The Inferno by August Strindberg

Author:August Strindberg
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: August, Swedish -- 19th century -- Biography, Authors, Autobiographical fiction, 1849-1912, Strindberg
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2018-03-20T21:53:08+00:00

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The little town to which I now betook my­self lies in the ex­treme south of Sweden, on the sea­coast. It is an old pir­ates’ and smug­glers’ haunt, in which exot­ic traces of all parts of the world have been left by vari­ous voy­agers. My doc­tor’s house looks like a Buddhist cloister. The four wings of the one-storeyed house form a quad­rangle, in the centre of which the dome-shaped wood­shed re­sembles the tomb of Tam­er­lane at Samar­cand. The style of which the roof is built and faced with Chinese bricks re­calls the Farther East. An apathet­ic tor­toise crawls over the pave­ment and dis­ap­pears in a Nir­vana of in­nu­mer­able weeds. In the garden is a pa­goda-shaped sum­mer­house com­pletely over­grown by clematis.

In the whole of this cloister, with its count­less rooms, there lives only one per­son, the dir­ect­or of the dis­trict hos­pit­al. He is a wid­ower, sol­it­ary and in­de­pend­ent, and from the hard dis­cip­line of life has de­rived that strong and noble con­tempt of men which leads to a deep know­ledge of the van­ity of all things, one­self in­cluded.

The en­trance of this man in­to my life oc­curred in such an un­ex­pec­ted man­ner, that I am in­clined to as­sign it to the dra­mat­ic skill of a Deus ex mach­ina.

At our first greet­ing, on my ar­rival from Dieppe, he looks at me in­quir­ingly, and sud­denly asks, “You have a nervous ill­ness! Good! But that is not all. You look so strange that I do not re­cog­nise you. What have you been after? Dis­sip­a­tion, crime, lost il­lu­sions, re­li­gion? Tell me, old fel­low!”

But I tell him noth­ing spe­cial, for my first thought is one of sus­pi­cion. He is pre­ju­diced against me, has made in­quir­ies about me in some quarter, and wants to have me con­fined. I tell him about my sleep­less­ness, nervous­ness, and bad dreams, and then we talk of oth­er things.

In my room my at­ten­tion is ar­res­ted by the Amer­ic­an bed, with its four legs topped by four brass balls, which look like the con­duct­ors of an elec­tric ma­chine. Add to this an elast­ic mat­tress with cop­per springs, re­sem­bling Ruh­mkorff in­duc­tion coils, and one can eas­ily ima­gine my rage at this diabol­ic­al co­in­cid­ence. Be­sides, it is im­possible to ask for an­oth­er bed, as I might be sus­pec­ted of be­ing mad. In or­der to as­sure my­self that noth­ing is con­cealed above me, I mount in­to the loft over­head. There is only one ob­ject there, but it drives me al­most to des­per­a­tion. An enorm­ous wire-net rolled to­geth­er stands im­me­di­ately over my bed. One could not wish for a bet­ter ac­cu­mu­lat­or. If there is a thun­der­storm, such as is fre­quent here, the wire net­work will at­tract the light­ning, and I shall be ly­ing on the con­duct­or. But I do not ven­ture to say a word.

The first thing that dis­turbs me is the noise of a ma­chine. Since I have quit­ted the Hôtel Or­fila I have a roar­ing in my ears like the sound of a wa­ter­wheel. Doubt­ing the ob­ject­ive ex­ist­ence of this noise, I ask the cause of it, and learn that it is the print­ing-press close by.

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