Wondrak Read online

  STEFAN ZWEIG

  WONDRAK

  AND OTHER STORIES

  Translated from the German by

  Anthea Bell

  PUSHKIN PRESS

  LONDON

  Contents

  Title Page

  In the Snow

  Compulsion

  Wondrak

  Translator’s Note

  Copyright

  IN THE SNOW

  A SMALL MEDIEVAL GERMAN TOWN close to the Polish border, with the sturdy solidity of fourteenth-century building: the colourful, lively picture that it usually presents has faded to a single impression of dazzling, shimmering white. Snow is piled high on the broad walls and weighs down on the tops of the towers, around which night has already cast veils of opaque grey mist.

  Darkness is falling fast. The hurry and bustle of the streets, the activity of a crowd of busy people, is dying down to a continuous murmur of sound that seems to come from far away, broken only by the rhythmic, monotonous chime of evening bells. The day’s business is over for the weary workers who are longing for sleep, lights become few and far between, and finally they all go out. The town lies there like a single mighty creature fast asleep.

  Every sound has died away, even the trembling voice of the wind over the moors is only a gentle lullaby now, and you can hear the soft whisper of snowflakes dusting down on the surfaces where their wandering ends …

  But suddenly a faint sound is heard.

  It is like the distant, hasty beat of hoofs coming closer. The startled man in the guardhouse at the gate, drowsy with sleep, goes to the window in surprise to listen. And sure enough, a horseman is approaching at full gallop, making straight for the gate, and a minute later a brusque voice, hoarse from the cold, demands entrance. The gate is opened. A man steps through it, leading in a steaming horse which he immediately hands to the gate-keeper. He swiftly allays the man’s doubts with a few words and a sizeable sum of money, and then, his confident and rapid strides showing that he knows the place, he crosses the deserted white market place, and goes down quiet streets and along alleys deep in snow, making for the far end of the little town.

  Several small houses stand there, crowding close together as if they needed each other’s support. They are all plain, unassuming, smoky and crooked, and they stand in eternal silence in these secluded streets. They might never have known cheerful festivities bubbling over with merriment, no cries of delight might ever have shaken those blank, hidden windows, no bright sunshine might ever have been reflected in their panes. Alone, like shy children intimidated by others, the houses press together in the narrow confines of the Jewish quarter.

  The stranger stops outside one of these houses, the largest and relatively speaking the finest. It belongs to the richest man in the little community, and also serves as a synagogue.

  Bright light filters through the crack between the drawn curtains, and voices are raised in religious song inside the lighted room. This is the peaceful celebration of Chanukah, a festival of rejoicing in memory of the victory of the Maccabaeans, a day that reminds these exiled people, reduced to servitude by Fate, of their former great power. It is one of the few happy days that life and the law will allow them. But the song sounds melancholy, yearning, and the bright metal of the voices singing it has rusted with all the thousands of tears that have been shed. Out in the lonely street, the singing echoes like a hopeless lament, and is blown away on the wind.

  The stranger stands outside the house for some time, inactive, lost in thought and dreams, and tears rise in his throat as he instinctively joins in the ancient, sacred melodies that flow from deep within his heart. His soul is full of profound devotion.

  Then he pulls himself together. His steps faltering now, he goes to the closed doorway and brings the knocker down heavily, with a dull thud that shakes the door.

  The vibration is felt through the entire building as the sound echoes on.

  At once the singing in the room above stops dead, as if at an agreed signal. The people inside have turned pale and are looking at one another in alarm. Their festive mood has instantly evaporated. Dreams of the victorious power of such men as Judas Maccabaeus, by whose side they were all standing in spirit a moment ago, have fled; the bright vision of Israel that they saw before their eyes has gone, they are poor, trembling, helpless Jews again. Reality has asserted itself.

  There is a terrible silence. The trembling hand of the prayer leader has sunk to his prayer book, the pale lips of his congregation will not obey them. A dreadful sense of foreboding has fallen on the room, seizing all throats in an iron grip.

  They well know why.

  Some while ago they heard an ominous word, a new and terrible word, but they were aware of its murderous meaning for their own people. The Flagellants were abroad in Germany, wild, fanatically religious men who flailed their own bodies with scourges in Bacchanalian orgies of lust and delight, deranged and drunken hordes who had already slaughtered and tortured thousands of Jews, intending to deprive them of what they held most holy, their age-old belief in the Father. That was their worst fear. With blind, stoical patience they had accepted exile, beatings, robbery, enslavement; they had all known late-night raids with burning and looting, and they shuddered to think of living in such times.

  Then, only a few days earlier, rumours had begun spreading that one company of Flagellants was on its way to their own part of the country, which so far had known them only by hearsay, and it was said to be not far off. Perhaps the Flagellants have already arrived?

  Terrible fear has seized on them all, making their hearts falter. They already see those forces, greedy for blood, men with faces flushed by wine, brandishing blazing torches and breaking violently into their homes. Already the stifled cries of their women ring in their ears, crying out for help as they pay the price of the murderers’ wild lust; they already feel the flashing weapons strike. It is like a clear and vivid dream.

  The stranger listens for sounds in the room above, and when no one lets him in he knocks again. Once more the dull echo of his knock resounds through the silence and distress inside the building.

  By now the master of the house, the prayer leader, whose flowing white beard and great age give him the look of a patriarch, has been the first to recover some composure. He quietly murmurs, “God’s will be done,” and then bends down to his granddaughter. She is a pretty girl and, in her fear resembles a deer turning its great, pleading eyes on the huntsman. “Look out and see who’s there, Lea.”

  All eyes are on the girl’s face as she goes timidly to the window, and draws back the curtain with pale, trembling fingers. Then comes a cry from the depths of her heart. “Thank God, it’s only one man.”

  “Praise the Lord.” It is a sound like a sigh of relief on all sides. Now movement returns to the still figures who had been oppressed by the dreadful nightmare. Separate groups form, some standing in silent prayer, others talking in frightened, uncertain voices, discussing the unexpected arrival of the stranger, who is now being let in through the front gate.

  The whole room is full of the hot, stuffy aroma of logs burning and a large crowd of people, all of them gathered around the richly laid festive table on which the sign and symbol of this holy evening stands, the seven-branched candlestick. The candles shine with a dull light in the smouldering vapours. The women wear dresses adorned with jewellery, the men voluminous robes with white prayer bands. There is a sense of deep solemnity in the crowded room, a solemnity such as only genuine piety can bring.

  Now the stranger’s quick footsteps are coming up the steps, and he enters the room.

  At the same time a sharp gust of biting wind blows into the warm room through the open door. Icy cold streams in with the snow-scented air, chilling everyone. The draught puts out t
he flickering candles on the candlestick; only one of them still wavers unsteadily as it dies down. Suddenly the room is full of a heavy, oppressive twilight, as if cold night might suddenly fall within these walls. All at once the peace and comfort are gone. Everyone feels that the extinguishing of the sacred candles is a bad omen, and superstition makes them shiver again. But no one dares to say a word.

  A tall, black-bearded man, who can hardly be more than thirty years old, stands at the door. He quickly divests himself of the scarves and coats in which he had been muffled up against the cold, and as soon as his face is revealed in the faint light of that last little flickering candle flame, Lea runs to him and embraces him.

  This is Josua, her fiancé from the neighbouring town.

  The others also crowd eagerly around him, greeting him happily, only to fall silent next moment, for he frees himself from his fiancée’s arms with a grave, sad expression, and the weight of his terrible knowledge has dug deep furrows on his brow. All eyes are anxiously turned on him, and he cannot defend himself and what he has to say from the raging torrent of his own emotions. He takes the girl’s hands as she stands beside him, and quietly forces himself to utter the fateful news.

  “The Flagellants are here.”

  The eyes that had been turned questioningly to him stare, fixed on his face, and he feels the pulse of the hands he is holding falter suddenly. The prayer leader clutches the edge of the heavy table, his fingers trembling, so that the crystal glasses begins to sing softly, sending quavering notes through the air. Fear digs its claws into desperate hearts again, draining the last drops of blood from the frightened, devastated faces staring at the bearer of the news.

  The last candle flickers once more and goes out.

  Only the lamp hanging from the ceiling now casts a faint light on the dismayed, distraught people; the news has struck them like a thunderbolt.

  One voice softly murmurs the resigned phrase with which Fate has made them familiar. “It is God’s will.”

  But the others still cannot grasp it.

  However, the newcomer is continuing, his words brusque and disconnected, as if he could hardly bear to hear them himself.

  “They’re coming—many of them—hundreds. And crowds of people with them—blood on their hands—they’ve murdered thousands—all our people in the East. They’ve been in my town already … ”

  He is interrupted by a woman’s dreadful scream. Her floods of tears cannot soften its force. Still young, only recently married, she falls to the floor in front of him.

  “They’re there? Oh, my parents, my brothers and sisters! Has any harm come to them?”

  He bends down to her, and there is grief in his voice as he tells her quietly, making it sound like a consolation, “They can feel no human harm any more.”

  And once again all is still, perfectly still. The awesome spectre of the fear of death is in the room with them, making them tremble. There is no one present here who did not have a loved one in that town, someone who is now dead.

  At this the prayer leader, tears running into his silver beard and unable to control his shaking voice, begins to chant, disjointedly, the ancient, solemn prayer for the dead. They all join in. They are not even aware that they are singing, their minds are not on the words and melody that they utter mechanically; each is thinking only of his dear ones. And the chant grows ever stronger, they breathe more and more deeply, it is increasingly difficult for them to suppress their rising feelings. The words become confused until at last they are all sobbing in wild, uncomprehending sorrow. Infinite pain, a pain beyond words, has brought them all together like brothers.

  Deep silence descends. But now and then a great sob can no longer be suppressed. And then comes the heavy, numbing voice of the messenger telling his tale again.

  “They are all at rest with the Lord. Not one of them escaped, only I, through the providence of God … ”

  “Praise be to his name,” murmurs the whole circle with instinctive piety. In the mouths of these broken, trembling people, the words sound like a worn-out formula.

  “I came home late from a journey, and the Jewish quarter was already full of looters. I wasn’t recognized, I could have run for it—but I had to go in, I couldn’t help going to my place, my own people, I was among them as they fell under flailing fists. Suddenly a man came riding my way, struck out at me—but he missed, swaying in the saddle. Then all at once the will to live took hold of me, that strange chain that binds us to our misery—passion gave me strength and courage. I pulled him off his horse, mounted it, and rode away on it myself through the dark night, here to you. I’ve been riding for a day and a night.”

  He stops for a moment. Then he says, in a firmer voice, “But enough of all that now! First of all, what shall we do?”

  The answer comes from all sides.

  “Escape!”—“We must get away!”—“Over the border to Poland!”

  It is the one way they all know to help themselves, age-old and shameful, yet the only way for the weaker to oppose the strong. No one dreams of physical resistance. Can a Jew defend himself or fight back? As they see it, the idea is ridiculous, unimaginable; they are not living in the time of the Maccabaeans now, they are enslaved again. The Egyptians are back, stamping the mark of eternal weakness and servitude on the people. Even the torrent of the passing years over many centuries cannot wash it away.

  Flight, then.

  One man did suggest, timidly, that they might appeal to the other citizens of the town for protection, but a scornful smile was all the answer he got. Again and again, their fate has always brought the oppressed back to the necessity of relying on themselves and on their God. No third party could be trusted.

  They discussed the practical details. Men who had regarded making money as their sole aim in life, who saw wealth as the peak of human happiness and power, now agreed that they must not shrink from any sacrifice if it could speed their flight. All possessions must be converted into cash, however unfavourable the rate of exchange. There were carts and teams of horses to be bought, the most essential protection from the cold to be found. All at once the fear of death had obliterated what was supposed to be the salient quality of their race, just as their individual characters had been forged together into a single will. In all the pale, weary faces, their thoughts were working towards one aim.

  And when morning lit its blazing torches, it had all been discussed and decided. With the flexibility of their people, used to wandering through the world, they adjusted to their sad situation, and their final decisions and arrangements ended in another prayer.

  Then each of them went to do his part of the work.

  And many sighs died away in the soft singing of the snowflakes, which had already built high walls towering up in the shimmering whiteness of the streets.

  The great gates of the town closed with a hollow clang behind the last of the fugitives’ carts.

  The moon shone only faintly in the sky, but it turned the myriad flakes whirling in their lively dance to silver as they clung to clothes, fluttered around the nostrils of the snorting horses, and crunched under wheels making their way with difficulty through the dense snowdrifts.

  Quiet voices whispered in the carts. Women exchanged reminiscences of their home town, which still seemed so close in its security and self-confidence. They spoke in soft, musical and melancholy tones. Children had a thousand things to ask in their clear voices, although their questions grew quieter and less frequent, and finally gave way to regular breathing. The men’s voices struck a deeper note as they anxiously discussed the future and murmured quiet prayers. They all pressed close to one another, out of their awareness that they belonged together and instinctive fear of the cold. It blew through all the gaps and cracks in the carts with its icy breath, freezing the drivers’ fingers.

  The leading cart came to a halt.

  Immediately the whole line of carts following behind it stopped too. Pale faces peered out from the tarpaulin covers of these
moving tents, wondering what had caused the delay. The patriarch had climbed out of the first cart, and all the others followed his example, understanding the reason for this halt.

  They were not far from the town yet; through the falling white flakes you could still, if indistinctly, make out the tower rising from the broad plain as if were a menacing hand, with a light shining from its spire like a jewel on its ringed finger.

  Everything here was smooth and white, like the still surface of a lake, broken only by a few small, regular mounds surmounted by fenced-in trees here and there. They knew that this was where their dear ones lay in quiet, everlasting beds, rejected, alone and far from home, like all their kind.

  Now the deep silence is broken by quiet sobbing, and although they are so used to suffering hot tears run down their rigid faces, freezing into droplets of bright ice on the snow.

  As they contemplate this deep and silent peace, their mortal fears are gone, forgotten. Suddenly, eyes heavy with tears, they all feel an infinite, wild longing for this eternal, quiet peace in the ‘good place’ with their loved ones. So much of their childhood sleeps under this white blanket, so many good memories, so much happiness that they will never know again. Everyone senses it; everyone longs to be in the ‘good place’.

  But time is short, and they must go on.

  They climb back into the carts, huddling close to each other, for although they did not feel the biting cold while they were out in the open, the icy frost now steals over their shaking, shivering bodies again, making them grit their teeth. And in the darkness of the carts their eyes express unspeakable fear and endless sorrow.

  Their thoughts, however, keep going back the way they have come, along the path of broad furrows left by the horse-drawn carts in the snow, back to the ‘good place’, the place of their desires.

  It is past midnight now, and the carts have travelled a long way from the town. They are in the middle of the great plain which lies flooded by bright moonlight, while white, drifting veils seen to hover over it, the shimmering reflections of the snow. The strong horses trudge laboriously through the thick snow, which clings tenaciously, and the carts jolt slowly, almost imperceptibly on, as if they might stop at any moment.