Burning Secret by Stefan Zweig Read Free Book Online

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 traitorthe 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