The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig (31 page)

When he woke up he felt fresher, and the morning was bright and clear outside the shining window. The
föhn
wind had blown away the darkness, and the white silhouette of the distant mountain chain gleamed above the lake. Ferdinand got up, still a little unsteady from the hours he had slept away, and when he was fully awake his eyes fell on the fastened rucksack. Suddenly he remembered it all, but now, in bright daylight, it did not weigh so heavily on his mind.

Why did I pack it? he asked himself. Why? I have no intention of going away. The spring is just beginning. I want to paint. There’s no great hurry. He told me himself I could take a couple of days. Even animals don’t run to the slaughter. My wife is right: it’s a crime against her, against myself, against everyone. Nothing can happen to me, after all. A few weeks under arrest, maybe, if I report for duty late, but isn’t military service a prison in itself? I have no ambition to cut a fine figure in society, in fact I’d feel it an honour to have disobeyed at this time of slavery. I’ve no idea of setting out now. I’ll stay here. I want to paint the landscape first, so that some day I’ll remember where I was happy. And I won’t go until the picture is in its frame. They can’t herd me like a cow. I’m in no hurry.

He took the rucksack, swung it up in the air and tossed it into a corner. He enjoyed trying his own strength as he did so. And his new mood made him feel a need for a quick test of his will power. He took the call-up order from his wallet to tear it into pieces, and unfolded it.

But strangely, the military jargon cast its spell over him again. He began to read. “You are under orders to…”. The words struck him to the heart. This was an order that would not be denied. Somehow he felt himself wavering; that unknown sensation was back. His hands began to shake. His strength faded. Cold came from somewhere, like a draught of wind blowing around him, uneasiness returned, inside him the steel clockwork of the alien will began to stir, tensing all his nerves and making its way to his joints. Instinctively he looked at his watch. “Plenty of time,” he murmured, but he no longer knew what he himself meant: time to catch the morning train to the border, or did he mean the extended deadline he had granted himself? And now it came back, that mysterious internal compulsion, the ebb tide carrying him away, stronger than ever because it faced both his last resistance and his fear, his surely hopeless fear of succumbing. He knew that if no one held fast to him now he would be lost.

He made his way to the door of his wife’s room and listened intently. Nothing moved. Hesitantly, he knocked with his knuckles. Silence. He knocked again. Still silence. He cautiously tried the handle. The door was not locked, and opened, but the room was empty, the bed empty too and unmade. He felt alarmed. Softly, he called her name, and when there was no reply repeated, more uneasily, “Paula!” Then, like a man under attack, he shouted at the top of his voice, “Paula! Paula! Paula!” Nothing moved. He tried the kitchen, which was empty. The terrible sense of abandonment asserted its rights over him, and he trembled. He groped his way up to the studio, not knowing what he wanted to do: say goodbye or be prevented from leaving. But here again there was no one. There wasn’t even any trace of the faithful dog. Everything was deserting him, loneliness washed around him and broke the last of his strength.

He went back through the empty house and picked up the rucksack. In giving way to the compulsion he somehow felt relieved of the burden of himself. It’s her fault, he told himself, her fault. Why has she gone? She ought to have kept me here, it was her duty.
She could have saved me from myself, but she didn’t want to. She despises me. She doesn’t love me any more. She’s let me down, so I’ll let myself down too. My blood will be on her conscience! It’s her fault, not mine, all her fault.

Outside the house, he turned once more. Would no call come from somewhere, no word of love? Would nothing raise its fists against that steely mechanism of obedience inside him and smash it? But nothing spoke. Nothing called. Nothing showed itself. Everything was deserting him, and already he felt himself falling into an abyss. And the thought came to him: might it not be better to take another ten steps towards the lake, let himself fall from the bridge and find peace?

The clock in the church tower struck, a ponderous, heavy sound. Its severe call out of the clear sky he had once loved so much goaded him on like a whiplash. Ten more minutes: then the train would come in, then it would all be over, finally, hopelessly over. Ten more minutes: but he no longer felt they were minutes of freedom. Like a hunted man he raced forward, staggered, hesitated, ran on, gasped in frantic fear of being late, went faster and faster until suddenly, just before reaching the platform, he almost collided with someone standing at the barrier.

He started in alarm. The rucksack fell from his trembling hand. It was his wife standing there, pale, as if she hadn’t slept, her grave, sad eyes turned on him again.

“I knew you’d come. For the last three days I’ve known you would do it. But I’m not leaving you. I’ve been waiting here since early in the morning, since the first trains came in, and I’ll wait until the last have left. As long as I breathe they won’t lay hands on you, Ferdinand, remember that. You said yourself there was plenty of time. Why are you in such a hurry?”

He looked at her uncertainly.

“It’s just that… my name’s been sent in… they’re expecting me…”

“Who are expecting you? Slavery and death, maybe, no one else! Wake up, Ferdinand, realize that you’re free, entirely free, no one
has power over you, no one can give you orders—listen, you’re free, free, free! I’ll tell you so a thousand times, ten thousand times, every hour, every minute, until you feel it yourself! You’re free. Free! Free!”

“Please,” he said quietly, as two farmers turned curiously to glance at them in passing. “Please, not so loud. People are looking…”

“People! People!” she cried in a rage. “What do I care about people? How will they help me when you’re shot dead, or limping home, a broken man? What do I care for people, their pity, their love, their gratitude? I want you as a human being, a free, living human being. I want you free, free, as a man should be, not cannon-fodder.”

“Paula!” He tried to calm her fury. She pushed him away.

“Let me alone, you and your stupid, cowardly fear! I’m in a free country here, I can say what I like, I’m not a servant and I won’t give you up to servitude! Ferdinand, if you go I’ll throw myself in front of the locomotive.”

“Paula!” He took hold of her again, but her face was suddenly bitter.

“But no,” she said, “I won’t lie. I may be too cowardly to do it. Millions of women have been too cowardly when their husbands and children were dragged away—not one of them did what she ought to have done. Your cowardice poisons us. What will I do if you go away? Weep and wail, go to church and ask God to let you off with some light kind of service. And then perhaps I’ll mock men who didn’t go. Anything’s possible these days.”

“Paula.” He held her hands. “Why are you making it so hard for me, when you know it must be done?”

“Am I to make it easy for you? It ought to be hard for you, very, very hard, as hard as I can make it. Here I am, you’ll have to push me away by force, use your fists, you’ll have to kick me when I’m down. I’m not giving you up.”

The signals clattered. He straightened up, pale and agitated, and reached for his rucksack. But she had already snatched it and was standing foursquare in front of him.

“Give me that!” he groaned.

“Never! Never!” she gasped, wrestling with him. The farmers gathered around, laughing out loud. There was shouting as the bystanders egged them on, encouraging one or the other, children ran from their games to look. But the pair were struggling for possession of the rucksack with the strength of bitter despair, as if fighting for their lives.

At that moment the locomotive was heard as the train steamed in. Suddenly he let go of the rucksack and ran, without turning back. He hurried on, stumbling over the rails to reach a carriage and fling himself into it. Loud laughter broke out as the farmers roared with glee, pursuing him with shouts of, “You’ll have to jump out again, mister, the missus has got it!” Their raucous laughter lashed at his shame. And now the train was moving out.

She stood there holding the rucksack, with the laughter of the crowd all around her, and stared at the train vanishing faster and faster into the distance. He did not wave from the window, he gave her no sign. Sudden tears veiled her eyes, and she saw no more.

He sat hunched in the corner of the carriage, and did not venture to look out of the window as the train gathered speed. Outside, torn to a thousand pieces by the speed of the train, everything he owned passed by: the little house on the hill with his pictures, his table and chair and bed, his wife, the dog, many days of happiness. And the wide landscape at which he had often gazed, his eyes shining, was gone as if hurled away, like his freedom and his whole life. He seemed to feel his life’s blood streaming out of all his veins; he was nothing now but the white call-up order crackling in his pocket, and he was driven on with it by the ill will of Fate.

In dull bewilderment, he merely registered events as they happened. The conductor asked for his ticket; he had none, but in the voice of a sleepwalker named the town on the border as his destination, and passively changed to another train. The mechanism
inside him did everything, and it had stopped hurting. At the Swiss customs office they asked to see his papers. He showed them what he had: only that one sheet of paper. Now and then some lost remnant of himself made a slight effort to think, murmuring as if in a dream, “Turn back! You’re still free! You don’t have to go.” But the mechanism in his blood that did not speak, and yet made his nerves and limbs move by force, thrust him implacably on with its invisible command, “You must.”

He was standing on the platform of the transit station where he had to change trains again for his native land. Over there, clearly visible in the dull light, a bridge crossed the river which was the border. His weary mind tried to understand the meaning of the word; on this side of the border you could still live, breathe, and speak freely, act as you liked, do work that mattered. Eight hundred paces further on, once over that bridge, your will would be removed from your body like an animal’s entrails being gutted, you would have to obey strangers and stab other strangers to death. And the little bridge there, a structure of just ten dozen wooden posts and two crossbeams meant all those things. That was why two men, each in a different, colourful and pointless uniform, stood one at each end with guns to guard the bridge. A sombre sensation tormented him, he knew he couldn’t think clearly any more, but his thoughts rolled on. What exactly were they guarding in the form of that wooden structure? They were preventing anyone passing from one country to the other, making sure no one got out of the country where men’s wills were gutted, and went to the country on the other side of the border. And was he himself going to cross the bridge? Yes, but the other way, out of freedom into…

He stood still, musing, hypnotized by the idea of the border. Now that he saw its intrinsic nature, a physical object guarded by two bored citizens in military uniforms, there was something in himself
that he could no longer entirely understand. He tried to stand back and think: there was a war going on. But only in the country over there—the war was going on a kilometre away, or rather a kilometre minus two hundred metres away. Or perhaps, it occurred to him, it was ten metres closer than that, say a kilometre minus eight hundred metres minus ten metres away. He felt some kind of odd urge to find out whether there was still a war in progress on those last ten metres or not. The comical aspect of the idea amused him. There ought to be a line drawn somewhere, the dividing line. Suppose when you reached the border you had one foot on the bridge and one on the ground, what were you then—were you still free, or already a soldier? You’d have to be wearing a civilian boot on one foot and a military boot on the other. His confused thoughts became more and more childish. Suppose you were standing on the bridge, you were already over it, and then you ran back, were you a deserter? And the water under the bridge—was it warlike or peaceful? And
was
there a line drawn somewhere in the national colours? What about the fish, were they allowed to swim across into the war zone? What about the animals? He thought of his dog. If the dog had come along too, they’d probably have called him up as well, he’d have had to fire machine guns or go tracking down wounded men under a hail of bullets. Thank God the dog had stayed at home.

Thank God! The thought gave him a shock, and he shook himself. He sensed that since he had seen the border in physical form, a bridge between life and death, something in him that was not the mechanism was beginning to work, understanding and resistance were coming back to life in him. The train that had brought him in still stood on the opposite track, except that the locomotive had been moved and its gigantic glass eyes were now looking the other way, ready to pull the carriages back into Switzerland. It was a reminder that there was still time. He felt painful life return to the numbed nerve of his longing for his lost home, and the man he had once been began to revive. Over there, on the far side of bridge, he saw a soldier strapped into a strange uniform, he saw him marching
pointlessly up and down with his gun over his shoulder, and he saw himself reflected in this stranger. Only now was his destiny clear to him, and now that he understood it he saw that it meant death and destruction. And life cried out in his soul.

Then the signals clattered, and the harsh sound shattered his still tentative feelings. Now, he knew, all was lost—if he got into the train just coming in and spent three minutes in it, travelling to the bridge and over it. And he knew that he would. Another quarter-of-an-hour and he would have been saved. He stood there feeling dizzy.

But the train did not come in from the distance into which he looked as he stood there trembling; it rumbled slowly over the bridge from the other side. And suddenly the station concourse was full of movement, people were streaming out of the waiting rooms, women crowded forward, crying out, pushing, Swiss soldiers quickly lined up. And all at once music began to play—he listened, amazed, he couldn’t believe it. But there it was, blaring out, unmistakeable: the Marseillaise. The enemy’s national anthem, sung on a train coming out of German territory!