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Authors: Stefan Zweig
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Lieutenant Hofmiller. You don’t know how she has been tormented all these years … always some new treatment, and progress is so terribly slow that I can understand her impatience. But what are we to do? We must try everything, we have to.”
The old man is standing beside the abandoned tea trolley. He does not look at me as he speaks. Standing very still, he keeps his eyes, almost hidden by their grey lids, bent on the trolley. As if in a dream he puts his fingers into the sugar bowl and takes out a cube, which he turns this way and that, staring at it pointlessly and then putting it down again, with something of the demeanour of a drunk. He still cannot look up from the tea trolley, as if something on it held him spellbound. Abstractedly, he touches a spoon, picks it up, and then speaks again, apparently to the spoon.
“If you knew what the child used to be like! Upstairs and downstairs all day long, running up and down steps and through all the rooms, oh, she terrified us. At the age of eleven she was riding her pony full tilt in the meadows, no one could keep upwith her. We often feared for her, my late wife and I, she was so reckless, so high-spirited and agile, everything came so easily to her. You felt she had only to spread out her arms to be able to fly … and the accident had to happen to her, of all people …”
The parting in his sparse white hair is bent lower and lower over the table. His nervous hand is still fiddling with all the items strewn around the tea trolley, not a spoon now but a pair of sugar tongs, and he traces curious round runes on the trolley with the little tongs. I know it is out of shame and embarrassment; he is afraid to look at me.
“And yet it’s still so easy to make her happy. She can rejoice like a child at the least little thing. She will laugh at the silliest joke and immerse herself enthusiastically in a book—I wish you could have seen how delighted she was when your flowers arrived, and she felt free of her fear that she had offended you. You have no idea how intensely she feels everything, far more strongly than the rest of us. I know very well that she is more distressed than anyone else when she knows she has lost control of herself. But how can anyone … how could anyone exercise such self-control? How can a child always be patient when progress is so slow, hold her tongue when God has inflicted such a blow on her, and she has done nothing to deserve it … she never hurt a soul!”
He was still staring at the imaginary figures traced with the sugar tongs in the empty air by his trembling hand. Suddenly he put the tongs down with a little clink, as if alarmed. It was as if he were waking up, and only now realised that he was speaking not to himself alone but to a total stranger. In a very different voice, wakeful if dejected, he awkwardly began to apologise.
“Forgive me, Lieutenant Hofmiller, what must you think of my unburdening myself to you, telling you our troubles? It was onlythat … it just came over me, I wanted to explain … I wouldn’t like you to think too badly of her, I wouldn’t want you to—”
I don’t know how I found the courage to interrupt the awkwardly stammering voice and go towards him. But suddenly I took the old man’s hand—the hand of a perfect stranger—in both of mine. I said nothing. I just held his cold, bony hand as it instinctively flinched, and pressed it firmly. He stared at me in surprise, the lenses of his glasses glinting, and behind them an uncertain gaze gently and shyly sought mine. I was afraid he would say something now, but he did not. His round black pupils grew wider and wider, that was all, as if they were brimming over. I myself felt the rise of an emotion that I had never known before, and to escape it I quickly bowed and left.
Out in the front hall, as the manservant was helping me into my coat, I suddenly felt a draught of air behind me. Without even turning to look, I knew that the old man had
The old man is standing beside the abandoned tea trolley. He does not look at me as he speaks. Standing very still, he keeps his eyes, almost hidden by their grey lids, bent on the trolley. As if in a dream he puts his fingers into the sugar bowl and takes out a cube, which he turns this way and that, staring at it pointlessly and then putting it down again, with something of the demeanour of a drunk. He still cannot look up from the tea trolley, as if something on it held him spellbound. Abstractedly, he touches a spoon, picks it up, and then speaks again, apparently to the spoon.
“If you knew what the child used to be like! Upstairs and downstairs all day long, running up and down steps and through all the rooms, oh, she terrified us. At the age of eleven she was riding her pony full tilt in the meadows, no one could keep upwith her. We often feared for her, my late wife and I, she was so reckless, so high-spirited and agile, everything came so easily to her. You felt she had only to spread out her arms to be able to fly … and the accident had to happen to her, of all people …”
The parting in his sparse white hair is bent lower and lower over the table. His nervous hand is still fiddling with all the items strewn around the tea trolley, not a spoon now but a pair of sugar tongs, and he traces curious round runes on the trolley with the little tongs. I know it is out of shame and embarrassment; he is afraid to look at me.
“And yet it’s still so easy to make her happy. She can rejoice like a child at the least little thing. She will laugh at the silliest joke and immerse herself enthusiastically in a book—I wish you could have seen how delighted she was when your flowers arrived, and she felt free of her fear that she had offended you. You have no idea how intensely she feels everything, far more strongly than the rest of us. I know very well that she is more distressed than anyone else when she knows she has lost control of herself. But how can anyone … how could anyone exercise such self-control? How can a child always be patient when progress is so slow, hold her tongue when God has inflicted such a blow on her, and she has done nothing to deserve it … she never hurt a soul!”
He was still staring at the imaginary figures traced with the sugar tongs in the empty air by his trembling hand. Suddenly he put the tongs down with a little clink, as if alarmed. It was as if he were waking up, and only now realised that he was speaking not to himself alone but to a total stranger. In a very different voice, wakeful if dejected, he awkwardly began to apologise.
“Forgive me, Lieutenant Hofmiller, what must you think of my unburdening myself to you, telling you our troubles? It was onlythat … it just came over me, I wanted to explain … I wouldn’t like you to think too badly of her, I wouldn’t want you to—”
I don’t know how I found the courage to interrupt the awkwardly stammering voice and go towards him. But suddenly I took the old man’s hand—the hand of a perfect stranger—in both of mine. I said nothing. I just held his cold, bony hand as it instinctively flinched, and pressed it firmly. He stared at me in surprise, the lenses of his glasses glinting, and behind them an uncertain gaze gently and shyly sought mine. I was afraid he would say something now, but he did not. His round black pupils grew wider and wider, that was all, as if they were brimming over. I myself felt the rise of an emotion that I had never known before, and to escape it I quickly bowed and left.
Out in the front hall, as the manservant was helping me into my coat, I suddenly felt a draught of air behind me. Without even turning to look, I knew that the old man had
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