by Stefan Zweig
The old man was trembling with horror and cold, while at the same time sweat broke out all over his body, flooding the pores of his skin. His first thought was to break in at the shameless girl’s door and chastise her with his fists. But his feet were tottering beneath the weight of his broad body. He could hardly summon up the strength to drag himself into his own room and back to bed, where he fell on the pillows like a stricken animal, his senses dulled.
The old man lay motionless in bed. His eyes, wide open, stared at the darkness. He heard his wife breathing easily beside him, without a care in the world. His first thought was to shake her awake, tell her about his dreadful discovery, rage and rant to his heart’s content. But how could he express it, how could he put this terrible thing into words? No, such words would never pass his lips. What was he to do, though? What could he do?
He tried to think, but his mind was in blind confusion, thoughts flying this way and that like bats in daylight. It was so monstrous—Erna, his tender, well-brought-up child with her melting eyes … How long ago was it, how long ago that he would still find her poring over her schoolbooks, her little pink finger carefully tracing the difficult characters on the page, how long since she used to go straight from school to the confectioner’s in her little pale-blue dress, and then he felt her childish kiss with sugar still on her lips? Only yesterday, surely? But no, it was all years ago. Yet how childishly she had begged him yesterday—really yesterday—to buy her the blue and gold pullover that looked so pretty in the shop window. “Oh please, dear Papa, please!”—with her hands clasped, with that self-confident, happy smile that he could never resist. And now, now she was stealing away to a strange man’s bed by night, not far from his own door, to roll about in it with him, naked and lustful.
My God, my God! thought the old man, instinctively groaning. The shame of it, the shame! My child, my tender, beloved child—an assignation with some man … Who is he? Who can he be? We arrived here in Gar-done only three days ago, and she knew none of those spruced-up dandies before—thin-faced Conte Ubaldi, that Italian officer, the baron from Mecklenburg who’s a gentleman jockey … they didn’t meet on the dance floor until our second day. Has one of them already? … No, he can’t have been the first, no … it must have begun earlier, at home, and I knew nothing about it, fool that I am. Poor fool! But what do I know about my wife and daughter anyway? I toil for them every day, I spend fourteen hours a day at my office just to earn money for them, more and more money so that they can have fine dresses and be rich … and when I come home tired in the evening, worn out, they’ve gone gadding off to the theatre, to balls, out with company, what do I know about them and what they get up to all day long? And now my child with her pure young body has assignations with men by night like a common streetwalker … oh, the shame of it!
The old man groaned again and again. Every new idea deepened his wound and tore it open, as if his brain lay visibly bleeding, with red maggots writhing in it.
But why do I put up with this, he wondered, why do I lie here tormenting myself while she, with her unchaste body, sleeps peacefully? Why didn’t I go straight into her room so that she’d know I knew her shame? Why didn’t I beat her black and blue? Because I’m weak … and a coward … I’ve always been weak with both of them, I’ve given way to them in everything, I was proud that I could make their lives easy, even if my own was ruined, I scraped the money together with my fingernails, pfennig by pfennig, I’d have torn the flesh from my hands to see them content! But as soon as I’d made them rich they were ashamed of me, I wasn’t elegant enough for them any more, too uneducated … where would I have got an education? I was taken out of school aged twelve, I had to earn money, earn and earn, carry cases of samples about from village to village, run agencies in town after town before I could open my own business … and no sooner were they ladies and living in their own house than they didn’t like my honourable old name any more. I had to buy the title of Councillor, so that my wife wouldn’t be just Frau Salomonsohn, so that she could be Frau Commercial Councillor and put on airs. Put on airs! They laughed at me when I objected to all that putting on airs of distinction, when I objected to what they call high society, when I told them how my mother, God rest her soul, kept house quietly, modestly, just for my father and the rest of us … they called me old-fashioned. “Oh, you’re so old-fashioned, Papa!” She was always mocking me … yes, old-fashioned, indeed I am … and now she lies in a strange bed with strange men, my child, my only child! Oh, the shame, the shame of it!
The old man was moaning and sighing in such torment that his wife, in the bed beside his, woke up. “What’s the matter?” she drowsily asked. The old man did not move, and held his breath. And so he lay there motionless in the coffin of his torment until morning, with his thoughts eating away at him like worms.
The old man was first at the breakfast table. He sat down with a sigh, unable to face a morsel of food.
Alone again, he thought, always alone! When I go to the office in the morning they’re still comfortably asleep, lazily taking their ease after all their dancing and theatre-going … when I come home in the evening they’ve already gone out to enjoy themselves in company, they don’t need me with them. It’s the money, the accursed money that’s ruined them, made them strangers to me. Fool that I am, I earned it, scraped it together, I stole from myself, made myself poor and them bad with the money … for fifty pointless years I’ve been toiling, never giving myself a day off, and now I’m all alone …
He felt impatient. Why doesn’t she come down, he wondered, I want to talk to her, I have to tell her … we must leave this place at once … why doesn’t she come down? I suppose she’s too tired, sleeping soundly with a clear conscience while I’m tearing my heart to pieces, old fool that I am … and her mother titivating herself for hours on end, has to take a bath, dress herself, have a manicure, get her hair arranged, she won’t be down before eleven, and is it any wonder? How can a child turn out so badly? It’s the money, the accursed money …
Light footsteps were approaching behind him. “Good morning, Papa, did you sleep well?” A soft cheek bent down to his side, a light kiss brushed his hammering forehead. Instinctively he drew back; repelled by the sweetly sultry Coty perfume she wore. And then …
“What’s the matter, Papa … are you in a cross temper again? Oh, coffee, please, waiter, and ham and eggs … Did you sleep badly, or have you heard bad news?”
The old man restrained himself. He bowed his head—he did not have the courage to look up—and preserved his silence. He saw only her manicured hands on the table, her beloved hands, casually playing with each other like spoilt, slender little greyhounds on the white turf of the tablecloth. He trembled. Timidly, his eyes travelled up the delicate, girlish arms which she had often—but how long ago?—flung around him before she went to sleep. He saw the gentle curve of her breasts moving in time with her breathing under the new pullover. Naked, he thought grimly, stark naked, tossing and turning in bed with a strange man. A man who touched all that, felt it, lavished caresses on it, tasted and enjoyed her … my own flesh and blood, my child … that villainous stranger, oh …
Unconsciously, he had groaned again. “What’s the matter with you, Papa?” She moved closer, coaxing him.
What’s the matter with me? echoed a voice inside him. A whore for a daughter, and I can’t summon up the courage to tell her so.
But he only muttered indistinctly, “Nothing, nothing!” and hastily picked up the newspaper, protecting himself from her questioning gaze behind a barricade of outspread sheets of newsprint. He felt increasingly unable to meet her eyes. His hands were shaking. I ought to tell her now, said his tormented mind, now while we’re alone. But his voice failed him; he could not even find the strength to look up.
And suddenly, abruptly, he pushed back his chair and escaped, treading heavily, in the direction of the garden, for he felt a large tear rolling down his cheek against his will, and he didn’t want her to see it
.
The old man wandered around the garden on his short legs, staring at the lake for a long time. Almost blinded by the unshed tears he was holding back, he still could not help noticing the beauty of the landscape—the hills rose in undulating shades of soft green behind silver light, black-hatched with the thin spires of cypress trees, and beyond the hills were the sterner outlines of the mountains, severe, yet looking down on the beauty of the lake without arrogance, like grave men watching the light-hearted games of beloved children. How mild it all lay there outspread, with open, flowering, hospitable gestures. How it enticed a man to be kindly and happy, that timeless, blessed smile of God at the south he had created! Happy! The old man rocked his heavy head back and forth, confused.
One could be happy here, he thought. I would have liked to be happy myself, just once, feel how beautiful the world of the carefree is for myself, just once, after fifty years of writing and calculating and bargaining and haggling, I would have liked to enjoy a few bright days before they bury me … for sixty-five years, my God, death’s hand is in my body now, money is no help and nor are the doctors. I wanted to breathe easily just a little first, have something for myself for once. But my late father always said: contentment is not for the likes of us, we carry our pedlar’s packs on our backs to the grave … Yesterday I thought I myself might feel at ease for a change … yesterday I could have been called a happy man, glad of my beautiful, lovely child, glad to give her pleasure … and God has punished me already and taken that away from me. It’s all over now for ever … I can’t speak to my own child any more, I am ashamed to look her in the eye. I’ll always be thinking of this at home, at the office, at night in my bed—where is she now, where has she been, what has she done? I’ll never be able to come happily home again, to see her sitting there and then running to meet me, with my heart opening up at the sight of her, so young and lovely … When she kisses me I’ll wonder who had her yesterday, who kissed those lips … I’ll always live in fear when she’s not with me, I’ll always be ashamed when I meet her eyes—a man can’t live like this, can’t live like this …
The old man stumbled back and forth like a drunk, muttering. He kept staring out at the lake, and his tears ran down into his beard. He had to take off his pincenez and stand there on the narrow path with his moist, short-sighted eyes revealed, looking so foolish that a gardener’s boy who was passing stopped in surprise, laughed aloud and called out a few mocking words in Italian at the bewildered old man. That roused him from his turmoil of pain, and he put his pince-nez on and stole aside into the garden to sit on a bench somewhere and hide from the boy.
But as he approached a remote part of the garden, a laugh to his left startled him again … a laugh that he knew and that went to his heart. That laughter had been music to him for nineteen years, the light laughter of her high spirits … for that laughter he had travelled third-class by night to Poland and Hungary so that he could pour out money before them, rich soil from which that carefree merriment grew. He had lived only for that laughter, while inside his body his gall bladder fell sick … just so that that laughter could always ring out from her beloved mouth. And now the same laughter cut him to the heart like a red-hot saw.
Yet it drew him to it despite his reluctance. She was standing on the tennis court, twirling the racket in her bare hand, gracefully throwing it up and catching it again in play. At the same time as the racket flew up, her light-hearted laughter rose to the azure sky. The three gentlemen admiringly watched her, Conte Ubaldi in a loose tennis shirt, the officer in the trim uniform that showed off his muscles, the gentleman jockey in an immaculate pair of breeches, three sharply profiled, statuesque male figures around a plaything fluttering like a butterfly. The old man himself stared, captivated. Good God, how lovely she was in her pale, ankle-length dress, the sun dusting her blonde hair with liquid gold! And how happily her young limbs felt their own lightness as she leapt and ran, intoxicated and intoxicating as her joints responded to the free-and-easy rhythm of her movements. Now she flung the white tennis ball merrily up to the sky, then a second and a third after it, it was wonderful to see how the slender wand of her girlish body bent and stretched, leaping up now to catch the last ball. He had never seen her like that before, incandescent with high spirits, an elusive, wavering flame, the silvery trill of her laughter above the blazing of her body, like a virginal goddess escaped in panic from the southern garden with its clinging ivy and the gentle surface of the lake. At home she never stretched that slender, sinewy body in such a wild dance or played competitive games. No, he had never seen her like this within the sombre walls of the crowded city, had never heard her voice rise like lark-song set free from the earthly confines of her throat in merriment that was almost song, not indoors and not in the street. She had never been so beautiful. The old man stared and stared. He had forgotten everything, he just watched and watched that white, elusive flame. And he would have stood like that, endlessly absorbing her image with a passionate gaze, if she had not finally caught the last of the balls she was juggling with a breathless, fluttering leap, turning nimbly, and pressed them to her breast breathing fast, face flushed, but with a proud and laughing gaze. “Brava, brava!” cried the three gentlemen, who had been intently watching her clever juggling of the balls, applauding as if she had finished an operatic aria. Their guttural voices roused the old man from his enchantment, and he stared grimly at them.
So there they are, the villains, he thought, his heart thudding. There they are—but which of them is it? Which of those three has had her? Oh yes, how finely rigged out they are, shaved and perfumed, idle dandies … while men like me still sit in offices in their old age, in shabby trousers, wearing down the heels of their shoes visiting customers … and for all I know the fathers of these fine fellows may still be toiling away today, wearing their hands out so that their sons can travel the world, wasting time at their leisure, their faces browned and carefree, their impudent eyes bright. Easy for them to be cheerful, they only have to throw a silly, vain child a few sweet words and she’ll fall into bed … But which of the three is it, which is it? One of them, I know, is seeing her naked through her dress and smacking his lips. I’ve had her, he’s thinking, he’s known her hot and naked, we’ll do it again this evening, he thinks, winking at her—oh, the bastard, the dog, yes, if only I could whip him like a dog!
And now they had noticed him standing there. His daughter swung up her racket in a salutation, and smiled at him, the gentlemen wished him good day. He did not thank them, only stared at his daughter’s smiling lips with brimming, bloodshot eyes. To think that you can laugh like that, he thought, you shameless creature … and one of those men may be laughing to himself, telling himself—there goes the stupid old Jew who lies snoring in bed all night … if only he knew, the old fool! Oh yes, I do know, you fine fellows laugh, you tread me underfoot like dirt … but my daughter, so pretty and willing, she’ll tumble into bed with you … and as for her mother, she’s a little stout now, but she goes about all dolled up with her face painted, and if you were to make eyes at her, who knows, she might yet venture to dance a step or so with you … You’re right, you dogs, you’re right when they run after you, those shameless women, women on heat … what’s it to you that another man’s heart is breaking so long as you can have your fun, fun with those shameless females … someone should take a revolver and shoot you down, you deserve to be horsewhipped … but yes, you’re right, so long as no one does anything, so long as I swallow my rage like a dog returning to his vomit … you’re right, if a father is so cowardly, so shockingly cowardly … if he doesn’t go to the shameless girl, take hold of her, drag her away from you … if he just stands there saying nothing, bitter gall in his mouth, a coward, a coward, a coward …
The old man clutched the balustrade as helpless rage shook him. And suddenly he spat on the ground in front of his feet and staggered out of the garden.
The old man made his way unsteadily into the little town. Suddenly
he stopped in front of a display window full of all kinds of things for tourists’ needs—shirts and nets, blouses and angling equipment, ties, books, tins of biscuits, not in chance confusion but built up into artificial pyramids and colourfully arranged on shelves. However, his gaze went to just one object, lying disregarded amidst this elegant jumble—a gnarled walking stick, stout and solid with an iron tip, heavy in the hand; it would probably come down with a good thump. Strike him down, thought the old man, strike the dog down! The idea transported him into a confused, almost lustful turmoil of feeling which sent him into the shop, and he bought the stout stick quite cheaply. And no sooner was the weighty, heavy, menacing thing in his hand than he felt stronger. A weapon always makes the physically weak more sure of themselves. It was as if the handle of the stick tensed and tautened his muscles. “Strike him down … strike the dog down!” he muttered to himself, and unconsciously his heavy, stumbling gait turned to a firmer, more upright, faster rhythm. He walked, even ran up and down the path by the shores of the lake, breathing hard and sweating, but more from the passion spreading through him than because of his accelerated pace. For his hand was clutching the heavy handle of the stick more and more tightly.
Armed with this weapon, he entered the blue, cool shadows of the hotel lobby, his angry eyes searching for the invisible enemy. And sure enough, there in the corner they were sitting together on comfortable wicker chairs, drinking whisky and soda through straws, talking cheerfully in idle good fellowship—his wife, his daughter and the inevitable trio of gentlemen. Which of them is it, he wondered, which of them is it? And his fist clenched around the handle of the heavy stick. Whose skull do I smash in, whose, whose? But Erna, misunderstanding his restless, searching glances, was already jumping up and running to him. “So here you are, Papa! We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Guess what, Baron von Medwitz is going to take us for a drive in his Fiat, we’re going to drive all along the lake to Desenzano!” And she affectionately led him to their table, as if he ought to thank the gentlemen for the invitation.