Creditors and Pariah | Page 7

happiness. And when they
became aware of his invisible interference with their happiness; when
they took flight at last--a vain flight from the memories that pursued
them, from the liability they had left behind, from the public opinion
they could not face--and when they found themselves without the
strength needed to carry their own guilt, then they had to send out into
the fields for a scapegoat to be sacrificed. They were free-thinkers, but
they did not have the courage to step forward and speak openly to him
the words: "We love each other!" To sum it up, they were cowards, and
so the tyrant had to be slaughtered. Is that right?
ADOLPH. Yes, but you forget that she educated me, that she filled my
head with new thoughts--
GUSTAV. I have not forgotten it. But tell me: why could she not
educate the other man also--into a free-thinker?
ADOLPH. Oh, he was an idiot!
GUSTAV. Oh, of course--he was an idiot! But that's rather an
ambiguous term, and, as pictured in her novel, his idiocy seems mainly
to have consisted in failure to understand her. Pardon me a question:
but is your wife so very profound after all? I have discovered nothing
profound in her writings.
ADOLPH. Neither have I.--But then I have also to confess a certain
difficulty in understanding her. It is as if the cogs of our brain wheels
didn't fit into each other, and as if something went to pieces in my head
when I try to comprehend her.
GUSTAV. Maybe you are an idiot, too?
ADOLPH. I don't THINK so! And it seems to me all the time as if she
were in the wrong--Would you care to read this letter, for instance,
which I got today?
[Takes out a letter from his pocket-book.]

GUSTAV. [Glancing through the letter] Hm! The handwriting seems
strangely familiar.
ADOLPH. Rather masculine, don't you think?
GUSTAV. Well, I know at least ONE man who writes that kind of
hand--She addresses you as "brother." Are you still playing comedy to
each other? And do you never permit yourselves any greater familiarity
in speaking to each other?
ADOLPH. No, it seems to me that all mutual respect is lost in that way.
GUSTAV. And is it to make you respect her that she calls herself your
sister?
ADOLPH. I want to respect her more than myself. I want her to be the
better part of my own self.
GUSTAV. Why don't you be that better part yourself? Would it be less
convenient than to permit somebody else to fill the part? Do you want
to place yourself beneath your wife?
ADOLPH. Yes, I do. I take a pleasure in never quite reaching up to her.
I have taught her to swim, for example, and now I enjoy hearing her
boast that she surpasses me both in skill and daring. To begin with, I
merely pretended to be awkward and timid in order to raise her courage.
And so it ended with my actually being her inferior, more of a coward
than she. It almost seemed to me as if she had actually taken my
courage away from me.
GUSTAV. Have you taught her anything else?
ADOLPH. Yes--but it must stay between us--I have taught her how to
spell, which she didn't know before. But now, listen: when she took
charge of our domestic correspondence, I grew out of the habit of
writing. And think of it: as the years passed on, lack of practice made
me forget a little here and there of my grammar. But do you think she
recalls that I was the one who taught her at the start? No--and so I am
"the idiot," of course.
GUSTAV. So you are an idiot already?
ADOLPH. Oh, it's just a joke, of course!
GUSTAV. Of course! But this is clear cannibalism, I think. Do you
know what's behind that sort of practice? The savages eat their enemies
in order to acquire their useful qualities. And this woman has been
eating your soul, your courage, your knowledge---
ADOLPH. And my faith! It was I who urged her to write her first

book---
GUSTAV. [Making a face] Oh-h-h!
ADOLPH. It was I who praised her, even when I found her stuff rather
poor. It was I who brought her into literary circles where she could
gather honey from our most ornamental literary flowers. It was I who
used my personal influence to keep the critics from her throat. It was I
who blew her faith in herself into flame; blew on it until I lost my own
breath. I gave, gave, gave--until I had nothing left for myself. Do you
know--I'll tell you everything now--do you know I really believe--and
the human soul is so peculiarly constituted--I believe that when my
artistic