Gustav. I think so, too. What can be the cause of it?
Adolf. I don’t know. Perhaps one gets accustomed to talk more softly to women. Thekla, at any rate, was always ragging me because I shrieked.
Gustav. And then you subsided into a minor key, and allowed yourself to be put in the corner.
Adolf. Don’t say that. [Reflectively.] That wasn’t the worst of it. Let’s talk of something else—where was I then?—I’ve got it. [GUSTAV turns round again at the back of the square table and comes to ADOLF on his right.] You came here, old man, and opened my eyes to the mysteries of my art. As a matter of fact, I’ve been feeling for some time that my interest in painting was lessening, because it didn’t provide me with a proper medium to express what I had in me; but when you gave me the reason for this state of affairs, and explained to me why painting could not possibly be the right form for the artistic impulse of the age, then I saw the true light and I recognized that it would be from now onward impossible for me to create in colors.
Gustav. Are you so certain, old man, that you won’t be able to paint any more, that you won’t have any relapse?
Adolf. Quite. I have tested myself. When I went to bed the evening after our conversation I reviewed your chain of argument point by point, and felt convinced that it was sound. But the next morning, when my head cleared again, after the night’s sleep, the thought flashed through me like lightning that you might be mistaken all the same. I jumped up, and snatched up a brush and palette, in order to paint, but— just think of it!— it was all up. I was no longer capable of any illusion. The whole thing was nothing but blobs of color, and I was horrified at the thought I could ever have believed I could convert anyone else to the belief that this painted canvas was anything else except painted canvas. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I could as much paint again as I could become a child again.
Gustav. You realized then that the real striving of the age, its aspiration for reality, for actuality, can only find a corresponding medium in sculpture, which gives bodies extension in the three dimensions.
Adolf. [Hesitating.] The three dimensions? Yes—in a word, bodies.
Gustav. And now you want to become a sculptor? That means that you were a sculptor really from the beginning, you got off the line somehow, so you only needed a guide to direct you back again to the right track. I say, when you work now, does the great joy of creation come over you?
Adolf. Now, I live again.
Gustav. May I see what you’re doing?
Adolf. [Undraping a figure on the small table.] A female figure.
Gustav. [Probing.] Without a model, and yet so lifelike?
Adolf. [Heavily.] Yes, but it is like somebody; extraordinary how this woman is in me, just as I am in her.
Gustav. That last is not so extraordinary—do you know anything about transfusion?
Adolf. Blood transfusion? Yes.
Gustav. It seems to me that you’ve allowed your veins to be opened a bit too much. The examination of this figure clears up many things which I’d previously only surmised. You loved her infinitely?
Adolf. Yes, so much that I could never tell whether she is I, or I am her, when she laughed I laughed, when she cried I cried, and when—just imagine it—our child came into the world I suffered the same as she did.
Gustav. [Stepping a little to the right.] Look here, old chap, I am awfully sorry to have to tell you, but the symptoms of epilepsy are already manifesting themselves.
Adolf. [Crushed.] In me? What makes you say so?
Gustav. Because I watched these symptoms in a younger brother of mine, who eventually died of excess. [He sits down in the armchair by the circular table.]
Adolf. How did it manifest itself—that disease, I mean?
[GUSTAV gesticulates vividly; ADOLF watches with strained attention, and involuntarily imitates GUSTAV’S gestures.]
Gustav. A ghastly sight. If you feel at all off color, I’d rather not harrow you by describing the symptoms.
Adolf. [Nervously.] Go on, go on.
Gustav. Well, it’s like this. Fate had given the youngster for a wife a little innocent, with kiss-curls, dove-like eyes, and a baby face, from which there spoke the pure soul of an angel. In spite of that, the little one managed to appropriate the man’s prerogative.
Adolf. What is that?
Gustav. Initiative, of course; and the inevitable result was that the angel came precious near taking him away to heaven. He first had to be on the cross and feel the nails in his flesh.
Adolf. [Suffocating.] Tell me, what was it like?
Gustav. [Slowly.] There were times when he and I would sit quite quietly by each other and chat, and then—I’d scarcely been speaking a few minutes before his face became ashy white, his limbs were paralyzed, and his thumbs turned in towards the palm of the hand. [With a gesture.] Like that! [ADOLF imitates the gesture.] And his eyes were shot with blood, and he began to chew, do you see, like this. [He moves his lips as though chewing; ADOLF imitates him again.] The saliva stuck in his throat, the chest contracted as though it had been compre?1ed by screws on a joiner’s bench; there was a flicker in his pupils like gas jets, foam spurted from his mouth, and he sank gently back in the chair as though he were drowning. Then—
Adolf. [Hissing.] Stop!
Gustav. Then—are you unwell?
Adolf. Yes.
Gustav. [Gets up and fetches a glass of water front the table on the right near the center door.] Here, drink this, and let’s change the subject.
Adolf. [Drinks, limp.] Thanks, go on.
Gustav. Good! When he woke up he had no idea what had taken place. [He takes the glass back to the table.] He had simply lost consciousness. Hasn’t that ever happened to you?
Adolf. Now and again I have attacks of dizziness. The doctor puts it down to anaemia.
Gustav. [On the right of ADOLF.] That’s just how the thing starts, mark you. Take it from me, you’re in danger of contracting epilepsy; if you aren’t on your guard, if you don’t live a careful and abstemious life, all round.
Adolf. What can I do to effect that?
Gustav. Above all, you must exercise the most complete continence.
Adolf. For how long?
Gustav. Six months at least.
Adolf. I can’t do it. It would upset all our life together.
Gustav. Then it’s all up with you.
Adolf. I can’t do it.
Gustav. You can’t save your own life? But tell me, as you’ve taken me into your confidence so far, haven’t you any other wound that hurts you?—some other secret trouble in this multifarious life of ours, with all its numerous opportunities for jars and complications? There is usually more than one motif which is responsible for a discord. Haven’t you got a skeleton in the cupboard, old chap, which you hide even from yourself? You told me a minute ago you’d given your child to people to look after. Why didn’t you keep it with you? [He goes behind the square table on the left and then behind the sofa.]