Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

All at once I was overcome by disgust at the sound of her caustic voice and this scene of torture. What did I care for this smoky bar, this unpleasant whore and the feeble man, these fumes of beer, smoke and cheap perfume? I craved fresh air. I pushed the money over to her, stood up and moved away with decision as she came flatteringly closer to me. It revolted me to help her humiliate another human being, and the determined manner of my withdrawal clearly showed how little she attracted me sensually. Her blood was up now, a line appeared around her mouth, but whatever word sprang to her lips she took care not to utter it, just turning on him and flouncing with undisguised hatred. But he was expecting the worst, and at this threatening movement he rapidly, with a hunted look, put his hand in his pocket and brought out a purse. It was obvious that he was afraid of being left alone with her now, and in his haste he had trouble untying the purse-strings—it was the kind of knitted purse adorned with glass beads that peasants and the lower classes carry. Anyone could see that he wasn’t used to throwing his money about, unlike the sailors who produce the coins clinking in their pockets with a sweeping gesture and fling them down on the table; he was clearly in the habit of counting money carefully and weighing the coins up in his fingers. “How he trembles for his dear, sweet pfennigs ! Are we going too slowly for you? Wait!” she mocked, and came a step closer. He shrank back, and seeing his alarm she said, shrugging her shoulders and with unspeakable revulsion in her eyes, “Oh, I won’t take anything from you, I spit on your money. I know you’ve counted all your dear, nice little pfennigs . No one in the world must have too much money. And then of course,” she added, suddenly tapping his chest, “there’s the banknotes you’ve sewn in there so that no one will steal them!”

Sure enough, like a man with a weak heart suddenly clutching at his breast, he reached with a pale and trembling hand for a certain place on his coat, his fingers instinctively felt for the secret hiding-place and came away again, reassured. “Miser!” she spat. But then, suddenly, a flush rose to her victim’s face; he threw the purse abruptly at the other girl, who first cried out in alarm, then laughed aloud, and he stormed past her and out of the door as if escaping from a fire.

For a moment she still stood there, eyes flashing with fury. Then her eyelids fell apathetically again, weariness relaxed her body from its tension. She seemed to grow old and tired within a moment. Something uncertain and lost blurred the gaze now resting on me. She stood there like a drunk waking up, feeling numb and empty with shame. “He’ll be weeping and wailing for his money outside. Maybe he’ll go to the police and say we stole it. And he’ll be back tomorrow, but he won’t have me all the same. Anyone else can, but not him!”

She went to the bar, threw coins down on it and swallowed a glass of brandy in a single draught. The vicious light was back in her eyes, but blurred as if by tears of rage and shame. I felt nauseated by her, and that destroyed pity. “Good evening,” I said, and left. “ Bonsoir ,” replied the landlady. She did not look round but just laughed, shrill and scornful laughter.

When I stepped outside there was nothing in the alley but night and the sky, a sultry darkness with the moonlight veiled and endlessly far away. I greedily took great breaths of the warm yet reviving air, my sense of dread turned to amazement at the diversity of human fate, and I felt again—it is a feeling that can make me happy to the point of tears—how fate is always waiting behind every window, every door opens on new experience, the wide variety of this world is omnipresent, and even its dirtiest corners swarm with predestined events as if with the iridescent gleam of beetles decomposing. Gone was the distasteful part of the encounter, and my tension was pleasantly resolved, turning to a sweet weariness that longed to turn all I had just seen and heard into a more attractive dream. Instinctively I looked around me, trying to work out my way back through this tangle of winding alleys. Then a shadow—he must have come close without making any noise—approached me.

“Forgive me,”—and I immediately recognised that humble tone of voice—“but I don’t think you know your way around here. May I—may I show you which way to go? You are staying, sir, at…?”

I told him the name of my hotel.

“I’ll go with you… if you’ll permit me,” he immediately added humbly.

Dread came over me again. This stealthy, spectral step, almost soundless yet close beside me, the darkness of the sailors’ alley and the memory of what I had just witnessed all gradually turned to a dreamlike confusion of the emotions, leaving me devoid of judgement and unable to say no. I felt without seeing the subservience in his eyes, and noticed how his lips trembled; I knew that he wanted to talk to me, but in my daze, where the curiosity of my heart mingled uncertainly with physical numbness, I did nothing to encourage or discourage him. He cleared his throat several times, I noticed that he was trying and failing to speak, but some kind of cruelty which had, mysteriously, passed from the woman in the bar to me enjoyed watching him wrestle with shame and mental torment, and I did not help him, but let the silence lie black and heavy between us. And our steps, his quietly shuffling like an old man’s, mine deliberately firm and decided, as if to escape this dirty world, sounded odd together. I felt the tension between us more strongly all the time; it was a shrill silence now, full of unheard cries, and it already resembled a violin string stretched too taut by the time he at last—and at first with dreadful hesitation—managed to bring out his words.

“You saw… you saw… sir, you saw a strange scene in there. Forgive me… forgive me if I mention it again… but it must seem strange to you… and I must look very ridiculous. That woman, you see…”

He stopped again. Something was constricting his throat. Then his voice sank very low, and he whispered rapidly, “That woman… she’s my wife.” I must have given a start of surprise, for he quickly went on as if to apologise. “That’s to say, she was my wife… four or five years ago, it was in Geratzheim back in Hesse where I come from… sir, I wouldn’t like you to think ill of her… perhaps it’s my fault she’s like that. She wasn’t always… I… I tormented her. I took her although she was very poor, she didn’t even have any household linen, nothing, nothing at all… and I’m rich, or that’s to say well off… not rich… at least, I was then… and you see, sir, perhaps—she’s right there—perhaps I was tight-fisted with money… but then I always was, sir, before this misfortune… and my father and mother before me, we all were… and I worked hard for every pfennig … and she was light-minded, she liked pretty things… but she was poor, and I was always reproaching her for it… I shouldn’t have done it, I know that now, sir, for she is proud, very proud. You mustn’t think she’s really the way she makes out… that’s a lie, and she does herself violence only… only to hurt me, to torment me… and… and because she’s ashamed. Perhaps she’s gone to the bad, but I… I don’t think so, because, sir, she was very good, very good…”

He wiped his eyes in great agitation and stood still. Instinctively, I looked at him, and he suddenly no longer struck me as ridiculous. I found that I could even ignore his curiously servile manner of speech, the way he kept calling me “sir”, as only the lower classes do in Germany. His face was greatly exercised by his internal struggle to put his story into words, and his eyes were fixed as he began walking unsteadily forward again, on the roadway itself, as if there, in the flickering light, he were laboriously reading the tale that so painfully tore its way out of his constricted throat.