Plays by August Strindberg Volume II Part 40

ADOLPH. It was I who praised her, even when I found her stuff rather poor. It was I who brought her into literary circles where she could gather honey from our most ornamental literary flowers.

It was I who used my personal influence to keep the critics from her throat. It was I who blew her faith in herself into flame; blew on it until I lost my own breath. I gave, gave, gave--until I had nothing left for myself. Do you know--I'll tell you everything now--do you know I really believe--and the human soul is so peculiarly const.i.tuted--I believe that when my artistic successes seemed about to put her in the shadow--as well as her reputation-- then I tried to put courage into her by belittling myself, and by making my own art seem inferior to hers. I talked so long about the insignificant part played by painting on the whole--talked so long about it, and invented so many reasons to prove what I said, that one fine day I found myself convinced of its futility. So all you had to do was to breathe on a house of cards.

GUSTAV. Pardon me for recalling what you said at the beginning of our talk--that she had never taken anything from you.

ADOLPH. She doesn't nowadays. Because there is nothing more to take.

GUSTAV. The snake being full, it vomits now.

ADOLPH. Perhaps she has been taking a good deal more from me than I have been aware of?

GUSTAV. You can be sure of that. She took when you were not looking, and that is called theft.

ADOLPH. Perhaps she never did educate me?

GUSTAV. But you her? In all likelihood! But it was her trick to make it appear the other way to you. May I ask how she set about educating you?

ADOLPH. Oh, first of all--hm!

GUSTAV. Well?

ADOLPH. Well, I--

GUSTAV. No, we were speaking of her.

ADOLPH. Really, I cannot tell now.

GUSTAV. Do you see!

ADOLPH. However--she devoured my faith also, and so I sank further and further down, until you came along and gave me a new faith.

GUSTAV. [Smiling] In sculpture?

ADOLPH. [Doubtfully] Yes.

GUSTAV. And have you really faith in it? In this abstract, antiquated art that dates back to the childhood of civilisation?

Do you believe that you can obtain your effect by pure form--by the three dimensions--tell me? That you can reach the practical mind of our own day, and convey an illusion to it, without the use of colour--without colour, mind you--do you really believe that?

ADOLPH. [Crushed] No!

GUSTAV. Well, I don't either.

ADOLPH. Why, then, did you say you did?

GUSTAV. Because I pitied you.

ADOLPH. Yes, I am to be pitied! For now I am bankrupt! Finished!-- And worst of all: not even she is left to me!

GUSTAV. Well, what could you do with her?

ADOLPH. Oh, she would be to me what G.o.d was before I became an atheist: an object that might help me to exercise my sense of veneration.

GUSTAV. Bury your sense of veneration and let something else grow on top of it. A little wholesome scorn, for instance.

ADOLPH. I cannot live without having something to respect--

GUSTAV. Slave!

ADOLPH.--without a woman to respect and wors.h.i.+p!

GUSTAV. Oh, h.e.l.l! Then you had better take back your G.o.d--if you needs must have something to kow-tow to! You're a fine atheist, with all that superst.i.tion about woman still in you! You're a fine free-thinker, who dare not think freely about the dear ladies! Do you know what that incomprehensible, sphinx-like, profound something in your wife really is? It is sheer stupidity!--Look here: she cannot even distinguish between th and t. And that, you know, means there is something wrong with the mechanism. When you look at the case, it looks like a chronometer, but the works inside are those of an ordinary cheap watch.--Nothing but the skirts-that's all! Put trousers on her, give her a pair of moustaches of soot under her nose, then take a good, sober look at her, and listen to her in the same manner: you'll find the instrument has another sound to it. A phonograph, and nothing else--giving yon back your own words, or those of other people-- and always in diluted form. Have you ever looked at a naked woman-- oh yes, yes, of course! A youth with over-developed b.r.e.a.s.t.s; an under-developed man; a child that has shot up to full height and then stopped growing in other respects; one who is chronically anaemic: what can you expect of such a creature?

ADOLPH. Supposing all that to be true--how can it be possible that I still think her my equal?

GUSTAV. Hallucination--the hypnotising power of skirts! Or--the two of you may actually have become equals. The levelling process has been finished. Her capillarity has brought the water in both tubes to the same height.--Tell me [taking out his watch]: our talk has now lasted six hours, and your wife ought soon to be here. Don't you think we had better stop, so that you can get a rest?

ADOLPH. No, don't leave me! I don't dare to be alone!

GUSTAV. Oh, for a little while only--and then the lady will come.

ADOLPH. Yes, she is coming!--It's all so queer! I long for her, but I am afraid of her. She pets me, she is tender to me, but there is suffocation in her kisses--something that pulls and numbs. And I feel like a circus child that is being pinched by the clown in order that it may look rosy-cheeked when it appears before the public.

GUSTAV. I feel very sorry for you, my friend. Without being a physician, I can tell that you are a dying man. It is enough to look at your latest pictures in order to see that.

ADOLPH. You think so? How can you see it?

GUSTAV. Your colour is watery blue, anaemic, thin, so that the cadaverous yellow of the canvas s.h.i.+nes through. And it impresses me as if your own hollow, putty-coloured checks were showing beneath--

ADOLPH. Oh, stop, stop!

GUSTAV. Well, this is not only my personal opinion. Have you read to-day's paper?

ADOLPH. [Shrinking] No!

GUSTAV. It's on the table here.

ADOLPH. [Reaching for the paper without daring to take hold of it]

Do they speak of it there?

GUSTAV. Read it--or do you want me to read it to you?

ADOLPH. No!

GUSTAV. I'll leave you, if you want me to.

ADOLPH. No, no, no!--I don't know--it seems as if I were beginning to hate you, and yet I cannot let you go.--You drag me out of the hole into which I have fallen, but no sooner do you get me on firm ice, than you knock me on the head and shove me into the water again. As long as my secrets were my own, I had still something left within me, but now I am quite empty. There is a canvas by an Italian master, showing a scene of torture--a saint whose intestines are being torn out of him and rolled on the axle of a windla.s.s. The martyr is watching himself grow thinner and thinner, while the roll on the axle grows thicker.--Now it seems to me as if you had swelled out since you began to dig in me; and when you leave, you'll carry away my vitals with you, and leave nothing but an empty sh.e.l.l behind.

GUSTAV. How you do let your fancy run away with you!--And besides, your wife is bringing back your heart.