Burning Secret

by Stefan Zweig

  Suddenly Edgar felt that the unknown, the great secret was closer than ever before, almost within reach, he felt it just before him—still locked away and unsolved, to be sure, but close, very close. That excited him and gave him a sudden, solemn gravity. For unconsciously he guessed that he was approaching the end of his childhood.

  The couple opposite felt some kind of mute resistance before them, without guessing that it came from the boy. They felt constrained and inhibited as the three of them sat in the carriage together. The two eyes opposite them, with their dark and flickering glow, were an obstacle to both adults. They hardly dared to speak, hardly dared to look. They could not find the way back to their earlier light small-talk, they were already enmeshed too far in that tone of ardent intimacy, those dangerous words in which insidious lust trembles at secret touches. Their conversation kept coming up against lacunae, hesitations. It halted, tried to go on, but still stumbled again and again over the child’s persistent silence.

  That grim silence was particularly hard for his mother to bear. She cautiously looked at him sideways, and as the child compressed his lips she was suddenly startled to see, for the first time, a similarity to her husband when he was annoyed or angry. It was uncomfortable for her to be reminded of her husband just now, when she wanted to play a game with an adventure, a game of hide and seek. The child seemed to her like a ghost, a guardian of her conscience, doubly intolerable here in the cramped carriage, sitting just opposite with his watchful eyes glowing darkly beneath his pale forehead. Then Edgar suddenly looked up, just for a second. Both of them lowered their eyes again at once; she felt, for the first time in her life, that they were keeping watch on each other. Until now they had trusted one another blindly, but today something between the two of them, mother and child, was suddenly different. For the first time they began observing each other, separating their two lives, both already feeling a secret dislike that was still too new for them to dare to acknowledge it.

  All three breathed a sigh of relief when the horses stopped outside the hotel. As an outing it had been a failure; they all felt that, but no one dared say so. Edgar jumped down first. His mother excused herself, saying that she had a headache, and quickly went upstairs. She felt tired and wanted to be alone. Edgar and the Baron were left behind. The Baron paid the driver of the carriage, looked at his watch, and walked towards the lobby, ignoring the boy. He went past Edgar, turning his elegant, slender back, walking with that slight, rhythmically springy gait that captivated the boy so much. Edgar had tried to imitate it yesterday. The Baron walked past him, he simply passed him by. Obviously he had forgotten the boy, leaving him there with the driver and the horses as if they had nothing to do with each other.

  Something inside Edgar broke in two as he saw him pass like that—the man whom, in spite of everything, he still idolized. Desperation rose from his heart as the Baron passed by without a word, not even brushing him with his coat—and he wasn’t aware of having done anything wrong. His laboriously maintained self-control gave way, the artificial burden of his new dignity slipped from his narrow shoulders, he was a child again, small and humble as he had been yesterday and for so long before that. It impelled him on against his will. With quick, unsteady steps he followed the Baron, stood in his way as he was about to go upstairs, and said in a strained voice, keeping back the tears only with difficulty:

  “What have I done to you? You don’t take any notice of me any more! Why are you always like that to me now? And Mama too! Why are you always trying to get rid of me? Am I in your way, or have I done something wrong, or what?”

  The Baron gave a start of surprise. There was something in that voice that bewildered him and softened his heart. Pity for the innocent boy overcame him. “Oh, Edi, you’re an idiot! I was in a bad mood today, that’s all. And you’re a good boy, I’m really fond of you.” So saying he ruffled the boy’s hair vigorously, but with his face half turned away to avoid seeing those large, moist, pleading, childish eyes. He was beginning to feel awkward about his play-acting. In fact he was already feeling ashamed of exploiting this child’s love so ruthlessly, and that high little voice, shaken by suppressed sobs, physically hurt him.

  “Upstairs you go now, Edi, we’ll meet this evening and be friends again, you wait and see,” he said in mollifying tones.

  “But you won’t let Mama send me straight up to bed, will you?”

  “No, no, Edi, I won’t,” smiled the Baron. “So up you go now, I must dress for dinner.”

  Edgar went, happy for the moment. But soon the hammer in his mind started working away again. He had grown years older since yesterday; distrust, previously a stranger to him, had taken up residence in his childish breast.

  He waited. This would be the test that decided it. They sat at the table together. Nine o’clock came, but still his mother did not send him to bed. He was beginning to feel uneasy. Why was she letting him stay up so long today, when she was usually so strict about it? Had the Baron told her what he wanted after all, had he given their conversation away? He was suddenly overcome by bitter regret for running round after him today with his heart so full of trust. At ten his mother suddenly rose from the table and wished the Baron goodnight. And strange to say, the Baron did not seem at all surprised by her early departure, or try to keep her there as he had before. The hammer in the child’s breast was coming down harder and harder.

  Now for the test. He too acted as if he suspected nothing, and followed his mother to the door without demur. But there he suddenly looked up, and sure enough, at that moment he caught her smiling at the Baron over his head. It was a glance of complicity, about a secret of some kind. So the Baron had indeed given him away. That was why she was going up early: he was to be lulled into a sense of security today so that he wouldn’t be in their way again tomorrow.

  “Swine,” he muttered.

  “What did you say?” asked his mother.

  “Nothing,” he said between his teeth. He had a secret of his own now. Its name was hatred, boundless hatred for both of them.

  8

  SILENCE

  EDGAR WAS NO LONGER RESTLESS. At last he was relishing a pure, clear feeling: hatred and open animosity. Now that he was certain he was in their way, being with them became a cruelly complex pleasure. He gloated over the idea of disrupting their plans, bringing all the concentrated force of his hostility to bear on them at last. He showed his teeth to the Baron first. When that gentleman came down in the morning and greeted him in passing with a hearty, “Hello there, Edi!”, Edgar stayed where he was, sitting in an armchair, and just grunted a surly, “Morning”, without looking up.

  “Is your Mama down yet?”

  Edgar was looking at the newspaper. “I don’t know.”

  The Baron was taken aback. What was this all of a sudden?

  “Got out of bed on the wrong side today, Edi, did you?” A joke always helped to smooth things over. But Edgar just cast him a scornful, “No,” and immersed himself in the newspaper once more.

  “Silly boy,” muttered the Baron to himself, shrugging his shoulders, and he moved on. War had been declared.

  Edgar was cool and courteous to his Mama too. He calmly rebuffed a clumsy attempt to send him out to the tennis courts. The faint, bitter smile on his curling lips showed that he was not to be deceived any more.

  “I’d rather go for a walk with you and the Baron, Mama,” he said with assumed friendliness, looking into her eyes. She obviously found it an inconvenient response. She hesitated, and seemed to be searching for something to say. “Wait for me here,” she told him at last, and went in to breakfast.

  Edgar waited. But his suspicions were aroused. His alert instincts were busy detecting some secret and hostile meaning in everything the two adults said. Distrustful as he now was, he became remarkably perceptive in his conclusions. So instead of waiting in the lobby as directed by his mother, Edgar decided to position himself in the street, where he could keep watch not only on the main entrance but on all
the other doors of the hotel. Something in him scented deception. But they weren’t going to get away from him any more. Out in the street, he took cover behind a woodpile, a useful trick learned from his books about American Indians. And he merely smiled with satisfaction when, after about half-an-hour, he actually did see his mother coming out of a side door carrying a bouquet of beautiful roses, and followed by that traitor the Baron. They both seemed to be in high spirits. Were they breathing a sigh of relief to have escaped him? Now, they thought, they were alone with their secret! They were laughing as they talked, starting down the road to the woods.

  The moment had come. Edgar emerged from behind the woodpile at a leisurely pace, as if he happened to be here by mere chance. Very, very casually he went towards them, giving himself time, plenty of time, to relish their surprise. They were both taken aback, and exchanged a strange look. The boy slowly approached them, pretending to take this meeting entirely for granted, but he never took his mocking gaze off them.

  “Oh, so there you are, Edi. We were looking for you indoors,” said his mother at last. What a bare-faced liar she is, thought the child, but his lips did not relax. They kept the secret of his hatred fenced in behind his teeth.

  Then they all three stood there, undecided. Each was watching the others. “Oh, let’s be off,” said Edgar’s mother, irritated but resigned, plucking at one of the beautiful roses. Once again he saw that slight fluttering of the nostrils that betrayed her anger. Edgar stopped as if all this were nothing to do with him, looked up at the sky, waited until they had begun walking, and then set off to follow them.

  The Baron made one more attempt. “It’s the tennis tournament today. Have you ever seen one of those?”

  Edgar looked at him with scorn. He did not even reply, just pursed his lips as if he were about to whistle. That was all his answer. His animosity was showing itself.

  His unwanted presence now weighed on the other two like a nightmare. They walked as convicts walk behind their jailer, with fists surreptitiously clenched. The child wasn’t really doing anything, but with every passing minute he became more intolerable to them—he and his watchful gaze, wet as his eyes were with tears grimly suppressed, his resentful ill humour, the way he rejected all attempts at conciliation with a growl.

  “Go on ahead,” said his mother, suddenly angry, and made uneasy by his constant close attention. “Don’t keep dancing about in front of my feet like that, it makes me nervous.”

  Edgar obeyed, but after every few steps he turned and stood there waiting for them if they had lagged behind, his gaze circling around them like Mephistopheles in the shape of the black dog, spinning a fiery web of hostility and entangling them hopelessly in it.

  His malice and silence corroded their good humour like acid, his gaze soured their conversation. The Baron dared not utter another word of gallantry, he felt with annoyance that the woman was slipping away from him again, and the flames of passion that he had so laboriously fanned were cooling again in her fear of that irritating, horrible child. They kept trying to converse, and their exchanges kept dying away. In the end, they were all three marching along the path in silence, a silence unbroken except by the rustling whisper of the trees and their own dragging footsteps. The child had throttled any conversation.

  By now all three felt irritation and animosity. The betrayed child was delighted to realize that the helpless anger of the adults was all directed against his own existence, which they had ignored. Eyes sparkling with derision, he now and then scanned the Baron’s grim face. He saw that the man was muttering curses between his teeth, and had to exercise self-control himself to keep from spitting them out at him. At the same time, with diabolical pleasure, he observed his mother’s rising anger, and saw that they were both longing for some reason to turn on him, send him away, or in general render him harmless. But he offered them no chance, he had worked on his hostility for hours and he wasn’t going to show any weakness now.

  “Let’s go back,” said his mother suddenly. She felt that she wouldn’t be able to stand this much longer, she must do something, must at least scream under the torture.

  “What a pity,” said Edgar calmly. “It’s so nice here.”

  They both realized that the child was mocking them, but they dared not say anything. In the space of two days the little tyrant had learned to control himself expertly. Not a muscle moved in his face to betray his irony. Without a word, they walked the long way back. Edgar’s mother was still in an agitated state when the two of them were alone in her room. She threw her sunshade and gloves angrily down. Edgar saw at once that her nerves were on edge, her temper was demanding release, but as an outburst was just what he wanted, he stayed in the room on purpose to provoke it. She paced about, sat down, drumming her fingers on the table, and then leaped to her feet again. “What a sight you look, going around all dirty and untidy like that! In front of other people too, it’s a shame. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, at your age?”

  Without a word in answer, the boy went over to the mirror to comb his hair. His silence, his obstinate cold silence and the scornful smile playing round his lips infuriated her. She could have hit him. “Go to your room!” she cried. She couldn’t bear his presence any more. Edgar smiled, and went.

  How they were both trembling before him now, how afraid she and the Baron were, afraid of every hour they all spent together, fearing his pitilessly hard eyes! The more uncomfortable they felt, the more satisfaction and pleasure there was for him in staring, and the more challenging was his delight. Edgar was now tormenting the defenceless couple with all the cruelty natural to children, which is still almost animal in nature. The Baron was able to restrain his anger because he still hoped to trick the boy, and was thinking only of his own aims. But his mother kept losing control of herself. A chance to shout at him came almost as a relief. “Don’t play with your fork,” she snapped at him at table. “What a naughty boy you are, you don’t deserve to be eating with grown-ups!” Edgar just kept smiling and smiling, his head slightly tilted to one side. He knew that she was snapping at him in desperation, and felt proud that she was exposing herself like that. His glance was perfectly calm now, like a doctor’s. Once he might perhaps have been naughty in order to annoy her, but you learn a lot when you hate, and you learn it fast. Now he said nothing, he went on and on saying nothing, until the sheer pressure of his silence had her at screaming-point.

  His mother could bear it no longer. When the adults rose from table and she saw that Edgar was about to follow them, still looking as if such devotion was only to be taken for granted, her resentment suddenly burst out. She abandoned all caution and spat out the truth. Tormented by his insidious presence, she reared and bucked like a horse tortured by flies. “Why do you keep following me around like a three-year-old toddler? I don’t want you on my heels all the time. Children don’t belong with adults, remember that! Go and do something on your own for an hour or so. Read a book, do anything you like, but leave me alone! You’re making me nervous, slinking around like that with your horrible hangdog look.”

  At last he’d wrung an admission out of her! Edgar smiled, and she and the Baron now seemed embarrassed. She turned and was about to move away, angry with herself for showing the child her annoyance. But Edgar just said coolly, “Papa doesn’t want me going around here all on my own. Papa made me promise to be careful, he wanted me to stay close to you.”

  He emphasized the word “Papa”, having noticed already that it had a certain inhibiting effect on them both. So somehow or other his father too must be part of that burning secret. Papa must have some kind of secret power over the couple, something that he himself didn’t know about, for even the mention of his name seemed to cause them alarm and discomfiture. Once again they did not reply. They had laid down their arms. His mother went ahead, the Baron with her. After them came Edgar, but not humbly like a servant, instead he was harsh, stern, implacable as a jailer. Invisibly, he clinked their chains—they were rattling those chains
, but they couldn’t break them. Hatred had steeled his childish power; he, who didn’t know the secret, was stronger than the two whose hands were bound by it.

  9

  LIARS

  BUT TIME WAS RUNNING OUT. The Baron had only a few days left, and he wanted to make the most of them. Resistance to the angry child’s obstinacy, they both felt, was useless, so they resorted to the last and ignoble way out: flight, just to get away from his tyranny for an hour or two.

  “Take these letters to the post office, will you, and send them by registered mail,” Edgar’s mother told him. They were both standing in the hotel lobby while the Baron spoke to a cabby outside.

  Suspiciously, Edgar took the two letters. He had noticed a servant delivering some kind of message to his mother earlier. Were they hatching a plot against him after all?

  He hesitated. “Where will I find you?”

  “Here.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mind you don’t go away, though! You’ll wait for me here in the lobby until I get back, won’t you?” In his awareness of having the upper hand he spoke imperiously, as if giving his mother orders. Much had changed since the day before yesterday.

  Then he went out with the two letters. At the door he met the Baron and spoke to him for the first time in two days. “I’m just taking two letters to the post. My Mama will wait for me here. Please don’t leave before I come back.”