The Burning Secret

by Stefan Zweig

Edgar was about to pull the door-bell when something odd occurred. Suddenly the thing that only a few hours before had seemed quite natural to him had now become impossible. How was he to go into the house, how meet his grandmother and her family, how endure all the questions they would besiege him with, and how answer them? How would he be able to bear the looks they would give him when he would tell, as he would be obliged to, that he had run away from his mother? And, above all, how would he explain his monstrous deed, which he himself no longer understood? A door in the house slammed, and Edgar, in a sudden panic at being detected, ran off.

When he reached the park he paused. It was dark there, and he expected to find it empty and thought it would be a good place to sit down in and rest and at last reflect quietly and come to some understanding with himself about his fate. He passed through the gateway timidly. A few lamps were burning near the entrance, giving the young leaves on the trees a ghostly gleam of transparent green, but deeper in the park, down the hill, everything lay like a single, black, fermenting mass in the darkness.

Edgar, eager to be alone, slipped past the few people who were sitting in the light of the lamps, talking or reading. But even in the deep shadows of the unilluminated pathways it was not quiet. There were low whisperings that seemed to shun the light, sounds mingled with the rustling of the leaves, the scraping of feet, subdued voices, all mingled with a certain voluptuous, sighing, groaning sound that seemed to emanate from people and animals and nature, all in a disturbed sleep. It was a restlessness that had something foreboding in it, something sneaking, hidden, puzzling, a sort of subterranean stirring in the wood that was connected perhaps with nothing but the spring, yet had a peculiarly alarming effect upon the child.

He cowered into a diminutive heap on a bench and tried to think of what he was to say at home. But his thoughts slipped away from him as on a slippery surface before he could grasp his own ideas, and in spite of himself he had to keep listening and listening to the muffled tones, the mystical voices of the darkness. How terrible the darkness was, how bewildering and yet how mysteriously beautiful!

Were they animals, or people, or was it merely the ghostly hand of the wind that wove together all this rustling and crackling and whirring? He listened. It was the wind gently moving the tree tops. No, it wasn’t, it was people—now he could see distinctly—couples arm in arm, who came up from the lighted city to enliven the darkness with their perplexing presence. What were they after? He could not make out. They were not talking to each other, because he heard no voices. All he could catch was the sound of their tread on the gravel and here and there the sight of their figures moving like shadows past some clear space between the trees, always with their arms round each other, like his mother and the baron in the moonlight.

So the great, dazzling, portentous secret was here, too.

Steps approached. A subdued laugh. Edgar, for fear of being discovered, drew deeper into the dark. But the couple now groping their way in the deep gloom had no eyes for him. They passed him by, closely locked, and they stopped only a few feet beyond his bench. They pressed their faces together. Edgar could not see clearly, but he heard a soft groan from the woman, and the man stammering mad, ardent words. A sort of sultry presentiment touched Edgar’s alarm with a shudder that was sensual and pleasant.

The couple stayed thus a minute or so, and then the gravel crunched under their tread again, and the sound of their footsteps died away in the darkness.

A tremor went through Edgar. His blood whirled hot through his veins, and all of a sudden he felt unbearably alone in this bewildering darkness, and the need came upon him with elemental force for the sound of a friend’s voice, an embrace, a bright room, people he loved. The whole perplexing darkness this night seemed to be inside his breast rending it.

He jumped up. To be at home, just to be at home, anywhere at home in a warm, bright room, in some relation with people. What could happen to him then? Even if they were to scold and beat him, he would not mind all that darkness and the dread of loneliness.