The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig (27 page)

Shame made him rough. Tearing himself free, he pushed the desperate woman away. What a fuss she was making! Thousands and thousands of men had marched away for the Emperor, and none of them had uttered a squeak of protest. The doctors would soon find out if the lad was sick. She should be glad he wasn’t put up against the wall at once as a deserter. A fellow who makes off like that ought by rights to be shot, and if it was up to him, the officer, he said, he knew what he’d do with him, he would…

He got no further. In the middle of this speech she leaped at him. Suddenly, from down on the floor at his feet, she sprang at him and made him stagger, both hands going for his throat like claws. He was a strong man, but he rocked back on his heels. Hitting out, he struck her, punching her flesh, her forehead. Then he seized her in his two hard hands and twisted a joint until she writhed in pain. But although she was defenceless now, she bit, snapping like an animal, bit his arm and hung there with her teeth in it. He yelled. And now his men came up, tore her away, got her down on the ground and kicked her.

The officer was shaking with pain and anger—to be shamed like this in front of his soldiers! “Handcuff her,” he ordered. “We’ll show you, you bitch.” His arm hurt like hell. Her teeth had gone through his coat and the fabric of his shirt; red blood was running out. He felt it trickling down, but he wasn’t going to show that. As they put the handcuffs on her, he bound up the place under his shirt with his handkerchief, and then, composed again, ordered the
men: “Forward march. Two of you go ahead with the lad, two of you follow with her.”

Her hands were fastened behind her back now, and the officer had drawn his revolver. “If either of them moves, shoot them down.”

The soldiers took Karel between them. He twisted and turned, but when they told him, “March!” he marched. He walked on with fixed eyes, mechanically, without resisting; the shock had broken his strength. His mother followed without defending herself either; violence would do no good now. She would have gone anywhere with Karel, she’d have gone to the ends of the earth, just so long as she was with him, could stay with him. So long as she could see him: his fine broad back, his curly brown shock of hair above his firm neck, oh, and his hands, tortured now, bound behind his back, the hands she had known when they were tiny, with small pink nails, with sweet little folds on them. She would have walked on without any soldiers, without any orders, just so as to be with him and not leave him. All she wanted was to know that she was still near him. She felt no weariness in spite of walking for so long—eight hours. She did not feel her sore feet, although they had both gone barefoot all this time, she did not feel the pressure of her hands cuffed behind her back, all she felt was that he was close, she had him, she was with him.

They marched through the forest and along the dusty country road. Bells were pealing out over the town, striking twelve noon, all was at rest when the unusual procession made its way along the main street of Dobitzan, Karel first, with the weary soldiers trotting along to right and left of him to guard him, then Ruzena Sedlak, her eyes glazed, still dishevelled and battered from the blows, with her own hands cuffed behind her back, and bringing up the rear the military police officer, a grave, stern figure, obviously making a great effort to bear himself well. He had put his revolver back into its holster.

The buzz of noise in the marketplace died down. People came out of their doors to look darkly at the scene. Drivers on their
carts cracked the whip at their horses angrily and spat, as if by chance. Men frowned and murmured, looked away and then back again, it was a shame, they muttered, first the children, the lads of seventeen, now they were dragging women off too. All the ill will and resentment of a people who had long felt that this Austrian war was nothing to do with them, yet dared not show any violent opposition, stood mute but menacing in hundreds of eyes, the eyes of the people of Dobitzan.

No one said a word; they were all silent. The steps of the marching soldiers could be heard in the street.

Somehow or other, Ruzena’s animal nature must have sensed the magnetic force of that embitterment, for suddenly, in the middle of the road, the handcuffed woman flung herself down flat among the soldiers, her skirts flying, and began shouting at the top of her voice, “Help me, brothers! For God’s sake help me! Don’t let them do this.”

The soldiers had to seize her, and then she cried out again, to Karel, “Throw yourself down! They’ll have to drag us to the slaughter! Let God see this!” And Karel obediently lay down in the middle of the wet road too.

The furious military police officer intervened. “Get them up!” he shouted at his startled men. They tried to haul Ruzena and her son to their feet. But she twisted and turned, flung herself about with her bound hands like a fish landed on the bank, uttering shrill cries. She snapped and bit; it was a terrible sight. “God must see this,” she howled, “God must see this.” Finally the soldiers had to drag both of them away like beasts going to be butchered. But she went on shouting, her voice cracking horribly, “God must see this, God must see this!”

She was forced away as they waited for reinforcements, and was taken off to a cell under arrest, half-naked now, with her greying hair coming down. It was high time; the townsfolk were gathering together. Their looks were even darker than before. One farmer spat. Several women began talking angrily out loud. There was
whistling, you could see men nudging the women and warning them; children stared, wide-eyed and alarmed, at all this tumultuous confusion.

Mother and son were taken off to the cells together, but the hatred in the air for the open display of violence was palpable.

Meanwhile, pacing furiously up and down in his office, his collar, trimmed with gold lace, torn open in his rage, the District Commissioner was bawling out the military police officer. He was a fool, he told the man, he was a godforsaken idiot to bring a deserter in along the road in broad daylight, and a woman in handcuffs with him. This kind of thing would get around the whole region, and then he personally would have trouble with Vienna. Didn’t the officer think there had been quite enough of all this chasing people around here in Bohemia? This evening would have been a better time to bring the young man in. And why the devil had he brought the woman along too?

The officer showed his torn coat, pointing out that the mad bitch had attacked and bitten him. He’d had to have her arrested, he said, if only for the sake of the men’s morale.

But the Commissioner was not mollified, and went on: “So did you have to drag her through the town in broad daylight? You can’t treat women like that. People won’t stand for it. What a mess! It gets folk really annoyed when you start in on women. Much better leave them out of it.”

Finally the police officer asked, in muted tones, what he ought to do now.

“Oh, get the lad sent off tonight, send him to Budweis with the others. What business is all this of ours? Let those…” (he was about to say “bloody bureaucrats”, but thought better of it in time), “let those responsible take care of it, we’ve done our duty. Keep the Sedlak woman under arrest until he’s gone. She’ll calm down in the morning. You can release her as soon as he’s left. After all, women do calm down when they’ve had a good cry. And after that they go to church—or to some other man’s bed.”

The officer protested; he was most unwilling to agree. Had he marched all night for this? To himself, he vowed that this was the last time he’d go to so much trouble.

The District Commissioner had been right, it seemed. The Sedlak woman did indeed calm down in the cells. She did not move, but lay still on her bed. However, she felt no weariness. She was merely straining her ears to listen. She knew that her child was somewhere in another part of this building. Karel was still here, but she couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him. She felt his presence, all the same. She knew he was close. Despite her dull nature, she felt a link with him through all these doors. Something could still make it turn out well for them. Perhaps the priest could help; he must have heard them both being dragged off under arrest. Perhaps the war was already over. Somewhere she listened for a sign, for a word. Karel was still there. As long as he was still there, there was hope. That was why everything was so quiet, so breathlessly still. The prison warder went up to see the District Commissioner, who duly noted the fact that the Sedlak woman had calmed down. Just as he’d said she would. Tomorrow they’d send Karel off, and then there would be peace and quiet again.

[
Here ends Zweig’s unfinished manuscript
]

T
HE WOMAN WAS STILL
fast asleep, her breath coming full and strong. Her mouth, slightly open, seemed to be on the verge of smiling or speaking, and her curved young breasts rose softly under the covers. The first glimmer of dawn showed at the windows, but the light was poor this winter morning. Somewhere between darkness and day, it hovered uncertainly over sleeping things, veiling their forms.

Ferdinand had risen and dressed quietly, he himself did not know why. It often happened these days that, in the middle of working, he would suddenly pick up his hat and hurry out of the house, into the fields, striding faster and faster until he had walked to the point of exhaustion, and all at once found himself somewhere far away, in a place he did not know, his knees shaking and the pulse throbbing at his temples. Or he would suddenly freeze in the middle of an animated conversation and lose track of the words, failing to hear questions, and he would have to force himself back into awareness. Then again, he might forget what he was doing when he undressed in the evening, and would sit perfectly still on the edge of the bed, holding the shoe he had just taken off, until a word from his wife startled him out of his reverie or the shoe fell to the floor with a bang.

As he now left the slightly close atmosphere of the bedroom and stepped out on to the balcony, he shivered. Instinctively he drew his elbows in, closer to the warmth of his body. The landscape deep below him was still enveloped in mist. Dense, milky vapours hovered over the Lake of Zürich, which from his little house, perched high up here, usually looked as smooth as a mirror, reflecting every white cloud that hurried past in the sky. Wherever his eyes looked, whatever his hands felt, it was all damp, dark, slippery and grey.
Water dripped from the trees, moisture trickled from the rafters of the house. The world rising from the mists was like a man who has just emerged from a river with water streaming off him. The murmur of human voices came through the misty night, but muted and disjointed like the stertorous breathing of a drunk. Sometimes he also heard hammer blows and the distant chime of the bell from the church tower, but its usually clear tone sounded damp and rusty. Dank darkness stood between him and his world.

He shivered. Yet he stayed there, his hands thrust deeper into his pockets, waiting for the view to clear. The mist began slowly rolling up from below, like a sheet of grey paper, and he longed to see the beloved landscape that, he knew, lay down there in its usual orderly fashion, with its clear lines that normally brought clarity and order to his own life, although now it was hidden by these morning mists. He had so often gone to the window here in a mood of inner turmoil to find reassurance in the peaceful view: the houses over on the opposite bank of the lake, turning to each other as if in friendship, a steamer dividing the blue water with delicate precision, gulls flocking cheerfully over the banks, smoke rising in silver coils from red chimneys as the noonday chimes rang out. Peace! Peace! was the message it conveyed for all to see. At such moments, in the face of his own knowledge and despite the madness of the world, he believed in the beautiful signal it gave him, and for hours could forget his own homeland as he looked at this new one that he had chosen. Months ago, in flight from the present times and from other human beings, coming away from a country at war and arriving in Switzerland, he had felt his soul, crumpled, furrowed and ploughed into disorder as it was by horror and dismay, smoothing out here and growing scar tissue as the landscape softly welcomed him in, and its pure lines and colours called on his art to set to work. As a result he always felt alienated from himself, an exile once again, when the sight was obscured, as it was by the mist hiding everything from him at this time of the morning. He felt infinite pity for everyone shut
up down in the dark, and for the people in the world of his old home, far away now—infinite pity, and a longing to be linked to them and their fate.

Somewhere out in the mist, the bell in the church tower gave four strokes and then, telling itself the time of day, chimed eight in clearer tones that pealed out into the March morning. He felt as if he were on top of a tower himself, indescribably isolated, with the world before him and his wife behind him in the darkness of her slumbers. His innermost will strained to tear that soft wall of mist apart and to sense, somewhere, the message of awakening, the certainty of life. And as he sent his eyes out into the mist, so to speak, he thought he did see something, either a man or an animal, moving slowly down there in the grey penumbra where the village ended and the winding path climbed up the hill to this house. Small, softly veiled in mist, it was coming towards him. He felt first pleasure to see something awake besides himself, then curiosity too, an avid and unhealthy curiosity. The grey figure of a man was making its way to a crossroads, with tracks leading to the next village in one direction and up here in the other. For a moment the stranger seemed to hesitate and draw breath at the crossroads. Then, slowly, he began climbing the bridle path.

Ferdinand felt uneasy. Who is this man, he wondered, what compulsion drives him out of the warmth of his dark bedroom and into the morning as mine has driven me? Is he coming up to see me, and if so what does he want? Then, through the mist which was thinner at close quarters now, he recognized the postman. He climbed up here every morning on the stroke of eight, and Ferdinand knew and pictured the man’s rough-hewn face, his red seaman’s beard turning grey at the ends, and his blue-framed glasses. His name was Nussbaum, meaning ‘nut tree’, and to himself Ferdinand called him Nutcracker because of his stiff movements and the ceremony with which he always swung his big, black leather bag over to the right before delivering the post with an air of self-importance. Ferdinand could not help smiling as he saw him trudging up, step by step, bag
at the moment slung over his left shoulder, careful to impart great dignity to his short-legged gait.

But suddenly he felt weak at the knees. His hand, which had been shielding his eyes, dropped as if suddenly numb. His uneasiness today, yesterday, all these last weeks was back. He thought he sensed that the man was coming step by step inexorably towards him, coming to him alone. Without knowing just what he was about, he opened the bedroom door, stole past his sleeping wife, and hurried downstairs to intercept the postman on his way up the fenced path. They met at the garden gate.

“Do you have… do you have…”—he had to try again three times—“do you have any post for me?”

The postman pushed up his wet glasses to look at him. “Let’s have a look.” He hauled the black bag round to his right, and his fingers—they were like large worms, damp and red with the frosty mist—rummaged among the letters. Ferdinand was shivering. In the end the postman took one letter out. It was in a large brown envelope, with the word ‘
Official
’ stamped in large letters on it, and his name underneath. “To be signed for,” said the postman, moistening his indelible pencil and holding out the book to Ferdinand, who signed his name with a flourish. In his agitation the signature was illegible.

Then he took the letter that the sturdy red hand was offering him. But his fingers were so awkward that it slipped out of them, and fell to the ground to lie on the wet soil and damp leaves. And as he bent to pick it up, a bitter smell of decomposition and decay rose to his nostrils.

This, he now knew for certain, was what had been lurking under the surface for weeks, destroying his peace: the thought of this letter, which he had expected and was reluctant to receive, sent to him from far away, from a pointless, formless distance. Its rigid, typewritten words were groping for him, his warm life and his freedom. He
had felt it approaching from somewhere or other, like a mounted man on patrol who senses the cold steel tube invisibly aimed at him from green forest undergrowth, and the little piece of lead in it that wants to penetrate the darkness beneath his skin. So resistance had been useless, and so had the little tricks he had practised to occupy his mind for nights on end. They had caught up with him. Barely eight months ago he had been standing naked, shivering with cold and revulsion, in front of an army doctor who felt the muscles in his arms like a horse-dealer. The humiliation of it illustrated the human indignity of the times and the slavery into which Europe had declined. He bore life in the stifling atmosphere of the patriotic phase of the war for two months, but after a while he found the air too difficult to breathe, and when the people around him opened their lips to speak he thought he saw their lies lying yellow on their tongues. The sight of the women, shivering with cold, who sat on the marketplace steps with their empty potato sacks in the first light of dawn broke his heart; he went around with his fists clenched, he felt that he was turning mean-minded and spiteful, he hated himself in his powerless rage. At last, thanks to a good word that someone put in for him, he succeeded in moving to Switzerland with his wife, and when he crossed the border the blood suddenly returned to his cheeks. He was swaying so much that he had to hold on to a post for support, but he felt like a human being again at last, full of life, will, strength, and capable of action. His lungs opened to breathe the air of freedom. All his fatherland meant to him now was prison and compulsion. His home in the world was outside his country, Europe was humanity.

But that light-hearted happiness did not last long. The fear came back. He felt that somehow or other his name had hooked him from behind to haul him back into that bloodstained thicket, that something he didn’t know, although it knew him, was not about to let him go. He retreated inside himself, read no newspapers in order to avoid anything about men being called up, moved house to blur his trail, had letters sent to his wife
poste restante
, and avoided
company so as to be asked no questions. He never went into town, he sent his wife to buy canvas and paints. He hid away in anonymity in this little village on the Lake of Zürich, where he had rented a small house from a farming family. But still he knew that in a drawer somewhere, among hundreds of thousands of other sheets of paper, there was one with his name on it. And one day, somewhere, some time, they would be bound to open that drawer—he could hear it being pulled out, he imagined the staccato hammer of his name being typed, and he knew that the letter would be sent on its travels until at last it found him.

Now here it was, crackling and cold, physically present in his fingers. Ferdinand made an effort to keep calm. What does this letter matter to me? he asked himself. Why should I take out the sheet of paper inside the envelope and read what it says overleaf? Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow the bushes will bear a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand leaves, and this is no more to me than any of them. What does that word ‘
Official
’ mean? Does that say I
have
to read it? I hold no office anywhere, and no one holds office over me. What’s my name there for—is that really me? Who can compel me to say it means me, who can force me to read what’s written on the paper? If I just tear it up unread, the scraps will flutter down to the lake, I won’t know anything about it and nor will the world; it will be gone as fast as a drop of water falling from a tree to the ground, as fast as every breath that passes my lips! Why should this piece of paper make me uneasy? I won’t know anything about it unless I want to. And I don’t want to. All I want is my freedom.

His fingers tensed, ready to tear the stout envelope into small scraps. But oddly enough, his muscles would not do it. Something or other had taken over his own hands against his own will, for they did not obey him. And as he wished with all his heart that they would tear up the envelope, they very carefully opened it and, trembling, unfolded the white sheet of paper. It said what he already knew.

When he went back indoors an hour later his wife came to meet him, smiling, a bunch of spring flowers loosely held in her hand. She was radiant with carefree delight. “Look,” she said, “look what I’ve found! They’re already flowering in the meadow behind the house, even though the snow still lies in the shade among the trees.” He took the flowers to please her, bent over them so as not to catch his beloved wife’s untroubled gaze, and was quick to take refuge in the little attic room that he had made into a studio.

But his work did not go well. No sooner did he face his blank canvas than the typewritten words of the letter suddenly stood there as if hammered out on it. The colours on his palette seemed to him like mud and blood. He kept thinking of pus and wounds. His self-portrait, painted in half-shade, showed him a military collar under his chin. “Madness! Madness!” he said out loud, stamping his foot to dispel these deranged images. But his hands trembled and the floor shook beneath his feet. He had to sit down, and he went on sitting there on his small stool, overwhelmed by his thoughts, until his wife called him to luncheon.

Every morsel choked him. Something bitter was stuck high up in his throat, it had to be swallowed with every mouthful, and it always came up again. Hunched there in silence, he realized that his wife was watching him. Suddenly he felt her hand softly placed on his own.

“What’s the matter, Ferdinand?” He did not reply. “Have you had bad news?”

He just nodded, and gulped.

“From the army?”

He nodded again. She said no more, and nor did he. The looming, oppressive idea of it was suddenly there in the room, pushing everything else aside. It weighed down, broad and sticky, on the food they had begun to eat. It crawled, a damp slug, over the backs of their necks and made them shudder. They dared not look at each other, but just sat there in silence with their shoulders bent, and the intolerable burden of that thought pressing down on them.