Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

Even as a child Ruzena Sedlak learned, to her shame, that she was known with good reason as the Death’s Head, at the same time as she learned to talk, and every second she was reminded yet again that because of that missing inch of bone she was mercilessly banished from the cheerful company of other human beings. Pregnant women quickly turned away if they met her in the street; farmer’s wives from the local countryside, bringing their eggs to sell at market, crossed themselves on seeing her, for these simple souls could not help thinking that the Devil himself had squashed the child’s nose. And even those who were more kindly disposed and talked to her kept their eyes obviously lowered as they talked; she could not remember ever having seen the pupil of an eye clearly and at close quarters, except in the eyes of animals, who sense only kindness and not ugliness in human beings. It was lucky that her mind was dull and lethargic, so that she suffered only vaguely from this injustice of God’s when she was with other people. She did not have the strength to hate them, or any wish to love them; she took little notice of the whole town, which remained strange to her, so she was very pleased when kind Father Nossal put in a good word for her and found her a post as housekeeper at a hunting lodge out in the forest. It was eight hours’ walk from town, and very remote from any human company. In the middle of his extensive woods, which reached from Dobitzan to the Schwarzenberg Forests, Count R had had a log cabin built in the foreign style for his guests, and apart from those few weeks in autumn when they came visiting, it was always empty. Ruzena Sedlak was installed as caretaker, with a ground-floor room to live in. Her only duties were to look after the hunting lodge, and feed the deer and the small game in hard winters. Otherwise her time was her own to use as she pleased, which she did by rearing goats, rabbits, chickens, and other small livestock, cultivating a vegetable garden, and trading a little in eggs, chickens, and kids. She lived entirely in the woods for eight years, and the animals, which she loved dearly, made her forget human beings. In their own turn human beings forgot her. Only the miraculous fact that some specimen of masculinity, either blind or dead drunk (no one could explain the aberration in any other way), had made the Death’s Head pregnant, brought this forgotten creature of God back to the amused attention of the people of Dobitzan after many years.

One man in town, to be sure, did not laugh at the news but growled angrily, and that was the Mayor. For if Nature is unkind to one of her offspring now and then, and God forgets one of his creatures, an official would be no kind of official if he allowed himself to forget any human being, and there must be no omissions from a well-kept register. A child five months old and not yet registered, with no name in the records, grumbled the Mayor (who was a baker by profession) in great indignation. The priest was upset too: a child of five months and not yet baptised! These were heathen ways. After long discussion between the two of them, as representing the earthly and divine powers, the town clerk Wondrak was sent off to the forest to remind Ruzena Sedlak of her duty as a citizen. At first she told him roughly that the child was hers, no business of anyone else, and no concern of God or the Devil either. But when Wondrak, a sturdy figure and sticking to his point, replied that she was wrong there, the Devil would indeed take an interest in an unbaptised child, he’d carry its mother off to Hell if she failed to have the baby christened, the poor simple creature felt terrified of good Father Nossal, and she obediently brought the child to town next Sunday, wrapped in blue cotton. The baptism was celebrated early in the morning, to keep curious mockers away, the sponsors being a half-blind beggar woman and the good clerk Wondrak, who gave his own first name of Karel to the crying boy. The civil formalities proved a little more awkward, for when the Mayor asked as in duty bound for the father’s name, a small, unseemly smile escaped both him and the kindly Wondrak. Ruzena did not reply, but bit her lip. So the unknown man’s son was registered in her name, and thereafter was known as Karel Sedlak.

It was a fact that Ruzena, the Death’s Head, could not have said who Karel’s father was. One misty October evening the previous year, she had come back from town very late with her pannier on her back. Three fellows met her deep in the forest, out to steal timber, perhaps, or poachers or gypsies, at any rate not local men. The thick leaves cast far too much shade for her to tell their faces apart, and they could not make out who they had in front of them either (a sight which might have spared her their unwanted attentions). They saw only from her full, bell-shaped skirts that they were looking at a woman, and they attacked her. Ruzena quickly turned to run away, but one of them leaped at her from behind, moving faster than she did, and knocked her to the ground so hard that her back crashed down on her smashed pannier. Now she wanted to scream, but the three men quickly pulled her skirt up over her head, tore her shift in two, knotted the rags of it together and used them to tie her hands as she hit out wildly, punching and scratching. That was when it happened. There were three of them, she couldn’t tell one from the other with her skirts up over her face, and none of them said a word. She heard only laughter, deep, rumbling and spiteful, and then satisfied grunts. She smelled tobacco, felt bearded faces, hard hands inflicting pain, weight falling on her, and more pain. When the last man had finished with her she tried to get up and free herself, but one of them hit her on the head with a cudgel so hard that she fell down. They weren’t standing for any nonsense.

They must have been a long way off by the time Ruzena Sedlak ventured to get up again, bleeding, angry, abused and beaten. Her knees were trembling with exhaustion and rage. Not that she felt ashamed: her own hated body meant far too little to her, and she had known too much humiliation to feel that this vicious attack was anything out of the ordinary, but her shift was torn, her green skirt and her apron, and in addition the rogues had broken her pannier, which had cost her good money. She thought of going back to town to complain of the vagabonds, but the people there would only mock her; no one would help her. So she angrily dragged herself home, and once among her animals, good, gentle creatures who nuzzled her hands affectionately with their soft noses, she forgot all about the vile attack on her.

Only months later did she realize, in alarm, that she was going to be a mother. She immediately decided to get rid of the unwanted child. She didn’t want to bring another monstrosity like herself into the world! No other innocent child should suffer as she had suffered herself. Better to kill it at once, get rid of it, bury it. For the next few weeks she avoided going to town so that no one would notice her condition, and as her pregnancy went on she dug a deep pit beside the compost heap ahead of time. She would bury the child there as soon as it was born, she thought; who would ever know? No one came into these woods.

One May night her pains began, so suddenly and savagely that she lay writhing on the floor, groaning as hot claws tore at her inside, and had no time to find a light. She bit her lips until they bled. Alone, helpless and in agony, she bore her child on the bare floor like an animal. She had just enough strength left afterwards to drag herself to her bed, where she collapsed, exhausted, in a wet and bleeding heap, and slept until it was day. Waking up when it grew light, she remembered what had happened, and the thought of what she must do now immediately came back into her mind. She hoped she wouldn’t have to kill the brat, she hoped it was dead already. She listened. And then, very faintly, she heard a thin sound, a squeaking sound on the floor. She dragged herself over to it; the child was still alive. She felt it with a shaking hand: first the forehead, then the tiny ears, the chin, the nose, and she trembled worse than ever. It was a wild yet at the same time pleasant feeling, for an extraordinary thing had happened—the baby was well-formed. She, the monstrosity, had brought a real, pure, healthy child into the world. The curse had run its course. In amazement, she stared at the pink little thing. The child looked fair, she even thought beautiful, he was a little boy, not a death’s head but made like other human beings, and a tiny smile was just forming on his tadpole of a mouth. She no longer had the strength to do what she had meant to do; she picked up the faintly breathing little creature and put it to her breast.