Beware of Pity

by Stefan Zweig

  Quite beside herself, she had positively shouted the last few words at me, her eyes smouldering, her face livid. Then suddenly her fury subsided. Her head fell back as though exhausted on the chair, and only gradually did the colour return to her still quivering lips.

  ‘Well, that’s that!’ she said in a low tone, as though ashamed. ‘I had to say that some time. And now it’s all over and done with. Let’s not talk of it any more. Give me ... give me a cigarette.’

  And now something strange happened to me. I am as a rule tolerably controlled and have firm, steady hands. But this unexpected outburst had so shattered me that I felt as though my limbs were paralysed; I had never felt so stunned in my life. Laboriously taking a cigarette out of my case, I handed it to her and lit a match. But my fingers trembled so violently that I could not hold the match steady, and the flame flickered in the empty air and went out. I had to light a second match, and this too swayed unsteadily in my trembling hand before her cigarette was lit. My obvious clumsiness must have made her realize the state I was in, and it was in quite another, a surprised, disquieted voice that she now asked me gently:

  ‘Whatever is the matter with you? You’re trembling.... What ... what is upsetting you so? ... What is all this to you?’

  The tiny flame of the match had gone out. I sat down in silence.

  ‘How could you let my stupid prattle upset you so?’ she murmured in really troubled tones. ‘Papa is right. You are really a ... a very ... a very strange person.’

  At that moment there was a faint droning noise behind us. It was the lift, on its way up to the terrace. Josef opened the gate, and Kekesfalva stepped out with that guilty, shy air of his, that droop of the shoulders that for some reason was always more noticeable whenever he approached his crippled daughter.

  Naturally I got up to greet Kekesfalva. He gave me an embarrassed nod and bent down to kiss Edith on the brow. Then there was a strange silence. Everyone in that house seemed to sense everything about everyone else. The old man must immediately have been aware of the dangerous tension between the two of us, for he hovered about uneasily with downcast eyes. I could see he would have liked to run away. Edith made an effort to break the ice.

  ‘Just fancy, Papa, this is the first time Lieutenant Hofmiller has been up to the terrace!’

  ‘Yes, it’s wonderful up here,’ I said, conscious as I spoke of the pitiful banality of my words, and then relapsed into silence. To hide his embarrassment, Kekesfalva bent over Edith’s chair.

  ‘I’m afraid it will soon be too chilly for you up here. Hadn’t we better go downstairs?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Edith. It was a welcome relief to all of us to have to busy ourselves with various trifles, such as collecting the books, wrapping Edith in her shawl, ringing the bell that here, as everywhere else in the house, lay ready to hand on the table. In two minutes’ time the lift came droning up and Josef wheeled the invalid’s chair cautiously into it.

  ‘We’ll be down in a moment,’ said Kekesfalva, waving to her affectionately. ‘Perhaps you’ll change for dinner? In the meantime Lieutenant Hofmiller and I can take a little stroll round the garden.’

  The man-servant closed the lift door, and the invalid chair sank into the depths below as though into a crypt. The old man and I involuntarily averted our gaze. We were both silent, but suddenly I became aware that he was timidly approaching me.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, there’s something I’d like to talk over with you ... that is, I’d like to ask you a favour ... Perhaps we might go over to my office in the estate buildings? I mean, of course, only if you wouldn’t mind ... Otherwise we can, of course, go for a walk in the park.’

  ‘But it’s an honour, I assure you, Herr von Kekesfalva,’ I replied.

  At that moment the lift came droning up again to take us down. We descended, and then walked across the courtyard to the estate building. It struck me how stealthily Kekesfalva made his way past the house, how he seemed to hug the wall, to make himself small, as though afraid of being caught. Involuntarily — I could not help it — I found myself walking behind him with equally noiseless stealthy tread.

  At the end of the low building, which would have been the better for a fresh coat of whitewash, he opened a door and ushered me into his office, which proved to be hardly better furnished than my own room in barracks: a cheap desk, shabby and rickety; old, discoloured wicker chairs; and on the wall, over the torn wallpaper, one or two charts which had evidently not been in use for years. Even the musty smell reminded me unpleasantly of our own garrison offices. At the first glance — how much I had learned to grasp in these last few days! — I realized that this old man showered luxuries and comforts on his child alone, and stinted himself like a thrifty peasant. I had noticed for the first time as he walked ahead of me how shabby and shiny his black coat was at the elbows; he must have been wearing it continuously for the last ten or fifteen years.

  Kekesfalva pushed forward the capacious arm-chair upholstered in black leather, the only comfortable chair in the room. ‘Sit down, Herr Leutnant, do sit down,’ he said with a certain tender insistence in his tone, bringing up one of the doubtful-looking wicker chairs for himself before I could forestall him. Now we sat close to one another; he could, he must begin, and I waited in an odd state of agitation to hear what favour this rich man, this millionaire, could have to ask of me, a poor subaltern. But he kept his head obstinately lowered, as though he were casually examining his shoes. I could hear the breath coming heavily and painfully from the bowed chest.

  At length he raised his forehead, which was beaded with sweat, and removed his clouded spectacles; deprived of its usual flashing screen, his face looked different, more naked as it were, more pitiful, more tragic; as is so often the case with short-sighted people, his eyes looked duller and more weary than when seen through the magnifying lenses. I thought I could tell too, from the slight inflammation round the lids, that the old man slept little and slept badly. Once more I could feel that warm surging up of emotion within me; my pity, I now knew, was gushing forth. Suddenly I felt I was no longer sitting opposite the rich Herr von Kekesfalva, but an old man weighed down with sorrow.

  Clearing his throat, he now began in a husky voice that was still imperfectly under control: ‘I want to ask you a very great favour, Herr Leutnant ... I know, of course, I have no right to trouble you. You scarcely know us ... besides, you can refuse, of course you can refuse. Perhaps it is presumptuous of me, importunate, but from the very first moment I met you I have felt confidence in you. You are, one feels it straight away, a good man, a man always ready to lend a helping hand. Yes, yes, yes’ — I must have made a gesture of protest — ‘you are a good man. There is something about you that inspires confidence, and sometimes ... I feel as though you had been sent from ...’ — he stopped short, and I could tell that he had been going to say ‘from God’, but had not had the courage — ‘sent to me as someone to whom I can speak frankly. Besides, it’s not a very big thing that I want to ask of you ... but here am I rambling on without even asking you whether you’re willing to listen to me.’

  ‘Why, of course!’

  ‘Thank you. When one is old, one has only to look at a person to know him through and through. I know a good man when I see one. My wife taught me that, God rest her soul ... That was the first tragedy, her being taken from me, and yet I keep telling myself that it was perhaps better that she did not live to see the tragedy that befell the child ... she could not have borne it. You know, when the whole thing began, five years ago ... I had no idea then it would last so long ... How ever could one imagine that one day a child could be just like other children, running about and playing and dancing about like a top ... and then all of a sudden it should all be over, over for ever? ... And then, we’ve all been brought up to respect doctors, we read in the papers of the miracles they’re able to perform, they can stitch up people’s hearts and graft new eyes on to them, we’re told ... And so it was only natural that I sh
ould think that they could do a simple thing like curing a child — a child that was born healthy, mark you, that had always been healthy — in no time. That was why I wasn’t very alarmed at first, for I never believed, never for a moment, that God could do such a thing, that He could afflict a child, an innocent child, for ever. If it had happened to me — well, my legs have carried me about for long enough, what further need have I of them? And then, I’ve been by no means a good man, I’ve done a lot of wicked things, I’ve even ... But what was I saying? ... Yes, yes, if it had happened to me, I could have understood. But how could God go so wide of the mark and strike the wrong one, an innocent creature? How are the likes of us to comprehend that the legs of a living creature, a child, should suddenly go dead, just because a mere nothing, a bacillus, the doctors said, and imagined they were saying something that made sense ... But bacillus is only a word, when all’s said and done, an excuse, but that other thing — that’s real, the fact that a child should lie there, her legs suddenly rigid, unable to walk or move any longer, and that one should have to stand helplessly looking on ... That’s something one cannot, one cannot comprehend.’

  With a vehement gesture he wiped the sweat from his rumpled hair with the back of his hand. ‘Of course I made inquiries of every possible doctor ... Wherever there was a famous doctor to be found, I went to see him. I got them all to come here, and they held forth and talked Latin and discussed and held consultations; one tried one thing and one another, and then they said they hoped, and they trusted, and took their fees and departed, and things were left just where they were. That is to say, there has been some improvement, as a matter of fact considerable improvement. At first she had to lie flat on her back and her whole body was paralysed, whereas now at least her arms and the upper part of her body are normal and she can walk alone on crutches ... some improvement, yes, considerable improvement — I mustn’t be unfair — there certainly is ... But none of them has effected a complete cure. They have all shrugged their shoulders and counselled patience, patience, patience. Only one of them has persevered with her, only one. Dr Condor ... I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him?’

  I was obliged to say that I had never heard the name.

  ‘Of course, how could you be expected to know him? You’re in perfect health, and he’s not one of those who throws his weight about. He doesn’t hold a university post. I don’t believe he has a big practice, either ... that is, he isn’t out for a big practice. He is really a remarkable, a most uncommon man. I don’t know exactly how to explain it to you. He’s not interested in ordinary cases, the kind that can be treated by any sawbones ... he’s only interested in severe cases that other doctors give up with a shrug of the shoulders. I can’t, of course, uneducated as I am, affirm that Dr Condor is a better doctor than other doctors. I only know that he is a better man. I got to know him first when my wife was ill, and I saw how he fought for her life. He was the only one who refused to give up hope until the very last, and I realized then that here was a man who lived and died with every one of his patients. He has — I don’t know if I’m expressing myself properly — he has a kind of passion to get the better of an illness. He’s not actuated, like other doctors, by ambition to make money and a name for himself. He doesn’t think of himself, but of others, of those who are suffering. Oh, he’s a wonderful man!’

  The old man had worked himself up into a state of excitement, and the eyes that had been so tired took on a fierce brilliance.

  ‘A wonderful man, I tell you, who would never leave a soul in the lurch; he looks upon every case as a solemn duty. I know I’m not able to express myself very well, but it seems as though he feels guilty whenever he’s unable to do anything — personally guilty — and for that reason — you won’t believe it, but I swear to you it’s the truth — on one occasion when he failed to do what he’d set out to do — he had promised a woman who was going blind that he’d put her right — and then, when she really did go blind, he married her. Just fancy, a young man marrying a blind woman seven years older than himself, not beautiful and without any money, an hysterical creature, who is now a burden to him and is not the least bit grateful! ... That shows, doesn’t it, what kind of man he is, and you’ll understand how happy I am to have found such a man, who looks after my child as I do myself. I have remembered him in my will ... if anyone can help her, he can. God grant he may! God grant it!’

  The old man clasped his hands as though in prayer. Then he jerked his chair up nearer to me.

  ‘And now listen, Herr Leutnant. I want to ask you a favour. I’ve told you how sympathetic this Dr Condor is. But, you see, just because he is such a good man, I feel uneasy. I’m always afraid, you see ... I’m always afraid that out of consideration for my feelings he won’t tell me the truth, the whole truth. He’s always promising me and assuring me that there’s definite improvement, constant improvement, and that the child will eventually get quite well. But whenever I ask him point blank how long it will take, he is evasive and merely says, “Patience, patience”. But I must have certainty. I am an old, a sick man, and I must know if I shall live to see her recover, and if she is ever going to get well, quite well ... No, believe me, Herr Leutnant, I can’t go on like this. I must know, I can’t bear this uncertainty any longer.’

  Overcome by his agitation, he rose and took three vigorous, rapid paces to the window. I had seen him like this before. Always when the tears rushed to his eyes he would turn away abruptly like this. He too refused to be pitied — how like her he was! His right hand fumbled clumsily in the back pocket of his pitiful old black coat and drew out a handkerchief, but it was in vain that he pretended he had only been wiping the sweat from his brow, for I could see only too clearly the reddened lids. Once, twice, he paced up and down the room; I could not tell whether the groans I heard issued from the rotting floor-boards or from the decrepit old man himself. Then, like a swimmer about to plunge, he took a deep breath.

  ‘Forgive me. I didn’t mean to talk about it all. What was I going to say? Oh yes, tomorrow Dr Condor is coming again from Vienna — he made an appointment over the telephone. He comes every two or three weeks to see how things are going. If it rested with me I wouldn’t let him go away at all; he could stay here in the house and I would pay him whatever he wished. But he says he needs a certain perspective so as to judge the progress of his patient, so as to ... a certain perspective, so as to ... yes, what was I saying? ... I know. He is coming tomorrow, and he’ll examine Edith in the afternoon; he always stays to dinner afterwards and goes back by the night express. And it occurred to me that if someone were to ask him casually ... a complete stranger, who had nothing to do with the whole thing, whom he doesn’t even know ... were to ask him ... quite casually, as it were ... just as one asks after an acquaintance ... ask him how things were going with regard to Edith’s illness, and whether he thought the child would ever really be cured at all — quite cured, I mean — completely cured, and how long he thought it would take ... I have a feeling that he wouldn’t lie to you. He has no need to spare your feelings, he need not scruple to tell you the truth. When he talks to me he may be keeping something back; after all, I am the child’s father, I am an old, sick man, and he knows how it tears at my heart. But you must not, of course, let him suspect that you have talked to me about it. You must touch upon the subject quite casually, just as a stranger might make inquiries of a doctor. Will you ... will you do this for me?’

  How was I to refuse? There in front of me, his eyes swimming, sat the old man, waiting for my assent as though for the Last Trump. Naturally I promised all he asked. His hands shot out towards me.

  ‘I knew it! I knew it when you came back that time and were so kind to the child, after ... well, you know. I knew at once that here was a man who would understand me ... the very man to ask him for me, and I promise you, I swear to you, not a soul shall know, either before or afterwards, neither Edith, nor Condor, nor Ilona. Only I shall know what a tremendous service you have done
me.’

  ‘But it’s no trouble at all ... it’s a mere trifle.’

  ‘No, it is not a trifle ... it is a great ... a very great service you’re doing me ... a very great service indeed, and if ...’ — he hunched his shoulders slightly and his voice seemed to tail off — ‘if I for my part can ever ... ever do anything for you. Perhaps you have ...’

  I must have recoiled (was he going to offer to pay me on the spot?), for he went on hurriedly in the stammering tones that in his case always betrayed profound agitation:

  ‘Oh no, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean ... I don’t mean anything material ... I only mean ... I mean ... I have good connections. I know a whole crowd of people at the various ministries, at the War Ministry too, and it’s always a good thing these days to have someone at the back of one. That’s all I meant, of course. For everyone there may come a time ... that was all ... that was all I was going to say.’

  The timid way in which he offered me his help made me feel ashamed. The whole time he had not glanced up at me once, but had, as it were, addressed his own hands. Now for the first time he looked up uneasily, groped for the spectacles that he had laid aside, and settled them on his nose with trembling fingers.

  ‘It might be better,’ he murmured, ‘if we were to go across to the house now, or ... or Edith will be wondering why we’ve been away so long. One has, unfortunately, to be terribly on one’s guard with her; since she has been ill, her senses seem to have become more acute than other people’s; as she lies there in her room she knows everything that goes on in the house. She knows what one is going to say almost before one has opened one’s mouth. So, you see, she might ... that is why I suggest we had better go across to the house before her suspicions are aroused.’