The Burning Secret

by Stefan Zweig

“No, no. There was no good reason for my running away. Mamma was very kind to me, but I didn’t behave myself, and I was ashamed, and so—and so I ran away.”

The father looked at his son in amazement. Such a confession was the last thing he expected to hear. His wrath was disarmed.

“Well, if you’re sorry, then it’s all right, and we won’t say any more about it to-day. You’ll be careful in the future, though, not to do anything of the sort again.” 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.

They sent him to bed, but he was not now distressed at being left alone. He had such a wealth of things to think over. All the agony of the past days was dissipated by the tremendous sense of his first experience of life. He felt happy in a mysterious presentiment of future experiences. Outside, the trees were rustling in the gloomy night, but he was not scared. He had lost all impatience at having to wait for life now that he knew how rich it was. For the first time that day, it seemed to him, he had seen life naked, no longer veiled behind the thousand lies of childhood he saw it in its complete, fearful, voluptuous beauty. Never had he supposed that days could be crowded so full of transitions from sorrow to joy and back again, and it made him happy to think there were many more such days in store for him and that a whole life was waiting to reveal its mystery to him. A first inkling had come to him of the diversity of life. For the first time, he thought, he understood men’s beings, that they heeded each other even when they seemed to be inimical, and that it was very sweet to be loved by them. He was incapable of thinking of anything or anybody with hate. He regretted nothing and had a sense of gratitude even to the baron, his bitterest enemy, because it was he who had opened the door for him to this world of dawning emotions.

It was very sweet to be lying in the dark thinking thoughts that were mingled vaguely with dreams and were lapsing almost into sleep.

Was it a dream or did Edgar really hear the door open and someone creep softly into his room? He was too sleepy to open his eyes and look. Then he felt a breath upon his face and the touch of another face, soft and warm and gentle, against his, and he knew it was his mother who was kissing him and stroking his hair. He felt her kisses and her tears, and responded to her caresses. He took them as reconciliation and gratitude for his silence. It was not until many years later that he really understood these silent tears and knew they were a vow, of this woman verging on middle age, to dedicate herself henceforth to her child and renounce adventure and all desire on her own behalf. They were a farewell. He did not know that she was thanking him for more than his silence. She was grateful that he had rescued her from a barren experience, and in these caresses was bequeathing him the bitter-sweet legacy of her love for his future life. Nothing of all this did the child lying there comprehend, but he felt it was blissful to be so loved and that by this love he was already entangled in the great secret of the world.

When she had withdrawn her hand from his head and her lips from his lips, and with a light swish of her skirts had left the room, something warm remained behind, a breath upon Edgar’s mouth. And a seductive longing came upon him to feel such soft lips upon his and to be so tenderly embraced often and often again.

But this divination of the great secret, so longed for, was already clouded over by sleep. Once again all the happenings of the past hours flitted through Edgar’s mind, once again the leaves in the book of his childhood were turned alluringly, then the child fell asleep, and the profounder dream of his life began.