Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

Many things altered for the better now. Life no longer went pointlessly by; it came running to her with tiny gasps and little cries, now it touched her with two small, clumsy baby hands. She had never had anything but her own malformed body; now she had something of her own. She had made a creature that would outlast and survive her, a child who needed and made use of her. For those first five months Ruzena Sedlak was perfectly happy. The baby grew for her alone, no one else knew about him, which was all to the good. And he had no father; that was good too. No one on earth knew about him, and once again that was excellent. He belonged entirely to her, and her alone.

That was why she snapped so angrily at poor Wondrak when he came from the offices in town with the message to say she had to take the baby to be baptised and registered. Her dull, rural sense of greed instinctively if vaguely felt that if people knew about her baby, he would be taken away from her. Now he was hers, all hers, but if those people in the offices, if the State and the Mayor wrote his name in one of their stupid books, a part of the baby as a human being would belong to them. They would have got a grip on his ankle, so to speak, they could summon him and order him about. And indeed, this was the one and only time that she took her Karel as a baby to town to see other people. To her own surprise, he grew to be a sturdy, brown, pretty boy with a pert, curious nose and quick straight legs, a lad with an ear for music who could whistle like a thrush, imitate the cry of the jay and the cuckoo, who climbed trees like a cat and ran races with the white dog Horcek. Knowing no one else, he was not afraid of her deformed face, and she laughed and was carefree and happy when she talked to him and his round, chestnut-brown eyes were turned on her. He was soon helping her to milk the goats, gather berries and split wood with his firm little hands. It was at this time that she, who had seldom been to church, began to pray again. She was never entirely free of the fear that he might be taken away from her as suddenly as he had arrived.

But once, when she went to town to sell a kid, Wondrak suddenly barred her way, which he was well able to do, for in these seven years his good Bohemian belly had grown even bigger and broader. It was a good thing he’d happened to meet her, he growled, that would save him another trek into the woods. He had a bone to pick with her. Didn’t Ruzena Sedlak know that at the age of seven a boy ought to be at school? And when she said angrily it was none of his business how old her boy was, or where he ought to be, then Wondrak tightened his braces and his broad moon-face assumed a menacing expression of official dignity. Now the town clerk spoke forcefully; he didn’t give a damn for her impertinence. Hadn’t she ever heard of the law on elementary schooling for all? Why did she think the expensive new schoolhouse had been put up two years ago? She must go the Mayor at once, he’d soon make her understand that a Christian child in the Imperial state couldn’t be allowed to grow up like the beasts of the field. And if she didn’t like it, he supposed there was still a place in the lockup for her, and the child would be taken away and put in the orphanage.

At this last threat Ruzena turned pale. Of course the thought of school had long ago occurred to her, but she had always hoped they would forget. This was all because of that wretched book in the Mayor’s office. Anyone whose name was written in it didn’t own himself any more. And they were already beginning to take him away from her. For Karel, sturdy as his legs were, couldn’t spend eight hours a day walking to school, and what was she to live on in the town? Finally, yet again, Father Nossal came to the rescue. He would have the boy to live with him during the week, he said, and he could go home to her every Saturday and Sunday and in the school holidays. His housekeeper would look after Karel very well. Ruzena stared angrily at the kindly, plump woman, who assured her in friendly tones that Father Nossal was right. She would have liked to strike the housekeeper—a woman who would now have more of her Karel than she did herself. But she was afraid in front of Father Nossal, so there was nothing she could do but agree. However, her skin was pale as stone, and in her hatred those terrible holes looked so black in her ruined face that the housekeeper hastily crossed herself in the kitchen, as if she had seen the Devil.

After that Ruzena often went to town. She had to walk all night, for eight hours, just to get a glimpse from the corner of her Karel and feel proud of him: neatly dressed, sponge dangling from his slate, walking to school with the other boys. He was strong, lively, and better-looking than most of them, not a fright like her, shunned by everyone. She would walk eight hours there and eight hours back for that sight of him, she brought eggs and butter with her out of the forest, and she worked harder and did more business than ever simply so that she could pay to have new clothes made for him. And now, too, she understood for the first time that Sundays were a God-given gift to man. Karel studied hard and did well, and the priest even spoke of sending him to high school in the big city at his own expense. But she balked frantically at this: no, no, he must stay here, and she found him a job with a woodcutter in the forest where she lived. It was hard work but closer to her, only four hours from her part of the woods, in a place where they were cutting rides through the forest. She was sometimes able to take him his mid-day meal and sit with him for an hour. And even when she didn’t see him but just heard the firm, ringing axe strokes in the distance, they echoed cheerfully in her heart. It was her own blood she heard, her own strength.

Only Karel mattered to her. She even neglected the animals. There was no one else in the world. So she hardly noticed that a war began in the year 1914, and when she did notice it seemed to her, oddly enough, rather a good thing. The boys were paid better wages now, because the men were away, and when she took her eggs and chickens to town she didn’t feel she must wait humbly for the women to arrive, as she used to, but went further and further down the road to meet them, and soon sold her shining eggs for shining coins, haggling with her customers. She already had a whole hidden drawer full of money and banknotes; another three years like this, and she would be able to move into town with her Karel. That was all she knew about the war, and all she thought of it.

But one day in this period that could hardly be measured in months, when she took her son’s meal to the workmen’s hut, he said, bending his head and swallowing the words along with his soup, that he couldn’t come out to see her this Sunday. She was dumbfounded. Why not? It was the first time since she had given birth to him that he wouldn’t be spending Sunday with her. Well, it was like this, he said, chewing, he had to go off to Budweis with the others for acceptance. Acceptance? She didn’t know what he was talking about. Acceptance for military service, he explained, eighteen-year-olds were soon going to be called up, it had been in the newspapers for a long time, and yesterday they’d had official notification.

Ruzena turned pale. All at once the blood drained from her face. She had never thought of that—she had never thought that he too would turn eighteen, her own child, and then they could take him away from her. Now she saw it all: that was why they had written him down in their wretched book in the Mayor’s office all that time ago, so that they could drag him off to their accursed war. She sat perfectly still, and when Karel looked at her in surprise, he was frightened of his mother for the first time, because the figure sitting there was no longer a human being. He himself felt the force of the terrible nickname of ‘the Death’s Head’, as he never had before—he had once punched a friend in the face for thoughtlessly uttering it. Out of a face drained of blood and white as bone, her black eyes stared straight into space, and her mouth had fallen open to show an empty cavern under those two dark holes in her flesh. He shuddered. Then she stood up and took his hand.