Chapter 14. Absinth

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_ CHAPTER XIV. ABSINTH

A hot afternoon sun was scorching the pavements of the provincial town X-köping.

The large vaults of the town hall were still deserted; fir branches were scattered all over the floor, and it smelt of a funeral. The graduated liqueur bottles stood on the shelves, having an afternoon nap, opposite the brandy bottles which wore the collars of their orders round their necks and were on leave until the evening; the clock, which could never take a nap, stood against the wall like a tall peasant, whiling away the time by contemplating, apparently, a huge playbill, impaled on a clothes peg close by. The vault was very long and narrow; both of the long walls were furnished with birchwood tables, jutting out from the wall, giving it the appearance of a stable, in which the four-legged tables represented the horses tied with their heads to the wall and turning their hind quarters towards the room; at the present moment all of them were asleep; one of them lifted its hind leg a little off the ground, for the floor was very uneven. One could see that they were fast asleep, for the flies were calmly walking up and down their backs.

The sixteen-year-old waiter who was leaning against the tall clock close to the poster was not asleep; he was incessantly waving his white apron at the flies which had just finished their dinner in the kitchen and were now playing about the vaults. Every now and then he leaned back and put his ear to the chest of the clock, as if he were sounding it, or wanting to find out what it had had for dinner. He was soon to be enlightened. The tall creature gave a sob, and exactly four minutes later it sobbed again; a groaning and rumbling in its inside made the lad jump; rattling terribly it struck six times, after which it continued its silent work.

The boy, too, began to work. He walked round his stable, grooming his horses with his apron and putting everything in order as if he were expecting visitors. On one of the tables, in the background, from which a spectator could view the whole long room, he placed matches, a bottle of absinth and two glasses, a liqueur glass and a tumbler; then he fetched a bottle of water from the pump and put it on the table by the side of the inflammables. When everything was ready, he paced up and down the room, occasionally striking quite unexpected attitudes, as if he were imitating somebody. Now he stood with arms folded across his chest, his head bowed, staring fiercely at the faded paper on the old walls; now he stood with legs crossed, the knuckles of his right hand touching the edge of the table holding in his left a lorgnette, made of a piece of wire from a beer bottle through which he sarcastically scanned the mouldings on the ceiling.

The door flew open, and a man of thirty-five entered with assurance, as if he were coming into his own house. His beardless face had the sharply cut features which are the result of much exercise of the facial muscles, characteristic of actors and one other class. Every muscle and ligament was plainly visible under the skin with its bluish shadows on upper lip and chin, but the miserable wire-work which set these fine tangents in motion was invisible, for he was not like a common piano which requires a pedal. A high, rather narrow forehead with hollow temples, rose like a true Corinthian capital; black, untidy locks of hair climbed round it like wild creepers, from which small straight snakes darted, trying to reach the sockets of his eyes, but ever failing to do so. In calm moments his large, dark eyes looked gentle and sad, but there were times when they blazed and then the pupils looked like the muzzles of a revolver.

He took his seat at the table which the boy had prepared and looked sadly at the water bottle.

"Why do you always give me a bottle of water, Gustav?"

"So that you won't be burned to death, sir."

"What does it matter to you whether I am or not? Can't I burn if I like?"

"Don't be a nihilist to-day, sir."

"Nihilist? Who talked to you of nihilists? When did you hear that word? Are you mad, boy? Speak!"

He rose to his feet and fired a few shots from his dark revolvers.

Fear and consternation at the expression in the actor's face kept Gustav tongue tied.

"Answer, boy, when did you hear this word?"

"Mr. Montanus said it a few days ago, when he came here from his church," answered the boy timidly.

"Montanus, indeed!" said the melancholy man, sitting down again. "Montanus is my man: he has a large understanding. I say, Gustav, what's the name, I mean the nickname, by which these theatrical blackguards call me? Tell me! You needn't be afraid."

"I'd rather not, sir; it's very ugly."

"Why not if you can please me by doing so? Don't you think I could do with a little cheering up? Do I look so frightfully gay? Out with it! What do they say when they ask you whether I have been here? Don't they say: Has...."

"The devil...."

"Ah, the devil! They hate me, don't they?"

"Yes, they do!"

"Good! But why? Have I done them any harm?"

"No, they can't say that, sir."

"No, I don't think they can."

"But they say that you ruin people, sir."

"Ruin?"

"Yes, they say that you ruined me, sir, because I find that there's nothing new in the world."

"Hm! Hm! I suppose you tell them that their jokes are stale?"

"Yes; everything they say is stale; they are so stale themselves that they make me sick."

"Indeed! And don't you think that being a waiter is stale?"

"Yes, I do; life and death and everything is an old story--no--to be an actor would be something new."

"No, my friend. That is the stalest of all stale stories. But shut up, now! I want to forget myself."

He drank his absinth and rested his head against the wall with its long, brown streak, the track on which the smoke of his cigar had ascended during the six long years he had been sitting there, smoking. The rays of the sun fell through the window, passing through the sieve of the great aspens outside, whose light foliage, dancing in the evening breeze, threw a tremulous net on the long wall. The shadow of the melancholy man's head, with its untidy locks of hair, fell on the lowest corner of the net and looked very much like a huge spider.

Gustav had returned to the clock, where he sat plunged in nihilistic silence, watching the flies dancing round the hanging lamp.

"Gustav!" came a voice from the spider's web.

"Yes sir!" was the prompt response from the clock.

"Are your parents still alive?"

"No, sir, you know they aren't."

"Good for you."

A long pause.

"Gustav!"

"Yes sir!"

"Can you sleep at night?"

"What do you mean, sir?" answered Gustav blushing.

"What I say!"

"Of course I can! Why shouldn't I?"

"Why do you want to be an actor?"

"I don't know! I believe I should be happy!"

"Aren't you happy now?"

"I don't know! I don't think so!"

"Has Mr. Rehnhjelm been here again?"

"No, sir, but he said he would come here to meet you about this time."

A long pause; the door opened and a shadow fell into the spider's net; it trembled, and the spider in the corner made a quick movement.

"Mr. Rehnhjelm?" said the melancholy head.

"Mr. Falander?"

"Glad to meet you! You came here before?"

"Yes; I arrived this afternoon and called at once. You'll guess my purpose. I want to go on the stage."

"Do you really? You amaze me!"

"Amaze you?"

"Yes! But why do you come to me first?"

"Because I know that you are one of our finest actors and because a mutual friend, Mr. Montanus, the sculptor, told me that you were in every way to be trusted."

"Did he? Well, what can I do for you?"

"I want advice."

"Won't you sit down?"

"If I may act as host...."

"I couldn't think of such a thing."

"Then as my own guest, if you don't mind."

"As you like! You want advice?--Hm! Shall I give you my candid opinion? Yes, of course! Then listen to me, take what I'm going to say seriously, and never forget that I said such and such a thing on such and such an evening; I'll be responsible for my words."

"Give me your candid opinion! I'm prepared for anything."

"Have you ordered your horses? No? Then do so and go home."

"Do you think me incapable of becoming an actor?"

"By no means! I don't think anybody in all the world incapable of that. On the contrary! Everybody, has more or less talent for acting."

"Very well then!"

"Oh! the reality is so different from your dream! You're young, your blood flows quickly through your veins, a thousand pictures, bright and beautiful like the pictures in a fairy tale throng your brain; you want to bring them to the light, show them to the world and in doing so experience a great joy--isn't that so?"

"Yes, yes, you're expressing my very thoughts!"

"I only supposed quite a common case--I don't suspect bad motives behind everything, although I have a bad opinion of most things! Well, then, this desire of yours is so strong, that you would rather suffer want, humiliate yourself, allow yourself to be sucked dry by vampires, lose your social reputation, become bankrupt, go to the dogs--than turn back. Am I right?"

"Yes! How well you know me!"

"I once knew a young man--I know him no longer, he is so changed! He was fifteen years old when he left the penitentiary which every community keeps for the children who commit the outrageous crime of being born, and where the innocent little ones are made to atone for their parents' fall from grace--for what should otherwise become of society? Please remind me to keep to the subject! On leaving it he went for five years to Upsala and read a terrible number of books; his brain was divided into six pigeon-holes in which six kinds of information, dates, names, a whole warehouseful of ready-made opinions, conclusions, theories, ideas and nonsense of every description, were stored like a general cargo. This might have been allowed to pass, for there's plenty of room in a brain. But he was also supposed to accept foreign thoughts, rotten, old thoughts, which others had chewed for a life-time, and which they now vomited. It filled him with nausea and--he was twenty years old--he went on the stage. Look at my watch! Look at the second-hand; it makes sixty little steps before a minute has passed; sixty times sixty before it is an hour; twenty-four times the number and it is a day; three hundred and sixty-five times and it is only a year. Now imagine ten years! Did you ever wait for a friend outside his house? The first quarter of an hour passes like a flash! The second quarter--oh! one doesn't mind waiting for a person one's fond of; the third quarter: he's not coming; the fourth: hope and fear; the fifth: one goes away but hurries back; the sixth: Damn it all! I've wasted my time for nothing! the seventh: having waited so long, I might just as well wait a little longer; the eighth: raging and cursing; the ninth: One goes home, lies down on one's sofa and feels as calm as if one were walking arm in arm with death. He waited for ten years! Ten years! Isn't my hair standing on end when I say ten years? Look at it! Ten years had passed before he was allowed to play a part. When he did, he had a tremendous success--at once. But his ten wasted years had brought him to the verge of insanity; he was mad that it hadn't happened ten years before. And he was amazed to find that happiness when at last he held it within his grasp didn't make him happy! And so he was unhappy."

"But don't you think he required the ten years for the study of his art?"

"How could he study it when he was never allowed to play? He was a laughing-stock, the scum of the playbill; the management said he was no good; and whenever he tried to find an engagement at another theatre, he was told that he had no repertoire."

"But why couldn't he be happy when his luck had turned?"

"Do you think an immortal soul is content with happiness? But why speak about it? Your resolution is irrevocable. My advice is superfluous. There is but one teacher: experience, and experience is as capricious, or as calculating, as a schoolmaster; some of the pupils are always praised; others are always beaten. You are born to be praised; don't think I'm saying this because you belong to a good family; I'm sufficiently enlightened not to make that fact responsible for good or evil; in this case it is a particularly negligible quantity, for on the stage a man stands or falls by his own merit. I hope you'll have an early success so that you won't be enlightened too soon; I believe you deserve it."

"But have you no respect for your art, the greatest and most sublime of all arts?"

"It's overrated like everything about which men write books. It's full of danger and can do much harm! A beautifully told lie can impress like a truth! It's like a mass meeting where the uncultured majority turns the scale. The more superficial the better--the worse, the better! I don't mean to say that it is superfluous."

"That can't be your opinion!"

"That is my opinion, but all the same, I may be mistaken."

"But have you really no respect for your art?"

"For mine? Why should I have more respect for my art than for anybody else's?"

"And yet you've played the greatest parts! You've played Shakespeare! You've played Hamlet! Have you never been touched in your inmost soul when speaking that tremendous monologue: To be or not to be...."

"What do you mean by tremendous?"

"Full of profound thought."

"Do explain yourself! Is it so full of profound thought to say: Shall I take my life or not? I should do so if I knew what comes hereafter, and everybody else would do the same thing; but as we don't know, we don't take our lives. Is that so very profound?"

"Not if expressed in those words."

"There you are! You've surely contemplated suicide at one time or another? Haven't you?"

"Yes; I suppose most people have."

"And why didn't you do it? Because, like Hamlet, you hadn't the courage, not knowing what comes after. Were you very profound then?"

"Of course I wasn't!"

"Therefore it's nothing but a banality! Or, expressed in one word it is--what is it, Gustav?"

"Stale!" came a voice from the clock, a voice which seemed to have waited for its cue.

"It's stale! But, supposing the poet had given us an acceptable supposition of a future life, that would have been something new."

"Is everything new excellent?" asked Rehnhjelm. Under the pressure of all the new ideas to which he had been listening, his courage was fast ebbing away.

"New ideas have one great merit--they are new! Try to think your own thoughts and you will always find them new! Will you believe me when I say that I knew what you wanted before you walked in at that door? And that I know what you are going to say next, seeing that we are discussing Shakespeare?"

"You are a strange man! I can't help confessing that you're right in what you're saying, although I don't agree with you."

"What do you say to Anthony's speech over the body of Cæsar? Isn't it remarkable?"

"That's exactly what I was going to speak about. You seem to be able to read my thoughts."

"Exactly what I was telling you just now. And is it so wonderful considering that all men think the same, or at any rate say the same thing? Well, what do you find in it of any great depth?"

"I can't explain in words...."

"Don't you think it a very commonplace piece of sarcastic oratory? One expresses exactly the reverse of one's meaning, and if the points are sharpened, they are bound to sting. But have you ever come across anything more beautiful than the dialogue between Juliet and Romeo after their wedding night?"

"Ah! You mean where he says, 'It is the nightingale and not the lark'...."

"What other passage could I mean? Doesn't every one quote that? It is a wonderful poetical conception on which the effect depends. Do you think Shakespeare's greatness depends on poetical conceptions?"

"Why do you break up everything I admire? Why do you take away my supports?"

"I am throwing away your crutches so that you may learn to walk without them. But let me ask you to keep to the point."

"You are not asking, you are compelling me to do so."

"Then you should steer clear of me. Your parents are against your taking this step?"

"Yes! How do you know?"

"Parents always are. Why overrate my judgment? You should never exaggerate anything."

"Do you think we should be happier if we didn't?"

"Happier? Hm! Do you know anybody who is happy? Give me your own opinion, not the conventional one."

"No!"

"If you don't believe anybody is happy, how can you postulate such a condition as being happier? Your parents are alive then? It's a mistake to have parents."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"Don't you think it unfair of an older generation to bring up a younger one in its antiquated inanities? Your parents expect gratitude from you, I suppose?"

"And doesn't one owe it to one's parents?"

"For what? For the fact that with the connivance of the law they have brought us into this world of misery, have half-starved us, beaten us, oppressed us, humiliated us, opposed all our wishes? Believe me, a revolution is needed--two revolutions! Why don't you take some absinth? Are you afraid of it? Look at the bottle! It's marked with the Geneva cross! It heals those who have been wounded on the battlefield, friends and foes alike; it lulls all pain, blunts the keen edge of thought, blots out memories, stifles all the nobler emotions which beguile humanity into folly, and finally extinguishes the light of reason. Do you know what the light of reason is? First, it is a phrase, secondly, it is a will-o'-the-wisp; one of those flames, you know, which play about spots where decaying fish have engendered phosphoretted hydrogen; the light of reason is phosphoretted hydrogen engendered by the grey brain substance. It is a strange thing. Everything good on this earth perishes and is forgotten. During my ten years' touring, and my apparent idleness, I have read through all the libraries one finds in small towns, and I find that all the twaddle and nonsense contained in the books is popular and constantly quoted; but the wisdom is neglected and pushed aside. Do remind me to keep to the point...."

The clock went through its diabolical tricks and thundered seven. The door was flung open and a man lurched noisily into the room. He was a man of about fifty, with a huge, heavy head, fixed between a pair of lumpy shoulders like a mortar on a gun carriage, with a permanent elevation of forty-five degrees, looking as if it were going to throw bombs at the stars. To judge from the face, the owner was capable of all possible crimes and impossible vices, but too great a coward to commit any. He immediately threw a bombshell at the melancholy man, and harshly ordered a glass of grog made of rum, in grammatical, uncouth language and in the voice of a corporal.

"This is the man who holds your fate in his hands," whispered the melancholy man to Rehnhjelm. "This is the tragedian, actor-manager, and my deadly foe."

Rehnhjelm could not suppress a shudder of disgust as he looked at the terrible individual who, after having exchanged a look of hatred with Falander, now closed the passage of arms by repeated expectorations.

The door opened again, and in glided the almost elegant figure of a middle-aged man with oily hair and a waxed moustache. He familiarly took his place by the side of the actor-manager, who gave him his middle finger on which shone a ring with a large cornelian.

"This is the editor of the Conservative paper, the defender of throne and altar. He has the run of the theatre and tries to seduce all the girls on whom the actor-manager hasn't cast his eye. He started his career as a Government official, but had to resign his post, I'm ashamed to tell you why," explained Falander. "But I am also ashamed to remain in the same room with these gentlemen, and, moreover, I have asked a few friends here, to-night, to a little supper in celebration of my recent benefit. If you care to spend the evening in bad company, among the most unimportant actors, two notorious ladies and an old blackguard, you are welcome at eight."

Rehnhjelm hesitated a moment before he accepted the invitation.

The spider on the wall climbed through his net as if to examine it and disappeared. The fly remained in its place a little longer. The sun sank behind the cathedral, the meshes of the net were undone as if they had never existed, and the aspens outside the window shivered. The great man and stage-director raised his voice and shouted--he had forgotten how to speak:

"Did you see the attack on me in the Weekly?"

"Don't take any notice of such piffle."

"Take no notice of it? What the devil do you mean? Doesn't everybody read it? Of course the whole town does! I should like to give him a horse-whipping! The impertinent rascal calls me affected and exaggerated."

"Bribe him! Don't make a fuss!"

"Bribe him? Haven't I tried it? But these Liberal journalists are damned queer. If you are on friendly terms with them, they'll give you a nice enough notice; but they won't be bribed however poor they may be."

"Oh! You don't go about it in the right way! You shouldn't do it openly, you could send them presents which they can turn into cash, or cash, if you like, but anonymously, and never refer to it."

"As I do in your case! No, old chap, the trick doesn't work in their case. I've tried it! It's hell to reckon with people with opinions."

"Who do you think was the victim in the devil's clutches, to change the subject?"

"That's nothing to do with me."

"Oh, but I think it has! Gustav! Who was the gentleman with Mr. Falander?"

"His name's Rehnhjelm! He wants to go on the stage."

"What do you say? He wants to go on the stage? He!" shouted the actor-manager.

"Yes, that's it!" replied Gustav.

"And, of course, act tragedy parts? And be Falander's protégé? And not come to me? And take away my parts? And honour us by playing here? And I know nothing about the whole matter? I? I? I'm sorry for him! It's a pity! Bad prospects for him. Of course, I shall patronize him! I'll take him under my wing! The strength of my wings may be felt even when I don't fly! They have a way of pinching now and then! He was a nice looking lad! A smart lad! Beautiful as Antinous! What a pity he didn't come to me first, I should have given him Falander's parts, every one of them! Oh! Oh! Oh! But it isn't too late yet! Hah! Let the devil corrupt him first! He's still a little too fresh! He really looked quite an innocent boy! Poor little chap! I'll only say 'God help him!'"

The sound of the last sentence was drowned in the noise made by the grog drinkers of the whole town who were now beginning to arrive. _

Read next: Chapter 15. The Theatrical Company "Phoenix"

Read previous: Chapter 13. Divine Ordinance

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