Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

I said as much to him one evening when we were sitting outside the hotel after dinner, watching the bright lake slowly darken before our eyes. He smiled. “You may be right. I don’t believe in memoirs; what you have experienced is in the past as soon as its moment is over. And as for literature: doesn’t that perish as well twenty, fifty, a hundred years later? However, I’ll tell you something today that I think would make a pretty novella. Come with me—such things are better told as one walks along.”

So we set off on the beautiful path along the beach, overshadowed by the eternal cypresses and tangled chestnut trees, with the lake casting restless reflections through their branches. Over there lay the white cloud of Bellagio, softly tinted by sunset colours, and high, high above the dark hill gleamed the sparkling crown of the walls of the Villa Serbelloni. The atmosphere was still slightly sultry, but not oppressive; like a woman’s gentle arm, it leant tenderly on the shadows and filled the night with the fragrance of invisible flowers. Then he began his tale.

“I will introduce the story with a confession. Until now I haven’t told you that I have been in Cadenabbia before, last year, at the same season and in the same hotel. That may surprise you, especially as I have mentioned that I always avoid doing anything twice. But listen to my story. Last year this place was, of course, as deserted as it is now. The same gentleman from Milan was here—the one who spends all day catching fish and throws them back into the lake in the evening, only to catch them again next day; there were two old Englishwomen whose quietly vegetative existence one hardly noticed, and in addition a handsome young man with a pretty, pale girl, who I don’t believe to this day was his wife, because they seemed far too fond of each other for that. Finally, there was also a German family, the most typical kind of north Germans. A flaxen-haired, raw-boned woman getting on in years, with angular, graceless movements, piercing steely eyes and a sharp, quarrelsome mouth like a cut made with a knife. She had a sister with her, unmistakably her sister because she had the same features, only lined and somehow softened; the two of them were always together, yet never seemed to talk to each other, and were always intent on their embroidery, into which they seemed to weave all their absence of thought, implacable Fates in a restricted world of tedium. And between them a young girl some sixteen years old, the daughter of one of them, I don’t know which, for the pronounced immaturity of her features was already mingling with a slight indication of feminine curves. She was not really pretty, too thin, not fully grown yet, but there was something touching in her look of helpless yearning. Her eyes were large, and probably full of dark light, but they always shyly avoided the glance of others, their glow dispersed into fitful glints. She too always had some needlework with her, but her hands often moved slowly, her fingers slackened, and then she would sit still, looking out over the lake.

“I don’t know what it was about that sight that so strangely attracted my attention. Was it the banal yet inevitable idea that struck me, on seeing the faded mother beside her daughter coming into the bloom of youth? Was it the shadow behind her figure, the thought that lines wait hidden in every cheek, weariness in all laughter, disappointment in every dream? Or was it that wild, unfocused longing just breaking out, giving away everything about the girl, every wonderful moment in her life when her eyes were fixed on the whole universe in desire, because they had not yet found one desirable object to cling to, then to remain there rotting like algae on a piece of floating wood? I found it infinitely fascinating to watch her, to see her dreamy, dewy-eyed glance, the wildly exuberant caresses she lavished on every dog and cat, the restlessness that made her begin so many projects and then leave them unfinished. And then the ardent haste with which she raced through the few wretched books in the hotel library in the evening, or leafed through the two volumes of poetry, worn with much reading, that she had brought with her, books containing the poetry of Goethe and Baumbach… but why do you smile?

I had to apologize. “It’s the juxtaposition of Goethe and Baumbach.”

“I see! Yes, of course, it’s comical. And then again, it isn’t. You may believe me when I say that it is immaterial to young girls of that age whether the poetry they read is good or bad, the real essence of poetry or an imitation. To them, poems are only vessels for quenching their thirst, and they pay no attention to the quality of the wine in those vessels; it is intoxicating even before it is drunk. And this girl was like that, so full to the brim of longing that it glowed in her eyes, made her fingertips tremble on the table, and she moved in a manner somewhere between awkwardness and elation. You could see she was hungry to talk to someone, to give away something of all that filled her mind, but there was no one there, only a void, only the slight sound of the embroidery needles to right and left of her, and the cold, deliberate glances of the two older ladies.

“I felt a great sense of pity for her. And yet I could not approach her, for first, what does a man of my age mean to a girl at this moment in her life, and secondly, my dislike of becoming acquainted with family groups, and in particular ageing middle-class ladies, stood in the way of any opportunity to do so. Then an odd approach occurred to me. I thought: here is a young girl, unfledged, inexperienced, probably visiting Italy for the first time, a country that in Germany, thanks to Shakespeare, the Englishman who never went there, is regarded as the land of romantic love—the land of Romeos, secret adventures, dropped fans, flashing daggers, of masks, duennas and tender letters. She surely dreams of such adventures, I thought, and who knows a girl’s dreams? They are white, wafting clouds hovering aimlessly in the blue sky, and like real clouds always more intensely coloured in the evening, glowing pink and then an ardent red. Nothing will strike her as improbable or unlikely here. So I decided to invent a secret lover for her.

“And that same evening I wrote a long letter, humbly and respectfully tender, full of strange hints, and unsigned. A letter demanding nothing, promising nothing, exuberant and restrained at the same time—in short a romantic letter that would not have been out of place in a verse drama. As I knew that she was the first to come down to breakfast every day, driven by her restlessness, I folded it into her napkin. Morning came. Watching from the garden, I saw her incredulous surprise, her sudden alarm, the red flame that shot into her pale cheeks and quickly spread down her throat. I saw her looking around helplessly, fidgeting, I saw the nervous movement with which she hid the letter, and then I saw her sit there, nervous and uneasy, scarcely touching her breakfast and soon running away, out of the dining room, to somewhere in the dark, deserted corridors of the hotel, to find a place where she could decipher her mysterious letter… Did you want to say something?”

I had made an involuntary movement, and now I had to explain it. “Wasn’t that a bold step to take? Didn’t you stop to think she might want to find out how the letter came to be in her napkin, or simplest of all ask the waiter? Or show it to her mother?”

“Of course I thought of that. But if you had seen the girl, that timid, scared, sweet creature who was always looking around anxiously if for once she had raised her voice, any doubts would have been dispelled. There are girls whose modesty is so great that you can go to considerable lengths with them, because they are so helpless and would rather put up with anything than confide so much as a word about it to others. I smiled as I watched her going, and was pleased with the success of my little game. Then she came back, and I felt the blood rush suddenly to my temples; this was another girl, moving in a different way. She came in, looking restless and confused, a glowing wave of red had suffused her face, and a sweet awkwardness made her clumsy. And it was the same all day. Her glance flew to every window as if to find the answer to the mystery there, circled around every passer-by, and once fell on me. I carefully avoided it, so as not to give myself away by any sign, but in that fleeting second I had felt a fiery questioning that almost alarmed me; and it struck me again, from years of experience, that there is no more dangerous, tempting and corrupt desire than to light that first spark in a girl’s eyes. Then I saw her sitting between the two older ladies, her fingers idle, and noticed that she sometimes quickly felt a place in her dress, where I was sure she was hiding the letter.