Beware of Pity

by Stefan Zweig

  It was already late in the evening when we once more drove through the gate of the Schloss. They all pressed me to stay to dinner. But I did not want to; I felt that I had had enough, too much, for one day. I had been perfectly happy the whole of this long golden summer day; anything more could only diminish my happiness. Better to walk home now down the familiar avenue, my spirit tranquillized like the warm, summer air after the burning day. Better not to hanker for more, better merely to look back on it all and remember it gratefully. And so I took my leave earlier than usual. It was a bright, starry night, and I felt as though the stars were shining down affectionately upon me. The wind, full of sweet breath, soughed softly over the darkling fields, and seemed to be singing to me. There stole over me that mood of serene exaltation in which everything seems good and rapturous, the world and its human beings; that mood in which one has an urge to embrace every tree and stroke its bark as though it were the flesh of a loved one; in which one longs to enter every house, to sit down by the side of its unknown occupants and unburden oneself to them; in which one’s own breast is filled to bursting point, and one’s emotions are too much for one, in which one would like to open one’s heart, to give lavishly of oneself — to spend and squander some of the superabundance of one’s happiness.

  When I at length reached the barracks, my batman was standing waiting at the door of my room. For the first time I noticed (I noticed everything today as though for the first time) what a guileless, round, apple-cheeked face this Ruthenian peasant boy had. I must do something to make him happy too, I thought. I’ll give him something to buy himself and his girl a few glasses of beer. He shall have this evening off, and tomorrow evening, and every evening this week. I put my hand in my pocket to feel for a silver coin, but at this point he stood smartly to attention and announced: ‘A telegram for the Herr Leutnant.’

  A telegram? I immediately felt uneasy. Who in the world could want anything of me? It could only be evil tidings that had to be told in such a hurry. I strode across to the table. There lay the ominous missive. With reluctant fingers I tore it open. The message, incisively clear, consisted only of a dozen words: ‘Am asked visit Kekesfalva tomorrow stop meet me Weinstube five o’clock Condor.’

  That within the space of a few minutes one can pass from a state of reeling drunkenness to a state of crystal-clear sobriety I had once before had an opportunity of discovering. That had been last year when, a few days before his marriage to the daughter of an immensely rich North Bohemian manufacturer, a fellow-officer had invited us all to a magnificent farewell party. The good chap had done us really proud; he had brought into action battery after battery of bottles of heady, full-bodied Bordeaux and, finally, such enormous quantities of champagne that we grew either rowdy or sentimental, according to our individual temperaments. We embraced each other, we laughed, we brawled, we kicked up a hell of a shindy and sang at the tops of our voices. We drank each other’s healths again and again, tossed down glass after glass of brandy and liqueurs, and puffed away at cigars and pipes until the over-heated room was enveloped in a kind of bluish fog by the dense fumes of smoke; in the end none of us noticed that behind the clouded windows day was dawning. It must have been about three or four o’clock in the morning, and by this time most of us could no longer sit up straight in our chairs. Sprawling heavily over the table, we stared up with bleary, glazed eyes whenever a fresh toast was drunk; and any one of us who had to leave the room stumbled and reeled to the door or fell flat like a stuffed sack. We could none of us speak or think clearly any longer.

  Suddenly the door was flung open, and the Colonel (of whom I shall have more to say later) came bustling in. Since in the frightful hullabaloo only a few of us either noticed or recognized him, he strode abruptly up to the table, and banged his fist down so violently that the plates and glasses clattered. Then he roared in his most acid, incisive tones, ‘Silence!’

  And instantly, before you could say Jack Robinson, there was complete silence; even the most befuddled of us blinked and came to life. The Colonel announced briefly that the next morning there was to be a surprise inspection by the General commanding the Division. He relied on us to see that everything went off smoothly, and that no one disgraced the regiment. And now a strange thing occurred: in the twinkling of an eye we all came to our senses. Just as though some inner window had been thrown open, all the fumes of alcohol were dissipated, the bleary faces changed, tensed, at the call of duty; in a trice every man pulled himself together. Two minutes later the table with all its wreckage was deserted, and every one of us knew exactly what was expected of him. The men were roused, orderlies were sent posting hither and thither, everything, down to the last pommel, was quickly cleaned and polished. And a few hours later the dreaded inspection went off without a hitch.

  It was with the same lightning rapidity that, the moment I had torn open and read the telegram, my soft, drowsy, dreamy mood was dissipated. In an instant I knew what I had been refusing to admit to myself for hours and hours: that all my raptures had been nothing but the intoxication born of a lie, and that in my weakness, my fatal wallowing in my own pity, I had been guilty of deceiving both myself and the others. I realized that Dr Condor was coming in order to call me to account, and that I was now to pay the price for my own, for the others’, elation.

  With the punctuality born of impatience I found myself standing a quarter of an hour before the time appointed outside the little wine-bar, and punctually to the minute Dr Condor drove up from the station in a two-horse carriage. He came straight towards me, and dispensing with formalities, began:

  ‘Capital that you’re punctual! I knew I could depend on you. Perhaps it would be best if we were to ensconce ourselves in the same corner as before. The things we have to discuss are not for others’ ears.’

  He seemed, somehow, different from the flabby creature of a few days ago. Agitated and yet controlled, he marched on ahead of me into the bar and almost rudely ordered the waitress who came hurrying up: ‘A litre of wine. The same as we had the other day. And leave us alone. I’ll call you when I want you.’

  We sat down. ‘Well, to come straight to the point,’ he began, even before the waitress had had time to put the wine before us. ‘I’ll have to hurry, or those people up at Kekesfalva will smell a rat and get it into their heads we’re hatching all sorts of plots. It was a devil of a business to shake off the chauffeur; he was absolutely determined at all costs to rush me out there at once. But let me plunge in medias res, so that you may know what’s at stake.

  ‘Well then — yesterday morning I received a telegram. “Please dear friend come earliest opportunity stop all await you with greatest impatience stop fullest confidence and deepest gratitude Kekesfalva.” Those piled-up superlatives, “earliest opportunity” and “greatest impatience”, were in themselves not to my liking. Why suddenly so impatient? I had examined Edith only a few days before. And then, why assure me of his confidence by telegram, why the special gratitude? All the same, I didn’t take the matter in the least seriously, and filed the telegram away. After all, I thought, the old fellow often indulges in such whims. But it was what happened this morning that gave me a shock. I received an interminably long express letter from Edith, an utterly mad and ecstatic letter, saying that she had known from the start that I was the only person on earth who could save her and she just couldn’t tell me how happy it made her to know that we had at last reached the present stage. She was only writing to assure me I could count absolutely upon her. She would without fail carry out any treatment I prescribed, however difficult. But I must start her on the new treatment soon, at once, she was burning with impatience. And once again, I could expect anything of her, only I must get started quickly. And so on and so on.

  ‘Well, this mention of a new treatment threw a great light on the whole matter. I realized at once that someone must have been chattering either to the old boy or his daughter about Professor Viennot’s cure; there must be something behind it all. And this
someone could, of course, be no one but you, Herr Leutnant.’

  I must involuntarily have recoiled, for he went on firmly:

  ‘Now please don’t let us have any argument on this point. I haven’t breathed a word to anyone except you about Professor Viennot’s method. If the Kekesfalvas think that Edith’s illness is going to be swept away in a few months as though with a broom, you alone are responsible. But, as I have said, let us dispense with all recriminations — we have both of us gossiped, I to you, and you in your turn pretty freely to the others. It was my duty to be more cautious with you. After all, it’s not your job to treat the sick. How should you know that invalids and their relatives have a quite different vocabulary from normal people, that they immediately translate every “perhaps” into a “certainly” and that one can only measure out hope to them in carefully distilled drops, or their optimism goes to their heads and makes them quite mad?

  ‘But we won’t go into that any further — what’s done can’t be undone! Let’s put “finis” to the whole subject of responsibility. I didn’t ask you to come here to lecture you. I merely felt it my duty, seeing that you had already meddled in my business, to enlighten you as to the actual state of affairs. That is why I asked you to come here.’

  Condor raised his head for the first time and looked straight at me. But there was no sternness in his gaze. On the contrary, I felt that he pitied me. His voice, too, was gentler as he went on:

  ‘I know, my dear Lieutenant, that what I now have to tell you will be very disagreeable to you. But, as I have said, we have no time for sentiment and sentimentality. I told you that when I read that article in the medical journal I wrote straight off to Professor Viennot for further information — more than that, I think, I did not say. Well, this morning I received his answer — as it happened by the same post as Edith’s effusion. His information seems, at the first glance, to be positive. He actually has had astonishing success with the patient he described in his article and also with one or two others. But unfortunately — and this is the disagreeable point — his method cannot be applied in our case. His cures have been effected in cases of disease of the spinal cord arising out of tuberculosis, in which — I shall spare you the technical details — the motor nerves can be made to function perfectly again. In our case, where the central nervous system is affected, all the methods employed by Professor Viennot, such as lying motionless in a steel corset, the use of sun-rays, his special system of remedial exercises, are out of the question. His method is — alas! alas! — entirely impracticable in our case. To expect the poor child to endure all this elaborate treatment would probably be to torture her quite needlessly. So there it is — that was what I felt bound to tell you. So now you know how things really stand, and how thoughtless you have been in buoying the poor girl up with the hope that she will be able to dance and run about again in a few months. I should never have allowed such a preposterous assertion to pass my lips. But it will be you, who have so rashly promised them the sun, the moon and the stars, that they will now fall back upon, and quite justifiably. After all, it is you and you alone who have set the ball rolling.’

  I felt my fingers stiffen. From the moment when I had seen Dr Condor’s telegram lying on my table I had subconsciously anticipated all this, and now that he had summed up the situation so clearly for me, I felt as though I had been dealt a blow on the head with a blunt hatchet. Instinctively I felt impelled to defend myself. I did not want to have to bear the whole responsibility. But the words that I eventually forced out sounded like the stammering of a guilty schoolboy.

  ‘But why? I only meant to act for the best ... If I said something to Kekesfalva it was only out of ... out of ...’

  ‘I know, I know,’ interrupted Condor. ‘Naturally, he forced it out of you, wrung it from you. I know how he can break down all one’s defences with his desperate persistence. Yes, I know, I know that you only weakened out of pity, out of the best possible motives. But — and I think I’ve already once warned you on this score — pity is a confoundedly two-edged business. Anyone who doesn’t know how to deal with it should keep his hands, and, above all, his heart, off it. It is only at first that pity, like morphia, is a solace to the invalid, a remedy, a drug, but unless you know the correct dosage and when to stop, it becomes a virulent poison. The first few injections do good, they soothe, they deaden the pain. But the devil of it is that the organism, the body, just like the soul, has an uncanny capacity for adaptation. Just as the nervous system cries out for more and more morphia, so do the emotions cry out for more and more pity, in the end more than one can give. Inevitably there comes a moment when one has to say ‘No’, and then one must not mind the other person’s hating one more for this ultimate refusal than if one had never helped him at all. Yes, my dear Lieutenant, one has got to keep one’s pity properly in check, or it does far more harm than any amount of indifference — we doctors know that, and so do judges and myrmidons of the law and pawnbrokers; if they were all to give way to their pity, this world of ours would stand still — a dangerous thing, pity, a dangerous thing! You can see for yourself what your weakness has done.’

  ‘Yes ... but one can’t ... one just can’t abandon a person to despair ... after all, there was no harm in my trying ...’

  But Condor suddenly grew vehement.

  ‘Oh, but there was — a very great deal! You take on yourself a confounded amount of responsibility when you make a fool of another person with your pity. An adult person must consider, before getting himself mixed up in such a thing, how far he’s prepared to go — there must be no fooling about with other people’s feelings. Admitted that you have fooled these good people out of the best, the most honourable motives — in this world of ours it’s not a question of whether one acts boldly or timorously, but solely of what one ultimately achieves, what one accomplishes. Pity — that’s all right! But there are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as possible of the painful emotion aroused by the sight of another’s unhappiness, that pity which is not compassion, but only an instinctive desire to fortify one’s own soul against the sufferings of another; and the other, the only kind that counts, the unsentimental but creative kind, which knows what it is about and is determined to hold out, in patience and forbearance, to the very limit of its strength and even beyond. It is only when one goes on to the end, to the extreme, bitter end, only when one has an inexhaustible fund of patience, that one can help one’s fellows. Only when one is prepared to sacrifice oneself in doing so — and then only!’

  A bitter note crept into his voice. I could not help remembering what Kekesfalva had told me: that Condor had a blind wife whom he had been unable to cure, and had married by way of penance, and that this blind woman, instead of being grateful to him, was a continual plague to him. But he put his hand on my arm with a warm, almost affectionate gesture.

  ‘Come, come, I don’t mean to be unkind. It’s just that your feelings got the better of you, and that’s a thing that can happen to anyone. But now to business — yours and mine. I haven’t dragged you here to babble psychology. We must get down to practical details. It’s essential, of course, that we should act concertedly in this affair. I cannot have you interfering with my plans behind my back a second time. Well, listen. After that letter of Edith’s I am unfortunately bound to assume that our friends have been swept off their feet by the illusion that Edith’s complicated disease can be spirited away by Professor Viennot’s treatment as easily as a sum is wiped off a slate. If that crazy notion has taken a dangerous hold of them, there’s nothing for it but to eradicate it — the quicker the better for us all. Of course it will be a severe shock to them; truth is always a bitter pill to swallow, but we can’t let such an illusion go on flourishing like a weed. Leave it to me to deal with the whole thing in the most humane way possible.

  ‘And now as to you. The most convenient thing for me, of course, would be to put all
the blame on you; to say that you had misunderstood me, that you had exaggerated or drawn upon your imagination. Well, I’m not going to do that, I prefer to take the whole responsibility on my own shoulders. Only — I may as well tell you straight away — I can’t leave you entirely out of the picture. You know the old man and his terrible pertinacity. If I were to explain the whole thing to him a hundred times over and to show him the letter, he’d still keep on whining, “But you promised the Herr Leutnant”, and “But the Herr Leutnant said ...” He’d go on quoting you ad infinitum in order to delude himself and me into thinking that despite everything there was still some hope. Without using you as a witness I’ll never convince him. You can’t dispel illusions as easily as you shake down the quicksilver in a thermometer. Once you hold out even a straw of hope to one of those patients who are so cruelly called incurable he will immediately construct a plank out of it, and out of the plank a whole house. But such castles in the air are extremely unhealthy for patients, and it is my duty as a doctor to demolish this particular one as speedily as possible, before sublime hopes take up their abode in it. We must therefore tackle the business in earnest and lose no time.’

  Condor paused. He was obviously waiting for my assent. But I did not dare to meet his gaze. Memories of the day before raced hither and thither in my brain, driven on by the thumping of my heart; how we had driven through the summer countryside, and how the face of the crippled girl had been radiant with sunshine and happiness; how she had stroked the little foals, how she had sat like a queen at the feast; how the tears had trickled down the old man’s face into his laughing, trembling mouth. Was I to shatter all that at one blow? To change back into her suffering self an Edith who had been so transformed, with one word to drive back into the purgatory of impatience the girl who had been so gloriously snatched from despair! No, I knew that I should never lift a finger to do such a thing.