To serve potato soup at a quarter to one in the morning and announce that a boiled pike is to follow is a perversion of which only the Auersbergers are capable, I said to myself, sitting opposite Jeannie, who had always had her own special way of eating soup, with the little finger of her right hand sticking up about half an inch above the others. Imagine serving a pike at a quarter to one in the morning in honor of an actor from the Burgtheater! The actor had already spooned up half his potato soup with great rapidity, as though he were famished, with such rapidity that some of it was now lodged in his beard. Ekdal, he said, spooning up his soup, has been my dream role for decades. And then he went on, interrupting himself after every other word to spoon up more soup, Ekdal—pause for a spoonful—has always—another spoonful—been my—another spoonful—favorite part, adding, after two more spoonfuls, for decades. And the phrase dream role he actually pronounced as though it denoted some culinary delicacy. Ekdal is my favorite role, he said several times, and I immediately wondered whether he would have said that Ekdal was his favorite role had he had no success in it. When an actor is successful in a certain role he says it’s his favorite: when he isn’t, he doesn’t, I thought. The actor went on spooning up his soup and repeating that Ekdal was his favorite role. For a long time none of the other guests said anything, but merely ate their soup and stared at the actor, as though he were the only one entitled to speak. When he ate fast, they ate fast; when he slowed down, they slowed down; and by the time he had finished the last spoonful, so had they. Long after they had finished their soup I still had half a plateful left. I did not like the taste, and so I did not eat it. He had always wanted to play in The WildDuck, and now at last he had the chance, the actor said with some pathos. If the other members of the cast had been better, if he had had ideal fellow actors in other words, he said — for they were not the best, they were not ideal; apart from himself the casting had been a makeshift affair—the production of The Wild Duck would have been an enormous success as a whole and not just where he was concerned. As it was, everybody had concentrated on his performance; the newspapers had written exclusively about him. It was not The WildDuck, not the production as such, that had been the great theatrical event, but his performance as Ekdal. Where would The WildDuckbe,where would Ibsenbe, were it not for him? — that was more or less what all the papers had asked if one read between the lines. He himself had a high regard for Ibsen, just as he had for Strindberg, indeed for all the so-called Nordic dramatists, but where would these dramatists be without actors like himself? He asked this in all modesty, he said, but at the same time quite openly. But of course in his opinion there was more to these dramatists than the papers made out, he said: quite irrespective of whether the acting was superb or not, Ibsen was a great writer, and so was Strindberg — they were both towering geniuses, towering figures in literary history, but where would they be without superb actors? He must have had at least two or three glasses of champagne on arrival, I thought when I heard him say, Drama comes to life only when a good actor brings it to life. Whereupon he placed his hands on the table, raised his histrionic head, and said to Auersberger, I greatly enjoyed your new com position, my dear friend. At this Auersberger lowered his head; the successor of Webern lowered his head at the same moment as the actor raised his and paid his compliment. The whole company now fell silent, thinking that the pike was about to be brought in, but they were wrong: all that happened was that the cook entered the room empty-handed to ask whether the pike could now be served. The hosts indicated that it could. We actors are accustomed to dining late, the guest of honor remarked. We don’t usually dine until after midnight. It’s a typical feature of our profession that we don’t dine until after midnight. It’s an unhealthy life, the life of the theater, he added, breaking a pretzel stick in two. But an actor gets used to eating after midnight, he said. The role of Ekdal, more than any other, was his dream role, he said. You have to have great writing if you’re to give a consummate performance. He had studied the role for a whole six months, the actor went on, and in order to carry out this study of Ekdal he had withdrawnto a remote alpine chalet in the Tyrol,for it was only in such genuine solitude that he was able to understandthe role properly. Actors tended to approach a part either too early or too late, he said, and a part like Ekdal had to be approached at just the right moment. Great drama and great dramatic roles must always be approached at just the right moment. Ekdal was always my dream role, he said, but I’d never understood it properly. It was only when I was in the mountain chalet, concentrating solely on Ekdal, that I discovered the true nature of the character — and of The Wild Duck as a whole. The true nature of The Wild Duck! he exclaimed. It was in the mountain chalet, he said, that he had suddenly understood Ekdal. It was there, in the mountain chalet, that I saw the light, he said. Whereupon he leaned back and remarked that he had always been partial to pike—preferably from LakeBalaton, the genuine Balaton pike. Auersberger’s wife now interrupted his disquisition on Ekdal to say that naturally she would never serve any pike other than a Balaton pike — what other pike was there? One has to approach Ekdal with great sensitivity, the actor said. We rush around in the city for months on end, racking our brains, yet failing to understand Ekdal or relate to the character in any way, despite the fact that in the whole of world literature we’ve always felt him to be the figure who most appeals to us, and we finally give up in despair, he said. And then we go up the mountain and live in the alpine chalet, and we see the light. I had the same experience with Prospero,the actor went on. If Ieverplay Lear,he said, I shall go back to the chalet, and Iwon’t spend months beforehand waitingaround for enlightenment in this dreadful city. It was the Tyrolean atmosphere, the actor said, that had revealed the secret of Ekdal to him — living in a chalet, five and a half thousand feet above sea level, far from civilization. No electric light, no gas, no consumer society! he exclaimed as a warm plate was placed before him and he was invited to help himself to the pike. We must all scale the mountain heights if we are to get a proper view of the world, he said, helping himself to a second portion of pike. Incidentally, he said, he had never played Ibsen before — Strindberg yes, Edgar in The Dance of Death, but never Ibsen. He had not even played Peer Gynt when he was a young man, though that would have been an obvious part for him to play. We come up against so many producers, he said, and they never give us the parts we really want to play. Or the dramatists who are close to our hearts. We want to act in a Spanish play and we’re landed with a French one, he said. We want to play Goethe and we’re condemned to play Schiller. We want to appear in comedy, and we’re pushed into tragedy. Even being famous doesn’t ensure that you always get the parts you want to play, the actor went on. And how often is one promised a part, one of one’s favorite parts, he said, only to learn later that it’s been given to somebody else! Theaters don’t plan properly; nothing in the theater ever turns out according to plan. What’s finally presented to the public is always a compromise, a sloppy compromise. By his age, he said, actors like himself had long since learned to live with all this.