“My tragedy is my mother. Living with her I live with the coffin of my
unborn aspirations. You heard that about the safety-pin to-night. It
may seem to you a little thing, but it ruined my three first gestures.
They were—”
“Impaled on a safety-pin,” I suggested.
“Yes, exactly that. And when we are in Vienna I am the victim of moods,
you know. I long to do wild, passionate things. And mamma says, ‘Please
pour out my mixture first.’ Once I remember I flew into a rage and
threw a washstand jug out of the window. Do you know what she said?
‘Sonia, it is not so much throwing things out of windows, if only you
would—’”
“Choose something smaller?” said I.
“No... ‘tell me about it beforehand.’ Humiliating! And I do not see any
possible light out of this darkness.”
“Why don’t you join a touring company and leave your mother in Vienna?”
“What! Leave my poor, little, sick, widowed mother in Vienna! Sooner
than that I would drown myself. I love my mother as I love nobody else
in the world—nobody and nothing! Do you think it is impossible to love
one’s tragedy? ‘Out of my great sorrows I make my little songs,’ that
is Heine or myself.”
“Oh, well, that’s all right,” I said cheerfully.
“But it is not all right!”