The Red Room, August Strindberg [the mitten read aloud txt] 📗

Falk is married?”

“Is he? Whom did he marry?”

“A schoolmistress!”

“Ugh! A woman with blue spectacles and short hair!”

And the questioner had all the information he wanted.

If the answer had been: “He’s married old Kochstrom’s daughter,” the second question would have been: “Did he get any money with her?”

The world asks no further questions, and everything would be all right⁠—if this were all. But the world demands that a couple which has three times given the clergyman the trouble to read the banns and the community to listen to them; which has forced its fellow-creatures to engage in genealogical research and send a reporter to the wedding⁠—the world demands that such a couple shall be happy⁠—woe to it if it is not!

Supposing that on coming home from school, tired with her work, angry at a slight, depressed because some of her efforts have proved a failure, she should meet a friend in the street who takes her hand and says: “You don’t look too happy, Elizabeth,” then woe to him!

Supposing that on leaving his office, in despair because he has been overlooked instead of promoted, he should meet a friend who finds him looking depressed, then woe to her!

Unhappy people, if you dare to be anything but happy!

It was a winter evening two or three years later; she was bending over her writing desk, correcting copybooks, he was sitting in his room computing assessments of property. The pens were scribbling, the clock was ticking, and the teakettle singing. Whenever he looked up from his documents at her sweet face, she raised her eyes, their glances met, and they nodded to each other as if they had been parted for a long time. And they continued working.

But finally he grew tired of his work.

“Talk to me a little,” he pleaded.

And she eagerly complied with his request.

“But what do they talk about?”

The scoffer Borg once asked that question, when he declared matrimony to be an impossibility from the point of view of natural science.

He laid down the proposition that the moment must come when every subject had been discussed, when each partner knew every thought and opinion of the other, and when absolute silence was bound to reign.

The fool!

Endnotes

Since the great reorganization of the public offices, this description is no longer true to life. ↩

Colophon

The Red Room
was published in 1879 by
August Strindberg.
It was translated from Swedish in 1913 by
Ellie Schleussner.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2011 by
Charlene Taylor, Ron Stephens, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Portrait of August Strindberg,
a painting completed in 1905 by
Richard Bergh.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
July 7, 2017, 8:10 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/august-strindberg/the-red-room/ellie-schleussner.

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