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Read Ebook: The Road to Damascus a Trilogy by Strindberg August Oll N Gunnar Commentator Rawson Graham Translator
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Ebook has 1065 lines and 58435 words, and 22 pages
LADY. You've noticed that?
STRANGER. For some time I've noticed a great deal; but not as I used to. Once I merely saw objects and events, forms and colours, whilst now I perceive ideas and meanings. Life, that once had no meaning, has begun to have one. Now I discern intention where I used to see nothing but chance. When I met you yesterday it struck me you'd been sent across my path, either to save me, or destroy me.
LADY. Why should I destroy you?
STRANGER. Because it may be your destiny.
LADY. No such idea ever crossed my mind; it was largely sympathy I felt for you.... Never, in all my life, have I met anyone like you. I have only to look at you for the tears to start to my eyes. Tell me, what have you on your conscience? Have you done something wrong, that's never been discovered or punished?
STRANGER. You may well ask! No, I've no more sins on my conscience than other free men. Except this: I determined that life should never make a fool of me.
LADY. You must let yourself be fooled, more or less, to live at all.
STRANGER. That would seem a kind of duty; but one I wanted to get out of. I've another secret. It's whispered in the family that I'm a changeling.
LADY. What's that?
STRANGER. A child substituted by the elves for the baby that was born.
LADY. Do you believe in such things?
STRANGER. No. But, as a parable, there's something to be said for it. As a child I was always crying and didn't seem to take to life in this world. I hated my parents, as they hated me. I brooked no constraint, no conventions, no laws, and my longing was for the woods and the sea.
LADY. Did you ever see visions?
STRANGER. Never. But I've often thought that two beings were guiding my destiny. One offers me all I desire; but the other's ever at hand to bespatter the gifts with filth, so that they're useless to me and I can't touch them. It's true that life has given me all I asked of it--but everything's turned out worthless to me.
LADY. You've had everything and yet are not content?
STRANGER. That is the curse....
LADY. Don't say that! But why haven't you desired things that transcend this life, that can never be sullied?
STRANGER. Because I doubt if there is a beyond.
LADY. But the elves?
STRANGER. Are merely a fairy story. Shall we sit down?
LADY. Yes. Who are you waiting for?
STRANGER. Really, for the post office to open. There's a letter for me--it's been forwarded on but hasn't reached me. But tell me something of yourself now.
LADY. There's nothing to tell.
STRANGER. Strangely enough, I should prefer to think of you like that. Impersonal, nameless--I only do know one of your names. I'd like to christen you myself--let me see, what ought you to be called? I've got it. Eve! Trumpets! There it is again! Now I must invent your age, for I don't know how old you are. From now on you are thirty-four--so you were born in sixty-four. Now your character, for I don't know that either. I shall give you a good character, your voice reminds me of my mother--I mean the idea of a mother, for my mother never caressed me, though I can remember her striking me. You see, I was brought up in hate! An eye for an eye--a tooth for a tooth. You see this scar on my forehead? That comes from a blow my brother gave me with an axe, after I'd struck him with a stone. I never went to my father's funeral, because he turned me out of the house when my sister married. I was born out of wedlock, when my family were bankrupt and in mourning for an uncle who had taken his life. Now you know my family! That's the stock I come from. Once I narrowly escaped fourteen years' hard labour--so I've every reason to thank the elves, though I can't be altogether pleased with what they've done.
LADY. I like to hear you talk. But don't speak of the elves: it makes me sad.
STRANGER. Frankly, I don't believe in them; yet they're always making themselves felt. Are these elves the souls of the unhappy, who still await redemption? If so, I am the child of an evil spirit. Once I believed I was near redemption--through a woman. But no mistake could have been greater: I was plunged into the seventh hell.
LADY. You must be unhappy. But this won't go on always.
STRANGER. Do you think church bells and Holy Water could comfort me? I've tried them; they only made things worse. I felt like the Devil when he sees the sign of the cross. Let's talk about you now.
LADY. There's no need. Have you been blamed for misusing your gifts?
LADY. Why did they hate you so?
STRANGER. How should I know! Yet I do! I couldn't endure to see men suffer. So I kept on saying, and writing, too: free yourselves, I will help you. And to the poor I said: do not let the rich exploit you. And to the women: do not allow yourselves to be enslaved by the men. And--worst of all--to the children: do not obey your parents, if they are unjust. What followed was impossible to foresee. I found that everyone was against me: rich and poor, men and women, parents and children. And then came sickness and poverty, beggary and shame, divorce, law-suits, exile, solitude, and now.... Tell me, do you think me mad?
LADY. No.
STRANGER. You must be the only one. But I'm all the more grateful.
LADY . I must leave you now.
STRANGER. You, too?
LADY. And you mustn't stay here.
STRANGER. Where should I go?
LADY. Home. To your work.
STRANGER. But I'm no worker. I'm a writer.
LADY. I know. But I didn't want to hurt you. Creative power is something given you, that can also taken away. See you don't forfeit yours.
STRANGER. Where are you going?
LADY. Only to a shop.
STRANGER . Tell me, are you a believer?
LADY. I am nothing.
STRANGER. All the better: you have a future. How I wish I were your old blind father, whom you could lead to the market place to sing for his bread. My tragedy is I cannot grow old that's what happens to children of the elves, they have big heads and never only cry. I wish I were someone's dog. I could follow him and never be alone again. I'd get a meal sometimes, a kick now and then, a pat perhaps, a blow often....
LADY. Now I must go. Good-bye.
STRANGER . Good-bye. White are you picking up, beggar?
BEGGAR. Why call me that? I'm no beggar. Have I asked you for anything?
STRANGER. I beg your pardon. It's so hard to judge men from appearances.
BEGGAR. That's true. For instance, can you guess who I am?
STRANGER. I don't intend to try. It doesn't interest me.
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