The Ghost Sonata

The Ghost Sonata Summary | Scene 1 Summary

The detailed description of the set that begins this scene establishes that the scene takes place in a wealthy neighborhood. The house is a new, two-story one. Many nice amenities are present in this home, including marble stairs with mahogany and brass railings leading to the front door. A marble statue is visible through the open windows. White sheets covering a few upstairs windows indicate that there has been a recent death in the house. The bells of several churches can be heard ringing in the distance.

A young woman wearing black stands in the open doorway of the house, and an older woman cleans the stairs, railings and sidewalks in front of the house. An old man sits in a wheelchair next to a kiosk, reading a newspaper. A milkmaid carrying a basket of milk bottles comes from around the corner and stops at the fountain for a drink, to wash her hands and straighten her hair. A student who looks as if he has not slept in days enters and approaches the fountain.

The student asks the milkmaid for a drink of water. He also explains that he has been helping take care of people at an accident scene in which a house has collapsed. She gives him a drink of water and helps him clean out his eyes that are inflamed from the smoke and dust at the accident scene.

The old man interrupts the student to ask him whom he was talking to, as there is no one at the fountain. Further, he asks the boy his name because he recognizes his speech pattern. They introduce themselves to each other and discover that the old man, named Hummel, was responsible for the boy's family's bankruptcy years before. Of course, the old man says, the boy's father stole money from him.

Hummel then asks the boy to do him a favor and push his chair around the kiosk so he can see what plays are at the theaters that night. He finds a play that he is interested in and sends the boy to see about tickets, in order for the boy to meet the colonel and the colonel's daughter. The boy calls and purchases the ticket as he is instructed by Hummel to do.

The old man then directs the boy's attention to the house behind them. He tells the boy about the house's occupants. First, there's the colonel who has a marble statue of his wife in his bedroom. Next, Hummel tells about the dead man upstairs who was a consul. Hummel says that if the boy were a "Sunday child," he would see the consul walking around looking at his own funeral arrangements. The boy says he was born on a Sunday, and does in fact see things that other people do not see, such as the milkmaid whom the old man did not see. Next, a white-haired woman sits down in front of a window. Hummel claims that she was his fiancée sixty years earlier.

The superintendent's wife comes out of the house carrying spruce greens to spread on the sidewalk, which is a Swedish funeral custom. Hummel explains the complicated and confusing family relationships of the members of this household. The woman in black is the daughter of the superintendent's wife and the consul. She has a lover who is currently married to her half-sister, the consul's other daughter.

Hummel asks the boy to push his chair into the sunlight and complains about how cold he is. The boy takes his icy hand and the old man refuses to let go. The boy pulls his hand away after accusing the old man of draining all of his strength and freezing him to death.

The colonel's daughter crosses the stage, without noticing the men, and enters the house. She looks just like the marble statue upstairs, which Hummel says is a statue of her mother. The boy is instantly in love with her and grieving that he can never have her, when Hummel tells him that she is who he will be sitting by at the play and that he will be in her drawing room that evening afterwards.

The colonel's daughter re-appears at the hyacinth window to water the flowers. Then the colonel appears behind her to show her the paper with the article about the student's heroic deeds from the night before at the accident site.

Soon, the old woman closes the window that she has been sitting in front of, and the dead consul appears at the front door, wrapped in a burial sheet. The student can see him though the old man cannot. The dead man comes outside to inspect all of the traditional funeral customs in his honor.

The old man's servant, Johansson, returns. The servant reports to the old man that there will be an extra edition of the paper with a full report of the collapsed building and all of the information about the student who is now a hero. The old man and Johansson leave as Baron Skanskorg approaches the house to speak to the lady in black. Johannson returns without the old man to speak to the student. The student asks what kind of man Hummel is and the servant gives him very vague answers. He does say that the man knows everyone and everything, uses people, and destroys lives. The student also guesses that the one thing the old man is afraid of is the ghost of the milkmaid that he had seen earlier. While they are talking, the colonel's daughter drops her bracelet outside the window. The student returns it to her.

The old man returns standing in his wheelchair that is being pushed by beggars. He sends up a cheer for the student for being a hero, drawing the attention of everyone in the house. He claims to be able to heal the sick and see the future, though he cannot see the dead, and claims to have brought a drowned person back to life. The milkmaid re-appears, though she can be seen only by the student and the old man who shrivels in fear. Johansson and Hummel hurry offstage.