by Stefan Zweig
And with a sudden movement she turned away.
I sought calm in vain—as if tied up in a black sack in an anxious dream from which there was no awakening, I struggled to understand, to rouse myself from the mysterious confusion of these conflicting feelings.
Four months had passed in this way—weeks of self-improvement and transformation such as I had never imagined. The term was fast approaching an end, and I faced the imminent vacation with a sense of dread, for I loved my purgatory, and the soberly non-intellectual atmosphere of my home threatened me like exile and deprivation. I was already hatching secret plans to pretend to my parents that important work kept me here, weaving a skilful tissue of lies and excuses to prolong my present existence, although it was devouring me. But the day and the hour had long ago been ordained for me elsewhere. That hour hung invisibly over me, just as the sound of the bell striking midday lies latent in the metal, ready to chime suddenly and gravely, urging laggards to work or to departure.
How well that fateful evening began, how deceptively well! I had been sitting at table with the two of them—the windows were open, and a twilit sky with white clouds was slowly filling their darkened frames: there was something mild and clear in their majestically hovering glow; one could not help feeling it deep within. His wife and I had been talking more casually, more easily, with more animation than usual. My teacher sat in silence, ignoring our conversation, but his silence presided over it with folded wings, so to speak. Looking sideways, I glanced surreptitiously at him—there was something curiously radiant about him today, a restlessness devoid of anything nervous, like the movement of those summer clouds. Sometimes he took his wine glass and held it up to the light to appreciate the colour, and when my happy glance followed that gesture he smiled slightly and raised the glass to me. I had seldom seen his face so untroubled, his movements so smooth and composed; he sat there in almost solemn cheerfulness, as if he heard music in the street outside, or were listening to some unseen conversation. His lips, around which tiny movements usually played, were still and soft as a peeled fruit, and his forehead when he turned it gently to the window took on the refraction of the mild light and seemed to me nobler than ever. It was wonderful to see him at peace like that: I did not know whether it was the reflection of the pure summer evening, whether the mild, soft air did him good, or whether some pleasant thought were illuminating him from within. But used as I was to reading his countenance like a book, I felt that
today a kinder God had smoothed out the folds and crevices of his heart.
And it was with curious solemnity, too, that he rose and with his usual movement of the head invited me to follow him to his study: for a man who normally moved fast, he trod with strange gravity. Then he turned back, took an unopened bottle of wine from the sideboard— this too was unusual—and carried it thoughtfully into the study with him. His wife, like me, seemed to notice something strange in his behaviour; she looked up from her needlework with surprise in her eyes and, silent and intent, observed his unusually measured step as we went to the study to work.
The familiar dimness of the darkened room awaited us as usual; there was only a golden circle of light cast by the lamp on the piled white sheets of paper lying ready. I sat in my usual place and repeated the last few sentences of the manuscript; he always needed to hear the rhythm, which acted as a tuning fork, to get himself in the right mood and let the words stream on. But while he usually started immediately once that rhythm was established, this time no words came. Silence spread in the room, a tense silence already pressing in on us from the walls. He still seemed not quite to have collected himself, for I heard him pacing nervously behind my back. “Read it over again!” Odd how restlessly his voice suddenly vibrated. I repeated the last few paragraphs: now he started, going straight on from what I had said, dictating more abruptly but faster and with more consistency than usual. Five sentences set the scene; until now he had been describing the cultural prerequisites of the drama, painting a fresco of the period, an outline of its history. Now he turned to the drama itself, a genre finally settling down after all its vagabond wanderings, its rides across country in carts, building itself a home licensed by right and privilege, first the Rose Theatre and the Fortuna, wooden houses for plays that were wooden themselves, but then the workmen build a new wooden structure to match the broader breast of the new poetic genre, grown to virility; it rises on the banks of the Thames, on piles thrust into the damp and otherwise unprofitable muddy ground, a massive wooden building with an ungainly hexagonal tower, the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare, the great master, will strut the stage. As if cast up by the sea like a strange ship, with a piratical red flag on the topmost mast, it stands there firmly anchored in the mud. The groundlings push and shove noisily on the floor of the theatre, as if in harbour, the finer folk smile down and chat idly with the players. Impatiently, they call for the play to begin. They stamp and shout, bang the hilts of their daggers on the boards, until at last a few flickering candles are brought out to illuminate the stage below, and casually costumed figures step forward to perform what appears to be an improvised comedy. And then—I remember his words to this day—“a storm of words suddenly blows up, the sea, the endless sea of passion, sends its bloody waves surging out from these wooden walls to reach all times, all parts of the human heart, inexhaustible, unfathomable, merry and tragic, full of diversity, a unique image of mankind—the theatre of England, the drama of Shakespeare.”
With these words, uttered in an elevated tone, he suddenly ceased. A long, heavy silence followed. Alarmed, I turned round: my teacher, one hand clutching the table, stood there with the look of exhaustion I knew well. But this time there was something alarming in his rigidity. I jumped up, fearing that something had happened to him, and asked anxiously whether I should stop. He just looked at me, breathless, his gaze fixed, and remained there immobile for a while. But then his starry eye shone bright blue again, his lips relaxed, he stepped towards me. “Well—haven’t you noticed anything?” He looked hard at me. “Noticed what?” I stammered uncertainly. Then he took a deep breath and smiled slightly; after long months, I felt that enveloping, soft and tender gaze again. “The first part is finished.” I had difficulty in suppressing a cry of joy, so warmly did my surprise surge through me. How could I have missed seeing it? Yes, there was the whole structure, magnificently built on foundations of the distant past, now on the threshold of its grand design: now they could enter, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, striding the stage victorious. The great work was celebrating its first anniversary. I made haste to count the pages. This first part amounted to a hundred and seventy close-written sheets, and was the most difficult, for what came next could be freely drawn, while hitherto the account had been closely bound to the historical facts. There was no doubt of it, he would complete his work—our work!
Did I shout aloud, did I dance around with joy, with pride, with delight? I don’t know. But my enthusiasm must have taken unforeseen forms of exuberance, since his smiling gaze moved to me as I quickly read over the last few words, eagerly counted the pages, put them together, weighed them in my hand, felt them lovingly, and already, with my calculations running on ahead, I was imagining what it might be like when we had finished the whole book. He saw his own hidden pride, deeply concealed and dammed up as it was, reflected in my joy; touched, he looked at me with a smile. Then he slowly came very, very close to me, put out both hands and took mine; unmovingly, he looked at me. Gradually his pupils, which usually held only a quivering and sporadic play of colour, filled with that clear and radiant blue which, of all the elements, only the depths of water and of human feeling can represent. And this brilliant blue shone from his eyes, blazed out, penetrating me; I felt its surge of warmth moving softly to my inmost being, spreading there, extending into a sense of strange delight; my whole breast suddenly broadened with that vaulting, swelling power, and I felt an Italian noonday sun rising within me. “I know,” said his voice, echoing above this b
rilliance, “that I would never have begun this work without you. I shall never forget what you have done. You gave my tired mind the spur it needed, and what remains of my lost, wasted life you and you alone have salvaged! No one has ever done more for me, no one has helped me so faithfully. And so it is you,” he concluded, changing from the formal Sie to the familiar du pronoun—“it is you whom I must thank. Come! Let us sit together like brothers for a while!”
He drew me gently to the table and picked up the bottle standing ready. There were two glasses there as well—he had intended this symbolic sharing of the wine as a visible sign of his gratitude to me. I was trembling with joy, for nothing more violently confuses one’s inner sense than the sudden granting of an ardent wish. The sign of his confidence, the open sign for which I had unconsciously been longing, had found the best possible means of expression in his thanks: the fraternal use of du, offered despite the gulf of years between us, was made seven times more precious by the obstacle that gulf represented. The bottle was about to strike its note, the still silent celebratory bottle which would soothe my anxieties for ever, replacing them with faith, and already my inner mind was ringing out as clearly as that quivering, bright note—when one small obstacle halted the festive moment: the bottle was still corked, and we had no corkscrew. He was about to go and fetch one, but guessing his intention I ran impatiently ahead of him to the dining-room—for I burned to experience that moment, the final pacification of my heart, the public statement of his regard for me.
As I ran impetuously through the doorway into the lighted corridor, I collided in the dark with something soft which hastily gave way—it was my teacher’s wife, who had obviously been listening at the door. But strange to say, violently as I had collided with her she uttered not a sound, only stepped back in silence, and I myself, incapable of any movement, was so surprised that I said nothing either. This lasted for a moment—we both stood there in silence, feeling ashamed, she caught eavesdropping, I frozen to the spot by this unexpected discovery. But then there was a quiet footstep in the dark, a light came on, and I saw her, pale and defiant, standing with her back to the cupboard; her gaze studied me gravely, and there was something dark, admonitory and threatening in her immobile bearing. However, she said not a word.
My hands were shaking when, after groping around nervously for some time, half-blinded, I finally found the corkscrew; I had to pass her twice, and when I looked up I met that fixed gaze, gleaming hard and dark as polished wood. Nothing about her betrayed any shame at having been found secretly eavesdropping; on the contrary, her eyes, sharp and determined, were now darting threats which I could not understand, and her defiant attitude showed that she was not minded to move from this unseemly position, but intended to go on keeping watch and listening. Her superior strength of will confused me; unconsciously, I avoided the steady glance bent on me like a warning. And when finally, with uncertain step, I crept back into the room where my teacher was impatiently holding the bottle, the boundless joy I had just felt had frozen into a strange anxiety.
But how unconcernedly he was waiting, how cheerfully his gaze moved to me—I had always dreamed of seeing him like that some day, with the cloud of melancholy removed from his brow! Yet now that it was at peace for the first time, ardently turned to me, every word failed me; all my secret joy seeped away as if through hidden pores. Confused, indeed ashamed, I heard him thanking me again, still using the familiar du, and our glasses touched with a silvery sound. Putting his arm around me in friendly fashion, he led me over to the armchairs, where we sat opposite each other, his hand placed loosely in mine; for the first time I felt that he was entirely open and at ease. But words failed me; my glance involuntarily kept going to the door, where I feared she might still be standing and listening. She can hear us, I kept thinking, she can hear every word he says to me, every word I say to him—why today, why today of all days? And when, with that warm gaze enveloping me, he suddenly said: “There’s something I would like to tell you about my own youth today,” I put out a hand to stop him, showing such alarm that he looked up in surprise. “Not today,” I stammered, “not today … please forgive me.” The idea of his giving himself away to an eavesdropper whose presence I must conceal from him was too terrible.
Uncertainly, my teacher looked at me. “What’s the matter?” he asked, sounding slightly displeased.
“I’m tired … forgive me … somehow it’s been too much for me … I think,” and here I rose to my feet, trembling, “I think I’d better go.” Involuntarily my glance went past him to the door, where I could not help feeling that hostile curiosity must still be jealously on watch behind the wood.
Moving slowly, he too rose from his chair. A shadow moved over his suddenly tired face. “Are you really going already … today, of all days?” He held my hand; imperceptible pressure made it heavy. But suddenly he dropped it abruptly, like a stone. “A pity,” he said, disappointed, “I was so much looking forward to speaking freely to you for once. A pity!” For a moment a profound sigh hovered like a dark butterfly in the room. I was deeply ashamed, and I felt a curiously inexplicable fear; uncertainly, I stepped back and closed the door of the room behind me.
I groped my way laboriously up to my room and threw myself on the bed. But I could not sleep. Never before had I felt so strongly that my living quarters were separated from theirs only by thin floorboards, that there was only the impermeable dark wood between us. And now, with my sharpened senses and as if by magic, I sensed them both awake below me. Without seeing or hearing, I saw and heard him pacing restlessly up and down his study, while she sat silently or wandered around listening elsewhere. But I felt that both of them had their eyes open, and their wakefulness was horribly imparted to me—it was a nightmare, the whole heavy, silent house with its shadows and darkness suddenly weighing down on me.
I threw the covers off. My hands were sweating. What place had I reached? I had sensed the secret quite close, its hot breath already on my face, and now it had retreated again, but its shadow, its silent, opaque shadow still murmured in the air, I felt it as a dangerous presence in the house, stalking on quiet paws like a cat, always there, leaping back and forth, always touching and confusing me with its electrically charged fur, warm yet ghostly. And in the dark I kept feeling his encompassing gaze, soft as his proffered hand, and that other glance, the keen, threatening, alarmed look in his wife’s eyes. What business did I have in their secret, why did the pair of them bring me into the midst of their passion with my eyes blindfolded, why were they chasing me into the preserves of their own unintelligible strife, each forcing a blazing accumulation of anger and hatred into my mind?
My brow was still burning. I sat up and opened the window. Outside, the town lay peaceful under the summer clouds; windows were still lamplit, but the people sitting in them were united by calm conversation, cheered by a book or by domestic music-making. And surely calm sleep reigned where darkness already showed behind the white window frames. Above all these resting rooftops, mild peace hovered like the moon in silvery mists, a relaxed and gentle silence, and the eleven strokes of the clock striking from the tower fell lightly on all their ears, whether they chanced to be listening or were dreaming. Only I still felt wide awake, balefully beset by strange thoughts. Some inner sense was feverishly trying to make out that confused murmuring.
Suddenly I started. Wasn’t that a footstep on the stairs? I sat up, listening. Sure enough, something was making its way blindly up them, something in the nature of cautious, hesitant, uncertain footsteps—I knew the creak and groan of the worn wood. Those footsteps could only be coming towards me, only to me, since no one else lived up here on the top floor except for the deaf old lady, and she would have been asleep long ago and never had visitors. Was it my teacher? No, that was not his rapid, restless tread; these footsteps hesitated and waited cravenly—there it was again!—on every step: an intruder, a criminal might approach like this, not a friend. I strained my ears so intently that there was a r
oaring in them. And suddenly a frosty sensation crept up my bare legs.
Then the latch clicked quietly—my sinister visitor must already be on the threshold. A faint draught of air on my bare toes told me that the outer door had been opened, yet no one else, apart from my teacher, had the key. But if it were he—why so hesitant, so strange? Was he anxious about me, did he want to see if I was all right? And why did my sinister visitor hesitate now, just outside the door? For his furtively creeping step had suddenly stopped. I was equally immobile as I faced the horror. I felt as if I ought to scream, but my throat was closed with mucus. I wanted to open the door; my feet refused to move. Only a thin partition now divided me and my mysterious visitor, but neither of us took a step forward to face the other.
Then the bell in the tower struck—only once, a quarter-to-twelve. But it broke the spell. I flung the door open.
And indeed there stood my teacher, candle in hand. The draught from the door as it suddenly swung open made the flame leap with a blue light, and behind it, gigantic and separated from him as he stood there motionless, his quivering shadow flickered drunkenly over the wall behind him. But he too moved when he saw me; he pulled himself together like a man woken from sleep by a sudden breath of keen air, shivering and involuntarily pulling the covers around him. Only then did he step back, the dripping candle swaying in his hand.