With regular short rest periods, he was able to live this way for many years, in apparent glory, feted by the world, but nevertheless usually in a gloomy mood that became steadily gloomier because nobody would take it seriously. After all, what could they have comforted him with? What more could he wish for? And if occasionally he met some good-natured person who sympathized and tried to explain that his sadness was probably a consequence of hunger, it sometimes happened, especially if he was deep into a fasting period, that the hunger artist would react with a fit of rage, frightening the audience by rattling at his cage like an animal. But the impresario had a punishment he liked to employ for these outbursts. He apologized to the assembled public on the artist’s behalf and admitted that nothing could excuse his behaviour except the irritability caused by hunger, something well-fed people could hardly understand; then he came on to the claims made by the hunger artist—which, after all, also needed an explanation—that he would be able to fast for far longer than he did; the impresario praised the noble endeavour, the goodwill, the great self-denial that was certainly bound up in that claim; but then he refuted it simply enough, by showing photographs—which were also on sale—of the artist on his fortieth fast day, in bed, so enfeebled he was almost extinguished. This twisting of the facts, which was well known to the hunger artist but always unnerved him all over again, was too much for him. The consequences of prematurely ending the fast were being presented as the reason for doing so! Against that unreason, to fight against this world of unreason, was impossible. Every time this came up he would listen greedily at the bars, in good faith, but when the photographs appeared he would let go of the bars, sink back into the straw with a sigh, and the reassured spectators could come and view him again.
When the people who witnessed these scenes thought back a couple of years later, they often found that they no longer understood what they’d been doing there. Because by then the collapse in public interest mentioned above had taken place; it happened suddenly; there may have been deeper reasons for it, but who cared enough to dig around for them; in any case, one day the pampered hunger artist found that the pleasure-seeking crowds had abandoned him and now preferred to go to other kinds of performance. Once again the impresario rushed him through half of Europe, to see whether here and there they might still find a flicker of the old interest; all in vain; as if in some secret pact, audiences everywhere had developed a downright aversion to performance fasting. Of course things like that couldn’t change overnight, and in retrospect they remembered several warning signs that had been insufficiently heeded or addressed amid the intoxication of fame, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Although it was certain that the art of fasting’s time would one day come again, that was no comfort to those living through this moment. What was the hunger artist supposed to do? He, who’d been celebrated by thousands, couldn’t start displaying himself in a booth at local fairs, and as for taking up another profession, the artist was not only too old, he was above all too fanatically devoted to his hunger. So he said goodbye to the impresario, who’d been his companion in an unparalleled career, and had himself taken on by a travelling circus; to spare his own feelings, he didn’t even look at the terms of the contract.
A big circus with its myriad of people and animals and apparatuses, all complementing and offsetting one another, can find a use for anybody at any time, even a hunger artist, on appropriately modest terms of course, and moreover in this particular case it was not just the hunger artist himself who’d been hired, but also his famous old name; given the unique nature of this art form, which made no concessions to advancing age, you couldn’t have said that a veteran artist past his prime was retreating into a quiet circus job; on the contrary, the hunger artist assured them that he would fast just as well as he ever had, which was entirely credible, and went so far as to claim that, if he was allowed to have his way—something that was promised out of hand—he would astonish the world as he’d never been able to before, a claim that, in view of the fashions of the day, which the hunger artist forgot in his enthusiasm, elicited no more than a smile from the experts.
Overall, however, even the hunger artist didn’t lose sight of the real state of affairs and took it as read that his cage wouldn’t be placed in the centre of the ring as a star attraction, but was found a home outside, in an actually very easily accessible spot just next to the menagerie. Big, colourfully painted signs framed the cage and announced what could be seen inside. In the intervals in the main show, when the audience streamed out to see the animals, it was almost inevitable that they passed by the hunger artist and paused there for a moment. They might have stayed there longer had it not been that the passage was narrow and that those pushing on from the back of the crowd, who didn’t understand this delay on the way to the eagerly anticipated menagerie, made any slower, quieter viewing impossible. That was why the viewing times, which he naturally looked forward to since they were the purpose of his life, also made him tremble. At first he could hardly wait for the intervals in the main show; he’d been exhilarated as he prepared to face the onrushing masses, but all too soon—even his most obstinate, almost conscious self-deception couldn’t withstand what he experienced—he became convinced that if you categorized these spectators by what they wanted to see, they were all, always and without exception, visitors to the menagerie. The first sight of them, from a distance, remained the most pleasant. When they had got up close, he was surrounded by a racket of shouting and swearing between the two groups that always formed, those—who soon became almost more painful to the hunger artist—who wanted to have a good look at him, not out of understanding, but on a whim or out of spite; and those who truly only wanted to get to the menagerie. Once the main bulk of them had gone by, there were always a few stragglers, who had nothing to prevent them stopping as long as they liked, but they hurried past with long strides, barely glancing sideways, to make sure they saw the animals in time. All too rarely did a father come past with his children, point his finger at the artist, explain what was going on, tell them how it had been years ago, when he’d gone to similar but incomparably grander performances; the children hadn’t been prepared by school or life to really understand—after all, what was fasting to them?—but in their bright, curious eyes he saw a sign of new, more favourable, times to come. Perhaps, the hunger artist then sometimes said to himself, it would be better after all if he wasn’t positioned so near the menagerie. His being there made the choice between him and the animals too easy for people, not to mention that the smell of the stalls, the animals’ restlessness at night, the slabs of raw meat being brought to the carnivores and the uproar at feeding time all upset and depressed him. But he didn’t dare take a grievance to the management; at the end of the day, he owed the animals the crowds of visitors who trooped past him and among whom one or two of the right sort might appear; and who knew where the management would stick him if he reminded them that he existed and that, strictly speaking, he was an obstacle on the way to the menagerie.