Read Online Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig - Free Book Online

was merely an artificial mask over a nervous face, fitfully working in the throes of restless passion. He had imagined another kind of reunion with her for too long, on too many nights by the camp fire in his hut beyond the seas, for too many years and too many days—he had envisaged the two of them falling into each other’s arms in a burning embrace, the final surrender, a dress slipping to the ground—he had imagined it too long for this friendliness, this courteous talk as they sounded each other out to ring entirely true. Actor and actress, he said to himself, we are both putting on a performance but neither of us is deceived. She is surely sleeping as little as I am tonight, he thought.
    And when he went to see her next morning, she must have seen his loss of self-control and noticed his agitation and the evasive expression on his face at once, for the first thing she herself said was confused, and even later she could not find her way back to yesterday’s easy, composed tone. Today their conversation was a matter of fits and starts, with pauses and awkward moments that had to be overcome with a forceful effort. Something or other stood between them, and questions and answers, invisibly coming up against it, ran into a dead end like bats flying into a wall. They both felt that they were skirting some other subject as they talked, and finally the conversation died down, reeling from this cautious circling of their words. He realized it in time and, when she invited him to stay for lunch again, invented an urgent appointment in the city.
    She said she was very sorry, and indeed the shy warmth of her heart did now venture back into her voice. But she did not seriously try to keep him there. As she accompanied him out, their eyes nervously avoided each other. Something was crackling along their nerves, again and again conversation stumbled over the invisible obstacle that went with them from room to room, from word to word, and that now, growing stronger, took their breath away. So it was a relief when he was at the door, his coat already on. But all of a sudden, making up his mind, he turned back. “In fact there is something else I wanted to ask you before I go.”
    “You want to ask me something? By all means!” she smiled, radiant once again with the joy of being able to fulfil a wish of his.
    “It may be foolish,” he said, his glance diffident, “but I know that you’ll understand. I would very much like to see my room again, the room where I lived for two years. All this time I’ve been down in the reception rooms that you keep for visitors, and if I leave like this, you see, I wouldn’t feel I had been in my former home. As a man grows older he goes in search of his own youth, taking silly pleasure in little memories.”
    “You, grow older, Ludwig?” she replied almost light-heartedly. “I never thought you were so vain! Look at me, look at this grey streak in my hair. You’re only a boy by comparison with me, and you talk of growing older already. You must allow me to take precedence there! But how forgetful of me not to have taken you straight to your room, for that’s what it still is. You will find nothing changed; nothing ever changes in this house.”
    “I hope that includes you,” he said, trying to make a joke of it, but when she looked at him his expression instinctively changed to one of tender warmth.
    She blushed slightly. “People may grow old, but they remain the same.”
    They went up to his old room. Even as they entered it there was a slight awkwardness, for she stood aside after opening the door to let him in, and as each of them courteously drew back at the same time to make way for the other, their shoulders briefly collided in the doorway. Both instinctively retreated, but even this fleeting physical contact was enough to embarrass them. She said nothing, but was overcome by a paralysing self-consciousness which was doubly perceptible in the silent, empty room. Nervously, she