Like Hans Castorp at the end of The Magic Mountain, Ferdinand's fate is left uncertain, though we are given room to hope for both his physical and his mental survival. The final tale lacks certainty for another reason: Zweig never finished it. Wondrak is titled after a minor character, a local functionary charged with assisting the authorities in locating young men avoiding the draft. The story recounts the life of a disfigured woman, Ruzena, who is now trying to hide her only son, Karel.
It's a tale of large cruelties and small mercies. Zweig left it off with Ruzena and her son both jailed, awaiting his transport off to war. Knut Beck, an earlier editor of Zweig, suggested that perhaps the author felt the story couldn't have been published because of its subject matter and therefore didn't finish it. I think it's just as likely that he quit because he'd written himself into a corner. Either way, again there is no irony; though certain characters may have psychological depth, what actually occurs is plainly motivated and sensible, at least within the twisted sensibility of war. We do, however, wish we knew what became of Ruzena, having dwelt with her for some 33 pages.
I suspect Pushkin Press's earlier Zweig release, Amok & Other Stories, might be a better introduction to the author. But this volume has piqued my interest in reading more from a writer who was one of the most successful of his time but is largely unknown today in the English-speaking world. I was a little disappointed to spot several typos, after finding the same publisher's edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets such a model of small-print perfection. But Pushkin's unique and rather artistic small softcover format remains appealing.
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