Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

The old man was trembling with horror and cold, while at the same time sweat broke out all over his body, flooding the pores of his skin. His first thought was to break in at the shameless girl’s door and chastise her with his fists. But his feet were tottering beneath the weight of his broad body. He could hardly summon up the strength to drag himself into his own room and back to bed, where he fell on the pillows like a stricken animal, his senses dulled.

*

The old man lay motionless in bed. His eyes, wide open, stared at the darkness. He heard his wife breathing easily beside him, without a care in the world. His first thought was to shake her awake, tell her about his dreadful discovery, rage and rant to his heart’s content. But how could he express it, how could he put this terrible thing into words? No, such words would never pass his lips. What was he to do, though? What could he do?

He tried to think, but his mind was in blind confusion, thoughts flying this way and that like bats in daylight. It was so monstrous—Erna, his tender, well-brought-up child with her melting eyes… How long ago was it, how long ago that he would still find her poring over her schoolbooks, her little pink finger carefully tracing the difficult characters on the page, how long since she used to go straight from school to the confectioner’s in her little pale-blue dress, and then he felt her childish kiss with sugar still on her lips? Only yesterday, surely? But no, it was all years ago. Yet how childishly she had begged him yesterday— really yesterday—to buy her the blue and gold pullover that looked so pretty in the shop window. “Oh please, dear Papa, please!”—with her hands clasped, with that self-confident, happy smile that he could never resist. And now, now she was stealing away to a strange man’s bed by night, not far from his own door, to roll about in it with him, naked and lustful.

My God, my God! thought the old man, instinctively groaning. The shame of it, the shame! My child, my tender, beloved child—an assignation with some man… Who is he? Who can he be? We arrived here in Gardone only three days ago, and she knew none of those spruced-up dandies before—thin-faced Conte Ubaldi, that Italian officer, the baron from Mecklenburg who’s a gentleman jockey… they didn’t meet on the dance floor until our second day. Has one of them already?… No, he can’t have been the first, no… it must have begun earlier, at home, and I knew nothing about it, fool that I am. Poor fool! But what do I know about my wife and daughter anyway? I toil for them every day, I spend fourteen hours a day at my office just to earn money for them, more and more money so that they can have fine dresses and be rich… and when I come home tired in the evening, worn out, they’ve gone gadding off to the theatre, to balls, out with company, what do I know about them and what they get up to all day long? And now my child with her pure young body has assignations with men by night like a common streetwalker… oh, the shame of it!

The old man groaned again and again. Every new idea deepened his wound and tore it open, as if his brain lay visibly bleeding, with red maggots writhing in it.

But why do I put up with this, he wondered, why do I lie here tormenting myself while she, with her unchaste body, sleeps peacefully? Why didn’t I go straight into her room so that she’d know I knew her shame? Why didn’t I beat her black and blue? Because I’m weak… and a coward… I’ve always been weak with both of them, I’ve given way to them in everything, I was proud that I could make their lives easy, even if my own was ruined, I scraped the money together with my fingernails, pfennig by pfennig , I’d have torn the flesh from my hands to see them content! But as soon as I’d made them rich they were ashamed of me, I wasn’t elegant enough for them any more, too uneducated… where would I have got an education? I was taken out of school aged twelve, I had to earn money, earn and earn, carry cases of samples about from village to village, run agencies in town after town before I could open my own business… and no sooner were they ladies and living in their own house than they didn’t like my honourable old name any more. I had to buy the title of Councillor, so that my wife wouldn’t be just Frau Salomonsohn, so that she could be Frau Commercial Councillor and put on airs. Put on airs! They laughed at me when I objected to all that putting on airs of distinction, when I objected to what they call high society, when I told them how my mother, God rest her soul, kept house quietly, modestly, just for my father and the rest of us… they called me old-fashioned. “Oh, you’re so old-fashioned, Papa!” She was always mocking me… yes, old-fashioned, indeed I am… and now she lies in a strange bed with strange men, my child, my only child! Oh, the shame, the shame of it!

The old man was moaning and sighing in such torment that his wife, in the bed beside his, woke up. “What’s the matter?” she drowsily asked. The old man did not move, and held his breath. And so he lay there motionless in the coffin of his torment until morning, with his thoughts eating away at him like worms.

The old man was first at the breakfast table. He sat down with a sigh, unable to face a morsel of food.

Alone again, he thought, always alone! When I go to the office in the morning they’re still comfortably asleep, lazily taking their ease after all their dancing and theatre-going… when I come home in the evening they’ve already gone out to enjoy themselves in company, they don’t need me with them. It’s the money, the accursed money that’s ruined them, made them strangers to me. Fool that I am, I earned it, scraped it together, I stole from myself, made myself poor and them bad with the money… for fifty pointless years I’ve been toiling, never giving myself a day off, and now I’m all alone…

He felt impatient. Why doesn’t she come down, he wondered, I want to talk to her, I have to tell her… we must leave this place at once… why doesn’t she come down? I suppose she’s too tired, sleeping soundly with a clear conscience while I’m tearing my heart to pieces, old fool that I am… and her mother titivating herself for hours on end, has to take a bath, dress herself, have a manicure, get her hair arranged, she won’t be down before eleven, and is it any wonder? How can a child turn out so badly? It’s the money, the accursed money…

Light footsteps were approaching behind him. “Good morning, Papa, did you sleep well?” A soft cheek bent down to his side, a light kiss brushed his hammering forehead. Instinctively he drew back; repelled by the sweetly sultry Coty perfume she wore. And then…

“What’s the matter, Papa… are you in a cross temper again? Oh, coffee, please, waiter, and ham and eggs… Did you sleep badly, or have you heard bad news?”

The old man restrained himself. He bowed his head—he did not have the courage to look up—and preserved his silence. He saw only her manicured hands on the table, her beloved hands, casually playing with each other like spoilt, slender little greyhounds on the white turf of the tablecloth. He trembled. Timidly, his eyes travelled up the delicate, girlish arms which she had often—but how long ago?—flung around him before she went to sleep. He saw the gentle curve of her breasts moving in time with her breathing under the new pullover. Naked, he thought grimly, stark naked, tossing and turning in bed with a strange man. A man who touched all that, felt it, lavished caresses on it, tasted and enjoyed her… my own flesh and blood, my child… that villainous stranger, oh…

Unconsciously, he had groaned again. “What’s the matter with you, Papa?” She moved closer, coaxing him.