Adolf. [Covers the figure on the small table with a cloth.] It was my wife’s wish to have it nursed outside the house.
Gustav. The motive? Don’t be afraid.
Adolf. Because when the kid was three years old she thought it began to look like her first husband.
Gustav. Re-a-lly? Ever seen the first husband?
Adolf. No, never. I just once cast a cursory glance over a bad photograph, but I couldn’t discover any likeness.
Gustav. Oh, well, photographs are never like, and besides, his type of face may have changed with time. By the by, didn’t that make you at all jealous?
Adolf. Not a bit. The child was born a year after our marriage, and the husband was traveling when I met Thekla, here—in this watering place—in this very house. That’s why we come here every summer.
Gustav. Then all suspicion on your part was out of the question? But so far as the intrinsic facts of the matter are concerned you needn’t be jealous at all, because it not infrequently happens that the children of a widow who marries again are like the deceased husband. Very awkward business, no question about it; and that’s why, don’t you. know, the widows are burned alive in India. Tell me, now, didn’t you ever feel jealous of him, of the survival of his memory in your own self? Wouldn’t it have rather gone against the grain if he had just met you when you were out for a walk, and, looking straight at Thekla, said “We,” instead of “I”? “We.”
Adolf. I can’t deny that the thought has haunted me.
Gustav. [Sits down opposite ADOLF on the sofa on the left.] I thought as much, and you’ll never get away from it. There are discords in life, you know, which never get resolved, so you must stuff your ears with wax, and work. Work, get older, and heap up over the coffin a mass of new impressions, and then the corpse will rest in peace.
Adolf. Excuse my interrupting you—but it is extraordinary at times how your way of speaking reminds me of Thekla. You’ve got a trick, old man, of winking with your right eye as though you were counting, and your gaze has the same power over me as hers has.
Gustav. No, really?
Adolf. And now you pronounce your “No, really?” in the same indifferent tone that she does. “No, really?” is one of her favorite expressions, too, you know.
Gustav. Perhaps there is a distant relationship between us : all men and women are related of course. Anyway, there’s no getting away from the strangeness of it, and it will be interesting for me to make the acquaintance of your wife, so as to observe this remarkable characteristic.
Adolf. But just think of this, she doesn’t take a single expression from me; why, she seems rather to make a point of avoiding all my special tricks of speech; all the same, I have seen her make use of one of my gestures; but it is quite the usual thing in married life for a husband and a wife to develop the so-called marriage likeness.
Gustav. Quite. But look here now. [He stands up.] That woman has never loved you.
Adolf. Nonsense.
Gustav. Pray excuse me, woman’s love consists simply in this—in taking in, in receiving. She does not love the man from whom she takes nothing: she has never loved you. [He turns round behind the square table and walks fa ADOLF’S right.]
Adolf. I suppose you don’t think that she’d be able to love more than once?
Gustav. No. Once bit, twice shy. After the first time, one keeps one’s eyes open, but you have never been really bitten yet. You be careful of those who have, they’re dangerous customers. [He goes round the circular table on the right.]
Adolf. What you say jabs a knife into my flesh. I’ve got a feeling as though something in me were cut through, but I can do nothing to stop it all by myself, and it’s as well it should be so, for abscesses will be opened in that way which would otherwise never be able to come to a head. She never loved me? Why did she marry me, then?
Gustav. Tell me first how it came about that she did marry you, and whether she married you or you her?
Adolf. God knows! That’s much too hard a question to be answered offhand, and how did it take place? —it took more than a day.
Gustav. Shall I guess? [He goes behind the round table, toward the left, then sits on the sofa.]
Adolf. You’ll get nothing for your pains.
Gustav. Not so fast! From the insight which you’ve given me into your own character, and that of your wife, I find it pretty easy to work out the sequence of the whole thing. Listen to me and you’ll be quite convinced. [Dispassionately and in an almost jocular tone.] The husband happened to be traveling on study and she was alone. At first she found a pleasure in being free. Then she imagined that she felt the void, for I presume that she found it pretty boring after being alone for a fortnight. Then he turned up, and the void begins gradually to be filled—the picture of the absent man begins gradually to fade in comparison, for the simple reason that he is a long way off—you know of course the psychological algebra of distance?And when both of them, alone as they were, felt the awakening of passion, they were frightened of themselves, of him, of their own conscience. They sought for protection, skulked behind the fig-leaf, played at brother and sister, and the more sensual grew their feelings the more spiritual did they pretend their relationship really was.
Adolf. Brother and sister! How did you know that?
Gustav. I just thought that was how it was. Children play at mother and father, but of course when they grow older they play at brother and sister—so as to conceal what requires concealment; they then discard their chaste desires; they play blind man’s- buff till they’ve caught each other in some dark corner, where they’re pretty sure not to be seen by anybody. [With increased severity.] But they are warned by their inner consciences that an eye sees them through the darkness. They are afraid— and in their panic the absent man begins to haunt their imagination—to assume monstrous proportions—to become metamorphosed—he becomes a nightmare who opposes them in that love’s young dream of theirs. He becomes the creditor [he raffs slowly on the table three times with his finger, as though knocking at the door] who knocks at the door. They see his black hand thrust itself between them when their own are reaching after the dish of pottage. They hear his unwelcome voice in the stillness of the night, which is only broken by the beating of their own pulses. He doesn’t prevent their belonging to each other, but he is enough to mar their happiness, and when they have felt this invisible power of his, and when at last they want to run away, and make their futile efforts to escape the memory which haunts them, the guilt which they have left behind, the public opinion which they are afraid of, and they lack the strength to bear their own guilt, then a scapegoat has to be exterminated and slaughtered. They posed as believers in Free Love, but they didn’t have the pluck to go straight to him, to speak straight out to him and say, “We love each other.” They were cowardly, and that’s why the tyrant had to be assassinated. Am I not right?