Fantastic Night & Other Stories
Page 17
Frau Sporschil and I went on talking about him for a long time, the two last persons to remember this strange creature, Buchmendel: I to whom in my youth the book-dealer from Galicia had given the first revelation of a life wholly devoted to the things of the spirit; she, the poor old woman who was caretaker of a café-toilet, who had never read a book in her life, and whose only tie with this strangely matched comrade in her subordinate, poverty-stricken world had been that for twenty-five years she had brushed his overcoat and had sewn on buttons for him. We, too, might have been considered strangely assorted, but Frau Sporschil and I got on very well together, linked, as we sat at the forsaken marble-topped table, by our common memories that our talk had conjured up—for joint memories, and above all loving memories, always establish a tie. Suddenly, while in the full stream of talk, she exclaimed:
“Lord Jesus, how forgetful I am. I still have the book he left on the table the evening Herr Gurtner gave him the key of the street. I didn’t know where to take it. Afterwards, when no one appeared to claim it, I ventured to keep it as a souvenir. You don’t think it wrong of me, Sir?”
She went to a locker where she stored some of the requisites for her job, and produced the volume for my inspection. I found it hard to repress a smile, for I was face to face with one of life’s little ironies. It was the second volume of Hayn’s Bibliotheca Germanorum erotica et curiosa, a compendium of gallant literature known to every book-collector. Habent sua fata libelli—Books have their own destiny! This scabrous publication, a legacy of the vanished magician, had fallen into toilworn hands which had perhaps never held any other printed work than a prayer-book. Maybe I was not wholly successful in controlling my mirth, for the expression of my face seemed to perplex the worthy soul, and once more she said:
“You don’t think it wrong of me to keep it, Sir?”
I shook her cordially by the hand.
“Keep it, and welcome,” I said. “I am absolutely sure that our old friend Mendel would be only too delighted to know that someone among the many thousand he has provided with books, cherishes his memory.”
Then I took my departure, feeling a trifle ashamed when I compared myself with this excellent old woman, who, so simply and so humanely, had fostered the memory of the dead scholar. For she, uncultured though she was, had at least preserved a book as a memento; whereas I, a man of education and a writer, had completely forgotten Buchmendel for years—I, who at least should have known that one only makes books in order to keep in touch with one’s fellows after one has ceased to breathe, and thus to defend oneself against the inexorable fate of all that lives—transitoriness and oblivion.
About the Author
STEFAN ZWEIG was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoyed literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide.
Copyright
Original text © Williams Verlag AG. Zurich
Fantastic Night first published in German as Phantastiche Nacht in 1922
Letter from an Unknown Woman first published
in German as Brief einer Unbekannten in 1922
The Fowler Snared first published
in German as Sommernovellette in 1906
The Invisible Collection first published
in German as Die unsichtbare Sammlung in 1925
Buchmendel first published in German as Buchmendel in 1929
First published in 2004 by
Pushkin Press
12 Chester Terrace
London NW1 4ND
Reprinted 2007
This ebook edition first published in 2011
ISBN: 978 1 906548 57 5
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
Cover: Donati’s Comet over Balliol College
by William Turner of Oxford (1789-1862)
© The Bridgeman Art Library Getty Images
Photograph of the author: Stefan Zweig
© Roger-Viollet Rex Features
Set in 10 on 12 Monotype Baskerville
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