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The Road to Damascus: A Trilogy, a play by August Strindberg |
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Part 3 - Act 3 - Scene 3. A Small House On The Mountain |
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_ PART III ACT III SCENE III. A SMALL HOUSE ON THE MOUNTAIN [A pleasant, panelled dining-room, with a tiled stove of majolica. On the dining-table, which is in the middle of the room, stand vases filled with flowers; also two candelabra with many lighted candles. A large carved sideboard on the left. On the right, two windows. At the back, two doors; that on the left is open and gives a view of the drawing-room, belonging to the lady of the house, which is furnished in light green and mahogany, and has a standard lamp of brass with a large, lemon-coloured lampshade, which is lit. The door on the right is closed. On the left behind the sideboard the entrance from the hall.] [From the left the STRANGER enters, dressed as a bridegroom; and the LADY, dressed as a bride; both radiant with youth and beauty.] STRANGER. Welcome to my house, beloved; to your home and mine, my bride; to your dwelling-place, my wife! LADY. I'm grateful, dear friend! It's like a fairy tale! STRANGER. Yes, it is. A whole book of fairy tales, my dear, written by me. (They sit down on either side of the table.) LADY. Is this real? It seems too lovely to me. STRANGER. I've never seen you look so young, so beautiful. LADY. It's your own eyes.... STRANGER. Yes, my own eyes that have learnt to see. And your goodness taught them.... LADY. Which itself was taught by sorrow. STRANGER. Ingeborg! LADY. It's the first time you've called me by that name. STRANGER. The first? I've never met Ingeborg; I've never known you, as you are, sitting here in our home! Home! An enchanting word. An enchanting thing I've never yet possessed. A home and a wife! You are my first, my only one; for what once happened exists no longer--no more than the hour that's past! LADY. Orpheus! Your song has made these dead stones live. Make life sing in me! STRANGER. Eurydice, whom I rescued from the underworld! I'll love you to life again; revivify you with my imagination. Now happiness will come to us, for we know the dangers to avoid. LADY. The dangers, yes! It's lovely in this house. It seems as if these rooms were full of invisible guests, who've come to welcome us. Kind spirits, who'll bless us and our home. STRANGER. The candle flames are still, as if in prayer. The flowers are pensive.... And yet! LADY. Hush! The summer night's outside, warm and dark. And stars hang in the sky; large and tearful in the fir trees, like Christmas candles. This is happiness. Hold it fast! STRANGER (still thinking). And yet! LADY. Hush! STRANGER (getting up). A poem's coming: I can hear it. It's for you. LADY. Don't tell it me. I can see it--in your eyes. STRANGER. For I read it in yours! Well, I couldn't repeat it, because it has no words. Only scent, and colour. If I were to, I should destroy it. What's unborn is always most beautiful. What's unwon, most dear! LADY. Quiet. Or, our guests will leave us. (They do not speak.) STRANGER. This _is_ happiness--but I can't grasp it. LADY. See it and breath it; for it can't be grasped. (They do not speak.) STRANGER. You're looking at your little room. LADY. It's as bright green as a summer meadow. There's someone in there. Several people! STRANGER. Only my thoughts. LADY. Your good, your beautiful thoughts.... STRANGER. Given me by you. LADY. Had I anything to give you? STRANGER. You? Everything! But up to now my hands have not been free to take it. Not clean enough to stroke your little heart.... LADY. Beloved! The time for reconciliation's coming. STRANGER. With mankind, and woman--through a woman? Yes, that time has come; and blessed may you be amongst women. (The candles and lamps go out; it grows dark in the dining-room; but a weak ray of light can be seen, coming from the brass standard lamp in the LADY's room.) LADY. Why's it grown dark? Oh! STRANGER. Where are you, beloved? Give me your hand. I'm afraid! LADY. Here, dearest. STRANGER. The little hand, held out to me in the darkness, that's led me over stones and thorns. That little, soft, dear hand! Lead me into the light, into your bright, warm room; fresh green like hope. LADY (leading him towards the pale-green room). Are you afraid? STRANGER. You're a white dove, with whom the startled eagle finds sanctuary, when heaven's thunder clouds grow black, for the dove has no fear. She has not provoked the thunders of heaven! (They have reached the doorway leading to the other room, when the curtain falls.) *** [The same room; but the table has been cleared. The LADY is sitting at it, doing nothing. She seems bored. On the right, down stage, a window is open. It is still. The STRANGER comes in, with a piece of paper in his hand.] STRANGER. Now you shall hear it. LADY (acquiescing absent-mindedly). Finished already? STRANGER. Already? Do you mean that seriously? I've taken seven days to write this little poem. (Silence.) Perhaps it'll bore you to hear it? LADY (drily). No. Certainly not. (The STRANGER sits down at the table and looks at the LADY.) Why are you looking at me? STRANGER. I'd like to see your thoughts. LADY. But you've heard them. STRANGER. That's nothing; I want to see them! (Pause.) What one says is mostly worthless. (Pause.) May I read them? No, I see I mayn't. You want nothing more from me. (The LADY makes a gesture as if she were going to speak.) Your face tells me enough. Now you've sucked me dry, eaten me hollow, killed my ego, my personality. To that I answer: how, my beloved? Have _I_ killed your ego, when I wanted to give you the whole of mine; when I let you skim the cream off my bowl, that I'd filled with all the experience of along life, with incursions into the deserts and groves of knowledge and art? LADY. I don't deny it, but my ego wasn't my own. STRANGER. Not yours? Then what is? Something that belongs to others? LADY. Is yours something that belongs to others too? STRANGER. No. What I've experienced is my own, mine and no other's. What I've read becomes mine, because I've broken it in two like glass, melted it down, and from this substance blown new glass in novel forms. LADY. But I can never be yours. STRANGER. I've become yours. LADY. What have you got from me? STRANGER. How can you ask me that? LADY. All the same--I'm not sure that you think it, though I feel you feel it--you wish me far away. STRANGER. I must be a certain distance from you, if I'm to see you. Now you're within the focus, and your image is unclear. LADY. The nearer, the farther off! STRANGER. Yes. When we part, we long for one another; and when we meet again, we long to part. LADY. Do you really think we love each other? STRANGER. Yes. Not like ordinary people, but unusual ones. We resemble two drops of water, that fear to get close together, in case they should cease to be two and become one. LADY. This time we knew the dangers and wanted to avoid them. But it seems that they can't be avoided. STRANGER. Perhaps they weren't dangers, but rude necessities; laws inscribed in the councils of the immortals. (Silence.) Your love always seemed to have the effect of hate. When you made me happy, you envied the happiness you'd given me. And when you saw I was unhappy, you loved me. LADY. Do you want me to leave you? STRANGER. If you do, I shall die. LADY. And, if I stay, it's I who'll die. STRANGER. Then let's die together and live out our love in a higher life; our love, that doesn't seem to be of this world. Let's live it out in another planet, where there's no nearness and no distance, where two are one; where number, time and space are no longer what they are in this. LADY. I'd like to die, yet I don't want to. I think I must be dead already. STRANGER. The air up here's too strong. LADY. You can't love me if you speak like that. STRANGER. To be frank, there are moments when you don't exist for me. But in others I feel your hatred like suffocating smoke. LADY. And I feel my heart creeping from my breast, when you are angry with me. STRANGER. Then we must hate one other. LADY. And love one another too. STRANGER. And hate because we love. We hate each other, because we're bound together. We hate the bond, we hate our love; we hate what is most loveable, what is the bitterest, the best this life can offer. We've come to an end! LADY. Yes. STRANGER. What a joke life is, if you take it seriously. And how serious, if you take it as a joke! You wanted to lead me by the hand towards the light; your easier fate was to make mine easier too. I wanted to raise you above the bogs and quicksands; but you longed for the lower regions, and wanted to convince me they were the upper ones. I ask myself if it's possible that you took what was wicked from me, when I was freed from it; and that what was good in you entered into me? If I've made you wicked I ask your pardon, and I kiss your little hand, that caressed and scratched me... the little hand that led me into the darkness... and on the long journey to Damascus.... LADY. To a parting? (Silence.) Yes, a parting! (The LADY goes on her way. The STRANGER falls on to a chair by the table. The TEMPTER puts his head in at the window, and rests himself on his elbows whilst he smokes a cigarette.) TEMPTER. Ah, yes! C'est l'amour! The most mysterious of all mysteries, the most inexplicable of all that can't be explained, the most precarious of all that's insecure. STRANGER. So you're here? TEMPTER. I'm always everywhere, where it smells of quarrels. And in love affairs there are always quarrels. STRANGER. Always? TEMPTER. Always! I was invited to a silver wedding yesterday. Twenty-five years are no trifle--and for twenty-five years they'd been quarrelling. The whole love affair had been one long shindy, with many little ones in between! And yet they loved one another, and were grateful for all the good that had come to them; the evil was forgotten, wiped out--for a moment's happiness is worth ten days of blows and pinpricks. Oh yes! Those who won't accept evil never get anything good. The rind's very bitter, though the kernel's sweet. STRANGER. But very small. TEMPTER. It may be small, but it's good! (Pause.) Tell me, why did your madonna go her way? No answer; because he doesn't know! Now we'll have to let the hotel again. Here's a board. I'll hang it out at once. 'To Let.' One comes, another goes! C'est la vie, quoi? Rooms for Travellers! STRANGER. Have you ever been married? TEMPTER. Oh yes. Of course. STRANGER. Then why did you part? TEMPTER. Chiefly--perhaps it's a peculiarity of mine--chiefly because--well, you know, a man marries to get a home, to get into a home; and a woman to get out of one. She wanted to get out, and I wanted to get in! I was so made that I couldn't take her into company, because I felt as if she were soiled by men's glances. And in company, my splendid, wonderful wife turned into a little grimacing monkey I couldn't bear the sight of. So I stayed at home; and then, she stayed away. And when I met her again, she'd changed into someone else. She, my pure white notepaper, was scribbled all over; her clear and lovely features changed in imitation of the satyr-like looks of strange men. I could see miniature photographs of bull-fighters and guardsmen in her eyes, and hear the strange accents of strange men in her voice. On our grand piano, on which only the harmonies of the great masters used to be heard, she now played the cabaret songs of strange men; and on our table there lay nothing but the favourite reading of strange men. In a word, my whole existence was on the way to becoming an intellectual concubinage with strange men--and that was contrary to my nature, which has always longed for women! And--I need hardly say this--the tastes of these strange men were always the reverse of mine. She developed a real genius for discovering things I detested! That's what she called 'saving her personality.' Can you understand that? STRANGER. I can; but I won't attempt to explain it. TEMPTER. Yet this woman maintained she loved me, and that I didn't love her. But I loved her so much I didn't want to speak to any other human being; because I feared to be untrue to her if I found pleasure in the company of others, even if they were men. I'd married for feminine society; and in order to enjoy it I'd left my friends. I'd married in order to find company, but what I got was complete solitude! And I was supporting house and home, in order to provide strange men with feminine companionship. _C'est l'amour_, my friend! STRANGER. You should never talk about your wife. TEMPTER. No! For if you speak well of her, people will laugh; and if you speak ill, all their sympathy will go out to her; and if, in the first instance, you ask why they laugh, you get no answer. STRANGER. No. You can never find out who you've married. Never get hold of her--it seems she's no one. Tell me--what is woman? TEMPTER. I don't know! Perhaps a larva or a chrysalis, out of whose trance-like life a man one day will be created. She seems a child, but isn't one; she is a sort of child, and yet not like one. Drags downward, when the man pulls up. Drags upward, when the man pulls down. STRANGER. She always wants to disagree with her husband; always has a lot of sympathy for what he dislikes; is crudest beneath the greatest superficial refinement; the wickedest amongst the best. And yet, whenever I've been in love, I've always grown more sensitive to the refinements of civilisation. TEMPTER. You, I dare say. What about her? STRANGER. Oh, whilst our love was growing _she_ was always developing backwards. And getting cruder and more wicked. TEMPTER. Can you explain that? STRANGER. No. But once, when I was trying to find the solution to the riddle by disagreeing with myself, I took it that she absorbed my evil and I her good. TEMPTER. Do you think woman's particularly false? STRANGER. Yes and no. She seeks to hide her weakness but that only means that she's ambitious and has a sense of shame. Only whores are honest, and therefore cynical. TEMPTER. Tell me some more about her that's good. STRANGER. I once had a woman friend. She soon noticed that when I drank I looked uglier than usual; so she begged me not to. I remember one night we'd been talking in a cafe for many hours. When it was nearly ten o'clock, she begged me to go home and not to drink any more. We parted, after we'd said goodnight. A few days later I heard she'd left me only to go to a large party, where she drank till morning. Well, I said, as in those days I looked for all that was good in women, she meant well by me, but had to pollute herself for business reasons. TEMPTER. That's well thought out; and, as a view, can be defended. She wanted to make you better than herself, higher and purer, so that she could look up to you! But you can find an equally good explanation for that. A wife's always angry and out of humour with her husband; and the husband's always kind and grateful to his wife. He does all he can to make things easy for her, and she does all she can to torture him. STRANGER. That's not true. Of course it may sometimes appear to be so. I once had a woman friend who shifted all the defects that she had on to me. For instance, she was very much in love with herself, and therefore called me the most egoistical of men. She drank, and called me a drunkard; she rarely changed her linen and said I was dirty; she was jealous, even of my men friends, and called me Othello. She was masterful and called me Nero. Niggardly and called me Harpagon. TEMPTER. Why didn't you answer her? STRANGER. You know why very well! If I'd made clear to her what she really was, I'd have lost her favour that moment--and it was precisely her favour I wanted to keep. TEMPTER. _A tout prix_! Yes, that's the source of degradation! You grow accustomed to holding your tongue, and at last find yourself caught in a tissue of falsehoods. STRANGER. Wait! Don't you agree that married people so mix their personalities that they can no longer distinguish between meum and tuum, no longer remain separate from one another, or cannot tell their own weaknesses from those of the other. My jealous friend, who called me Othello, took me for herself, identified me with herself. TEMPTER. That sounds conceivable. STRANGER. You see! You can often explain most if you don't ask who's to blame. For when married people begin to differ, it's like a realm divided against itself, and that's the worst kind of disharmony. TEMPTER. There are moments when I think a woman cannot love a man. STRANGER. Perhaps not. To love is an active verb and woman's a passive noun. He loves and she is loved; he asks questions and she merely answers. TEMPTER. Then what is woman's love? STRANGER. The man's. TEMPTER. Well said. And therefore when the man ceases to love her, she severs herself from him! STRANGER. And then? TEMPTER. 'Sh! Someone's coming. Perhaps to take the house! STRANGER. A woman or a man? TEMPTER. A woman! And a man. But he's waiting outside. Now he's turned and is going into the wood. Interesting! STRANGER. Who is it? TEMPTER. You can see for yourself. STRANGER (looking out of the window). It's she! My first wife! My first love! TEMPTER. It seems she's left her second husband recently... and arrived here with number three; who, if one can judge by certain movements of his back and calves, is escaping from a stormy scene. Oh, well! But she didn't notice his spiteful intentions. Very interesting! I'll go out and listen. (He disappears. The WOMAN knocks.) STRANGER. Come in! (The WOMAN comes in. There is a silence.) WOMAN (excitedly). I only came here because the house was to let. STRANGER. Oh! WOMAN (slowly). Had I known who wanted to let it, I shouldn't have come. STRANGER. What does it matter? WOMAN. May I sit down a moment? I'm tired. STRANGER. Please do. (They sit down at the table opposite one another, in the seats occupied by the STRANGER and the LADY in the first scene.) It's a long time since we've sat facing one another like this. WOMAN. With flowers and lights on the table. One night... STRANGER. When I was dressed as a bridegroom and you as a bride... WOMAN. And the candle flames were still as in prayer and the flowers pensive.... STRANGER. Is your husband outside? WOMAN. No. STRANGER. You're still seeking... what doesn't exist? WOMAN. Doesn't it? STRANGER. No. I always told you so, but you wouldn't believe me; you wanted to find out for yourself. Have you found out now? WOMAN. Not yet. STRANGER. Why did you leave your husband? (The WOMAN doesn't reply.) Did he beat you? WOMAN. Yes. STRANGER. How did he come to forget himself so far? WOMAN. He was angry. STRANGER. What about? WOMAN. Nothing. STRANGER. Why was he angry about nothing? WOMAN (rising). No, thank you! I won't sit here and be picked to pieces. Where's your wife? STRANGER. She left me just now. WOMAN. Why? STRANGER. Why did you leave me? WOMAN. I felt you wanted to leave me; so, not to be deserted, I went myself. STRANGER. I dare say that's true. But how could you read my thoughts? WOMAN (sitting down again). What? We didn't need to speak in order to know one another's thoughts. STRANGER. We made a mistake when we were living together, because we accused each other of wicked thoughts before they'd become actions; and lived in mental reservations instead of realities. For instance, I once noticed how you enjoyed the defiling gaze of a strange man, and I accused you of unfaithfulness. WOMAN. You were wrong to do so, and right. Because my thoughts were sinful. STRANGER. Don't you think my habit of 'anticipating you' prevented your bad designs from being put in practice? WOMAN. Let me think! Yes, perhaps it did. But I was annoyed to find a spy always at my side, watching my inmost self, that was my own. STRANGER. But it wasn't your own: it was ours! WOMAN. Yes, but I held it to be mine, and believed you'd no right to force your way in. When you did so I hated you; I said you were abnormally suspicious out of self-defence. Now I can admit that your suspicions were never wrong; that they were, in fact, the purest wisdom. STRANGER. Oh! Do you know that, at night, when we'd said good-night as friends and gone to sleep, I used to wake and feel your hatred poisoning me; and think of getting out of bed so as not to be suffocated. One night I woke and felt a pressure on the top of my head. I saw you were awake and had put your hand close to my mouth. I thought you were making me inhale poison from a phial; and, to make sure, I seized your hand. WOMAN. I remember. STRANGER. What did you do then? WOMAN. Nothing. Only hated you. STRANGER. Why? WOMAN. Because you were my husband. Because I ate your bread. STRANGER. Do you think it's always the same? WOMAN. I don't know. I suspect it is. STRANGER. But sometimes you've even despised me? WOMAN. Yes, when you were ridiculous. A man in love is always ridiculous. Do you know what a cox-comb is? That's what a lover's like. STRANGER. But if any man who loves you is ridiculous, how can you respond to his love? WOMAN. We don't! We submit to it, and search for another man who doesn't love us. STRANGER. But if he, in turn, begins to love you, do you look for a third? WOMAN. Perhaps it's like that. STRANGER. Very strange. (There is a silence.) I remember you were always dreaming of someone you called your Toreador, which I translated by 'horse butcher.' You eventually got him, but he gave you no children, and no bread; only beatings! A toreador's always fighting. (Silence.) Once I let myself be tempted into trying to compete with the toreador. I started to bicycle and fence and do other things of the kind. But you only began to detest me for it. That means that the husband mayn't do what the lover may. Later you had a passion for page boys. One of them used to sit on the Brussels carpet and read you bad verses.... My good ones were of no use to you. Did you get your page boy? WOMAN. Yes. But his verses weren't bad, really. STRANGER. Oh yes, they were, my dear. I know him! He stole my rhythms and set them for the barrel organ. WOMAN (rising and going to the door.) You should be ashamed of yourself. (The TEMPTER conies in, holding a letter in his hand.) TEMPTER. Here's a letter. It's for you. (The WOMAN takes it, reads it and falls into a chair.) A farewell note! Oh, well! All beginnings are hard--in love affairs. And those who lack the patience to surmount initial difficulties--lose the golden fruit. Pages are always impatient. Unknown youth, have you had enough? STRANGER (rising and picking up his hat). My poor Anna! WOMAN. Don't leave me. STRANGER. I must. WOMAN. Don't go. You were the best of them all. TEMPTER. Do you want to begin again from the beginning? That would be a sure way to make an end of this. For if lovers only find one another, they lose one another! What is love? Say something witty, each one of you, before we part. WOMAN. I don't know what it is. The highest and the loveliest of things, that has to sink to the lowest and the ugliest. STRANGER. A caricature of godly love. TEMPTER. An annual plant, that blossoms during the engagement, goes to seed in marriage and then sinks to the earth to wither and die. WOMAN. The loveliest flowers have no seed. The rose is the flower of love. STRANGER. And the lily that of innocence. That can form seeds, but only opens her white cup to kisses. TEMPTER. And propagates her kind with buds, out of which fresh lilies spring, like chaste Minerva who sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus, and not from his royal loins. Oh yes, children, I've understood much, but never this: what the beloved of my soul has to do with.... (He hesitates.) STRANGER. Well, go on! TEMPTER. What all-powerful love, that is the marriage of souls, has to do with the propagation of the species! STRANGER and WOMAN. Now he's come to the point! TEMPTER. I've never been able to understand how a kiss, that's an unborn word, a soundless speech, a quiet language of the soul, can be exchanged, by means of a hallowed procedure, for a surgical operation, that always ends in tears and the chattering of teeth. I've never understood how that holy night, the first in which two souls embrace each other in love, can end in the shedding of blood, in quarrelling, hate, mutual contempt--and lint! (He holds his mouth shut.) STRANGER. Suppose the story of the fall were true? In pain shalt thou bring forth children. TEMPTER. In that case one could understand. WOMAN. Who is the man who says these things? TEMPTER. Only a wanderer on the quicksands of this life. (The WOMAN rises.) So you're ready to go. Who will go first? STRANGER. I shall. TEMPTER. Where? STRANGER. Upwards. And you? TEMPTER. I shall stay down here, in between.... [Curtain.] _ |
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