Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

I kept my promise, and told no one on board of my strange meeting, although the temptation to do so was great. For on a sea voyage every little thing becomes an event: a sail on the horizon, a dolphin leaping, a new flirtation, a joke made in passing. And I was full of curiosity to know more about the vessel’s unusual passenger. I searched the ship’s list for a name that might be his, I scrutinized other people, wondering if they could be somehow related to him; all day I was a prey to nervous impatience, just waiting for evening and wondering if I would meet him again. Odd psychological states have a positively disquieting power over me; I find tracking down the reasons for them deeply intriguing, and the mere presence of unusual characters can kindle a passionate desire in me to know more about them, a desire not much less strong than a woman’s wish to acquire some possession. The day seemed long and crumbled tediously away between my fingers. I went to bed early, knowing that my curiosity would wake me at midnight.

Sure enough, I woke at the same time as the night before. The two hands on the illuminated dial of my clock covered one another in a single bright line. I quickly left my sultry cabin and climbed up into the even sultrier night.

The stars were shining as they had shone yesterday, casting a diffuse light over the quivering ship, and the Southern Cross blazed high overhead. It was all just the same as yesterday, where days and nights in the tropics resemble each other more than in our latitudes, but I myself did not feel yesterday’s soft, flowing, dreamy sensation of being gently cradled. Something was drawing me on, confusing me, and I knew where it was taking me: to the black hoist by the ship’s side, to see if my mysterious acquaintance was sitting immobile there again. I heard the ship’s bell striking above me, and it urged me on. Step by step, reluctantly yet fascinated, I followed my instincts. I had not yet reached the prow of the ship when something like a red eye suddenly hovered in front of me: the pipe. So he was there.

I instinctively stepped back and stopped. Next moment I would have left again, but there was movement over there in the dark, something rose, took a couple of steps, and suddenly I heard his voice very close to me, civil and melancholy.

“Forgive me,” he said. “You obviously want to sit there again, and I have a feeling that you hesitated when you saw me. Do please sit down, and I’ll go away.”

I made haste to say he was very welcome to stay so far as I was concerned. I had stepped back, I said, only for fear of disturbing him.

“Oh, you won’t disturb me,” he said, with some bitterness. “Far from it, I’m glad to have company for a change. I haven’t spoken a word to anyone for ten days… well, not for years, really, and then it seems so difficult, perhaps because forcing it all back inside myself chokes me. I can’t sit in my cabin any more, in that… that coffin, I can’t bear it, and I can’t bear the company of human beings either because they laugh all day… I can’t endure that now, I hear it in my cabin and stop my ears against it. Of course, they don’t know that I… well, they don’t know that… they don’t know it, and what business is it of theirs, after all, they’re strangers…”

He stopped again, and then very suddenly and hastily said, “But I don’t want to bother you… forgive me for speaking so freely.”

He made a bow, and was about to leave, but I urged him to stay. “You’re not bothering me in the least. I’m glad to have a few quiet words with someone up here myself… may I offer you a cigarette?”

He took one, and I lit it. Once again his face moved away from the ship’s black side, flickering in the light of the match, but now he turned it fully to me: his eyes behind his glasses looking inquiringly into my face, avidly and with demented force. A shudder passed through me. I could feel that this man wanted to speak, had to speak. And I knew that I must help him by saying nothing.

We sat down again. He had a second deckchair there, and offered it to me. Our cigarettes glowed, and from the way that the ring of light traced by his in the darkness shook, I could tell that his hand was trembling. But I kept silent, and so did he. Then, suddenly, he asked in a quiet voice, “Are you very tired?”

“No, not at all.”

The voice in the dark hesitated again. “I would like to ask you something… that’s to say, I’d like to tell you something. Oh, I know, I know very well how absurd it is to turn to the first man I meet, but… I’m… I’m in a terrible mental condition, I have reached a point where I absolutely must talk to someone, or it will be the end of me… You’ll understand that when I… well, if I tell you… I mean, I know you can’t help me, but this silence is almost making me ill, and a sick man always looks ridiculous to others…”

Here I interrupted, begging him not to distress himself. He could tell me anything he liked, I said. Naturally I couldn’t promise him anything, but to show willingness is a human duty. If you see someone in trouble, I added, of course it is your duty to help…

“Duty… to show willing… a duty to try to… so you too think it is a man’s duty… yes, his duty to show himself willing to help.”

He repeated it three times. I shuddered at the blunt, grim tone of his repetition. Was the man mad? Was he drunk?

As if I had uttered my suspicions aloud, he suddenly said in quite a different voice, “You may think me mad or drunk. No, I’m not—not yet. Only what you said moved me so… so strangely, because that’s exactly what torments me now, wondering if it’s a duty… a duty…”

He was beginning to stammer again. He broke off for a moment, pulled himself together, and began again.

“The fact is, I am a doctor of medicine, and in that profession we often come upon such cases, such fateful cases… borderline cases, let’s call them, when we don’t know whether or not it is our duty… or rather, when there’s more than one duty involved, not just to another human being but to ourselves too, to the state, to science… yes, of course, we must help, that’s what we are there for… but such maxims are never more than theory. How far should we go with our help? Here are you, a stranger to me, and I’m a stranger to you, and I ask you not to mention seeing me… well, so you don’t say anything, you do that duty… and now I ask you to talk to me because my own silence is killing me, and you say you are ready to listen. Good, but that’s easy… suppose I were to ask you to take hold of me and throw me overboard, though, your willingness to help would be over. The duty has to end somewhere… it ends where we begin thinking of our own lives, our own responsibilities, it has to end somewhere, it has to end… or perhaps for doctors, of all people, it ought not to end? Must a doctor always come to the rescue, be ready to help one and all, just because he has a diploma full of Latin words, must he really throw away his life and water down his own blood if some woman… if someone comes along wanting him to be noble, helpful, good? Yes, duty ends somewhere… it ends where no more can be done, that’s where it ends…”

He stopped again, and regained control.

“Forgive me, I know I sound agitated… but I’m not drunk, not yet… although I often am, I freely confess it, in this hellish isolation… bear in mind that for seven years I’ve lived almost entirely with the local natives and with animals… you forget how to talk calmly. And then if you do open up, everything comes flooding out… but wait… Yes, I know… I was going to ask you, I wanted to tell you about a certain case, wondering whether you think one has a duty to help… just help, with motives as pure as an angel’s, or whether… Although I fear it will be a long story. Are you sure you’re not tired?”