Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

“Now the game really did tempt me. That very evening I wrote her a second letter, and so on over the next few days; I found it exciting to be playing the part of a young man in love in my letters, exaggerating an imaginary passion. It became a fascinating sport such as I suppose huntsmen feel when they set snares or entice game to within the firing line of their guns. And my own success was so indescribable, almost frightening me, that I was thinking of putting an end to it, but temptation now bound me ardently to the game I had begun. It was so easy. Her bearing became light, wildly confused as if by dancing, her features radiated a hectic beauty all their own; her sleep must have been a matter of watching and waiting for next morning’s letter, for her eyes were darkly shadowed early in the day, and the fire in them unsteady. She began looking after herself, wore flowers in her hair, a wonderful tenderness for everything calmed her hands, and there was always a question in her eyes, for she sensed, from a thousand small indications in my letters, that the writer of them must be near her—an Ariel filling the air with music, hovering nearby, listening for the sound of the slightest things she did, yet invisible by his own will. She became so cheerful that even the two dull-witted ladies noticed the change, for sometimes they let their eyes linger with kindly curiosity on her hurrying form and her budding cheeks, and then looked at her with a surreptitious smile. There was a new sound in her voice, louder, brighter, bolder, and her throat often vibrated and swelled as if she were about to burst into a song full of joyous trills, as if… but there you go, smiling again!”

“No, no, please go on. I only mean that you tell a very good story. You have—forgive me for taking the liberty—you have talent, you could tell as good a tale as one of our novelists.”

“You say that, I suppose, for the sake of courtesy, suggesting that I tell a story like your German novelists, that’s to say with lyrical fancies, broad, sentimental, tedious. Very well, I’ll cut it short! The marionette was dancing, and I pulled the strings with care. To divert any suspicion from me—for sometimes I felt her eyes resting on mine with a question in them—I had suggested that the writer was not staying here but in one of the nearby spa resorts, and came over the lake in a boat or on the steamer every day. And now I saw that when the bell of the approaching steamer rang, she would always escape her mother’s supervision on some pretext, hurry away, and keep watch, with bated breath, on the passengers disembarking from a corner of the pier.

“And then one day it happened. It was a gloomy afternoon, and I had nothing better to do than to watch her, when something remarkable occurred. One of the passengers was a handsome young man with the showy elegance of young Italians, and as he scanned the place as if in search of something, the desperately enquiring, questioning, intent look in the young girl’s face met his eye. And at once, flooding wildly over her gentle smile, a modest blush swiftly rose in her face. The young man stopped in surprise, his attention drawn to her—something easily understood when you are the recipient of so warm a glance, full of a thousand unsaid things—and he smiled and tried to follow her. She fled, came to a halt in the certainty that this was the man she had been looking out for so long—hurried on again, but looked round once more. It was the eternal interplay of wanting and fearing, longing and shame, in which the sweet, weak partner is always really the stronger. Obviously encouraged, if surprised, he hurried after her, and was getting close. I was feeling, apprehensively, that all this must surely collapse into an alarming state of chaos—when the two older ladies came along the path. The girl flew to them like a shy bird, the young man cautiously withdrew, but still their eyes met once more as they turned to look back, feverishly fixed on one another. This incident was a warning to me to bring my game to an end, yet the temptation was still too strong, and I made up my mind to make use of this coincidence as an aid. I wrote her an unusually long letter that evening, one that was bound to confirm her assumption. It intrigued me to be directing two characters in my play.

“Next morning the quivering confusion of her features alarmed me. Her pretty unrest had given way to nervous agitation that I did not understand; her eyes were moist and red-rimmed, as if by tears, and she seemed to feel a piercing pain. It was as if all her silence were trying to emerge in a wild scream. Darkness lay on her brow, and there was a gloomy astringency in her eyes, while this time above all I had expected bright joy. I was frightened. For the first time a strange element had entered the game; the marionette didn’t obey me and wouldn’t dance as I had planned. I thought of all possible reasons, and couldn’t find one. I began to be afraid of the play I myself had staged, and I did not return to the hotel until evening, to avoid the accusation in her eyes.

“When I did get back, I understood it all. The family’s table was no longer laid. They had left. She had been obliged to go away without a chance to say a word to him, and she could not let her family see how her heart was still attached to that one day, that single hour—she had been dragged away from a sweet dream and back to some miserable small town. I had forgotten to think of that. And I still feel that last look of hers as an accusation, its terrible force of mingled anger, torment, despair and the most bitter pain—something that I had brought into her life, and who knew how long it would last?”

He fell silent. The night had been walking with us, and the moon, partly covered with clouds, was shedding a fitful light. Sparkling stars seemed to hang between the trees and the pale surface of the lake. We went on without a word. At last my companion broke our silence. “Well, that was my story. Don’t you think it would make a novella?”

“I don’t know. At any rate, it’s a story that I will remember, along with the others for which I already have to thank you. But a novella? A good opening for one that might perhaps tempt me. For these people are only ships passing in the night, they are not entirely in control of themselves, they mark the beginning of human stories, but there is no real story. You would have to think it out to the end.”

“I see what you mean. The young girl’s life, her return to the small town, the dreadful tragedy of ordinary life…”

“No, that’s not quite it. The girl doesn’t interest me so much. Young girls are never interesting, remarkable as they may think themselves, because all that they’ve experienced is negative, and so their stories are all the same. In this case the girl marries some good solid citizen at home when the time for it comes, and this affair remains a flower petal among her memories. I’m not, as I said, interested in the girl.”

“That’s strange. I don’t know what you can find in the young man to interest you. Everyone catches such glances in his youth, a fire kindled between one pair of eyes and another, most don’t even notice it, others quickly forget. You have to grow older to know that this is perhaps the noblest and deepest thing you ever receive, the sacred privilege of youth.”

“I’m not interested in the young man either…”

“Then?”

“I’d develop the character of the older man, the letter-writer, trace it all the way through the story. I don’t think that you write ardent letters with impunity at any age, or meddle with the feelings of someone else’s love. I would try to show how the game becomes serious, how he thinks he is in control of it, when the game now controls him. The girl’s awakening beauty, beauty that he thinks he sees only as an observer, intrigues him and fascinates him more deeply. And the moment when it all slips away from him makes him feel a wild longing for the game—and his plaything. I would be intrigued by the reversal in love that is bound to make an old man’s passion very like a boy’s, because neither feels entirely adequate as a lover, I would give him the fears and expectations of that state of mind. I would make him uncertain, I’d have him travelling after her to see her, yet at the last minute not venturing near her, I’d have him coming back to the same place in the hope of seeing her again, imploring coincidence, which is always cruel in such cases. I would plan my novella along those lines, and then it would be…”