by Stefan Zweig
Above the windows the first light of dawn was showing. But it did not bring light to him, for he did not want to see new days dawning in the life he had lived for so many years, touched by its miracles yet never really transfigured by them. And now, without fear, he felt close to the last miracle, the miracle that ceases to be dream and illusion, and is only the dark eternal truth.
THE STAR ABOVE THE FOREST
A STRANGE THING HAPPENED one one day when the slender, elegantly groomed waiter François was leaning over the beautiful Polish Baroness Ostrovska’s shoulder to serve her. It lasted for only a second, it was not marked by any start or sudden movement of surprise, any restlessness or momentary agitation. Yet it was one of those seconds in which thousands of hours and days of rejoicing and torment are held spellbound, just as all the wild force of a forest of tall, dark, rustling oak trees, with their rocking branches and swaying crowns, is contained in a single tiny acorn dropping through the air. To outward appearance, nothing happened during that second. With a supple movement François, the waiter in the grand hotel on the Riviera, leaned further down to place the serving platter at a more convenient angle for the Baroness’s questing knife. For that one moment, however, his face was just above her softly curling, fragrant waves of hair, and when he instinctively opened the eyes that he had respectfully closed, his reeling gaze saw the gentle white radiance of the line of her neck as it disappeared from that dark cascade of hair, to be lost in her dark red, full-skirted dress. He felt as if crimson flames were flaring up in him. And her knife clinked quietly on the platter, which was imperceptibly shaking. But although in that second he foresaw all the fateful consequences of his sudden enchantment, he expertly mastered his emotion and went on serving at the table with the cool, slightly debonair stylishness of a well-trained waiter with impeccable good taste. He handed the platter calmly to the Baroness’s usual companion at table, an elderly aristocrat with gracefully assured manners, who was talking of unimportant matters in crystal-clear French with a very faint accent. Then he walked away from the table without a gesture or a backward glance.
Those minutes were the beginning of his abandoning himself to a very strange kind of devotion, such a reeling, intoxicated sensation that the proud and portentous word ‘love’ is not quite right for it. It was that faithful, dog-like devotion without desire that those in mid-life seldom feel, and is known only to the very young and the very old. A love devoid of any deliberation, not thinking but only dreaming. He entirely forgot the unjust yet ineradicable disdain that even the clever and considerate show to those who wear a waiter’s tailcoat, he did not look for opportunities and chance meetings, but nurtured this strange affection in his blood until its secret fervour was beyond all mockery and criticism. His love was not a matter of secret winks and lurking glances, the sudden boldness of audacious gestures, the senseless ardour of salivating lips and trembling hands; it was quiet toil, the performance of those small services that are all the more sacred and sublime in their humility because they are intended to go unnoticed. After the evening meal he smoothed out the crumpled folds of the tablecloth where she had been sitting with tender, caressing fingers, as one would stroke a beloved woman’s soft hands at rest; he adjusted everything close to her with devout symmetry, as if he were preparing it for a special occasion. He carefully carried the glasses that her lips had touched up to his own small, musty attic bedroom, and watched them sparkle like precious jewellery by night when the moonlight streamed in. He was always to be found in some corner, secretly attentive to her as she strolled and walked about. He drank in what she said as you might relish a sweet, fragrantly intoxicating wine on the tongue, and responded to every one of her words and orders as eagerly as children run to catch a ball flying through the air. So his intoxicated soul brought an ever-changing, rich glow into his dull, ordinary life. The wise folly of clothing the whole experience in the cold, destructive words of reality was an idea that never entered his mind: the poor waiter François was in love with an exotic Baroness who would be for ever unattainable. For he did not think of her as reality, but as something very distant, very high above him, sufficient in its mere reflection of life. He loved the imperious pride of her orders, the commanding arch of her black eyebrows that almost touched one another, the wilful lines around her small mouth, the confident grace of her bearing. Subservience seemed to him quite natural, and he felt the humiliating intimacy of menial labour as good fortune, because it enabled him to step so often into the magic circle that surrounded her.
So a dream suddenly awakened in the life of a simple man, like a beautiful, carefully raised garden flower blooming by a roadside where the dust of travel obliterates all other seedlings. It was the frenzy of someone plain and ordinary, an enchanting narcotic dream in the midst of a cold and monotonous life. And such people’s dreams are like a rudderless boat drifting aimlessly on quiet, shining waters, rocking with delight, until suddenly its keel grounds abruptly on an unknown bank.
However, reality is stronger and more robust than any dreams. One evening the stout hotel porter from Waadland told him in passing, “Baroness Ostrovska is leaving tomorrow night on the eight o’clock train.” And he added a couple of other names which meant nothing to François, and which he did not note. For those words had turned to a confused, tumultuous roaring in his head. A couple of times he mechanically ran his fingers over his aching brow, as if to push away an oppressive weight lying there and dimming his understanding. He took a few steps; he was unsteady on his feet. Alarmed and uncertain, he passed a tall, gilt-framed mirror from which a pale strange face looked back at him, white as a sheet. No ideas would come to him; they seemed to be held captive behind a dark and misty wall. Almost unconsciously, he felt his way down by the hand-rail of the broad flight of steps into the twilit garden, where tall pines stood alone like dark thoughts. His restless figure took a few more shaky steps, like the low reeling flight of a large dark nocturnal bird, and then he sank down on a bench with his head pressed to its cool back. It was perfectly quiet. The sea sparkled here and there beyond the round shapes of shrubs. Faint, trembling lights shone out on the water, and the monotonous, murmuring sing-song of distant breakers was lost in the silence.
Suddenly everything was clear to him, perfectly clear. So painfully clear that he could almost summon up a smile. It was all over. Baroness Ostrovska was going home, and François the waiter would stay at his post. Was that so strange? Didn’t all the foreign guests who came to the hotel leave again after two, three or four weeks? How foolish not to have thought of it before. It was so clear, it was enough to make you laugh or cry. And ideas kept whirring through his head. Tomorrow evening on the eight o’clock train to Warsaw. To Warsaw—hours and hours of travel through forests and valleys, passing hills and mountains, steppes and rivers and noisy towns. Warsaw! It was so far away! He couldn’t even imagine it, but he felt it in the depths of his heart, that proud and threatening, harsh and distant word Warsaw. While he…
For a second a small, dream-like hope fluttered up in his heart. He could follow. He could hire himself out there as a servant, a secretary, could stand in the street as a freezing beggar, anything not to be so dreadfully far away, just to breathe the air of the same city, perhaps see her sometimes driving past, catch a glimpse of her shadow, her dress, her dark hair. Daydreams flashed hastily through his mind. But this was a hard and pitiless hour. Clear and plain, he saw how unattainable his dreams were. He worked it out: at the most he had savings of a hundred or two hundred francs. That would scarcely take him half the way. And then what? As if through a torn veil he suddenly saw his own life, knew how wretched, pitiful, hateful it must be now. Empty, desolate years working as a waiter, tormented by foolish longing—was something so ridiculous to be his future? The idea made him shudder. And suddenly all these trains of thoughts came stormily and inevitably together. There was only one way out…
The treetops swayed quietly in an imperceptible breeze. A dark, black night menacingly faced h
im. He rose from his bench, confident and composed, and walked over the crunching gravel up to the great building of the hotel where it slumbered in white silence. He stopped outside her windows. They were dark, with no spark of light at which his dreamy longing could have been kindled. Now his blood was flowing calmly, and he walked like a man whom nothing will ever confuse or deceive again. In his room, he flung himself on the bed without any sign of agitation, and slept a dull, dreamless sleep until the alarm summoned him to get up in the morning.
Next day his demeanour was entirely within the bounds of carefully calculated reflection and self-imposed calm. He carried out his duties with cool indifference, and his gestures were so sure and easy that no one could have guessed at the bitter decision behind his deceptive mask. Just before dinner he hurried out with his small savings to the best florist in the resort and bought choice flowers whose colourful glory spoke to him like words: tulips glowing with fiery, passionate gold—shaggy white chrysanthemums resembling light, exotic dreams—slender orchids, the graceful images of longing—and a few proud, intoxicating roses. And then he bought a magnificent vase of sparkling, opalescent glass. He gave the few francs he still had left to a beggar child in passing, with a quick and carefree movement. Then he hurried back. With sad solemnity, he put the vase of flowers down in front of the Baroness’s place at table, which he now prepared for the last time with slow, voluptuously meticulous attention.
Then came the dinner. He served it as usual: cool, silent, skilful, without looking up. Only at the end did he embrace her supple, proud figure with an endlessly long look of which she never knew. And she had never seemed to him so beautiful as in that last, perfect look. Then he stepped calmly back from the table, without any gesture of farewell, and left the dining room. Bearing himself like a guest to whom the staff would bow and nod their heads, he walked down the corridors and the handsome flight of steps outside the reception area and out into the street: any observer must surely have been able to tell that, at that moment, he was leaving his past behind. He stood outside the hotel for a moment, undecided, and then turned to the bright villas and wide gardens, following the road past them, walking on, ever on with his thoughtful, dignified stride, with no idea where he was going.
He wandered restlessly like this until evening, in a lost, dreamy state of mind. He was not thinking of anything any more. Not about the past, or the inevitable moment to come. He was no longer playing with ideas of death, not in the way one might well pick up a shining revolver with its deep, menacing mouth in those last moments, weighing it in the hand, and then lower it again. He had passed sentence on himself long ago. Only images came to him now in rapid flight, like swallows soaring. First images of his youthful days, up to a fateful moment at school when a foolish adventure had suddenly closed an alluring future to him and thrust him out into the turmoil of the world. Then his restless wanderings, his efforts to earn a living, all the attempts that kept failing, until the great black wave that we call destiny broke his pride and he ended up in a position unworthy of him. Many colourful memories whirled past. And finally the gentle reflection of these last few days glowed in his waking dreams, suddenly pushing the dark door of reality open again. He had to go through it. He remembered that he intended to die today.
For a while he thought of the many ways leading to death, assessing their comparative bitterness and speed, until suddenly an idea shot through his mind. His clouded senses abruptly showed him a dark symbol: just as she had unknowingly, destructively driven over his fate, so she should also crush his body. She herself would do it. She would finish her own work. And now his ideas came thick and fast with strange certainty. In just under an hour, at eight, the express carrying her away from him left. He would throw himself under its wheels, let himself be trampled down by the same violent force that was tearing the woman of his dreams from him. He would bleed to death beneath her feet. The ideas stormed on after one another as if in jubilation. He knew the right place too: further off, near the wooded slope, where the swaying treetops hid the sight of the last bend in the railway line nearby. He looked at his watch; the seconds and his hammering blood were beating out the same rhythm. It was time to set off. Now a spring returned to his sluggish footsteps, along with the certainty of his destination. He walked at that brisk, hasty pace that does away with dreaming as one goes forward, restlessly striding on in the twilight glory of the Mediterranean evening towards the place where the sky was a streak of purple lying embedded between distant, wooded hills. And he hurried on until he came to the two silver lines of the railway track shining ahead of him, guiding him on his way. The track led him by winding paths on through the deep, fragrant valleys, their veils of mist now silvered by the soft moonlight, it took him into the hilly landscape where the sight of sparkling lights along the beach showed how far away the nocturnal, black expanse of the sea was now. And at last it presented him with the deep, restlessly whispering forest that hid the railway line in its lowering shadows.
It was late when, breathing heavily, he reached the dark wooded slope. The trees stood around him, black and ominous, but high above, in their shimmering crowns, faint, quivering moonlight was caught in the branches that moaned as they embraced the slight nocturnal breeze. Sometimes this hollow silence was broken by the strange cries of night birds. In this alarming isolation, his thoughts froze entirely. He was merely waiting, waiting and straining his eyes to see the red light of the train appearing down by the curve of the first bend. Sometimes he looked nervously at his watch again, counting seconds. Then he listened once more, thinking that he heard the distant whistle of the locomotive. But it was a false alarm. All was perfectly silent again. Time seemed to stand still.
At last, far away, he saw the light. At that moment he felt a pang in his heart, and could not have said if it was fear or jubilation. He flung himself down on the rails with a brusque movement. At first he felt the pleasantly cool sensation of the strips of iron against his temples for a moment. Then he listened. The train was still far off. It might be several minutes yet. There was nothing to be heard but the whispering of the trees in the wind. His thoughts went this way and that in confusion, until suddenly one stopped and pierced his heart painfully, like an arrow: he was dying for her sake, and she would never know. Not a single gentle ripple of his life as it came to its turbulent end had ever touched hers. She would never know that a stranger’s life had depended on her own, and had been crushed by it.
Very quietly, the rhythmic chugging of the approaching engine came through the breathless air from afar. But that idea burned on, tormenting the dying man in his last minutes. The train rattled closer and closer. Then he opened his eyes once more. Above him was a silent, blue-black sky, with the tops of a few trees swaying in front of it. And above the forest stood a shining, white star. A single star above the forest… the rails beneath his head were already beginning to vibrate and sing faintly. But the idea burned on like fire in his heart, and in his eyes as they saw all the fire and despair of his love. His whole longing and that last painful question flowed into the white and shining star that looked mildly down on him. Closer and closer thundered the train. And once more, with a last inexpressible look, the dying man took the sparkling star above the forest to his heart. Then he closed his eyes. The rails were trembling and swaying, closer and closer came the rattling of the express train, making the forest echo as if great bells were hammering out a rhythm. The earth seemed to sway. One more deafening, rushing, whirring sound, a whirlwind of noise, then a shrill scream, the terrifyingly animal scream of the steam whistle, and the screech and groan of brakes applied in vain…
*
The beautiful Baroness Ostrovska had a reserved compartment to herself in the express. She had been reading a French magazine since the train left, gently cradled by the rocking movement of the carriage. The air in the enclosed space was sultry, and drenched with the heavy fragrance of many fading flowers. Clusters of white lilac were already hanging heavily, like over-ripe fru
it, from the magnificent farewell baskets that she had been given, flowers hung limp on their stems, and the broad, heavy cups of the roses seemed to be withering in the hot cloud of intoxicating perfumes. Even in the haste of the express as it rushed along, a suffocatingly close atmosphere heated the heavy drifts of perfume weighing oppressively down.
Suddenly she lowered her book with limp fingers. She herself did not know why. Some secret feeling was tearing at her. She felt a dull but painful pressure. A sudden sense of constriction that she couldn’t explain clutched her heart. She thought she would choke on the heavy, intoxicating aroma of the flowers. And that terrifying pain did not pass, she felt every revolution of the rushing wheels, their blind, pounding, forward movement was an unspeakable torment. Suddenly she longed to be able to halt the swift momentum of the train, to haul it back from the dark pain towards which it was racing. She had never in her life felt such fear of something terrible, invisible and cruel seizing on her heart as she did now, in those seconds of incomprehensible, incredible pain and fear. And that unspeakable feeling grew stronger and stronger, tightening its grasp around her throat. The idea of being able to stop the train was like a prayer moaned out loud in her mind…
Then she hears a sudden shrill whistle, the wild, warning scream of the locomotive, the wailing groan and crunch of the brakes. And the rhythm of the flying wheels slackens, goes slower and slower, until there is a stuttering rattle and a faltering jerk.
With difficulty, she makes her way to the window to fill her lungs with fresh air. The pane rattles down. Dark figures are hurrying around… words fly back and forth, different voices: a suicide… under the wheels… dead… yes, out here in the open…
She starts. Instinctively, her eyes go to the high and silent sky and the dark trees whispering above it. And beyond them, a single star is shining over the forest. She is aware of its gaze on her like a sparkling tear. Looking at it, she abruptly feels such grief as she has never known before. A fiery grief, full of a longing that has not been part of her own life…
