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Page 112
STRANGER. No. You can never find out who you've married. Never get
hold of her--it seems she's no one. Tell me--what is woman?
TEMPTER. I don't know! Perhaps a larva or a chrysalis, out of whose
trance-like life a man one day will be created. She seems a child,
but isn't one; she is a sort of child, and yet not like one. Drags
downward, when the man pulls up. Drags upward, when the man pulls
down.
STRANGER. She always wants to disagree with her husband; always has
a lot of sympathy for what he dislikes; is crudest beneath the
greatest superficial refinement; the wickedest amongst the best.
And yet, whenever I've been in love, I've always grown more
sensitive to the refinements of civilisation.
TEMPTER. You, I dare say. What about her?
STRANGER. Oh, whilst our love was growing _she_ was always
developing backwards. And getting cruder and more wicked.
TEMPTER. Can you explain that?
STRANGER. No. But once, when I was trying to find the solution to
the riddle by disagreeing with myself, I took it that she absorbed
my evil and I her good.
TEMPTER. Do you think woman's particularly false?
STRANGER. Yes and no. She seeks to hide her weakness but that only
means that she's ambitious and has a sense of shame. Only whores
are honest, and therefore cynical.
TEMPTER. Tell me some more about her that's good.
STRANGER. I once had a woman friend. She soon noticed that when I
drank I looked uglier than usual; so she begged me not to. I
remember one night we'd been talking in a caf� for many hours. When
it was nearly ten o'clock, she begged me to go home and not to
drink any more. We parted, after we'd said goodnight. A few days
later I heard she'd left me only to go to a large party, where she
drank till morning. Well, I said, as in those days I looked for all
that was good in women, she meant well by me, but had to pollute
herself for business reasons.
TEMPTER. That's well thought out; and, as a view, can be defended.
She wanted to make you better than herself, higher and purer, so
that she could look up to you! But you can find an equally good
explanation for that. A wife's always angry and out of humour with
her husband; and the husband's always kind and grateful to his
wife. He does all he can to make things easy for her, and she does
all she can to torture him.
STRANGER. That's not true. Of course it may sometimes appear to be
so. I once had a woman friend who shifted all the defects that she
had on to me. For instance, she was very much in love with herself,
and therefore called me the most egoistical of men. She drank, and
called me a drunkard; she rarely changed her linen and said I was
dirty; she was jealous, even of my men friends, and called me
Othello. She was masterful and called me Nero. Niggardly and called
me Harpagon.
TEMPTER. Why didn't you answer her?
STRANGER. You know why very well! If I'd made clear to her what she
really was, I'd have lost her favour that moment--and it was
precisely her favour I wanted to keep.
TEMPTER. _A tout prix_! Yes, that's the source of degradation! You
grow accustomed to holding your tongue, and at last find yourself
caught in a tissue of falsehoods.
STRANGER. Wait! Don't you agree that married people so mix their
personalities that they can no longer distinguish between meum and
tuum, no longer remain separate from one another, or cannot tell
their own weaknesses from those of the other. My jealous friend,
who called me Othello, took me for herself, identified me with
herself.
TEMPTER. That sounds conceivable.
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