The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig (30 page)

Ferdinand stood up and heard his own voice stammering, “No… no.”

The attaché signed the call-up order and handed it to him. “You’re really supposed to leave tomorrow, but I don’t suppose it’s all that urgent. Let the paint dry on your latest masterpiece. If you need
another day or so to put your affairs in order, I’ll take the responsibility for that. A couple of days won’t matter to the Fatherland.”

Ferdinand sensed that this was a joke, and he ought to smile. To his private horror, he actually did feel his lips stretching in a polite grimace. Say something, he told himself, I must say something now, not just stand around like a dolt. And at last he managed to get out, “Is the call-up letter enough… I don’t need anything else… some kind of special pass?”

“No, no,” smiled the attaché. “They won’t make any trouble for you at the border. They’ll be expecting you anyway. Well,
bon voyage
.” And he offered his hand.

Ferdinand felt that he had been dismissed. Everything went dark before his eyes as he quickly made his way to the door. Nausea rose in his throat.

“The door on the right, please, the one on the right,” said the voice behind him. He had tried the wrong door, and now—with a slight smile, as he thought he saw in the dim light of his bewildered senses—the attaché was holding the correct door open for him.

“Thank you, thank you, please don’t trouble yourself,” he stammered, furious with himself for this unnecessary civility. And no sooner was he out of the room, with the servant handing him his stick and gloves, than he remembered all he had planned to say. “Economic obligations… put it on the record.” He felt more ashamed than ever before in his life, and he had even thanked the man, thanked him politely! But his emotional capacity would no longer suffice even for rage. Pale-faced, he went down the stairs, feeling only that this man walking along couldn’t be himself, and that he had been defeated by force, a strange and pitiless force treading a whole world underfoot.

It was not until late in the afternoon that he arrived home. The soles of his feet were sore; he had been walking aimlessly around
for hours, and had turned back from his own door three times. Finally he tried stealing up to it from the back, along hidden paths through the vineyards. However, the faithful dog had detected him. Barking wildly, he jumped up at him, tail wagging passionately. His wife stood at the door, and he saw at first glance that she knew everything. He followed her without a word, shame weighing heavily on the back of his neck.

But she was not harsh. She did not look at him, she was visibly avoiding anything that would upset him. She placed some cold meat on the table, and when he obediently sat down she went to his side. “Ferdinand,” she said, and her voice was shaking badly, “you’re not well. This is not the time for me to talk to you. I won’t blame you, you’re not acting of your own free will, and I feel how much you’re suffering. But promise me one thing: don’t do anything else in this business without discussing it first with me.”

He said nothing. Her voice became more agitated.

“I’ve never interfered in your personal affairs, I always aimed to leave you the freedom to make your own decisions absolutely. But now you’re playing not just with your life, you’re playing with mine too. It took us years to find our happiness, and I’m not giving it up as easily as you. Not to the state, not to murder, not to your vanity and weakness. Not to anyone, do you hear? Not to anyone! If you are weak when you face them, I’m not. I know what this is all about, and I’m not giving up.”

He still remained silent, and his servile, guilty silence began to make her bitter. “I’m not letting this scrap of paper take something away from me, I don’t acknowledge any law that ends in murder. I’m not bowing to any bureaucracy. You men are all ruined by ideologies now, you think in terms of politics and ethics, we women still have straightforward feelings. I know what the word Fatherland means too, but I know what our Fatherland means today: murder and enslavement. You can feel a sense of belonging to your own nation, but that doesn’t mean that when the nations have run mad you have to join them. You may be just a number to them, a tool,
cannon-fodder, but to me you’re still a living man and I won’t let them have you. I’m not giving you up. I’ve never ventured to decide anything for you, but now it’s my duty to protect you. You’ve always been a clear-minded, responsible human being who knew what he wanted; now you’re a broken, disturbed, dutiful mechanism without any will of your own—it’s dead, like those millions of victims out there. They’ve worked on you through your nerves, but they forgot me. I was never stronger than I am now.”

He still remained silent, lost in gloomy thought. There was no ability in him to resist either his adversary or her.

She stood up very straight, like someone arming for battle. Her voice was hard, tense, braced.

“What did they say to you at the Consulate? I want to know.” It was an order. Wearily, he took out the paper and handed it to her. She read it, frowning. Then she tossed it scornfully on to the table.

“What a hurry those good gentlemen are in! Tomorrow! And I expect you even thanked them, clicked your heels, obedient already. ‘Ordered to make yourself available at once.’ Available! They should have said make yourself a slave. We haven’t fallen so low yet, that point hasn’t come, not by a long way!”

Ferdinand stood up. He was pale, and his hand clutched the chair convulsively. “Paula, let’s not deceive ourselves. That point
has
come. We can’t escape it. I tried to defend myself, and it was no use. I’m—I
am
this piece of paper. Even if I tear it up, I still am. Don’t make it difficult for me. There’d be no freedom here. Every hour I’d feel something out there calling, groping for me, pulling and tugging at me. It will be easier for me there. There’s freedom to be found in the dungeon itself. It’s only while I still feel I’m a fugitive, evading them, that I’m not free. And anyway, why jump to the worst conclusions? They rejected me once, why not this time too? Or perhaps they won’t give me a weapon, in fact I feel sure they won’t, I’ll be employed on some lighter kind of service. Why think the worst now? It may not be so dangerous, perhaps I’ll be lucky.”

She did not relent. “That’s not the point any more, Ferdinand. It makes no difference whether they give you light or heavy work to do. It’s a case of whether you have to go into service under what you hate, whether you’re willing to lend yourself to the greatest crime in the world against your own convictions. Because everyone who isn’t against them is with them. And you
can
reject them, you can do it, so you must.”

“I can do it? I can’t do anything! Not any more. Everything that once made me strong—my abhorrence of this absurdity, my hatred for it, my indignation—all that is such a burden on me now. Don’t torment me, please, don’t torment me, don’t tell me that.”

“I’m not. You have to tell yourself: they have no rights over a living man.”

“Rights! Rights! Where are there any rights in the world? We’ve murdered rights. Every individual person has his rights, but they have power, and nothing else matters any more.”

“And why do they have power? Because the rest of you hand it to them. And they’ll have it only while you’re still cowards. What humanity now calls monstrous consists of ten men with strong wills in the countries concerned, and ten men can destroy the monstrosity again. A man, a single living man can destroy their power by saying no to them. But while you and those like you cower, thinking perhaps you’ll muddle through, while you dodge and duck and hope to slip through their fingers instead of striking them to the heart, you’ll be their servants and you’ll deserve no better. A man ought not to crawl away, he ought to say no, that’s the only duty there is today, there’s no duty to go and get yourself killed.”

“But Paula… what do you think… what should I…”

“You should say no if something says no inside you. You know I love life, I love your freedom, I love your work. And if you tell me today: I have to go there, I have to lay down the law with a gun, and if I know you truly believe you must, then I’ll say: Go! But if you go for the sake of a lie that you don’t believe yourself, out of weakness and lack of nerve and just hoping you can muddle through,
then I despise you, yes, I despise you! If you want to go as a man standing for humanity, for what you believe in, then I won’t try to stop you. But if you go to be a beast among beasts, a slave among slaves, I shall stand up to you. It’s all right for people to sacrifice themselves for their own ideas, not for the madness of others. Let those who believe in the Fatherland die for it.”

“Paula!” Instinctively, he rose to his feet.

“Oh, am I speaking too freely for you? Do you feel the corporal’s stick behind you already? Never fear! We’re still in Switzerland. You’d like me to keep quiet, or tell you you’ll be all right, nothing will happen to you. But this is no time for sentimentality. Everything is at stake now. You and I are at stake.”

“Paula!” he said, trying to interrupt again.

“No, I have no more sympathy with you. I chose you and lived with you as a free human being. And I despise weaklings and those who lie to themselves. Why should I sympathize with you? What do I mean to you? A sergeant hands you a few words on a piece of paper, and you cast me aside and run after him. But I’m not to be cast aside and then picked up again: you must decide now. Decide between them and me! Despise them or despise me. I know there are hard times ahead for us if you stay; I’ll never see my parents and family again, we shall never be allowed to go back, but I can face that if you are with me. If you tear us apart now, though, then it’s for ever.”

He merely groaned, but she was blazing with angry strength.

“Choose them or me! There’s no third choice. Ferdinand, think better of it while there’s still time. I’ve often felt sorry we have no child. Now, for the first time, I’m glad of it. I don’t want a weakling’s child, and I don’t want to bring up a war orphan. I’ve never stood by you more than I do now that I’m making it hard for you. But I tell you: this is not a trial separation, this is goodbye for ever. If you leave me to join the army and follow those uniformed murderers, there’s no coming back. I don’t share my life with criminals, I don’t share a man with that vampire the state. It or me—you must choose now.”

He still stood there shivering as she went to the door and slammed it behind her. The loud slam brought him to his knees. He had to sit down, and collapsed there, sombre, at a loss. And at last he broke down and cried like a small child.

She did not come back into the room all afternoon, but he felt that her strong will stood outside it, hostile and armed. And at the same time he knew about that other will, with a steel driving-wheel set cold under its breast, forcing him on. Sometimes he tried to think about this or that, but his thoughts slipped away, and as he sat there still, apparently thoughtful, the last of his peace flowed away into a state of burning nervous agitation. He felt the two ends of his life taken and tugged both ways by superhuman powers, and wished only that it would split like a rope in the middle.

To occupy himself he went through the desk drawers, tore up some letters, stared at others without taking in a word, stumbled round the room, sat down again, forced up by restlessness and down again by exhaustion. And suddenly he saw his hands putting together necessities for the journey, bringing out his rucksack from under the sofa. He stared at his own hands doing all this deliberately and against his own will. When the rucksack was packed he began to tremble, and suddenly there it was on the table. His shoulders felt weighed down, as if it were already resting on them, and with it the whole weight of these times.

The door opened, and his wife came in with a paraffin lamp. When she placed it on the table, the circle of light it cast fell on the packed rucksack. His secret ignominy, thus brightly lit, emerged starkly from the darkness. He stammered, “It’s only in case… I still have time… I…” But a glance, fixed, stony, mask-like, met his words and crushed them. She stared at him for several minutes, her lips tightly pressed over her teeth. She stood motionless at first, then swayed slightly as if she might faint, while her eyes bored into him.
The tension of her lips relaxed, but she turned, a shudder ran over her shoulders, and she left him without looking back.

A few minutes later the maid came in, bringing supper for him alone. The usual place at his side was empty, and when, full of incoherent emotion, he looked at it, he saw the cruel symbol of the rucksack placed there. He felt as if he had left already, was already dead to this house; its walls were dark, the circle of light from the lamp did not reach all the way to them, and outside, beyond the lights in other houses, night and the
föhn
wind pressed down. All was still in the distance, and the height of the sky, its vast expanse spanning the depths below, only increased his sense of isolation. He felt everything around him gradually dying, dropping away from him: the house, the landscape, his work, his wife, as the broad sea of his life suddenly dried up, compressing his beating heart. A great need for love overcame him, for warm and kindly words. He felt ready to agree to anything, if he could only somehow get back to the past. Melancholy prevailed over his nervous restlessness, and the strong emotions of his imminent farewell were lost in childish longing for a little tenderness.

He went to the bedroom door and softly tried the handle. It did not move; it was locked. He knocked, hesitantly. No answer. He knocked again. His heart beat in time with his knocking. Still silence. Now he knew it was all over and he had lost; the chilly knowledge came home to him. He put out the lamp, lay down on the sofa in his clothes and wrapped himself in a rug. Everything in him now longed to fall into sleep and oblivion. Once more he listened, and thought he had heard something close. He strained his ears, looking at the door, but it was solid wood. Nothing. His head fell back again.

Then something low down touched him. He started up in alarm, but it soon changed to emotion. The dog, who had slipped in with the maid and hidden under the sofa, came up to him and licked his hand with a warm tongue. And the animal’s instinctive love touched him deeply because it came from the world now dead to him, and
was all of his past life that still was his. He bent down and hugged the dog like a human being. Something on this earth still loves me and does not despise me, he felt, to him I am not a machine yet, not just a tool of murder, not a willing weakling, only a creature linked to him by love. Again and again, his hand tenderly stroked the soft coat. The dog moved closer to him, as if he knew his master was lonely, and both of them, breathing softly, began to fall asleep.