Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

At that moment there was a rustle behind me. A twig cracked. I jumped back. And a coarse, vulgar male voice was laughing. “There we are. I thought so.”

Even before I saw them I knew who they were. Not for one second, dazed and confused as I was, had I forgotten that I was surrounded, and indeed this was what my mysteriously lively curiosity had been waiting for. A figure now emerged from the bushes, and a second behind it: a couple of rough fellows boldly taking up their positions. The coarse laugh came again. “Turning a trick here, eh? A fine gentleman, of course! Well, we’ll see to him now.” I stood perfectly still, the blood beating in my temples. I felt no fear. I was simply waiting for what came next. Now I was in the very depths at last, in the final abyss of ignominy. Now the blow must come, the shattering end towards which I had half-intentionally been moving.

The girl had moved quickly away from me, but not to join them. She was in a way standing between us; it seemed that she did not entirely like the ambush prepared for me. The men, for their part, were vexed because I did not move. They looked at each other, obviously expecting some protest from me, a plea, some display of fear. “Oh, so he’s not talking!” said one of them at last, threateningly. The other approached me and said in commanding tones, “You’ll have to come down to the police station with us.”

I still did not answer. One of the men put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a slight push. “Move,” he said.

I began to move. I did not defend myself, for I did not want to: the extraordinary, degraded, dangerous nature of the situation left me dazed. But my brain remained perfectly clear: I knew that these fellows must fear the police more than I did, that I could buy myself off for a few crowns—but I wanted to relish the depths of horror to the full, I was enjoying the dreadful humiliation of the situation, in a kind of waking swoon. Without haste, entirely automatically, I went the way they had pushed me.

But the very fact that I moved towards the light so obediently and without a word seemed to confuse the men. They whispered softly, and then began to talk to each other again in deliberately raised voices. “Let him go,” said one (a pockmarked little fellow), but the other replied, with apparent decision: “No, that won’t do. If poor starving devils like us do such things they put us behind bars. But a fine gentleman like this—he really deserves punishment.” I heard every word, and in their voices I detected their clumsily expressed request for me to begin negotiating with them; the criminal in me understood the criminal in them, understood that they wanted to torment me with fears, while I was tormenting them with my docility. It was a silent battle between us, and—oh, how rich in experience this night was!—and in the midst of deadly danger, here in this insalubrious grove on the Prater, in the company of a couple of ruffians and a whore, I felt the frenzied enchantment of gambling for the second time in twelve hours, but this time for the highest of stakes, for my whole comfortable existence, even my life. And with all the force of my quivering nerves, tensed as they were to breaking point, I abandoned myself to this great game, to the sparkling magic of chance.

“Hey, there goes the cop,” said a voice behind me. “Our fine gentleman won’t like this, he’ll be behind bars a week or more.” It was meant to sound like a grim threat, but I heard the man’s hesitant uncertainty. I went placidly towards the dim light, where I did indeed see light glint on a police officer’s spiked helmet. Twenty more paces and I would have reached him. Behind me, the men had fallen silent. I realised they were slowing down. Next moment, I knew, they must retreat like cowards into the dark, into their own world, embittered by the failure of their trick, perhaps to vent their anger on the poor woman. The game was over: again, for the second time today, I had won, I had cheated other strangers of their malicious designs. Pale lantern light was already flickering ahead, and when I turned I looked for the first time into the two ruffians’ faces: bitterness and a craven shame looked out of their uncertain eyes. They still stood there, but downcast and disappointed, ready to slink back into the dark. For their power was gone: it was me they feared now.

At that moment I was suddenly overcome—and it was like fermentation within me, bursting the staves in the barrel of my breast to pour out hot feeling into my blood—I was suddenly overcome by an infinite, fraternal sympathy for these two men. What had they wanted from me, these poor hungry, ragged fellows, what had they wanted from me, a satiated parasite, but a few miserable crowns? They could have strangled me there in the dark, they could have robbed me, killed me, but they had not; they had only tried to frighten me in a clumsy, amateurish way for the sake of the loose silver in my pocket. How could I, who had become a thief on a whim, out of a sense of audacity, who had turned criminal for the pleasure of my nerves, how could I dare to torment these poor devils further? And my infinite sympathy was mingled with infinite shame at having toyed with their fear and impatience for my own amusement. I pulled myself together: now that I was safe and the light of the nearby street protected me, I must go along with them and banish the disappointment from those bitter, hungry eyes.

With a sudden movement I stepped up to one of them. “Why would you want to report me to the police?” I said, taking care to inject a touch of stress and fear into my voice. “What good will it do you? Perhaps I’ll be locked up, perhaps not. But it won’t do you any good. Why do you want to make my life a misery?”

They both stared at me in embarrassment. They must have expected anything: cries, threats to make them cringe like growling dogs, not this subservience. At last one of them said, not threateningly at all, but as it were apologetically: “Justice have got to be done! We’re only doing our duty, right?”

This comment was obviously prepared for such cases, yet it rang false. Neither of the pair dared look at me. They were waiting. And I knew what they were waiting for. They were waiting for me to beg for mercy and offer them money.

I still remember everything about those seconds. I recollect every nerve that stirred in me, every thought that shot through my mind. And I know what I maliciously wanted at first: I wanted to make them wait, torment them a little longer, relish the pleasure of keeping them on tenterhooks. But soon I forced myself to beg, because I knew it was time for me to relieve these two of their anxiety. I began putting on a show of being terrified, I begged for mercy, asked them to keep all this quiet and not make me wretched. I saw these poor amateur blackmailers begin to feel awkward, and the silence between us was milder now.

And then at last, at last I said what they had been longing to hear all this time. “I’ll… I’ll give you… I’ll give you a hundred crowns.”

All three started and looked at each other. They had not expected so much, not now that all was really lost for them. At last one of them, the pockmarked man with the shifty eyes, pulled himself together. He started to speak twice, but couldn’t get it out. Then he said—and I felt that he was ashamed as he spoke—“Two hundred crowns.”

“Oh, shut it!” the girl suddenly intervened. “You be glad he gives you anything. He ain’t done nothing, he didn’t hardly touch me. This is too much.”

She was shouting at them in genuinely embittered tones. And my heart sang. Someone was sorry for me, someone was speaking up for me, kindness was born of something low and mean, blackmail gave rise to some dim desire for justice. How good it felt, how it responded to the swelling tide of my feelings! No, I must not play with these people or torment them in their fear and shame any longer—enough, enough!