Authors: Stefan Zweig
His firm tone carries conviction. But I feel that I must not give way.
“I do know it means going down in the social scale,” I tell him. “But I have to go away, there’s nothing else for it. So please don’t try changing my mind. I know I’m nothing out of the ordinary, and I can’t say I’ve ever learnt much, but if you were kind enough to put in a good word for me somewhere I promise not to let you down. I know I wouldn’t be the first. You found a job for Ferencz’s brother-in-law, didn’t you?”
“Oh, Jonas,” says Balinkay dismissively, “but what was he to start with anyway? A little provincial civil servant, it’s easy enough to help someone like that. Move him from one office stool to a slightly better one and he feels like God Almighty. It
doesn’t matter to him where he wears the seat of his trousers shiny, he was never used to anything better. But to find something for a man who once wore a star on his collar, well, that’s another story. No, my dear Hofmiller, the best jobs are always taken already. If you want to start out again in civilian life you have to begin at the bottom, right down on the lowest rung of the ladder, where it doesn’t exactly smell of roses.”
“That doesn’t make any difference.”
I must have said those words with great vigour, because Balinkay looks at me first with curiosity, then with a strangely fixed glance that seems to come from far away. Finally he moves his chair closer to me and places his hand on my arm.
“Look, Hofmiller, I’m not responsible for you, and I’m not about to read you a lecture. But I’ve been through this kind of thing myself, and you may believe me when I tell you it
does
make a difference, a great difference, when you suddenly go from the top to the bottom, off your cavalry officer’s horse and into humdrum everyday life … and I’m saying this to you as a man who once sat in this shabby little room from twelve noon until darkness fell, telling myself just the same as you—it won’t make any difference. I’d resigned my commission around eleven-thirty, and I didn’t want to sit in the officers’ mess with the others or walk down the street in broad daylight in civilian clothes. So I took this room—now you know why I always want it again—and I waited here until it was dark so that no one could give a pitying glance on seeing me slink away in a shabby grey coat with a bowler hat on my head. I stood at that window, that very window, and I looked down once more at the others strolling around. There were my comrades, all in uniform, upright and free, each of them a little god, and each of them knew who he was and where he belonged. And I felt that
I was nothing now but a speck of dirt. It was as if I’d stripped off my skin along with my uniform. Of course you’re thinking, nonsense—one coat is blue, another is black or grey, and who cares if you go walking with a sword beside you or an umbrella in your hand instead? But I can still feel the shock, I feel it to the marrow of my bones, of stealing out by night on my way to the station, and how two lancers passed me on the corner and neither of them saluted. And I remember humping my own case into a third-class carriage, where I sat among the sweaty farmers’ wives and labourers—yes, I know all this is stupid, and unjust, and the military man’s idea of his honour is only a delusion—but after eight years of service and four years of military academy it’s in your blood. You feel maimed at first, or like someone with an oozing sore in the middle of his face. God keep you from going through that yourself! I wouldn’t live that evening all over again for any money, the evening when I stole away from here, making a detour around every lamp post until I reached the station. And that was only the beginning.”
“But Balinkay, that’s just why I want to go somewhere else, somewhere far away, where none of these things exist and no one knows anything about me.”
“That’s exactly the way I talked, Hofmiller, exactly the way I thought! Get far away and the slate will be wiped clean, a
tabula rasa
! I’d sooner be blacking boots or washing dishes in America, I told myself, like the tales you read in the newspapers about self-made millionaires! But it takes a fair amount of money even to get to America, Hofmiller, and you don’t yet know what it means for the likes of us to have to bow and scrape. As soon as a former officer of the lancers doesn’t feel those stars on his collar any more, he can’t even stand on his own two feet with any dignity, let alone talk the way he used to. You feel stupid
and embarrassed even with your best friends, and when you have to ask for something your own pride keeps you quiet. Yes, my dear boy, I went through a lot I’d rather not remember back then—humiliations, a sense of disgrace. I’ve never told anyone that before.”
He had got to his feet and was waving his arms vigorously about, as if his coat suddenly felt too tight for him. Suddenly he turned round.
“However, I don’t mind talking about it now. Because today I’m not ashamed of it any more, and if my story’s in time to show you your plan in less of a rosy light, well, that may do you some good.”
He sat down again, moving closer to me.
“I expect you’ve been told the whole story of my wonderful catch, haven’t you? How I met my wife in Shepheard’s Hotel? I know it’s the talk of all the regiments, they’d like to have it printed and published, a fine example of the heroic prowess of an Imperial Austrian military officer. Well, it wasn’t as wonderful as all that, and only a part of the story is true. Yes, I really did meet her in Shepheard’s Hotel. But only she and I know
how
I met her, she hasn’t told anyone, and nor have I. And I’m telling you only so you’ll understand that money doesn’t grow on trees for our sort. So to cut a long story short, when I met her at Shepheard’s Hotel I was working there—prepare for a shock!—as a room waiter—yes, my dear boy, I was an ordinary, humble waiter. Obviously I didn’t take the job for fun, it was a case of sheer stupidity and a former military man’s pitiful ignorance of the world. An Egyptian had been staying at the same run-down boarding house as me in Vienna, a fellow who made out that his brother-in-law was manager of the Royal Polo Club in Cairo, and he said if I gave him two
hundred crowns as commission he could get me a job there as a trainer. They thought highly of polished manners and good names at the Polo Club, he said, and well, I’d always been a good polo player, and the salary he mentioned was excellent—in three years I’d have earned a tidy little sum and could start up in some good line of business on my own. What’s more, Cairo is some way off, and you mix with a good class of people playing polo. I won’t bore you by telling you how many doorbells I had to ring, how many embarrassed excuses I heard from people who used to call themselves my friends, but in the end I managed to scrape together the few hundred crowns I wanted for my crossing and my kit—you need riding clothes for a club like that, and evening dress. Even though I travelled steerage class, the voyage went remarkably quickly. But by the time I was in Cairo I had just seven piastres in my pocket, and when I ring the bell at the Royal Polo Club I find a black man gawping at me, saying he doesn’t know anyone called Efdopulos, or his brother-in-law, no, they don’t need any trainer, and in any case the Polo Club is about to close—by now you’ll have realised that my Egyptian acquaintance was a rogue who had cheated me, fool that I was, out of my two hundred crowns. I hadn’t had the sense to ask to see the letters and telegrams he claimed to have had. I can tell you, my dear Hofmiller, we’re not up to such tricks, and it wasn’t the first time I’d fallen for a tall story as I looked for employment. But this was a blow right in the solar plexus. For there I was, I didn’t know a soul in Cairo, I had only those seven piastres. Not only was I in a real fix, life there cost a lot. I’ll spare you the account of how I lived and what I ate over the first six days. I’m surprised, myself, that you can survive that sort of thing. And you see, another man in that position will go to
the consul and try to scrounge a passage home. But there’s the snag—once we’re used to the army it sticks in our throats. We can’t sit around on benches in waiting rooms along with dockers and kitchen maids who have lost their jobs, we can’t endure the look a petty consular clerk will give a man when he’s deciphered the words ‘Baron Balinkay’ in a passport. We’d sooner go straight to the dogs—so just think what a stroke of luck it was for me when I heard by chance that they needed an assistant waiter at Shepheard’s Hotel! And as I had evening dress, tails and all, and the tailcoat was even new (I’d lived on the proceeds of my riding gear for the first few days), and on the grounds that I could speak French, they hired me on probation. At first that seems all right. You stand there in your spotless white shirt front, you wait at table, you serve the food, you cut a good figure, but then again, as a humble room waiter you sleep with two others in a baking hot attic under the roof, sharing it with about seven million fleas and bedbugs, and in the morning the three of you have to wash one by one in the same tin bowl—not to mention the fact that to people like you and me a tip burns the hand like fire, and so on and so forth—well, never mind all that! I went through it, and it’s enough for you to know that I survived.
“And then there was the business over my wife. She’d just been widowed, and she had come to Cairo with her sister and brother-in-law. This brother-in-law was the most objectionable character imaginable—broad, fat, flabby, loud-mouthed, and there was something about me that he didn’t care for. Perhaps I was too elegant for his liking, perhaps I didn’t bow humbly enough to Mynheer, and one day when I didn’t serve him his breakfast at exactly the right time he shouted ‘You stupid fool!’ at me … well, something like that gets to you when you were
once an army officer—and it gave me such a jolt that before I could stop to think what I was doing I flew off the handle. I assure you, for two pins I’d have smashed my fist into his face. Well—I stopped myself at the last minute because, you see, that whole business of being a waiter had felt like a masquerade anyway, and next moment—I don’t know if you’ll understand this—I was taking an almost sadistic pleasure in thinking that I, Baron Balinkay, now had to put up with this kind of thing. So I just stood still, smiling at him slightly—but condescendingly, you understand, looking down my nose, which made the man go greenish white in the face with anger, sensing that somehow I was his superior. Then I walked coolly out of the room, with an ironically civil bow—he almost burst with rage. But my wife—my future wife, I mean—was there, and she must have noticed the bad feeling between the two of us, and somehow she could tell—she told me so herself later—from the way I’d flared up that never in my life had anyone allowed himself to speak to me like that before. So she followed me out into the corridor to say she was afraid her brother-in-law was rather agitated, she hoped I wouldn’t take it ill—and to tell you whole truth, my dear Hofmiller, she even tried to slip a banknote into my hand to put things right.
“When I refused it she must have sensed for a second time that I wasn’t quite the usual run of waiter. But that would have been the end of the matter, because in those few weeks I’d scraped enough money together to pay my passage home without having to beg from the consul. I went to the consulate only to get information. And then chance came to my aid, that one-in-a-thousand chance. The consul just happened to be walking through the anteroom to his office, and he was none other than Elemér von Juhácz. God knows how
often I’ve sat talking to him at the Jockey Club. Well, so he welcomed me warmly and invited me to his club—and by another coincidence, so it was coincidence piled on coincidence, I tell you this just to show how many amazing coincidences must come together for someone like you or me to get himself up on dry land again—by another coincidence, my future wife was there. When Elemér introduced me as his friend Baron Balinkay, she went scarlet. She recognised me at once, of course, and now she felt terrible about trying to give me a tip. But I could tell at once what kind of woman she was, and she’s a fine, right-minded woman, because she didn’t try ignoring the subject, she said honestly and frankly what a mistake she’d made. After that everything happened very fast … that’s another story, and not for telling here. But believe me, such coincidences don’t happen every day, and in spite of my money and in spite of my wife, for whom I thank God a thousand times every morning and every evening, I wouldn’t like to go through those experiences of mine before I met her again.”
I instinctively offered Balinkay my hand.
“Thank you very much for warning me. I have a better idea of what lies ahead now. But word of honour, I can’t see any other way. Do you really not know of any employment I might find? They say your wife and you do a great deal of business.”
Balinkay said nothing for a moment, and then he sighed sympathetically.
“Poor lad, you certainly seem to be in a bad way—don’t worry, I won’t put you through an interrogation. I can see enough for myself. Once you get to that stage, no amount of persuasion is any use. Well, a comrade has to lend a hand, and I don’t suppose I need to say I won’t be backward in that.
Just one thing, Hofmiller, I’m sure you have enough sense not to think I can simply snap my fingers and set you up in grand style in one of our companies. Such things don’t happen in a good organisation, it only makes for bad feeling if one man suddenly gets preferential treatment. You’d have to start at the very bottom, maybe spend a few months on tedious clerical work in an office before you could be sent over to the plantations, or we could think up something else for you. But as I said, I’ll start the wheels turning. We’re leaving tomorrow, my wife and I, we’ll spend a week or ten days strolling around Paris, then we’ll be in Le Havre and Antwerp for a few days, looking into our agencies there. But we’ll be back in around three weeks’ time, and I’ll write to you as soon as I’m home in Rotterdam. I won’t forget, don’t worry. You can rely on the word of a Balinkay.”
“I know,” I said, “and I really am most grateful.”
But Balinkay must have picked up the slight note of disappointment in what I said. Indeed, he had probably suffered such setbacks himself, because experiencing that kind of thing develops your ear for these nuances.