Fair Haven and Foul Strand

by August Strindberg

The Swede sat there, and probably the gossip regarding the Norwegian's engagement had caused him to bring his lady friend with him. She was a tall fragile-looking Swede who seemed to be emaciated by illness; she had a mournful, despairing sort of voice, a drawling accent and drooping eyes. As an artist, although obscure she was "emancipated" as the phrase is, but not free from the feminine vanity of being able to appear with a number of male hangers-on, whom she boasted of having made conquests of. Her thoughts had long turned upon the Norwegian. When they met, she found him novel and full of surprises. At the same time he brought with him the fire of his newly kindled flame. Within half an hour she had neither eyes nor ears for her old friend. When at last she snapped at him, he stood up and asked her to come with him. "You can go," she answered. And he went.

In less than an hour she had broken with her friend of many years and formed a tie with the Norwegian who an hour and a half before had kissed his fiancée at parting. He asked himself how that was possible, but took no time to reflect on it. She possessed the advantage of being able to understand him completely; he was able to speak out his thoughts after a long imprisonment; he needed only to give a hint in order to be understood. She drank in the eloquence of his words, seemed to follow the sudden leaps of his thought, and probably received answers to many questions which had long occupied her mind. But she was ugly and ill-dressed, and he sometimes felt ashamed at the thought that he might be suspected of being her admirer. Then he felt an unspeakable sympathy with her which she interpreted to mean that she had made a conquest of him.

They went out into the town and wandered from café to café, continually talking. Sometimes his conscience pricked him, sometimes he felt a repulsion to her, because she had been faithless to her friend. Faithlessness indeed was the link which united them, and they felt as if Destiny had driven them to commit the same wrong on the same evening. She had at once inquired about his engagement and he had at first given an evasive answer; but as she had continued to ask with comrade-like sympathy he had told her the whole story. But in doing so he spoke of his love, he became enthusiastic; she warmed herself at the glow and seemed to be a reflection of "the other." So the two images coincided, and the absent maiden, who should have been a barrier between them, was the one who brought them near each other.

The next day they met again, and she never seemed tired of discussing his engagement. She was in a critical mood and began to express doubts whether he would be happy. But she went carefully to work, showed indulgence, and only attempted purely objective psychological analysis. She also understood how to withdraw a severe expression at the right time in order not to frighten him away.

Now as ill-luck would have it, he received at noon a letter from his fiancée which was the answer to the stormy one he had written when they parted. In her letter she only wrote of business matters, gave good advice in a superior tone, in a word was pedantic and narrow-minded. Not a trace of the pretty young girl was to be found in the letter. This put him out of humour and aroused his disgust to such a degree that when he met his new friend, with a ruthless joy in destruction he proceeded to analyse his fiancée under the microscope. The Swede was not backward with her feminine knowledge of feminine secrets to put the worst interpretation on all the details which he narrated. He had cast his lamb to the she-wolf, who tore the prey asunder while he looked on.

At the beginning of April, that is three weeks later, the Norwegian sat in the café one afternoon with Lais, as she was called, after she had become the friend of the company in general, not of anyone in particular. He sat there with a resigned air, "prepared for everything" as usual. It had been difficult to keep his engagement alive by means of the post, and it had become still more uncertain after the news had reached her father's ears and brought him to despair. He was a Minister of State, lived at Odense, went to Court when he was in the capital, and wore twelve orders. He would rather shoot himself than be the father-in-law of a notorious nihilist. In order to put an end to the affair the old man had dictated his conditions, which were of course impossible.

The Norwegian must pay all his debts and give a guarantee that he would have a regular and sufficient income. Since a writer of plays has nothing guaranteed, but is dependent on popular favour, the wooer considered his proposal withdrawn, and regarded himself as unfettered, and indeed he was so. Moreover, thus humiliating correspondence about pecuniary matters had cooled his devotion, for love letters which were full of figures and motherly advice, practical items of information about publishers and so on, were not inspiring to read for a literary free-lance. And as the correspondence slackened, and finally ceased, he considered himself entirely free.

With her usual vanity, Lais had ascribed to herself the honour of having dissolved his engagement, although there was no reason for her doing so. Moreover, in the last few days a circumstance had happened which was fortunate for his future. Another friend of Lais had arrived from the north, and as he was one of her admirers she had such assiduous court paid to her that she did not notice how the Norwegian was slackening in his attentions.

In order to celebrate the arrival of the newcomer, the last few days had been a continual feast, and now they were in that strange condition, when the soul is, so to speak, loosed from its bearings and utters its thoughts without distinction and without regard.

Lais was possessed by the not unusual idea that she was irresistible, and liked to produce the impression that all her male friends, even those who had dropped her, were dismissed admirers. Now she wished to show her newly arrived friend how well she was provided with them and began to skirmish with the Norwegian. Since he had long cherished towards her the hate which is born of imprudently bestowed confidences, he seized the opportunity to bring about the breach without scandal, in a word to dispose of her without disgrace to either of them. Under some pretext, or perhaps with a foreboding that something was about to happen, he took his leave and left the other two together. But Lais pressed him to remain, probably to gain an opportunity of leaving him alone, when she went out with her friend. Here, however, she had made a miscalculation. Making a gesture of invitation to the new-comer, the Norwegian went out after saying the last word: "Now I leave you alone!"