Letter From an Unknown Woman and Other Stories

by Stefan Zweig

  Today, now that we have become middle-aged and therefore sensible people, it may be easy for us to smile scornfully at our folly as the usual rapturous fantasy of a girlish adolescent crush. And yet I cannot conceal from myself that in our case it had already become dangerous. I think that our infatuation took such absurd, exaggerated shape only because, silly children that we were, we had sworn to love him together. That meant that each of us tried to outdo the other in her flights of fancy, and we egged each other on further every day, thinking of more and more new evidence to prove that we had not for a moment forgotten the idol of our dreams. We were not like other girls, who by now were swooning over smooth-cheeked boys and playing silly games; to us, all emotion and enthusiasm was bent on this one man. For those two passionate years, all our thoughts were of him alone. Sometimes I am surprised that after this early obsession we could still love our husbands and children later with a clear-minded, sound and healthy love, and we did not waste all our emotional strength in those senseless excesses. But in spite of everything, we need not be ashamed of that time. For, thanks to the object of our love, we also lived with a passion for his art, and in our folly there was still a mysterious urge towards higher, purer, better things; they acquired, purely by coincidence, personification in him.

  All this already seemed so very far away, overgrown by another life and other feelings; and yet when the landlady told me his name, it gave me such a shock that it is a miracle she didn’t notice it. It was so startling to meet the man whom we had seen only surrounded by the aura of our infatuation, had loved so wholeheartedly as the very emblem of youth and beauty, and to find that he was a beggar now, the recipient of anonymous charity, a butt of the mockery of simple-minded peasants and already too old and tired to feel ashamed of his decline—so startling that it was impossible for me to go back into the main room of the inn. I might not have been able to restrain my tears at the sight of him, or I might have given myself away to him by some other means. I had to regain my composure first. So I went up to my room to think, to recollect clearly what this man had meant to me in my youth. The human heart is strange: for years and years I had not given him a single thought, although he had once dominated all my thoughts and filled my whole soul. I could have died and never asked what had become of him; he could have died and I would not have known.

  I did not light a lamp in my room, I sat in the dark, trying to remember both the beginning and the end of it all; and all at once I seemed to be back in that old, lost time. I felt as if my own body, which had borne children many years ago, was a slender, immature girl’s body again, and I was the girl who used to sit on her bed with her heart beating fast, thinking of him before she went to sleep. Involuntarily, I felt my hands turn hot, and then something happened that alarmed me, something that I can hardly describe to you. A shudder suddenly ran through me, and at first I did not know why. Something shook me severely. A thought, a certain thought, a certain memory had come back to me; it was one that I had shut out of my mind for years and years. At the very second when the landlady told me his name, I felt something within me lying heavily on my mind, demanding expression, something that I didn’t want to remember, something that, as that Professor Freud in Vienna says, I “had suppressed”—had suppressed at such a deep level that I really had forgotten it for years on end, one of those profound secrets that one defiantly keeps even from oneself. I also kept it from you at the time, even after swearing to tell you everything I knew about him. I had hidden it from myself for years. Now it had been roused and was close to the surface of my mind again; and only now that it is for our children, and soon our grandchildren, to commit their own follies, can I confess to you what happened between me and that man at the time.

  And now I can tell you my most intimate secret openly. This stranger, this old, broken, down-at-heel actor who would now deliver lines of verse in front of the local rustics for a glass of beer, and was the object of their laughter and contempt—this man, Ellen, held my whole life in his hands for the space of a dangerous minute. If he had taken advantage of that moment—and it was in his power to do so—my children would never have been born, and I do not know where or what I would have been today. The friend who is writing you this letter today would probably have been an unhappy woman, and might have been as crushed and downtrodden by life as he was himself. Please don’t think that I exaggerate. At the time, I myself did not understand the danger I was in, but today I see and understand clearly what I did not understand at the time. Only today do I know how deeply indebted I was to that stranger, a man I had forgotten.

  I will tell you about it as well as I can. You will remember that at the time, just before your sixteenth birthday, your father was suddenly transferred from Innsbruck, and I can still see you in my mind’s eye weeping stormily in my room, sobbing out the news that you would have to leave me—and leave him. I don’t know which was harder for you. I am inclined to believe that it was the fact that you would lose sight of him, the idol of our youth, without whom life seemed to you not worth living. You made me swear to tell you everything about him, write you a letter every week, no, every day, write a whole diary—and for some time I faithfully did it. It was hard for me to lose you, too, because whom could I confide in now, to whom could I describe the emotional high flights and blissful folly of my exuberant feelings? However, I still had him, I could see him, he was mine and only mine now; and in the midst of my pain there was a little pleasure in that. But soon afterwards—as you may have heard—there was an incident that we knew only in vague outline. It was said that Sturz had made advances to the wife of the manager of the theatre—at least, so I was told later—and after a violent scene he had been forced to accept dismissal. He was allowed one final benefit performance. He was to tread the boards of our theatre once more, and then I too would have seen him for the last time.

  Thinking back to it today, I don’t believe that any other day in my life was unhappier than the one when it was announced that Peter Sturz would be on stage in Innsbruck for the last time. I felt ill. I had no one to share my desperation with, no one to confide in. At school the teachers noticed how distracted and disturbed I looked; at home I was so violent and frantic that my father, guessing nothing, lost his temper and forbade me, on pain of punishment, to go to the theatre. I pleaded with him—perhaps too hard and too passionately—and only made matters worse, because my mother too now spoke against me, saying all that theatre-going had been a strain on my nerves and I must stay at home. At that moment I hated my parents—yes, I was so confused and deranged that day that I hated them and couldn’t bear the sight of them. I locked myself into my room. I wanted to die. One of those sudden fits of melancholy that can actually endanger young people now and then overcame me; I sat rigid in my chair, I did not shed any tears—I was too desperate for that. Sometimes all was cold as ice inside me, and then I would suddenly feel feverish and go from room to room. I flung the window up and stared down at the yard three storeys below, assessing how far I would fall if I jumped out. And again and again my eyes went to my watch: it was only three in the afternoon, and the performance began at seven. He was going to act in our theatre for the last time, and I wouldn’t hear him; everyone else would cheer him to the echo, and I wouldn’t be there. Suddenly I couldn’t bear it any more. I ignored my parents’ prohibition on my leaving the house. I went out without a word to anyone, downstairs and out into the street—I don’t know where I thought I was going. I believe I had some confused notion of drowning myself or doing something else senseless. I just didn’t want to live any more without him, and I did not know how to put an end to my life. And so I went up and down the streets, ignoring friends when they hailed me. I was indifferent to everything, no one else in the world existed for me, he was the only one. Suddenly, I don’t know how it happened, I was standing outside the building where he lived. You and I had often waited in the entrance to the building opposite to see if he might come home, or we looked up at his windows, and perhaps
that vague hope of meeting him by chance some time had unconsciously driven me here. But he did not appear. Dozens of unimportant people, the postman, a carpenter, a fat woman from the market, left the building or went into it, hundreds and hundreds of people who didn’t matter to me hurried past in the street; but he never put in an appearance.

  I don’t remember how the next part happened, but suddenly I felt drawn there. I crossed the road, went up the stairs to the second floor without stopping to get my breath back, and then went to the door of his apartment; I just had to be close to him, nearer to him! I had to say something to him, although I didn’t know what. I really was in a state of possession by a madness that I couldn’t account for to myself, and perhaps I ran up the stairs so fast in order to outrun any kind of circumspect thought. I was already—still without stopping for breath—pressing the doorbell. I can hear its high, shrill note to this day, and then there was a long wait in total silence, broken suddenly by the sound of my awakening heart. At last I heard footsteps inside: the firm, heavy tread I knew from his appearances at the theatre. And at that moment sober reflection returned to me. I wanted to run away from the door again, but everything in me was frozen in alarm. My feet felt paralysed, and my little heart stood still.

  He opened the door and looked at me in surprise. I don’t know if he knew or recognized me at all. Out in the street there were always dozens of his immature admirers, boys and girls alike, flocking around him. But the two of us who loved him most had been too shy, we had always fled rather than meet his eyes. And this time, too, I stood before him with my head bent, and dared not look up. He waited to hear what I had to say to him—he obviously thought I was an errand girl from one of the shops in town bringing him a message. “Well, my child, what is it?” he finally encouraged me in his deep, sonorous voice.

  I stammered, “I only wanted to… but I can’t say it here…” And I stopped again.

  He said in a kindly tone, “Well, come in, then, child. What’s it about?”

  I followed him into his room. It was a large, simple place, rather untidy; the pictures had already been taken down from the walls, cases were standing around half-packed. “There now, tell me… who sent you here?” he asked again.

  And suddenly it came bursting out of me in a torrent of burning tears. “Please stay here… please, please don’t go away… stay here with us.”

  He instinctively took a step back. His brows shot up, and his mouth tightened in a sharp line. He had realized that I was another of those importunate admirers who kept pestering him, and I was afraid he would say something angry. But there must have been something about me that made him take pity on my childish despair. He came up to me and gently patted my arm: “My dear child,”—he spoke like a teacher addressing a pupil—“it’s not my own doing that I am leaving this place, and it can’t be altered now. It is very nice of you to come and ask me to stay. Who do we actors perform for if not the young? It has always been a particular joy to me if young people applaud us. But the die is cast, and I can’t do anything about that. Well, as I said,”—and he stepped back again—“it was very, very nice of you to come and tell me what you have, and I thank you. Be a good girl, and I hope you will all think of me kindly.”

  I realized that he had said goodbye, but that only increased my desperation. “No, stay here,” I exclaimed, sobbing, “for God’s sake, stay here… I… I can’t live without you.”

  “My dear child,” he said soothingly, but I clung to him, clung to him with both arms—I who had never before had the courage even to brush against his coat. “No, don’t go away,” I went on, still sobbing in despair, “don’t leave me alone! Take me with you. I’ll go anywhere you like with you… anywhere… do what you like to me… only don’t leave me.”

  I don’t know what other nonsensical stuff I poured out in my despair. I pressed close to him as if I could keep him there like that, with no idea at all of the dangerous situation my passionate outburst was inviting. You know how naive we still were at the time, and what a strange and unknown idea physical love was to us. But I was a young girl and—I can say so today—a strikingly pretty girl; men were already turning in the street to look at me, and he was a man, thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old at the time. He could have done anything he liked to me; I really would have followed him, and whatever he had tried I would have offered no resistance. It would have been easy for him to take advantage of my ignorance there in his apartment. At that moment my fate was in his hands. Who knows what would have become of me if he had improperly abused my childish persistence, if he had given way to his vanity, and perhaps his own desires and the strength of temptation? Only now do I understand what danger I was in. There was a moment at which, I now feel, he was not sure of himself, when he sensed my body pressed to his, and my quivering lips were very close. But he controlled himself and slowly pushed me away. “Just a moment,” he said, breaking free of me almost by force, and he turned to the other door. “Frau Kilcher!”

  I was horrified. Instinctively, I wanted to run away. Was he going to hold me up to ridicule in front of his old housekeeper? Make fun of me in front of her? Then she came in, and he turned to her. “What do you think, Frau Kilcher,” he said to her, “this young lady has come to bring me warm farewell wishes in the name of her whole school. Isn’t that touching?” He turned to me again. “Please tell your friends I am very grateful. I have always felt that the beauty of our profession is having youth, and thus the very best thing there is on earth, on our side. Only young people appreciate the finer points of the stage, I assure you, only they. You have given me great pleasure, my dear young lady, and”—here he clasped my hands—“I will never forget it.”

  My tears dried up. He had not shamed me, he had not humiliated me. But his concern for me went even further, because he turned to his housekeeper again: “Well, if we didn’t have so much to do, I would very much have liked to talk to this charming young lady for a little while. However, you will escort her down to the door, Frau Kilcher, won’t you? My very good wishes to you, my very good wishes.”

  Only later did I realize how thoughtful of him it was to spare and protect me by sending the housekeeper down to the door of the building with me. After all, I was well known in the little city of Innsbruck, and some ill-disposed person might have seen me, a young girl, stealing out of the famous actor’s apartment all by myself, and could have spread gossip. Although he was a stranger to me, he understood better than I, still a child, what endangered me. He had protected me from my own ignorant youth—how clear that was to me now, more than twenty-five years later.

  Isn’t it strange, my dear friend, doesn’t it put me to shame that I had forgotten all that for years and years, because I was so ashamed that I wanted to forget it? That I had never felt truly grateful to this man, never asked after him, when he had held my life, my fate in his hands that afternoon? And now the same man was sitting downstairs over his glass of beer, a wreck of a failure, a beggar, despised by everyone; no one knew who he was and who he had been except for me. I was the only one aware of it. Perhaps I was the only person on earth who still remembered his name, and I was indebted to him. Now I might be able to repay my debt. All at once I felt very calm. I was no longer upset, only a little ashamed of my injustice in forgetting, for so long, that this stranger had once been generous to me at a crucial moment in my life.

  I went downstairs and back into the main room of the inn. I suppose that only some ten minutes in all had passed. Nothing had changed. The card game was still going on, the landlady was at the bar, doing her mending, the local rustics were sleepily puffing their pipes. He too was still sitting in his place, with his empty glass in front of him, staring ahead. Only now did I see how much sorrow there was in that wreck of a face, his eyes dull under their heavy lids, his mouth grim and bitter, distorted by the stroke. He sat there gloomily with his elbows on the table so that he could prop his bowed head in his hands, warding off his weariness. It was not the weariness of sle
ep; he was tired of life. No one spoke to him, no one troubled about him. He sat there like a great grey bird with tattered feathers, crouching in its cage, perhaps dreaming of its former freedom when it could still spread its wings and fly through the air.

  The door opened again and three more of the locals came in, with heavy, dragging footsteps, ordered their beer and then looked around for somewhere to sit. “Move up, you,” one of them ordered him rather brusquely. Poor Sturz looked up. I could see that the rough contempt with which they treated him hurt his feelings. But he was too tired and humiliated by now to defend himself or dispute the point. He moved aside in silence, pushing his empty beer glass along with him. The landlady brought full tankards for the newcomers. He looked at them, I noticed, with an avid, thirsty glance, but the landlady ignored his silent plea with composure. He had already had his charity for that evening, and if he didn’t leave then that was his fault. I saw he no longer had the strength of mind to stand up for himself, and how much more humiliation awaited him in his old age!