The Red Room by August Strindberg

Author:August Strindberg
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Stockholm (Sweden) -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2017-07-07T20:10:32+00:00

XV The Theatrical Company “Phœnix”

On the fol­low­ing day Rehnhjelm awoke late in the morn­ing in his hotel bed. Memor­ies of the pre­vi­ous night arose like phantoms and crowded round him.

He saw again the pretty, closely shuttered room, richly dec­or­ated with flowers, in which the orgy had been held. He saw the act­ress, a lady of thirty-five who, thanks to a younger rival, had to play the parts of old wo­men; he saw her en­ter­ing the room, in a frenzy of rage and des­pair at the fresh hu­mi­li­ations heaped upon her, throw­ing her­self full length on the sofa, drink­ing glass after glass of wine and, when the tem­per­at­ure of the room rose, open­ing her bod­ice, as a man opens his waist­coat after a too-plen­ti­ful din­ner.

He saw again the old comedian who, after a very short ca­reer, had been de­graded from play­ing lead to tak­ing ser­vant’s parts; he now en­ter­tained the trades­people of the town with his songs, and, above all, with the stor­ies of his short glory.

But, in the very heart of the clouds of smoke and his drunken vis­ions Rehnhjelm saw the pic­ture of a young girl of six­teen, who had ar­rived with tears in her eyes, and told the mel­an­choly Falander that the great actor-man­ager had again been per­se­cut­ing her with in­sult­ing pro­pos­als, vow­ing that in fu­ture, un­less she would ac­cede to them, she should play only the very smal­lest parts.

And he saw Falander, listen­ing to every­body’s troubles and com­plaints, breath­ing on them un­til they van­ished; he watched him, re­du­cing in­sults, hu­mi­li­ations, kicks, ac­ci­dents, want, misery, and grief to noth­ing; watched him teach­ing his friends and warn­ing them never to ex­ag­ger­ate any­thing, least of all their troubles.

But again and again his thoughts re­ver­ted to the little girl of six­teen with the in­no­cent face, with whom he had made friends, and who had kissed him when they par­ted, hun­grily, pas­sion­ately. To be quite can­did, her kiss had taken him by sur­prise. But what was her name?

He rose, and stretch­ing out his hand for the wa­ter-bottle, he seized a tiny handker­chief, spot­ted with wine. Ah! Here was her name, in­ef­face­able, writ­ten in mark­ing ink—Agnes! He kissed the handker­chief twice on the clean­est spot and put it into his box.

When he had care­fully dressed him­self, he went out to see the actor-man­ager, whom he con­fid­ently ex­pec­ted to find at the theatre between twelve and three.

To be on the safe side, he ar­rived at the of­fice at twelve o’clock; he found no one there but a porter, who asked him what he wanted and put him­self at his ser­vice.

Rehnhjelm did not think that he would need his help, and asked to see the actor-man­ager; he was told that the actor-man­ager was at the present mo­ment at the fact­ory, but would no doubt come to the of­fice in the course of the af­ter­noon.

Rehnhjelm sup­posed “fact­ory” to be a slang ex­pres­sion for theatre, but the porter ex­plained to him that the actor-man­ager was also a match man­u­fac­turer. His brother-in-law, the cash­ier, was a post of­fice

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