Fair Haven and Foul Strand

August Strindberg

Description

Over the course of his remarkably varied literary career, Swedish writer August Strindberg produced plays, poetry, novels, essays, and memoirs. In the short stories collected in Fair Haven and Foul Strand, Strindberg's unparalleled skill as a creator of memorable characters shines through.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776534777
• Langue: English

Extrait

FAIR HAVEN AND FOUL STRAND
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AUGUST STRINDBERG
 
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Fair Haven and Foul Strand First published in 1914 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-477-7 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-478-4 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Fair Haven and Foul Strand The Doctor's First Story I II III IV The Doctor's Second Story I II III IV V VI Herr Bengt's Wife Endnotes
Fair Haven and Foul Strand
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The quarantine doctor was a man of five-and-sixty, well-preserved,short, slim and elastic, with a military bearing which recalled thefact that he had served in the Army Medical Corps. From birth hebelonged to the eccentrics who feel uncomfortable in life and are neverat home in it. Born in a mining district, of well-to-do but sternparents, he had no pleasant recollections of his childhood. His fatherand mother never spoke kindly, even when there was occasion to do so,but always harshly, with or without cause. His mother was one of thosestrange characters who get angry about nothing. Her anger arose withoutvisible cause, so that her son sometimes thought she was not right inher head, and sometimes that she was deaf and could not hear properly,for occasionally her response to an act of kindness was a box on theears. Therefore the boy became mistrustful towards people in general,for the only natural bond which should have united him to humanitywith tenderness, was broken, and everything in life assumed a hostileappearance. Accordingly, though he did not show it, he was always in aposture of defence.
At school he had friends, but since he did not know how sincerelyhe wished them well, he became submissive, and made all kinds ofconcessions in order to preserve his faith in real friendship. By sodoing he let his friends encroach so much that they oppressed him andbegan to tyrannise over him. When matters came to this point, he wenthis own way without giving any explanations. But he soon found a newfriend with whom the same story was repeated from beginning to end. Theresult was that later in life he only sought for acquaintances, andgrew accustomed to rely only upon himself. When he was confirmed, andfelt mature and responsible through being declared ecclesiastically ofage, an event happened which proved a turning-point in his life. Hecame home too late for a meal and his mother received him with a showerof blows from a stick. Without thinking, the young man raised his hand,and gave her a box on the ear. For a moment mother and son confrontedeach other, he expecting the roof to fall in or that he would be struckdead in some miraculous way. But nothing happened. His mother wentout as though nothing had occurred, and behaved afterwards as thoughnothing unusual had taken place between them.
Later on in life when this affair recurred to his memory, he wonderedwhat must have passed through her mind. She had cast one look to theceiling as though she sought there for something—an invisible handperhaps, or had she resigned herself to it, because she had at lastseen that it was a well-deserved retribution, and therefore not calledhim to account? It was strange, that in spite of desperate efforts toproduce pangs of conscience, he never felt any self-reproach on thesubject. It seemed to have happened without his will, and as though itmust happen.
Nevertheless, it marked a boundary-line in his life. The cord was cutand he fell out in life alone, away from his mother and domesticity. Hefelt as though he had been born without father and mother. Both seemedto him strangers whom he would have found it most natural to call Mrand Mrs So-and-so. At the University he at once noticed the differencebetween his lot and that of his companions. They had parents, brothers,and sisters; there was an order and succession in their life. They hadrelations to their fellow-men and obeyed secret social laws. They feltinstinctively that he did not belong to their fold.
When as a young doctor he acted on behalf of an army medical officerfor some time, he felt at once that he was not in his proper place, andso did the officers. The silent resistance which he offered from thefirst to their imperiousness and arbitrary ways marked him out as adissatisfied critic, and he was left to himself.
In the hospital it was the same. Here he perceived at once the fatefulpredestination of social election, those who were called and those whowere not called. It seemed as though the authorities could discernby scent those who were congenial to them. And so it was everywhere.He started a practice as a ladies' doctor, but had no luck, for hedemanded straightforward answers to his questions, and those he neverreceived. Then he became impatient, and was considered brutal. Hebecame a Government sanitary officer in a remote part of the country,and since he was now independent of his patients' favour, he troubledhimself still less about pleasing them. Presently he was transferred tothe quarantine service, and was finally stationed at Skamsund.
When he had come here, now seventeen years ago, he at once began tobe at variance with the pilots, who, as the only authorities on theisland, indulged themselves in many acts of arbitrariness towards theinhabitants. The quarantine doctor loved peace and quietness like othermen, but he had early learnt that warfare is necessary; and that itis no use simply to be passive as regards one's rights, but that onemust defend them every day and every hour of the day. Since he was anew-comer they tried to curtail his authority and deprive him of hissmall privileges. The chief pilot had a prescriptive right to halfthe land, but the quarantine doctor had in his bay a small promontorywhere the pilots used to moor their private boats and store theirfishing implements. The doctor first ascertained his legal rights inthe matter, and when he found out that he had the sole right of usingthe promontory and that the pilots could store their fishing-tackleelsewhere, he went to the chief pilot and gave them a friendlynotice to quit. When he saw that mere politeness was of no avail, hetook stronger measures, had the place cleared and fenced off by hisservants, turned it into a garden, and erected a simple pavilion init. The pilots hailed petitions on the Government, but the matter wasdecided in his favour. The result was a lifelong enmity between him andthe pilots. The quarantine doctor was shut in on his promontory andhimself placed in quarantine. There he had now remained for seventeenyears, but not in peace, for there was always strife. Either his dogfought with the pilots' dog, or their fowls came into his garden, orthey ran their boats ashore on each other's ground. Thus he was kept ina continual state of anger and excitement, and even if there ever wasquiet for a moment outside the house, inside there was the housekeeper.They had quarrelled for seventeen years, and once every week she hadpacked her things in order to go. She was a tyrant and insisted thather master should have sugar in all his sauces, even with fresh cod.During all the seventeen years she had not learnt how to boil an eggbut wished the doctor to learn to eat half-raw eggs, which he hated.Sometimes he got tired of quarrelling, and then everything went on inKristin's old way. He would eat raw potatoes, stale bread, sour creamand such-like for a whole week and admire himself as a Socrates; thenhis self-respect awoke and he began to storm again. He had to stormin order to get the salt-cellar placed on the table, to get the doorsshut, to get the lamps filled with oil. The lamp-chimneys and wicks hehad to clean himself, for that she could not learn.
"You are a cow, Kristin! You are a wretch who cannot value kindness.Do you like me to storm? Do you know that I abominate myself when Iam obliged to get so excited. You make me bad, and you are a poisonousworm. I wish you had never been born, and lay in the depths of theearth. You are not a human being for you cannot learn; you are a cow,that you are! You will go? Yes, go to the deuce, where you came from!"
But Kristin never went. Once indeed she got as far as the steamerbridge, but turned round and entered the wood, whence the doctor had tofetch her home.
The doctor's only acquaintance was the postmaster at Fagervik, an oldcomrade of his student days, who came over every Saturday evening.Then the two drank and gossiped till past midnight and the postmasterremained till Sunday morning. They certainly did not look at life andtheir fellow-men from the same point of view, for the postmaster wasa decided member of the Left Party, and the doctor was a sceptic, buttheir talk suited each other so well, that their conversation was likea part-song, or piece of music, for two voices, in which the voices,although varying, yet formed a harmony. The doctor, with his wider,mental outlook, sometimes expressed disapproval of his companion'ssentiments somewhat as follows:
"You party-men are like one-eyed cats. Some see only with theleft eye, others with the right, and therefore you can never seestereoscopically, but always flat and one-sidedly."
They were both great newspaper readers and followed the course of allquestions with eagerness. The most burning question, however, was thereligious one, for the political ones were settled by votes in theReichstag and came to an end, but the religious questions never ended.The postmaster hated pietists and temperance advocates.
"Why the deuce do you hate the pietists?" t