however when morning came and a lavish breakfast was brought to them at his own expense; they threw themselves on it with the keen appetite of healthy men after the wearying night’s vigil. Of course there were people who even misconstrued this breakfast as a bribe for the guards, but that was really going too far, and when asked if they would take over the night watch without breakfast just for the sake of the cause, they slunk away but stuck to their insinuations nevertheless.
But suspicions of this nature are inseparable from fasting. No one was capable of spending all his days and nights keeping watch over the hunger artist, therefore no one person could be absolutely certain from firsthand knowledge that the fast had truly been constant and flawless; only the hunger artist himself could know that, and so at the same time only he could be a satisfied spectator of his own fast. And yet for other reasons he was never satisfied; perhaps it was not just the fasting that emaciated his body to such a point that many people regretfully could not attend his demonstrations because they could not bear the sight of him, perhaps he was so reduced through dissatisfaction with himself. For he alone knew what no other initiate knew: How easy it was to fast. It was the easiest thing in the world. Nor did he make a secret of this though no one believed him; at best they thought him modest, but mostly they chalked it up to publicity or thought him a fraud for whom fasting was easy because he had figured out some scam to make it easy and then had the audacity to more or less admit it. He was forced to endure all this and he even grew accustomed to it over the years, but his own dissatisfaction gnawed at him inwardly, and yet never, not after a single fasting period—one had to grant him that much—had he left his cage voluntarily. The impresario had fixed the maximum period of fasting at forty days, he would never allow a fast to exceed this limit even in great cities, and for good reason. Experience had proved that public interest in any town could be roused by steadily increased advertising for about forty days, but the public lost interest after that and a substantial drop in attendance was noted; naturally there were small variations in this between one town or country and another, but as a rule forty days was the prescribed limit. So on the fortieth day the flower-festooned cage was opened, an enthusiastic crowd of spectators filled the hall, a military band performed, two doctors entered the cage to take the necessary measurements of the hunger artist, announced these results to the audience through a megaphone, and finally two young ladies came forward, pleased to have been selected for the honor of assisting the hunger artist from the cage and down the first few steps toward a small table laden with a carefully prepared invalid’s meal. And at this very moment the hunger artist always turned stubborn. He would go so far as to surrender his bony arms to the outstretched hands of these solicitous ladies as they bent down to him, but stand up—that he would not do. Why stop now, after just forty days? He could have gone on longer, infinitely longer; why stop now when he was in his best fasting form, or rather, not yet in his best form? Why should he be robbed of the glory of fasting longer, not only for being the greatest hunger artist of all time, which he probably was already, but for surpassing his own record to achieve the inconceivable, because he felt his powers of fasting knew no bounds. Why did his public, who claimed to so admire him, have so little patience with him; if he could endure fasting longer, why couldn’t they endure it? And besides, he was tired, he was comfortable sitting in the straw, and now he was expected to haul himself up to his full height and proceed to a meal the mere thought of which nauseated him to such a point that only the presence of the ladies and enormous effort prevented him from expressing it. And he gazed up into the eyes of the ladies, who were seemingly so friendly but in reality so cruel, and shook his head, which felt too heavy for his enfeebled neck. But then, what always happened, happened again. The impresario came forward silently—the band music made speech impossible—he raised his arms over the hunger artist as if inviting heaven to look down upon its handiwork in the straw, this pathetic martyr, which the hunger artist certainly was but in a completely different sense; he grasped the hunger artist around his emaciated waist with exaggerated delicacy to accentuate the fragile condition he was in, and committed him—not without giving him a secret shake or two so that the hunger artist’s upper body and legs lolled and swayed about—to the care of the ladies, who had grown quite pale. Now the hunger artist submitted to everything, his head lay on his chest as if it had rolled there by chance and was inexplicably stopped, his body was hollowed out, some instinct of self-preservation squeezed his legs tight at the knees but they scraped at the ground as if it were not the solid earth they sought, and the entire weight of his body, however modest, was supported by one of the ladies, who looked around for help, panting a little—this was not how she had pictured her post of honor—first she craned her neck as far back as she could to prevent her face from touching the hunger artist, but then, when this was not successful and her more fortunate companion did not come to her aid but merely extended a trembling hand, which held the small bundle of bones that was the hunger artist’s hand, she burst into tears, much to the delight of the spectators, and had to be replaced by an attendant who was standing in readiness. Then came the meal, a tiny bit of which the impresario spooned into the virtually comatose hunger artist, amid cheerful patter designed to divert the audience’s attention from the artist’s condition; afterward a toast that the artist allegedly whispered to the impresario was drunk to the public, the band capped everything with a grand flourish, the crowd dispersed, and no one had any cause to be dissatisfied with the show; no one, that is, but the hunger artist, always only him.