Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig Read Free Book Online

evening. All I recollect is that the first thing I did was to fling open the door of the cupboard where I kept a bottle of slivovitz for visitors and tip two or three half-full tumblers of it down my throat, to dispel the horrible sensation of my rising nausea. Then I threw myself on the bed, fully dressed as I was, and tried to think. But delusions in the dark are like hothouse flowers; they grow faster and with more tropical luxuriance. Confused and fantastic, they shoot up in the warm ground into bright creepers that choke your breath, forming with the speed of dreams and chasing the most absurd fears through the overheated brain. Shamed for life, was all I could think, a social outcast, mocked by my comrades, the talk of the whole town! I would never leave my room again, I could never again venture out into the street for fear of meeting one of those who knew about my crime (for that night, under extreme nervous strain, I felt that my sheer stupidity was a crime, and I myself would be the butt of mockery, a subject of universal derision). When I finally fell asleep, it canhave been only a shallow, restless sleep in which my anxiety went on working feverishly.
    For as soon as I open my eyes I see the girl’s angry, childish face there before them again. I see her quivering lips, her hands convulsively clutching the table, I hear the sound of falling wood and now, in retrospect, realise it must have been her crutches, and I am overwhelmed by a stupid fear that the door might suddenly open, and her father—black coat trimmed with white braid, gold-rimmed glasses, neat little goatee beard—will march into my room. In my alarm I jump up. And as I stare at my own face, damp with the sweat of night fears and anxiety, I feel like punching the nose of the fool reflected in the pale mirror.
    But luckily day has dawned, footsteps clatter up and down the corridor, carts pass along the cobblestones outside. And once the windowpanes let in light you think more clearly than slumped in the ominous darkness that conjures up phantoms. Perhaps, I say to myself, it’s not all so terrible after all. Perhaps no one noticed. She did, of course—she will never forget, never forgive, that poor pale, sick, lame girl! And then a good idea abruptly flashes through my mind. I hastily comb my untidy hair, fling on my uniform and run past my surprised batman Kusma, who calls frantically after me, in his poor Ruthenian German, “Lieutenant, sir—Lieutenant, coffee ready is.”
    I run down the barracks stairs and race past the lancers lounging half-dressed around the yard. I’ve gone by them so fast that they don’t even have time to stand to attention. Next moment I’m out of the barracks gate, running (in so far as it is proper for a lieutenant to run) straight to the florists’ shop on the town-hall square. In my haste I had entirely forgotten that the shops aren’t open at five-thirty in the morning, but fortunately Frau Gurtner sells not just flowers, real and artificial, but alsovegetables. A cart delivering carrots is standing half-unloaded at the shop door, and as I knock vigorously on the window I can already hear her making her way downstairs. Once in the house, I make up a story—yesterday, I say, I entirely forgot that today some dear friends are celebrating an anniversary. We leave barracks in half-an-hour’s time, and I would like to have flowers sent at once. So flowers, please, the finest that she has! At once the stout florist, still in her bed jacket and slippers with holes in them, shuffles along to open her shop and show me her crown jewels, a large bunch of long-stemmed roses. How many would I like? All of them, I say, all of them! Just as they are, simply tied together, or would I rather have them in a pretty basket? Yes, yes, a basket. All that’s left of my month’s pay will go on this lavish order, and at the end of the month I shall have to deny myself supper and the café for a few days, or else borrow some