It is of hunger that I am going to speak in this good book of mine: what it means, what it desires, what it is able to do. I cannot, to be sure, show how, for the world as a whole, hunger is both Shiva and Vishnu, destroyer and preserver in one; it is for history to show that; but I can describe how it works in the individual as destroyer and preserver, and will continue so to work till the end of the world.
To hunger, to the sacred power of genuine, true hunger, I dedicate these pages, and, indeed, they belong to it by rights, as will, I hope, be perfectly clear by the time we have reached the end. With this latter assurance I am relieved of the necessity of writing a further introduction which, after all, would contribute only in the slightest degree to the reader's comfort, emotion, and excitement; and will begin my story with unlimited good will toward my fellow men, past, present and future, as well as toward myself and all those shadow-figures that will pass before me in the course of this tale—reflexes of the great cycle of birth, being, and passing away, of the infinite growth that is called the evolution of the world—slightly more interesting and richer than this book, it is true, but, unlike this book, not obliged to come to a satisfactory conclusion in three parts.
"Here we have the boy at last! We have him at last—at last!" cried the father of my hero, and drew a long breath of relief like a man who, after long, vain yearning, hard work, many troubles and cares, had finally reached his happy goal. He looked down with wise, shining eyes at the tiny, pitiable bit of humanity that the midwife had laid in his arms just as the evening bell had sounded. A tear stole over the man's haggard cheek and the sharp, pointed, wise fatherly nose sank ever lower and lower toward the insignificant, scarcely recognizable little nose of the new-born infant, till it suddenly rose up again with a jerk and turned with anxious inquiry toward the kind, capable woman who had contributed so much to his delight.
"Oh, Mrs. Tiebus—good Mrs. Tiebus, is it really a boy? Tell me again that you aren't mistaken—that it is really, really so!"
The midwife, who till now had watched the first tender greeting between father and son with self-assured, smiling nods of the head, now jerked her nose into the air, dispelled all the spirits and sprites of good will and contentment which had fluttered about her, with an inimitable gesture of both arms, placed them akimbo, and, with scorn, contempt, and insulted self-respect, began to speak:
"Master Unwirrsch, you are a fool! Have your picture painted on the wall!... Is it one? Did ever anybody hear the like from such a sensible old man and the head of a house?... Is it one? Master Unwirrsch, next, I believe, you'll forget how to tell a boot from a shoe. This just shows what a cross it is when God's gift comes so late. Isn't that a boy that you've got there in your arms? Isn't that really a boy, a fine, proper boy? Lord, if the old creature didn't have the poor little thing in his arms I'd like to give him a good box on the ears for putting such a silly, meddlesome question! Not a boy? Indeed it is a boy, Father Pitch-thread—not one of the heaviest, to be sure; but still a boy, and a proper boy at that! And how shouldn't it be a boy? Isn't Bonnyparty, isn't Napoleum on his way again across the water and won't there be war and tussling between today and tomorrow, and don't we need boys, and isn't it exactly for that reason that in these strange times of ours more boys than girls come into the world, and aren't there three boys to one girl? and you come to me, to an experienced and sensible person like me, and ask such outrageous questions? Have your picture painted on the wall, Father Unwirrsch, and have written underneath it what I think of you. Here, give the boy to me, you don't deserve to have him bother with you—go along with you to your wife—perhaps you'll ask her too, if it's—a—boy!"
Ungently the infant was snatched from the arms of the despised, crushed father and, after getting his breath, Master Anton Unwirrsch hobbled into the bedroom of his wife, and the evening bells still rang. But we will not disturb either the father and mother or the bells—let them give full utterance to their feelings with no one to interfere.
Poor people and rich people have different ways of life in this world; but when the sun of happiness shines into their huts, houses, or palaces, it gilds with the very same gold the wooden bench and the velvet chair, the whitewashed wall and the gilt one, and more than one sly dog of a philosopher says he has noticed that as far as joy and sorrow are concerned the difference between rich and poor people is not nearly as great as both classes often, very often, extremely often think. Be that as it may; it is enough for us that laughter is not a monopoly nor weeping an obligation on this spherical, fire-filled ball with its flattened poles, onto which we find our way without desiring it, and from which, without desiring it, we depart, after the interval between our coming and going has been made bitter enough for us.
The sun now shone into the house of poor people. Happiness, smiling, stooped to enter the low doorway, both her open hands extended in greeting. There was great joy over the birth of the son on the part of the parents, the shoemaker Unwirrsch and his wife, who had waited for him so long that they were almost on the point of giving up hope altogether.
And now he had come after all, come an hour before work ceased for the day! All Kröppel Street already knew of the event, and the glad tidings had even reached Master Nikolaus Grünebaum, the brother of the woman who had just given birth to the child, though he lived almost at the opposite end of the town. A grinning shoemaker's apprentice, carrying his slippers under his arm so as to be able to run quicker, bore the news there and shouted it breathlessly into Master Grünebaum's less deaf ear with the result that for five minutes the good man looked much stupider than he really was. But now he was already on his way to Kröppel Street, and as he, a citizen, householder and resident master of his trade, could not take his slippers under his arm, the consequence was that one of them deserted him faithlessly at a street corner, to begin life with nothing to depend on but its own hands, or rather its own sole.