Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 151

ADOLF. No, I noticed as much, for when I remarked, some time back, that you wanted to sneak away from me, and get a set of your own, so as to be able to deck yourself out with my feathers, to scintillate with my jewels, I wanted to remind you of your guilt. And then I changed from your point of view into that inconvenient creditor, whom a woman would particularly prefer to keep at a safe distance from one, and then you would have liked to have canceled the debt, and to avoid getting any more into my debt; you ceased to pilfer my coffers and transferred your attention to others. I was your husband without having wished it, and your hate began to arise; but now I'm going to be your husband, whether you want it or not. I can't be your lover any more, that's certain!

[_He sits down in his previous place on the right._]

THEKLA [_half joking, she moves away behind the table and goes behind the sofa_]. Don't talk such nonsense.

ADOLF. You be careful! It's a dangerous game, to consider every one else an a.s.s and only oneself smart.

THEKLA. Everybody does that more or less.

ADOLF. And I'm just beginning to suspect that that husband of yours wasn't such an a.s.s after all.

THEKLA. Good G.o.d! I really believe you're beginning to have sympathy--for him?

ADOLF. Yes, almost.

THEKLA. Well, look here. Wouldn't you like to make his acquaintance, so as to pour out your heart to him if you want to? What a charming picture! But I, too, begin to feel myself drawn to him somehow. I'm tired of being the nurse of a baby like you. [_She goes a few steps forward and pa.s.ses by Adolf on the right._] He at any rate was a man, even though he did make the mistake of being my husband.

ADOLF. Hush, hush! But don't talk so loud, we might be heard.

THEKLA. What does it matter, so long as we're taken for man and wife.

ADOLF. So this is what it comes to then? You are now beginning to be keen both on manly men and pure boys.

THEKLA. There are no limits to my keenness, as you see. And my heart is open to the whole world, great and small, beautiful and ugly. I love the whole world.

ADOLF [_standing up_]. Do you know what that means?

THEKLA. No, I don't know, I only feel.

ADOLF. It means that old age has arrived.

THEKLA. Are you starting on that again now? Take care!

ADOLF. You take care!

THEKLA. What of?

ADOLF. Of this knife.

[_Goes towards her._]

THEKLA [_flippantly_]. Little brother shouldn't play with such dangerous toys.

[_She pa.s.ses by him behind the sofa._]

ADOLF. I'm not playing any longer.

THEKLA [_leaning on the arm of the sofa_]. Really, he's serious, is he, quite serious? Then I'll jolly well show you--that you made a mistake. I mean--you'll never see it yourself, you'll never know it. The whole world will be up to it, but you jolly well won't, you'll have suspicions and surmises and you won't enjoy a single hour of peace. You will have the consciousness of being ridiculous and of being deceived, but you'll never have proofs in your hand, because a husband never manages to get them. [_She makes a few steps to the right in front of him and toward him._] That will teach you to know me.

ADOLF [_sits down in his previous place by the table on the left_]. You hate me.

THEKLA. No, I don't hate you, nor do I think that I could ever get to hate you. Simply because you're a child.

ADOLF. Listen to me! Just think of the time when the storm broke over us. [_Standing up._] You lay there like a new-born child and shrieked; you caught hold of my knees and I had to kiss your eyes to sleep. Then I was your nurse, and I had to be careful that you didn't go out into the street without doing your hair. I had to send your boots to the shoe-maker. I had to take care there was something in the larder. I had to sit by your side and hold your hand in mine by the hour, for you were frightened, frightened of the whole world, deserted by your friends, crushed by public opinion. I had to cheer you up till my tongue stuck to my palate and my head ached; I had to pose as a strong man, and compel myself to believe in the future, until at length I succeeded in breathing life into you while you lay there like the dead. Then it was I you admired, then it was I who was the man; not the athlete like the man you deserted, but the man of psychic strength, the man of magnetism, who transferred his moral force into your enervated muscles and filled your empty brain with new electricity. And then I put you on your feet again, got a small court for you, whom I jockeyed into admiring you, as a sheer matter of friendship to myself, and I made you mistress over me and my home. I painted you in my finest pictures, in rose and azure on a ground of gold, and there was no exhibition in which you didn't have the place of honor. At one moment you were called St. Cecelia, then you were Mary Stuart, Karm Mansdotter, Ebba Brahe, and so I succeeded in awakening and stimulating your interests and so I compelled the yelping rabble to look at you with my own dazzled eyes. I impressed your personality on them by sheer force. I compelled them until you had won their overwhelming sympathy--so that at last you have the free _entree_. And when I had created you in this way it was all up with my own strength--I broke down, exhausted by the strain. [_He sits down in his previous place.

Thekla turns toward the fireplace on the right._] I had lifted you up, but at the same time I brought myself down; I fell ill; and my illness began to bore you, just because things were beginning to look a bit rosy for you--and then it seemed to me many times as though some secret desire were driving you to get away from your creditor and accomplice.

Your love became that of a superior sister, and through want of a better part I fell into the habit of the new role of the little brother. Your tenderness remained the same as ever, in fact it has rather increased, but it is tinged with a grain of pity which is counterbalanced by a strong dose of contempt, and that will increase until it becomes complete, even as my genius is on the wane and your star is in the ascendant. It seems, too, as though your source were likely to dry up, when I leave off feeding it, or, rather, as soon as you show that you don't want to draw your inspiration from me any longer. And so we both go down, but you need somebody you can put in your pocket, somebody new, for you are weak and incapable of carrying any moral burden yourself. So I became the scapegoat to be slaughtered alive, but all the same we had become like twins in the course of years, and when you cut through the thread of my longing, you little thought that you were throttling our own self. You are a branch from my tree, and you wanted to cut yourself free from your parent stem before it had struck roots, but you are unable to flourish on your own, and the tree in its turn couldn't do without its chief branch, and so both perish.

THEKLA. Do you mean, by all that, that you've written my books?

ADOLF. No; you say that so as to provoke me into a lie. I don't express myself so crudely as you, and I've just spoken for five minutes on end simply so as to reproduce all the nuances, all the half-tones, all the transitions, but your barrel organ has only one key.

THEKLA [_walking up and down on the right_]. Yes, yes; but the gist of the whole thing is that you've written my books.

ADOLF. No, there's no gist. You can't resolve a symphony into one key; you can't translate a multifarious life into a single cipher. I never said anything so cra.s.s as that I'd written your books.

THEKLA. But you meant it all the same.

ADOLF [_furious_]. I never meant it.

THEKLA. But the result--

ADOLF [_wildly_]. There's no result if one doesn't add. There is a quotient, a long infinitesimal figure of a quotient, but I didn't add.

THEKLA. You didn't, but I can.

ADOLF. I quite believe you, but I never did.

THEKLA. But you wanted to.

ADOLF [_exhausted, shutting his eyes_]. No, no, no--don't speak to me any more, I'm getting convulsions--be quiet, go away! You're flaying my brain with your brutal pinchers--you're thrusting your claws into my thoughts and tearing them.

[_He loses consciousness, stares in front of him and turns his thumbs inwards._]

THEKLA [_tenderly coming towards him_]. What is it, dear? Are you ill?

[_Adolf beats around him. Thekla takes her handkerchief, pours water on to it out of the bottle on the table right of the center door, and cools his forehead with it._] Adolf!

ADOLF [_he shakes his head_]. Yes.

THEKLA. Do you see now that you were wrong?

ADOLF [_after a pause_]. Yes, yes, yes--I see it.

THEKLA. And you ask me to forgive you?

ADOLF. Yes, yes, yes--I ask you to forgive me; but don't talk right into my brain any more.

THEKLA. Now kiss my hand.