Stefan Zweig

“ A deep furrow cut itself between the child’s brows. He looked almost old as he sat in the carriage painfully cogitating this great mystery and never casting a single glance at the landscape, which was shading into all the delicate colors of the spring, the mountains in the freshened green of their pines, the valleys in the mistier greens of budding trees, shrubbery and young grass. All he had eyes for were the man and the woman on the seat opposite him, as though, with his hot gaze, as with an angling hook, he could snatch the secret from the shimmering depths of their eyes. ”

“ He felt he must scream the words out to relieve himself of his frenzy. All the pent-up rage, impatience, annoyance, curiosity, impotence, and the sense of betrayal of the last few days, which he had suppressed in the fond belief that he was an adult and must behave like an adult, now gushed from him in a fit of weeping and sobbing. It was the final crying spell of his childhood. For the last time he was giving in to the bliss of weeping like a woman. In that moment of uncontrolled fury his tears washed away his whole childhood, trust, love, credulity, respect. ”

“ The power of love is not properly gauged if it is estimated only by the object that inspires it, if the tension preceding it is not taken into account—that gloomy space of disillusionment and loneliness which stretches in front of all the great events of the heart.
In Edgar there had been a heavily fraught, unexpended emotion lying in wait, which now burst out and rushed to meet the first human being who seemed to deserve it. He lay in the dark, happy and dazed. He wanted to laugh, but had to cry. For he loved the baron as he had never loved friend, father, mother, or even God. ”

“ In their watchful alertness all the passionate instincts of the chase are afire, the stalking, the excitement, the cruel cunning. They are always at their post, always ready and determined to follow the tracks of an adventure up to the very brink of the precipice, always loaded with passion, not with the passion of a lover, but with the cold, calculating, dangerous passion of a gambler. Some of them are doggedly persevering, their whole life shaping itself, from this expectancy, into one perpetual adventure. ”

“ Nothing gives so keen an edge to the intelligence as a passionate suspicion. All the possibilities of an immature mind are developed by a trail leading into obscurity. Sometimes it is only a single light door that keeps children out of the world that we call the real world, and a chance puff of wind may blow it open.
Edgar, all at once, felt himself tangibly closer, closer than ever before, to the Unknown, the Great Secret. ”

“ Edgar could tell from his gestures that he was talking emphatically. The child was alarmed. What did this man want of his mother? Why did he attempt—the villain!—to drag her into the dark? From his books, to him the world, came live memories of murder and seduction and sinister crime. There, he had it, the baron meant to murder her. That was why he had kept him, Edgar, at a distance, and enticed her to this lonely spot. Should he cry for help? Murder! He wanted to shriek, but his throat and lips were dry and no sound issued from his mouth. ”

“ In Edgar, a last tiny flame of credulity went out. To tread on the truth and extinguish it as one would a burning match was more than he could stomach. His insides congealed in an icy lump, and everything he now said was in a tone of unrestrained, pointed maliciousness.
“So I dreamed what I saw in the hall, did I? I dreamed this bump on my forehead, and that you two went walking in the moonlight and he wanted to make you go down the dark path into the valley? I dreamed all that, did I? What do you think, that I am going to let myself be locked up like a baby? ”

“ He knew his mother’s outburst was a sign of desperation and took pride in having made her betray herself. His manner and glance were now as composed as a physician’s. In previous days he might have answered back rudely so as to annoy her. But hate teaches many things, and quickly. How he kept quiet, and still kept quiet, and still kept quiet, until his mother, under the pressure of his silence, began to scream. She could stand it no longer. When they rose from table and Edgar with his matter-of-course air of attachment preceded to follow her and the baron, her pent-up anger suddenly burst out. ”

“ Old, domesticated elephants were used to lure the young, wild, high-spirited ones into the enclosure. The child’s eyes flashed. Then, as though a knife came cutting through the air right down between him and the baron, his mother said, glancing at the clock:
“Neuf heures. Au lit.”
Edgar turned white. To be sent to bed is dreadful enough to grown children at any time. It is the most patent humiliation in adult company, the proclamation that one is still a child, the stigma of being small and needing a child’s sleep. ”

“ It is so infinitely easy to deceive children, those unsuspecting creatures whose love is so rarely courted. All the baron needed to do was to transport himself back to his own childhood, and the talk flowed quite naturally. Edgar felt himself in the presence of an equal, and within a few minutes had lost all sense of distance between them, and was perfectly at ease, conscious of nothing but bliss at having so unexpectedly found a friend in this lonely place. ”

“ Edgar tortured the two defenceless creatures with the almost animal cruelty of children. The baron, because he had not given up hope of playing a trick on the lad and was thinking of nothing but the goal of his desires, could still contain his anger, but Edgar’s mother was losing her hold upon herself and kept constantly slipping. It was a relief to her to be able to shriek at him.
“Don’t play with your fork,” she cried at table. “You’re an ill-bred monkey. You don’t deserve to be in the company of grown-up people.” ”

“ She had always taken voluptuous delight in creeping up to the very edge of an adventure and then jumping back at the last moment, an adventure of the great and dangerous kind, not a mere fleeting flirtation. But the baron was too proud to push his advantage now, too assured of his victory to take this woman like a robber in a moment of weakness and intoxication. A fair sportsman prefers his game to show fight and to surrender quite consciously. ”

“ THE baron had passed a bad night. It is rather vain to attempt to sleep after an adventure that has been abruptly broken off. Tossing on his bed and starting up out of oppressive dreams, the baron was soon regretting that he had not seized the moment. The next morning when he came down he was still sleepy and cross and in no mood to take up with Edgar, who at sight of him rushed out of a corner and threw his arms about his waist and began to pester him with a thousand questions. The boy was happy to have his big friend to himself once more without having to share him with his mother. ”

“ The baron was not worth an answer any more. Edgar merely gave him a scornful look and pursed his lips for whistling. That was his full reply. His hate showed its bared teeth.
Edgar’s unwished-for presence weighed upon the two like a nightmare. They felt very like convicts who follow their keeper gritting their teeth and clenching their fists in secret. ”

“ Edgar protested he was not sleepy and would be happy to stay up the whole night. But his mother remained obdurate and held out her hand by way of good-night to the baron, who shook hands with her most respectfully.
Edgar did not sleep well that night. A chaos of happiness and childish despair filled his soul. Something new had come to him that day. For the first time he had played a part in the life of adults. In his half-awake state he forgot that he was a child and all at once felt himself a grown man. Brought up an only child and often ailing, he had never had many friends. ”

“ After repeated unsuccessful attempts at a conversation they jogged along the path in complete silence, hearing nothing but the rustling of the leaves and their own dejected footsteps.
There was active hostility now in each of the three. The betrayed child perceived with satisfaction how their anger gathered helplessly against his own little, despised person. Every now and then he cast a shrewd, ironic look at the baron’s sullen face and saw how he was muttering curses between gritted teeth and had to restrain himself from hurling them out at him. ”

“ The mother left the room with the baron, and Edgar followed behind, not humbly like a servitor, but hard, strict, inexorable, like a guard over prisoners, rattling the chains against which they strained in vain. Hate had steeled his child’s strength. He, the ignorant one, was stronger than the two older people whose hands were held fast by the great secret. ”

“ He knew she was giving him the secret to guard and that a human destiny was hanging in the balance on his child’s lips. Filled with a jubilant pride that she reposed confidence in him he suddenly became possessed by a desire for self-sacrifice. He magnified his own wrong-doing in order to show how much of a man he had grown to be. ”

“ He paused and looked at Edgar, and his voice was milder as he went on. “How pale you are, boy! But I believe you’ve grown taller in this short while. I hope you won’t be guilty of such childish behavior again because really you’re not a child any more, and you ought to be sensible.”
Edgar, the whole time, had kept looking at his mother. Something peculiar seemed to be glowing in her eyes, or was it the reflection of the light? No, it was something new, her eyes were moist, and there was a smile on her lips that said “Thank you” to him. ”

“ Each day is divided for them into a hundred little sensual experiences—a passing look, a flitting smile, an accidental contact of the knees—and each year into a hundred such days, in which the sensual experience constitutes the ever-flowing, life-giving and quickening source of their existence. ”

“ Edgar did not fail to note these signs and was aware that her electrified nerves would seek to discharge themselves, but he courted an outburst and remained in her room on purpose. She paced up and down, seated herself, drummed on the table with her fingers, and jumped up again.
“How untidy you look. You go around filthy. It’s a disgrace. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself—a boy of your age!”
Without a word of opposition Edgar went to his mother’s toilet table and washed and combed himself. His cold, obdurate silence and the ironic quiver of his lips drove her to a frenzy. ”

“ The life whose questions seem to have been answered long before becomes a problem again, and for the last time the magnetic needle of the will wavers between the hope for an intense love experience and ultimate resignation. ”

“ Being a young man favored with a handsome face, he was always prepared for a new experience. He was of the sort of men who are constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to plunge into an adventure for the sake of its novelty, yet whom nothing surprises because, forever lying in wait, they have calculated every possibility in advance. Such men never overlook any element of the erotic. The very first glance they cast at a woman is a probe into the sensual, a searching, impartial probe that knows no distinction between the wife of a friend or the maid who opens the door to her house. ”

“ With set lips and a look of frenzy on his face he pounded away at the baron with his two small fists.
By this time the baron had recognized his assailant. He, too, was primed with hate of the little spy who had been dogging him and interfering with his sport, and he hit back, striking out blindly. Edgar groaned once or twice, but did not let go, and did not cry for help. They wrestled a fraction of a minute in the dark corridor grimly and sullenly without the exchange of a single word. ”

“ Once the baron intercepted one of his curious looks. His black eyes instantly fell, when he saw himself observed, and hid behind lowered lids. The baron was amused. The boy actually began to interest him, and it flashed into his mind that he might be made to serve as the speediest means for bringing him and his mother together. He could overcome his shyness, since it proceeded from nothing but fear. At any rate, it was worth the trial. So when Edgar strolled out of the door to pet, in his child’s need of tenderness, the pinkish nostrils of one of the ’bus horses, the baron followed him. ”

“ He was almost ashamed at having been able to extract these family secrets from the unsuspecting child, for Edgar, very proud that anything he had to say could interest a grown-up person, fairly pressed confidences upon his new friend. His child’s heart beat with pride—the baron had put his arm on his shoulder while they were walking—to be seen in such close intimacy with a “man,” and gradually he forgot he was a child and talked quite unconstrainedly, as if to an equal. ”

“ She was at the critical age when a woman begins to regret having remained faithful to a husband she has never truly loved, and when the purple sunset of her beauty still affords her a final urgent choice between motherliness and womanliness. ”

“ EDGAR’S mother stayed at table with the baron a while longer. But the two no longer spoke of elephants or hunting. An indefinable embarrassment instantly sprang up between them, and a faint sultriness descended upon their conversation. After a time they went out into the hall and seated themselves in a corner.
The baron was more brilliant than ever. The woman was a little heated by her two glasses of champagne, so that the conversation quickly took a dangerous turn. The baron was not what is called exactly handsome. ”

“ It will tan your cheeks. But you oughtn’t to be standing round the whole day long. A fellow like you ought to be on the go, running, jumping, playing, full of spirits, and up to mischief, too. It strikes me you are too good. With that big fat book under your arm you look as though you were always poking in the house. By jingo, when I think of the kind of fellow I was at your age, I used to raise the devil, and every evening I came home with torn knickerbockers. Don’t be so good, whatever you are.”
Edgar could not help smiling, and the consciousness of his own smile removed his fear. ”