Creditors and Pariah | Page 9

than you knock me on the head and shove me into the water again. As long as my secrets were my own, I had still something left within me, but now I am quite empty. There is a canvas by an Italian master, showing a scene of torture--a saint whose intestines are being torn out of him and rolled on the axle of a windlass. The martyr is watching himself grow thinner and thinner, while the roll on the axle grows thicker.--Now it seems to me as if you had swelled out since you began to dig in me; and when you leave, you'll carry away my vitals with you, and leave nothing but an empty shell behind.
GUSTAV. How you do let your fancy run away with you!--And besides, your wife is bringing back your heart.
ADOLPH. No, not since you have burned her to ashes. Everything is in ashes where you have passed along: my art, my love, my hope, my faith!
GUSTAV. All of it was pretty nearly finished before I came along.
ADOLPH. Yes, but it might have been saved. Now it's too late-- incendiary!
GUSTAV. We have cleared some ground only. Now we'll sow in the ashes.
ADOLPH. I hate you! I curse you!
GUSTAV. Good symptoms! There is still some strength left in you. And now I'll pull you up on the ice again. Listen now! Do you want to listen to me, and do you want to obey me?
ADOLPH. Do with me what you will--I'll obey you!
GUSTAV. [Rising] Look at me!
ADOLPH. [Looking at GUSTAV] Now you are looking at me again with that other pair of eyes which attracts me.
GUSTAV. And listen to me!
ADOLPH. Yes, but speak of yourself. Don't talk of me any longer: I am like an open wound and cannot bear being touched.
GUSTAV. No, there is nothing to say about me. I am a teacher of dead languages, and a widower--that's all! Take my hand.
ADOLPH. What terrible power there must be in you! It feels as if I were touching an electrical generator.
GUSTAV. And bear in mind that I have been as weak as you are now.- -Stand up!
ADOLPH. [Rises, but keeps himself from falling only by throwing his arms around the neck of GUSTAV] I am like a boneless baby, and my brain seems to lie bare.
GUSTAV. Take a turn across the floor!
ADOLPH. I cannot!
GUSTAV. Do what I say, or I'll strike you!
ADOLPH. [Straightening himself up] What are you saying?
GUSTAV. I'll strike you, I said.
ADOLPH. [Leaping backward in a rage] You!
GUSTAV. That's it! Now you have got the blood into your head, and your self-assurance is awake. And now I'll give you some electriticy: where is your wife?
ADOLPH. Where is she?
GUSTAV. Yes.
ADOLPH. She is--at--a meeting.
GUSTAV. Sure?
ADOLPH. Absolutely!
GUSTAV. What kind of meeting?
ADOLPH. Oh, something relating to an orphan asylum.
GUSTAV. Did you part as friends?
ADOLPH. [With some hesitation] Not as friends.
GUSTAV. As enemies then!--What did you say that provoked her?
ADOLPH. You are terrible. I am afraid of you. How could you know?
GUSTAV. It's very simple: I possess three known factors, and with their help I figure out the unknown one. What did you say to her?
ADOLPH. I said--two words only, but they were dreadful, and I regret them--regret them very much.
GUSTAV. Don't do it! Tell me now?
ADOLPH. I said: "Old flirt!"
GUSTAV. What more did you say?
ADOLPH. Nothing at all.
GUSTAV. Yes, you did, but you have forgotten it--perhaps because you don't dare remember it. You have put it away in a secret drawer, but you have got to open it now!
ADOLPH. I can't remember!
GUSTAV. But I know. This is what you said: "You ought to be ashamed of flirting when you are too old to have any more lovers!"
ADOLPH. Did I say that? I must have said it!--But how can you know that I did?
GUSTAV. I heard her tell the story on board the boat as I came here.
ADOLPH. To whom?
GUSTAV. To four young men who formed her company. She is already developing a taste for chaste young men, just like--
ADOLPH. But there is nothing wrong in that?
GUSTAV. No more than in playing brother and sister when you are papa and mamma.
ADOLPH. So you have seen her then?
GUSTAV. Yes, I have. But you have never seen her when you didn't-- I mean, when you were not present. And there's the reason, you see, why a husband can never really know his wife. Have you a portrait of her?
(Adolph takes a photograph from his pocketbook. There is a look of aroused curiosity on his face.)
GUSTAV. You were not present when this was taken?
ADOLPH. No.
GUSTAV. Look at it. Does it bear much resemblance to the portrait you painted of her? Hardly any! The features are the same, but the expression is quite different. But you don't see this, because your own picture of her creeps in between your eyes and this