Amok and Other Stories

by Stefan Zweig

  She tapped the table lightly with her knuckles. So she was nervous too. Then she said, quickly and suddenly, ‘Do you know what I want you to do for me, doctor, or don’t you?’

  ‘I believe I do. But let’s be quite plain about it. You want an end put to your condition … you want me to cure you of your fainting fits and nausea by … by removing their cause. Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The word fell like a guillotine.

  ‘And do you know that such attempts are dangerous … for both parties concerned?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That I am legally forbidden to do such a thing?’

  ‘There are cases when it isn’t forbidden but actually recommended.’

  ‘They call for medical indications, however.’

  ‘Then you’ll find such indications. You’re a doctor.’

  Clear, fixed, unflinching, her eyes looked at me as she spoke. It was an order, and weakling that I am, I trembled with admiration for her demonically imperious will. But I was still evasive, I didn’t want to show that I was already crushed. Some spark of desire in me said: don’t go too fast! Make difficulties. Force her to beg!

  ‘That is not always within a doctor’s competence. But I am ready to ask a colleague at the hospital … ’

  ‘I don’t want your colleague … I came to you.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  She looked coldly at me. ‘I have no reservations about telling you. Because you live in seclusion, because you don’t know me—because you are a good doctor, and because,’ she added, hesitating for the first time, ‘you probably won’t stay here very much longer, particularly if you … if you can go home with a large sum of money.’

  I felt cold. The adamant, commercial clarity of her calculation bemused me. So far her lips had uttered no request—she had already worked it all out, she had been lying in wait for me and then tracked me down. I felt the demonic force of her will enter into me, but embittered as I was—I resisted. Once again I made myself sound objective, indeed almost ironic.

  ‘Oh, and you would … would place this large sum of money at my disposal?’

  ‘For your help, and then your immediate departure.’

  ‘Do you realise that would lose me my pension?’

  ‘I will compensate you.’

  ‘You’re very clear in your mind about it … but I would like even more clarity. What sum did you envisage as a fee?’

  ‘Twelve thousand guilders, payable by cheque when you reach Amsterdam.’

  I trembled … I trembled with anger and … yes, with admiration again too. She had worked it all out, the sum and the manner of its payment, which would oblige me to leave this part of the world, she had assessed me and bought me before she even met me, had made arrangements for me in anticipation of getting her own way. I would have liked to strike her in the face, but as I stood there shaking—she too had risen to her feet—and I looked her straight in the eye, the sight of her closed mouth that refused to plead, her haughty brow that would not bend, a … a kind of violent desire overcame me. She must have felt something of it, for she raised her eyebrows as one would to dismiss a trouble-maker; the hostility between us was suddenly in the open. I knew she hated me because she needed me, and I hated her because … well, because she would not plead. In that one single second of silence we spoke to each other honestly for the first time. Then an idea suddenly came to me, like the bite of a reptile, and I told her … I told her …

  But wait a moment, or you’ll misunderstand what I did … what I said. First I must explain how … well, how that deranged idea came into my mind.”

  Once again the glass clinked softly in the dark, and the voice became more agitated.

  “Not that I want to make excuses, justify myself, clear myself of blame … but otherwise you won’t understand. I don’t know if I have ever been what might be called a good man, but … well, I think I was always helpful. In the wretched life I lived over there, the only pleasure I had was using what knowledge was contained in my brain to keep some living creature breathing … an almost divine pleasure. It’s a fact, those were my happiest moments, for instance when one of the natives came along, pale with fright, his swollen foot bitten by a snake, howling not to have his leg cut off, and I managed to save him. I’ve travelled for hours to see a woman in a fever—and as for the kind of help my visitor wanted, I’d already given that in the hospital in Europe. But then I could at least feel that these people needed me, that I was saving someone from death or despair—and the feeling of being needed was my way of helping myself.

  But this woman—I don’t know if I can describe it to you—she had irritated and intrigued me from the moment when she had arrived, apparently just strolling casually in. Her provocative arrogance made me resist, she caused everything in me that was—how shall I put it?—everything in me that was suppressed, hidden, wicked, to oppose her. Playing the part of a great lady, meddling in matters of life and death with unapproachable aplomb … it drove me mad. And then … well, after all, no woman gets pregnant just from playing golf. I knew, that is to say I reminded myself with terrible clarity—and this is when my idea came to me—that this cool, haughty, cold woman, raising her eyebrows above her steely eyes if I so much as looked at her askance and parried her demands, had been rolling in bed with a man in the heat of passion two or three months ago, naked as an animal and perhaps groaning with desire, their bodies pressing as close as a pair of lips. That was the idea burning in my mind as she looked at me with such unapproachable coolness, proud as an English army officer … and then everything in me braced itself, I was possessed by the idea of humiliating her. From that moment on, I felt I could see her naked body through her dress … from that moment on I lived for nothing but the idea of taking her, forcing a groan from her hard lips, feeling this cold, arrogant woman a prey to desire like anyone else, as that other man had done, the man I didn’t know. That … that’s what I wanted to explain to you. Low as I had sunk, I had never before thought of exploiting such a situation as a doctor … and this time it wasn’t desire, the rutting instinct, nothing sexual, I swear it wasn’t, I can vouch for it … just a wish to break her pride, dominate her as a man. I think I told you that I have always been susceptible to proud and apparently cold women … and add to that the fact that I had lived here for seven years without sleeping with a white woman, and had met with no resistance … for the girls here, twittering, fragile little creatures who tremble with awe if a white man, a ‘master’ takes them … they efface themselves in humility, they’re always available, always at your service with their soft, gurgling laughter, but that submissive, slavish attitude in itself spoils the pleasure. So can you understand the shattering effect on me when a woman full of pride and hostility suddenly came along, reserved in every fibre of her being, glittering with mystery and at the same time carrying the burden of an earlier passion? When such a woman boldly enters the cage of a man like me, a lonely, starved, isolated brute of a man … well, that’s what I wanted to tell you, just so that you’ll understand the rest, what happened next. So, full of some kind of wicked greed, poisoned by the thought of her stripped naked, sensuous, submitting, I pulled myself together with pretended indifference. I said coolly, ‘Twelve thousand guilders? No, I won’t do it for that.’

  She looked at me, turning a little pale. She probably sensed already that my refusal was not a matter of avarice, but she said, ‘Then what do you want?’

  I was not putting up with her cool tone any more. ‘Let’s show our hands, shall we? I am not a tradesman … I’m not the poor apothecary in Romeo and Juliet who sells his poison for ‘corrupted gold’. Perhaps I’m the opposite of a tradesman … you won’t get what you want by those means.’

  ‘So you won’t do it?’

  ‘Not for money.’

  All was very still between us for a second. So still that for the first time I heard her breathing.

  ‘What else can you want, then?’

  N
ow I could control myself no longer. ‘First, I want you to stop … stop speaking to me as if I were a tradesman and address me like a human being. And when you need help, I don’t want you to … to come straight out with your shameful offer of money, but to ask me … ask me to help you as one human being to another. I am not just a doctor, I don’t spend all my time in consultations … I spend some of it in other ways too, and perhaps you have come at such a time.’

  She says nothing for a moment, and then her lip curls very slightly, trembles, and she says quickly, ‘Then if I were to ask you … would you do it?’

  ‘You’re trying to drive a bargain again—you won’t ask me unless I promise first. You must ask me first—then I will give you an answer.’

  She tosses her head like a defiant horse, and looks angrily at me.

  ‘No, I will not ask you. I’d rather go to my ruin!’

  At that anger seized upon me, red, senseless anger.

  ‘Then if you won’t ask, I will make my own demand. I don’t think I have to put it crudely—you know what I want from you. And then—then I will help you.’

  She stared at me for a moment. Then—oh, I can’t, I can’t tell you how terrible it was—then her features froze and she … she suddenly laughed, she laughed at me with unspeakable contempt in her face, contempt that was scattered all over me … and at the same time intoxicated me. That derisive laughter was like a sudden explosion, breaking out so abruptly and with such monstrous force behind it that I … yes, I could have sunk to the ground and kissed her feet. It lasted only a second … it was like lightning, and it had set my whole body on fire. Then she turned and went quickly to the door. I instinctively moved to follow her … to apologise, to beg her … well, my strength was entirely broken. She turned once more and said … no, ordered, ‘Don’t dare to follow me or try to track me down. You would regret it.’

  And the door slammed shut behind her.”

  Another hesitation. Another silence … again, there was only the faint rushing sound, as if of moonlight pouring down. Then, at last, the voice spoke again.

  “The door slammed, but I stood there motionless on the spot, as if hypnotized by her order. I heard her go downstairs, open the front door … I heard it all, and my whole will urged me to follow her … to … oh, I don’t know what, to call her back, strike her, strangle her, but to follow her … to follow. Yet I couldn’t. My limbs were crippled as if by an electric shock … I had been cut to the quick by the imperious gleam of those eyes. I know there’s no explaining it, it can’t be described … it may sound ridiculous, but I just stood there, and it was several minutes, perhaps five, perhaps ten, before I could raise a foot from the floor …

  But no sooner had I moved that foot than I instantly, swiftly, feverishly hurried down the stairs. She could only have gone along the road back to civilisation … I hurry to the shed for my bicycle, I find I have forgotten the door key, I wrench the lock off, splitting and breaking the bamboo of the shed door… and next moment I am on my bicycle and hurrying after her … I have to reach her, I must, before she gets back to her car. I must speak to her. The road rushes past me … only now do I realise how long I must have stood there motionless. Then, where the road through the forest bends just before reaching the buildings of the district station, I see her hurrying along, stepping firmly, walking straight ahead accompanied by her boy … but she must have seen me too, for now she speaks to the boy, who stays behind while she goes on alone. What is she doing? Why does she want to be on her own? Does she want to speak to me out of his hearing? I pedal fast and furiously … then something suddenly springs into my path. It’s the boy … I am only just in time to swerve and fall. I rise, cursing … involuntarily I raise my fist to hit the fool, but he leaps aside. I pick up my bicycle to remount it, but then the scoundrel lunges forward, takes hold of the bicycle, and says in his pitiful English, ‘You not go on.’

  You haven’t lived in the tropics … you don’t know how unheard-of it is for a yellow bastard like that to seize the bicycle of a white ‘master’ and tell him, the master, to stay where he is. Instead of answering I strike him in the face with my fist. He staggers, but keeps hold of the bicycle … his eyes, his narrow, frightened eyes are wide open in slavish fear, but he holds the handlebars infernally tight. ‘You not go on,’ he stammers again. It’s lucky I don’t have my revolver with me, or I’d shoot him down. ‘Out of the way, scum!’ is all I say. He cringes and stares at me, but he does not let go of the handlebars. At this rage comes over me … I see that she is well away, she may have escaped me entirely … and I hit him under the chin with a boxer’s punch and send him flying. Now I have my bicycle back, but as I jump on it the mechanism jams. A spoke has bent in our tussle. I try to straighten it with trembling hands. I can’t, so I fling the bicycle across the road at the scoundrel, who gets up, bleeding, and flinches aside. And then—no, you won’t understand how ridiculous it looks to everyone there for a European … well, anyway, I didn’t know what I was doing any more. I had only one thought in my mind: to go after her, to reach her. And so I ran, ran like a madman along the road and past the huts, where the yellow riff-raff were gathered in amazement to see a white man, the doctor, running.

  I reach the station, dripping with sweat. My first question is: where is the car? Just driven away … People stare at me in surprise. I must look to them like a lunatic, arriving wet and muddy, screaming my question ahead of me before coming to a halt … Down in the road, I see the white fumes of the car exhaust. She has succeeded … succeeded, just as all her harsh, cruelly harsh calculations must succeed.

  But flight won’t help her. There are no secrets among Europeans in the tropics. Everyone knows everyone else, everything is a notable event. And not for nothing did her driver spend an hour in the government bungalow … in a few minutes, I know all about it. I know who she is, I know that she lives in …. well, in the capital of the colony, eight hours from here by rail. I know that she is … let’s say the wife of a big businessman, enormously rich, distinguished, an Englishwoman. I know that her husband has been in America for five months, and is to arrive here next day to take her back to Europe with him …

  And meanwhile—the thought burns in my veins like poison—meanwhile she can’t be more than two or three months pregnant …

  So far I hope I have made it easy for you to understand … but perhaps only because up to that point I still understood myself, and as a doctor I could diagnose my own condition. From now on, however, something began to work in me like a fever … I lost control. That’s to say, I knew exactly how pointless everything I did was, but I had no power over myself any more … I no longer understood myself. I was merely racing forward, obsessed by my purpose …. No, wait. Perhaps I can make you understand it after all. Do you know what the expression ‘running amok’ means?”

  “‘Running amok?’ Yes, I think I do … a kind of intoxication affecting the Malays …”

  “It’s more than intoxication … it’s madness, a sort of human rabies, an attack of murderous, pointless monomania that bears no comparison with ordinary alcohol poisoning. I’ve studied several cases myself during my time in the East—it’s easy to be very wise and objective about other people—but I was never able to uncover the terrible secret of its origin. It may have something to do with the climate, the sultry, oppressive atmosphere that weighs on the nervous system like a storm until it suddenly breaks … well then, this is how it goes: a Malay, an ordinary, good-natured man, sits drinking his brew, impassive, indifferent, apathetic … just as I was sitting in my room … when suddenly he leaps to his feet, snatches his dagger and runs out into the street, going straight ahead of him, always straight ahead, with no idea of any destination. With his kris he strikes down anything that crosses his path, man or beast, and this murderous frenzy makes him even more deranged. He froths at the mouth as he runs, he howls like a lunatic … but he still runs and runs and runs, he doesn’t look right, he doesn’t look left, he just runs on scream
ing shrilly, brandishing his bloodstained kris as he forges straight ahead in that dreadful way. The people of the villages know that no power can halt a man running amok, so they shout warnings ahead when they see him coming—‘Amok! Amok!’—and everyone flees … but he runs on without hearing, without seeing, striking down anything he meets … until he is either shot dead like a mad dog or collapses of his own accord, still frothing at the mouth …

  I once saw a case from the window of my bungalow. It was a terrible sight, but it’s only because I saw it that I can understand myself in those days … because I stormed off like that, just like that, obsessed in the same way, going straight ahead with that dreadful expression, seeing nothing to right or to left, following the woman. I don’t remember exactly what I did, it all went at such breakneck speed, with such mindless haste … Ten minutes, no, five—no, two—after I had found out all about the woman, her name, where she lived and her story, I was racing back to my house on a borrowed bicycle, I threw a suit into my case, took some money and drove to the railway station in my carriage. I went without informing the district officer, without finding a locum for myself, I left the house just as it was, unlocked. The servants were standing around, the astonished women were asking questions. I didn’t answer, didn’t turn, drove to the station and took the next train to the city … only an hour after that woman had entered my room, I had thrown my life away and was running amok, careering into empty space.

  I ran straight on, headlong … I arrived in the city at six in the evening, and at ten past six I was at her house asking to see her. It was … well, as you will understand, it was the most pointless, stupid thing I could have done, but a man runs amok with empty eyes, he doesn’t see where he is going. The servant came back after a few minutes, cool and polite: his mistress was not well and couldn’t see anyone.