Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

“Paula!” he said, trying to interrupt again.

“No, I have no more sympathy with you. I chose you and lived with you as a free human being. And I despise weaklings and those who lie to themselves. Why should I sympathize with you? What do I mean to you? A sergeant hands you a few words on a piece of paper, and you cast me aside and run after him. But I’m not to be cast aside and then picked up again: you must decide now. Decide between them and me! Despise them or despise me. I know there are hard times ahead for us if you stay; I’ll never see my parents and family again, we shall never be allowed to go back, but I can face that if you are with me. If you tear us apart now, though, then it’s for ever.”

He merely groaned, but she was blazing with angry strength.

“Choose them or me! There’s no third choice. Ferdinand, think better of it while there’s still time. I’ve often felt sorry we have no child. Now, for the first time, I’m glad of it. I don’t want a weakling’s child, and I don’t want to bring up a war orphan. I’ve never stood by you more than I do now that I’m making it hard for you. But I tell you: this is not a trial separation, this is goodbye for ever. If you leave me to join the army and follow those uniformed murderers, there’s no coming back. I don’t share my life with criminals, I don’t share a man with that vampire the state. It or me—you must choose now.”

He still stood there shivering as she went to the door and slammed it behind her. The loud slam brought him to his knees. He had to sit down, and collapsed there, sombre, at a loss. And at last he broke down and cried like a small child.

She did not come back into the room all afternoon, but he felt that her strong will stood outside it, hostile and armed. And at the same time he knew about that other will, with a steel driving-wheel set cold under its breast, forcing him on. Sometimes he tried to think about this or that, but his thoughts slipped away, and as he sat there still, apparently thoughtful, the last of his peace flowed away into a state of burning nervous agitation. He felt the two ends of his life taken and tugged both ways by superhuman powers, and wished only that it would split like a rope in the middle.

To occupy himself he went through the desk drawers, tore up some letters, stared at others without taking in a word, stumbled round the room, sat down again, forced up by restlessness and down again by exhaustion. And suddenly he saw his hands putting together necessities for the journey, bringing out his rucksack from under the sofa. He stared at his own hands doing all this deliberately and against his own will. When the rucksack was packed he began to tremble, and suddenly there it was on the table. His shoulders felt weighed down, as if it were already resting on them, and with it the whole weight of these times.

The door opened, and his wife came in with a paraffin lamp. When she placed it on the table, the circle of light it cast fell on the packed rucksack. His secret ignominy, thus brightly lit, emerged starkly from the darkness. He stammered, “It’s only in case… I still have time… I…” But a glance, fixed, stony, mask-like, met his words and crushed them. She stared at him for several minutes, her lips tightly pressed over her teeth. She stood motionless at first, then swayed slightly as if she might faint, while her eyes bored into him. The tension of her lips relaxed, but she turned, a shudder ran over her shoulders, and she left him without looking back.

A few minutes later the maid came in, bringing supper for him alone. The usual place at his side was empty, and when, full of incoherent emotion, he looked at it, he saw the cruel symbol of the rucksack placed there. He felt as if he had left already, was already dead to this house; its walls were dark, the circle of light from the lamp did not reach all the way to them, and outside, beyond the lights in other houses, night and the föhn wind pressed down. All was still in the distance, and the height of the sky, its vast expanse spanning the depths below, only increased his sense of isolation. He felt everything around him gradually dying, dropping away from him: the house, the landscape, his work, his wife, as the broad sea of his life suddenly dried up, compressing his beating heart. A great need for love overcame him, for warm and kindly words. He felt ready to agree to anything, if he could only somehow get back to the past. Melancholy prevailed over his nervous restlessness, and the strong emotions of his imminent farewell were lost in childish longing for a little tenderness.

He went to the bedroom door and softly tried the handle. It did not move; it was locked. He knocked, hesitantly. No answer. He knocked again. His heart beat in time with his knocking. Still silence. Now he knew it was all over and he had lost; the chilly knowledge came home to him. He put out the lamp, lay down on the sofa in his clothes and wrapped himself in a rug. Everything in him now longed to fall into sleep and oblivion. Once more he listened, and thought he had heard something close. He strained his ears, looking at the door, but it was solid wood. Nothing. His head fell back again.

Then something low down touched him. He started up in alarm, but it soon changed to emotion. The dog, who had slipped in with the maid and hidden under the sofa, came up to him and licked his hand with a warm tongue. And the animal’s instinctive love touched him deeply because it came from the world now dead to him, and was all of his past life that still was his. He bent down and hugged the dog like a human being. Something on this earth still loves me and does not despise me, he felt, to him I am not a machine yet, not just a tool of murder, not a willing weakling, only a creature linked to him by love. Again and again, his hand tenderly stroked the soft coat. The dog moved closer to him, as if he knew his master was lonely, and both of them, breathing softly, began to fall asleep.

When he woke up he felt fresher, and the morning was bright and clear outside the shining window. The föhn wind had blown away the darkness, and the white silhouette of the distant mountain chain gleamed above the lake. Ferdinand got up, still a little unsteady from the hours he had slept away, and when he was fully awake his eyes fell on the fastened rucksack. Suddenly he remembered it all, but now, in bright daylight, it did not weigh so heavily on his mind.

Why did I pack it? he asked himself. Why? I have no intention of going away. The spring is just beginning. I want to paint. There’s no great hurry. He told me himself I could take a couple of days. Even animals don’t run to the slaughter. My wife is right: it’s a crime against her, against myself, against everyone. Nothing can happen to me, after all. A few weeks under arrest, maybe, if I report for duty late, but isn’t military service a prison in itself? I have no ambition to cut a fine figure in society, in fact I’d feel it an honour to have disobeyed at this time of slavery. I’ve no idea of setting out now. I’ll stay here. I want to paint the landscape first, so that some day I’ll remember where I was happy. And I won’t go until the picture is in its frame. They can’t herd me like a cow. I’m in no hurry.

He took the rucksack, swung it up in the air and tossed it into a corner. He enjoyed trying his own strength as he did so. And his new mood made him feel a need for a quick test of his will power. He took the call-up order from his wallet to tear it into pieces, and unfolded it.

But strangely, the military jargon cast its spell over him again. He began to read. “You are under orders to…”. The words struck him to the heart. This was an order that would not be denied. Somehow he felt himself wavering; that unknown sensation was back. His hands began to shake. His strength faded. Cold came from somewhere, like a draught of wind blowing around him, uneasiness returned, inside him the steel clockwork of the alien will began to stir, tensing all his nerves and making its way to his joints. Instinctively he looked at his watch. “Plenty of time,” he murmured, but he no longer knew what he himself meant: time to catch the morning train to the border, or did he mean the extended deadline he had granted himself? And now it came back, that mysterious internal compulsion, the ebb tide carrying him away, stronger than ever because it faced both his last resistance and his fear, his surely hopeless fear of succumbing. He knew that if no one held fast to him now he would be lost.