Free Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig Page A

grimly for a minute in the midnight corridor. Gradually the Baron becomes aware of the ridiculous aspect of this scuffle with a boy of twelve, and takes firm hold of Edgar to fling him off. But the child, feeling his muscles lose their force and knowing that next moment he will be defeated, the loser in the fight, snaps furiously at that strong, firm hand trying to grab him by the nape of his neck. He bites. Involuntarily, his opponent utters a muted scream and lets go. The child uses that split second to take refuge in his room and bolt the door.
    The midnight conflict has lasted only about a minute. No one to right or left has heard it. All is still, everything seems to be drowned in sleep. The Baron mops his bleeding hand with his handkerchief and peers anxiously into the darkness. No one was listening. Only in the ceiling does a last, restless light flicker—as if, it seems to him, with derision.

12
THE STORM
    W AS IT A DREAM , a dangerous nightmare? So Edgar wondered next morning as he woke from a sleep full of anxious confusion with his hair tousled. His head was tormented by a dull thudding, his joints by a stiff, wooden feeling, and now, when he looked down at himself, he was startled to realize that he was still fully dressed. He jumped up, staggered over to the mirror, and shrank back from his own pale, distorted face. A red weal was swelling on his forehead. With difficulty, he pulled his thoughts together and now, in alarm, remembered everything, the fight in the dark out in the corridor, his retreat to his room, and how then, trembling feverishly, he threw himself on his bed in his day clothes, ready for flight. He must have fallen asleep there, plunging into a dark, overcast slumber and bad dreams in which it all came back to him again, only in a different and yet more terrible form, with the wet smell of fresh blood flowing.
    Downstairs, footsteps were crunching over the gravel. Voices flew up like invisible birds, and the sun shone, reaching far into the room. It must be late in themorning, but when he looked at his watch in alarm the hands pointed to midnight. In his agitation yesterday he had forgotten to wind it up. And this uncertainty, the sense that he was left dangling somewhere in time, disturbed him and was reinforced by the fact that he didn’t know what had really happened. He quickly tidied himself and went downstairs, uneasiness and a faintly guilty feeling in his heart.
    His Mama was sitting alone at their usual table in the breakfast-room. Edgar breathed a sigh of relief to see that his enemy wasn’t there, that he wouldn’t have to look at the hated face into which he had angrily driven his fist yesterday. And yet he still felt very uncertain as he approached the table.
    “Good morning,” he said.
    His mother did not reply. She did not even look up, but stared at the landscape in the distance, her eyes curiously fixed. She looked very pale, there were slight rings round her eyes, and that give-away fluttering of her nostrils showed that she was upset. Edgar bit his lip. This silence confused him. He really didn’t know whether he had hurt the Baron badly yesterday, and indeed whether she even knew about their fight in the dark. His uncertainty plagued him. But her face remained so frozen that he didn’t even try to look at her, for fear her eyes, now lowered, might suddenly come to life behind their heavy lids and fix on him. He kept very still, not daring to make a sound, he very carefully picked up his cup and put it down again,looking surreptitiously at his mother’s fingers as they nervously played with a spoon. They were curved into claws, as if betraying her secret fury. He sat like that for a quarter-of-an-hour with the oppressive feeling of waiting for something that didn’t happen. Not a word, not a single word came to his rescue. And now that his mother rose to her feet, still without taking any notice of his presence, he didn’t know what to do: should he stay sitting here