by Stefan Zweig
Her hands were fastened behind her back now, and the officer had drawn his revolver. “If either of them moves, shoot them down.”
The soldiers took Karel between them. He twisted and turned, but when they told him, “March!” he marched. He walked on with fixed eyes, mechanically, without resisting; the shock had broken his strength. His mother followed without defending herself either; violence would do no good now. She would have gone anywhere with Karel, she’d have gone to the ends of the earth, just so long as she was with him, could stay with him. So long as she could see him: his fine broad back, his curly brown shock of hair above his firm neck, oh, and his hands, tortured now, bound behind his back, the hands she had known when they were tiny, with small pink nails, with sweet little folds on them. She would have walked on without any soldiers, without any orders, just so as to be with him and not leave him. All she wanted was to know that she was still near him. She felt no weariness in spite of walking for so long—eight hours. She did not feel her sore feet, although they had both gone barefoot all this time, she did not feel the pressure of her hands cuffed behind her back, all she felt was that he was close, she had him, she was with him.
They marched through the forest and along the dusty country road. Bells were pealing out over the town, striking twelve noon, all was at rest when the unusual procession made its way along the main street of Dobitzan, Karel first, with the weary soldiers trotting along to right and left of him to guard him, then Ruzena Sedlak, her eyes glazed, still dishevelled and battered from the blows, with her own hands cuffed behind her back, and bringing up the rear the military police officer, a grave, stern figure, obviously making a great effort to bear himself well. He had put his revolver back into its holster.
The buzz of noise in the marketplace died down. People came out of their doors to look darkly at the scene. Drivers on their carts cracked the whip at their horses angrily and spat, as if by chance. Men frowned and murmured, looked away and then back again, it was a shame, they muttered, first the children, the lads of seventeen, now they were dragging women off too. All the ill will and resentment of a people who had long felt that this Austrian war was nothing to do with them, yet dared not show any violent opposition, stood mute but menacing in hundreds of eyes, the eyes of the people of Dobitzan.
No one said a word; they were all silent. The steps of the marching soldiers could be heard in the street.
Somehow or other, Ruzena’s animal nature must have sensed the magnetic force of that embitterment, for suddenly, in the middle of the road, the handcuffed woman flung herself down flat among the soldiers, her skirts flying, and began shouting at the top of her voice, “Help me, brothers! For God’s sake help me! Don’t let them do this.”
The soldiers had to seize her, and then she cried out again, to Karel, “Throw yourself down! They’ll have to drag us to the slaughter! Let God see this!” And Karel obediently lay down in the middle of the wet road too.
The furious military police officer intervened. “Get them up!” he shouted at his startled men. They tried to haul Ruzena and her son to their feet. But she twisted and turned, flung herself about with her bound hands like a fish landed on the bank, uttering shrill cries. She snapped and bit; it was a terrible sight. “God must see this,” she howled, “God must see this.” Finally the soldiers had to drag both of them away like beasts going to be butchered. But she went on shouting, her voice cracking horribly, “God must see this, God must see this!”
She was forced away as they waited for reinforcements, and was taken off to a cell under arrest, half-naked now, with her greying hair coming down. It was high time; the townsfolk were gathering together. Their looks were even darker than before. One farmer spat. Several women began talking angrily out loud. There was whistling, you could see men nudging the women and warning them; children stared, wide-eyed and alarmed, at all this tumultuous confusion.
Mother and son were taken off to the cells together, but the hatred in the air for the open display of violence was palpable.
Meanwhile, pacing furiously up and down in his office, his collar, trimmed with gold lace, torn open in his rage, the District Commissioner was bawling out the military police officer. He was a fool, he told the man, he was a godforsaken idiot to bring a deserter in along the road in broad daylight, and a woman in handcuffs with him. This kind of thing would get around the whole region, and then he personally would have trouble with Vienna. Didn’t the officer think there had been quite enough of all this chasing people around here in Bohemia? This evening would have been a better time to bring the young man in. And why the devil had he brought the woman along too?
The officer showed his torn coat, pointing out that the mad bitch had attacked and bitten him. He’d had to have her arrested, he said, if only for the sake of the men’s morale.
But the Commissioner was not mollified, and went on: “So did you have to drag her through the town in broad daylight? You can’t treat women like that. People won’t stand for it. What a mess! It gets folk really annoyed when you start in on women. Much better leave them out of it.”
Finally the police officer asked, in muted tones, what he ought to do now.
“Oh, get the lad sent off tonight, send him to Budweis with the others. What business is all this of ours? Let those … ” (he was about to say “bloody bureaucrats”, but thought better of it in time), “let those responsible take care of it, we’ve done our duty. Keep the Sedlak women under arrest until he’s gone. She’ll calm down in the morning. You can release her as soon as he’s left. After all, women do calm down when they’ve had a good cry. And after that they go to church—or to some other man’s bed.”
The officer protested; he was most unwilling to agree. Had he marched all night for this? To himself, he vowed that this was the last time he’d go to so much trouble.
The District Commissioner had been right, it seemed. The Sedlak woman did indeed calm down in the cells. She did not move, but lay still on her bed. However, she felt no weariness. She was merely straining her ears to listen. She knew that her child was somewhere in another part of this building. Karel was still here, but she couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him. She felt his presence, all the same. She knew he was close. Despite her dull nature, she felt a link with him through all these doors. Something could still make it turn out well for them. Perhaps the priest could help; he must have heard them both being dragged off under arrest. Perhaps the war was already over. Somewhere she listened for a sign, for a word. Karel was still there. As long as he was still there, there was hope. That was why everything was so quiet, so breathlessly still. The prison warder went up to see the District Commissioner, who duly noted the fact that the Sedlak woman had calmed down. Just as he’d said she would. Tomorrow they’d send Karel off, and then there would be peace and quiet again.
[Here ends Zweig’s unfinished manuscript]
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Knut Beck, editor of the volume from which these three stories by Stefan Zweig come, explains that the tales in the German collection (nine in all) were selected because in one way or another their chief characters are all threatened and under pressure. The first of the three, In the Snow, describes an incident from the Middle Ages, at the time when the fanatical Flagellant sect was persecuting Jews. Although of Jewish birth himself, Zweig was not an observant Jew, and nor did he share the opinions of his acquaintance the Zionist nationalist Theodor Herzl, but his ready sympathy for the victims of persecution is evident in this story. Much later than its first publication in 1901, all Jews in Germany and Austria, whether observant or not, were of course in mortal danger from the racial policies of the Nazis, and Zweig, like so many others, had to go into exile.
The other two stories are both set at around the time of the First World War, and in reading them it is useful to know that Zweig was a convinced pacifist all his life. During the 1914–18 war, he and his friend the French writer Romain Rolland took a committed stand against the morality of waging war
at all. Zweig was working in the archives section of the Austrian War Office at the time, but when his pacifist views became uncomfortably outspoken and in 1917 he was given permission to deliver some lectures in neutral Switzerland, he stayed in that country until the war ended. Ferdinand, the artist protagonist of Compulsion, has also taken refuge in Switzerland, but in spite of his abhorrence of war still feels compelled to respond to the call-up papers that arrive from Germany, summoning him to join the army. The story traces in detail Zweig’s ethical arguments in favour of pacifism, brought to life in Ferdinand’s conversations with his wife Paula. She presents refusal to comply with the call-up order as a far more meritorious act than going to fight for the Fatherland.
The third story, Wondrak, was begun at some time during the First World War. It is a powerful tale of obsessive and devoted maternal love. Ruzena Sedlak, a facially disfigured woman, has an only son, the result of rape, who is to be taken from her to join the army and fight in the war. The story is set in southern Bohemia, in what is now part of the Czech Republic but was then under the rule of Austria-Hungary. Wondrak, however, was left unfinished, and was preserved in the material left at Zweig’s death in his literary estate. Knut Beck suggests that “the circumstances of the time and his duties, and perhaps also the impossibility of its publication in the foreseeable future, led to his leaving Wondrak uncompleted.” In fact the last third of the story, up to the point where it stops short, consists of Zweig’s notes pieced together by the German editor to make a consecutive narrative. He distinguishes between the words actually written by Zweig and his own additions in stringing them together, giving the latter in square brackets, but German word-order makes it impracticable to follow this method precisely in English translation, and I have not tried to reproduce it.
We are left to wonder about the ultimate fate of Ruzena and her son Karel (the Wondrak of the title is the local town clerk, a minor character), but one imagines that events are unlikely to turn out well. The sole ray of hope for them, perhaps, is that the date of Karel’s birth and his age at the time of his call-up show the date to be 1917, with the end of the First World War approaching.
ANTHEA BELL
Copyright
English translation © Anthea Bell 2009
In the Snow first published as Im Schnee in Die Welt Vienna 1901
Compulsion first published as Der Zwang, Insel-Verlag Leipzig 1920
Print edition published in 2009 by
Pushkin Press
12 Chester Terrace
London NW1 4ND
ISBN 978 1 906548 58 2
This ebook edition published in 2011
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 Peasant Woman and Child from Moor Fritz Mackensen 1866–1953
© Bridgeman Art Library DACS
Frontispiece Stefan Zweig
© Roger-Viollet Rex Features
Set in 10 on 12 Baskerville
by Alma Books Ltd
