Beware of Pity

  ‘But now it has happened. And now, beloved, that I can no longer deny and dissimulate my feelings for you, do not be cruel to me, I implore you. Even the most wretched, the most pitiable creature has her pride, and I could not bear it if you were to despise me because I could not keep my heart in check. I do not expect you to return my love — no, by God, who is to heal and save me, I have not the audacity to expect that! Not even in my dreams do I dare to hope that you could love me as I am — I do not want, as you know, any sacrifice, any pity from you. All I ask is that you should let me wait, wait in silence, and not spurn me utterly. I know that even this is asking too much of you. But is it really too much to grant a human being this pitiful modicum of happiness, which one willingly allows to any dog, the happiness of gazing up dumbly now and then at his master? Is it necessary to thrust it away violently, to drive it away scornfully with a whip? For the one thing, I tell you, that I could not bear, would be that I, wretched creature that I am, should become repellent to you through having given myself away, that you should punish me; for my own shame and despair are punishment enough to me. In that case I should have only one way out, and you know what that is. I have already shown it to you.

  ‘But no, don’t be alarmed, I don’t want to threaten you! I don’t want to frighten you, to extort from you, instead of love, pity — the only thing that you have hitherto given me of your own free will. You must feel quite free and unhindered — God knows I don’t want to burden you with my burden, weigh you down with guilt of which you are guiltless — all I want is that you should forgive and forget what has happened, forget what I have said, what I have revealed to you. Give me just this reassurance, just this pitiful little certainty! Tell me now — a word will suffice — that I have not become repugnant to you, that you will come to see us again as though nothing had happened. You can have no idea of how I dread losing you. Ever since that moment when the door closed behind you I have been in an agony of fear that it was for the last time. You were so pale, you had such a look of horror in your eyes as I let go of you, that in the midst of my ardour I suddenly felt icy-cold. And I know — for Josef told me — that you rushed straight out of the house, seized your cap and sword and were off in a moment. He searched for you in vain, in my room and all over the house, and so I know that you fled from me as from the plague, the pest. But no, beloved, I am not reproaching you—I understand. I of all people, who recoil in horror from myself when I see the great weights on my feet, I alone, who know how beastly, how petulant, how impossible, how intolerable I have become in my impatience, I of all people should be able to understand why others should recoil in horror from me. Oh, I can understand only too well why they flee from me, shrink back when they come upon such a monstrosity! And yet I implore you to forgive me, for there is no night and no day without you, but only despair. Send me just a note, a little hurried note, or a blank sheet of paper, a flower — but something, some sign or other. Just something by which I shall know that you are not spurning me, that I have not become repellent to you. Remember that in a few days I shall be going away for months, that in a week or ten days your torture will be at an end. And if mine is increased a thousandfold, the torture of having to do without you for weeks, for months on end, don’t think of that, think only of yourself, as I think always of you, only of you. In a week’s time you will be released — so come again, and in the meantime send me a word, give me a sign. I cannot think, cannot breathe, cannot feel until I know that you have forgiven me. I will not, I cannot go on living if you deny me the right to love you!’

  I read and read. I read the letter over and over again from the beginning. My hands trembled and the hammering at my temples grew more and more insistent; my consternation and dismay at being loved so desperately were boundless.

  ‘Well, I’m damned! There you are still in your underclothes, and they’re all waiting anxiously for you. The whole crowd’s already at table, dying for things to begin, even Balinkay; the Colonel may turn up any moment now, and you know what a song and dance the old buffer makes when any of us is late. Ferdl sent me over specially to see if anything had happened to you, and there you are mooning about reading a billet doux ... Well, look sharp, or we’ll both get a deuce of a dressing down!’

  It was Ferencz who had burst into my room. I had not noticed his presence until he gave me a hearty slap on the back with his heavy paw. At first I couldn’t take in what he was saying. The Colonel? Ferdl had sent him over? Balinkay? Ah yes, ah yes, I remembered now: the dinner in honour of Balinkay! Hastily I reached for my trousers and tunic, and with a speed acquired after years at the cadet school, I mechanically threw on my clothes, without really knowing what I was doing.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ asked Ferencz, looking at me oddly. ‘You’re behaving absolutely crazily. Have you had bad news or something?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I hastened to protest. ‘I’m coming.’ Three bounds and we were on the landing. Then I tore back again to my room.

  ‘God bless the boy, what’s wrong now?’ Ferencz roared after me indignantly. But I had merely gone to pick up the letter I had left lying on the table and stow it away in my breast-pocket. As it was, we were only just in time. The noisy crew were assembled round the long horse-shoe table, but, like schoolboys waiting after the bell has gone they none of them really dared to let themselves go until the senior officers had taken their seats.

  And now the orderlies flung open the doors; the Colonel and his staff entered, their spurs jingling. We all rose and stood for a moment at attention. The Colonel sat down on Balinkay’s right, the senior Major on his left, and the whole table instantly became animated; plates clattered, spoons rattled, everyone chattered away and fell to with a will. I alone sat in a kind of trance amidst my jovial companions and kept feeling for the place where, beneath my tunic, something was hammering and thumping away like a second heart. Every time I touched it I could feel the letter crackling through the soft, yielding cloth like the flames of a newly kindled fire; yes, it was there, it moved and stirred close to my breast like a living thing, and while the others babbled away happily over their food I could think of nothing but the letter and the desperate plight of the girl who had written it.

  In vain the waiter placed food before me; I left everything untouched. This listening to my inner self paralysed me. It was as though I was asleep with my eyes wide open. To right and left of me I heard people talking as through a fog, without understanding a word of what they were saying; they might have been speaking a foreign language. Before me, beside me, I saw faces, moustaches, eyes, noses, lips, uniforms, but saw them dimly as one sees things through the plate-glass of a shop-window. I was there and yet not there, immobile and yet occupied, for I kept murmuring with soundless lips the individual phrases of the letter, and sometimes, when I could not remember how it went on or I got mixed up, my hand would move stealthily towards my pocket, as though I were a cadet, bringing out proscribed books during the lecture on tactics.

  Then a knife was rattled vigorously against a glass, and there was a sudden hush, as though the sharp steel had cut right through the din. The Colonel had risen and was about to make a speech. Gripping the table with both hands, he swung his stocky body backwards and forwards as though he were on horseback. Starting off with a harsh, strident ‘Kame-rr-aden,’ he barked out his well-prepared speech, rhythmically accentuating the syllables. I listened attentively, but my brain refused to function. I could hear only isolated phrases vibrating through the room: ‘... hon’r of the army ... spirit of the Austrian cav’lry ... loyalty to the reg’ment... old comr’de.’ But in between these I could catch the ghostly whisper of other words, soft, pleading words, coming as though from another world: ‘My heart’s beloved ... do not be afraid ... I cannot go on living if you take from me the right to love you ...’ And in between these, again, the Colonel’s crisp syllables: ‘... has not forgotten his comr’des ... so far away ... or the Fatherland ... or his native Austria ...’ And once again t
he other voice, like a sob, like a stifled scream: ‘All I ask is that you should let me love you ... all I ask is that you should give me a sign ...’

  And now there rattled and thundered out a salvo, ‘Hoch, hoch, hoch!’ As though dragged to their feet by the Colonel’s raised glass, my comrades sprang to attention, and from the next room there rang out the prearranged fanfare: ‘Here’s health to Balinkay!’ Everyone clinked glasses and drank a toast to Balinkay, who had only been waiting for the shiver of breaking glass before replying in mellow, easy, jocular vein. He wanted to say only a few modest words, he said; merely that, despite everything, there was nowhere in the world where he felt so much at home as among his old comrades. He ended up with the toast: ‘Long live the Regiment! Long live His Majesty, our most gracious Commander-in-Chief, the Emperor!’ Steinhübel once more signalled to the bugler, another fanfare was sounded, and the National Anthem boomed forth from all throats. Then came the inevitable song of every Austrian regiment, in which each mentions its own name with the same boastful pride:

  ‘Wir sind vom k und k,

  Ulanenregiment ...’[1]

  Glass in hand, Balinkay strolled round the table to clink glasses with each of us. All of a sudden, pushed forward energetically by my neighbour, I found myself gazing into a pair of bright friendly eyes: ‘Servus, Comrade!’ I nodded back in a stupor; and only when Balinkay had passed on to the next man did I realize that I had omitted to clink glasses with him. But everything had already vanished in the rainbow mist in which faces and uniforms were so strangely blurred and jumbled together. Good heavens! — whatever was that blue smoke before my eyes? Had the others already begun to puff away at their cigars? I suddenly felt suffocatingly hot. I must drink something, drink quickly! I gulped down one, two, three glasses, without knowing what I was drinking. At all costs I must get this bitter, nasty taste out of my mouth! And I must smoke too. But as I felt in my pocket for my cigarette-case I was once more conscious of that crackling under my tunic: the letter! My hand drew back. Once again I could hear nothing amid the confusion of voices but those sobbing, pleading words: ‘All I ask is that you should let me love you ... I know that it is madness to force myself upon you ...’

  Of His Royal and Imperial Majesty’s Uhlans ...

  But at this moment a fork was tinkled against a glass to call for silence. Major Wondraczek, who seized every opportunity of displaying his poetic talents by declaiming humorous verses and extempore doggerel, had got to his feet. The moment he rose, rested his comfortable little paunch on the table and tried to assume a sly, knowing expression, we all knew that the ‘matey’ part of the evening had begun, and that nothing could stop it.

  And now, pushing his spectacles up above his somewhat longsighted eyes, he struck an attitude and ostentatiously unrolled a sheet of foolscap on which was written the inevitable poem with which, as he fondly thought, he graced every festive occasion. This time it was an effort to embroider Balinkay’s life-story with all kinds of ‘telling’ witticisms. Several of my neighbours, either out of courtesy to a senior officer or because they themselves were already a little tipsy, tittered obligingly at every allusion. At last a point really did get home, and a volley of bravos thundered out from the whole company.

  But suddenly I was seized with a feeling of revulsion. This ribald laughter clawed at my heart. How could they laugh like that when somewhere someone was groaning in despair, suffering boundless torments? How could they crack smutty jokes when someone was in agony of soul? The moment Wondraczek had come to an end of his silly twaddle, the real orgy, I knew, would begin. There would be songs; they would bawl out ‘The Good-wife on the Lahn,’ they would retail funny stories, they would laugh uproariously. All of a sudden I felt unable to bear the sight of all these good-humoured, glowing faces. Had she not asked me in her letter to send her just a note, just one word? Ought I not to go to the telephone and ring her up? One couldn’t leave a person in suspense like that. One ought to send some message, one ought ...

  ‘Bravo, bravissimo!’ Everyone applauded, chairs were pushed back noisily, the floor groaned, and a cloud of dust flew up as forty or fifty rowdy and slightly tipsy men suddenly shuffled to their feet. Proudly the Major stood there, removed his spectacles and rolled up his manuscript, nodding good-humouredly and a little vainly at the officers who had crowded round to congratulate him. I, however, seized the opportunity of this hullabaloo to rush off without saying any farewells. Perhaps they wouldn’t notice my absence. And even if they did, it was all the same; I simply could not stand it any longer — could not stand this laughter, this smug merriment, which seemed, as it were, to be patting itself on its full belly. I could not, simply could not.

  ‘Is the Herr Leutnant going already?’ asked the orderly at the cloakroom in amazement. ‘Go to the devil!’ I murmured under my breath, and pushed past him without a word. Across the road, round the corner and up the stairs to my room. Oh to be alone, alone!

  The corridors reeked of desolation. Somewhere a sentry was pacing to and fro, a tap was running, a boot fell to the ground, and the only human sound came, faint and far-off, from one of the men’s dormitories, where, according to the regulations, lights had already been put out. Involuntarily I listened; a few of the Ruthenian lads were either singing or humming a melancholy song in low voices. Every night before going to sleep, when they took off the strange bright uniform with the brass buttons and were once again no more than the peasants who lay down naked at home among the straw, they would remember their native land and its pastures, or perhaps a girl they were fond of, and then they would sing these mournful tunes in order to drown their home-sickness. As a rule I paid no heed to their humming and singing, because I did not understand the words. But this time its strange melancholy moved me, and I felt as though these men were my brothers. Oh to sit down by one of them, to talk to him! He would not understand, and yet, perhaps, as he gazed sympathetically at me out of his mild, cow-like eyes, he would understand everything far better than those revellers at the horse-shoe table. Oh to have someone who would help me out of this hopeless entanglement!

  So as not to wake Kusma, my batman, who was snoring away loudly in the ante-room, I crept on tiptoe into my room, threw my cap down in the darkness, and tore off my sword and the collar which had long been choking me. Then I lit the lamp and went over to the table in order at last, at last, to read the letter in peace — the first heart-breaking letter which I, a young, unsophisticated fellow, had ever received from a woman.

  But the next moment I gave a start. There on the table lay, in the circle of lamplight — how was it possible? — the very letter I had thought was still hidden in my breast-pocket! Yes, there it lay, the blue, square envelope, the familiar handwriting.

  For a moment I reeled. Was I drunk? Was I dreaming with my eyes wide open? Had I lost my senses? Had I not just now, as I took off my tunic, distinctly heard the letter crackling in my breast-pocket? Was I so distraught that I had taken it out without remembering anything about it a moment afterwards? I felt in my pocket. No — of course I was right — the letter was still safely there. And only now did I understand what had happened. Only now did I become fully awake. This letter on the table must be a fresh letter, a second letter, one that had arrived later, and my good Kusma had thoughtfully placed it by the thermos flask so that I should find it on my return.

  Another letter? A second letter within two hours? My throat immediately went dry with vexation and anger. So this was to go on every day, every day, every night, letter after letter, one upon another. If I wrote to her, she would write back to me, and if I did not answer, she would want to know why. She would always be wanting something of me, every day, every day! She would send me messages, she would telephone me, she would watch out for me and have me spied upon at every turn; she would want to know when I went out and when I returned, whom I was with and what I said and did. I could see that I was lost — she would never let me go again. Oh, the djinn, the Old Man of the Sea, old Kekesfalv
a and the cripple — I should never be free again, those greedy, desperate creatures would never let me go until one of us was destroyed, she or I, by this futile, fatal passion.

  Don’t read it, I told myself. Don’t read it today on any account. Don’t get involved any further. You haven’t sufficient strength to resist this pulling and tugging, it will tear you to pieces. Better destroy the letter or send it back unopened. Don’t let the knowledge that a total stranger loves you force itself upon your consciousness, your conscience. To the devil with all the Kekesfalvas! I used not to know them and I don’t want to know them any more. But then I was suddenly petrified by the thought that perhaps because I had not answered her she had done herself some injury. One could not leave a desperate person without a reply of any kind. Ought I not, after all, to wake Kusma and quickly send some word of reassurance, of acknowledgement, out to Kekesfalva? I must not incur any guilt, whatever happened. And so I tore open the envelope. Thank God, it was only a short letter! Only a single sheet, only ten lines without any heading.

  ‘Destroy my previous letter at once. I was mad, completely mad. All that I wrote was untrue. And don’t come to see us tomorrow. Please don’t come. I must punish myself for having abased myself so horribly to you. So on no account come tomorrow, I don’t want you to, I forbid it. And don’t answer my letter on any account. Destroy my previous letter without fail, forget every word of it. And think no more about it.’