The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig (68 page)

From that day on the old man always used the servants’ stairs in his own house. He was sure not to meet anyone here, he was in no one’s way and no one was in his. He stayed away from meals—an old maidservant brought something to his room. If his wife or daughter tried to get in to speak to him, he would send them away again with a vague murmur that was none the less clearly a refusal to see them. In the end they left him alone, and gradually stopped asking how he was, nor did he enquire after anyone or anything. He sometimes heard music and laughter coming through the walls from the other rooms in the house, which were already strange to him, he heard vehicles pass by until late at night, but he was so indifferent to everything that he did not even look out of the window. What was it to do with him? Only the dog sometimes came up and lay down by his forgotten master’s bed.

Nothing hurt in his dead heart now, but the black mole was tunnelling on inside his body, tearing a bloodstained path into quivering flesh. His attacks grew more frequent from week to week, and at last, in agony, he gave way to his doctor’s urging to have himself thoroughly examined. The professor looked grave. Carefully preparing the way, he said he thought that at this point an operation was essential. But the old man did not take fright, he only smiled wearily. Thank God, now it was coming to an end. An end to dying, and now came the good part, death. He would not let the doctor say a word to his family, the day was decided, and he made ready. For the last time, he went to his firm (where no one expected to see him any more, and they all looked at him as if he were a stranger), sat down once more in the old black leather chair where he had sat for thirty years, a whole lifetime, for thousands and thousands of hours, told them to bring him a cheque book and made out a cheque. He took it to the rabbi of the synagogue, who was almost frightened by the size of the sum. It was for charitable works and for his grave, he said, and to avoid all thanks he hastily stumbled out, losing his hat, but he did not even bend to pick it up. And so, bareheaded, eyes dull in his wrinkled face, now yellow with sickness, he went on his way, followed by surprised glances, to his parents’ grave in the cemetery. There a few idlers gazed at the old man, and were surprised to hear him talk out loud and at length to the mouldering tombstones as if they were human beings. Was he announcing his imminent arrival to them, or asking for their blessing? No one could hear the words, but his lips moved, murmuring, and his shaking head was bowed deeper and deeper in prayer. At the way out of the cemetery beggars, who knew him well by sight, crowded around him. He hastily took all the coins and notes out of his pockets, and had distributed them when a wrinkled old woman limped up, later than the rest, begging for something for herself. In confusion, he searched his pockets, but there was nothing left. However, he still had something strange and heavy on his finger—his gold wedding
ring. Some kind of memory came to him—he quickly took it off and gave it to the startled old woman.

And so, impoverished, empty and alone, he went under the surgeon’s knife.

When the old man came round from the anaesthetic, the doctors, seeing the dangerous state he was in, called his wife and daughter, now informed of the operation, into the room. With difficulty, his eyes looked out from lids surrounded by blue shadows. “Where am I?” He stared at the strange white room that he had never seen before.

Then, to show him her affection, his daughter leant over his poor sunken face. And suddenly a glimmer of recognition came into the blindly searching eyes. A light, a small one, was kindled in their pupils—that was her, his child, his beloved child, that was his beautiful and tender child Erna! Very, very slowly the bitterly compressed lips relaxed. A smile, a very small smile that had not come to his closed mouth for a long time, cautiously began to show. And shaken by that joy, expressed as it was with such difficulty, she bent closer to kiss her father’s bloodless cheeks.

But there it was—the sweet perfume that aroused a memory, or was it his half-numbed brain remembering forgotten moments?—and suddenly a terrible change came over the features that had looked happy only just now. His colourless lips were grimly tightened again, rejecting her. His hand worked its way out from under the blanket, and he tried to raise it as if to push something repellent away, his whole sore body quivering in agitation. “Get away!… Get away!” he babbled. The words on his pale lips were almost inarticulate, yet clear enough. And so terribly did a look of aversion form on the face of the old man, who could not get away, that the doctor anxiously urged the women to stand aside. “He’s delirious,” he whispered. “You had better leave him alone now.”

As soon as the two women had gone, the distorted features relaxed wearily again into final drowsiness. Breath was still escaping, although more and more stertorously, as he struggled for the heavy air of life. But soon his breast tired of the struggle to drink in that bitter nourishment of humanity. And when the doctor felt for the old man’s heart, it had already ceased to hurt him.

O
N THE BANKS OF LAKE GENEVA
, close to the small Swiss resort of Villeneuve, a fisherman who had rowed his boat out into the lake one summer night in the year 1918 noticed a strange object in the middle of the water. When he came closer, he saw that it was a raft made of loosely assembled wooden planks which a naked man was clumsily trying to propel forward, using a piece of board as an oar. In astonishment, the fisherman steered his boat that way, helped the exhausted man into it, used some fishing nets as a makeshift covering for his nakedness, and then tried
questioning
the shivering figure huddling nervously into the corner of the boat. But he replied in a strange language, not a word of which was anything like the fisherman’s, so the rescuer soon gave up any further attempts, pulled in his nets, and rowed back to the bank, plying his oars faster than before.

As the early light of dawn showed the outline of the bank, the naked man’s face too began to clear. A childlike smile appeared through the tangled beard around his broad mouth, he raised one hand, pointing, and kept stammering out a single word over and over again: a question that was half a statement. It sounded like “
Rossiya
”, and he repeated it more and more happily the closer the keel came to the bank of the lake. At last the boat crunched on the beach; the fisherman’s womenfolk, who were waiting for him to land his dripping catch, scattered screeching, like Nausicaa’s maids in the days of old, when they caught sight of the naked man covered by fishing nets, and only gradually, on hearing the strange news, did several men from the village appear. They were soon joined by that local worthy the courthouse usher, eagerly officious and very much on his dignity. He knew at once, from various instructions that he had received and a wealth of wartime
experience, that this must be a deserter who had swum over the lake from the French bank, and he was preparing to interrogate him officially, but any such elaborate process was quickly deprived of any dignity or usefulness by the fact that the naked man (to whom some of the locals had now thrown a jacket and a pair of cotton drill trousers) responded to all questions with his questioning cry of “
Rossiya? Rossiya?
” sounding ever more anxious and doubtful. Slightly irked by his failure, the usher ordered the stranger to follow him by means of gestures that could not be misunderstood, and the wet, barefoot figure, his jacket and trousers flapping around him, was escorted to the courthouse, surrounded by the vociferous youths of the village who had now come along, and was taken into custody there. He did not protest, he said not a word, but his bright eyes had darkened with disappointment, and his shoulders were hunched as if expecting blows.

By now news of this human catch had reached the nearby hotel, and several ladies and gentlemen, glad of this intriguing episode to relieve the monotonous course of the day’s events, came over to look at the wild man. One lady gave him some confectionery, which he eyed as suspiciously as a monkey might, and did not touch. A gentleman took a photograph. They all chattered and talked vivaciously as they swarmed around him, until at last the manager of the large hotel, who had lived abroad for a long time and knew several languages, spoke to the terrified man first in German, then in Italian and English, and finally in Russian. No sooner did he hear the first sound of his native tongue than the frightened man started violently, a broad smile split his good-natured face from ear to ear, and suddenly he was telling his whole story frankly and with self-assurance. It was very long and very confused, and the chance-come interpreter could not always understand every detail, but in essentials the man’s history was as follows:

He had been fighting in Russia, and then one day he and a thousand others were packed into railway trucks and taken a very long way, they were transferred to ships and had travelled in
those for even longer, through regions where it was so hot that, as he put it, the bones were baked soft inside your body. Finally they were landed again somewhere or other, packed into more railway trucks, and then they were suddenly told to storm a hill, but he knew no more about that, because a bullet had hit him in the leg as soon as the attack began. The audience, for whom the interpreter translated his questions and the man’s answers, immediately realised that this fugitive was a member of one of those Russian divisions fighting in France who had been sent half-way round the world, from Siberia and Vladivostok to the French front, and as well as feeling a certain pity they were all moved at the same time by curiosity: what could have induced him to make this strange attempt at flight? With a smile that was half-good-natured, half-crafty, the Russian readily explained that as soon as he was better he had asked the orderlies where Russia was, and they had pointed to show him the way. He had roughly remembered the direction by noting the position of the sun and the stars, and so he had escaped in secret, walking by night and hiding in haystacks from patrols by day. He had eaten fruit and begged for bread for ten days, until at last he reached this lake. Now his account became less clear. Apparently he himself came from Lake Baikal, and seeing the undulating curves of the opposite bank ahead of him in the evening light, he had thought that Russia must lie over there. At any rate, he had stolen a couple of planks from a hut, and lying face downwards over them, had used a piece of old board as a paddle to make his way far out into the lake, where the fisherman found him. As soon as the hotel manager had translated the anxious question which concluded his confused explanation—could he get home tomorrow?—its naivety at first aroused loud laughter, but that soon turned to pity, and everyone found a few coins or banknotes to give the poor man, who was now looking around him with miserable uncertainty.

By this time a telephone call to Montreux had brought the arrival of a senior police officer to take down an account of the case, rather
an arduous task. For not only was the amateur interpreter’s
command
of Russian inadequate, it was soon obvious that the man was uneducated to a degree scarcely comprehensible to Westerners. All he knew about himself was his own first name of Boris, and he was able to give only the most confused accounts of his native village, for instance that the people there were serfs of Prince Metchersky (he used the word serfs although serfdom had been abolished long ago), and that he lived fifty versts from the great lake with his wife and three children. Now a discussion of what was to be done with him began, while he stood amidst the disputants dull-eyed and hunching his shoulders. Some thought he ought to be handed over to the Russian embassy in Berne, others feared that such a measure would get him sent back to France; the police officer explained all the difficulty of deciding whether he should be treated as a deserter or a foreigner without papers; the local courthouse usher rejected out of hand any suggestion that the stranger should be fed and accommodated in Villeneuve itself. A Frenchman protested that there was no need to make such a fuss about a miserable runaway; he had better either work or be sent back. Two women objected strongly to this remark, saying that his misfortune wasn’t his own fault, and it was a crime to send people away from their homes to a foreign country. It began to look as if this chance incident would lead to political strife when suddenly an old Danish gentleman intervened, saying in firm tones that he would pay for the man’s board and lodging for a week, and meanwhile the authorities could come to some agreement with the embassy. This unexpected solution satisfied both the officials and the private parties.

During the increasingly agitated discussion the fugitive’s timid gaze had gradually lifted, and his eyes were now fixed on the lips of the hotel manager, the only person in all this turmoil who, he knew, could tell him his fate in terms that he was able to understand. He seemed to be vaguely aware of the turmoil caused by his presence, and as the noisy argument died down he spontaneously raised both hands in the silence, and reached them out to the manager with
the pleading look of women at prayer before a holy picture. This moving gesture had an irresistible effect on all present. The manager went up to the man and reassured him warmly, saying that he had nothing to fear, he could stay here and come to no harm, he would have accommodation for the immediate future. The Russian tried to kiss his hand, but the other man withdrew it and quickly stepped back. Then he pointed out the house next door, a small village inn where the Russian would have bed and board, said a few more words of reassurance to him, and then, with another friendly wave, went up the beach to his hotel.

The motionless fugitive stared after him, and as the only person who understood his language dwindled in the distance, his face, which had brightened, grew gloomy again. His avid glances followed the figure of the manager as he went away, going up to the hotel above the bank of the lake, and he took no notice of the others present who were smiling at his strange demeanour. When a sympathetic bystander touched him and pointed to the inn, his heavy shoulders seemed to slump, and he went to the doorway with his head bowed. The bar was opened for him. He sat down at the table, where the barmaid brought him a glass of brandy by way of welcome, and stayed there without moving all afternoon, his eyes clouded. The village children kept looking in at the windows, laughing and shouting something at him—he never raised his head. Customers coming in looked at him curiously, but he sat where he was, back bowed, eyes staring at the table, shy and bashful. And when a crowd of guests came in to eat at midday and filled the room with their laughter, while hundreds of words he did not understand swirled around him and he himself, horribly aware of being a foreigner here, sat deaf and mute amidst the general liveliness, his hands trembled so badly that he could hardly raise the spoon from his soup. Suddenly a large tear ran down his cheek and dropped heavily on the table. He looked timidly around him. The others present had noticed the tear, and suddenly fell silent. And he felt ashamed; his large, shaggy head sank closer and closer to the black wood of the table.

He sat like that until evening. People came and went; he did not notice them, and they had stopped noticing him. He sat in the shadow of the stove like a shadow himself, his hands resting
heavily
on the table. He was forgotten, and no one saw him suddenly rise when twilight came and go up the path to the hotel, plodding lethargically like an animal. He stood for an hour at the door there, cap humbly in his hand, and then for another hour, not looking at anyone. At last this strange figure, standing still and black as a tree stump outside the sparkling lights of the hotel entrance as if he had put down roots there, attracted the attention of one of the pageboys, who fetched the manager. Once again his dark face lightened a little when he heard his own language.

“What do you want, Boris?” asked the manager kindly.

“Forgive me,” stammered the fugitive, “I only wanted… I wanted to know if I can go home.”

“Of course, Boris, to be sure you can go home,” smiled the manager.

“Tomorrow?”

Now the other man looked grave too. The words had been spoken in so pleading a tone that the smile vanished from his face.

“No, Boris… not just yet. Not until the war is over.”

“When is that? When will the war be over?”

“God only knows. We humans don’t.”

“But before that? Can’t I go before that?”

“No, Boris.”

“Is it so far to go?”

“Yes.”

“Many more days’ journey?”

“Many more days.”

“I’ll go all the same, sir. I’m strong. I don’t tire easily.”

“But you can’t, Boris. There’s a border between here and your home.”

“A border?” He looked blank. The word was new to him. Then he said again, with his extraordinary obstinacy, “I’ll swim over it.”

The manager almost smiled. But he was painfully moved, and explained gently, “No, Boris, that’s impossible. A border means there’s a foreign country on the other side. People won’t let you through.”

“But I won’t hurt them! I threw my rifle away. Why wouldn’t they let me go back to my wife, if I ask them in Christ’s name?”

The manager was feeling increasingly heavy at heart. Bitterness rose in him. “No,” he said, “they won’t let you through, Boris. People don’t take any notice of the word of Christ any more.”

“But what am I to do, sir? I can’t stay here! The people that live here don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them.”

“You’ll soon learn, Boris.”

“No, sir.” The Russian bowed his head. “I can’t learn things. I can only work in the fields, that’s all I know how to do. What would I do here? I want to go home! Show me the way!”

“There isn’t any way at the moment, Boris.”

“But sir, they can’t forbid me to go home to my wife and my children! I’m not a soldier any more.”

“Oh yes, they can, Boris.”

“What about the Tsar?” He asked the question very suddenly, trembling with expectation and awe.

“There’s no Tsar any more, Boris. He’s been deposed.”

“No Tsar any more?” He stared dully at the other man, the last glimmer of light went out in his eyes, and then he said very wearily, “So I can’t go home?”

“Not yet. You’ll have to wait, Boris.”

The face in the dark grew ever gloomier. “I’ve waited so long already! I can’t wait any more. Show me the way to go! I want to try!”

“There’s no way, Boris. They’d arrest you at the border. Stay here and we’ll find you work.”

“People here don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them,” he obstinately repeated. “I can’t live here! Help me, sir!”

“I can’t, Boris.”

“Help me, sir, for the sake of Christ! Help me, I can’t bear it any more!”

“I can’t, Boris. There’s no way anyone can help anyone else these days.”

They faced each other in silence. Boris was twisting his cap in his hands. “Then why did they take me away from home? They said I had to fight for Russia and the Tsar. But Russia is far away from here, and the Tsar… what do you say they did to the Tsar?”