Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 144

[_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. G.o.d 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. [_Dispa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sion, 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated. 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 a.s.s.

GUSTAV. Right you are--he was an a.s.s; but that's a fairly elastic word, and according to her description of him, in her novel, his asinine nature seemed to have consisted princ.i.p.ally 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 a.s.s 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 pa.s.ses 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, G.o.d 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 a.s.s now.

GUSTAV. Ah, really? You're the a.s.s 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 a.s.serting 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.