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

the magnificent ease that came naturally to her, and said, ‘I am a little tired … I think I’ll go to bed early for once. Good night!’ And she was walking past me with a distant social nod of her head … I could still see the frown on her face, and then nothing but her back, her white, cool, bare back. It was a second before I realised that she was leaving … that I wouldn’t be able to see her or speak to her again this evening, this last evening before I could help her. For a moment I stood there rooted to the spot until I realised it, and then … then …
    But wait … wait, or you will not understand how stupid and pointless what I did was. I must describe the whole room to you first. It was the great hall of the government building, entirely illuminated by lights and almost empty … the couples had gone into the other room to dance, gentlemen had gone to play cards … only a few groups were still talking in the corners, so the hall was empty, every movement conspicuous and visible in the bright light. And she walked slowly and lightly through that great hall with her shoulders straight, exchanging greetings now and then with indescribable composure, with the magnificent , frozen, proud calm that so enchanted me. I … I had stayed behind, as I told you, as if paralysed, before I realised that she was leaving … and then, when I did realise, she was already at the far side of the hall and justapproaching the doors. Then … and I am still ashamed to think of it now … something suddenly came over me and I ran … I ran , do you hear? … I did not walk but ran through the hall after her, my shoes clattering on the floor. I heard my own footsteps, I saw all eyes turning to me in surprise … I could have died of shame … even as I ran I understood my own derangement, but I could not … could not go back now. I caught up with her in the doorway. She turned to me … her eyes stabbed like grey steel, her nostrils were quivering with anger … I was just going to stammer something out when … when she suddenly laughed aloud … a clear, carefree, whole-hearted laugh, and said, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Oh, doctor, have you only just remembered my little boy’s prescription? Ah, you learned scientists!’ A couple of people standing nearby laughed kindly … I understood, and was shattered by the masterly way she had saved the situation. I put my hand in my wallet and tore a blank leaf off my prescription block, and she took it casually before … again with a cold smile of thanks … before she went. For one second I felt easy in my mind… I saw that her skill in dealing with my blunder had made up for it and put things right—but next moment I also knew that all was over for me now, she hated me for my intemperate folly … hated me worse than death itself. I could come to her door hundreds upon hundreds of times, and she would always have me turned away like a dog.
    I staggered through the room … I realised that people were looking at me, and I must have appeared strange. I went to the buffet and drank two, three, four glasses of cognac one after another, which saved me from collapsing.My nerves could bear no more, they were in shreds. Then I slunk out through a side entrance, as secretly as a criminal . Not for any principality in the world could I have walked back through that hall, with her carefree laughter still echoing from its walls. I went … I really can’t say now exactly where I went, but into a couple of bars where I got drunk, like a man trying to drink his consciousness away … but I could not numb my senses, the laughter was there in me, high and dreadful … I could not silence that damned laughter. I wandered around the harbour … I had left my revolver in my room, or I would have shot myself. I could think of nothing else, and with that thought I went back to the hotel with one idea in my mind … the left-hand drawer of the chest where my revolver lay …