Plays by August Strindberg Volume II Part 39

GUSTAV. Well? Have you seen her former husband?

ADOLPH. No, never. I have only had a casual glance at a very poor portrait of him, and then I couldn't detect the slightest resemblance.

GUSTAV. Oh, portraits are never like the original, and, besides, he might have changed considerably since it was made. However, I hope it hasn't aroused any suspicions in you?

ADOLPH. Not at all. The child was born a year after our marriage, and the husband was abroad when I first met Tekla--it happened right here, in this very house even, and that's why we come here every summer.

GUSTAV. No, then there can be no cause for suspicion. And you wouldn't have had any reason to trouble yourself anyhow, for the children of a widow who marries again often show a likeness to her dead husband. It is annoying, of course, and that's why they used to burn all widows in India, as you know.--But tell me: have you ever felt jealous of him--of his memory? Would it not sicken you to meet him on a walk and hear him, with his eyes on your Tekla, use the word "we" instead of "I"?--We!

ADOLPH. I cannot deny that I have been pursued by that very thought.

GUSTAV. There now!--And you'll never get rid of it. There are discords in this life which can never be reduced to harmony. For this reason you had better put wax in your ears and go to work. If you work, and grow old, and pile ma.s.ses of new impressions on the hatches, then the corpse will stay quiet in the hold.

ADOLPH. Pardon me for interrupting you, but--it is wonderful how you resemble Tekla now and then while you are talking. You have a way of blinking one eye as if you were taking aim with a gun, and your eyes have the same influence on me as hers have at times.

GUSTAV. No, really?

ADOLPH. And now you said that "no, really" in the same indifferent way that she does. She also has the habit of saying "no, really"

quite often.

GUSTAV. Perhaps we are distantly related, seeing that all human beings are said to be of one family. At any rate, it will be interesting to make your wife's acquaintance to see if what you say is true.

ADOLPH. And do you know, she never takes an expression from me.

She seems rather to avoid my vocabulary, and I have never caught her using any of my gestures. And yet people as a rule develop what is called "marital resemblance."

GUSTAV. And do you know why this has not happened in your case?-- That woman has never loved you.

ADOLPH. What do you mean?

GUSTAV. I hope you will excuse what I am saying--but woman's love consists in taking, in receiving, and one from whom she takes nothing does not have her love. She has never loved you!

ADOLPH. Don't you think her capable of loving more than once?

GUSTAV. No, for we cannot be deceived more than once. Then our eyes are opened once for all. You have never been deceived, and so you had better beware of those that have. They are dangerous, I tell you.

ADOLPH. Your words pierce me like knife thrusts, and I fool as if something were being severed within me, but I cannot help it. And this cutting brings a certain relief, too. For it means the p.r.i.c.king of ulcers that never seemed to ripen.--She has never loved me!--Why, then, did she ever take me?

GUSTAV. Tell me first how she came to take you, and whether it was you who took her or she who took you?

ADOLPH. Heaven only knows if I can tell at all!--How did it happen? Well, it didn't come about in one day.

GUSTAV. Would you like to have me tell you how it did happen?

ADOLPH. That's more than you can do.

GUSTAV. Oh, by using the information about yourself and your wife that you have given me, I think I can reconstruct the whole event.

Listen now, and you'll hear. [In a dispa.s.sionate tone, almost humorously] The husband had gone abroad to study, and she was alone. At first her freedom seemed rather pleasant. Then came a sense of vacancy, for I presume she was pretty empty when she had lived by herself for a fortnight. Then _he_ appeared, and by and by the vacancy was filled up. By comparison the absent one seemed to fade out, and for the simple reason that he was at a distance--you know the law about the square of the distance? But when they felt their pa.s.sions stirring, then came fear--of themselves, of their consciences, of him. For protection they played brother and sister. And the more their feelings smacked of the flesh, the more they tried to make their relations.h.i.+p appear spiritual.

ADOLPH. Brother and sister? How could you know that?

GUSTAV. I guessed it. Children are in the habit of playing papa and mamma, but when they grow up they play brother and sister--in order to hide what should be hidden!--And then they took the vow of chast.i.ty--and then they played hide-and-seek--until they got in a dark corner where they were sure of not being seen by anybody. [With mock severity] But they felt that there was _one_ whose eye reached them in the darkness--and they grew frightened-- and their fright raised the spectre of the absent one--his figure began to a.s.sume immense proportions--it became metamorphosed: turned into a nightmare that disturbed their amorous slumbers; a creditor who knocked at all doors. Then they saw his black hand between their own as these sneaked toward each other across the table; and they heard his grating voice through that stillness of the night that should have been broken only by the beating of their own pulses. He did not prevent them from possessing each other but he spoiled their happiness. And when they became aware of his invisible interference with their happiness; when they took flight at last--a vain flight from the memories that pursued them, from the liability they had left behind, from the public opinion they could not face--and when they found themselves without the strength needed to carry their own guilt, then they had to send out into the fields for a scapegoat to be sacrificed. They were free-thinkers, but they did not have the courage to step forward and speak openly to him the words: "We love each other!" To sum it up, they were cowards, and so the tyrant had to be slaughtered. Is that right?

ADOLPH. Yes, but you forget that she educated me, that she filled my head with new thoughts--

GUSTAV. I have not forgotten it. But tell me: why could she not educate the other man also--into a free-thinker?

ADOLPH. Oh, he was an idiot!

GUSTAV. Oh, of course--he was an idiot! But that's rather an ambiguous term, and, as pictured in her novel, his idiocy seems mainly to have consisted in failure to understand her. Pardon me a question: but is your wife so very profound after all? I have discovered nothing profound in her writings.

ADOLPH. Neither have I.--But then I have also to confess a certain difficulty in understanding her. It is as if the cogs of our brain wheels didn't fit into each other, and as if something went to pieces in my head when I try to comprehend her.

GUSTAV. Maybe you are an idiot, too?

ADOLPH. I don't _think_ so! And it seems to me all the time as if she were in the wrong--Would you care to read this letter, for instance, which I got today?

[Takes out a letter from his pocket-book.]

GUSTAV. [Glancing through the letter] Hm! The handwriting seems strangely familiar.

ADOLPH. Rather masculine, don't you think?

GUSTAV. Well, I know at least _one_ man who writes that kind of hand--She addresses you as "brother." Are you still playing comedy to each other? And do you never permit yourselves any greater familiarity in speaking to each other?

ADOLPH. No, it seems to me that all mutual respect is lost in that way.

GUSTAV. And is it to make you respect her that she calls herself your sister?

ADOLPH. I want to respect her more than myself. I want her to be the better part of my own self.

GUSTAV. Why don't you be that better part yourself? Would it be less convenient than to permit somebody else to fill the part? Do you want to place yourself beneath your wife?

ADOLPH. Yes, I do. I take a pleasure in never quite reaching up to her. I have taught her to swim, for example, and now I enjoy hearing her boast that she surpa.s.ses me both in skill and daring.

To begin with, I merely pretended to be awkward and timid in order to raise her courage. And so it ended with my actually being her inferior, more of a coward than she. It almost seemed to me as if she had actually taken my courage away from me.

GUSTAV. Have you taught her anything else?

ADOLPH. Yes--but it must stay between us--I have taught her how to spell, which she didn't know before. But now, listen: when she took charge of our domestic correspondence, I grew out of the habit of writing. And think of it: as the years pa.s.sed on, lack of practice made me forget a little here and there of my grammar. But do you think she recalls that I was the one who taught her at the start? No--and so I am "the idiot," of course.

GUSTAV. So you _are_ an idiot already?

ADOLPH. Oh, it's just a joke, of course!

GUSTAV. Of course! But this is clear cannibalism, I think. Do you know what's behind that sort of practice? The savages eat their enemies in order to acquire their useful qualities. And this woman has been eating your soul, your courage, your knowledge--

ADOLPH. And my faith! It was I who urged her to write her first book--

GUSTAV. [Making a face] Oh-h-h!