Burning Secret (7 page)

F
URTHER ALONG THE ROAD
he stopped. He had to hold on to a tree, his limbs were trembling so much in fear and emotional upheaval, his breathing was so laboured as it broke out of his overstressed chest. His horror at his own actions had been chasing him, and now it caught him by the throat and shook him as if he had a fever. What was he to do now? Where could he go? For here, in the middle of the woods so close to the hotel where he was staying, only fifteen
minutes
’ walk away, he was overcome by a sense of
desolation
. Everything seemed different, more hostile, more dreadful now that he was alone with no one to help him. The trees that had rustled in such a friendly way around him yesterday suddenly looked dense and dark as a threat. And how much stranger and more
unfamiliar
must all that lay ahead of him be! This
isolation
, alone against the great, unknown world, made the child dizzy. No, he couldn’t bear it yet, he couldn’t yet bear to be on his own. But where could he go? He was afraid of his father, who was short-tempered,
forbidding
, and would send him straight back here. He wasn’t
going back, though, he’d sooner go on into the
dangerous
, alien atmosphere of the unknown. He felt as if he could never look at his mother’s face again without remembering that he had hit it with his fist.

Then he thought of his grandmother, that kind, good old lady, who had spoiled him since he was tiny, had always protected him when he was threatened by discipline or injustice at home. He would hide with her in Baden until the first storm of fury had passed over, he’d write his parents a letter from there saying he was sorry. At this moment he was so humiliated by the mere thought of being all alone in the world, inexperienced as he was, that he cursed his pride—the stupid pride that a stranger had aroused in him with a lie. He wanted nothing but to be the child he had been before, obedient, patient, without the arrogance that, he now felt, had been so ridiculously exaggerated.

But how was he to get to Baden? How could he travel all that distance? He quickly reached into the little leather purse that he always carried with him. Thank goodness, the shiny new golden twenty-crown piece that he had been given for his birthday was still there. He had never been able to bring himself to spend it, but almost every day he had looked to make sure it was there, feasting his eyes on it, feeling rich, and then always affectionately and gratefully polishing up the coin with his handkerchief until it shone like a little sun. But—the sudden thought alarmed him—would it be enough? He had so often
travelled by train without even thinking that you had to pay, or wondering how much or how little it cost. A crown or a hundred crowns? For the first time he felt that certain facts of life had never occurred to him, that all the many things around him, things he had held in his hands and played with, were somehow imbued with a value of their own, a particular significance. Only an hour ago he had thought he knew everything; now he felt he had passed a thousand secrets and problems by without a thought, and he was ashamed that his poor amount of knowledge stumbled over the first hurdle he encountered in life. He grew more and more desperate, he took smaller and smaller steps on his faltering way down to the station. He had so often dreamed of flight, of storming out into life, becoming an emperor or a king, a soldier or a poet, and now he looked diffidently at the bright little station building and could think of nothing but whether or not the twenty crowns would be enough to get him to his grandmother’s house. The shining tracks stretched on into the countryside, the station was empty and deserted. Shyly, Edgar went into the ticket office and asked at the window in a whisper, so that no one else could hear him, how much a ticket to Baden cost? A surprised face looked out from behind the dark partition, two eyes smiled at the timid child from behind a pair of glasses.

“A full fare?”

“Yes,” stammered Edgar, but without any pride, rather in alarm in case it cost too much.

“Six crowns.”

“I’d like one, please!”

Relieved, he pushed the shiny, much-loved coin over to the window, change clinked as it was pushed back to him, and all of a sudden Edgar felt wonderfully rich again. He had in his hand the brown piece of cardboard that promised freedom now, and the muted music of silver rang in his pocket.

The train would arrive in twenty minutes’ time, so the timetable told him. Edgar withdrew into a corner. A few people were standing idle on the platform, not thinking about him, but the anxious child felt as if they were all looking at him and no one else, wondering why a child was travelling on his own, as if his flight and his crimes were written on his forehead. He heaved a sigh of relief when at last he heard the train’s first whistle in the distance, and then the roar as it thundered in. The train that was to take him out into the world. As he boarded it, he saw that he had a third-class ticket. He had travelled only by first class before, and once again he felt that something had changed, that there were differences which had escaped his notice in the past. A few Italian labourers with hard hands and rough voices, carrying spades and shovels, sat opposite him and looked into space with dull eyes. They must obviously have been hard at work on the road, because some of them were tired and fell asleep in the clattering train, leaning back against the hard, dirty wood with their mouths open. They had been working to earn money,
thought Edgar, but he could not imagine how much it was. All the same, he felt once more that money was something you didn’t always have, something that had to be gained by some means or other. For the first time, he now realized that he took an atmosphere of comfort for granted, he was used to it, while to right and left of his existence there gaped abysses on which his eyes had never looked, going deep into the darkness. All of a sudden he understood that there were professions, there was purpose, that secrets clustered close around his life, near enough to touch, and yet they had gone ignored. Edgar learned a great deal from that single hour when he was all alone, he began to see through the windows of this cramped railway compartment and out into the open air. And quietly, in his dim apprehensions, something began to flower; it was not happiness yet, but a sense of amazement at the variety of life. He had fled out of fear and cowardice, he understood that now, but for the first time he had acted independently, had experienced something of the reality that had previously eluded him. For the first time, perhaps, he himself had become a secret to his mother and his father, just as the world had been a secret to him until now. He looked out of the window with new eyes. And he felt as if, for the first time, he was seeing reality, as if a veil had fallen away from what he saw and now showed him everything, the essence of its intentions, the secret nerve centre of its activity. Houses flew past as if blown away by the wind, and he found himself
thinking of the people who lived in them, were they rich or poor, were they happy or unhappy, did they have his own longing to know everything, and were there perhaps children in there who, like himself, had only played games so far? The railwaymen standing by the tracks, waving their flags, seemed to him for the first time not, as before, just dolls and inanimate toys, placed there by indifferent chance; he understood that it was their fate, their own struggle with life. The wheels went round faster and faster, the rounded curves of the track now allowed the train to go down into the valley, the mountains looked gentler and more distant all the time, and then they reached the plain. He looked back once, to the place where they were still blue and full of shadows, distant and unattainable, and he felt as if his own childhood lay there, back in the place where the mountains slowly dissolved into the hazy sky.

B
UT THEN IN BADEN
, when the train stopped and Edgar found himself alone on the platform where the lights had just come on and the signals glowed red and green in the distance, sudden fear of the falling night mingled with this vivid sight. By day he had still felt safe, since there were people all around him and he could rest, sitting on a bench, or looking into shop windows. But how would he be able to bear it when the people had gone home, they all had beds and could look forward to some conversation and then a good night’s sleep, while he would have to wander round on his own with his guilty conscience, lonely in a strange place? Oh, if only he could have a roof over his head, and soon too, instead of standing around a minute longer in the open air! That was his one clear thought.

He quickly walked along the familiar street, looking neither to right nor left, until at last he reached the villa where his grandmother lived. It was well situated on a broad road, but not where all eyes could see it, hidden behind the ivy and climbing plants of a
well-tended
garden, bright behind a cloud of green, an
old-fashioned, comfortable white house. Edgar peered through the gratings like a stranger. Nothing moved in there, the windows were closed, obviously they were all in the garden at the back with guests. He was just putting his hand on the cool latch of the gate when something strange suddenly happened; all at once what he had thought for the last two hours would be so easy and natural appeared impossible. How could he go in, how could he say good evening to them, how could he bear and answer all the questions? How could he stand up to the first glance when he had to confess that he had secretly run away from his mother? And how could he possibly explain the enormity of what he had done when he himself didn’t understand it now? A door opened inside the house. Instantly, he was overcome by a foolish fear that someone might come out, and he ran on without any idea where he was going.

He stopped when he came to the grounds of the spa buildings, because he saw that it was dark there and he didn’t expect to meet anyone. Perhaps he could sit down in the grounds and at last, at long last think calmly, rest, and get his mind in order. He timidly went in. A couple of lanterns were lighted at the entrance, giving a ghostly, watery gleam of translucent green to the young leaves. Further on, however, when he had to go down the slope, everything lay like one great black and seething mass in the bewildering darkness of an early spring night. Edgar slipped shyly past a
couple of people who sat talking or reading here in the light of the lanterns; he wanted to be alone. But he could not rest even in the shadowy darkness of the unlit paths. Everything there was full of a soft rustling and murmuring that shunned the light, and was mingled with the sound of the wind breathing through the leaves that bent to it, the crunch of distant footsteps, or the whispering of low voices in what were somehow sensual, sighing tones, a soft moan of fear, sounds that might come from human beings and animals and the restless slumbers of Nature all at once. There was dangerous unrest in the air here, covert, hidden, alarmingly mysterious, something moving underground in the woods that might be just to do with the spring season, but it alarmed the distraught child strangely.

He huddled on a bench in this deep darkness and tried to think what to tell them in the house. But all his ideas slipped away before he could seize and hold them, and against his own will all he could do was listen, listen to the muted tones and strange voices of the dark. How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering and yet mysteriously beautiful! Was the sound made by animals, or people, or just the spectral hand of the wind weaving all that rustling and cracking, all that humming and those enticing calls together? He listened. It was the wind stirring the trees restlessly but—and now he saw it clearly—people too, couples arm-in-arm, coming up from the well-lit town and
enlivening the darkness with their mysterious presence. What did they want? He couldn’t understand. They were not talking to each other, for he heard no voices, only footsteps crunching restlessly on the gravel, and here and there, in the clearing before him, he saw their figures move fleetingly past like shadows, but always as closely entwined as he had seen his mother and the Baron yesterday evening. So the secret, that great, shining, fateful secret was here too. He heard steps coming closer and closer now, and then a low laugh. Fear that the people who were coming might find him here overcame him, and he huddled even further back into the dark. But the couple now groping their way along the path through that impenetrable darkness did not see him. They went past, still entwined, Edgar breathed again. However, then their footsteps suddenly stopped right in front of his bench. They pressed their faces together. Edgar couldn’t see anything clearly, he just heard a moan come from the woman’s mouth, the man stammered hot, crazed words, and some sense of warm anticipation pierced his fears with a frisson of pleasure. They stayed like that for a moment, then the gravel crunched underfoot again as they walked on. The sound of their footsteps soon died away in the dark.

Edgar shuddered. The blood was pulsing back into his veins again, hotter and more turbulent than before. Suddenly he was unbearably lonely in this bewildering darkness, and he felt a strong, primeval
need for a friendly voice, an embrace, a bright room, people whom he loved. It was as if the whole baffling darkness of this confusing night had sunk into him and was wrenching him apart.

He jumped up. He must get home, home, be at home somewhere in a lighted room, whatever it was like, in some kind of human relationship. What could happen to him, after all? If they beat him and scolded him, he wasn’t afraid of anything now, not since he had felt that darkness and the fear of being alone.

His need drove him on, although he was hardly aware of it, and suddenly he was outside the villa again with his hand on the cool latch of the gate. He saw the window shining with light through all the green leaves now, saw in his mind’s eye the familiar room and the people there behind every bright pane. Its very closeness made him happy, that first, reassuring sense of being near people who, he knew, loved him. And if he hesitated now it was only to heighten the pleasure of anticipation.

Then a voice behind him, startled and shrill, cried, “Edgar! Here’s Edgar!”

His grandmother’s maid had seen him. She hurried out to him and took his hand. The door inside was flung open, a dog jumped up at him, barking, they came out of the house with lights, he heard voices, cries of delight and alarm, a happy tumult of shouting and approaching footsteps, figures that he recognized now. First came his grandmother with her arms
stretched out to him, and behind her—he thought he must be dreaming—was his mother. Red-eyed with crying, trembling and intimidated, he himself stood in the middle of this warm outburst of overwhelming emotions, not sure what to do or what to say, and not sure what he felt either. Was it fear or happiness?