by Stefan Zweig
Meanwhile we considered what to do with Ponto. “Shoot him,” said my husband, and he was about to go home to fetch his revolver. But the doctor said it was his own duty to take him to have his saliva tested without a moment’s delay, in case he was rabid, because if so then special measures must be taken to treat Limpley’s bites. He would get Ponto into his car at once, he said. We all went out to help the doctor. The animal was lying defenceless outside the door, bound and gagged—a sight I shall never forget—but he was rolling his bloodshot eyes as if they would pop out of his head. He ground his teeth and retched and swallowed, trying to spit out the gag, while his muscles stood out like cords. His entire contorted body was vibrating and twitching convulsively, and I must confess that although we knew he was well trussed up we all hesitated to touch him. I had never in my life seen anything like such concentrated malice and fury, or such hatred in the eyes of any living creature as in his bloodshot and bloodthirsty gaze. I instinctively wondered if my husband had not been right in suggesting that the dog should be shot at once. But the doctor insisted on taking him away, and so the trussed animal was dragged to his car and driven off, in spite of his helpless resistance.
With this inglorious departure, Ponto vanished from our sight for quite a long time. My husband found out that he had tested negative for rabies under observation for several days at the Pasteur Institute, and as there could be no question of a return to the scene of his crime Ponto had been given to a butcher in Bath who was looking for a strong, aggressive dog. We thought no more of him, and Limpley himself, after wearing his arm in a sling for only two or three days, entirely forgot him. Now that his wife had recovered from the strain of childbirth, his passion and care were concentrated entirely on his little daughter, and I need hardly say that he showed as much extreme and fanatical devotion as to Ponto in his time, and perhaps made even more of a fool of himself. The powerful, heavy man would kneel beside the baby’s pram like one of the Magi before the crib in the Nativity scenes of the old Italian masters; every day, every hour, every minute he discovered some new beauty in the little rosy creature, who was indeed a charming child. His quiet, sensible wife smiled with far more understanding on this paternal adoration than on his old senseless idolising of his four-footed friend, and we too benefited, for the presence of perfect, unclouded happiness next door could not help but cast its friendly light on our own house.
We had all, as I said, completely forgotten Ponto when I was surprisingly reminded of him one evening. My husband and I had come back from London late, after going to a concert conducted by Bruno Walter, and I could not drop off to sleep, I don’t know why. Was it the echo of the melodies of the Jupiter Symphony that I was unconsciously trying to replay in my head, or was it the mild, clear, moonlit summer night? I got up—it was about two in the morning—and looked out of the window. The moon was sailing in the sky high above, as if drifting before an invisible wind, through clouds that shone silver in its light, and every time it emerged pure and bright from those clouds it bathed the whole garden in snowy brightness. There was no sound; I felt that if a single leaf had stirred it would not have escaped me. So I started in alarm when, in the midst of this absolute silence, I suddenly noticed something moving stealthily along the hedge between our garden and the Limpleys’, something black that stood out distinctly as it moved quietly but restlessly against the moonlit lawn. With instinctive interest, I looked more closely. It was not a living creature, it was nothing corporeal moving there, it was a shadow. Only a shadow, but a shadow that must be cast by some living thing cautiously stealing along under cover of the hedge, the shadow of a human being or an animal. Perhaps I am not expressing myself very well, but the furtive, sly silence of that stealthy shape had something alarming about it. My first thought—for we women worry about such things—was that this must be a burglar, even a murderous one, and my heart was in my mouth. But then the shadow reached the garden hedge on the upper terrace where the fence began, and now it was slinking along past the railing of the fence, curiously hunched. Now I could see the creature itself ahead of its shadow—it was a dog, and I recognised the dog at once. Ponto was back. Very slowly, very cautiously, obviously ready to run away at the first sound, Ponto was snuffling around the Limpleys’ house. It was—and I don’t know why this thought suddenly flashed through my mind—it was as if he wanted to give notice in advance of something, for his was not the free, loose-limbed movement of a dog picking up a scent; there was something about him suggesting that he had some forbidden or ill-intentioned plan in mind. He did not keep his nose close to the ground, sniffing, nor did he walk with his muscles relaxed, he made his way slowly along, keeping low and almost on his belly, to make himself more inconspicuous. He was inching forward as if stalking prey. I instinctively leant forward to get a better look at him. But I must have moved clumsily, touching the window frame and making some slight noise, for with a silent leap Ponto disappeared into the darkness. It seemed as if I had only dreamt it all. The garden lay there in the moonlight empty, white and brightly lit again, with nothing moving.
I don’t know why, but I felt ashamed to tell my husband about this; it could have been just my senses playing a trick on me. But when I happened to meet the Limpleys’ maid in the road next morning, I asked her casually if she had happened to see Ponto again recently. The girl was uneasy, and a little embarrassed, and only when I encouraged her did she admit that yes, she had in fact seen him around several times, and in strange circumstances. She couldn’t really say why, but she was afraid of him. Four weeks ago, she told me, she had been taking the baby into town in her pram, and suddenly she had heard terrible barking. As the butcher’s van rolled by with Ponto in it, he had howled at her or, as she thought, at the baby in the pram, and looked as if he were crouching to spring, but luckily the van had passed so quickly that he dared not jump out of it. However, she said, his furious barking had gone right through her. Of course she had not told Mr Limpley, she added; the news would only have upset him unnecessarily, and anyway she thought the dog was in safe keeping in Bath. But only the other day, one afternoon when she went out to the old woodshed to fetch a few logs, there had been something moving in there at the back. She had been about to scream in fright, but then she saw it was Ponto hiding there, and he had immediately shot away through the hedge and into our garden. Since then she had suspected that he hid there quite often, and he must have been walking around the house by night, because the other day, after that heavy storm in the night, she had clearly seen paw prints in the wet sand showing that he had circled the whole house several times. Did I think he might want to come back, she asked me? Mr Limpley certainly wouldn’t have him in the house again, and living with a butcher Ponto could hardly be hungry. If he were, anyway, he would have come to her in the kitchen first to beg for food. Somehow she didn’t like the way he was slinking about the place, she added, and did I think she ought to tell Mr Limpley after all, or at least his wife? We thought it over, and agreed that if Ponto turned up again we would tell his new master the butcher, so that he could put an end to his visits. For the time being, at least, we wouldn’t remind Limpley of the existence of the hated animal.
I think we made a mistake, for perhaps—who can say—that might have prevented what happened next day, on that terrible and never-to-be-forgotten Sunday. My husband and I had gone round to the Limpleys’, and we were sitting in deckchairs on the small lower terrace of the garden, talking. From the lower terrace, the turf ran down quite a steep slope to the canal. The pram was on the flat lawn of the terrace beside us, and I hardly need say that the besotted father got up in the middle of the conversation every five minutes to enjoy the sight of the baby. After all, she was a pretty child, and on that golden sunlit afternoon it was really charming to see her looking up at the sky with her bright blue eyes and smiling—the hood of the pram was put back—as she tried to pick up the patterns made by the sunlight on her blanket with her delicate if still rather awkward hands. Her father rejoic
ed at this, as if such miraculous reasoning as hers had never been known, and we ourselves, to give him pleasure, acted as if we had never known anything like it. That sight of her, the last happy moment, is rooted in my mind for ever. Then Mrs Limpley called from the upper terrace, which was in the shade of the veranda, to tell us that tea was ready. Limpley spoke soothingly to the baby as if she could understand him, “There, there, we’ll be back in a minute!” We left the pram with the baby in it on the lawn, shaded from the hot sunlight by a cool canopy of leaves above, and strolled slowly to the usual place in the shade where the Limpleys drank afternoon tea. It was about twenty yards from the lower to the upper terrace of their garden, and you could not see one terrace from the other because of the rose-covered pergola between them. We talked as we walked, and I need hardly say what we talked about. Limpley was wonderfully cheerful, but his cheerfulness did not seem at all out of place today, when the sky was such a silky blue, it was such a peaceful Sunday, and we were sitting in the shade in front of a house full of blessings. Today, his mood was like a reflection of that fine summer’s day.
Suddenly we were alarmed. Shrill, horrified screams came from the canal, voices of children and women’s cries of alarm. We rushed down the green slope with Limpley in the lead. His first thought was for the child. But to our horror the lower terrace, where the pram had been standing only a few minutes ago with the baby dozing peacefully in it in perfect safety, was empty, and the shouting from the canal was shriller and more agitated than ever. We hurried down to the water. On the opposite bank several women and children stood close together, gesticulating and staring at the canal. And there was the pram we had left safe and sound on the lower terrace, now floating upside down in the water. One man had already put out in a boat to save the child, another had dived in. But it was all too late. The baby’s body was not brought up from the brackish water, which was covered with green waterweed, until quarter-of-an-hour later.
I cannot describe the despair of the wretched parents. Or rather, I will not even try to describe it, because I never again in my life want to think of those dreadful moments. A police superintendent, informed by telephone, turned up to find out how this terrible thing had happened. Was it negligence on the part of the parents, or an accident, or a crime? The floating pram had been fished out of the water by now, and put back on the lower terrace on the police officer’s instructions, just where it had been before. Then the Chief Constable himself joined the superintendent, and personally tested the pram to see whether a light touch would set it rolling down the slope of its own accord. But the wheels would hardly move through the thick, long grass. So it was out of the question for a sudden gust of wind, perhaps, to have made it roll so suddenly over the terrace, which itself was level. The superintendent also tried again, pushing a little harder. The pram rolled about a foot forward and then stopped. But the terrace was at least seven yards wide, and the pram, as the tracks of its wheels showed, had been standing securely some way from the place where the land began to slope. Only when the superintendent took a run up to the pram and pushed it really hard did it move along the terrace and begin to roll down the slope. So something unexpected must have set the pram suddenly in motion. But who or what had done it?
It was a mystery. The police superintendent took his cap off his sweating brow and scratched his short hair ever more thoughtfully. He couldn’t make it out. Had any object, he asked, even just a ball when someone was playing with it, ever been known to roll over the terrace and down to the canal of its own accord? “No, never!” everyone assured him. Had there been a child nearby, or in the garden, a high-spirited child who might have been playing with the pram? No, no one! Had there been anyone else in the vicinity? Again, no. The garden gate had been closed, and none of the people walking by the canal had seen anyone coming or going. The one person who could really be regarded as an eyewitness was the labourer who had jumped straight into the water to save the baby, but even he, still dripping wet and greatly distressed, could say only that he and his wife had been walking beside the canal, and nothing seemed wrong. Then the pram had suddenly come rolling down the slope from the garden, going faster and faster, and tipped upside down as soon as it reached the water. As he thought he had seen a child in the water, he had run down to the bank at once, stripping off his jacket, and tried to rescue it, but he had not been able to make his way through the dense tangles of waterweeds as fast as he had hoped. That was all he knew.
The police superintendent was more and more baffled. He had never known such a puzzling case, he said. He simply could not imagine how that pram could have started rolling. The only possibility seemed to be that the baby might suddenly have sat up, or thrown herself violently to one side, thus unbalancing the lightweight pram. But it was hard to believe that, and he for one couldn’t imagine it. Was there anything else that occurred to any of us?
I automatically glanced at the Limpleys’ housemaid. Our eyes met. We were both thinking the same thing at the same moment. We both knew that the dog hated the child. We knew that he had been seen several times recently slinking around the garden. We knew how he had often head-butted laundry baskets full of washing and sent them into the canal. We both—I saw it from the maid’s pallor and her twitching lips—we both suspected that the sly and now vicious animal, finally seeing a chance to get his revenge, had come out of hiding as soon as we left the baby alone for a few minutes, and had then butted the pram containing his hated rival fiercely and fast, sending it rolling down to the canal, before making his own escape as soundlessly as usual. But we neither of us voiced our suspicions. I knew the mere idea that if he had shot the raving animal after Ponto’s attack, he might have saved his child would drive Limpley mad. And then, in spite of the logic of our thinking, we lacked any solid evidence. Neither the maid nor I, and none of the others, had actually seen the dog slinking around or running away that afternoon. The woodshed where he liked to hide—I looked there at once—was empty, the dry trodden earth of its floor showed no trace at all, we had not heard a note of the furious barking in which Ponto had always triumphantly indulged when he pushed a basket of washing into the canal. So we could not really claim that he had done it. It was more of a cruelly tormenting assumption. Only a justified, a terribly well justified suspicion. But the final, clinching certainty was missing.
And yet I have never since shaken off that dreadful suspicion—on the contrary, it was even more strongly confirmed over the next few days, almost to the point of certainty. A week later—the poor baby had been buried by then, and the Limpleys had left the house because they could not bear the sight of that fateful canal—something happened that affected me deeply. I had been shopping in Bath for a few household items when I suddenly had a shock. Beside the butcher’s van I saw Ponto, of whom I had subconsciously been thinking in all those terrible hours, walking along at his leisure, and at the same moment he saw me. He stopped at once, and so did I. And now something that still weighs on my mind happened; in all the weeks that had passed since his humiliation, I had never seen Ponto looking anything but upset and distressed, and he had avoided any encounter with me, crouching low and turning his eyes away. Now he held his head high and looked at me—I can’t put it any other way—with self-confident indifference. Overnight he had become the proud, arrogant animal of the old days again. He stood in that provocative position for a minute. Then, swaggering and almost dancing across the road with pretended friendliness, he came over to me and stopped a foot or so away, as if to say, “Well, here I am! Now what have you got to say? Are you going to accuse me?”
I felt paralysed. I had no power to push him away, no power to bear that self-confident and, indeed, I might almost say self-satisfied look. I walked quickly on. God forbid I should accuse even an innocent animal, let alone a human being, of a crime he did not commit. But since that day I cannot get rid of the terrible thought: “He did it. He was the one who did it.”
THE DEBT PAID LATE
MY DEAR ELLEN,
I know you will be surprised to receive a letter from me after so long; it must be five or perhaps even six years since I last wrote to you. I believe that then it was a letter of congratulations on your youngest daughter’s marriage. This time the occasion is not so festive, and perhaps my need to confide the details of a strange encounter to you, rather than anyone else, may strike you as odd. But I can’t tell anyone else what happened to me a few days ago. You are the only person who would understand.
My pen involuntarily hesitates as I write these words, and I have to smile at myself a little. Didn’t we exchange the very same “You are the only person who would understand” a thousand times when we were fifteen or sixteen years old—immature, excitable girls telling each other our childish secrets at school or on the way home? And didn’t we solemnly swear, long ago in our salad days, to tell each other everything, in detail, concerning a certain person? All that is more than a quarter of a century ago; but a promise, once made, must be kept. And as you will see, I am faithfully keeping my word, if rather late in the day.