Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays Part 145

GUSTAV [_he laughs_]. In sculpture?

[_He turns round by the square table and comes to Adolf's right._]

ADOLF [_hesitating_]. Yes.

GUSTAV. And you believed in it?--in that abstract, obsolete art from the childhood of the world. Do you believe that by means of pure form and three dimensions--no, you don't really--that you can produce an effect on the real spirit of this age of ours, that you can create illusions without color? Without color, I say. Do you believe that?

ADOLF [_tonelessly_]. No.

GUSTAV. Nor do I.

ADOLF. But why did you say you did?

GUSTAV. You make me pity you.

ADOLF. Yes, I am indeed to be pitied. And now I'm bankrupt, absolutely--and the worst of it is I haven't got her any more.

GUSTAV [_with a few steps toward the right_]. What good would she be to you? She would be what G.o.d above was to me before I became an atheist--a subject on which I could lavish my reverence. You keep your feeling of reverence dark, and let something else grow on top of it--a healthy contempt, for instance.

ADOLF. I can't live without some one to reverence.

GUSTAV. Slave!

[_He goes round the table on the right._]

ADOLF. And without a woman to reverence, to wors.h.i.+p.

GUSTAV. Oh, the deuce! Then you go back to that G.o.d of yours--if you really must have something on which you can crucify yourself; but you call yourself an atheist when you've got the superst.i.tious belief in women in your own blood; you call yourself a free thinker when you can't think freely about a lot of silly women. Do you know what all this illusive quality, this sphinx-like mystery, this profundity in your wife's temperament all really comes to? The whole thing is sheer stupidity; why, the woman can't distinguish between A.B. and bull's foot for the life of her. And look here, it's something shoddy in the mechanism, that's where the fault lies. Outside it looks like a fifty-guinea hunting watch, open it and you find it's tuppenny-halfpenny gun-metal. [_He comes up to Adolf._] Put her in trousers, draw a mustache under her nose with a piece of coal, and then listen to her in the same state of mind, and then you'll be perfectly convinced that it is quite a different kettle of fish altogether---a gramaphone which reproduces, with rather less volume, your words and other people's words. Do you know how a woman is const.i.tuted? Yes, of course you do. A boy with the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a mother, an immature man, a precocious child whose growth has been stunted, a chronically anaemic creature that has a regular emission of blood thirteen times in the year. What can you do with a thing like that?

ADOLF. Yes--but--but then how can I believe--that we are really on an equality?

GUSTAV [_moves away from him again towards the right_]. Sheer hallucination! The fascination of the petticoat. But it is so; perhaps, in fact you have become like each other, the leveling has taken place.

But I say. [_He takes out his watch._] We've been chatting for quite long enough. Your wife's bound to be here shortly. Wouldn't it be better to leave off now, so that you can rest for a little?

[_He comes nearer and holds out his hand to say good-by. Adolf grips his hand all the tighter._]

ADOLF. NO, don't leave me. I haven't got the pluck to be alone.

GUSTAV. Only for a little while. Your wife will be coming in a minute.

ADOLF. Yes, yes--she's coming. [_Pause._] Strange, isn't it? I long for her and yet I'm frightened of her. She caresses me, she is tender, but her kisses have something in them which smothers one, something which sucks, something which stupefies. It is as though I were the child at the circus whose face the clown is making up in the dressing-room, so that it can appear red-cheeked before the public.

GUSTAV [_leaning on the arm of Adolf's chair_]. I'm sorry for you, old man. Although I'm not a doctor I am in a position to tell you that you are a dying man. One only has to look at your last pictures to be quite clear on the point.

ADOLF. What do you say--what do you mean?

GUSTAV. Your coloring is so watery, so consumptive and thin, that the yellow of the canvas s.h.i.+nes through. It is just as though your hollow ashen white cheeks were looking out at me.

ADOLF. Ah!

GUSTAV. Yes, and that's not only my view. Haven't you read to-day's paper?

ADOLF [_he starts_]. No.

GUSTAV. It's before you on the table.

ADOLF [_he gropes after the paper without having the courage to take it_]. Is it in here?

GUSTAV. Read it, or shall I read it to you?

ADOLF. No.

GUSTAV [_turns to leave_]. If you prefer it, I'll go.

ADOLF. NO, no, no! I don't know how it is--I think I am beginning to hate you, but all the same I can't do without your being near me. You have helped to drag me out of the slough which I was in, and, as luck would have it, I just managed to work my way clear and then you knocked me on the head and plunged me in again. As long as I kept my secrets to myself I still had some guts--now I'm empty. There's a picture by an Italian master that describes a torture scene. The entrails are dragged out of a saint by means of a windla.s.s. The martyr lies there and sees himself getting continually thinner and thinner, but the roll on the windless always gets perpetually fatter, and so it seems to me that you get stronger since you've taken me up and that you're taking away now with you, as you go, my innermost essence, the core of my character, and there's nothing left of me but an empty husk.

GUSTAV. Oh, what fantastic notions; besides, your wife is coming back with your heart.

ADOLF. No; no longer, after you have burnt it for me. You have pa.s.sed through me, changing everything in your track to ashes--my art, my love, my hope, my faith.

GUSTAV [_comes near to him again_]. Were you so splendidly off before?

ADOLF. No, I wasn't, but the situation might have been saved; now it's too late. Murderer!

GUSTAV. We've wasted a little time. Now we'll do some sowing in the ashes.

ADOLF. I hate you! I curse you!

GUSTAV. A healthy symptom. You've still got some strength, and now I'll screw up your machinery again. I say. [_He goes behind the square table on the left and comes in front of the sofa._] Will you listen to me and obey me?

ADOLF. Do what you will with me, I'll obey.

GUSTAV. Look at me.

ADOLF [_looks him in the face_]. And now you look at me again with that other expression in those eyes of yours, which draws me to you irresistibly.

GUSTAV. Now listen to me.

ADOLF. Yes, but speak of yourself. Don't speak any more of me: it's as though I were wounded, every movement hurts me.

GUSTAV. Oh no, there isn't much to say about me, don't you know. I'm a private tutor in dead languages and a widower, that's all. [_He goes in front of the table._] Hold my hand.

[_Adolf does so._]

ADOLF. What awful strength you must have, it seems as though a fellow were catching hold of an electric battery.

GUSTAV. And just think, I was once quite as weak as you are.

[_Sternly._] Get up.