Amok and Other Stories

  Surprised, Crescenz came out of the kitchen as soon as she heard the click of the key turning. When she saw him, she stood there looking pale for a moment, and then, as if ducking out of sight, bent to pick up the travelling bag he had put down. But she said not a word of greeting, and he said nothing either. In silence she carried the bag to his room; he followed in silence too. He waited in silence, looking out of the window, until she had left the room. Then he hastily turned the key in the door.

  That was their first meeting after several months.

  Crescenz waited. And so did the Baron, to see if that dreadful spasm of horror at the sight of her would pass off. It did not. Even before he saw her, the mere sound of her footsteps in the corridor outside his room sent the sense of discomfort fluttering up in him. He did not touch his breakfast, he was quick to leave the house every morning without a word to her, and he stayed out until late at night merely to avoid her presence. He delivered the two or three instructions that he had to give her with his face averted. It choked him to breathe the air of the same room as this spectral creature.

  Meanwhile, Crescenz sat silently on her wooden stool all day. She was not cooking anything for herself. She couldn’t stomach food, she avoided all human company, she just sat with timidity in her eyes, waiting for the first whistle from her master, like a beaten dog which knows that it has done something bad. Her dull mind did not understand exactly what had happened, only that her lord and master was avoiding her and didn’t want her any more. That was all that reached her, and it made a powerful impression.

  On the third day after the Baron’s return the doorbell rang. A composed, grey-haired man with a clean-shaven face was standing there with a suitcase in his hand. Crescenz was about to send him away, but the intruder insisted that he was the new manservant here, his master had asked him to arrive at ten, and she was to announce him. Crescenz went white as a sheet; she stood there for a moment with her stiff fingers spread wide in mid-air. Then her hand fell like a bird that has been shot. “Thassa way,” she abruptly told the surprised man, turned to the kitchen and slammed the door behind her.

  The manservant stayed. From that day on her master no longer had to say a word to her; all messages were relayed by the calm, elderly servant. She did not know what was going on in the apartment; it all flowed over her like a cold wave flowing over a stone.

  This oppressive state of affairs lasted for two weeks, draining Crescenz like an illness. Her face was thin and haggard, the hair was suddenly going grey at her temples. Her movements froze entirely. She spent almost all the time sitting on her wooden stool, like a block of wood herself, staring blankly at the empty window, and if she did work she worked furiously, like someone in a violent outbreak of rage.

  After those two weeks the manservant went to his master’s room, and from his tactful air of biding his time the Baron realised that there was something he particularly wanted to say. The man had already complained of the sullen manner of that ‘Tyrolean clod’, as he contemptuously called her, and had suggested dismissing her. But feeling in some way painfully embarrassed, the Baron had initially pretended to ignore his proposal. Although at the time the servant had bowed and left the room, this time he stuck doggedly to his opinion, and with a strange, almost awkward expression he finally stammered that he hoped sir would not think he was being ridiculous, but he couldn’t … no, he couldn’t put it any other way … he was afraid of her. That surly, withdrawn creature was unbearable, he didn’t think the Baron knew what a dangerous person he had in his home.

  The Baron instinctively started at this warning. What did the man mean, he asked, what was he trying to say? The manservant did soften his statement by saying that he couldn’t point to anything certain, he just had a feeling that the woman was like a rabid animal … she could easily do someone harm. Yesterday he turned to give her an order, and he had unexpectedly seen a look in her eyes—well, there wasn’t much you could say about a look, but it had been as if she was about to spring at his throat. And since then he had been afraid of her—even afraid to touch the food she cooked. “You wouldn’t have any idea, sir,” he concluded, “what a dangerous person that is. She don’t speak, she don’t say much, but I think she’s capable of murder.” Startled, the Baron cast the man a quick glance. Had he heard anything definite? Had someone passed any suspicion on to him? He felt his fingers begin to shake, and hastily put his cigar down so that the trembling of his hands would not show. But the elderly man’s face was entirely unsuspecting—no, he couldn’t know anything. The Baron hesitated. Then he suddenly pulled himself together, knowing what he himself wanted to do, and made up his mind. “Well, wait a little while, but if she’s so unfriendly to you again then I’ll just give her notice.”

  The manservant bowed, and the Baron sat back in relief. Every thought of that mysteriously dangerous creature darkened the day for him. It would be best to do it while he was away, he thought, at Christmas, perhaps—the mere idea of the liberation he hoped for did him good. Yes, that will be best, he told himself once more, at Christmas when I’m away.

  But the very next day, as soon as he had gone to his study after dinner, there was a knock at the door. Unthinkingly looking up from his newspaper, he murmured, “Come in.” And then he heard that dreaded, hard tread that was always in his dreams. He started up: like a death’s head, pale and white as chalk, he saw the angular face quivering above the thin black figure. A little pity mingled with his horror when he saw how the anxious footsteps of the creature, crushed as she looked, humbly stopped short at the edge of the carpet. And to hide his bemused state, he tried to sound carefree. “Well, what is it then, Crescenz?” he asked. But it didn’t come out warm and jovial, as he had intended; against his own will the question sounded hostile and unpleasant.

  Crescenz did not move. She stared at the carpet. At last, as you might push a hard object away with your foot, she managed to get the words out. “That servant, sir, he come ter see ’un. He say sir be going to fire ’un.”

  The Baron, painfully embarrassed, rose to his feet. He had not expected it to come so soon. He began to say, stammering, that he was sure it hadn’t been meant like that, she ought to try to get on with his other servant, adding whatever other unthinking remarks came to his lips.

  But Crescenz stayed put, her gaze boring into the carpet, her shoulders hunched. Bitter and dogged, she kept her head bowed like an ox, letting all his kindly remarks pass her by, waiting for just one word that did not come. And when at last he fell silent, exhausted and rather repelled by the contemptible role he was obliged to adopt, trying to ingratiate himself with a servant, she remained obstinate and mute. Then at last she got out something else. “I only wants ter know if sir himself tells Anton ter fire ’un.”

  She somehow got it out—harshly, reluctantly, violently. And already on edge as he was, he felt it like a blow. Was that a threat? Was she challenging him? All at once all his cowardice was gone, and all his pity. The hatred and disgust that had been dammed up in him for weeks came together with his ardent wish to make an end of it at last. And suddenly changing his tone entirely, and adopting the cool objectivity that he had learned at work in the ministry, he confirmed, as if it were of no importance, that yes, that was indeed so, he had in fact given the manservant a free hand to organise the household just as he liked. He personally wished her well, and would try to persuade Anton to change his mind about dismissing her. But if she still insisted on maintaining hostilities with the manservant, well, he would just have to dispense with her services.

  And summoning up all his will-power, determined not to be deterred by any sly hint or insinuating remark, he turned his glance as he spoke these last words on the woman he assumed to be threatening him and looked straight at her.

  But the eyes that Crescenz now raised timidly from the floor were those of a wounded animal, seeing the pack just about to break out of the bushes ahead of her. “Th … thank ’ee, sir” she got out, very faintly. “I be goin’ … I w
on’t trouble sir no more …”

  And slowly, without turning, she dragged herself out of the door with her bowed shoulders and stiff, wooden footsteps.

  That evening, when the Baron came back from the opera and reached for the letters that had arrived on his desk, he saw something strange and rectangular there. As the light flared up, he made out a wooden casket with rustic carving. It was not locked: inside, neatly arranged, lay all the little things that he had ever given Crescenz: a few cards from his hunting expeditions, two theatre tickets, a silver ring, the entire heaped rectangle of her banknotes, and there was also a snapshot taken twenty years ago in the Tyrol in which her eyes, obviously taken unawares by the flashlight, stared out with the same stricken, beaten look as they had a few hours ago when she left his study.

  At something of a loss, the Baron pushed the casket aside and went out to ask the manservant what these things of Crescenz’s were doing on his desk. The servant immediately offered to bring his enemy in to account for herself. But Crescenz was not to be found in the kitchen or anywhere else in the apartment. And only the next day, when the police reported the suicidal fall of a woman about forty years old from the bridge over the Danube Canal, did the two men know the answer to the question of where Leporella had gone.

  INCIDENT ON LAKE GENEVA

  ON THE BANKS OF LAKE GENEVA, close to the small Swiss resort of Villeneuve, a fisherman who had rowed his boat out into the lake one summer night in the year 1918 noticed a strange object in the middle of the water. When he came closer, he saw that it was a raft made of loosely assembled wooden planks which a naked man was clumsily trying to propel forward, using a piece of board as an oar. In astonishment, the fisherman steered his boat that way, helped the exhausted man into it, used some fishing nets as a makeshift covering for his nakedness, and then tried questioning the shivering figure huddling nervously into the corner of the boat. But he replied in a strange language, not a word of which was anything like the fisherman’s, so the rescuer soon gave up any further attempts, pulled in his nets, and rowed back to the bank, plying his oars faster than before.

  As the early light of dawn showed the outline of the bank, the naked man’s face too began to clear. A childlike smile appeared through the tangled beard around his broad mouth, he raised one hand, pointing, and kept stammering out a single word over and over again: a question that was half a statement. It sounded like “Rossiya”, and he repeated it more and more happily the closer the keel came to the bank of the lake. At last the boat crunched on the beach; the fisherman’s womenfolk, who were waiting for him to land his dripping catch, scattered screeching, like Nausicaa’s maids in the days of old, when they caught sight of the naked man covered by fishing nets, and only gradually, on hearing the strange news, did several men from the village appear. They were soon joined by that local worthy the courthouse usher, eagerly officious and very much on his dignity. He knew at once, from various instructions that he had received and a wealth of wartime experience, that this must be a deserter who had swum over the lake from the French bank, and he was preparing to interrogate him officially, but any such elaborate process was quickly deprived of any dignity or usefulness by the fact that the naked man (to whom some of the locals had now thrown a jacket and a pair of cotton drill trousers) responded to all questions with his questioning cry of “Rossiya? Rossiya?” sounding ever more anxious and doubtful. Slightly irked by his failure, the usher ordered the stranger to follow him by means of gestures that could not be misunderstood, and the wet, barefoot figure, his jacket and trousers flapping around him, was escorted to the courthouse, surrounded by the vociferous youths of the village who had now come along, and was taken into custody there. He did not protest, he said not a word, but his bright eyes had darkened with disappointment, and his shoulders were hunched as if expecting blows.

  By now news of this human catch had reached the nearby hotel, and several ladies and gentlemen, glad of this intriguing episode to relieve the monotonous course of the day’s events, came over to look at the wild man. One lady gave him some confectionery, which he eyed as suspiciously as a monkey might, and did not touch. A gentleman took a photograph. They all chattered and talked vivaciously as they swarmed around him, until at last the manager of the large hotel, who had lived abroad for a long time and knew several languages, spoke to the terrified man first in German, then in Italian and English, and finally in Russian. No sooner did he hear the first sound of his native tongue than the frightened man started violently, a broad smile split his good-natured face from ear to ear, and suddenly he was telling his whole story frankly and with self-assurance. It was very long and very confused, and the chance-come interpreter could not always understand every detail, but in essentials the man’s history was as follows:

  He had been fighting in Russia, and then one day he and a thousand others were packed into railway trucks and taken a very long way, they were transferred to ships and had travelled in those for even longer, through regions where it was so hot that, as he put it, the bones were baked soft inside your body. Finally they were landed again somewhere or other, packed into more railway trucks, and then they were suddenly told to storm a hill, but he knew no more about that, because a bullet had hit him in the leg as soon as the attack began. The audience, for whom the interpreter translated his questions and the man’s answers, immediately realised that this fugitive was a member of one of those Russian divisions fighting in France who had been sent half-way round the world, from Siberia and Vladivostok to the French front, and as well as feeling a certain pity they were all moved at the same time by curiosity: what could have induced him to make this strange attempt at flight? With a smile that was half-good-natured, half-crafty, the Russian readily explained that as soon as he was better he had asked the orderlies where Russia was, and they had pointed to show him the way. He had roughly remembered the direction by noting the position of the sun and the stars, and so he had escaped in secret, walking by night and hiding in haystacks from patrols by day. He had eaten fruit and begged for bread for ten days, until at last he reached this lake. Now his account became less clear. Apparently he himself came from Lake Baikal, and seeing the undulating curves of the opposite bank ahead of him in the evening light, he had thought that Russia must lie over there. At any rate, he had stolen a couple of planks from a hut, and lying face downwards over them, had used a piece of old board as a paddle to make his way far out into the lake, where the fisherman found him. As soon as the hotel manager had translated the anxious question which concluded his confused explanation—could he get home tomorrow?—its naivety at first aroused loud laughter, but that soon turned to pity, and everyone found a few coins or banknotes to give the poor man, who was now looking around him with miserable uncertainty.

  By this time a telephone call to Montreux had brought the arrival of a senior police officer to take down an account of the case, rather an arduous task. For not only was the amateur interpreter’s command of Russian inadequate, it was soon obvious that the man was uneducated to a degree scarcely comprehensible to Westerners. All he knew about himself was his own first name of Boris, and he was able to give only the most confused accounts of his native village, for instance that the people there were serfs of Prince Metchersky (he used the word serfs although serfdom had been abolished long ago), and that he lived fifty versts from the great lake with his wife and three children. Now a discussion of what was to be done with him began, while he stood amidst the disputants dull-eyed and hunching his shoulders. Some thought he ought to be handed over to the Russian embassy in Berne, others feared that such a measure would get him sent back to France; the police officer explained all the difficulty of deciding whether he should be treated as a deserter or a foreigner without papers; the local courthouse usher rejected out of hand any suggestion that the stranger should be fed and accommodated in Villeneuve itself. A Frenchman protested that there was no need to make such a fuss about a miserable runaway; he had better either work or be sent back. Two
women objected strongly to this remark, saying that his misfortune wasn’t his own fault, and it was a crime to send people away from their homes to a foreign country. It began to look as if this chance incident would lead to political strife when suddenly an old Danish gentleman intervened, saying in firm tones that he would pay for the man’s board and lodging for a week, and meanwhile the authorities could come to some agreement with the embassy. This unexpected solution satisfied both the officials and the private parties.

  During the increasingly agitated discussion the fugitive’s timid gaze had gradually lifted, and his eyes were now fixed on the lips of the hotel manager, the only person in all this turmoil who, he knew, could tell him his fate in terms that he was able to understand. He seemed to be vaguely aware of the turmoil caused by his presence, and as the noisy argument died down he spontaneously raised both hands in the silence, and reached them out to the manager with the pleading look of women at prayer before a holy picture. This moving gesture had an irresistible effect on all present. The manager went up to the man and reassured him warmly, saying that he had nothing to fear, he could stay here and come to no harm, he would have accommodation for the immediate future. The Russian tried to kiss his hand, but the other man withdrew it and quickly stepped back. Then he pointed out the house next door, a small village inn where the Russian would have bed and board, said a few more words of reassurance to him, and then, with another friendly wave, went up the beach to his hotel.