Fear by Stefan Zweig Read Free Book Online Page A

turned. It was her lover, and when she stopped so suddenly he almost collided with her. His face was pale, bearing all the signs of agitation, and now, under her uncomprehending gaze, he also looked ashamed. Uncertainly, he raised his hand in greeting and let it sink again when she did not offer him hers. The sight of him was so unexpected that she just stared at him for one or two seconds. In thesedays of fear, she had forgotten all about him. But now that she saw his pale, inquiring face at close quarters, with that expression of vacant perplexity, a hot wave of rage suddenly surged up in her. Her lips trembled, attempting to form words, and the distress in her face showed so clearly that he could only stammer her name in alarm. “Irene, what’s the matter?” And when he saw her impatient gesture, he added meekly, “What harm have I done you?”
    She stared at him with barely repressed anger. “What harm have you done me?” she said, with a laugh of derision. “Oh, none! None at all! You’ve done only good! Only what’s right and proper.”
    His expression was baffled, and his mouth dropped half-open, increasing the ridiculously simple-minded effect of his appearance. “But Irene … Irene!”
    “Please don’t attract attention here!” she snapped at him brusquely. “And don’t trouble to put on an act for me! Your delightful lady friend is sure to be lurking somewhere near, ready to attack me again!”
    “Who … who do you mean?”
    She could have slapped his foolishly baffled, distorted face. She already felt her hand clutching her umbrella. She had never despised and hated anyone so much.
    “But Irene … Irene,” he kept stammering in confusion. “What on earth have I done? All of a sudden you stay away … I’ve been waiting for you day and night. I’vebeen standing outside your apartment block today, waiting for a chance to speak to you for a minute.”
    “Waiting for … oh, I see! You too.” She felt that her anger was driving her mad. It would feel so good to strike him! However, she controlled herself, cast him one more glance of burning revulsion, as if considering whether to spit all her accumulated rage out into his face in a torrent of abuse, and then, instead, she suddenly turned and made her way into the busy crowd without looking back. He stood there with his pleading hand still outstretched, bewildered and shaken, until the movement of the crowd in the street took hold of him and swept him away with it like a leaf sinking in the current, rocking and circling, and finally carried away by no will of its own.
     
    The idea that such a man had ever been her lover suddenly struck her as absolutely unreal and senseless. She could remember nothing about him, not the colour of his eyes or the shape of his face. She had no physical memory of his caresses, and none of his words echoed in her mind apart from that pitiful, childish, dog-like “But, Irene!” stammered out in desperation. Although he was the cause of all misfortune, she had not once thought of him in all these days, even in her dreams.He meant nothing in her life, he was no temptation now, hardly even a memory. She didn’t understand how her lips could ever have touched his, and she felt strong enough to have sworn that she had never really listened to him. What had driven her into his arms, what terrible madness had led her to embark on an adventure that her own heart no longer understood, and hardly even her mind? She knew nothing more about it, everything in what had passed was strange to her, she was a stranger to herself.
    But then again, hadn’t everything else changed in these few days, this single week of horror? Corrosive fear had eaten into her life like nitric acid, separating its elements. The weight of everything was suddenly different, all values were reversed, all relationships confused. She felt as if until this moment she had merely been groping her way vaguely through life with her eyes half closed, and now