



Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
(From images generously made available by the Internet
Archive.)





FAIR HAVEN

AND

FOUL STRAND

BY

AUGUST STRINDBERG

NEW YORK

MCBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY

MCMXIV




CONTENTS

FAIR HAVEN AND FOUL STRAND
THE DOCTOR'S FIRST STORY
THE DOCTOR'S SECOND STORY
HERR BENGT'S WIFE




FAIR HAVEN AND FOUL STRAND


The quarantine doctor was a man of five-and-sixty, well-preserved,
short, slim and elastic, with a military bearing which recalled the
fact that he had served in the Army Medical Corps. From birth he
belonged to the eccentrics who feel uncomfortable in life and are never
at home in it. Born in a mining district, of well-to-do but stern
parents, he had no pleasant recollections of his childhood. His father
and mother never spoke kindly, even when there was occasion to do so,
but always harshly, with or without cause. His mother was one of those
strange characters who get angry about nothing. Her anger arose without
visible cause, so that her son sometimes thought she was not right in
her head, and sometimes that she was deaf and could not hear properly,
for occasionally her response to an act of kindness was a box on the
ears. Therefore the boy became mistrustful towards people in general,
for the only natural bond which should have united him to humanity
with tenderness, was broken, and everything in life assumed a hostile
appearance. Accordingly, though he did not show it, he was always in a
posture of defence.

At school he had friends, but since he did not know how sincerely
he wished them well, he became submissive, and made all kinds of
concessions in order to preserve his faith in real friendship. By so
doing he let his friends encroach so much that they oppressed him and
began to tyrannise over him. When matters came to this point, he went
his own way without giving any explanations. But he soon found a new
friend with whom the same story was repeated from beginning to end. The
result was that later in life he only sought for acquaintances, and
grew accustomed to rely only upon himself. When he was confirmed, and
felt mature and responsible through being declared ecclesiastically of
age, an event happened which proved a turning-point in his life. He
came home too late for a meal and his mother received him with a shower
of blows from a stick. Without thinking, the young man raised his hand,
and gave her a box on the ear. For a moment mother and son confronted
each other, he expecting the roof to fall in or that he would be struck
dead in some miraculous way. But nothing happened. His mother went
out as though nothing had occurred, and behaved afterwards as though
nothing unusual had taken place between them.

Later on in life when this affair recurred to his memory, he wondered
what must have passed through her mind. She had cast one look to the
ceiling as though she sought there for something--an invisible hand
perhaps, or had she resigned herself to it, because she had at last
seen that it was a well-deserved retribution, and therefore not called
him to account? It was strange, that in spite of desperate efforts to
produce pangs of conscience, he never felt any self-reproach on the
subject. It seemed to have happened without his will, and as though it
must happen.

Nevertheless, it marked a boundary-line in his life. The cord was cut
and he fell out in life alone, away from his mother and domesticity. He
felt as though he had been born without father and mother. Both seemed
to him strangers whom he would have found it most natural to call Mr
and Mrs So-and-so. At the University he at once noticed the difference
between his lot and that of his companions. They had parents, brothers,
and sisters; there was an order and succession in their life. They had
relations to their fellow-men and obeyed secret social laws. They felt
instinctively that he did not belong to their fold.

When as a young doctor he acted on behalf of an army medical officer
for some time, he felt at once that he was not in his proper place, and
so did the officers. The silent resistance which he offered from the
first to their imperiousness and arbitrary ways marked him out as a
dissatisfied critic, and he was left to himself.

In the hospital it was the same. Here he perceived at once the fateful
predestination of social election, those who were called and those who
were not called. It seemed as though the authorities could discern
by scent those who were congenial to them. And so it was everywhere.
He started a practice as a ladies' doctor, but had no luck, for he
demanded straightforward answers to his questions, and those he never
received. Then he became impatient, and was considered brutal. He
became a Government sanitary officer in a remote part of the country,
and since he was now independent of his patients' favour, he troubled
himself still less about pleasing them. Presently he was transferred to
the quarantine service, and was finally stationed at Skamsund.

When he had come here, now seventeen years ago, he at once began to
be at variance with the pilots, who, as the only authorities on the
island, indulged themselves in many acts of arbitrariness towards the
inhabitants. The quarantine doctor loved peace and quietness like other