Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

She looked at me, turning a little pale. She probably sensed already that my refusal was not a matter of avarice, but she said, ‘Then what do you want?’

I was not putting up with her cool tone any more. ‘Let’s show our hands, shall we? I am not a tradesman… I’m not the poor apothecary in Romeo and Juliet who sells his poison for ‘corrupted gold’. Perhaps I’m the opposite of a tradesman… you won’t get what you want by those means.’

‘So you won’t do it?’

‘Not for money.’

All was very still between us for a second. So still that for the first time I heard her breathing.

‘What else can you want, then?’

Now I could control myself no longer. ‘First, I want you to stop… stop speaking to me as if I were a tradesman and address me like a human being. And when you need help, I don’t want you to… to come straight out with your shameful offer of money, but to ask me… ask me to help you as one human being to another. I am not just a doctor, I don’t spend all my time in consultations… I spend some of it in other ways too, and perhaps you have come at such a time.’

She says nothing for a moment, and then her lip curls very slightly, trembles, and she says quickly, ‘Then if I were to ask you… would you do it?’

‘You’re trying to drive a bargain again—you won’t ask me unless I promise first. You must ask me first—then I will give you an answer.’

She tosses her head like a defiant horse, and looks angrily at me.

‘No, I will not ask you. I’d rather go to my ruin!’

At that anger seized upon me, red, senseless anger.

‘Then if you won’t ask, I will make my own demand. I don’t think I have to put it crudely—you know what I want from you. And then—then I will help you.’

She stared at me for a moment. Then—oh, I can’t, I can’t tell you how terrible it was—then her features froze and she… she suddenly laughed , she laughed at me with unspeakable contempt in her face, contempt that was scattered all over me… and at the same time intoxicated me. That derisive laughter was like a sudden explosion, breaking out so abruptly and with such monstrous force behind it that I… yes, I could have sunk to the ground and kissed her feet. It lasted only a second… it was like lightning, and it had set my whole body on fire. Then she turned and went quickly to the door. I instinctively moved to follow her… to apologise, to beg her… well, my strength was entirely broken. She turned once more and said… no, ordered , ‘Don’t dare to follow me or try to track me down. You would regret it.’

And the door slammed shut behind her.”

Another hesitation. Another silence… again, there was only the faint rushing sound, as if of moonlight pouring down. Then, at last, the voice spoke again.

“The door slammed, but I stood there motionless on the spot, as if hypnotized by her order. I heard her go downstairs, open the front door… I heard it all, and my whole will urged me to follow her… to… oh, I don’t know what, to call her back, strike her, strangle her, but to follow her… to follow. Yet I couldn’t. My limbs were crippled as if by an electric shock… I had been cut to the quick by the imperious gleam of those eyes. I know there’s no explaining it, it can’t be described… it may sound ridiculous, but I just stood there, and it was several minutes, perhaps five, perhaps ten, before I could raise a foot from the floor…

But no sooner had I moved that foot than I instantly, swiftly, feverishly hurried down the stairs. She could only have gone along the road back to civilisation… I hurry to the shed for my bicycle, I find I have forgotten the door key, I wrench the lock off, splitting and breaking the bamboo of the shed door… and next moment I am on my bicycle and hurrying after her… I have to reach her, I must, before she gets back to her car. I must speak to her. The road rushes past me… only now do I realise how long I must have stood there motionless. Then, where the road through the forest bends just before reaching the buildings of the district station, I see her hurrying along, stepping firmly, walking straight ahead accompanied by her boy… but she must have seen me too, for now she speaks to the boy, who stays behind while she goes on alone. What is she doing? Why does she want to be on her own? Does she want to speak to me out of his hearing? I pedal fast and furiously… then something suddenly springs into my path. It’s the boy… I am only just in time to swerve and fall. I rise, cursing… involuntarily I raise my fist to hit the fool, but he leaps aside. I pick up my bicycle to remount it, but then the scoundrel lunges forward, takes hold of the bicycle, and says in his pitiful English, ‘You not go on.’

You haven’t lived in the tropics… you don’t know how unheard-of it is for a yellow bastard like that to seize the bicycle of a white ‘master’ and tell him, the master, to stay where he is. Instead of answering I strike him in the face with my fist. He staggers, but keeps hold of the bicycle… his eyes, his narrow, frightened eyes are wide open in slavish fear, but he holds the handlebars infernally tight. ‘You not go on,’ he stammers again. It’s lucky I don’t have my revolver with me, or I’d shoot him down. ‘Out of the way, scum!’ is all I say. He cringes and stares at me, but he does not let go of the handlebars. At this rage comes over me… I see that she is well away, she may have escaped me entirely… and I hit him under the chin with a boxer’s punch and send him flying. Now I have my bicycle back, but as I jump on it the mechanism jams. A spoke has bent in our tussle. I try to straighten it with trembling hands. I can’t, so I fling the bicycle across the road at the scoundrel, who gets up, bleeding, and flinches aside. And then—no, you won’t understand how ridiculous it looks to everyone there for a European… well, anyway, I didn’t know what I was doing any more. I had only one thought in my mind: to go after her, to reach her. And so I ran , ran like a madman along the road and past the huts, where the yellow riff-raff were gathered in amazement to see a white man, the doctor, running .

I reach the station, dripping with sweat. My first question is: where is the car? Just driven away… People stare at me in surprise. I must look to them like a lunatic, arriving wet and muddy, screaming my question ahead of me before coming to a halt… Down in the road, I see the white fumes of the car exhaust. She has succeeded… succeeded, just as all her harsh, cruelly harsh calculations must succeed.

But flight won’t help her. There are no secrets among Europeans in the tropics. Everyone knows everyone else, everything is a notable event. And not for nothing did her driver spend an hour in the government bungalow… in a few minutes, I know all about it. I know who she is, I know that she lives in… well, in the capital of the colony, eight hours from here by rail. I know that she is… let’s say the wife of a big businessman, enormously rich, distinguished, an Englishwoman. I know that her husband has been in America for five months, and is to arrive here next day to take her back to Europe with him…

And meanwhile—the thought burns in my veins like poison—meanwhile she can’t be more than two or three months pregnant…

So far I hope I have made it easy for you to understand… but perhaps only because up to that point I still understood myself, and as a doctor I could diagnose my own condition. From now on, however, something began to work in me like a fever… I lost control. That’s to say, I knew exactly how pointless everything I did was, but I had no power over myself any more… I no longer understood myself. I was merely racing forward, obsessed by my purpose… No, wait. Perhaps I can make you understand it after all. Do you know what the expression ‘running amok’ means?”