Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

“Thank you, thank you, please don’t trouble yourself,” he stammered, furious with himself for this unnecessary civility. And no sooner was he out of the room, with the servant handing him his stick and gloves, than he remembered all he had planned to say. “Economic obligations… put it on the record.” He felt more ashamed than ever before in his life, and he had even thanked the man, thanked him politely! But his emotional capacity would no longer suffice even for rage. Pale-faced, he went down the stairs, feeling only that this man walking along couldn’t be himself, and that he had been defeated by force, a strange and pitiless force treading a whole world underfoot.

It was not until late in the afternoon that he arrived home. The soles of his feet were sore; he had been walking aimlessly around for hours, and had turned back from his own door three times. Finally he tried stealing up to it from the back, along hidden paths through the vineyards. However, the faithful dog had detected him. Barking wildly, he jumped up at him, tail wagging passionately. His wife stood at the door, and he saw at first glance that she knew everything. He followed her without a word, shame weighing heavily on the back of his neck.

But she was not harsh. She did not look at him, she was visibly avoiding anything that would upset him. She placed some cold meat on the table, and when he obediently sat down she went to his side. “Ferdinand,” she said, and her voice was shaking badly, “you’re not well. This is not the time for me to talk to you. I won’t blame you, you’re not acting of your own free will, and I feel how much you’re suffering. But promise me one thing: don’t do anything else in this business without discussing it first with me.”

He said nothing. Her voice became more agitated.

“I’ve never interfered in your personal affairs, I always aimed to leave you the freedom to make your own decisions absolutely. But now you’re playing not just with your life, you’re playing with mine too. It took us years to find our happiness, and I’m not giving it up as easily as you. Not to the state, not to murder, not to your vanity and weakness. Not to anyone, do you hear? Not to anyone! If you are weak when you face them, I’m not. I know what this is all about, and I’m not giving up.”

He still remained silent, and his servile, guilty silence began to make her bitter. “I’m not letting this scrap of paper take something away from me, I don’t acknowledge any law that ends in murder. I’m not bowing to any bureaucracy. You men are all ruined by ideologies now, you think in terms of politics and ethics, we women still have straightforward feelings. I know what the word Fatherland means too, but I know what our Fatherland means today: murder and enslavement. You can feel a sense of belonging to your own nation, but that doesn’t mean that when the nations have run mad you have to join them. You may be just a number to them, a tool, cannon-fodder, but to me you’re still a living man and I won’t let them have you. I’m not giving you up. I’ve never ventured to decide anything for you, but now it’s my duty to protect you. You’ve always been a clear-minded, responsible human being who knew what he wanted; now you’re a broken, disturbed, dutiful mechanism without any will of your own—it’s dead, like those millions of victims out there. They’ve worked on you through your nerves, but they forgot me. I was never stronger than I am now.”

He still remained silent, lost in gloomy thought. There was no ability in him to resist either his adversary or her.

She stood up very straight, like someone arming for battle. Her voice was hard, tense, braced.

“What did they say to you at the Consulate? I want to know.” It was an order. Wearily, he took out the paper and handed it to her. She read it, frowning. Then she tossed it scornfully on to the table.

“What a hurry those good gentlemen are in! Tomorrow! And I expect you even thanked them, clicked your heels, obedient already. ‘Ordered to make yourself available at once.’ Available! They should have said make yourself a slave. We haven’t fallen so low yet, that point hasn’t come, not by a long way!”

Ferdinand stood up. He was pale, and his hand clutched the chair convulsively. “Paula, let’s not deceive ourselves. That point has come. We can’t escape it. I tried to defend myself, and it was no use. I’m—I am this piece of paper. Even if I tear it up, I still am. Don’t make it difficult for me. There’d be no freedom here. Every hour I’d feel something out there calling, groping for me, pulling and tugging at me. It will be easier for me there. There’s freedom to be found in the dungeon itself. It’s only while I still feel I’m a fugitive, evading them, that I’m not free. And anyway, why jump to the worst conclusions? They rejected me once, why not this time too? Or perhaps they won’t give me a weapon, in fact I feel sure they won’t, I’ll be employed on some lighter kind of service. Why think the worst now? It may not be so dangerous, perhaps I’ll be lucky.”

She did not relent. “That’s not the point any more, Ferdinand. It makes no difference whether they give you light or heavy work to do. It’s a case of whether you have to go into service under what you hate, whether you’re willing to lend yourself to the greatest crime in the world against your own convictions. Because everyone who isn’t against them is with them. And you can reject them, you can do it, so you must.”

“I can do it? I can’t do anything! Not any more. Everything that once made me strong—my abhorrence of this absurdity, my hatred for it, my indignation—all that is such a burden on me now. Don’t torment me, please, don’t torment me, don’t tell me that.”

“I’m not. You have to tell yourself: they have no rights over a living man.”

“Rights! Rights! Where are there any rights in the world? We’ve murdered rights. Every individual person has his rights, but they have power, and nothing else matters any more.”

“And why do they have power? Because the rest of you hand it to them. And they’ll have it only while you’re still cowards. What humanity now calls monstrous consists of ten men with strong wills in the countries concerned, and ten men can destroy the monstrosity again. A man, a single living man can destroy their power by saying no to them. But while you and those like you cower, thinking perhaps you’ll muddle through, while you dodge and duck and hope to slip through their fingers instead of striking them to the heart, you’ll be their servants and you’ll deserve no better. A man ought not to crawl away, he ought to say no, that’s the only duty there is today, there’s no duty to go and get yourself killed.”

“But Paula… what do you think… what should I…”

“You should say no if something says no inside you. You know I love life, I love your freedom, I love your work. And if you tell me today: I have to go there, I have to lay down the law with a gun, and if I know you truly believe you must, then I’ll say: Go! But if you go for the sake of a lie that you don’t believe yourself, out of weakness and lack of nerve and just hoping you can muddle through, then I despise you, yes, I despise you! If you want to go as a man standing for humanity, for what you believe in, then I won’t try to stop you. But if you go to be a beast among beasts, a slave among slaves, I shall stand up to you. It’s all right for people to sacrifice themselves for their own ideas, not for the madness of others. Let those who believe in the Fatherland die for it.”

“Paula!” Instinctively, he rose to his feet.

“Oh, am I speaking too freely for you? Do you feel the corporal’s stick behind you already? Never fear! We’re still in Switzerland. You’d like me to keep quiet, or tell you you’ll be all right, nothing will happen to you. But this is no time for sentimentality. Everything is at stake now. You and I are at stake.”