Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

I am about to go down the steps, but then I pull myself together. A glance in the mirror, and I hastily tidy myself up a little. I am nervous, restless, I have ominous forebodings, for I know no one in the world who would be coming to visit me out of friendship. At last I go down.

The lady is waiting in the hall, and hastily comes to meet me. A thick motoring veil hides her face. I am about to greet her, but she is quick to get her word in first. ‘Good day, doctor,’ she says in fluent English—slightly too fluent, as if she had learnt her speech by heart in advance. ‘Do forgive me for descending on you like this, but we have just been visiting the station, our car is over there’—here a thought flashes through my mind: why didn’t she drive up to the house?—‘And then I remembered that you live here. I’ve heard so much about you—you worked miracles for the vice-resident, his leg is perfectly all right now, he can play golf as well as ever. Oh yes, imagine all of us in the city are still talking about it, we’d happily dispense with our own cross-grained surgeon and the other doctors if you would only come to us instead. Now, why do you never go to the city? You live like a yogi here…’

And so she chatters on, faster and faster, without letting me get a word in. Her loquacity is nervous and agitated, and makes me uneasy. Why is she talking so much, I ask myself, why doesn’t she introduce herself, why doesn’t she put that veil back? Is she feverish? Is she ill? Is she mad? I feel increasingly nervous, aware that I look ridiculous, standing silently in front of her while her flood of chatter sweeps over me. At last she slows down slightly, and I am able to ask her upstairs. She signs to the boy to stay where he is, and goes up the stairs ahead of me.

‘You have a nice place here,’ she says, looking around my room. ‘Ah, such lovely books! I’d like to read them all!’ She goes up to the bookcase and looks at the titles. For the first time since I set eyes on her, she falls silent for a minute.

‘May I offer you a cup of tea?’ I ask.

She doesn’t turn, but just looks at the spines of the books. ‘No thank you, doctor… we have to be off again in a moment, and I don’t have much time… this was just a little detour. Ah, I see you have Flaubert as well, I love him so much… L’Education sentimentale, wonderful, really wonderful… So you read French too! A man of many talents! Ah, you Germans, you learn everything at school. How splendid to know so many languages! The vice-resident swears by you, he always says he wouldn’t go under the knife with anyone else… our residency surgeon is good for playing bridge but… the fact is,’ she said, still with her face turned away, ‘it crossed my mind today that I might consult you myself some time… and since we happened to be passing anyway, I thought… oh, but I’m sure you are very busy… I can come back another time.’

Showing your hand at last, I thought. But I didn’t show any reaction, I merely assured her that it would be an honour to be of service to her now or whenever she liked.

‘It’s nothing serious,’ she said, half-turning and at the same time leafing through a book she had taken off the shelf. ‘Nothing serious… just small things, women’s troubles… dizziness, fainting. This morning I suddenly fainted as we were driving round a bend, fainted right away, the boy had to prop me up in the car and fetch water… but perhaps the chauffeur was just driving too fast, do you think, doctor?’

‘I can’t say, just like that. Do you often have fainting fits?’

‘No… that is, yes… recently, in fact very recently. Yes, I have had such fainting fits, and attacks of nausea.’ She is standing in front of the bookcase again, puts the book back, takes another out and riffles the pages. Strange, I think, why does she keep leafing through the pages so nervously, why doesn’t she look up behind that veil? Deliberately, I say nothing. I enjoy making her wait. At last she starts talking again in her nonchalant, loquacious way.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, doctor, is there? No tropical disease… nothing dangerous…?’

‘I’d have to see if you are feverish first. May I take your pulse?’

I approach her, but she moves slightly aside.

‘No, no, I’m not feverish… certainly not, certainly not, I’ve been taking my own temperature every day since… since this fainting began. Never any higher, always exactly 36.4°. And my digestion is healthy too.’

I hesitate briefly. All this time a suspicion has been lurking at the back of my mind: I sense that this woman wants something from me. You certainly don’t go into the wilderness to talk about Flaubert. I keep her waiting for a minute or two, then I say, straight out, ‘Forgive me, but may I ask you a few frank questions?’

‘Of course, doctor! You are a medical man, after all,’ she replies, but she has her back turned to me again and is playing with the books.

‘Do you have children?’

‘Yes, a son.’

‘And have you… did you previously… I mean with your son, did you experience anything similar?’

‘Yes.’

Her voice is quite different now. Very clear, very firm, no longer loquacious or nervous.

‘And is it possible… forgive my asking… that you are now in the same situation?’

‘Yes.’

She utters the word in a tone as sharp and cutting as a knife. Her averted head does not move at all.

‘Perhaps it would be best, ma’am, if I gave you a general examination. May I perhaps ask you to… to go to the trouble of coming into the next room?’

Then she does turn, suddenly. I feel a cold, determined gaze bent straight on me through her veil.

‘No, that won’t be necessary… I am fully aware of my condition.’”

The voice hesitated for a moment. The glass that he had refilled shone briefly in the darkness again.

“So listen… but first try to think a little about it for a moment. A woman forces herself on someone who is desperate with loneliness, the first white woman in years to set foot in his room… and suddenly I feel that there is something wrong here, a danger. A shiver runs down my spine: I am afraid of the steely determination of this woman, who arrived with her careless chatter and then suddenly came out with her demand like a knife. For I knew what she wanted me to do, I knew at once—it was not the first time women had made me such requests, but they approached me differently, ashamed or pleading, they came to me with tears and entreaties. But here was a steely… yes, a virile determination. I felt from the first second that this woman was stronger than me, that she could force me to do as she wanted. And yet, and yet… there was some evil purpose in me, a man on his guard, some kind of bitterness, for as I said before… from the first second, indeed even before I had seen her, I sensed that this woman was an enemy.

At first I said nothing. I remained doggedly, grimly silent. I felt that she was looking at me under her veil—looking at me straight and challengingly, I felt that she wanted to force me to speak, but evasively, or indeed unconsciously, I emulated her casual, chattering manner. I acted as if I didn’t understand her, for—I don’t know if you can understand this—I wanted to force her to speak clearly, I didn’t want to offer anything, I wanted to be asked, particularly by her, because her manner was so imperious… and because I knew that I am particularly vulnerable to women with that cold, proud manner.

So I remained non-committal, saying there was no cause for concern, such fainting fits occurred in the natural course of events, indeed they almost guaranteed a happy outcome. I quoted cases from the medical press… I talked and talked, smoothly and effortlessly, always suggesting that this was something very banal, and… well, I kept waiting for her to interrupt me. Because I knew she wouldn’t stand for that.