"You want to talk with me, doctor?" "Have you already met Mrs. Vogler?" "No, not yet." "Then I will Briefly tell you about her and why you were appointed to look after her." "As you knows, Mrs. Vogler is actress, and played in the last performance of Electra." "In the middle of the scene she became silent... and she looked around surprised." "She remained shut up during a minute." "Afterwards she apologized her colleagues saying that she had got the giggles." "Next day the called from the theater asking if... she had forgotten her rehearsal." "The house keeper found her still in bed." "She was wide-awake, but she did not respond to his questions and did not move." "She has been like that three months" "She has gone through all the possible examinations." "The result is clear:" "she is totally healthy, as much physical as psychically." "Even a hysterical reaction she doesn't even have." "Do you have any questions, sister Alma?" "If not?" "You can go to Mrs. Vogler now." "Good morning, Mrs. Vogler." "I am the sister Alma." "I will be looking after you." "Well, I will tell you something about myself." "I am 25 years old and I am engaged." "I am nurse for two years." "My parents have a farm." "My mother also was nurse before marrying." "Maybe I will go and get your dinner." "It looked really delicious today." "Liver fried and Macedonian of fruits." "It looked really delicious today." "Another pillow?" "Is that comfortable?" "Sister Amal." "Which is your first impression?" "I do not know what to say, doctor." "First its face seemed gentle, almost childish." "But then you see her eyes and everything." "She has got such a strick look, I think." "Well, maybe I shouldn't..." "What did you want to say?" "sister Amal?" "I thought to give up." "Did she frighten you?" "Not exactly." "I just thought that Mrs. Vogler... should have a nurse with more experience." " I may be mot able to cope with her." " In what way?" " Mentally." " Mentally?" "If she won;t speak or move because she decides Not to" "Which it must be if she isn't ill..." "And?" "...Then it shows that she is mentally very strong." "I might not be equal to it." "I thought you might like to look at the twilight, Mrs.." "Vogler." "I will close them later." "Shall I turn on the radio?" "I think there is a play." "Forgive me, my darling." "Oh, you must forgive me." "your forgiveness is all I crave. for give and I..." "What are you laughing at, Mrs. Vogler?" "Is the actress so funny?" "What do your know about mercy?" "What do you know?" "What do your know about mercy?" "I do not know much about acting, Mrs. Vogler." "I like films and theater but I don't go very often." "I feel a great admiration for artists." "I believe that the art is very important in the life." "Especially for people with problems." "I shouldn't have talked with you like this." "I slide on I freeze." "I'll try to find some music." "It that alright?" "Good night, Mrs. Vogler." "sleeps well." "Damn it!" "How strange." "You can go around as you please..." "Do almost anything you like." "I will marry Karl-Henrik and we will have a few children whom I will raise." "that is all determined." "It is inside me." "There is nothing to worry about." "It is so safe." "I have a work that I like and with that I am happy." "That is another good thing, though in a different way." "But it is good." "It is good." "I wonder myself what's actually wrong with her?" "Elisabet Vogler." "Elisabet." "today, between the artilleries American and survietnamitas and the desperate one guerrilla of the Vietcong that she attacked the vital coastal base." "Airplanes of Navy and American Air Force in Quang they are bombing the positions of the Vietcong army in Tay Ninh." "Today the airplanes have left in than 48 missions more bombing." "In other actions, several battalions of troops of the U.S.A., they disembarked yesterday in the coast near?" "In this zone they were captured more than 2,000 vietcongs in the greater operation of the three last months." "Today the street disturbances?" "?" "that they have commanded to the courts to more than 141 vietcongs?" "It wants that it opens the letter to him, Mrs.." "Vogler?" "would you like me to oepn the letter?" "Shall I read it?" ""Dear Elisabet: since I can't see you, I write to you." "You don't have to read it if you don' want to." "I cannot avoid to look for this contact with you, since I am tormented continuously by a question:" "I have hurt to you of some way?" "I have hurt you without knowing it?" "Has some misunderstanding come between us? "" "Do you want me to read more?" ""As far as I know we were happy." "We never had been so close." "You remember when you said:" ""Now I understand what is the marriage "?" "You have taught me?"" "I can't see what is says." "Yes. now I can see you've taught me that we must look at each other, like we were two anxious children Full of good will and the best intentions, but..." "But ruled by forces that we only controlled partially." "You remember saying all this?" "We walked by the forest and you stopped and grabbed at my belt."" "Also there is a photography with the letter." "It is a photography of your son." "I do not know if?" "you would like to see it, Mrs. Vogler?" "It seems a very sweet boy." "I have been thinking, Elisabet, and I do not think it's a good idea for you to stay at the hospital any longer." "I believe that it is detrimental." "As you do not want to return to home, you and the sister Amal you can go to my house of the coast, eh?" "I understand all right." "The hopeless dream of being." "not to seem, but of being." "at everywaking moment." "alert." "At the same time," "What you are with others and what you are alone." "the vertigo feeling and the constant hunger to be exposed," "To be seen through... perhaps even wiped out." "Each word a lie, each gesture a falsification, each smile a grimace." "To commit suicide?" "Oh, no!" "That is horrible." "You would not do that." "But you can refuse to move refuse to talk." "At least you don't have to lie then." "You can shut yourself in and stop playing games." "Thus you will not have to... show any faces and wrong gestures" "That's what you think." "But, you see?" "The reality it is diablical, your hiding place is not water-tight." "The life tickles in from outside." "You are forced to react." "Nobody question if it is real or unreal, if you are true or false." "The question only matters in the theater." "And hardly even there." "I understand to you, Elisabet." "I understand that you are in silence, that you are immovable, that you have created of apathy a brilliant play." "I understand to you and I admire you." "I believe that you should go on until you lose yur interest, until it stops being interesting." "Then you will be able to leave it." "...like you've left all your other parts." "Mrs. Vogler and the sister they went to the doctor's summer house." "by end of summer." "To be near the sea produced a favorable effect in the actress." "The apathy starts to disappear, thanks to long walks, fishing, cooking, letter writing and other entertainments." "The sister Alma enjoyed her rustic isolation... and takes good care of her patient." "You do not know that it gives bad luck to compare the hands?" "Elisabet," "Can I read you a little bit from my book?" "Or I am bothering to you?" "It says here:" ""All the anxiety that we took with us, our hopeless dreams, the incomprehensible cruelty, our fear to the extinction, painful inner glance a our earthly condition, they have made out hope and any other salvation." "The cries of our faith and the doubt against the dark and silence are one of the most terrible proofs of our desolation and ourfightening awareness."" "You think it is like that?" "I do not think it's true." "Cambiar?" "My worse trouble is the laziness and later I have remorses." "Karl-Henrik nags me by my lack of ambition." "He says that I walk that way like a sleepwalker." "I believe that it is unfair." "In the final test I was of the best ones of my group." "But surely he means something else." "You?" "Pardon." "You know what I think sometimes?" "In the hospital where I graduate there is a home for old nurses." "Those who have been nurses for all of their lives." "Always in uniform." "They live in their small rooms." "Imag¨ªnate all your life dedicated to something." "I mean, believing in something, fulfilling something, thinking that your life has a meaning." "To me I like the things." "To hold something firm, without importarte nothing." "It would have to become." "To mean something for the others." "You do not think the same?" "I know that it seems childish, but I believe in it." "God mine, what a down pour!" "Ah, yes!" "He was married." "We maintained a relation of five years." "Later he got tired, of course." "I was very in love, he was my first one." "I remember it as a long torment." "Long periods of pain and later short moments that..." "Learning to smoke made me think of him." "he smoked like a chimney." "Thinking it now, he is really banal, a cheap fiction." "In some strange way, it was never quite real." "I do not know how to describe it." "At least, I never was very real for him." "My pain was real, that's for sure." "In some strange way it seemed part of it, but of a way disgusting," "Like it was meant to be like that." "Even the things that we said ourselves to each other?" "Much people have said to me that I am good listener." "strange, eh?" "Nobody has never been bothered in listening to me." "Like you do now." "You are listening." "I believe that you are the first person that has listened to me." "It cannot be too interesting." "It would more be worth to you to read a book." "God, and I follow." "I am not bothering to you?" "It is so pleasant to speak." "So warm one feels one and so well." "I've never been in this mood before." "I always wanted a sister and I only have a pile of brothers." "Seven." "Funny, eh?" "And later I arrived." "All my life been I have surrounded of boys." "I like the boys, but you would have to know that with all your experience of actress." "Karl-Henrik I really like." "But, already you know, you love only once." "I am faithful to him." "In my profession there are opportunities, I can tell you about." "Karl-Henrik and I had rented a house next to the sea." "It was June and we were totally alone." "One day, Karl-Henrik had to go to the city, I went alone to the beach." "It was really well." "Also there was another girl." "She lived in a near island, but she had paddled to our beach because he was oriented to the south and she was more unconstrained." "We eased up taking the sun bath completely naked." "We slept a little, and later we woke up again." "We wore those cheap straw hats." "Mine it had a blue ribbon." "So I lied there peeping out... at the landscape, the sea and the sun." "It was very odd." "Suddenly I saw two figures behind the rocks of upon us." "They hid and they spied once in a while." ""There are two boys watching us", I said to her." "Her name was Katarina." ""Good, Let them watch", she said." "And the return occurred." "It was a very strange sensation." "I wanted to run and to get dressed, but I just lied there." "mouth down, with the buttock to the air, totally ashamed, totally quiet." "All along I had Katarina to my side, with her breasts and thighs." "She just lied there giggling by herself." "Suddenly I saw that the boys they had approached and they watched to us." "I saw that they were terribly young." "Then, one of them, boldest, even approached where we were and sat next to Katarina." "He pretended he was busy with foot and started to prick between his toes." "I felt totally strange." "I suddenly heard Katarina saying:" ""Hey you. can you come here for a minute?"" "Then she helped him to undress." "Suddenly, he was on her," "She showed him how and held his fanny." "The other boy simply seated, observing." "I heard Katarina whispering and laughing." "I had the face of the boy to my side." "It was all red and puffy." "I turned over and I said suddenly:" ""you are not going to also come with me"" "Katarina said: "Yes go to her now"." "And he left her and fell on me, roughly." "He took hold one of my breasts." "God, how it hurt!" "I finished at once, can you imagine." "I was going to say to him to be careful not to make me pregnant, when he finished." "I felt?" "I felt, for the first time in the life, how it was spilled within me." "He gripped me and bent backwards." "I came time and time again." "Katarina lay of side, watching, and held him from behind." "When he finished, she finished herself off with her hand." "When she did she screamed shrill." "Then the three we began to laugh." "We called to the other boy that was seated." "Peter was called." "He came down all dazed and shivering in the sun." "Katarina undid his trousers and she began to play with him." "taking his fanny into her mouth." "He bent over and started to kiss her back." "She turned around and held his head with both hands and she offered her breasts to him." "The other boy was so excited, so he and I we began again." "It was as good as the first time." "Later we swam and we left." "When I returned to house, Karl-Henrik he had already returned." "We had supper together and we drank the red wine that he brought." "Later we lay down together." "It had never been so good, neither before nor since then." "You can understand it?" "I got pregnant, of course." "Karl-Henrik, who studies medicine, he took me to a friend and I aborted." "Both we were contentments." "We did not love children." "At least not then." "It does not make any sense." "He and I did not fit." "And then you get bad conscience for nothing, you understand it?" "What happens to the things you decided to do?" "It is not necessary?" "Can you be two person at once?" "I mean, I mean to be two people." "God, what idiot I am!" "Anyway, It's not a reason to start howling." "Delay, I am going to take a handkerchief." "It already is at dawn and it continues raining." "It imagines, I have been speaking without stopping." "I have spoken and you have listened to me." "What boredom for you!" "What interest can have my life for you?" "I would have to be like you." "You know what I thought when I saw your film that night?" "When I arrived at home, I saw myself in mirror and I thought: "we are alike"." "You are much prettier but we look like." "I believe that I could turn me to you," "I mean the inside." "You could change yourself to be me, like this." "Although your soul would be much greater." "It would overflow throughout." "You must go to bed, if no, you will fall asleep in the table." "No, I must lie down, if no, I will fall asleep in the table and that would be just a little bit uncomfortable." "Good night." "Elisabet?" "You spoke to me last night?" "Last night you were in my room?" "Shall I take your mail?" "?" "Good bye." ""Dear doctor:" "Always I had wanted to live thus." "To be silent, to live isolated, to feel the mistreated soul finally begins to cure itself." "Alma is fond of me the most stirring way." "I think, by the way, that it is enjoying and that I fall enough good to her, it is even excited of a delicious and unconscious way." "It is funny to study her." "Sometimes she cries by sins of the past, like an orgy with a unknown boy followed by an abortion." "She claims her idea of life they do not agree with her actions "" "I see that you are reading a play." "It is a good signal." "I will report it to the doctor." "don't you think that we should leave this place soon?" "I begin to lmiss the city." "Don't you?" "Will you do me a favor?" "I know that it is a sacrifice, but I need your aid right now." "It is not nothing dangerous." "I want that you speak to me." "It does not have to be nothing special." "Any thing." "What we are going to eat or if you think that the water is cold after the storm or too much fry to swim." "We would only have to speak for one minutes." "A minute." "You can read it of your book." "Only a few words." "I must try not to be angry." "You it follows in silence, that is yours." "But now I need that you speak to me." "My dear woman, you cannot to say a simple word?" "I knew that you would refuse." "You cannot know how I feel." "I have always thought that the great artist felt great compassion by the others," "that they created from a great sense of the compassion and of the necessity to help." "But that was stupid." "You have used me!" "Now that you do not need me you throw me away immediately!" "Yes, I konw hoe it sounds, how false it sounds!" "You have used me and now you throw me away!" "It has come to that!" "Every single word!" "You have really hurt me." "You have laughed me behind my backs." "I read the letter that you sent to the doctor, was not sealed." "And I read everything!" "You made me speak !" "You made me say things that I never told anybody." "What a study, eh?" "You are not?" "Then now you are going to speak, if you have something to say!" "You'll damn well." "No, don't!" "Really you were scared, eh?" "During a second you have been truely scared, no?" "A true fear to the death, eh?" "You thought that Alma she had gone crazy." "What kind of person you are after all?" "Or you think like this:" ""I will always remember that face, that tone of voice, that expression."" "I will give you something that you will not forget!" "You laugh?" "For me it is not so simple?" "nor so funny." "But you always have had your laugh." "Does it have to be like this?" "It is really important not to lie, to speak the truth with real intonation?" "It is possible to be lived without speaking freely?" "without lying quibbling and making excuses?" "isn't it better to be blunt and lax, mendacious?" "Perhaps you would be a little better if you allowed yourself to be what you are." "No, you do not understand it." "You do not understand what I am saying." "You are inaccessible." "They said that you were sane , but your madness is the worse kind." "You act as if you were healthy." "You do it so well that all they all believe in you." "All except I, because I know how rotten you are." "What I am doing?" "Elisabet!" "Elisabet, forgive me!" "I have behaved like an idiot, I do not know what it has happened to me." "I am here for help, but when I saw that horrible letter..." "I felt very disappointed." "You encouraged me to talk." "you looked so kind and understanding." "I was so drunk." "It was so nice to talk about everything." "I was also flattered because a great actress listened to me." "I thought that maybe things I said would help you." "But is terrible, right?" "It's sheer exhibitionism!" "Elisabet, I want you to forgive me." "I like you so much, you mean so much for me." "I have learned much of you, I do not want that we separate like enemies." "You do not want to forgive me!" "You are too proud!" "You will not condescend, because you do not have necessity to do it." "I will not do it!" "I will not do it!" "We did not speak, we did not listen, we do not understand?" "Elisabet?" "What means can I make you listen?" "When you sleep you have the flabby face." "The mouth is swollen and ugly." "You have a evil wrinkle in the forehead." "You smell of dream and tears." "I see your pulse in the throat." "You have a scar that normally covers with make-up." "Elisabet!" "Elisabet!" "He is calling again." "I will find out what he wants of us." "Here, faraway, in our solitude." "Elisabet!" "Elisabet?" "I am sorry if I have scared to you." "I am not Elisabet." "I do not demand anything." "It did not want disturb you." "You do not think that I understand it?" "The doctor explained things to me." "But it's hard rto explain to your little boy." "I do what I can." "There is something deep down I can't reach." "You love someone; or rather, you say you say you do." "It is incomprehensible." "Intangible, Obvious as words." "Mr. Vogler, I am not your wife." "You also are loved." "You form a bond." "It generates security." "You see the chance to endure, it is not like that?" "How I can say everything I want without losing myself?" "without losing you?" "I love you, as much as ever." "No, don't be so timid, my darling." "We have each other." "We have faith, we know our mutual thoughts." "We are in love." "Is certain, right?" "Most important it is the effort, not what we obtained, right?" "To see us like children." "Defenseless, tormented, solitary?" "Elisabet?" "Tell your little boy that Mummy will soon be home." "That mother has been ill, and is missing him." "remembers to buy a gift to him from mother." "Do you know how much affection I have for you?" "It is almost difficult to bear." "I do not know what to do with my affection." "I live on your affection." "Elisabet, you like to be with me?" "is it pleasant?" "You are a wonderful lover, you know it." "My darling?" "Give me an anaesthetic!" "throw me away!" "No, I cannot!" "I cannot bear it any more!" "Leave me alone!" "It is a shame!" "Everything is a shame!" "Leave me alone!" "I am cold, rotten and indifferent!" "Everything is lies and cheating!" "Everything!" "Elisabet, what there do you have?" "What you hide underneath the hand?" "Let me see it." "It is the photo of your little boy, the one that there were broken." "We have to talk about it." "Tell me now, Elisabet." "Or I will do it." "It was one night in a celebration, right?" "It became late and quite noisy." "In the small hours somebody said to you..." ""Elisabet, you have everything as a woman and as an artist." "practically everything in your baggage, but you lack motherhood."" "You laught and thought it was quite silly." "After awhile, you began to think about which he had said to you." "It worried to you more and more." "You your husband you make you pregnant." "You wanted to be mother." "When you knew that it was confirmed, you were scared." "scared of the responsibility to you, scared of coming home from the theater... scared the pain and death, scared of the swollen body." "But all the time you acted..." "The part of a future mother happy young person and." "Everybody said:" ""How beautiful she is." "she never has been so beautiful."" "While, you tried to abort several times." "But you failed." "When you realized it was too late, you began to hate the baby ." "You wished that the baby he was dead." "You wished a dead baby." "It was a long and difficult childbirth." "You suffered during several days." "Finally, the baby was born with f¨®rceps." "You looked with horror at your deformed child and whispered:" ""can you die soon?" "Can't you die? "" "But he survived." "The boy screamed day and night." "And you hated it." "You were scared and you had a bad conscience." "Finally the boy was taken by relatives.." "you could return to the theater." "But the suffering had not finished." "The boy was seized by a strange and violent love for his mother." "You defend yourself." "You defend yourself desperately." "You feel that you cannot return it." "So you try it and you try it, but your meeting with him are cruel and clumsy." "You cannot do it." "You are cold and indifferent." "He watches to you." "he loves to you and is so soft?" "You want to hit him, because he does not leave you peacefully." "To you it seems to you repugnant, with its heavy mouth and its ugly body, with its humid eyes ." "He is repulsive and you are scared." "What you hide underneath of the hand?" "Let me see it." "It is the photo of your little boy, the one that there were broken." "We must talk about it." "Tell me now, Elisabet." "or I will do it." "It was one night in a party, right?" "It became late and it was very noisy." "In the small hours somebody in the group said:" ""Elisabet, like woman and artist you have it practically everything in your baggage, but you lack motherhood."" "You laughed and thought it was quite silly." "After awhile, you began to think about which it had said to you." "It worried to you more and more." "You your husband make you pregnant." "You wanted to be mother." "When you knew that it was confirmed, you were scared." "you were scared the responsibility to you," "Scared of coming home from the theater." "scared the of the pain to you, the death, the one that your body was swollen." "But all the time you act." "The the part of a happy expecteant mother." "Everybody said:" ""How beautiful she is." "She never has been so beautiful."" "While, you tried to abort several times." "But you failed." "When you realized it was too late... you began to hate the baby" "and you wished that he was born dead." "You wished that the baby he was dead." "You wished a dead baby." "It was a long and difficult delivery." "You suffered for several days." "Finally, the baby was born with f¨®rceps." "You watched with terror at your deformed baby and you whispered:" ""can't die soon?" "Can't you die "" "The boy screamed day and night and you hated it." "You were scared and you had a bad conscience." "Finally the boy was taken in by the relatives." "and you could go back to the theater." "But your suffering was not over." "The boy was saized by a strange and violent love for hiss mother." "You defend yourself desperately." "You feel that you cannot return it." "So you try it and you try it, but your meeting with him are cruel and clumsy." "You cannot do it." "You are cold and indifferent." "He looks at you." "His loves to you and is so soft?" "You want to hit him because he does not leave you peacefully." "To you he seems to be repulsive, with its heavy mouth and its ugly body, with its humid pleading eyes ." "He is repugnant and you are scared." "No!" "I am not like you." "I do not feel like you." "I am the sister alma, I only am here to help you." "I am not Elisabet Vogler!" "You are Elisabet Vogler!" "I would like to have?" "I adore?" "I do not have?" "I have learned a lot." "We will see how long I can cope with." "I never will be like you, never." "I change all the time." "You can do what you want, with me but never reach me." "Don't defend anybody." "cut a light." "Another kind." "Now no, no." "No, no." "warning and timeless.Irregular." "When it should happened not as a failure." "Yourself where you are!" "But I should do it." "Not inwards, they say calm advises others." "A desperate perhaps." "Takes," "But where is nearest?" "How it is called?" "No, no, no" "We, ours, I, me?" "Many words and such nausea?" "Incomprehensible pain." "They throw!" "It repeats after me." "Nothing?" "Nothing." "No, nothing?" "Nothing." "That's it." "That's the way it shall be." "That's the way it would have to be."