Dying by Arthur Schnitzler
So here she was in the open air. What was her situation now? For this seemed to her the moment to survey the present with an undisturbed eye. She wanted to find clear words for her thoughts, words that she could utter in her mind. I am with him because I love him. I’m not making any sacrifice, because there’s nothing else I can do. And what will happen now? How much longer will it be? There’s no hope for him. And then what? Then what? I once wanted to die with him. Why are we such strangers to each other now? He thinks only of himself. Does he still want to die with me? The certainty came to her that he did. But what she saw was not the picture of a loving young man who wished to have her lying in bed beside him for all eternity. It was more as if he were forcibly, jealously dragging her down because she belonged to him.
A young man had seated himself on the bench beside her and made some remark or other. Her mind was so distracted that at first she said: “What did you say?” Then she rose and moved quickly away. She found the glances of the people she met in the park uncomfortable. Going out into the Ring, she hailed a cab and went for a drive. It was evening now, she leaned comfortably back in a corner of the cab and enjoyed its pleasant, easy motion and the various sights she saw, bathed in dusk and the flickering light of the gas lamps as they passed by. The beautiful September evening had tempted many people into the street. As Marie was driven past the Volksgarten she heard the brisk notes of a military band playing, and involuntarily thought of that evening in Salzburg. She tried in vain to persuade herself that all this life around her was paltry, ephemeral, she would have no difficulty about leaving it. But she couldn’t dispel the sense of wellbeing that was gradually filling her. She felt well, that was it. Everything did her good: the festive look of the theatre with its bright white arc lighting, people strolling at their ease out of the avenues of the Rathaus park and along the street, customers sitting outside a coffee-house, the mere presence of people whose troubles she didn’t know, or who perhaps had none. The mild, warm air around her did her good too, so did the thought that she could experience many such evenings, a thousand such delightful days and nights, and the sense of a healthy joie de vivre flowing through her veins. Well, after countless hours of mortal weariness, was she going to feel guilty for coming back to herself, so to speak, just for a minute? Had she no right to relish her own existence? She was healthy, she was young, and from all around, as if from a hundred sources all at once, the joy of being alive flooded over her. It was as natural as her breathing and the sky above her—and is she, she asks herself, to be ashamed of it? She thinks of Felix too. If a miracle happens and he recovers, she will certainly go on living with him. She thinks of him with mild, regretful sorrow. It will soon be time to go back to him. Is he all right only when she is with him? Does he appreciate her loving care? How bitter his words are! How reproachful his glance—and his kiss! It’s so long since they kissed each other. She can’t help thinking of his lips, always so pale and dry now. She doesn’t want to kiss his brow either, it’s cold and damp. How ugly illness is!
She leaned back in the cab and deliberately turned her thoughts away from the sick man. And so as not to think of him, she looked eagerly out at the street, observing the scene as closely as if she must imprint it on her memory.
Felix opened his eyes. A candle burning beside his bed gave a faint light. The old maidservant sat beside him, indifferent, her hands in her lap. She jumped when the sick man cried: “Where is she?” The old woman explained that Marie had gone out and would be back very soon.
“You can go!” said Felix. And when the woman hesitated, he repeated, “Go, you can go. I don’t need you.”
He was alone now, and uneasiness came over him, tormenting him more than ever before.
Where is she, he wondered, where is she? He could hardly bear to wait in bed, but he dared not get up. Suddenly an idea flashed through his mind: perhaps she’s gone away and left him! She wants to leave him alone, alone for ever. She can’t bear life beside him any more. She’s afraid of him, she’s read his thoughts. Or he’s been talking in his sleep and said out loud what’s always lurking in the depths of his consciousness, even if he doesn’t give it clear expression for days on end. And she doesn’t want to die with him.
These ideas chased through his brain. The fever that came every evening was back. It’s so long since he has said a kind word to her, he tells himself, perhaps it’s just that! He’s been tormenting her with his moods, with his suspicious looks, his bitter remarks, when she needed gratitude! Or no, no, merely justice! Oh, if only she were here! He must have her! He admits to himself, with burning pain, that he can’t manage without her. He’ll apologize to her for everything if need be, he will look at her tenderly again and find words of deep ardour for her. He won’t utter a syllable to show how he is suffering. He will smile when he feels heavy at heart. He will kiss her hand when he is struggling for breath. He’ll tell her that he dreams nonsensical dreams, and what she hears him say in his sleep is just his fevered imagination. And he will swear that he adores her, that he will let her have a long and happy life, wants her to have it, just so long as she will stay with him to the last, just so long as she doesn’t move from his bedside, she mustn’t leave him to die alone. He will face that terrible hour in wisdom and calm if only he knows that she is with him! And the hour may come so soon, it may come any day. So she must be with him all the time, for he is afraid when he is without her.
Where is she? Where is she? The blood whirled through his brain, his eyes grew dim, his breath came with more difficulty, and there was no one there. Oh, why had he sent that woman away? She was a human soul, after all. Now he was helpless, helpless. He sat up, feeling stronger than he had thought apart from his difficulty in breathing—that was a terrible torment. He couldn’t stand it, he got out of bed and, half-clothed as he was, went to the window. There air—there air … He took a few deep breaths. How good that was! He picked up the voluminous robe hanging over the end of the bed and dropped into a chair. For a few seconds all his thoughts were in confusion, and then that one question, always the same, kept flashing out. Where is she? Where is she, he asks himself. Has she often left him before like that while he was asleep? Who knows? Where can she be going? Does she just want to escape the stale air of the sickroom for a couple of hours, or is she trying to get away from him because he is ill? Does it repel her to be near him? Is she afraid of the shadows of death already hovering here? Does she long for life? Is she looking for life? Doesn’t he himself mean life to her any more? What is she seeking? What does she want? Where is she? Where is she?
And his flying thoughts turned to whispered syllables, to words moaned aloud. He screamed, he cried out, “Where is she?” Then he saw her in his mind’s eye, perhaps hurrying downstairs, a smile of liberation on her lips, going away, anywhere, to some place without sickness, disgust and slow dying, to some unknown place of fragrance and flowers. He saw her disappear, vanish into a light mist that hid her and from which her rippling laughter sounded, a laugh of happiness and joy. Then the mists parted, and he saw her dancing. She whirled round and round, and disappeared. Now he heard a dull rolling sound coming closer and closer. It suddenly stopped. Where is she? He started with alarm and hurried to the window. It had been the sound of a carriage drawing up outside the building. Yes, certainly, he could see it. And getting out of the carriage—yes, it was Marie! It was Marie! He must go to meet her, he rushed into the next room, but it was completely dark there and he couldn’t find the door handle. Then the key turned in the lock, the door flew open and Marie came in, with the faint gas light from the corridor shining around her. Unable to see him in the dark, she collided with him and cried out. He took her shoulders and pulled her into the room. Opening his mouth, he found that he couldn’t speak.
“What’s the matter?” she cried in horror. “Are you mad?” She drew away from him. He stood there as if rooted to the spot. At last he found words.
“Where have you been—where?”
“F
“Where have you been?” He spoke more quietly this time, as if lost. “Where? Where?” he whispered. She took his hands, which were burning hot. Docile, almost unconscious, he let her lead him to the sofa and slowly press him down into one corner. He looked around as if he had to recover his senses slowly. Then he repeated, distinctly but in the same monotonous manner, “Where have you been?”
She had partly recovered her composure. She threw her hat down on a chair behind her, sat down on the sofa too, and said coaxingly, “Darling, I only went out for an hour in the open air. I was afraid I might fall ill myself, and then what use would I be to you? And I took a cab so as to get back to you quickly.”
He was lying in his corner of the sofa, very limp now. He looked askance at her, and did not answer.
She went on, caressing his hot cheeks lovingly. “You’re not cross with me, are you? I asked the maid to sit with you until I was back. Didn’t you see her? Where is she?”
“I sent her away.”
“But why, Felix? She was to wait until I came home. I wanted you so much! What good is the fresh air outside to me if I don’t have you?”
“Sweetheart, sweetheart!” Like a sick child, he laid his head on her breast, and as in the old days her lips brushed his hair. Then he looked up at her with pleading eyes. “Sweetheart,” he said, “you must stay with me always, always, will you?”
“Yes,” she replied, kissing his damp, tangled hair. She felt miserable, unutterably miserable. She would have liked to shed tears, but her emotion had something dry and withered about it. There was no comfort to be found anywhere, even in her own pain. And she envied him, for she saw the tears flowing down his cheeks.
After that she sat at his bedside all through the days and evenings that followed, brought him his meals, gave him medicine, and when he was feeling well enough to ask for it she read aloud to him from the newspaper, or perhaps a chapter from some novel. It had begun to rain the morning after her expedition, and autumn weather came early. Now thin grey rain ran down the windows for hours, days on end, almost without stopping. Recently Marie had heard the invalid talking disjointedly at night. Then she would automatically stroke his forehead and hair, whispering, “Sleep, Felix, sleep, Felix!” as if soothing a restless child. He was becoming visibly weaker, but he did not suffer much, and when the short attacks of breathlessness that reminded him graphically of his illness were over, he usually lapsed into a state of apathy for which he himself could no longer account. But that itself sometimes made him wonder a little: why am I so indifferent to all around me? When he saw the rain falling outside, he told himself: ah yes, autumn, and thought no further about it. Indeed, he could imagine no possible change, neither death nor the recovery of his health. And Marie too could see no prospect of any change at this time. Even Alfred’s visits had come to seem habitual. To him, of course, coming from outside, a man for whom life still went on, the sickroom presented a different picture every day. He knew there was no hope. He saw that both Felix and Marie had now entered upon a period that he had sometimes found was experienced by those who had known extreme emotions, a time when there was no hope and no fear, when perception of the present itself was dark and opaque because there could be no looking forward to the future or back to the past. He himself always entered the sickroom with a sense of deep discomfort, and was very glad if he found them both the same as the last time he had left them. For a moment must come when, at last, they would be forced to think of what lay ahead.
On a day when he had climbed the stairs with this thought in his mind again, he found Marie pale-cheeked, standing in the entrance hall and wringing her hands. “Oh, come with me, come with me!” she cried. He followed her quickly. Felix was sitting up in bed. He glared at the two of them as they came in, crying, “What are you really planning for me?”
Alfred went quickly towards him. “What’s the matter, Felix?” he asked.
“What are you planning for me? That’s what I want to know.”
“What sort of childish questions are these?”
“You’re both letting me perish, perish miserably!” Felix was almost screaming.
Alfred came close to him and tried to take his hand, but the invalid snatched it back. “Leave me alone, and Marie, you can stop wringing your hands like that. I’d like to know what the two of you are planning. I want to know what’s going to happen now.”
“Anything that happens,” said Alfred calmly, “would go much better if you didn’t agitate yourself unnecessarily.”
“Listen, how long have I been lying here, how long! You both look at me and then you leave me. What are you planning for me?” he asked the doctor, suddenly turning to him.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“Nothing’s going to be done for me, nothing at all. I’ve only just realised, but you’re not going to lift a finger to prevent it!”
“Felix,” began Alfred in a firm voice, sitting down on the bed and trying to take his hand again.
“I know what it is, you’ve given me up for lost. Leaving me just to lie here and take morphine.”
“You must be patient for a few more days—”
“But as you can see, it’s doing me no good! I can feel the state I’m in. Why do you let me perish without doing anything to save me? You can see I’m going downhill. I can’t stop it! And there must be something to be done for it, some kind of help. Think, Alfred, you’re a doctor, it’s your duty.”
“Certainly there’s some kind of help,” said Alfred.
“Or if not help, perhaps a miracle. But no miracle’s going to happen here. I must get out of this place, I want to get out of it.”
“As soon as you’re strong enough you can leave your bed.”
“Alfred, I tell you, it will be too late. Why should I stay in this dreadful room? I want to go away, I want to leave the city. I know what I need. I need spring, I need the south. When the sun shines again I’ll be better.”
“That all sounds like good sense,” said Alfred. “Of course you shall go to the south, but you must have a little patience. You can’t travel today, or tomorrow either. You shall go as soon as it’s practicable.”
“I can travel today, I feel I can. As soon as I’m out of this terrible death chamber I’ll be a new man. Every day longer you leave me here is dangerous.”
“My dear friend, you must remember that I, as your doctor—”
“As a doctor you think in stereotypes. Sick people know best what they need. It’s careless, thoughtless to leave me lying here to rot away. Miracles sometimes do happen in the south. One doesn’t fold one’s hands in resignation if there’s even a little hope, and there is still hope. It’s inhumane to leave a man to die as you’re leaving me. I want to go south. I’ll come back in the spring.”
“And so you shall,” said Alfred.
“We could leave tomorrow, couldn’t we?” said Marie, hastily intervening.
“If Felix will just promise to rest for three days, I’ll send him away then. But here and now, today—it would be criminal! I can’t allow it, not in any circumstances. Just look at the weather,” he added, turning to Marie. “It’s wet and windy; I wouldn’t advise even the healthiest of men to travel today.”
“Tomorrow, then!”
“If the rain clears up a little,” said the Doctor, “then you can travel in two or three days’ time. You have my word.”
The sick man looked at him searchingly. Then he asked, “Your word of honour?”
“Yes.”
“There, do you hear that?” cried Marie.
“You don’t believe,” said the invalid turning to Alfred, “there’s still any way of saving me? You were going to let me die in my native land? That’s false humanity! A man on the point of death has no native land any more. Being able to live at all is his home. And I don’t want to die defenceless, I don’t want to.”