Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

Then, aimless again, I went back to France and a little town where I knew no one, for I was pursued by the delusion that at the very first glance everyone could see my shame and my changed nature from the outside, I felt so betrayed, so soiled to the depths of my soul. Sometimes, when I woke in my bed in the morning, I felt a dreadful fear of opening my eyes. Once again I would be overcome by the memory of that night when I suddenly woke beside a half-naked stranger, and then, as I had before, all I wanted was to die immediately.

But after all, time is strong, and age has the curious power of devaluing all our feelings. You feel death coming closer, its shadow falls black across your path, and things seem less brightly coloured, they do not go to the heart so much, they lose much of their dangerous violence. Gradually I recovered from the shock, and when, many years later, I met a young Pole who was an attaché of the Austrian Embassy at a party, and in answer to my enquiry about that family he told me that one of his cousin’s sons had shot himself ten years before in Monte Carlo, I did not even tremble. It hardly hurt any more; perhaps—why deny one’s egotism?—I was even glad of it, for now my last fear of ever meeting him again was gone. I had no witness against me left but my own memory. Since then I have become calmer. Growing old, after all, means that one no longer fears the past.

And now you will understand why I suddenly brought myself to tell you about my own experience. When you defended Madame Henriette and said, so passionately, that twenty-four hours could determine a woman’s whole life, I felt that you meant me; I was grateful to you, since for the first time I felt myself, as it were, confirmed in my existence. And then I thought it would be good to unburden myself of it all for once, and perhaps then the spell on me would be broken, the eternal looking back; perhaps I can go to Monte Carlo tomorrow and enter the same hall where I met my fate without feeling hatred for him or myself. Then the stone will roll off my soul, laying its full weight over the past and preventing it from ever rising again. It has done me good to tell you all this. I feel easier in my mind now and almost light at heart… thank you for that.”

*

With these words she had suddenly risen, and I felt that she had reached the end. Rather awkwardly, I sought for something to say. But she must have felt my emotion, and quickly waved it away.

“No, please, don’t speak… I’d rather you didn’t reply or say anything to me. Accept my thanks for listening, and I wish you a good journey.”

She stood opposite me, holding out her hand in farewell. Instinctively I looked at her face, and the countenance of this old woman who stood before me with a kindly yet slightly ashamed expression seemed to me wonderfully touching. Whether it was the reflection of past passion or mere confusion that suddenly dyed her cheeks with red, the colour rising to her white hair, she stood there just like a girl, in a bridal confusion of memories and ashamed of her own confession. Involuntarily moved, I very much wanted to say something to express my respect for her, but my throat was too constricted. So I leant down and respectfully kissed the faded hand that trembled slightly like an autumn leaf.

DESTINY DOES NOT ALWAYS need the powerful prelude of a sudden violent blow to shake a heart beyond recovery. The unbridled creativity of fate can generate disaster from some small, fleeting incident. In clumsy human language, we call that first slight touch the cause of the catastrophe, and feel surprise in comparing its insignificance with the force, often enormous, that it exerts, but just as the first symptoms of an illness may not show at all, the downfall of a human heart can begin before anything happens to make it visible. Fate has been at work within the victim’s mind and his blood long before his soul suffers any outward effects. To know yourself is to defend yourself, but it is usually in vain.

The old man—Salomonsohn was his name, and at home in Germany he could boast of the honorary title of Privy Commercial Councillor—was lying awake in the Gardone hotel where he had taken his family for the Easter holiday. A violent physical pain constricted his chest so that he could hardly breathe. The old man was alarmed; he had troublesome gallstones and often suffered bilious attacks, but instead of following the advice of his doctors and visiting Karlsbad to take the waters there he had decided, for his family’s sake, to go further south and stay at this resort on Lake Garda instead. Fearing a dangerous attack of his disorder, he anxiously palpated his broad body, and soon realised with relief, even though he was still in pain, that it was only an ordinary stomach upset, obviously as a result of the unfamiliar Italian food, or the mild food poisoning that was apt to afflict tourists. Feeling less alarmed, he let his shaking hand drop back, but the pressure on his chest continued and kept him from breathing easily. Groaning, the old man made the effort of getting out of bed to move about a little. Sure enough, when he was standing the pressure eased, and even more so when he was walking. But there was not much space to walk about in the dark room, and he was afraid of waking his wife in the other twin bed and causing her unnecessary concern. So he put on his dressing gown and a pair of felt slippers, and groped his way out into the corridor to walk up and down there for a little while and lessen the pain.

As he opened the door into the dark corridor, the sound of the clock in the church tower echoed through the open windows—four chimes, first weighty and then dying softly away over the lake. Four in the morning.

The long corridor lay in complete darkness. But from his clear memory of it in daytime, the old man knew that it was wide and straight, so he walked along it, breathing heavily, from end to end without needing a light, and then again and again, pleased to notice that the tightness in his chest was fading. Almost entirely freed from pain now by this beneficial exercise, he was preparing to return to his room when a sound startled him. He stopped. The sound was a whispering in the darkness somewhere near him, slight yet unmistakable. Woodwork creaked, there were soft voices and movements, a door was opened just a crack and a narrow beam of light cut through the formless darkness. What was it? Instinctively the old man shrank back into a corner, not out of curiosity but obeying a natural sense of awkwardness at being caught by other people engaged in the odd activity of pacing up and down like a sleepwalker. In that one second when the light shone into the corridor, however, he had involuntarily seen, or thought he had seen, a white-clad female figure slipping out of the room and disappearing down the passage. And sure enough, there was a slight click as one of the last doors in the corridor latched shut. Then all was dark and silent again.

The old man suddenly began to sway as if he had suffered a blow to the heart. The only rooms at the far end of the corridor, where the door handle had given away a secret by clicking… the only rooms there were his own, the three-roomed suite that he had booked for his family. He had left his wife asleep and breathing peacefully only a few minutes before, so that female figure—no, he couldn’t be mistaken—that figure returning from a venture into a stranger’s room could have been no one but his daughter Erna, aged only just nineteen.

The old man was shivering all over with horror. His daughter Erna, his child, that happy, high-spirited child—no, this was impossible, he must be mistaken! But what could she have been doing in a stranger’s room if not… Like an injured animal he thrust his own idea away, but the haunting picture of that stealthy figure still haunted his mind, he could not tear it out of his head or banish it. He had to be sure. Panting, he groped his way along the wall of the corridor to her door, which was next to his own bedroom. But he was appalled to see, at this one door in the corridor, a thin line of light showing under the door, and the keyhole was a small dot of treacherous brightness. She still had a light on in her room at four in the morning! And there was more evidence—with a slight crackle from the electric switch the white line of light vanished without trace into darkness. No, it was useless trying to pretend to himself. It was Erna, his daughter, slipping out of a stranger’s bed and into her own by night.