Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

However, reality is stronger and more robust than any dreams. One evening the stout hotel porter from Waadland told him in passing, “Baroness Ostrovska is leaving tomorrow night on the eight o’clock train.” And he added a couple of other names which meant nothing to François, and which he did not note. For those words had turned to a confused, tumultuous roaring in his head. A couple of times he mechanically ran his fingers over his aching brow, as if to push away an oppressive weight lying there and dimming his understanding. He took a few steps; he was unsteady on his feet. Alarmed and uncertain, he passed a tall, gilt-framed mirror from which a pale strange face looked back at him, white as a sheet. No ideas would come to him; they seemed to be held captive behind a dark and misty wall. Almost unconsciously, he felt his way down by the hand-rail of the broad flight of steps into the twilit garden, where tall pines stood alone like dark thoughts. His restless figure took a few more shaky steps, like the low reeling flight of a large dark nocturnal bird, and then he sank down on a bench with his head pressed to its cool back. It was perfectly quiet. The sea sparkled here and there beyond the round shapes of shrubs. Faint, trembling lights shone out on the water, and the monotonous, murmuring sing-song of distant breakers was lost in the silence.

Suddenly everything was clear to him, perfectly clear. So painfully clear that he could almost summon up a smile. It was all over. Baroness Ostrovska was going home, and François the waiter would stay at his post. Was that so strange? Didn’t all the foreign guests who came to the hotel leave again after two, three or four weeks? How foolish not to have thought of it before. It was so clear, it was enough to make you laugh or cry. And ideas kept whirring through his head. Tomorrow evening on the eight o’clock train to Warsaw. To Warsaw—hours and hours of travel through forests and valleys, passing hills and mountains, steppes and rivers and noisy towns. Warsaw! It was so far away! He couldn’t even imagine it, but he felt it in the depths of his heart, that proud and threatening, harsh and distant word Warsaw. While he…

For a second a small, dream-like hope fluttered up in his heart. He could follow. He could hire himself out there as a servant, a secretary, could stand in the street as a freezing beggar, anything not to be so dreadfully far away, just to breathe the air of the same city, perhaps see her sometimes driving past, catch a glimpse of her shadow, her dress, her dark hair. Daydreams flashed hastily through his mind. But this was a hard and pitiless hour. Clear and plain, he saw how unattainable his dreams were. He worked it out: at the most he had savings of a hundred or two hundred francs. That would scarcely take him half the way. And then what? As if through a torn veil he suddenly saw his own life, knew how wretched, pitiful, hateful it must be now. Empty, desolate years working as a waiter, tormented by foolish longing—was something so ridiculous to be his future? The idea made him shudder. And suddenly all these trains of thoughts came stormily and inevitably together. There was only one way out…

The treetops swayed quietly in an imperceptible breeze. A dark, black night menacingly faced him. He rose from his bench, confident and composed, and walked over the crunching gravel up to the great building of the hotel where it slumbered in white silence. He stopped outside her windows. They were dark, with no spark of light at which his dreamy longing could have been kindled. Now his blood was flowing calmly, and he walked like a man whom nothing will ever confuse or deceive again. In his room, he flung himself on the bed without any sign of agitation, and slept a dull, dreamless sleep until the alarm summoned him to get up in the morning.

Next day his demeanour was entirely within the bounds of carefully calculated reflection and self-imposed calm. He carried out his duties with cool indifference, and his gestures were so sure and easy that no one could have guessed at the bitter decision behind his deceptive mask. Just before dinner he hurried out with his small savings to the best florist in the resort and bought choice flowers whose colourful glory spoke to him like words: tulips glowing with fiery, passionate gold—shaggy white chrysanthemums resembling light, exotic dreams—slender orchids, the graceful images of longing—and a few proud, intoxicating roses. And then he bought a magnificent vase of sparkling, opalescent glass. He gave the few francs he still had left to a beggar child in passing, with a quick and carefree movement. Then he hurried back. With sad solemnity, he put the vase of flowers down in front of the Baroness’s place at table, which he now prepared for the last time with slow, voluptuously meticulous attention.

Then came the dinner. He served it as usual: cool, silent, skilful, without looking up. Only at the end did he embrace her supple, proud figure with an endlessly long look of which she never knew. And she had never seemed to him so beautiful as in that last, perfect look. Then he stepped calmly back from the table, without any gesture of farewell, and left the dining room. Bearing himself like a guest to whom the staff would bow and nod their heads, he walked down the corridors and the handsome flight of steps outside the reception area and out into the street: any observer must surely have been able to tell that, at that moment, he was leaving his past behind. He stood outside the hotel for a moment, undecided, and then turned to the bright villas and wide gardens, following the road past them, walking on, ever on with his thoughtful, dignified stride, with no idea where he was going.

He wandered restlessly like this until evening, in a lost, dreamy state of mind. He was not thinking of anything any more. Not about the past, or the inevitable moment to come. He was no longer playing with ideas of death, not in the way one might well pick up a shining revolver with its deep, menacing mouth in those last moments, weighing it in the hand, and then lower it again. He had passed sentence on himself long ago. Only images came to him now in rapid flight, like swallows soaring. First images of his youthful days, up to a fateful moment at school when a foolish adventure had suddenly closed an alluring future to him and thrust him out into the turmoil of the world. Then his restless wanderings, his efforts to earn a living, all the attempts that kept failing, until the great black wave that we call destiny broke his pride and he ended up in a position unworthy of him. Many colourful memories whirled past. And finally the gentle reflection of these last few days glowed in his waking dreams, suddenly pushing the dark door of reality open again. He had to go through it. He remembered that he intended to die today.

For a while he thought of the many ways leading to death, assessing their comparative bitterness and speed, until suddenly an idea shot through his mind. His clouded senses abruptly showed him a dark symbol: just as she had unknowingly, destructively driven over his fate, so she should also crush his body. She herself would do it. She would finish her own work. And now his ideas came thick and fast with strange certainty. In just under an hour, at eight, the express carrying her away from him left. He would throw himself under its wheels, let himself be trampled down by the same violent force that was tearing the woman of his dreams from him. He would bleed to death beneath her feet. The ideas stormed on after one another as if in jubilation. He knew the right place too: further off, near the wooded slope, where the swaying treetops hid the sight of the last bend in the railway line nearby. He looked at his watch; the seconds and his hammering blood were beating out the same rhythm. It was time to set off. Now a spring returned to his sluggish footsteps, along with the certainty of his destination. He walked at that brisk, hasty pace that does away with dreaming as one goes forward, restlessly striding on in the twilight glory of the Mediterranean evening towards the place where the sky was a streak of purple lying embedded between distant, wooded hills. And he hurried on until he came to the two silver lines of the railway track shining ahead of him, guiding him on his way. The track led him by winding paths on through the deep, fragrant valleys, their veils of mist now silvered by the soft moonlight, it took him into the hilly landscape where the sight of sparkling lights along the beach showed how far away the nocturnal, black expanse of the sea was now. And at last it presented him with the deep, restlessly whispering forest that hid the railway line in its lowering shadows.