Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

What’s the matter with me? echoed a voice inside him. A whore for a daughter, and I can’t summon up the courage to tell her so.

But he only muttered indistinctly, “Nothing, nothing!” and hastily picked up the newspaper, protecting himself from her questioning gaze behind a barricade of outspread sheets of newsprint. He felt increasingly unable to meet her eyes. His hands were shaking. I ought to tell her now, said his tormented mind, now while we’re alone. But his voice failed him; he could not even find the strength to look up.

And suddenly, abruptly, he pushed back his chair and escaped, treading heavily, in the direction of the garden, for he felt a large tear rolling down his cheek against his will, and he didn’t want her to see it.

*

The old man wandered around the garden on his short legs, staring at the lake for a long time. Almost blinded by the unshed tears he was holding back, he still could not help noticing the beauty of the landscape—the hills rose in undulating shades of soft green behind silver light, black-hatched with the thin spires of cypress trees, and beyond the hills were the sterner outlines of the mountains, severe, yet looking down on the beauty of the lake without arrogance, like grave men watching the light-hearted games of beloved children. How mild it all lay there outspread, with open, flowering, hospitable gestures. How it enticed a man to be kindly and happy, that timeless, blessed smile of God at the south he had created! Happy! The old man rocked his heavy head back and forth, confused.

One could be happy here, he thought. I would have liked to be happy myself, just once, feel how beautiful the world of the carefree is for myself, just once, after fifty years of writing and calculating and bargaining and haggling, I would have liked to enjoy a few bright days before they bury me… for sixty-five years, my God, death’s hand is in my body now, money is no help and nor are the doctors. I wanted to breathe easily just a little first, have something for myself for once. But my late father always said: contentment is not for the likes of us, we carry our pedlar’s packs on our backs to the grave… Yesterday I thought I myself might feel at ease for a change… yesterday I could have been called a happy man, glad of my beautiful, lovely child, glad to give her pleasure… and God has punished me already and taken that away from me. It’s all over now for ever… I can’t speak to my own child any more, I am ashamed to look her in the eye. I’ll always be thinking of this at home, at the office, at night in my bed—where is she now, where has she been, what has she done? I’ll never be able to come happily home again, to see her sitting there and then running to meet me, with my heart opening up at the sight of her, so young and lovely… When she kisses me I’ll wonder who had her yesterday, who kissed those lips… I’ll always live in fear when she’s not with me, I’ll always be ashamed when I meet her eyes—a man can’t live like this, can’t live like this…

The old man stumbled back and forth like a drunk, muttering. He kept staring out at the lake, and his tears ran down into his beard. He had to take off his pince-nez and stand there on the narrow path with his moist, short-sighted eyes revealed, looking so foolish that a gardener’s boy who was passing stopped in surprise, laughed aloud and called out a few mocking words in Italian at the bewildered old man. That roused him from his turmoil of pain, and he put his pince-nez on and stole aside into the garden to sit on a bench somewhere and hide from the boy.

But as he approached a remote part of the garden, a laugh to his left startled him again… a laugh that he knew and that went to his heart. That laughter had been music to him for nineteen years, the light laughter of her high spirits… for that laughter he had travelled third-class by night to Poland and Hungary so that he could pour out money before them, rich soil from which that carefree merriment grew. He had lived only for that laughter, while inside his body his gall bladder fell sick… just so that that laughter could always ring out from her beloved mouth. And now the same laughter cut him to the heart like a red-hot saw.

Yet it drew him to it despite his reluctance. She was standing on the tennis court, twirling the racket in her bare hand, gracefully throwing it up and catching it again in play. At the same time as the racket flew up, her light-hearted laughter rose to the azure sky. The three gentlemen admiringly watched her, Conte Ubaldi in a loose tennis shirt, the officer in the trim uniform that showed off his muscles, the gentleman jockey in an immaculate pair of breeches, three sharply profiled, statuesque male figures around a plaything fluttering like a butterfly. The old man himself stared, captivated. Good God, how lovely she was in her pale, ankle-length dress, the sun dusting her blonde hair with liquid gold! And how happily her young limbs felt their own lightness as she leapt and ran, intoxicated and intoxicating as her joints responded to the free-and-easy rhythm of her movements. Now she flung the white tennis ball merrily up to the sky, then a second and a third after it, it was wonderful to see how the slender wand of her girlish body bent and stretched, leaping up now to catch the last ball. He had never seen her like that before, incandescent with high spirits, an elusive, wavering flame, the silvery trill of her laughter above the blazing of her body, like a virginal goddess escaped in panic from the southern garden with its clinging ivy and the gentle surface of the lake. At home she never stretched that slender, sinewy body in such a wild dance or played competitive games. No, he had never seen her like this within the sombre walls of the crowded city, had never heard her voice rise like lark-song set free from the earthly confines of her throat in merriment that was almost song, not indoors and not in the street. She had never been so beautiful. The old man stared and stared. He had forgotten everything, he just watched and watched that white, elusive flame. And he would have stood like that, endlessly absorbing her image with a passionate gaze, if she had not finally caught the last of the balls she was juggling with a breathless, fluttering leap, turning nimbly, and pressed them to her breast breathing fast, face flushed, but with a proud and laughing gaze. “ Brava, brava! ” cried the three gentlemen, who had been intently watching her clever juggling of the balls, applauding as if she had finished an operatic aria. Their guttural voices roused the old man from his enchantment, and he stared grimly at them.

So there they are, the villains, he thought, his heart thudding. There they are—but which of them is it? Which of those three has had her? Oh yes, how finely rigged out they are, shaved and perfumed, idle dandies… while men like me still sit in offices in their old age, in shabby trousers, wearing down the heels of their shoes visiting customers… and for all I know the fathers of these fine fellows may still be toiling away today, wearing their hands out so that their sons can travel the world, wasting time at their leisure, their faces browned and carefree, their impudent eyes bright. Easy for them to be cheerful, they only have to throw a silly, vain child a few sweet words and she’ll fall into bed… But which of the three is it, which is it? One of them, I know, is seeing her naked through her dress and smacking his lips. I’ve had her, he’s thinking, he’s known her hot and naked, we’ll do it again this evening, he thinks, winking at her—oh, the bastard, the dog, yes, if only I could whip him like a dog!

And now they had noticed him standing there. His daughter swung up her racket in a salutation, and smiled at him, the gentlemen wished him good day. He did not thank them, only stared at his daughter’s smiling lips with brimming, bloodshot eyes. To think that you can laugh like that, he thought, you shameless creature… and one of those men may be laughing to himself, telling himself—there goes the stupid old Jew who lies snoring in bed all night… if only he knew, the old fool! Oh yes, I do know, you fine fellows laugh, you tread me underfoot like dirt… but my daughter, so pretty and willing, she’ll tumble into bed with you… and as for her mother, she’s a little stout now, but she goes about all dolled up with her face painted, and if you were to make eyes at her, who knows, she might yet venture to dance a step or so with you… You’re right, you dogs, you’re right when they run after you, those shameless women, women on heat… what’s it to you that another man’s heart is breaking so long as you can have your fun, fun with those shameless females… someone should take a revolver and shoot you down, you deserve to be horsewhipped… but yes, you’re right, so long as no one does anything, so long as I swallow my rage like a dog returning to his vomit… you’re right, if a father is so cowardly, so shockingly cowardly… if he doesn’t go to the shameless girl, take hold of her, drag her away from you… if he just stands there saying nothing, bitter gall in his mouth, a coward, a coward, a coward…