Beware of Pity (Translated by Anthea Bell 2011) by Stefan Zweig

Author:Stefan Zweig [Zweig, Stefan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9781908968371
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 1939-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

With the punctuality of impatience, and as a result quarter-ofan-hour early, I was standing outside the wine bar at the time he had fixed, and exactly at that time Condor drove up from the station in a carriage and pair. He came straight over to me without further formalities.

“Good to see you here on time. I knew I could rely on you. I think we’d better sit in the same little nook as before. We don’t want anyone overhearing what we have to discuss.”

I could tell that his former almost listless bearing had changed. He marched ahead of me into the inn in a manner that was both energetic and self-controlled, and asked the waitress who came hurrying up for, “A litre of wine—the same as we were drinking the day before yesterday. And then leave us alone; I’ll call if I need you.”

We sat down. Even before the waitress had put our wine down on the table, he began.

“Well, let’s keep this short. I have to hurry, or out at Kekesfalva they’ll suspect us of hatching Heaven knows what conspiracies. I had a hard job preventing the chauffeur from coming to town to drive me straight out there—he was intent on spiriting me away at any price. But now let’s plunge in medias res, so that I can put you in the picture.

“Very well—first thing the day before yesterday I received a telegram. ‘Please, dear friend, come as quickly as possible. Expecting you with all imaginable impatience. Most grateful, have every confidence in you. Yours, Kekesfalva.’ I didn’t like the sound of those superlatives. Why so impatient all of a sudden? I examined Edith only a couple of days ago. And why that telegraphic assurance of his confidence and his special gratitude? Well, I assumed there wasn’t really any great urgency, I put the telegram with other correspondence. After all, the old man indulges in such exaggerations quite often. But what came yesterday morning put a different complexion on it—I had an endlessly long letter from Edith, a crazy, ecstatic letter, sent express, saying she had always known that I was the only person on earth who could save her, she couldn’t tell me how happy she was to think we had reached this stage at last. She was writing, she said, only to assure me that I could rely absolutely on her, she would certainly undertake to do everything I told her, however hard it was. But she wanted to begin the new course of treatment soon, at once, she was burning with impatience. And she repeated that I could expect anything of her, just so long as I began soon. And so on and so forth.

“However, with that remark about new treatment light dawned on me. I realised at once that someone must have been talking either to the old man or his daughter about the method tried by Professor Viennot. Such stories don’t come out of thin air. And that someone, of course, had to be you, Lieutenant Hofmiller.

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