by Stefan Zweig
No signature on the crumpled paper torn from some old brochure … the writing of someone whose handwriting is usually steady, now scribbling hastily, untidily, in pencil. I don’t know why that note shook me so much. Some kind of horror, some mystery clung to it, it might have been written in flight, by someone standing in a window bay or a moving vehicle. An unspeakably cold aura of fear, haste and terror about that furtive note chilled me to the heart … and yet, and yet I was happy. She had written to me, I need not die yet, I could help her … perhaps I could … oh, I lost myself in the craziest hopes and conjectures. I read the little note a hundred, a thousand times over, I kissed it … I examined it for some word I might have forgotten or overlooked. My reverie grew ever deeper and more confused, I was in a strange condition, sleeping with open eyes, a kind of paralysis, a torpid yet turbulent state between sleep and waking. It lasted perhaps for quarter of an hour or so, perhaps for hours.
Suddenly I gave a start. Wasn’t that a knock at the door? I held my breath for a minute, two minutes of perfect silence … and then it came again, like a mouse nibbling, a soft but urgent knock. I leaped to my feet, still dizzy, flung the door open, and there outside it stood her boy, the same boy whom I had once struck in the face with my fist. His brown face was pale as ashes, his confused glance spoke of some misfortune. I immediately felt horror. ‘What … what’s happened?’ I managed to stammer. He said, ‘Come quickly!’ That was all, no more, but I was immediately racing down the stairs with the boy after me. A sado, a kind of small carriage, stood waiting. We got in. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked him. He looked at me, trembling, and remained silent, lips compressed. I asked again … still he was silent. I could have struck him with my fist once more, but his doglike devotion to her touched me, and I asked no more questions. The little carriage trotted through the crowded street so fast that people scattered, cursing. It left the European quarter near the beach in the lower town and went on into the noisy turmoil of the city’s Chinatown district. At last we reached a narrow, very remote alley … and the carriage stopped outside a low-built house. The place was dirty, with a kind of hunched look about it and a little shop window where a tallow candle stood … one of those places where you would expect to find opium dens or brothels, a thieves’ lair or a receivers’ cellar full of stolen goods. The boy quickly knocked … a voice whispered through a crack in the door, which stood ajar, there were questions and more questions. I could stand it no longer. I leaped up, pushed the door right open, and an old Chinese woman shrank back with a little scream. The boy followed me, led me along the passage … opened another door … another door, leading to a dark room with a foul smell of brandy and clotted blood. Something in the room groaned. I groped my way in …”
Once again his voice failed. And what he next uttered was more of a sob than words.
“I … I groped my way in …. And there … there on a dirty mat, doubled up with pain … a groaning piece of human flesh … there she lay …
I couldn’t see her face in the darkness. My eyes weren’t yet used to it … so I only groped about and found … found her hand, hot, burning hot … she had a temperature, a very high one, and I shuddered, for I instantly knew it all … how she had fled here from me, had let some dirty Chinese woman mutilate her, only because she hoped for more silence in that quarter … she had allowed some diabolical witch to murder her rather than trust me … because, deranged as I was, I hadn’t spared her pride, I hadn’t helped her at once … because she feared me more than she feared death.
I shouted for light. The boy ran off; the appalling Chinese woman, her hands trembling, brought a smoking oil lamp. I had to stop myself taking her by her filthy yellow throat as she put the lamp on the table. Its light fell bright and yellow on the tortured body. And suddenly … suddenly all my emotions were gone, all my apathy, my anger, all the impure filth of my accumulated passion … I was nothing but a doctor now, a human being who could understand and feel and help. I had forgotten myself, I was fighting the horror of it with my senses alert and clear … I felt the naked body I had desired in my dreams only as … how can I put it? … as matter, an organism. I did not see her any more, only life defending itself against death, a human being bent double in dreadful agony. Her blood, her hot, holy blood streamed over my hands, but I felt no desire and no horror, I was only a doctor. I saw only her suffering … and I saw …
And I saw at once that barring a miracle, all was lost … the woman’s criminally clumsy hand had injured her, and she had bled half to death … and I had nothing to stop the bleeding in that stinking den, not even clean water. Everything I touched was stiff with dirt …
‘We must go straight to the hospital,’ I said. But no sooner had I spoken than her tortured body reared convulsively.
‘No … no … would rather die … no one must know … no one … home … home …’
I understood. She was fighting now only to keep her secret, to preserve her honour … not to save her life. And—and I obeyed. The boy brought a litter, we placed her in it … and so we carried her home, already like a corpse, limp and feverish, through the night, fending off the frightened servants’ inquiries. Like thieves, we carried her into her own room and closed the doors. And then … then the battle began, the long battle with death …”
Suddenly a hand clutched my arm, and I almost cried out with the shock and pain of it. His face in the dark was suddenly hideously close to mine, I saw his white teeth gleam in his sudden outburst, saw his glasses shine like two huge cat’s eyes in the pale reflection of the moonlight. And now he was not talking any more but screaming, shaken by howling rage.
“Do you know, stranger, sitting here so casually in your deckchair, travelling at leisure around the world, do you know what it’s like to watch someone dying? Have you even been at a deathbed, have you seen the body contort, blue nails scrabbling at the empty air while breath rattles in the dying throat, every limb fights back, every finger is braced against the terror of it, and the eye stares into horror for which there are no words? Have you ever experienced that, idle tourist that you are, you who call it a duty to help? As a doctor I’ve often seen it, seen it as … as a clinical case, a fact … I have studied it, so to speak—but I experienced it only once, there with her, I died with her that night … that dreadful night when I sat there racking my brains to think of something, some way to staunch the blood that kept on flowing, soothe the fever consuming her before my eyes, ward off death as it came closer and closer, and I couldn’t keep it from her bed. Can you guess what it means to be a doctor, to know how to combat every illness—to feel the duty of helping, as you so sagely put it, and yet to sit helpless by a dying woman, knowing what is happening but powerless … just knowing the one terrible truth, that there is nothing you can do, although you would open every vein in your own body for her? Watching a beloved body bleed miserably to death in agonising pain, feeling a pulse that flutters and grows faint … ebbing away under your fingers. To be a doctor yet know of nothing, nothing, nothing you can do … just sitting there stammering out some kind of prayer like an little old lady in church, shaking your fist in the face of a merciful god who you know doesn’t exist … can you understand that? Can you understand it? There’s just one thing I don’t understand myself: how … how a man can manage not to die too at such moments, but wake from sleep the next morning, clean his teeth, put on a tie … go on living, when he has experienced what I felt as her breath failed, as the first human being for whom I was really wrestling, fighting, whom I wanted to keep alive with all the force of my being … as she slipped away from me to somewhere else, faster and faster, minute after minute, and my feverish brain could do nothing to keep that one woman alive …
And then, to add to my torment, there was something else too … as I sat at her bedside—I had given her morphine to relieve the pain—and I saw her lying there with burning cheeks, hot and ashen, as I sat there, I felt two eyes constantly fixed on me from behind, gazing at me with terrible
expectation. The boy sat there on the floor, quietly murmuring some kind of prayer, and when my eyes met his I saw … oh, I cannot describe it … I saw something so pleading, so … so grateful in his doglike gaze! And at the same time he raised his hands to me as if urging me to save her … to me, you understand, he raised his hands to me as if to a god … to me, the helpless weakling who knew the battle was lost, that I was as useless here as an ant scuttling over the floor. How that gaze tormented me, that fanatical, animal hope of what my art could do … I could have shouted at him, kicked him, it hurt so much … and yet I felt that we were both linked by our love for her … by the secret. A waiting animal, an apathetic tangle of limbs, he sat hunched up just behind me. The moment I asked for anything he leaped to his bare, silent feet and handed it to me, trembling … expectantly, as if that might help, might save her. I know he would have cut his veins to help her … she was that kind of woman, she had such power over people … and I … I didn’t even have the power to save her from bleeding … oh, that night, that appalling night, an endless night spent between life and death!
Towards morning she woke again and opened her eyes … they were not cold and proud now … there was a moist gleam of fever in them as they looked around the room, as if it were strange … Then she looked at me. She seemed to be thinking, trying to remember my face … and suddenly, I saw, she did remember, because some kind of shock, rejection … a hostile, horrified expression came over her features. She flailed her arms as if to flee … far, far away from me … I saw she was thinking of that … of the time back at my house. But then she thought again and looked at me more calmly, breathing heavily … I felt that she wanted to speak, to say something. Again her hands began to flex … she tried to sit up, but she was too weak. I calmed her, leaned down to her … and she gave me a long and tormented look … her lips moved slightly in a last, failing sound as she said, ‘Will no one ever know? No one?’
‘No one,’ I said, with all the strength of my conviction. ‘I promise you.’
But her eyes were still restless. Her fevered lips managed, indistinctly, to get it out.
‘Swear to me … that no one will know … swear.’
I raised my hand as if taking an oath. She looked at me with … with an indescribable expression… it was soft, warm, grateful … yes, truly, truly grateful. She tried to say something else, but it was too difficult for her. She lay there for a long time, exhausted by the effort, with her eyes closed. Then the terrible part began … the terrible part … she fought for another entire and difficult hour. Not until morning was it all over …”
He was silent for some time. I did not notice until the bell struck from amidships, once, twice, three times—three o’clock. The moon was not shining so brightly now, but a different, faint yellow glow was already trembling in the air, and the wind blew light as a breeze from time to time. Half-an-hour more, an hour more, and it would be day, the grey around us would be extinguished by clear light. I saw his features more distinctly now that the shadows were not so dense and dark in the corner where we sat—he had taken off his cap, and now that his head was bared his tormented face looked even more terrible. But already the gleaming lenses of his glasses were turned to me again, he pulled himself together, and his voice took on a sharp and derisive tone.
“It was all over for her now—but not for me. I was alone with the body—but I was also alone in a strange house and in a city that would permit no secrets, and I … I had to keep hers. Think about it, think about the circumstances: a woman from the colony’s high society, a perfectly healthy woman who had been dancing at the government ball only the evening before, suddenly dead in her bed … and a strange doctor with her, apparently called by her servant … no one in the house saw when he arrived or where he came from … she was carried in by night in a litter, and then the doors were closed … and in the morning she was dead. Only then were the servants called, and suddenly the house echoes with screams … the neighbours will know at once, the whole city will know, and there’s only one man who can explain it all … I, the stranger, the doctor from a remote country station. A delightful situation, don’t you agree?
I knew what lay ahead of me now. Fortunately the boy was with me, the good fellow who read every thought of mine in my eyes—that yellow-skinned, dull-minded creature knew that there was still a battle to be fought. I had said to him only, ‘Your mistress did not want anyone to know what happened.’ He returned my glance with his moist, doglike, yet determined gaze. All he said was, ‘Yes, sir.’ But he washed the blood off the floor, tidied everything—and his very determination restored mine to me.
Never in my life before, I know, was I master of such concentrated energy, and I never shall be again. When you have lost everything, you fight desperately for the last that is left—and the last was her legacy to me, my obligation to keep her secret. I calmly received the servants, told them all the same invented story: how the boy she had sent for the doctor happened to meet me by chance on his way. But while I talked, apparently calmly, I was waiting … waiting all the time for the crucial appearance of the medical officer who would have to make out the death certificate before we could put her in her coffin, and her secret with her. Don’t forget, this was Thursday, and her husband would arrive on Saturday …
At last, at nine o’clock, I heard the medical officer announced. I had told the servants to send for him—he was my superior in rank and at the same time my rival, the same doctor of whom she had once spoken with such contempt, and who had obviously already heard about my application for a transfer. I sensed his hostility at once, but that in itself stiffened my backbone.
In the front hall he immediately asked, ‘When did Frau … naming her by her surname—when did she die?’
‘At six in the morning.’
‘When did she send for you?’
‘Eleven last night.’
‘Did you know that I was her doctor?’
‘Yes, but this was an emergency … and then … well, she asked especially for me. She wouldn’t let them call any other doctor.’
He stared at me, and a flush of red came into his pale, rather plump face. I could tell that he felt bitter. But that was exactly what I needed—all my energies were concentrating on getting a quick decision, for I could feel that my nerves wouldn’t hold out much longer. He was going to return a hostile reply, but then said more mildly, ‘You may think that you can dispense with my services, but it is still my official duty to confirm death—and establish the cause of death.’
I did not reply, but let him go into the room ahead of me. Then I stepped back, locked the door and put the key on the table. He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’
I faced him calmly. ‘We don’t have to establish the cause of death, we have to think of a different one. This lady called me to treat her after … after suffering the consequences of an operation that went wrong. It was too late for me to save her, but I promised I would save her reputation, and that is what I’m going to do. And I am asking you to help me.’
His eyes were wide with astonishment. ‘You surely aren’t saying,’ he stammered, ‘that you’re asking me, as medical officer, to conceal a crime?’
‘Yes, I am. I must.’
‘So I’m to pay for your crime?’
‘I’ve told you, I didn’t touch this lady, or … or I wouldn’t be here talking to you, I would have put an end to myself by now. She has paid for her transgression, if that’s what you want to call it. There’s no need for the world to know about it. And I will not allow this lady’s reputation to be tarnished now for no good reason.’
My firm tone made him even angrier. ‘You will not allow … oh, so I suppose you’re my superior, or at least you think you are! Just try giving me orders … when you were summoned here from your country outpost I thought at once there was something fishy going on … nice practices you get up to, I must say, here’s a pretty sample of your skill! But now I will
examine her, I will do it, and you may depend upon it that any account to which my name is signed will be correct. I won’t put my name to a lie.’
I kept quite calm. ‘This time you must. You won’t leave the room until you do.’
I put my hand in my pocket. In fact I did not have my revolver with me, but he jumped in alarm. I came a step closer and looked at him.
‘Listen, let me tell you something … and then we need not resort to desperate measures. I have reached a point where I set no store by my life or anyone else’s … I am anxious only to keep my promise that the manner of this death will remain secret. And listen to this too: I give you my word of honour that if you will sign the certificate saying that this lady died of … well, died accidentally, I will leave this city and the East Indies too in the course of this week … and if you want, I will take my revolver and shoot myself as soon as the coffin is in the ground and I can be sure that no one… no one, you understand—can make any more inquiries. That ought to satisfy you—it must satisfy you.’
There must have been something menacing in my voice, something quite dangerous, because as I instinctively came closer he retreated with the obvious horror of … of someone fleeing from a man in frenzy running amok, wielding a kris. And suddenly he had changed … he cringed, so to speak, he was bemused, his hard attitude crumbled. He murmured something with a last faint protest. ‘It will be the first time in my life that I’ve signed a false certificate … still, I expect some form of words can be found … Who knows what would happen if … but I can’t simply …’
‘Of course not,’ I said helpfully, to strengthen his will—only move fast, move fast, said the tingling sensation in my temples—‘but now that you know you would only be hurting a living man and doing a terrible injury to a dead woman, I am sure you will not hesitate.’
