Stefan Zweig is a favourite writer of mine, I find him so insightful and compassionate. I also really like Pushkin Press Classics published in the smaller editions with the French flaps, so I was pleased to find just such a copy of his 1927 novella Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman (transl. Anthea Bell 2003).

It opens at a guesthouse on the French Riviera, “ten years before the war” with the unnamed first-person narrator remembering the arrival of an attractive single man who quickly absconds with Henriette, the wife of a manufacturer. Her absence causes quite a stir:

“Silently, one by one, as if put to shame by so shattering an emotional outburst, we crept back to our rooms, while that stricken specimen of mankind shook and sobbed alone with himself in the dark as the building slowly laid itself to rest, whispering, muttering, murmuring and sighing.”

The narrator takes a more liberal view of Henriette’s conduct, which puts him at odds with the other guests. I enjoyed Zweig’s gentle humour here:

“Well, it’s of no importance here to go back in every detail over the stormy course of an argument conducted between soup and dessert: only professionals of the table d’hôte are  witty, and points made in the heat of a chance dispute at table are usually banal, since the speakers resort to them clumsily and in haste.”

The narrator’s assertion that “I’d rather understand others than condemn them.” attracts the attention of Mrs. C, who from the way she’s initially described sounded easily in her nineties, but as it turns out is sixty-seven! She deliberately builds an intimacy with the narrator in order to tell her story, and he becomes the silent interlocutor to her tale.

“It is intolerable to spend one’s whole life staring at a single point in it.”

She describes how, at the age of forty-two, grieving her husband and with her sons fully grown, she arrived at Monte Carlo.

“I came there out of tedium, out of the painful emptiness of the heart that wells up like nausea, and at least tries to nourish itself on small external stimulations.”

She is not a seasoned gambler, but her husband enjoyed the casinos so she visits, and there becomes consumed by the vision of a young man compulsively placing bets.

“His face spoke the same fantastically extravagant language of extremes as the hands”

[…]

“A fear of something dreadful, something I had felt invisibly enveloping the young man like a miasma from the first moment.”

What follows is a character study of Mrs C and a portrait of addiction which is entirely believable. With his characteristic humanity, discernment and understanding, Zweig considers the supressed tragedies of people’s lives and how we continue to live.

Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman possibly felt more dramatic on initial publication – for twenty-first century readers nothing especially unpredictable takes place. But that is not to diminish it in any way. The evocation of strong feeling, and of trauma, is so sensitively realised that it remains a deeply affecting read.

This story has been filmed several times, including a made for television version with Ingrid Bergman. However, in its depiction of the glamour, seediness, seductions and betrayals of gambling, it also reminded me of a film I saw recently with lovely JacquiWIne, Bay of Angels: