Fair Haven and Foul Strand

by August Strindberg

"Aha!" he thought. "This is her plan to make me listen to a curtain-lecture in her room." He rang for the servant. "Is my wife at home?"

"No, she came home at nine, but went out again, in order to meet you, sir."

"Very well, open the door of my wife's room." That was done, but the door of his room remained locked, as he had locked it himself in the morning. Then he made his decision, closed the outer door of the flat, and took possession of his wife's room. After an hour she came and knocked. Her husband answered through the closed door: "You can take my room; I hope you can open it."

When she found she could not she began to form suspicions and thought he had shut himself in with someone. She naturally would not endure the scandal but sent for the police, on the pretext that a thief had been there, and perhaps was still in the room. The police came; the Norwegian dressed himself and admitted them, and they broke open the door between the two rooms. At the same time the door leading to the corridor was opened. A servantmaid said she thought she had heard steps inside the room. Before the open window stood a chair so placed as though someone had stood on it in order to climb on the roof. A thief then (or a woman) had clambered on the roof. The police went on it with lanterns, and some of the inmates of the boarding-house followed. A shadow moved by a chimney. A cry rose: "There he is!" The police declared that they could not climb the steep slate roof, and advised them to send for the fire brigade. "But that costs fifty crowns," objected the Norwegian. His wife signed a requisition for it, but her husband tore it in two. Meanwhile a crowd had collected in the street; the neighbouring roofs were also full of spectators. A cry was raised: "There he is!" They had seized a fellow who had joined the searchers with the good intention of catching the thief. A maid recollected that in the afternoon a traveller had arrived and was sleeping in a neighbouring attic from which he could have easily got into the room. The police made their way into the attic, searched through his papers and found nothing. All the attics were ransacked without result, and at midnight the police departed.

Then the young wife wished to begin with a whole series of explanations, but her husband was tired of the whole nonsense and could explain nothing. Therefore, since nothing more was to be done, he carried his wife into her room and shut the door between them for the second time that day!

This demoniacal adventure was never cleared up. The Norwegian did not believe there had been a thief, for nothing was missing from the rooms; he thought that his young wife, who had seen many plays, had stuck something in the lock, and that then devils had continued the performance of the comedy. He did not try to elicit what his wife thought, for then he would have been entangled in a web of necessary lies. He therefore made a stroke of erasure through the whole affair. The next morning they were again good friends, but not quite so good as before.

How disunion between a married pair arises has not yet been explained. They love one another, only flourish in each other's society, have not different opinions, and suffer when they are separated; their whole united self-interest enjoins them to keep the peace, because it is they especially who suffer when it is not kept. Nevertheless, a little cloud arises, one knows not whence; all merits are transformed into faults, beauty becomes ugliness and they confront each other like two hissing snakes; they wish each other miles away, although they know that if they are separated for a moment there begins the pain of longing, which is greater than any other pain in life.

Here physiology and psychology are non-plussed. Swedenborg in his "Conjugal Love" is the only one who has even approached the solution of the problem, and he has seen that for that purpose higher factors must be taken into consideration than come into the mental purview of most people.

This is why a married pair who love each other are obliged again and again to wonder why they hate one another, i.e. why they flee one another although they seek one another. Married people who are slightly acquainted with Ganot's "Physics" may note the resemblance of this phenomenon to that of the electricised elder-pith balls, but this will not make them either wiser or happier. Love indeed presents all the symptoms of lunacy, hallucination, or seeing beauty where none exists; profoundest melancholy, varying with extreme hilarity without any transition stage; unreasonable hate; distortions of each other's real opinions (so-called "misunderstandings"); persecution mania, when one believes the other is setting spies and laying snares; sometimes indeed attempts on each other's life, especially with poison. All this has reasons which lie below the surface. The question arises, whether through a married pair's living together, the evil thoughts of one, while still unripened, are not quite clearly apprehended and interpreted by the other, as though they had already entered into consciousness, with the express purpose of being carried into action. Nothing annoys a man more than to have his secret thoughts read, and that only a married pair can do to each other. They cannot conceal their dark secrets; one anticipates the other's intentions, and therefore they easily form the idea that they spy on each other, as indeed they actually do. Therefore they fear no one's look so much as each other's, and are so defenceless against one another. Each is accompanied by a judge who condemns the evil desire while yet in the germ, although no one is answerable for his thoughts to the civic law.

Accordingly, in marrying, one enters into a relation which stands a grade higher than ordinary life, makes severer demands, more exacting claims, and operates with more finely developed spiritual resources. Therefore the Christian Church made marriage a sacrament, and regarded it rather as a purgatory than a pleasure. Swedenborg in his explanation of it, also inclines this way.