by Stefan Zweig
But every Sunday morning Crescenz went to church in her wide, pleated skirt and flat peasant hat. Only once, on her first day off in Vienna, did she try taking a walk. As she didn’t want to ride on the tram, and had seen nothing but more and more stone walls in her cautious exploration of the many bewildering streets, she went only as far as the Danube Canal, where she stared at the flowing water as at something familiar, turned and went back the way she had come, always keeping close to the buildings and anxiously avoiding the carriageway. This first and only expedition must obviously have disappointed her, for after that she never left the house again, but preferred to sit at the window on Sundays either busy with her needlework or empty-handed. So the great metropolis brought no change into the routine treadmill of her days, except that at the end of every month she held four blue banknotes instead of the old two in her gnarled, tough, battered hands. She always checked these banknotes suspiciously for a long time. She unfolded the new notes ceremoniously, and finally smoothed them out flat, almost tenderly, before putting them with the others in the carved, yellow wooden box that she had brought from her home village. This clumsy, heavy little casket was her whole secret, the meaning of her life. By night she put its key under her pillow. No one ever found out where she kept it in the day.
Such was the nature of this strange human being (as we may call her, although humanity was apparent in her behaviour only in a very faint and muted way), but perhaps it took someone with exactly those blinkered senses to tolerate domestic service in the household of young Baron von F—which was an extremely strange one in itself. Most servants couldn’t put up with the quarrelsome atmosphere for any longer than the legally binding time between their engagement and the day when they gave notice. The irate shouting, wound up to hysterical pitch, came from the lady of the house. The only daughter of an extremely rich manufacturer in Essen, and no longer in her first youth, she had been at a spa where she met the considerably younger Baron (whose nobility was suspect, while his financial situation was even more dubious), and had quickly married that handsome young ne’er-do-well, ready and able as he was to display aristocratic charm. But as soon as the honeymoon was over, the newly-wedded wife had to admit that her parents, who set great store by solid worth and ability, had been right to oppose the hasty marriage. For it quickly transpired that besides having many debts to which he had not admitted, her husband, whose attentions to her had soon worn off, showed a good deal more interest in continuing the habits of his bachelor days than in his marital duties. Although not exactly unkind by nature, since at heart he was as sunny as light-minded people usually are, but extremely lax and unscrupulous in his general outlook, that handsome would-be cavalier despised all calculations of interest and capital, considering them stingy, narrow-minded evidence of plebeian bigotry. He wanted an easy life; she wanted a well-ordered, respectable domestic existence of the bourgeois Rhineland kind, which got on his nerves. And when, in spite of her wealth, he had to haggle to lay hands on any large sum of money, and his wife, who had a turn for mathematics, even denied him his dearest wish, a racing stables of his own, he saw no more reason to involve himself any further in conjugal relations with the massive, thick-necked North German woman whose loud and domineering voice fell unpleasantly on his ears. So he put her on ice, as they say, and without any harsh gestures, but none the less unmistakably, he kept his disappointed wife at a distance. If she reproached him he would listen politely, with apparent compassion, but as soon as her sermon was over he would wave her passionate admonitions away like the smoke of his cigarette, and had no qualms about continuing to do exactly as he pleased. This smooth, almost formal amiability embittered the disappointed woman more than any opposition. And as she was completely powerless to do anything about his well-bred, never abusive and positively overpowering civility, her pent-up anger broke out violently in a different direction: she ranted and raged at the domestic staff, wildly venting on the innocent her indignation, which was fundamentally justified but in those quarters inappropriately expressed. Of course there were consequences: within two years she had been obliged to engage a new lady’s maid no less than sixteen times, once after an actual physical scuffle—a considerable sum of money had to be paid in compensation to hush it up.
Only Crescenz stood unmoved, like a patient cab-horse in the rain, in the midst of this stormy tumult. She took no one’s side, ignored all changes, didn’t seem to notice the arrival of strangers with whom she shared the maids’ bedroom and whose names, hair-colour, body-odour and behaviour were constantly different. For she herself talked to no one, didn’t mind the slammed doors, the interrupted mealtimes, the helpless and hysterical outbursts. Indifferent to it all, she went busily from her kitchen to market, from market back to her kitchen, and what went on outside that enclosed circle did not concern her. Hard and emotionless as a flail, she dealt with day after day, and so two years in the big city passed her by without incident, never enlarging her inner world, except that the stack of blue banknotes in her little box rose an inch higher, and when she counted the notes one by one with a moistened finger at the end of the year, the magic figure of one thousand wasn’t far off.
But Chance works with diamond drills, and that dangerously cunning entity Fate can often intervene from an unexpected quarter, shattering even the rockiest nature entirely. In Crescenz’s case, the outward occasion was almost as ordinary as was she herself; after ten years, it pleased the state to hold a new census, and highly complicated forms were sent to all residential buildings to be filled in by their occupants, in detail. Distrusting the illegible handwriting and purely phonetic spelling of his domestic staff, the Baron decided to fill in the forms himself, and to this end he summoned Crescenz to his study. When he asked for her name, age and date of birth, it turned out that as a passionate huntsman and a friend of the owner of the local game preserves, he had often shot chamois in that very corner of the Alps from which Crescenz came. A guide from her native village had actually been his companion for two weeks. And when, extraordinarily, it turned out that this same guide was Crescenz’s uncle, the chance discovery led on the Baron, who was in a cheerful mood, to further conversation, in the course of which another surprising fact came to light: on his visit to the area, he had eaten an excellent dish of roast venison at the very same inn where she was cook. None of this was of any importance, but the power of coincidence made it seem strange, and to Crescenz, for the first time meeting someone who knew her home here in Vienna, it appeared miraculous. She stood before him with a flushed, interested face, bobbed clumsily, felt flattered when he went on to crack some jokes, imitating the Tyrolean dialect and asking if she could yodel, and talked similar schoolboy nonsense. Finally, amused at himself, he slapped her hard behind with the palm of his hand in the friendly peasant way and dismissed her with a laugh. “Off you go then, my good Cenzi, and here’s two crowns because you’re from the Ziller valley.”
In itself this was not a significant emotional event, to be sure. But that five minutes of conversation had an effect on the fish-like, underground currents of Crescenz’s dull nature like that of a stone being dropped into a swamp: ripples form, lethargically and gradually at first, but moving sluggishly on until they slowly reach the edge of consciousness. For the first time in years, the obdurate and taciturn Crescenz had held a personal conversation with another human being, and it seemed to her a supernatural dispensation of Providence that this first person to have spoken to her in the midst of the stony maze of the city knew her own mountains, and had even once eaten roast venison that she herself had prepared. And then there was that casual slap on the behind, which in peasant language represents a kind of laconic courtship of a woman. Although Crescenz did not make so bold as to suppose that such an elegant and distinguished gentleman had actually been expressing any intentions of that sort towards herself, the physical familiarity somehow shook her slumbering senses awake.
So that chance impetus set off movement in the underground realm within he
r, shifting stratum after stratum, until at last, first clumsily and then ever more clearly, a new feeling developed in her, like that sudden moment when one day a dog unexpectedly recognises one of the many two-legged figures around him as his master. From that hour on the dog follows him, greets the man whom Fate has set in authority over him by wagging his tail or barking, becomes voluntarily subservient and follows his trail obediently step by step. In just the same way, something new had entered the small circle of Crescenz’s life, hitherto bounded by the five familiar ideas of money, the market, the kitchen range, church and her bed. That new element needed space, and brusquely pushed everything else forcefully aside. And with that peasant greed that will never let something it has seized out of its hands again, she drew it deep into herself and the confused, instinctive world of her dull senses. Of course it was some time before any change became visible, and those first signs were very insignificant: for instance, the particularly fanatical care she devoted to cleaning the Baron’s clothes and shoes, while she still left the Baroness’s to the lady’s maid. Or she was often to be seen in the corridor of the apartment, eagerly making haste to take his hat and stick as soon as she heard the sound of the key in the front door. She redoubled her attention to the cooking, and even laboriously made her way to the big market hall so that she could get a joint of venison to roast specially for him. She was taking more care with her outward appearance too.
It was one or two weeks before these first shoots of new emotion emerged from her inner world, and many weeks more before a second idea was added to the first and grew, uncertainly in the beginning, but then acquiring distinct form and colour. This new feeling was complementary to the first: initially indistinct, but gradually appearing clear and plain, it was a sense of emergent hatred for the Baron’s wife, the woman who could live with him, sleep with him, talk to him, yet did not feel the same devoted veneration for him as she herself did. Whether because she had perhaps—these days instinctively noticing more—witnessed one of those shameful scenes in which the master she idolized was humiliated in the most objectionable way by his irate wife, or whether it was that the inhibited North German woman’s arrogant reserve was doubly obvious in contrast to his jovial familiarity—for one reason or another, at any rate, she suddenly brought a certain mulishness to bear on the unsuspecting wife, a prickly hostility expressed in a thousand little barbed remarks and spiteful actions. For instance, the Baroness always had to ring at least twice before Crescenz responded to the summons, deliberately slowly and with obvious reluctance, and her hunched shoulders always expressed resistance in principle. She accepted orders and errands wordlessly and with a glum expression, so that the Baroness never knew if she had actually understood her, but if she asked again to be on the safe side she got only a gloomy nod or a derisive “Sure I hears yer!” by way of answer. Or just before a visit to the theatre, while the Baroness was nervously scurrying around, an important key would prove to be lost, only to be unexpectedly discovered in a corner half-an-hour later. She regularly chose to forget about messages and phone calls to the Baroness: when charged with the omission she would offer, without the slightest sign of regret, only a brusque, “I fergot ’un”. She never looked the Baroness in the face, perhaps for fear that she would not be able to hide her hatred.
Meanwhile the domestic differences between husband and wife led to increasingly unedifying scenes; perhaps Crescenz’s unconsciously provocative surliness also had something to do with the hot temper of the Baroness, who was becoming more overwrought every week. With her nerves unstable as a result of preserving her virginity too long, and embittered by her husband’s indifference, the exasperated woman was losing control of herself. In vain did she try to soothe her agitation with bromide and veronal; the tension of her overstretched nerves showed all the more violently in arguments, she had fits of weeping and hysteria, and never received the slightest sympathy or even the appearance of kindly support from anyone at all. Finally the doctor who had been called in recommended a two-month stay in a sanatorium, a proposal that was approved by her usually indifferent husband with such sudden concern for her health that his wife, suspicious again, at first balked at the idea. But in the end it was decided that she would take the trip, with her lady’s maid to accompany her, while Crescenz was to stay behind in the spacious apartment to serve her master.
The news that her master was to be entrusted to her care alone affected Crescenz’s dull senses like a sudden tonic. As if all her strength and zest for life had been shaken wildly up in a magic flask, a hidden sediment of passion now rose from the depths of her being and lent its colour to her whole conduct. The sluggish heaviness suddenly left her rigid, frozen limbs; it was as if since she had heard that electrifying news her joints were suddenly supple, and she adopted a quick, nimble gait. She ran back and forth between the rooms, up and down the stairs, when it was time to make preparations for the journey she packed all the cases, unasked, and carried them to the car herself. And then, when the Baron came back from the railway station late in the evening, and handed her his stick and coat as she eagerly came to his aid, saying with a sigh of relief, “She’s on her way!” something strange happened. All at once a powerful stretching movement became visible around Crescenz’s narrowed lips, although in the normal way, like all animals, she never laughed. Now her mouth twisted, became a wide horizontal line, and suddenly a grin appeared in the middle of her idiotically brightening face. It displayed such frank, animal lack of inhibition that the Baron, embarrassed and surprised by the sight, was ashamed of his inappropriate familiarity with the servant, and disappeared into his study without a word.
But that fleeting second of discomfort quickly passed over, and during the next few days the two of them, master and maid, were united in their sense of shared relief, enjoying the precious silence and independence that did them both good. The departure of the Baron’s wife had lifted a lowering cloud, so to speak, from the atmosphere; the liberated husband, happily freed from the constant necessity to account for himself, came late home that very first evening, and the silent attentions of Crescenz were an agreeable contrast to his wife’s only too voluble reception of him. Crescenz flung herself into her daily work again with passionate enthusiasm, rose particularly early, scoured everything until it shone, polished doorknobs and handles like a woman possessed, conjured up particularly delicious menus, and to his surprise the Baron noticed, when she first served him lunch, that the valuable china and cutlery kept in the silver cupboard except on special occasions had been taken out just for him. Not an observant man in general, he couldn’t help noticing the attentive, almost affectionate care that this strange creature was taking, and kindly as he was at heart, he expressed his satisfaction freely. He praised her cooking, gave her a few friendly words, and when next morning, which happened to be his name-day, he found that she had made an elaborate cake with his initials and coat of arms on it in sugar icing, he smiled at her in high spirits. “You really are spoiling me, Cenzi! And what am I to do when—heaven forbid!—my wife comes home again?”
All the same, he kept a certain control over himself for a few days before casting off the last of his scruples. But then, feeling sure from various signs that she would keep silent, he began living the bachelor life again, making himself comfortable in his own apartment. On his fourth day as a grass widower he summoned Crescenz and told her, without further explanation, that he would like her to prepare a cold supper for two that evening and then go to bed; he would see to everything else himself. Crescenz received the order in silence. Not a glance, not the faintest look showed whether the real purport of what he said had penetrated her low forehead. But her master soon saw, with surprised amusement, how well she understood his real intentions, for when he came home from the theatre late that evening with a little music student who was studying opera, not only did he find the table beautifully laid and decorated with flowers, but the bed next to his own in the bedroom was invitingly if brazenly turned down, and his w
ife’s silk dressing gown and slippers were laid out ready. The liberated husband instinctively smiled at the far-sighted thoughtfulness of that strange creature Crescenz. And with that he threw off the last of his inhibitions about letting the helpful soul into his confidence. He rang next morning for her to help the amorous intruder get dressed, and that finally sealed the silent agreement between them.
It was in those days, too, that Crescenz acquired her new name. The merry little music student, who was studying the part of Donna Elvira and in jest liked to elevate her lover to the role of Don Giovanni, had once said to him, laughing, “Now, do call for your Leporella!” The name amused him, just because it was so grotesque a parody when applied to the gaunt Tyrolean woman, and from now on he never called her anything but Leporella. Crescenz, who looked up in surprise the first time but was then enchanted by the pleasing vocal music of her new name, which she did not understand in the least, regarded it as a sign of distinction; whenever her high-spirited master called for her by that name her thin lips would part, exposing her brown, horse-like teeth, and like a dog wagging its tail, she submissively hurried to receive her lord and master’s orders.
The name was intended as a joke, but the budding operatic diva had unintentionally hit the mark, throwing her a verbal dress that magically suited her. For like Don Giovanni’s appreciative accomplice as depicted by Da Ponte, this bony old maid who had never known love took a curious pride and pleasure in her master’s adventures. Was it just her satisfaction at seeing the bed of the wife she hated so much tumbled and desecrated every morning by now one, now another young body, or did a secret sense of conspiratorial pleasure make her own senses tingle? In any case, the stern, narrow-minded spinster showed a positively passionate readiness to be of service to her master in all his adventures. It was a long time since her own hard-worked body, now sexless after decades of labour, had felt any such urges, but she warmed herself comfortably, like a procuress, on the satisfaction of seeing a second young woman in the bedroom after a few days, and then a third; her share in the conspiracy and the exciting perfume of the erotic atmosphere worked like a stimulant on her dulled senses. Crescenz really did become Leporella, and was nimble, alert and ready to jump to attention; strange qualities appeared in her nature, as if forced into being by the flowing heat of her burning interest, all kinds of little tricks, touches of mischief, sharp remarks, a curiosity that made her eavesdrop and lurk in waiting. She was almost frolicking. She listened at doors, looked through keyholes, searched rooms and beds, flew upstairs and downstairs in excitement as soon as, like a huntswoman, she scented new prey; and gradually this alertness, this curious, interested sympathy reshaped the wooden shell of her old dull lethargy into some kind of living human being. To the general astonishment of the neighbours, Crescenz suddenly became sociable, she chatted to the maids in the building, cracked broad jokes with the postman, began chatting and gossiping with the women at the market stalls, and once in the evening, when the lights in the courtyard were out, the maidservants sleeping in the building in a room opposite hers heard a strange humming sound at the usually silent window: awkwardly, in a muted, rusty voice, Crescenz was singing one of those Alpine songs that herdswomen sing on the pastures at evening. The monotonous melody staggered out of her unpractised lips with difficulty, in a cracked tone, but it did come out, a strange and gripping sound. Crescenz was trying to sing again for the first time since her childhood, and there was something touching in those stumbling notes that rose with difficulty to the light out of the darkness of buried years.