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Page 78
BEGGAR. It's summer there.
STRANGER. And growing light! (A clear beam of light falls on the
foot-bridge.)
BEGGAR. Yes. It's light there, and dark here.
STRANGER. And who are they? (Three children, dressed is summer
clothing, two girls and a boy, come on to the bridge from the
right.) Ho! My children! (The children stop to listen, and then
look at the STRANGER without seeming to recognise him. The STRANGER
calls.) Gerda! Erik! Thyra! It's your father! (The children appear
to recognise him; they turn away to the left.) They don't know me.
They don't want to know me.
(A man and a woman enter from the right. The children dance of to
the left and disappear. The STRANGER falls on his face on the
ground.)
BEGGAR. Something like that was to be expected. Such things happen.
Get up again!
STRANGER (raising himself up). Where am I? Where have I been? Is it
spring, winter or summer? In what century am I living, in what
hemisphere? Am I a child or an old man, male or female, a god or a
devil? And who are you? Are you, you; or are you me? Are those my
own entrails that I see about me? Are those stars or bundles of
nerves in my eye; is that water, or is it tears? Wait! Now I'm
moving forward in time for a thousand years, and beginning to
shrink, to grow heavier and to crystallise! Soon I'll be
re-created, and from the dark waters of Chaos the Lotus flower will
stretch up her head towards the sun and say: it is I! I must have
been sleeping for a few thousand years; and have dreamed I'd
exploded and become ether, and could no longer feel, no longer
suffer, no longer be joyful; but had entered into peace and
equilibrium. But now! Now! I suffer as much as if I were all
mankind. I suffer and have no right to complain. ...
BEGGAR. Then suffer, and the more you suffer the earlier pain will
leave you.
STRANGER. No. Mine are eternal sufferings. ...
BEGGAR. And only a minute's passed.
STRANGER. I can't bear it.
BEGGAR. Then you must look for help.
STRANGER. What's coming now? Isn't it the end yet?
(It grows light above the bridge. CAESAR comes in and throws
himself from the parapet; then the DOCTOR appears on the right,
with bare head and a wild look. He behaves as if he would throw
himself into the stream too.)
STRANGER. He's revenged himself so thoroughly, that he awakes no
qualms of conscience! (The DOCTOR goes out, left. The SISTER
enters, right, as if searching for someone.) Who's that?
BEGGAR. His unmarried sister, who's unprovided for, and has now no
home to go to. She's grown desperate since her brother was driven
out of his wits by sorrow and went to pieces.
STRANGER. That's a harder fate. Poor creature, what can one do?
Even if I felt her sufferings, would that help her?
BEGGAR. No. It wouldn't.
STRANGER. Why do qualms of conscience come after, and not
beforehand? Can you help me over that?
BEGGAR. No. No one can. Let us go on.
STRANGER. Where to?
BEGGAR. Come with me.
Curtain.
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