Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

The festival day had brought the first wave of rioting to Antwerp in the shape of a rabble united in nothing but an instinct to join sudden uprisings. Sinister figures whom no one knew suddenly appeared in the taverns, cursing and uttering wild threats against Spaniards and clerics. Strange people of defiant and angry appearance who avoided the light of day emerged from nooks and crannies and disreputable alleys. There was more and more trouble. Now and then there were minor skirmishes. They did not spill over into a general movement, but were extinguished like sparks hissing out in isolation. The Prince of Orange still maintained strict discipline, and controlled the greedy, quarrelsome and ill-intentioned mob who were joining the Protestants only for the sake of profit.

The magnificence of the great procession merely provoked repressed instincts. For the first time coarse jokes mingled with the singing of the faithful, wild threats were uttered and scornful laughter. Some sang the text of the Beggars’ song to a pious melody, a young fellow imitated the croaking voice of the preacher, to the delight of his companions, others greeted the portrait of the Virgin by sweeping off their hats with ostentatious gallantry as if to their lady love. The soldiers and the few faithful Catholics who had ventured to take part in the procession were powerless, and had to grit their teeth and watch this mockery as it became ever wilder. And now that the common people had tasted defiant power, they were becoming less and less amenable. Almost all of them were already armed. The dark impulse that had so far broken out only in curses and threats called for action. This menacing unrest lay over the city like a storm cloud on the feast day of St Mary and the days that followed.

Women and the more sober of the men had kept to their houses since the angry scenes had endangered the procession. The streets now belonged to the mob and the Protestants. Esther, too, had stayed at home for the last few days. But she knew nothing of all these dark events. She vaguely noticed that there were more and more people crowding into the tavern, that the shrill sound of whores’ voices mingled with the agitated talk of quarrelling, cursing men, she saw distraught women, she saw figures secretly whispering together, but she felt such indifference to all these things that she did not even ask her foster father about them. She thought of nothing but the baby, the baby who, in her dreams, had long ago become her own. All memory paled beside this one image. The world was no longer so strange to her, but it had no value because it had nothing to give her; her loving devotion and youthful need of God were lost in her thoughts of the child. Only the single hour a day when she stole out to see the picture—it was both her God and her child—breathed real life into her. Otherwise she was like a woman lost in dreams, passing everything else by like a sleepwalker. Day after day, and even once on a long summer night heavy with warm fragrance, when she had fled the tavern and made sure she was shut up in the cathedral, she prostrated herself before the picture on her knees. Her ignorant soul had made a God of it.

And these days were difficult for her, because they kept her from her child. While festive crowds thronged the tall aisles on the Feast of St Mary, and surging organ music filled the nave, she had to turn back and leave the cathedral with the rest of the people crowding it, feeling humbled like a beggar woman because worshippers kept standing in front of the two pictures of St Mary in the chapel that day, and she feared she might be recognised. Sad and almost despairing, she went back, never noticing the sunlight of the day because she had been denied a sight of her child. Envy and anger came over her when she saw the crowds making pilgrimage to the altarpiece, piously coming through the tall porch of the cathedral into that fragrant blue darkness.

She was even sadder next day, when she was not allowed to go out into the streets, now so full of menacing figures. Her room, to which the noise of the tavern rose like a thick, ugly smoke, became intolerable to her. To her confused heart, a day when she could not see the baby in the picture was like a dark and gloomy sleepless night, a night of torment. She was not strong enough yet to bear deprivation. Late in the evening, when her foster father was sitting in the tavern with his guests, she very quietly went down the stairs. She tried the door, and breathed a sigh of relief; it was not locked. Softly, already feeling the mild fresh air that she had missed for a long time, she slipped through the door and hurried to the cathedral.

The streets through which she swiftly walked were dark and full of muffled noise. Single groups had come together from all sides, and news of the departure of the Prince of Orange had let violence loose. Threatening remarks, heard only occasionally and uttered at random in daytime, now sounded like shouts of command. Here and there drunks were bawling, and enthusiasts were singing rebel songs so loud that the windows echoed. Weapons were no longer hidden; hatchets and hooks, swords and stakes glinted in the flickering torchlight. Like a greedy torrent, hesitating only briefly before its foaming waves sweep away all barriers, these dark troops whom no one dared to resist gathered together.

Esther had taken no notice of this unruly crowd, although she once had to push aside a rough arm reaching for her as she slipped by when its owner tried to grab her headscarf. She never wondered why such madness had suddenly come into the rabble; she did not understand their shouting and cries. She simply overcame her fear and disgust, and quickened her pace until at last, breathless, she reached the tall cathedral deep in the shadow of the houses, white moonlit cloud hovering in the air above it.

Reassured, shivering only slightly, she came into the cathedral through a side door. It was dark in the tall, unlit aisles, with only a mysterious silvery light trembling around the dull glass of the windows. The pews were empty. No shadow moved through the wide, breathless expanses of the building, and the statues of the saints stood black and still before the altars. And like the gentle flickering of a glow-worm there came, from what seemed endless depths, the swaying light of the eternal flame above the chapels. All was quiet and sacred here, and the silent majesty of the place so impressed Esther that she muted her tapping footsteps. Carefully, she groped her way towards the chapel in the side aisle and then, trembling, knelt down in front of the picture in boundless quiet rejoicing. In the flowing darkness, it seemed to look down from dense, fragrant clouds, endlessly far away yet very close. And now she did not think any more. As always, the confused longings of her maturing girlish heart relaxed in fantastic dreams. Ardour seemed to stream from every fibre of her being and gather around her brow like an intoxicating cloud. These long hours of unconscious devotion, united with the longing for love, were like a sweet, gently numbing drug; they were a dark wellspring, the blessed fruit of the Hesperides containing and nourishing all divine life. For all bliss was present in her sweet, vague dreams, through which tremors of longing passed. Her agitated heart beat alone in the great silence of the empty church. A soft, bright radiance like misty silver came from the picture, as if shed by a light within, carrying her up from the cold stone of the steps to the mild warm region of light that she knew in dreams. It was a long time since she had thought of the baby as a stranger to her. She dreamt of the God in him and the God in every woman, the essence of her own body, warm with her blood. Vague yearning for the divine, questing ecstasy and the rise of maternal feelings in her spun the deceptive network of her life’s dream between them. For her, there was brightness in the wide, oppressive darkness of the church, gentle music played in the awed silence that knew nothing of human language and the passing of the hours. Above her prostrated body, time went its inexorable way.