Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

ON 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.