Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 142

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 a.s.s.

ADOLF. I've never seen him. He was away for more than six months, but the good fellow must have been as perfect an a.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.