Plays by August Strindberg Volume II Part 37

ADOLPH. Why, certainly! During the first days after my wife had gone, I lay helpless on a sofa and did nothing but long for her.

It was as if she had taken away my crutches with her, so that I couldn't move from the spot. When I had slept a couple of days, I seemed to come to, and began to pull myself together. My head calmed down after having been working feverishly. Old thoughts from days gone by bobbed up again. The desire to work and the instinct for creation came back. My eyes recovered their faculty of quick and straight vision--and then you showed up.

GUSTAV. I admit you were in a miserable condition when I first met you, and you had to use your crutches when you walked, but this is not to say that my presence has been the cause of your recovery.

You needed a rest, and you had a craving for masculine company.

ADOLPH. Oh, that's true enough, like everything you say. Once I used to have men for friends, but I thought them superfluous after I married, and I felt quite satisfied with the one I had chosen.

Later I was drawn into new circles and made a lot of acquaintances, but my wife was jealous of them--she wanted to keep me to herself: worse still--she wanted also to keep my friends to herself. And so I was left alone with my own jealousy.

GUSTAV. Yes, you have a strong tendency toward that kind of disease.

ADOLPH. I was afraid of losing her--and I tried to prevent it.

There is nothing strange in that. But I was never afraid that she might be deceiving me--

GUSTAV. No, that's what married men are never afraid of.

ADOLPH. Yes, isn't it queer? What I really feared was that her friends would get such an influence over her that they would begin to exercise some kind of indirect power over me--and _that_ is something I couldn't bear.

GUSTAV. So your ideas don't agree--yours and your wife's?

ADOLPH. Seeing that you have heard so much already, I may as well tell you everything. My wife has an independent nature--what are you smiling at?

GUSTAV. Go on! She has an independent nature--

ADOLPH. Which cannot accept anything from me--

GUSTAV. But from everybody else.

ADOLPH. [After a pause] Yes.--And it looked as if she especially hated my ideas because they were mine, and not because there was anything wrong about them. For it used to happen quite often that she advanced ideas that had once been mine, and that she stood up for them as her own. Yes, it even happened that friends of mine gave her ideas which they had taken directly from me, and then they seemed all right. Everything was all right except what came from me.

GUSTAV. Which means that you are not entirely happy?

ADOLPH. Oh yes, I am happy. I have the one I wanted, and I have never wanted anybody else.

GUSTAV. And you have never wanted to be free?

ADOLPH. No, I can't say that I have. Oh, well, sometimes I have imagined that it might seem like a rest to be free. But the moment she leaves me, I begin to long for her--long for her as for my own arms and legs. It is queer that sometimes I have a feeling that she is nothing in herself, but only a part of myself--an organ that can take away with it my will, my very desire to live. It seems almost as if I had deposited with her that centre of vitality of which the anatomical books tell us.

GUSTAV. Perhaps, when we get to the bottom of it, that is just what has happened.

ADOLPH. How could it be so? Is she not an independent being, with thoughts of her own? And when I met her I was nothing--a child of an artist whom she undertook to educate.

GUSTAV. But later you developed her thoughts and educated her, didn't you?

ADOLPH. No, she stopped growing and I pushed on.

GUSTAV. Yes, isn't it strange that her "authoring" seemed to fall off after her first book--or that it failed to improve, at least?

But that first time she had a subject which wrote itself--for I understand she used her former husband for a model. You never knew him, did you? They say he was an idiot.

ADOLPH. I never knew him, as he was away for six months at a time.

But he must have been an arch-idiot, judging by her picture of him. [Pause] And you may feel sure that the picture was correct.

GUSTAV. I do!--But why did she ever take him?

ADOLPH. Because she didn't know him well enough. Of course, you never _do_ get acquainted until afterward!

GUSTAV. And for that reason one ought not to marry until-- afterward.--And he was a tyrant, of course?

ADOLPH. Of course?

GUSTAV. Why, so are all married men. [Feeling his way] And you not the least.

ADOLPH. I? Who let my wife come and go as she pleases--

GUSTAV. Well, that's nothing. You couldn't lock her up, could you?

But do you like her to stay away whole nights?

ADOLPH. No, really, I don't.

GUSTAV. There, you see! [With a change of tactics] And to tell the truth, it would only make you ridiculous to like it.

ADOLPH. Ridiculous? Can a man be ridiculous because he trusts his wife?

GUSTAV. Of course he can. And it's just what you are already--and thoroughly at that!

ADOLPH. [Convulsively] I! It's what I dread most of all--and there's going to be a change.

GUSTAV. Don't get excited now--or you'll have another attack.

ADOLPH. But why isn't she ridiculous when I stay out all night?

GUSTAV. Yes, why? Well, it's nothing that concerns you, but that's the way it is. And while you are trying to figure out why, the mishap has already occurred.

ADOLPH. What mishap?

GUSTAV. However, the first husband was a tyrant, and she took him only to get her freedom. You see, a girl cannot have freedom except by providing herself with a chaperon--or what we call a husband.

ADOLPH. Of course not.

GUSTAV. And now you are the chaperon.

ADOLPH. I?

GUSTAV. Since you are her husband.

(ADOLPH keeps a preoccupied silence.)

GUSTAV. Am I not right?