Read Online Amok and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig - Free Book Online Page B

nodded. We approached the table. A few minuteslater the certificate was made out; it was published later in the newspaper, and told a credible story of a heart attack. Then he rose and looked at me.
    ‘And you’ll leave this week, then?’
    ‘My word of honour.’
    He looked at me again. I realised that he wanted to appear stern and objective. ‘I’ll see about a coffin at once,’ he said, to hide his embarrassment. But whatever it was about me that made me so … so dreadful, so tormented—he suddenly offered me his hand and shook mine with hearty good feeling. ‘I hope you will be better soon,’ he said—I didn’t know what he meant. Was I sick? Was I … was I mad? I accompanied him to the door and unlocked it—and it was with the last of my strength that I closed it again behind him. Then the tingling in my temples returned, everything swayed and went round before my eyes, and I collapsed beside her bed … just as a man running amok falls senseless at the end of his frenzied career, his nerves broken.”
     
    Once again he paused. I shivered slightly: was it the first shower carried on the morning wind that blew softly over the deck? But the tormented face, now partly visible in the reflected light of dawn, was getting control of itself again.
    “I don’t know how long I lay on the mat like that. Then someone touched me. I came to myself with a start. It was the boy, timidly standing before me with his look of devotion and gazing uneasily at me.
    ‘Someone wants come in … wants see her …’
    ‘No one may come in.’
    ‘Yes … but …’
    There was alarm in his eyes. He wanted to say something , but dared not. The faithful creature was in some kind of torment.
    ‘Who is it?’
    He looked at me, trembling as if he feared a blow. And then he said—he named a name—how does such a lowly creature suddenly come by so much knowledge, how is it that at some moments these dull human souls show unspeakable tenderness?—then he said, very, very timidly, ‘It is him .’
    I started again, understood at once, and I was immediately avid, impatient to set eyes on the unknown man. For strangely enough, you see, in the midst of all my agony, my fevered longing, fear and haste, I had entirely forgotten ‘him’, I had forgotten there was a man involved too … the man whom this woman had loved, to whom she had passionately given what she denied to me. Twelve, twenty-four hours ago I would still have hated him, I would have been ready to tear him to pieces. Now … well, I can’t tell you how much I wanted to see him, to … to love him because she had loved him.
    I was suddenly at the door. There stood a young, very young fair-haired officer, very awkward, very slender, very pale. He looked like a child, so … so touchingly young, and I was unutterably shaken to see how hard he was trying to be a man and maintain his composure, hide his emotion. I saw at once that his hands were trembling as he raised them to his cap. I could have embraced him … because he was so exactly what I would have wishedthe man who had possessed her to be, not a seducer, not proud … no, still half a child, a pure, affectionate creature to whom she had given herself.
    The young man stood before me awkwardly. My avid glance, my passionate haste as I rushed to let him in confused him yet more. The small moustache on his upper lip trembled treacherously … this young officer, this child, had to force himself not to sob out loud.
    ‘Forgive me,’ he said at last. ‘I would have liked to see Frau … I would so much have liked to see her again.’
    Unconsciously, without any deliberate intention, I put my arm around the young stranger’s shoulders and led him in as if he were an invalid. He looked at me in surprise, with an infinitely warm and grateful expression … at that moment, some kind of understanding existed between the two of us of what we had in common. We went over to the dead woman. There she lay, white-faced , in white