A Hunger Artist

"But we do admire it," said the supervisor obligingly.

"because I couldn't find a food which I enjoyed. If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and would have eaten to my heart's content, like you and everyone else."

This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, also appeared to carry freedom around with it.

And when once in a while a person strolling past stood there making fun of the old number and talking of a swindle, that was in a sense the stupidest lie which indifference and innate maliciousness could invent, for the hunger artist was not being deceptive — he was working honestly — but the world was cheating him of his reward.

"I always wanted you to admire my fasting," said the hunger artist.

People went straight past him.

Try to explain the art of fasting to anyone! If someone doesn't feel it, then he cannot be made to understand it.

And so the hunger artist kept fasting on and on, as he once had dreamed about in earlier times, and he had no difficulty succeeding in achieving what he had predicted back then, but no one was counting the days — no one, not even the hunger artist himself, knew how great his achievement was by this point, and his heart grew heavy.

A small obstacle, at any rate, a constantly diminishing obstacle.

He might fast as well as he could — and he did — but nothing could save him any more.