Fear by Stefan Zweig

Author:Stefan Zweig [Stefan Zweig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906548568
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2011-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

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 everything was illuminated with terrible clarity. Before her, as close as her own breath, were considerations that she had never touched but which, she suddenly realised, made up her real life, and others again that had once seemed important to her had dispersed like smoke. Up to this point she had mingled with lively society in the noisy, loquacious company of people who moved in well-to-do circles, and in essence she had lived only for herself, but now, after a week immured in her own household, she felt she did not miss that society. Instead, she was repelled by the pointless hurry and bustle of those who had nothing to do, and instinctively she judged the shallowness of her old inclinations, her constant neglect of love in action, in the light of this first truly strong feeling to come to her. She looked at her past as if looking into an abyss. Married for eight years, and deluding herself that she enjoyed too modest a happiness, she had never tried to come closer to her husband, she had remained a stranger to his real nature and no less to her own children. Paid domestic staff stood between them and her, governesses and servants who relieved her of all those little anxieties which, she only now began to sense—now that she had looked more closely at her children’s lives—were more alluring than the ardent glances of men, more delightful than a lover’s embrace. Slowly, her life was acquiring new meaning. Everything had affinities, all at once turning a gravely significant face to her.

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