The Last Days
Page 14
Two vials had been prepared and filled to the brim with little white crystals. An empty glass had been placed next to each of the vials and there was a bottle of Salutaris mineral water in the middle, the same natural spring water they’d taken with all their meals—and which would be the last drink they would ever consume together. Drenched in sweat, she had decided to take a bath. Then she had slipped into a flowery dressing gown, which she had worn on evenings when she had wanted to look particularly fetching, just like she did today.
He gazed at her as she came out of the bathroom with a questioning look. She nodded and forced a weak smile. She walked slowly, uncertainly, and went to sit down on the bed beside him. She regretted not having had a drink, that she wasn’t drunk, but he’d refused to allow her to do so. He had wanted to be fully conscious in order to experience the moment in serenity. She shuddered. Fear could be read on her features. He drew her closer to him and kissed her tenderly on the lips. He looked long and deep into her eyes. “I’ll go first,” he said. “You’ll follow me… if that’s what you want.” She couldn’t hold back her tears. He reminded her of the promise she’d made him. She apologized. Her sobs swelled in her chest. He dried her cheeks. He kissed her eyelids. He whispered words into her ear that were meant to dispel her fear. He stood up and walked over to the dresser where the vials had been placed. He turned back to look at her, as if wanting to read approval in her eyes. She held back a scream. She would have loved to rush towards him, spill the vials and run out of the house, but it was as if she were hypnotized by his stare, as if the poison had already had its effect. He had kept his composure and seemed at peace. He picked up the first vial and with untrembling fingers tipped its contents into the glass. Then he filled the glass with mineral water. He turned around to face her once more. She was silent and still. From the depths of her despair, she stared at him, terrified. She managed to form a sentence. Did he love her? He said that he did. She found the strength to come and stand by his side. She tried to mimic his gestures, but when she’d taken hold of the vial, she almost spilt its contents. He calmly took hold of her hand. He filled her glass.
There they stood, facing one another, looking into one another’s eyes. He raised the glass to his lips without removing his gaze from her. He drained the glass in three gulps without stopping for breath. He said he was going to lie down. That she should join him when she was ready. He stretched out on the bed. She drank, quickly, and then ran after him to be by his side, clinging to his shoulder.
He breathed in her body’s heady scent. He asked her if she needed anything. She wasn’t able to answer him. Her tears were preventing her from seeing anything, but was there anything to see? He said that a thousand things were crowding his mind. Off in the distance, they perceived the fantastic landscape of a familiar world, a European city with brightly lit pavements, where he recognized many faces and people embraced him. He said that everything was slowly growing darker. What about her, what was she seeing? She didn’t reply. He said that everything was blending together, the past, the present, lights were becoming confused and that he was in a hall plunged in semi-darkness. He recognized a familiar silhouette that brushed past him, the silhouette of a woman, with a fan in her hand and a haughty expression, walking along a corridor. He carried on talking, but the words no longer formed properly in his mouth. She kissed his forehead and his eyelids. His eyelids were shut. He could no longer see or hear anything. She kissed his temples. Although her lips had met his skin, she could no longer feel its warmth. Her own lips had grown cold. She stretched out her arms towards him, but they were as frozen as though they’d been plunged into ice. Her fingertips grazed his shoulder, but her arms grew heavy. Her strength was abandoning her. He was out of reach and out of sight. Her eyes could distinguish the outlines of a shadow beside her. The shadow drifted away into the darkness and faded into the netherworld. Day turned to night. The earth was shapeless and empty. She joined him in the abyss, and a gust of wind that came through the open windows shook the curtains and hovered over that abyss.
This novel is based on facts and historical events culled from various archives, witness accounts and documents. The remarks and reflections made by some characters are faithfully based on the books, articles and correspondence these characters left behind.
Here is a partial bibliography of the sources used during the writing of this novel:
Hannah Arendt, “Stefan Zweig: Jews in the World of Yesterday”, in Reflections on Literature and Culture, Stanford University Press, 2007.
Georges Bernanos, Brésil, terre d’amitié, La Table Ronde, 2009.
George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna, Pan Macmillan, 2002.
Robert Dumont, Stefan Zweig et la France, Didier, 1967.
William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind, University of California Press, 1992.
Sébastien Lapaque, Sous le soleil de l’exil, Georges Bernanos au Brésil, Grasset, 2003.
Klaus Mann, The Turning Point, Markus Wiener, 1995.
Serge Niémetz, Stefan Zweig, Le Voyageur et ses mondes, Belfond, 1999.
Donald A. Prater, European of Yesterday, Clarendon Press, 1972.
Arthur Schnitzler, My Youth in Vienna, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971.
Friderike and Stefan Zweig, L’Amour inquiet, Éditions des Femmes, 1987.
Stefan Zweig, Journaux (1912–1940), Belfond, 1986.
Stefan Zweig, Œuvre complète, La Pochothèque, 3 vols, Le Livre de Poche, 2001.
Stefan Zweig, Correspondances, 3 vols (1897–1919; 1920–31; 1932–42), Grasset, 2008.
Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, Pushkin Press, 2009.
QUOTATIONS
p. 50 “So I ask my memories to speak and choose for me, and give at least some faint reflection of my life before it sinks into the dark.”
From Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), p. 22.
p. 102 “He may not sleep who watches over the people. The Lord hath appointed me to watch and to give warning.”
From Stefan Zweig, Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, NY: Thomas Seltzer, 1922), p. 216.
p. 102 “Wanderers, sufferers, our drink must be drawn from distant waters, evil their taste, bitter in the mouth, the nations will drive us from home after home, we will wander down suffering’s endless roads, eternally vanquished, thralls at the hearths where in passing we rest.”
From Stefan Zweig, Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York, NY: Thomas Seltzer, 1922), pp. 331–35.
p. 120 “And their fear of death turns to hopeless resignation.”
From Stefan Zweig, “In the Snow”, Wondrak and Other Stories, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), p. 25.
p. 120 “Josua holds his fiancée with cold hands. She is dead already, although he does not know it.”
From Stefan Zweig, “In the Snow”, Wondrak and Other Stories, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), p. 24.
p. 124 “My heart is so sore, that I might almost say the daylight hurts my nose whenever I stick it out of the window.”
From Stefan Zweig, The Struggle with the Daemon, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 222.
p. 128 “…left Marie von Kleist, who was also dear to him, in loneliness and neglect; and dragged Henriette Vogel down with him to death… he retired more and more into himself, growing more solitary even than nature had created him.”
From Stefan Zweig, The Struggle with the Daemon, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), pp. 162–63.
p. 128 “Like every other of his hyperbolical affects, Kleist’s passion for a fellowship on which a joint suicide could alone put the seal remained a mystery to his friends. Vainly did he seek a companion into the Valley of the Shadow. One and all they contemptuously or shudderingly rejected the proposal.”
From Stefan Zweig, The Struggle with the Daemon, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press,
2012), p. 225.
p. 128 “He encountered a woman, hitherto almost a stranger, who thanked him for his strange invitation. She was an invalid, whose death could not in any case be long delayed, for her body was inwardly devoured by cancer even as Kleist’s mind was devoured by weariness of life. Though herself incapable of forming a vigorous resolution, she was sensitive and highly suggestible, and therefore open to the promptings of his morbid enthusiasm; she agreed to plunge with him into the unknown.”
From Stefan Zweig, The Struggle with the Daemon, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 225.
p. 129 “At bottom this somewhat priggish and sentimental wife of a tax-collector was of a type uncongenial to Kleist… She who would have been too petty, too soft, too weak for him as a living companion, was welcomed by him as a comrade in death.”
From Stefan Zweig, The Struggle with the Daemon, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 226.
p. 129 “Although another woman swore to be his companion in death, his thoughts turned to her for whom he had lived and whom he loved, to Marie von Kleist.”
From Stefan Zweig, The Struggle with the Daemon, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 230.
p. 129 “In the high spirits of honeymooners, the couple drive to the Wannsee. The host at the inn hears them laughing, sees them sporting merrily in the fields, can tell how they drank their coffee with gusto in the open air. Then, at the prearranged hour, came the two pistol shots, in swift succession, the first that with which Kleist pierced his companion’s heart, the second that with which (barrel in mouth) he blew out his own brains. His hand did not falter. It was true that he knew better how to die than to live.”
From Stefan Zweig, The Struggle with the Daemon, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Pushkin Press, 2012), p. 232.
p. 130 “You beam through the blindfold covering my eyes
At me with the radiance of a thousand suns.
Wings have put forth on both my shoulders,
My spirit lifts through the ether’s silent spaces.”
From Heinrich von Kleist, Selected Writings of Heinrich von Kleist, trans. David Constantine (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge, MA: Hackett, 2004), p. 204.
About the Author
LAURENT SEKSIK trained as a doctor, was a radiologist in a Paris hospital and continues to practise medicine alongside his work as a writer. Before The Last Days (2010) he published Les Mauvaises Pensées (1999, translated into ten languages), La Folle Histoire (2004, awarded the Littré Prize) and several other books, including a biography of Albert Einstein. The Last Days was a bestseller in France and has been translated into ten languages. The novel has been adapted for the stage into a very successful play, and a film version is currently in production. Seksik lives and works in Paris.
PUSHKIN PRESS
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Copyright
Pushkin Press
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The Last Days first published in French as Les derniers jours de Stefan Zweig in 2010
Original text © Flammarion, Paris, 2010
English translation © André Naffis-Sahely, 2013
“A Man of Sixty Gives Thanks” translated from the original poem in German, “Der Sechzigjährige dankt”, by Anthea Bell
Published by Pushkin Press in 2013
This ebook edition published in 2013
ISBN 978 1 782270 65 2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
This book is supported by the Institut français Royaume-Uni as part of the Burgess programme (www.frenchbooknews.com)
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