Chapter XV: Part 15

DONA LAURA. How very nice of him. Thank him for me. They are very fragrant. [_As she takes the violets from her maid, a few loose ones drop to the ground._]

DON GONZALO. My dear Senora, this has been a great honor and pleasure.

DONA LAURA. And it has also been a pleasure to me.

DON GONZALO. Good-by until to-morrow.

DONA LAURA. Until to-morrow.

DON GONZALO. If it is a sunny day.

DONA LAURA. If it is a sunny day. Will you go to your bench?

DON GONZALO. No, Senora, I will come to this, if you do not object?

DONA LAURA. This bench is at your disposal. [_Both laugh._]

DON GONZALO. And I will surely bring the bread crumbs. [_Both laugh again._]

DONA LAURA. Until to-morrow.

DON GONZALO. Until to-morrow.

[_Laura walks away on her maid's arm toward right. Gonzalo, before
leaving with Juanito, trembling and with a great effort, stoops to
pick up the violets Laura dropped. Just then, Laura turns her head
and sees him pick up flowers._]

JUANITO. What are you doing, Senor?

DON GONZALO. Wait, Juanito, wait.

DONA LAURA [_aside_]. There is no doubt. It is he.

DON GONZALO [_walks toward left. Aside_]. There can be no mistake. It is she.

[_Dona Laura and Don Gonzalo wave farewells to each other from a
distance._]

DONA LAURA. Merciful heavens! This is Gonzalo.

DON GONZALO. And to think that this is Laura.

[_Before disappearing they give one last smiling look at each
other._]

[_Curtain._]

THE CREDITOR

A PLAY

BY AUGUST STRINDBERG

PERSONS

THELKA.
ADOLF [_her husband, a painter_].
GUSTAV [_her divorced husband_].
TWO LADIES, A WAITER.

THE CREDITOR

A PLAY BY AUGUST STRINDBERG

[SCENE: _A small watering-place. Time, the present. Stage
directions with reference to the actors._

_A drawing-room in a watering-place; furnished as above._

_Door in the middle, with a view out on the sea; side doors right
and left; by the side door on the left the button of an electric
bell; on the right of the door in the center a table, with a
decanter of water and a glass. On the left of the door in the
center a what-not; on the right a fireplace in front; on the right
a round table and arm-chair; on the left a sofa, a square table, a
settee; on the table a small pedestal with a draped
figure--papers, books, arm-chairs. Only the items of furniture
which are introduced into the action are referred to in the above
plan. The rest of the scenery remains unaffected. It is summer,
and the day-time._]

SCENE I.

[_Adolf sits on the settee on the left of the square table; his
stick is propped up near him._]

ADOLF. And it's you I've got to thank for all this.

GUSTAV [_walks up and down on the right, smoking a cigar_]. Oh, nonsense.

ADOLF. Indeed, I have. Why, the first day after my wife went away, I lay on my sofa like a cripple and gave myself up to my depression; it was as though she had taken my crutches, and I couldn't move from the spot. A few days went by, and I cheered up and began to pull myself together. The delirious nightmares which my brain had produced, went away. My head became cooler and cooler. A thought which I once had came to the surface again. My desire to work, my impulse to create, woke up. My eye got back again its capacity for sound sharp observation. You came, old man.

GUSTAV. Yes, you were in pretty low water, old man, when I came across you, and you went about on crutches. Of course, that doesn't prove that it was simply my presence that helped so much to your recovery: you needed quiet, and you wanted masculine companionship.

ADOLF. You're right in that, as you are in everything else you say. I used to have it in the old days. But after my marriage it seemed unnecessary. I was satisfied with the friend of my heart whom I had chosen. All the same I soon got into fresh sets, and made many new acquaintances. But then my wife got jealous. She wanted to have me quite to herself; but much worse than that, my friends wanted to have her quite to themselves--and so I was left out in the cold with my jealousy.

GUSTAV. You were predisposed to this illness, you know that.

[_He passes on the left behind the square table and comes to
Adolf's left._]

ADOLF. I was afraid of losing her--and tried to prevent it. Are you surprised at it? I was never afraid for a moment that she'd be unfaithful to me.

GUSTAV. What husband ever was afraid?

ADOLF. Strange, isn't it? All I troubled about was simply this--about friends getting influence over her and so being able indirectly to acquire power over me--and I couldn't bear that at all.

GUSTAV. So you and your wife didn't have quite identical views?

ADOLF. I've told you so much, you may as well know everything---my wife is an independent character. [_Gustav laughs._] What are you laughing at, old man?

GUSTAV. Go on, go on. She's an independent character, is she?

ADOLF. She won't take anything from me.

GUSTAV. But she does from everybody else?

ADOLF [_after a pause_]. Yes. And I've felt about all this, that the only reason why my views were so awfully repugnant to her, was because they were mine, not because they appeared absurd on their intrinsic merits. For it often happened that she'd trot out my old ideas, and champion them with gusto as her own. Why, it even came about that one of my friends gave her ideas which he had borrowed direct from me. She found them delightful; she found everything delightful that didn't come from me.

GUSTAV. In other words, you're not truly happy.

ADOLF. Oh yes, I am. The woman whom I desired is mine, and I never wished for any other.

GUSTAV. Do you never wish to be free either?

ADOLF. I wouldn't like to go quite so far as that. Of course the thought crops up now and again, how calmly I should be able to live if I were free--but she scarcely leaves me before I immediately long for her again, as though she were my arm, my leg. Strange. When I'm alone I sometimes feel as though she didn't have any real self of her own, as though she were a part of my ego, a piece out of my inside, that stole away all my will, all my _joie de vivre_. Why, my very marrow itself, to use an anatomical expression, is situated in her; that's what it seems like.

GUSTAV. Viewing the matter broadly, that seems quite plausible.

ADOLF. Nonsense. An independent person like she is, with such a tremendous lot of personal views, and when I met her, what was I then? Nothing. An artistic child which she brought up.

GUSTAV. But afterwards you developed her intellect and educated her, didn't you?

ADOLF. No; her growth remained stationary, and I shot up.

GUSTAV. Yes; it's really remarkable, but her literary talent already began to deteriorate after her first book, or, to put it as charitably as possible, it didn't develop any further. [_He sits down opposite Adolf on the sofa on the left._] Of course she then had the most promising subject-matter--for of course she drew the portrait of her first husband--you never knew him, old man? He must have been an unmitigated ass.

ADOLF. I've never seen him. He was away for more than six months, but the good fellow must have been as perfect an ass as they're made, judging by her description--you can take it from me, old man, that her description wasn't exaggerated.

GUSTAV. Quite; but why did she marry him?

ADOLF. She didn't know him then. People only get to know one another afterwards, don't you know.

GUSTAV. But, according to that, people have no business to marry until--Well, the man was a tyrant, obviously.

ADOLF. Obviously?

GUSTAV. What husband wouldn't be? [_Casually._] Why, old chap, you're as much a tyrant as any of the others.

ADOLF. Me? I? Well, I allow my wife to come and go as she jolly well pleases!

GUSTAV [_stands up_]. Pah! a lot of good that is. I didn't suppose you kept her locked up. [_He turns round behind the square table and comes over to Adolf on the right._] Don't you mind if she's out all night?

ADOLF. I should think I do.

GUSTAV. Look here. [_Resuming his earlier tone._] Speaking as man to man, it simply makes you ridiculous.

ADOLF. Ridiculous? Can a man's trusting his wife make him ridiculous?

GUSTAV. Of course it can. And you've been so for some time. No doubt about it.

[_He walks round the round table on the right._]

ADOLF [_excitedly_]. Me? I'd have preferred to be anything but that. I must put matters right.

GUSTAV. Don't you get so excited, otherwise you'll get an attack again.

ADOLF [_after a pause_]. Why doesn't she look ridiculous when I stay out all night?

GUSTAV. Why? Don't you bother about that. That's how the matter stands, and while you're fooling about moping, the mischief is done.

[_He goes behind the square table, and walks behind the sofa._]

ADOLF. What mischief?

GUSTAV. Her husband, you know, was a tyrant, and she simply married him in order to be free. For what other way is there for a girl to get free, than by getting the so-called husband to act as cover?

ADOLF. Why, of course.

GUSTAV. And now, old man, you're the cover.

ADOLF. I?

GUSTAV. As her husband.

ADOLF [_looks absent_].

GUSTAV. Am I not right?

ADOLF [_uneasily_]. I don't know. [_Pause._] A man lives for years on end with a woman without coming to a clear conclusion about the woman herself, or how she stands in relation to his own way of looking at things. And then all of a sudden a man begins to reflect--and then there's no stopping. Gustav, old man, you're my friend, the only friend I've had for a long time, and this last week you've given me back all my life and pluck. It seems as though you'd radiated your magnetism over me. You were the watchmaker who repairs the works in my brain, and tightened the spring. [_Pause._] Don't you see yourself how much more lucidly I think, how much more connectedly I speak, and at times it almost seems as though my voice had got back the timbre it used to have in the old days.

GUSTAV. I think so, too. What can be the cause of it?

ADOLF. I don't know. Perhaps one gets accustomed to talk more softly to women. Thekla, at any rate, was always ragging me because I shrieked.

GUSTAV. And then you subsided into a minor key, and allowed yourself to be put in the corner.

ADOLF. Don't say that. [_Reflectively._] That wasn't the worst of it. Let's talk of something else--where was I then--I've got it. [_Gustav turns round again at the back of the square table and comes to Adolf on his right._] You came here, old man, and opened my eyes to the mysteries of my art. As a matter of fact, I've been feeling for some time that my interest in painting was lessening, because it didn't provide me with a proper medium to express what I had in me; but when you gave me the reason for this state of affairs, and explained to me why painting could not possibly be the right form for the artistic impulse of the age, then I saw the true light and I recognized that it would be from now onwards impossible for me to create in colors.

GUSTAV. Are you so certain, old man, that you won't be able to paint any more, that you won't have any relapse?

ADOLF. Quite. I have tested myself. When I went to bed the evening after our conversation I reviewed your chain of argument point by point, and felt convinced that it was sound. But the next morning, when my head cleared again, after the night's sleep, the thought flashed through me like lightning that you might be mistaken all the same. I jumped up, and snatched up a brush and palette, in order to paint, but--just think of it!--it was all up. I was no longer capable of any illusion. The whole thing was nothing but blobs of color, and I was horrified at the thought. I could never have believed I could convert any one else to the belief that painted canvas was anything else except painted canvas. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I could as much paint again as I could become a child again.

GUSTAV. You realized then that the real striving of the age, its aspiration for reality, for actuality, can only find a corresponding medium in sculpture, which gives bodies extension in the three dimensions.

ADOLF [_hesitating_]. The three dimensions? Yes--in a word, bodies.

GUSTAV. And now you want to become a sculptor? That means that you were a sculptor really from the beginning; you got off the line somehow, so you only needed a guide to direct you back again to the right track. I say, when you work now, does the great joy of creation come over you?

ADOLF. Now, I live again.

GUSTAV. May I see what you're doing?

ADOLF [_undraping a figure on the small table_]. A female figure.

GUSTAV [_probing_]. Without a model, and yet so lifelike?

ADOLF [_heavily_]. Yes, but it is like somebody; extraordinary how this woman is in me, just as I am in her.

GUSTAV. That last is not so extraordinary--do you know anything about transfusion?

ADOLF. Blood transfusion? Yes.

GUSTAV. It seems to me that you've allowed your veins to be opened a bit too much. The examination of this figure clears up many things which I'd previously only surmised. You loved her infinitely?

ADOLF. Yes; so much that I could never tell whether she is I, or I am her; when she laughed I laughed; when she cried I cried, and when--just imagine it--our child came into the world I suffered the same as she did.

GUSTAV [_stepping a little to the right_]. Look here, old chap, I am awfully sorry to have to tell you, but the symptoms of epilepsy are already manifesting themselves.

ADOLF [_crushed_]. In me? What makes you say so.

GUSTAV. Because I watched these symptoms in a younger brother of mine, who eventually died of excess.

[_He sits down in the arm-chair by the circular table._]

ADOLF. How did it manifest itself--that disease, I mean?

[_Gustav gesticulates vividly; Adolf watches with strained
attention, and involuntarily imitates Gustav's gestures._]

GUSTAV. A ghastly sight. If you feel at all off color, I'd rather not harrow you by describing the symptoms.

ADOLF [_nervously_]. Go on; go on.

GUSTAV. Well, it's like this. Fate had given the youngster for a wife a little innocent, with kiss-curls, dove-like eyes, and a baby face, from which there spoke the pure soul of an angel. In spite of that, the little one managed to appropriate the man's prerogative.

ADOLF. What is that?

GUSTAV. Initiative, of course; and the inevitable result was that the angel came precious near taking him away to heaven. He first had to be on the cross and feel the nails in his flesh.

ADOLF [_suffocating_]. Tell me, what was it like?

GUSTAV [_slowly_]. There were times when he and I would sit quite quietly by each other and chat, and then--I'd scarcely been speaking a few minutes before his face became ashy white, his limbs were paralyzed, and his thumbs turned in towards the palm of the hand. [_With a gesture._] Like that! [_Adolf imitates the gesture._] And his eyes were shot with blood, and he began to chew, do you see, like this. [_He moves his lips as though chewing; Adolf imitates him again._] The saliva stuck in his throat; the chest contracted as though it had been compressed by screws on a joiner's bench; there was a flicker in the pupils like gas jets; foam spurted from his mouth, and he sank gently back in the chair as though he were drowning. Then--

ADOLF [_hissing_]. Stop!

GUSTAV. Then--are you unwell?

ADOLF. Yes.

GUSTAV [_gets up and fetches a glass of water from the table on the right near the center door_]. Here, drink this, and let's change the subject.

ADOLF [_drinks, limp_]. Thanks; go on.

GUSTAV. Good! When he woke up he had no idea what had taken place. [_He takes the glass back to the table._] He had simply lost consciousness. Hasn't that ever happened to you?

ADOLF. Now and again I have attacks of dizziness. The doctor puts it down to anaemia.

GUSTAV [_on the right of Adolf_]. That's just how the thing starts, mark you. Take it from me, you're in danger of contracting epilepsy; if you aren't on your guard, if you don't live a careful and abstemious life, all round.

ADOLF. What can I do to effect that?

GUSTAV. Above all, you must exercise the most complete continence.

ADOLF. For how long?

GUSTAV. Six months at least.

ADOLF. I can't do it. It would upset all our life together.

GUSTAV. Then it's all up with you.

ADOLF. I can't do it.

GUSTAV. You can't save your own life? But tell me, as you've taken me into your confidence so far, haven't you any other wound that hurts you?--some other secret trouble in this multifarious life of ours, with all its numerous opportunities for jars and complications? There is usually more than one _motif_ which is responsible for a discord. Haven't you got a skeleton in the cupboard, old chap, which you hide even from yourself? You told me a minute ago you'd given your child to people to look after. Why didn't you keep it with you?

[_He goes behind the square table on the left and then behind the
sofa._]

ADOLF [_covers the figure on the small table with a cloth_]. It was my wife's wish to have it nursed outside the house.

GUSTAV. The motive? Don't be afraid.

ADOLF. Because when the kid was three years old she thought it began to look like her first husband.

GUSTAV. Re-a-lly? Ever seen the first husband?

ADOLF. No, never. I just once cast a cursory glance over a bad photograph, but I couldn't discover any likeness.

GUSTAV. Oh, well, photographs are never like, and besides, his type of face may have changed with time. By the by, didn't that make you at all jealous?

ADOLF. Not a bit. The child was born a year after our marriage, and the husband was traveling when I met Thekla, here--in this watering-place--in this very house. That's why we come here every summer.

GUSTAV. Then all suspicion on your part was out of the question? But so far as the intrinsic facts of the matter are concerned you needn't be jealous at all, because it not infrequently happens that the children of a widow who marries again are like the deceased husband. Very awkward business, no question about it; and that's why, don't you know, the widows are burned alive in India. Tell me, now, didn't you ever feel jealous of him, of the survival of his memory in your own self? Wouldn't it have rather gone against the grain if he had just met you when you were out for a walk, and, looking straight at Thekla, said "We," instead of "I"? "We."

ADOLF. I can't deny that the thought has haunted me.

GUSTAV [_sits down opposite Adolf on the sofa on the left_]. I thought as much, and you'll never get away from it. There are discords in life, you know, which never get resolved, so you must stuff your ears with wax, and work. Work, get older, and heap up over the coffin a mass of new impressions, and then the corpse will rest in peace.

ADOLF. Excuse my interrupting you--but it is extraordinary at times how your way of speaking reminds me of Thekla. You've got a trick, old man, of winking with your right eye as though you were counting, and your gaze has the same power over me as hers has.

GUSTAV. No, really?

ADOLF. And now you pronounce your "No, really?" in the same indifferent tone that she does. "No, really?" is one of her favorite expressions, too, you know.

GUSTAV. Perhaps there is a distant relationship between us: all men and women are related of course. Anyway, there's no getting away from the strangeness of it, and it will be interesting for me to make the acquaintance of your wife, so as to observe this remarkable characteristic.

ADOLF. But just think of this, she doesn't take a single expression from me; why, she seems rather to make a point of avoiding all my special tricks of speech; all the same, I have seen her make use of one of my gestures; but it is quite the usual thing in married life for a husband and a wife to develop the so-called marriage likeness.

GUSTAV. Quite. But look here now. [_He stands up._] That woman has never loved you.

ADOLF. Nonsense.

GUSTAV. Pray excuse me, woman's love consists simply in this--in taking in, in receiving. She does not love the man from whom she takes nothing: she has never loved you.

[_He turns round behind the square table and walks to Adolf's
right._]

ADOLF. I suppose you don't think that she'd be able to love more than once?

GUSTAV. No. Once bit, twice shy. After the first time, one keeps one's eyes open, but you have never been really bitten yet. You be careful of those who have; they're dangerous customers.

[_He goes round the circular table on the right._]

ADOLF. What you say jabs a knife into my flesh. I've got a feeling as though something in me were cut through, but I can do nothing to stop it all by myself, and it's as well it should be so, for abscesses will be opened in that way which would otherwise never be able to come to a head. She never loved me? Why did she marry me, then?

GUSTAV. Tell me first how it came about that she did marry you, and whether she married you or you her?

ADOLF. God knows! That's much too hard a question to be answered offhand, and how did it take place?--it took more than a day.

GUSTAV. Shall I guess?

[_He goes behind the round table, toward the left, and sits on the
sofa._]

ADOLF. You'll get nothing for your pains.

GUSTAV. Not so fast! From the insight which you've given me into your own character, and that of your wife, I find it pretty easy to work out the sequence of the whole thing. Listen to me and you'll be quite convinced. [_Dispassionately and in an almost jocular tone._] The husband happened to be traveling on study and she was alone. At first she found a pleasure in being free. Then she imagined that she felt the void, for I presume that she found it pretty boring after being alone for a fortnight. Then he turned up, and the void begins gradually to be filled--the picture of the absent man begins gradually to fade in comparison, for the simple reason that he is a long way off--you know of course the psychological algebra of distance? And when both of them, alone as they were, felt the awakening of passion, they were frightened of themselves, of him, of their own conscience. They sought for protection, skulked behind the fig-leaf, played at brother and sister, and the more sensual grew their feelings the more spiritual did they pretend their relationship really was.

ADOLF. Brother and sister! How did you know that?

GUSTAV. I just thought that was how it was. Children play at mother and father, but of course when they grow older they play at brother and sister--so as to conceal what requires concealment; they then discard their chaste desires; they play blind man's bluff till they've caught each other in some dark corner, where they're pretty sure not to be seen by anybody. [_With increased severity._] But they are warned by their inner consciences that an eye sees them through the darkness. They are afraid--and in their panic the absent man begins to haunt their imagination--to assume monstrous proportions--to become metamorphosed--he becomes a nightmare who oppresses them in that love's young dream of theirs. He becomes the creditor [_he raps slowly on the table three times with his finger, as though knocking at the door_] who knocks at the door. They see his black hand thrust itself between them when their own are reaching after the dish of pottage. They hear his unwelcome voice in the stillness of the night, which is only broken by the beating of their own pulses. He doesn't prevent their belonging to each other, but he is enough to mar their happiness, and when they have felt this invisible power of his, and when at last they want to run away, and make their futile efforts to escape the memory which haunts them, the guilt which they have left behind, the public opinion which they are afraid of, and they lack the strength to bear their own guilt, then a scapegoat has to be exterminated and slaughtered. They posed as believers in Free Love, but they didn't have the pluck to go straight to him, to speak straight out to him and say, "We love each other." They were cowardly, and that's why the tyrant had to be assassinated. Am I not right?

ADOLF. Yes; but you're forgetting that she trained me, gave me new thoughts.

GUSTAV. I haven't forgotten it. But tell me, how was it that she wasn't able to succeed in educating the other man--in educating him into being really modern?

ADOLF. He was an utter ass.

GUSTAV. Right you are--he was an ass; but that's a fairly elastic word, and according to her description of him, in her novel, his asinine nature seemed to have consisted principally in the fact that he didn't understand her. Excuse the question, but is your wife really as deep as all that? I haven't found anything particularly profound in her writings.

ADOLF. Nor have I. I must really own that I too find it takes me all my time to understand her. It's as though the machinery of our brains couldn't catch on to each other properly--as though something in my head got broken when I try to understand her.

GUSTAV. Perhaps you're an ass as well.

ADOLF. No, I flatter myself I'm not that, and I nearly always think that she's in the wrong--and, for the sake of argument, would you care to read this letter which I got from her to-day?

[_He takes a letter out of his pocketbook._]

GUSTAV [_reads it cursorily_]. Hum, I seem to know the style so well.

ADOLF. Like a man's, almost.

GUSTAV. Well, at any rate I know a man who had a style like that. [_Standing up._] I see she goes on calling you brother all the time--do you always keep up the comedy for the benefit of your two selves? Do you still keep on using the fig leaves, even though they're a trifle withered--you don't use any term of endearment?

ADOLF. No. In my view, I couldn't respect her quite so much if I did.

GUSTAV [_hands back the letter_]. I see, and she calls herself "sister" so as to inspire respect.

[_He turns around and passes the square table on Adolf's right._]

ADOLF. I want to esteem her more than I do myself. I want her to be my better self.

GUSTAV. Oh, you be your better self; though I quite admit it's less convenient than having somebody else to do it for you. Do you want, then, to be your wife's inferior?

ADOLF. Yes, I do. I find pleasure in always allowing myself to be beaten by her a little. For instance, I taught her swimming, and it amuses me when she boasts about being better and pluckier than I am. At the beginning I simply pretended to be less skillful and courageous than she was, in order to give her pluck, but one day, God knows how it came about, I was actually the worse swimmer and the one with less pluck. It seemed as though she's taken all my grit away in real earnest.

GUSTAV. And haven't you taught her anything else?

ADOLF. Yes--but this is in confidence--I taught her spelling, because she didn't know it. Just listen to this. When she took over the correspondence of the household I gave up writing letters, and--will you believe it?--simply from lack of practice I've lost one bit of grammar after another in the course of the year. But do you think she ever remembers that she has to thank me really for her proficiency? Not for a minute. Of course, I'm the ass now.

GUSTAV. Ah, really? You're the ass now, are you?

ADOLF. I'm only joking, of course.

GUSTAV. Obviously. But this is pure cannibalism, isn't it? Do you know what I mean? Well, the savages devour their enemies so as to acquire their best qualities. Well, this woman has devoured your soul, your pluck, your knowledge.

ADOLF. And my faith. It was I who kept her up to the mark and made her write her first book.

GUSTAV [_with facial expression_]. Re-a-lly?

ADOLF. It was I who fed her up with praise, even when I thought her work was no good. It was I who introduced her into literary sets, and tried to make her feel herself in clover; defended her against criticism by my personal intervention. I blew courage into her, kept on blowing it for so long that I got out of breath myself. I gave and gave and gave--until nothing was left for me myself. Do you know--I'm going to tell you the whole story--do you know how the thing seems to me now? One's temperament is such an extraordinary thing, and when my artistic successes looked as though they would eclipse her--her prestige--I tried to buck her up by belittling myself and by representing that my art was one that was inferior to hers. I talked so much of the general insignificant role of my particular art, and harped on it so much, thought of so many good reasons for my contention, that one fine day I myself was soaked through and through with the worthlessness of the painter's art; so all that was left was a house of cards for you to blow down.

GUSTAV. Excuse my reminding you of what you said, but at the beginning of our conversation you were asserting that she took nothing from you.

ADOLF. She doesn't--now, at any rate; now there is nothing left to take.

GUSTAV. So the snake has gorged herself, and now she vomits.

ADOLF. Perhaps she took more from me than I knew of.

GUSTAV. Oh, you can reckon on that right enough--she took without your noticing it. [_He goes behind the square table and comes in front of the sofa._] That's what people call stealing.

ADOLF. Then what it comes to is that she hasn't educated me at all?

GUSTAV. Rather you her. Of course she knew the trick well enough of making you believe the contrary. Might I ask how she pretended to educate you?

ADOLF. Oh--at first--hum!

GUSTAV. Well? [_He leans his arms on the table._]

ADOLF. Well, I--

GUSTAV. No; it was she--she.

ADOLF. As a matter of fact I couldn't say which it was.

GUSTAV. You see.

ADOLF. Besides, she destroyed my faith as well, and so I went backward until you came, old chap, and gave me a new faith.

GUSTAV [_he laughs_]. In sculpture?

[_He turns round by the square table and comes to Adolf's right._]

ADOLF [_hesitating_]. Yes.

GUSTAV. And you believed in it?--in that abstract, obsolete art from the childhood of the world. Do you believe that by means of pure form and three dimensions--no, you don't really--that you can produce an effect on the real spirit of this age of ours, that you can create illusions without color? Without color, I say. Do you believe that?

ADOLF [_tonelessly_]. No.

GUSTAV. Nor do I.

ADOLF. But why did you say you did?

GUSTAV. You make me pity you.

ADOLF. Yes, I am indeed to be pitied. And now I'm bankrupt, absolutely--and the worst of it is I haven't got her any more.

GUSTAV [_with a few steps toward the right_]. What good would she be to you? She would be what God above was to me before I became an atheist--a subject on which I could lavish my reverence. You keep your feeling of reverence dark, and let something else grow on top of it--a healthy contempt, for instance.

ADOLF. I can't live without some one to reverence.

GUSTAV. Slave!

[_He goes round the table on the right._]

ADOLF. And without a woman to reverence, to worship.

GUSTAV. Oh, the deuce! Then you go back to that God of yours--if you really must have something on which you can crucify yourself; but you call yourself an atheist when you've got the superstitious belief in women in your own blood; you call yourself a free thinker when you can't think freely about a lot of silly women. Do you know what all this illusive quality, this sphinx-like mystery, this profundity in your wife's temperament all really comes to? The whole thing is sheer stupidity; why, the woman can't distinguish between A.B. and bull's foot for the life of her. And look here, it's something shoddy in the mechanism, that's where the fault lies. Outside it looks like a fifty-guinea hunting watch, open it and you find it's tuppenny-halfpenny gun-metal. [_He comes up to Adolf._] Put her in trousers, draw a mustache under her nose with a piece of coal, and then listen to her in the same state of mind, and then you'll be perfectly convinced that it is quite a different kettle of fish altogether---a gramaphone which reproduces, with rather less volume, your words and other people's words. Do you know how a woman is constituted? Yes, of course you do. A boy with the breasts of a mother, an immature man, a precocious child whose growth has been stunted, a chronically anaemic creature that has a regular emission of blood thirteen times in the year. What can you do with a thing like that?

ADOLF. Yes--but--but then how can I believe--that we are really on an equality?

GUSTAV [_moves away from him again towards the right_]. Sheer hallucination! The fascination of the petticoat. But it is so; perhaps, in fact you have become like each other, the leveling has taken place. But I say. [_He takes out his watch._] We've been chatting for quite long enough. Your wife's bound to be here shortly. Wouldn't it be better to leave off now, so that you can rest for a little?

[_He comes nearer and holds out his hand to say good-by. Adolf
grips his hand all the tighter._]

ADOLF. NO, don't leave me. I haven't got the pluck to be alone.

GUSTAV. Only for a little while. Your wife will be coming in a minute.

ADOLF. Yes, yes--she's coming. [_Pause._] Strange, isn't it? I long for her and yet I'm frightened of her. She caresses me, she is tender, but her kisses have something in them which smothers one, something which sucks, something which stupefies. It is as though I were the child at the circus whose face the clown is making up in the dressing-room, so that it can appear red-cheeked before the public.

GUSTAV [_leaning on the arm of Adolf's chair_]. I'm sorry for you, old man. Although I'm not a doctor I am in a position to tell you that you are a dying man. One only has to look at your last pictures to be quite clear on the point.

ADOLF. What do you say--what do you mean?

GUSTAV. Your coloring is so watery, so consumptive and thin, that the yellow of the canvas shines through. It is just as though your hollow ashen white cheeks were looking out at me.

ADOLF. Ah!

GUSTAV. Yes, and that's not only my view. Haven't you read to-day's paper?

ADOLF [_he starts_]. No.

GUSTAV. It's before you on the table.

ADOLF [_he gropes after the paper without having the courage to take it_]. Is it in here?

GUSTAV. Read it, or shall I read it to you?

ADOLF. No.

GUSTAV [_turns to leave_]. If you prefer it, I'll go.

ADOLF. NO, no, no! I don't know how it is--I think I am beginning to hate you, but all the same I can't do without your being near me. You have helped to drag me out of the slough which I was in, and, as luck would have it, I just managed to work my way clear and then you knocked me on the head and plunged me in again. As long as I kept my secrets to myself I still had some guts--now I'm empty. There's a picture by an Italian master that describes a torture scene. The entrails are dragged out of a saint by means of a windlass. The martyr lies there and sees himself getting continually thinner and thinner, but the roll on the windless always gets perpetually fatter, and so it seems to me that you get stronger since you've taken me up and that you're taking away now with you, as you go, my innermost essence, the core of my character, and there's nothing left of me but an empty husk.

GUSTAV. Oh, what fantastic notions; besides, your wife is coming back with your heart.

ADOLF. No; no longer, after you have burnt it for me. You have passed through me, changing everything in your track to ashes--my art, my love, my hope, my faith.

GUSTAV [_comes near to him again_]. Were you so splendidly off before?

ADOLF. No, I wasn't, but the situation might have been saved; now it's too late. Murderer!

GUSTAV. We've wasted a little time. Now we'll do some sowing in the ashes.

ADOLF. I hate you! I curse you!

GUSTAV. A healthy symptom. You've still got some strength, and now I'll screw up your machinery again. I say. [_He goes behind the square table on the left and comes in front of the sofa._] Will you listen to me and obey me?

ADOLF. Do what you will with me, I'll obey.

GUSTAV. Look at me.

ADOLF [_looks him in the face_]. And now you look at me again with that other expression in those eyes of yours, which draws me to you irresistibly.

GUSTAV. Now listen to me.

ADOLF. Yes, but speak of yourself. Don't speak any more of me: it's as though I were wounded, every movement hurts me.

GUSTAV. Oh no, there isn't much to say about me, don't you know. I'm a private tutor in dead languages and a widower, that's all. [_He goes in front of the table._] Hold my hand.

[_Adolf does so._]

ADOLF. What awful strength you must have, it seems as though a fellow were catching hold of an electric battery.

GUSTAV. And just think, I was once quite as weak as you are. [_Sternly._] Get up.

ADOLF [_gets up_]. I am like a child without any bones, and my brain is empty.

GUSTAV. Take a walk through the room.

ADOLF. I can't.

GUSTAV. You must; if you don't I'll hit you.

ADOLF [_stands up_]. What do you say?

GUSTAV. I've told you--I'll hit you.

ADOLF [_jumps back to the circular table on the right, beside himself._] You!

GUSTAV [_follows him_]. Bravo! That's driven the blood to your head, and woken up your self-respect. Now I'll give you an electric shock. Where's your wife?

ADOLF. Where's my wife?

GUSTAV. Yes.

ADOLF. At--a meeting.

GUSTAV. Certain?

ADOLF. Absolutely.

GUSTAV. What kind of a meeting?

ADOLF. An orphan association.

GUSTAV. Did you part friends?

ADOLF [_hesitating_]. Not friends.

GUSTAV. Enemies, then? What did you say to make her angry?

ADOLF. You're terrible. I'm frightened of you. How did you manage to know that?

GUSTAV. I've just got three known quantities, and by their help I work out the unknown. What did you say to her, old chap?

ADOLF. I said--only two words--but two awful words. I regret them--I regret them.

GUSTAV. You shouldn't do that. Well, speak!

ADOLF. I said, "Old coquette."

GUSTAV. And what else?

ADOLF. I didn't say anything else.

GUSTAV. Oh yes, you did; you've only forgotten it. Perhaps because you haven't got the pluck to remember it. You've locked it up in a secret pigeonhole; open it.

ADOLF. I don't remember.

GUSTAV. But I know what it was--the sense was roughly this: "You ought to be ashamed of yourself to be always flirting at your age. You're getting too old to find any more admirers."

ADOLF. Did I say that--possibly? How did you manage to know it?

GUSTAV. On my way here I heard her tell the story on the steamer.

ADOLF. To whom?

GUSTAV [_walks up and down on the left_]. To four boys, whom she happened to be with. She has a craze for pure boys, just like--

ADOLF. A perfectly innocent _penchant_.

GUSTAV. Quite as innocent as playing brother and sister when one is father and mother.

ADOLF. You saw her, then?

GUSTAV. Yes, of course; but you've never seen her if you didn't see her then--I mean, if you weren't present--and that's the reason, don't you know, why a husband can never know his wife. Have you got her photograph?

ADOLF [_takes a photo out of his pocketbook. Inquisitively_]. Here you are.

GUSTAV [_takes it_]. Were you present when it was taken?

ADOLF. No.

GUSTAV. Just look at it? Is it like the portrait you painted? No, the features are the same, but the expression is different. But you don't notice that, because you insist on seeing in it the picture of her which you've painted. Now look at this picture as a painter, without thinking of the original. What does it represent? I can see nothing but a tricked-out flirt, playing the decoy. Observe the cynical twist in the mouth, which you never managed to see. You see that her look is seeking a man quite different from you. Observe the dress is _decollete_, the coiffure titivated to the last degree, the sleeves finished high up. You see?

ADOLF. Yes, now I see.

GUSTAV. Be careful, my boy.

ADOLF. Of what?

GUSTAV [_gives him back the portrait_]. Of her revenge. Don't forget that by saying she was no longer attractive to men you wounded her in the one thing which she took most seriously. If you'd called her literary works twaddle she'd have laughed, and pitied your bad taste, but now--take it from me--if she hasn't avenged herself already it's not her fault.

ADOLF. I must be clear on that point.

[_He goes over to Gustav, and sits down in his previous place.
Gustav approaches him._]

GUSTAV. Find out yourself.

ADOLF. Find out myself?

GUSTAV. Investigate. I'll help you, if you like.

ADOLF [_after a pause_]. Good. Since I've been condemned to death once--so be it--sooner or later it's all the same what's to happen.

GUSTAV. One question first. Hasn't your wife got just one weak point?

ADOLF. Not that I know of. [_Adolf goes to the open door in the center_]. Yes. You can hear the steamer in the Sound now--she'll be here soon. And I must go down to meet her.

GUSTAV [_holding him back_]. No, stay here. Be rude to her. If she's got a good conscience she'll let you have it so hot and strong that you won't know where you are. But if she feels guilty she'll come and caress you.

ADOLF. Are you so sure of it?

GUSTAV. Not absolutely. At times a hare goes back in the tracks, but I'm not going to let this one escape me. My room is just here. [_Points to the door on the right and goes behind Adolf's chair._] I'll keep this position, and be on the look-out, while you play your game here, and when you've played it to the end we'll exchange parts. I'll go in the cage and leave myself to the tender mercies of the snake, and you can stand at the keyhole. Afterwards we'll meet in the park and compare notes. But pull yourself together, old man, and if you show weakness I'll knock on the floor twice with a chair.

ADOLF [_getting up_]. Right. But don't go away: I must know that you're in the next room.

GUSTAV. You can trust me for that. But be careful you aren't afraid when you see later on how I can dissect a human soul and lay the entrails here on the table. It may seem a bit uncanny to beginners, but if you've seen it done once you don't regret it. One thing more, don't say a word that you've met me, or that you have made any acquaintance during her absence--not a word. I'll ferret out her weak point myself. Hush! She's already up there in her room. She's whistling--then she's in a temper. Now stick to it. [_He points to the left._] And sit here on this chair, then she'll have to sit there [_He points to the sofa on the left._], and I can keep you both in view at the same time.

ADOLF. We've still got an hour before dinner. There are no new visitors, for there has been no bell to announce them. We'll be alone together--more's the pity!

GUSTAV. You seem pretty limp. Are you unwell?

ADOLF. I'm all right; unless, you know, I'm frightened of what's going to happen. But I can't help its happening. The stone rolls, but it was not the last drop of water that made it roll, nor yet the first--everything taken together brought it about.

GUSTAV. Let it roll, then; it won't have any peace until it does. Good-by, for the time being.

[_Exit on the right. Adolf nods to him, stands up for a short
time, looking at the photograph, tears it to pieces, and throws
the fragments behind the circular table on the right; he then sits
down in his previous place, nervously arranges his tie, runs his
fingers through his hair, fumbles with the lapels of his coat,
etc. Thekla enters on the left._]

SCENE II.

THEKLA [_frank, cheerful and engaging, goes straight up to her husband and kisses him_]. Good-day, little brother; how have you been getting on?

[_She stands on his left._]

ADOLF [_half overcome but jocularly resisting_]. What mischief have you been up to, for you to kiss me?

THEKLA. Yes, let me just confess. Something very naughty--I've spent an awful lot of money.

ADOLF. Did you have a good time, then?

THEKLA. Excellent. [_She goes to his right._] But not at the Congress. It was as dull as ditch-water, don't you know. But how has little brother been passing the time, when his little dove had flown away?

[_She looks around the room, as though looking for somebody or
scenting something, and thus comes behind the sofa on the left._]

ADOLF. Oh, the time seemed awfully long.

THEKLA. Nobody to visit you?

ADOLF. Not a soul.

THEKLA [_looks him up and down and sits down on the sofa_]. Who sat here?

ADOLF. Here? No one.

THEKLA. Strange! The sofa is as warm as anything, and there's the mark of an elbow in the cushion. Have you had a lady visitor?

[_She stands up._]

ADOLF. Me? You're not serious?

THEKLA [_turns away from the square table and comes to Adolf's right_]. How he blushes! So the little brother wants to mystify me a bit, does he? Well, let him come here and confess what he's got on his conscience to his little wife.

[_She draws him to her. Adolf lets his head sink on her breast;
laughing._]

ADOLF. You're a regular devil, do you know that?

THEKLA. No, I know myself so little.

ADOLF. Do you never think about yourself?

THEKLA [_looking in the air, while she looks at him searchingly_]. About myself? I only think about myself. I am a shocking egoist, but how philosophical you've become, my dear.

ADOLF. Put your hand on my forehead.

THEKLA [_playfully_]. Has he got bees in his bonnet again? Shall I drive them away? [_She kisses him on the forehead._] There, it's all right now? [_Pause, moving away from him to the right._] Now let me hear what he's been doing to amuse himself. Painted anything pretty?

ADOLF. No; I've given up painting!

THEKLA. What, you've given up painting!

ADOLF. Yes, but don't scold me about it. How could I help it if I wasn't able to paint any more?

THEKLA. What are you going to take up then?

ADOLF. I'm going to be a sculptor. [_Thekla passes over in front of the square table and in front of the sofa._] Yes, but don't blame me--just look at this figure.

THEKLA [_unwraps the figure on the table_]. Hallo, I say. Who's this meant to be?

ADOLF. Guess!

THEKLA [_tenderly_]. Is it meant to be his little wife? And he isn't ashamed of it, is he?

ADOLF. Hasn't he hit the mark?

THEKLA. How can I tell?--the face is lacking.

[_She drapes the figure._]

ADOLF. Quite so--but all the rest? Nice?

THEKLA [_taps him caressingly on yhe cheek_]. Will he shut up? Otherwise I'll kiss him.

[_She goes behind him; Adolf defending himself._]

ADOLF. Look out, look out, anybody might come.

THEKLA [_nestling close to him_]. What do I care! I'm surely allowed to kiss my own husband. That's only my legal right.

ADOLF. Quite so; but do you know the people here in the hotel take the view that we're not married because we kiss each other so much, and our occasional quarreling makes them all the more cocksure about it, because lovers usually carry on like that.

THEKLA. But need there be any quarrels? Can't he always be as sweet and good as he is at present. Let him tell me. Wouldn't he like it himself? Wouldn't he like us to be happy?

ADOLF. I should like it, but--

THEKLA [_with a step to the right_]. Who put it into his head not to paint any more?

ADOLF. You're always scenting somebody behind me and my thoughts. You're jealous.

THEKLA. I certainly am. I was always afraid some one might estrange you from me.

ADOLF. You're afraid of that, you say, though you know very well that there isn't a woman living who can supplant you--that I can't live without you.

THEKLA. I wasn't frightened the least bit of females. It was your friends I was afraid of: they put all kinds of ideas into your head.

ADOLF [_probing_]. So you were afraid? What were you afraid of?

THEKLA. Some one has been here. Who was it?

ADOLF. Can't you stand my looking at you?

THEKLA. Not in that way. You aren't accustomed to look at me like that.

ADOLF. How am I looking at you then?

THEKLA. You are spying underneath your eyelids.

ADOLF. Right through. Yes, I want to know what it's like inside.

THEKLA. I don't mind. As you like. I've nothing to hide, but--your very manner of speaking has changed--you employ expressions. [_Probing._] You philosophize. Eh? [_She goes toward him in a menacing manner._] Who has been here?

ADOLF. My doctor--nobody else.

THEKLA. Your doctor! What doctor?

ADOLF. The doctor from Stroemastad.

THEKLA. What's his name?

ADOLF. Sjoeberg.

THEKLA. What did he say?

ADOLF. Well--he said, among other things--that I'm pretty near getting epilepsy.

THEKLA [_with a step to the right_]. Among other things! What else did he say?

ADOLF. Oh, something extremely unpleasant.

THEKLA. Let me hear it.

ADOLF. He forbade us to live together as man and wife for some time.

THEKLA. There you are. I thought as much. They want to separate us. I've already noticed it for some time.

[_She goes round the circular table toward the right._]

ADOLF. There was nothing for you to notice. There was never the slightest incident of that description.

THEKLA. What do you mean?

ADOLF. How could it have been possible for you to have seen something which wasn't there if your fear hadn't heated your imagination to so violent a pitch that you saw what never existed? As a matter of fact, what were you afraid of? That I might borrow another's eye so as to see you as you really were, not as you appeared to me?

THEKLA. Keep your imagination in check, Adolf. Imagination is the beast in the human soul.

ADOLF. Where did you get this wisdom from? From the pure youths on the steamer, eh?

THEKLA [_without losing her self-possession_]. Certainly--even youth can teach one a great deal.

ADOLF. You seem for once in a way, to be awfully keen on youth?

THEKLA [_standing by the door in the center_]. I have always been so, and that's how it came about that I loved you. Any objection?

ADOLF. Not at all. But I should very much prefer to be the only one.

THEKLA [_coming forward on his right, and joking as though speaking to a child_]. Let the little brother look here. I've got such a large heart that there is room in it for a great many, not only for him.

ADOLF. But little brother doesn't want to know anything about the other brothers.