Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

I staggered through the room… I realised that people were looking at me, and I must have appeared strange. I went to the buffet and drank two, three, four glasses of cognac one after another, which saved me from collapsing. My nerves could bear no more, they were in shreds. Then I slunk out through a side entrance, as secretly as a criminal. Not for any principality in the world could I have walked back through that hall, with her carefree laughter still echoing from its walls. I went… I really can’t say now exactly where I went, but into a couple of bars where I got drunk, like a man trying to drink his consciousness away… but I could not numb my senses, the laughter was there in me, high and dreadful… I could not silence that damned laughter. I wandered around the harbour… I had left my revolver in my room, or I would have shot myself. I could think of nothing else, and with that thought I went back to the hotel with one idea in my mind… the left-hand drawer of the chest where my revolver lay… with that single idea in mind.

The fact that I didn’t shoot myself after all… I swear it wasn’t cowardice, it would have been a release to take off the safety catch and press the cold trigger… how can I explain it? I still felt I had a duty… yes, that damned duty to help. The thought that she might still need me, that she did need me, made me mad… it was Thursday morning before I was back in my room, and on Saturday, as I have told you, on Saturday the ship would come in, and I knew that this woman, this proud and haughty woman would not survive being shamed before her husband and the world… Oh, how my thoughts tortured me, thoughts of the precious time I had unthinkingly wasted, the crazy haste that had thwarted any prospect of bringing her help in time… for hours, I swear, for hours on end I paced up and down my room, racking my brains to think of a way to approach her, put matters right, help her… for I was certain that she wouldn’t let me into her house now. Her laughter was still there in all my nerves, I still saw her nostrils quivering with anger. For hours I paced up and down the three metres of my cramped room… and day had dawned, morning was here already.

Suddenly an idea sent me to the desk… I snatched up a sheaf of notepaper and began to write to her, write it all down… a whining, servile letter in which I begged her forgiveness, called myself a madman, a criminal, and begged her to entrust herself to me. I swore that the hour after it was done I would disappear from the city, from the colony, from the world if she wanted… only she must forgive me and trust me to help her at the last, the very last minute. I feverishly wrote twenty pages like this… it must have been a mad, indescribable letter, like a missive written in delirium, for when I rose from the desk I was bathed in sweat… the room swayed, and I had to drink a glass of water. Only then did I try reading the letter through again, but the very first words horrified me, so I folded it up, trembling, found an envelope… and suddenly a new thought came to me. All at once I knew the right, the crucial thing to say. I picked up the pen again, and wrote on the last sheet, ‘I will wait here in the beach hotel for a word of forgiveness. If no answer comes by seven this evening, I shall shoot myself.’

Then I took the letter, rang for a boy, and told him to deliver the envelope at once. At last I had said everything—everything!”

Something clinked and fell down beside us. As he moved abruptly he had knocked over the whisky bottle; I heard his hand feeling over the deck for it, and then he picked it up with sudden vigour. He threw the empty bottle high in the air and over the ship’s side. The voice fell silent for a few minutes, and then feverishly continued, even faster and more agitated than before.

“I am not a believing Christian any more… I don’t believe in heaven or hell, and if hell does exist I am not afraid of it, for it can’t be worse than those hours I passed between morning and evening… think of a small room, hot in the sunlight, red-hot at blazing noon… a small room, just a desk and a chair and the bed… and nothing on the desk but a watch and a revolver, and sitting at the desk a man… a man who does nothing but stare at that desk and the second hand of his watch, a man who eats and drinks nothing, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t move, who only… listen to me… who only stares for three long hours at the white circle of the dial and the hand of the watch ticking as it goes around. That… that was how I spent the day, just waiting, waiting, waiting… but waiting like a man running amok, senselessly, like an animal, with that headlong, direct persistence.

Well, I won’t try to describe those hours to you… they are beyond description. I myself don’t understand now how one can go through such an experience without going mad. Then, at twenty-two minutes past three… I remember the time exactly, I was staring at my watch… there was a sudden knock at the door. I leap up… leap like a tiger leaping on its prey, in one bound I am across the room and at the door, I fling it open, and there stands a timid little Chinese boy with a folded note in his hand. As I avidly reach for it, he scurries away and is gone.

I tear the note open to read it… and find that I can’t. A red mist blurs my vision… imagine my agony, I have word from her at last, and now everything is quivering and dancing before my eyes. I dip my head in water, and my sight clears… once again I take the note and read it. ‘Too late! But wait where you are. I may yet send for you.’

No signature on the crumpled paper torn from some old brochure… the writing of someone whose handwriting is usually steady, now scribbling hastily, untidily, in pencil. I don’t know why that note shook me so much. Some kind of horror, some mystery clung to it, it might have been written in flight, by someone standing in a window bay or a moving vehicle. An unspeakably cold aura of fear, haste and terror about that furtive note chilled me to the heart… and yet, and yet I was happy. She had written to me, I need not die yet, I could help her… perhaps I could… oh, I lost myself in the craziest hopes and conjectures. I read the little note a hundred, a thousand times over, I kissed it… I examined it for some word I might have forgotten or overlooked. My reverie grew ever deeper and more confused, I was in a strange condition, sleeping with open eyes, a kind of paralysis, a torpid yet turbulent state between sleep and waking. It lasted perhaps for quarter of an hour or so, perhaps for hours.

Suddenly I gave a start. Wasn’t that a knock at the door? I held my breath for a minute, two minutes of perfect silence… and then it came again, like a mouse nibbling, a soft but urgent knock. I leaped to my feet, still dizzy, flung the door open, and there outside it stood her boy, the same boy whom I had once struck in the face with my fist. His brown face was pale as ashes, his confused glance spoke of some misfortune. I immediately felt horror. ‘What… what’s happened?’ I managed to stammer. He said, ‘Come quickly!’ That was all, no more, but I was immediately racing down the stairs with the boy after me. A sado , a kind of small carriage, stood waiting. We got in. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked him. He looked at me, trembling, and remained silent, lips compressed. I asked again… still he was silent. I could have struck him with my fist once more, but his doglike devotion to her touched me, and I asked no more questions. The little carriage trotted through the crowded street so fast that people scattered, cursing. It left the European quarter near the beach in the lower town and went on into the noisy turmoil of the city’s Chinatown district. At last we reached a narrow, very remote alley… and the carriage stopped outside a low-built house. The place was dirty, with a kind of hunched look about it and a little shop window where a tallow candle stood… one of those places where you would expect to find opium dens or brothels, a thieves’ lair or a receivers’ cellar full of stolen goods. The boy quickly knocked… a voice whispered through a crack in the door, which stood ajar, there were questions and more questions. I could stand it no longer. I leaped up, pushed the door right open, and an old Chinese woman shrank back with a little scream. The boy followed me, led me along the passage… opened another door… another door, leading to a dark room with a foul smell of brandy and clotted blood. Something in the room groaned. I groped my way in…”