THE ROAD TO DAMASCUSPART I.English Version by Graham RawsonCHARACTERSTHE STRANGERTHE LADYTHE BEGGARTHE DOCTORHIS SISTERAN OLD MANA MOTHERAN ABBESSA CONFESSORless important figuresFIRST MOURNERSECOND MOURNERTHIRD MOURNERLANDLORDCAESARWAITERnon-speakingA SMITHMILLER'S WIFEFUNERAL ATTENDANTSSCENESSCENE I Street Corner SCENE XVIISCENE II Doctor's House SCENE XVISCENE III Room in an Hotel SCENE XVSCENE IV By the Sea SCENE XIVSCENE V On the Road SCENE XIIISCENE VI In a Ravine SCENE XIISCENE VII In a Kitchen SCENE XISCENE VIII The 'Rose' Room SCENE XSCENE IX ConventFirst Performance in England by the Stage Society at the Westminster Theatre, 2nd May 1937CASTTHE STRANGER Francis JamesTHE LADY Wanda RothaTHE BEGGAR Alexander SarnerFIRST MOURNER George CormackSECOND MOURNER Kenneth BellTHIRD MOURNER Peter BennettFOURTH MOURNER Bryan SearsFIFTH MOURNER Michael BoyleSIXTH MOURNER Stephen PatrickTHE LANDLORD Stephen JackTHE DOCTOR Neil PorterHIS SISTER Olga MartinCAESAR Peter LandA WAITER Peter BennettAN OLD MAN A. Corney GrainA MOTHER Frances WaringTHE SMITH Norman ThomasTHE MILLER'S WIFE Julia SandhamAN ABBESS Natalia MoyaA CONFESSOR Tristan RawsonPRODUCER Carl H. JaffeASSISTANT PRODUCER Ossia TrillingSCENE I STREET CORNER[Street Corner with a seat under a tree; the side-door of a small Gothic Church nearby; also a post office and a café with chairs outside it. Both post office and café are shut. A funeral march is heard off, growing louder sand then fainter. A STRANGER is standing on the edge of the pavement and seems uncertain which way to go. A church clock strikes: first the four quarters and then the hour. It is three o'clock. A LADY enters and greets the STRANGER. She is about to pass him, but stops.]STRANGER. It's you! I almost knew you'd come.LADY. You wanted me: I felt it. But why are you waiting here?STRANGER. I don't know. I must wait somewhere.LADY. Who are you waiting for?STRANGER. I wish I could tell you! For forty years I've been waiting for something: I believe they call it happiness; or the end of unhappiness. (Pause.) There's that terrible music again. Listen! But don't go, I beg you. I'll feel afraid, if you do.LADY. We met yesterday for the first time; and talked for four hours. You roused my sympathy, but you mustn't abuse my kindness on that account.STRANGER. I know that well enough. But I beg you not to leave me. I'm a stranger here, without friends; and my few acquaintances seem more like enemies.LADY. You have enemies everywhere. You're lonely everywhere. Why did you leave your wife and children?STRANGER. I wish I knew. I wish I knew why I still live; why I'm here now; where I should go and what I should do! Do you believe that the living can be damned already?LADY. No.STRANGER. Look at me.LADY. Hasn't life brought you a single pleasure?STRANGER. Not one! If at any time I thought so, it was merely a trap to tempt me to prolong my miseries. If ripe fruit fell into my hand, it was poisoned or rotten at the core.LADY. What is your religion—if you'll forgive the question?STRANGER. Only this: that when I can bear things no longer, I shall go.LADY. Where?STRANGER. Into annihilation. If I don't hold life in my hand, at least I hold death.... It gives me an amazing feeling of power.LADY. You're playing with death!STRANGER. As I've played with life. (Pause.) I was a writer. But in spite of my melancholy temperament I've never been able to take anything seriously—not even my worst troubles. Sometimes I even doubt whether life itself has had any more reality than my books. (A De Profundis is heard from the funeral procession.) They're coming back. Why must they process up and down these streets?LADY. Do you fear them?STRANGER. They annoy me. The place might be bewitched. No, it's not death I fear, but solitude; for then one's not alone. I don't know who's there, I or another, but in solitude one's not alone. The air grows heavy and seems to engender invisible beings, who have life and whose presence can be felt.LADY. You've noticed that?STRANGER. For some time I've noticed a great deal; but not as I used to. Once I merely saw objects and events, forms and colours, whilst now I perceive ideas and meanings. Life, that once had no meaning, has begun to have one. Now I discern intention where I used to see nothing but chance. (Pause.) When I met you yesterday it struck me you'd been sent across my path, either to save me, or destroy me.LADY. Why should I destroy you?STRANGER. Because it may be your destiny.LADY. No such idea ever crossed my mind; it was largely sympathy I felt for you.... Never, in all my life, have I met anyone like you. I have only to look at you for the tears to start to my eyes. Tell me, what have you on your conscience? Have you done something wrong, that's never been discovered or punished?STRANGER. You may well ask! No, I've no more sins on my conscience than other free men. Except this: I determined that life should never make a fool of me.LADY. You must let yourself be fooled, more or less, to live at all.STRANGER. That would seem a kind of duty; but one I wanted to get out of. (Pause.) I've another secret. It's whispered in the family that I'm a changeling.LADY. What's that?STRANGER. A child substituted by the elves for the baby that was born.LADY. Do you believe in such things?STRANGER. No. But, as a parable, there's something to be said for it. (Pause.) As a child I was always crying and didn't seem to take to life in this world. I hated my parents, as they hated me. I brooked no constraint, no conventions, no laws, and my longing was for the woods and the sea.LADY. Did you ever see visions?STRANGER. Never. But I've often thought that two beings were guiding my destiny. One offers me all I desire; but the other's ever at hand to bespatter the gifts with filth, so that they're useless to me and I can't touch them. It's true that life has given me all I asked of it—but everything's turned out worthless to me.LADY. You've had everything and yet are not content?STRANGER. That is the curse....LADY. Don't say that! But why haven't you desired things that transcend this life, that can never be sullied?STRANGER. Because I doubt if there is a beyond.LADY. But the elves?STRANGER. Are merely a fairy story. (Pointing to a seat.) Shall we sit down?LADY. Yes. Who are you waiting for?STRANGER. Really, for the post office to open. There's a letter for me—it's been forwarded on but hasn't reached me. (They sit down.) But tell me something of yourself now. (The Lady takes up her crochet work.)LADY. There's nothing to tell.STRANGER. Strangely enough, I should prefer to think of you like that. Impersonal, nameless—I only do know one of your names. I'd like to christen you myself—let me see, what ought you to be called? I've got it. Eve! (With a gesture towards the wings.) Trumpets! (The funeral march is heard again.) There it is again! Now I must invent your age, for I don't know how old you are. From now on you are thirty-four—so you were born in sixty-four. (Pause.) Now your character, for I don't know that either. I shall give you a good character, your voice reminds me of my mother—I mean the idea of a mother, for my mother never caressed me, though I can remember her striking me. You see, I was brought up in hate! An eye for an eye—a tooth for a tooth. You see this scar on my forehead? That comes from a blow my brother gave me with an axe, after I'd struck him with a stone. I never went to my father's funeral, because he turned me out of the house when my sister married. I was born out of wedlock, when my family were bankrupt and in mourning for an uncle who had taken his life. Now you know my family! That's the stock I come from. Once I narrowly escaped fourteen years' hard labour—so I've every reason to thank the elves, though I can't be altogether pleased with what they've done.LADY. I like to hear you talk. But don't speak of the elves: it makes me sad.STRANGER. Frankly, I don't believe in them; yet they're always making themselves felt. Are these elves the souls of the unhappy, who still await redemption? If so, I am the child of an evil spirit. Once I believed I was near redemption—through a woman. But no mistake could have been greater: I was plunged into the seventh hell.LADY. You must be unhappy. But this won't go on always.STRANGER. Do you think church bells and Holy Water could comfort me? I've tried them; they only made things worse. I felt like the Devil when he sees the sign of the cross. (Pause.) Let's talk about you now.LADY. There's no need. (Pause.) Have you been blamed for misusing your gifts?STRANGER. I've been blamed for everything. In the town I lived in no one was so hated as I. Lonely I came in and lonely I went out. If I entered a public place people avoided me. If I wanted to rent a room, it would be let. The priests laid a ban on me from the pulpit, teachers from their desks and parents in their homes. The church committee wanted to take my children from me. Then I blasphemously shook my fist... at heaven!LADY. Why did they hate you so?STRANGER. How should I know! Yet I do! I couldn't endure to see men suffer. So I kept on saying, and writing, too: free yourselves, I will help you. And to the poor I said: do not let the rich exploit you. And to the women: do not allow yourselves to be enslaved by the men. And—worst of all—to the children: do not obey your parents, if they are unjust. What followed was impossible to foresee. I found that everyone was against me: rich and poor, men and women, parents and children. And then came sickness and poverty, beggary and shame, divorce, law-suits, exile, solitude, and now.... Tell me, do you think me mad?LADY. No.STRANGER. You must be the only one. But I'm all the more grateful.LADY (rising). I must leave you now.STRANGER. You, too?LADY. And you mustn't stay here.STRANGER. Where should I go?LADY. Home. To your work.STRANGER. But I'm no worker. I'm a writer.LADY. I know. But I didn't want to hurt you. Creative power is something given you, that can also taken away. See you don't forfeit yours.STRANGER. Where are you going?LADY. Only to a shop.STRANGER (after a pause). Tell me, are you a believer?LADY. I am nothing.STRANGER. All the better: you have a future. How I wish I were your old blind father, whom you could lead to the market place to sing for his bread. My tragedy is I cannot grow old that's what happens to children of the elves, they have big heads and never only cry. I wish I were someone's dog. I could follow him and never be alone again. I'd get a meal sometimes, a kick now and then, a pat perhaps, a blow often....LADY. Now I must go. Good-bye. (She goes out.)STRANGER (absent-mindedly). Good-bye. (He remains on the seat. He takes off his hat and wipes his forehead. Then he draws on the ground with his stick. A BEGGAR enters. He has a strange look and is collecting objects from the gutter.) White are you picking up, beggar?BEGGAR. Why call me that? I'm no beggar. Have I asked you for anything?STRANGER. I beg your pardon. It's so hard to judge men from appearances.BEGGAR. That's true. For instance, can you guess who I am?STRANGER. I don't intend to try. It doesn't interest me.BEGGAR. No one can know that in advance. Interest commonly comes afterwards—when it's too late. Virtus post nummos!STRANGER. What? Do beggars know Latin?BEGGAR. You see, you're interested already. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. I have always succeeded in everything I've undertaken, because I've never attempted anything. I should like to call myself Polycrates, who found the gold ring in the fish's stomach. Life has given me all I asked of it. But I never asked anything; I grew tired of success and threw the ring away. Yet, now I've grown old I regret it. I search for it in the gutters; but as the search takes time, in default of my gold ring I don't disdain a few cigar stumps....STRANGER. I don't know whether this beggar's cynical or mad.BEGGAR. I don't know either.STRANGER. Do you know who I am?BEGGAR. No. And it doesn't interest me.STRANGER. Well, interest commonly comes afterwards.... You see you tempt me to take the words out of your mouth. And that's the same thing as picking up other people's cigars.BEGGAR. So you won't follow my example?STRANGER. What's that scar on your forehead?BEGGAR. I got it from a near relation.STRANGER. Now you frighten me! Are you real? May I touch you? (He touches his arm.) There's no doubt of it.... Would you deign to accept a small coin in return for a promise to seek Polycrates' ring in another part of the town? (He hands him a coin.) Post nummos virtus.... Another echo. You must go at once.BEGGAR. I will. But you've given me far too much. I'll return three-quarters of it. Now we owe one another nothing but friendship.STRANGER. Friendship! Am I a friend of yours?BEGGAR. Well, I am of yours. When one's alone in the world one can't be particular.STRANGER. Then let me tell you you forget yourself...BEGGAR. Only too pleased! But when we meet again I'll have a word of welcome for you. (Exit.)STRANGER (sitting down again and drawing in the dust with his stick). Sunday afternoon! A long, dank, sad time, after the usual Sunday dinner of roast beef, cabbage and watery potatoes. Now the older people are testing, the younger playing chess and smoking. The servants have gone to church and the shops are shut. This frightful afternoon, this day of rest, when there's nothing to engage the soul, when it's as hard to meet a friend as to get into a wine shop. (The LADY comes back again, she is noun wearing a flower at her breast.) Strange! I can't speak without being contradicted at once!LADY. So you're still here?STRANGER. Whether I sit here, or elsewhere, and write in the sand doesn't seem to me to matter—as long so I write in the sand.LADY. What are you writing? May I see?STRANGER. I think you'll find: Eve 1864.... No, don't step on it.LADY. What happens then?STRANGER. A disaster for you... and for me.LADY. You know that?STRANGER. Yes, and more. That the Christmas rose you're wearing is a mandragora. Its symbolical meaning is malice and calumny; but it was once used in medicine for the healing of madness. Will you give it me?LADY (hesitating). As medicine?STRANGER. Of course. (Pause.) Have you read my books?LADY. You know I have. And that it's you I have to thank for giving me freedom and a belief in human rights and human dignity.STRANGER. Then you haven't read the recent ones?LADY. No. And if they're not like the earlier ones I don't want to.STRANGER. Then promise never to open another book of mine.LADY. Let me think that over. Very well, I promise.STRANGER. Good! But see you keep your promise. Remember what happened to Bluebeard's wife when curiosity tempted her into the forbidden chamber....LADY. You see, already you make demands like those of a Bluebeard. What you don't see, or have long since forgotten, is that I'm married, and that my husband's a doctor, and that he admires your work. So that his house is open to you, if you wish to be made welcome there.STRANGER. I've done all I can to forget it. I've expunged it from my memory so that it no longer has any reality for me.LADY. If that's so, will you come home with me to-night?STRANGER. No. Will you come with me?LADY. Where?STRANGER. Anywhere! I have no home, only a trunk. Money I sometimes have—though not often. It's the one thing life has capriciously refused me, perhaps because I never desired it intensely enough. (The LADY shakes her head.) Well? What are you thinking?LADY. I'm surprised I'm not angry with you. But you're not serious.STRANGER. Whether I am or not's all one to me. Ah! There's the organ! It won't be long now before the drink shops open.LADY. Is it trueyoudrink?STRANGER. Yes. A great deal! Wine makes my soul from her prison, up into the firmament, where she what has never yet been seen, and hears what men never yet heard....LADY. And the day after?STRANGER. I have the most delightful scruples of conscience! I experience the purifying emotions of guilt and repentance. I enjoy the sufferings of the body, whilst my soul hovers like smoke about my head. It is as if one were suspended between Life and Death, when the spirit feels that she has already opened her pinions and could fly aloft, if she would.LADY. Come into the church for a moment. You'll hear no sermon, only the beautiful music of vespers.STRANGER. No. Not into church! It depresses me because I feel I don't belong there.... That I'm an unhappy soul and that it's as impossible for me to re-enter as to become a child again.LADY. You feel all that... already?STRANGER. Yes. I've got that far. I feel as if I lay hacked in pieces and were being slowly melted in Medea's cauldron. Either I shall be sent to the soap-boilers, or arise renewed from my own dripping! It depends on Medea's skill!LADY. That sounds like the word of an oracle. We must see if you can't become a child again.STRANGER. We should have to start with the cradle; and this time with the right child.LADY. Exactly! Wait here for me whilst I go into the church. If the café were open I'd ask you please not to drink. But luckily it's shut.(The LADY exits. The STRANGER sits down again and draws in the sand. Enter six funeral attendants in brown with some mourners. One of them carries a banner with the insignia of the Carpenters, draped in brown crêpe; another a large axe decorated with spruce, a third a cushion with a chairman's mallet. They stop outside the café and wait.)STRANGER. Excuse me, whose funeral have you been attending?FIRST MOURNER. A house-breaker's. (He imitates the ticking of a clock.)STRANGER. A real house-breaker? Or the insect sort, that lodges in the woodwork and goes 'tick-tick'?FIRST MOURNER. Both—but mainly the insect sort. What do they call them?STRANGER (to himself). He wants to fool me into saying the death-watch beetle. So I won't. You mean a burglar?SECOND MOURNER. No. (The clock is again heard ticking.)STRANGER. Are you trying to frighten me? Or does the dead man work miracles? In that case I'd better explain that my nerves are good, and that I don't believe in miracles. But I do find it strange that the mourners wear brown. Why not black? It's cheap and suitable.THIRD MOURNER. To us, in our simplicity, it looks black; but if Your Honour wishes it, it shall look brown to you.STRANGER. A queer company! They give me an uneasy feeling I'd like to ascribe to the wine I drank yesterday. If I were to ask if that were spruce, you'd probably say—well what?FIRST MOURNER. Vine leaves.STRANGER. I thought it would not be spruce! The café's opening, at last! (The Café opens, the STRANGER sits at a table and is served with wine. The MOURNERS sit at the other tables.) They must have been glad to be rid of him, if the mourners start drinking as soon as the funeral's over.FIRST MOURNER. He was a good-for-nothing, who couldn't take life seriously.STRANGER. And who probably drank?SECOND MOURNER. Yes.THIRD MOURNER. And let others support his wife and children.STRANGER. He shouldn't have done so. Is that why his friends speak so well of him now? Please don't shake my table when I'm drinking.SECOND MOURNER. When I'm drinking, I don't mind.STRANGER. Well, I do. There's a great difference between us! (The MOURNERS whisper together. The BEGGAR comes back.) Here's the beggar again!BEGGAR (sitting down at a table). Wine. Moselle!LANDLORD (consulting a police last). I can't serve you: you've not paid your taxes. Here's your name, age and profession, and the decision of the court.BEGGAR. Omnia serviliter pro dominatione! I'm a free man with a university education. I refused to pay taxes because I didn't want to become a member of parliament. Moselle!LANDLORD. You'll get free transport to the poor house, if you don't get out.STRANGER. Couldn't you gentlemen settle this somewhere else. You're disturbing your patrons.LANDLORD. You can witness I'm in the right.STRANGER. No. The whole thing's too distressing. Even without paying taxes he has the right to enjoy life's small pleasures.LANDLORD. So you're the kind who'd absolve vagabonds from their duties?STRANGER. This is too much! I'd have you know that I'm a famous man. (The LANDLORD and MOURNERS laugh.)LANDLORD. Infamous, probably! Let me look at the police list, and see if the description tallies: thirty-eight, brown hair, moustache, blue eyes; no settled employment, means unknown; married, but has deserted his wife and children; well known for revolutionary views on social questions: gives impression he is not in full possession of his faculties.... It fits!STRANGER (rising, pale and taken aback). What?LANDLORD. Yes. It fits all right.BEGGAR. Perhaps he's on the list. And not me!LANDLORD. It looks like it. In any case, both of you had better clear out.BEGGAR (to the STRANGER). Shall we?STRANGER. We? This begins to look like a conspiracy.(The church bells are heard. The sun comes out and illuminates the coloured rose window above the church door, which is now opened, disclosing the interior. The organ is heard and the choir singing Ave Maris Stella.)LADY (coming from the church). Where are you? What are you doing? Why did you call me? Must you hang on a woman's skirts like a child?STRANGER. I'm afraid now. Things are happening that have no natural explanation.LADY. But you were afraid of nothing. Not even death!STRANGER. Death... no. But of something else, the unknown.LADY. Listen. Give me your hand. You're ill, I'll take you to a doctor. Come!STRANGER. If you like. But tell me: is this carnival, or... reality?LADY. It's real enough.STRANGER. This beggar must be a wretched fellow. Is it true he resembles me?LADY. He will, if you go on drinking. Now go to the post office and get your letter. And then come with me.STRANGER. No, I won't. It'll only be about lawsuits.LADY. If not?STRANGER. Malicious gossip.LADY. Well, do as you wish. No one can escape his fate. At this moment I feel a higher power is sitting in judgment on us and has made a decision.STRANGER. You feel that, too! I heard the hammer fall just now; and the chairs being pushed back. The clerk's being sent to find me! Oh, the suspense! No, I can't follow you.LADY. Tell me, what have you done to me? In the church I found I couldn't pray. A light on the altar was extinguished and an icy wind blew in my face when I heard you call me.STRANGER. I didn't call you. But I wanted you.LADY. You're not as weak as you pretend. You have great strength; and I'm afraid of you....STRANGER. When I'm alone I've no strength at all; but if I can find a single companion I grow strong. I shall be strong now; and so I'll follow you.LADY. Perhaps you can free me from the werewolf.STRANGER. Who's he?LADY. That's what I call him.STRANGER. Count on me. Killing dragons, freeing princesses, defeating werewolves—that is Life!LADY. Then come, my liberator!(She draws her veil over her face, kisses him on the mouth and hurries out. The STRANGER stands where he is for a moment, surprised and stunned. A loud chord sung by women's voices, rather like a cry, is heard from the church. The rose window suddenly grows dark and the tree above the seat is shaken by the wind. The MOURNERS rise and look at the sky, as if they could see something terrifying. The STRANGER hurries out after the LADY.)SCENE II DOCTOR'S HOUSE[Courtyard enclosed on three sides by a single-storied house with a tiled roof. Small windows in all three façades. Right, verandah with glass doors. Left, climbing roses and bee-hives outside the windows. In the middle of the courtyard a woodpile in the form of a cupola. A well beside it. The top of a walnut tree is seen above the central façade of the house. In the corner, right, a garden gate. By the well a large tortoise. On right, entrance below to a wine-cellar. An ice-chest and dust-bin. The DOCTOR'S SISTER enters from the verandah with a telegram.]SISTER. Now misfortune will fall on your house.DOCTOR. When has it not, my dear sister?SISTER. This time.... Ingeborg's coming and bringing... guess whom?DOCTOR. Wait! I know, because I've long foreseen this, even desired it, for he's a writer I've always admired. I've learnt much from him and often wished to meet him. Now he's coming, you say. Where did Ingeborg meet him?SISTER. In town, it seems. Probably in some literarysalon.DOCTOR. I've often wondered whether this man was the boy of the same name who was my friend at school. I hope not; for he seemed one that fortune would treat harshly. And in a life-time he'll have given his unhappy tendencies full scope.SISTER. Don't let him come here. Go out. Say you're engaged.DOCTOR. No. One can't escape one's fate.SISTER. But you've never bowed your head to anyone! Why crawl before this spectre, and call him fate?DOCTOR. Life has taught me to. I've wasted time and energy in fighting the inevitable.SISTER. But why allow your wife to behave like this? She'll compromise you both.DOCTOR. You think so? Because, when I made her break off her engagement I held out false hopes to her of a life of freedom, instead of the slavery she'd known. Besides, I could never love her if I were in a position to give her orders.SISTER. You'd be friends with your enemy?DOCTOR. Oh...!SISTER. Will you let her bring someone into the house who'll destroy you? If you only knew how I hate that man.DOCTOR. I do. His last book's terrible; and shows a certain lack of mental balance.SISTER. They ought to shut him up.DOCTOR. Many people have said so, but I don't think him bad enough.SISTER. Because you're eccentric yourself, and live in daily contact with a woman who's mad.DOCTOR. I admit abnormality has always had a strong attraction for me, and originality is at least not commonplace. (The syren of a steamer is heard.) What was that?SISTER. Your nerves are on edge. It's only the steamer. (Pause.) Now, I implore you, go away!DOCTOR. I ought to want to; but I'm held fast. (Pause.) From here I can see his portrait in my study. The sunlight throws a shadow on it that changes it completely. It makes him look like.... Horrible! You see what I mean?HATER. The devil! Come away!DOCTOR. I can't.SISTER. Then at least defend yourself.DOCTOR. I always do. But this time I feel a thunder storm gathering. How often have I tried to fly, and not been able to. It's as if the earth were iron and I a compass needle. If misfortune comes, it's not of my fee choice. They've come in at the door.SISTER. I heard nothing.DOCTOR. I did! Now I can see them, too! Heisthe friend of my boyhood. He got into trouble at school; but I was blamed and punished. He was nick-named Caesar, I don't know why.SISTER. And this man....DOCTOR. That's what always happens. Caesar! (The LADY comes in.)LADY. I've brought a visitor.DOCTOR. I know, and he's welcome.LADY. I left him in the house, to wash.DOCTOR. Well, are you satisfied with your conquest?LADY. I think he's the unhappiest man I ever met.DOCTOR. That's saying a great deal.LADY. Yes, there's enough unhappiness for all of us.DOCTOR. There is! (To his SISTER.) Would you ask him to come out here? (His SISTER goes out.) Have you had an interesting time?LADY. Yes. I met a number of strange people. Have you had many patients?DOCTOR. No. The consulting room's empty this morning. I think the practice is going down.LADY (kindly). I'm sorry. Tell me, oughtn't that woodpile to be taken into the house? It only draws the damp.DOCTOR (without reproach). Yes, and the bees should be killed, too; and the fruit in the garden picked. But I've no time to do it.LADY. You're tired.DOCTOR. Tired of everything.LADY (without bitterness). And you've a wife who can't even help you.DOCTOR (kindly). You mustn't say that, if I don't think so.LADY (turning towards the verandah). Here he is!(The STRANGER comes in through the verandah, dressed in a way that makes him look younger than before. He has an air of forced candour. He seems to recognise the doctor, and shrinks back, but recovers himself.)DOCTOR. You're very welcome.STRANGER. It's kind of you.DOCTOR. You bring good weather with you. And we need it; for it's rained for six weeks.STRANGER. Not for seven? It usually rains for seven if it rains on St. Swithin's. But that's later on—how foolish of me!DOCTOR. As you're used to town life I'm afraid you'll find the country dull.STRANGER. Oh no. I'm no more at home there than here. Excuse me asking, but haven't we met before—when we were boys?DOCTOR. Never.(The LADY has sat down at the table and is crocheting.)STRANGER. Are you sure?DOCTOR. Perfectly. I've followed your literary career from the first with great interest; as I know my wife has told you. So that if wehadmet I'd certainly have remembered your name. (Pause.) Well, now you can see how a country doctor lives!STRANGER. If you could guess what the life of a so-called liberator's like, you wouldn't envy him.DOCTOR. I can imagine it; for I've seen how men love their chains. Perhaps that's as it should be.STRANGER (listening). Strange. Who's playing in the village?DOCTOR. I don't know. Do you, Ingeborg?LADY. No.STRANGER. Mendelssohn's Funeral March! It pursues me. I never know whether I've heard it or not.DOCTOR. Do you suffer from hallucinations?STRANGER. No. But I'm pursued by trivial incidents. Can't you hear anyone playing?DOCTOR. Yes.LADY. Someoneisplaying. Mendelssohn.DOCTOR. Not surprising.STRANGER. No. But that it should be played precisely at the right place, at the right time.... (He gets up.)DOCTOR. To reassure you, I'll ask my sister. (Exit through the verandah.)STRANGER (to the LADY). I'm stifling here. I can't pass a night under this roof. Your husband looks like a werewolf and in his presence you turn into a pillar of salt. Murder has been done in this house; the place is haunted. I shall escape as soon as I can find an excuse.(The DOCTOR comes back.)DOCTOR. It's the girl at the post office.STRANGER (nervously). Good. That's all right. You've an original house. That pile of wood, for instance.DOCTOR. Yes. It's been struck by lightning twice.STRANGER. Terrible! And you still keep it?DOCTOR. That's why. I've made it higher out of defiance; and to give shade in summer. It's like the prophet's gourd. But in the autumn it must go into the wood shed.STRANGER (looking round). Christmas roses, too! Where did you get them? They're flowering in summer! Everything's upside down here.DOCTOR. They were given me by a patient. He's not quite sane.STRANGER. Is he staying in the house?DOCTOR. Yes. He's a quiet soul, who ponders on the purposelessness of nature. He thinks it foolish for hellebore to grow in the snow and freeze; so he puts the plants in the cellar and beds them out in the spring.STRANGER. But a madman... in the house. Most unpleasant!DOCTOR. He's very harmless.STRANGER. How did he lose his wits?DOCTOR. Who can tell. It's a disease of the mind, not the body.STRANGER. Tell me—is he here—now?DOCTOR. Yes. He's free to wander in the garden and arrange creation. But if his presence disquiets you, we can shut him up.STRANGER. Why aren't such poor devils put out of—their misery?DOCTOR. It's hard to know whether they're ripe....STRANGER. What for?DOCTOR. For what's to come.STRANGER. Thereisnothing. (Pause.)DOCTOR. Who knows!STRANGER. I feel strangely uneasy. Have you medical material... specimens... dead bodies?DOCTOR. Oh yes. In the ice-box—for the authorities, you know. (He pulls out an arm and leg.) Look here.STRANGER. No. Too much like Bluebeard!DOCTOR (sharply). What do you mean by that? (Looking at the LADY.) Do you think I kill my wives?STRANGER. Oh no. It's clear you don't. Is this house haunted, too?DOCTOR. Oh yes. Ask my wife.(He disappears behind the wood pile where neither the STRANGER nor the LADY can see him.)LADY. You needn't whisper, my husband's deaf. Though he can lip read.STRANGER. Then let me say that I've never known a more painful half-hour. We exchange the merest commonplaces, because none of us has the courage to say what he thinks. I suffered so that the idea came to me of opening my veins to get relief. But now I'd like to tell him the truth and have done with it. Shall we say to his face that we mean to go away, and that you've had enough of his foolishness?LADY. If you talk like that I'll begin to hate you. You must behave under any circumstances.STRANGER. How well brought up you are! (The DOCTOR now becomes visible to the STRANGER and the LADY, who continue their conversation.) Come away with me, before the sun goes down. (Pause.) Tell me, why did you kiss me yesterday?LADY. But....STRANGER. Supposing he could hear what we say! I don't trust him.DOCTOR. What shall we do to amuse our guest?LADY. He doesn't care much for amusement. His life's not been happy.(The DOCTOR blows a whistle. The MADMAN comes into the garden. He wears a laurel wreath and his clothes are curious.)DOCTOR. Come here, Caesar.STRANGER (displeased). What? Is he called Caesar?DOCTOR. No. It's a nickname I gave him, to remind me of a boy I was at school with.STRANGER (disturbed). Oh?DOCTOR. He was involved in a strange incident, and I got all the blame.LADY (to the STRANGER). You'd never believe a boy could have been so corrupt.(The STRANGER looks distressed. The MADMAN comes nearer.)DOCTOR. Caesar, come and make your bow to our famous writer.CAESAR. Is this the great man?LADY (to the DOCTOR). Why did you let him come, if it annoys our guest?DOCTOR. Caesar, you must behave. Or I shall have to whip you.CAESAR. Yes. He is Caesar, but he's not great. He doesn't even know which came first, the hen or the egg. But I do.STRANGER (to the LADY). I shall go. Is this a trap? What am I to think? In a minute he'll unloose his bees to amuse me.LADY. Trust me... whatever happens! And turn your face away when you speak.STRANGER. This werewolf never leaves us.DOCTOR (looking at his watch). You must excuse me for about an hour. I've a patient to visit. I hope the time won't hang on your hands.STRANGER. I'm used to waiting, for what never comes....DOCTOR (to the MADMAN). Come along, Caesar. I must lock you up in the cellar. (He goes out with the MADMAN.)STRANGER (to the LADY). What does that mean? Someone's pursuing me! You told me your husband was well disposed towards me, and I believed you. But he can't open his mouth without wounding me. Every word pricks like a goad. Then this funeral march... it's really being played! And here, once more, Christmas roses! Why does everything follow in an eternal round? Dead bodies, beggars, madmen, human destinies and childhood memories? Come away. Let me free you from this hell.LADY. That's why I brought you here. Also that it could never be said you'd stolen the wife of another. But one thing I must ask you: can I put my trust in you?STRANGER. You mean in my feelings?LADY. I don't speak of them. We're taking them for granted. They'll endure as long as they'll endure.STRANGER. You mean in my position? Large sums are owed me. All I have to do is to write or telegraph....LADY. Then I will trust you. (Putting away her work.) Now go straight out of that door. Follow the syringa hedge till you find a gate. We'll meet in the next village.STRANGER (hesitating). I don't like leaving the back way. I'd rather have fought it out with him here.LADY. Quick!STRANGER. Won't you come with me?LADY. Yes. But then I must go first. (She turns and blows a kiss towards the verandah.) My poor werewolf!SCENE III ROOM IN AN HOTEL[The STRANGER enters followed by the LADY. A WAITER.]STRANGER (who is carrying a suitcase). Is no other room free?WAITER. No.STRANGER. I don't want this one.LADY. But it's the only one: the other hotels are all full.STRANGER (to the WAITER). You can go. (The LADY sinks on to a chair without taking off her hat and coat.) What is it you want?LADY. I wish you'd kill me.STRANGER. I don't wonder! Thrown out of hotels, because we're not married, and pestered by the police, we're forced to come to this place, the last I'd have wished. To this very room, number eight.... Someone must be against me!LADY. Is this eight?STRANGER. What? Have you been here before?LADY. Have you?STRANGER. Yes.LADY. Then let's get away. Onto the road, into the woods. It doesn't matter where.STRANGER. I should like to. But after this terrible time I'm as tired as you are. I felt this was to be our journey's end. I resisted, I tried to go in the opposite direction, but trains were late, or we missed them, and we had to come here. To this room! The devil's in it—at least what I call the devil. But I'll be even with him yet.LADY. It seems we'll never find peace on earth again.STRANGER. Nothing's been changed. The dying Christmas roses. (Looking at two pictures.) There he is again. And that's the Hotel Breuer in Montreux. I've stayed there, too.LADY. Did you go to the post office?STRANGER. I thought you'd ask me that. I did. And as an answer to five letters and three telegrams I found a telegram saying that my publisher had gone away for a fortnight.LADY. Then we're lost.STRANGER. Very nearly.LADY. The waiter will be back in five minutes and ask for our passports. Then the landlord will come up and tell us to go.STRANGER. Then only one course remains.LADY. Two.STRANGER. The second's impossible.LADY. What is the second?STRANGER. To go to your parents in the country.LADY. You're beginning to read my thoughts.STRANGER. We no longer have any secrets from one another.LADY. Then the whole dream's at an end.STRANGER. It maybe.LADY. You must telegraph again.STRANGER. I ought to, I know. But I can't stir from here. I no longer believe that what I do can succeed. Someone's paralysed me.LADY. And me! We decided never to speak of the past and yet we drag it with us. Look at this carpet. Those flowers seem to form....STRANGER. Him! It's him. He's everywhere. How many hundred times has he.... Yet I see someone else in the pattern of the table cloth. No, it's an illusion! Any moment now I'll hear my funeral march—then everything will be complete. (Listening.) There!LADY. I hear nothing.STRANGER. Am I... am I....LADY. Shall we go home?STRANGER. The last place. The worst of all! To arrive like an adventurer, a beggar. Impossible!LADY. Yes, I know, but.... No, it would be too much. To bring shame, disgrace and sorrow to the old people, and to see you humiliated, and you me! We could never respect one another again.STRANGER. It would be worse than death. Yet I feel it's inevitable, and I begin to long for it, to get it over quickly, if it must be.LADY (taking out her work). But I don't want to be reviled in your presence. We must find another way. If only we were married—and divorce would be easy, because my former marriage isn't recognised by the laws of the country in which it was contracted.... All we need do is to go away and be married by the same priest... but that would be wounding for you!STRANGER. It would match the rest! For this honeymoon's becoming a pilgrimage!LADY. You're right! The landlord will be here in five minutes to turn us out. There's only one way to end such humiliations. Of our own free will we must accept the worst.... I can hear footsteps!STRANGER. I've foreseen this and am ready. Ready for everything. If I can't overcome the unseen, I can show you how much I can endure.... You must pawn your jewellery. I can buy it back when my publisher gets home, if he's not drowned bathing or killed in a railway accident. A man as ambitious as I must be ready to sacrifice his honour first of all.LADY. As we're agreed, wouldn't it be better to give up this room? Oh, God! He's coming now.STRANGER. Let's go. We'll run the gauntlet of waiters, maids and servants. Red with shame and pale with indignation. Animals have their lairs to hide in, but we are forced to flaunt our shame. (Pause.) Let down your veil.LADY. So this is freedom!STRANGER. And I... am the liberator. (Exeunt.)SCENE IV BY THE SEA[A hut on a cliff by the sea. Outside it a table with chairs. The STRANGER and the LADY are dressed in less sombre clothing and look younger than in the previous scene. The LADY is doing crochet work.]STRANGER. Three peaceful happy days at my wife's side, and anxiety returns!LADY. What do you fear?STRANGER. That this will not last long.LADY. Why do you think so?STRANGER. I don't know. I believe it must end suddenly, terribly. There's something deceptive even the sunshine and the stillness. I feel that happiness if not part of my destiny.LADY. But it's all over! My parents are resigned to what we've done. My husband understands and has written a kind letter.STRANGER. What does that matter? Fate spins the web; once more I hear the mallet fall and the chairs being pushed back from the table—judgment has been pronounced. Yet that must have happened before I was born, because even in childhood I began to serve my sentence. There's no moment in my life on which can look back with happiness.LADY. Unfortunate man! Yet you've had everything you wished from life!STRANGER. Everything. Unluckily I forgot to wish for money.LADY. You're thinking of that again.STRANGER. Are you surprised?LADY. Quiet!STRANGER. What is it you're always working at? You sit there like one of the Fates and draw the threads through your fingers. But go on. The most beautiful of sights is a woman bending over her work, or over her child. What are you making?LADY. Nothing. Crochet work.STRANGER. It looks like a network of nerves and knots on which you've fixed your thoughts. The brain must look like that—from within.LADY. If only I thought of half the things you imagine.... But I think of nothing.STRANGER. Perhaps that's why I feel so contented when I'm with you. Why, I find you so perfect that I can no longer imagine life without you! Now the clouds have blown away. Now the sky is clear! The wind soft—feel how it caresses us! This is Life! Yes, now I live. And I feel my spirit growing, spreading, becoming tenuous, infinite. I am everywhere, in the ocean which is my blood, in the rocks that are my bones, in the trees, in the flowers; and my head reaches up to the heavens. I can survey the whole universe. Iamthe universe. And I feel the power of the Creator within me, for I am He! I wish I could grasp the all in my hand and refashion it into something more perfect, more lasting, more beautiful. I want all creation and created beings to be happy, to be born without pain, live without suffering, and die in quiet content. Eve! Die with me now! This moment, for the next will bring sorrow again.LADY. I'm not ready to die.STRANGER. Why not?LADY. I believe there are things I've not yet done. Perhaps I've not suffered enough.STRANGER. Is that the purpose of life?LADY. It seems to be. (Pause.) Now I want to ask one thing of you.STRANGER. Well?LADY. Don't blaspheme against heaven again, or compare yourself with the Creator, for then you remind me of Caesar at home.STRANGER (excitedly). Caesar! How can you say that...?LADY. I'm sorry if I've said anything I shouldn't. It was foolish of me to say 'at home.' Forgive me.STRANGER. You were thinking that Caesar and I resemble one another in our blasphemies?LADY. Of course not.STRANGER. Strange. I believe you when you say you don't mean to hurt me; yet youdohurt me, as all the others do. Why?LADY. Because you're over-sensitive.STRANGER. You say that again! Do you think I've sensitive hidden places?LADY. No. I didn't mean that. And now the spirits of suspicion and discord are coming between us. Drive them away—at once.STRANGER. You mustn't say I blaspheme if I use the well-known words: See, we are like unto the gods.LADY. But if that's so, why can't you help yourself, or us?STRANGER. Can't I? Wait. As yet we've only seen the beginning.LADY. If the end is like it, heaven help us!STRANGER. I know what you fear; and I meant to hold back a pleasant surprise. But now I won't torment you longer. (He takes out a registered letter, not yet opened.) Look!LADY. The money's come!STRANGER. This morning. Who can destroy me now?LADY. Don't speak like that. You know who could.STRANGER. Who?LADY. He who punishes the arrogance of men.STRANGER. And their courage. That especially. This was my Achilles' heel; I bore with everything, except this fearful lack of money.LADY. May I ask how much they've sent?STRANGER. I don't know. I've not opened the letter. But I do know about how much to expect. I'd better look and see. (He opens the letter.) What? Only an account showing I'm owed nothing! There's something uncanny in this.LADY. I begin to think so, too.STRANGER. I know I'm damned. But I'm ready to hurl the curse back at him who so nobly cursed me.... (He throws up the letter.) With a curse of my own.LADY. Don't. You frighten me.STRANGER. Fear me, so long as you don't despise me! The challenge has been thrown down; now you shall see a conflict between two great opponents. (He opens his coat and waistcoat and looks threateningly aloft.) Strike me with your lightning if you dare! Frighten me with your thunder if you can!LADY. Don't speak like that.STRANGER. I will. Who dares break in on my dream of love? Who tears the cup from my lips; and the woman from my arms? Those who envy me, be they gods or devils! Little bourgeois gods who parry sword thrusts with pin-pricks from behind, who won't stand up to their man, but strike at him with unpaid bills. A backstairs way of discrediting a master before his servants. They never attack, never draw, merely soil and decry! Powers, lords and masters! All are the same!LADY. May heaven not punish you.STRANGER. Heaven's blue and silent. The ocean's silent and stupid. Listen, I can hear a poem—that's what I call it when an idea begins to germinate in my mind. First the rhythm; this time like the thunder of hooves and the jingle of spurs and accoutrements. But there's a fluttering too, like a sail flapping.... Banners!LADY. No. It's the wind. Can't you hear it in the trees?STRANGER. Quiet! They're riding over a bridge, a wooden bridge. There's no water in the brook, only pebbles. Wait! Now I can hear them, men and women, saying a rosary. The angels' greeting. Now I can see—on what you're working—a large kitchen, with white-washed walls, it has three small latticed windows, with flowers in them. In the left-hand corner a hearth, on the right a table with wooden seats. And above the table, in the corner, hangs a crucifix, with a lamp burning below. The ceiling's of blackened beams, and dried mistletoe hangs on the wall.LADY (frightened). Where can you see all that?STRANGER. On your work.LADY. Can you see people there?STRANGER. A very old man's sitting at the table, bent over a game bag, his hands clasped in prayer. A woman, so longer young, kneels on the floor. Now once more I hear the angels' greeting, as if far away. But those two in the kitchen are as motionless as figures of wax. A veil shrouds everything.... No, that was no poem! (Waking.) It was something else.LADY. It was reality! The kitchen at home, where you've never set foot. That old man was my grandfather, the forester, and the woman my mother! They were praying for us! It was six o'clock and the servants were saying a rosary outside, as they always do.STRANGER. You make me uneasy. Is this the beginning of second sight? Still, it was beautiful. A snow-white room, with flowers and mistletoe. But why should they pray for us?LADY. Why indeed! Have we done wrong?STRANGER. What is wrong?LADY. I've read there's no such thing. And yet... I long to see my mother; not my father, for he turned me out as he did her.STRANGER. Why should he have turned your mother out?LADY. Who can say? The children least of all. Let us go to my home. I long to.STRANGER. To the lion's den, the snake pit? One more or less makes no matter. I'll do it for you, but not like the Prodigal Son. No, you shall see that I can go through fire and water for your sake.LADY. How do you know...?STRANGER. I can guess.LADY. And can you guess that the path to where my parents live in the mountains is too steep for carts to use?STRANGER. It sounds extraordinary, but I read or dreamed something of the kind.LADY. You may have. But you'll see nothing that's not natural, though perhaps unusual, for men and women are a strange race. Are you ready to follow me?STRANGER. I'm ready—for anything!(The LADY kisses him on the forehead and makes the sign of the cross simply, timidly and without gestures.)LADY. Then come!SCENE V ON THE ROAD[A landscape with hills; a chapel, right, in the far distance on a rise. The road, flanked by fruit trees, winds across the background. Between the trees hills can be seen on which are crucifixes, chapels and memorials to the victims of accidents. In the foreground a sign post with the legend, 'Beggars not allowed in this parish.' The STRANGER and the LADY.]LADY. You're tired.
THE STRANGERTHE LADYTHE BEGGARTHE DOCTORHIS SISTERAN OLD MANA MOTHERAN ABBESSA CONFESSORless important figuresFIRST MOURNERSECOND MOURNERTHIRD MOURNERLANDLORDCAESARWAITERnon-speakingA SMITHMILLER'S WIFEFUNERAL ATTENDANTS
SCENE I Street Corner SCENE XVIISCENE II Doctor's House SCENE XVISCENE III Room in an Hotel SCENE XVSCENE IV By the Sea SCENE XIVSCENE V On the Road SCENE XIIISCENE VI In a Ravine SCENE XIISCENE VII In a Kitchen SCENE XISCENE VIII The 'Rose' Room SCENE XSCENE IX Convent
First Performance in England by the Stage Society at the Westminster Theatre, 2nd May 1937
THE STRANGER Francis JamesTHE LADY Wanda RothaTHE BEGGAR Alexander SarnerFIRST MOURNER George CormackSECOND MOURNER Kenneth BellTHIRD MOURNER Peter BennettFOURTH MOURNER Bryan SearsFIFTH MOURNER Michael BoyleSIXTH MOURNER Stephen PatrickTHE LANDLORD Stephen JackTHE DOCTOR Neil PorterHIS SISTER Olga MartinCAESAR Peter LandA WAITER Peter BennettAN OLD MAN A. Corney GrainA MOTHER Frances WaringTHE SMITH Norman ThomasTHE MILLER'S WIFE Julia SandhamAN ABBESS Natalia MoyaA CONFESSOR Tristan RawsonPRODUCER Carl H. JaffeASSISTANT PRODUCER Ossia Trilling
[Street Corner with a seat under a tree; the side-door of a small Gothic Church nearby; also a post office and a café with chairs outside it. Both post office and café are shut. A funeral march is heard off, growing louder sand then fainter. A STRANGER is standing on the edge of the pavement and seems uncertain which way to go. A church clock strikes: first the four quarters and then the hour. It is three o'clock. A LADY enters and greets the STRANGER. She is about to pass him, but stops.]
STRANGER. It's you! I almost knew you'd come.
LADY. You wanted me: I felt it. But why are you waiting here?
STRANGER. I don't know. I must wait somewhere.
LADY. Who are you waiting for?
STRANGER. I wish I could tell you! For forty years I've been waiting for something: I believe they call it happiness; or the end of unhappiness. (Pause.) There's that terrible music again. Listen! But don't go, I beg you. I'll feel afraid, if you do.
LADY. We met yesterday for the first time; and talked for four hours. You roused my sympathy, but you mustn't abuse my kindness on that account.
STRANGER. I know that well enough. But I beg you not to leave me. I'm a stranger here, without friends; and my few acquaintances seem more like enemies.
LADY. You have enemies everywhere. You're lonely everywhere. Why did you leave your wife and children?
STRANGER. I wish I knew. I wish I knew why I still live; why I'm here now; where I should go and what I should do! Do you believe that the living can be damned already?
LADY. No.
STRANGER. Look at me.
LADY. Hasn't life brought you a single pleasure?
STRANGER. Not one! If at any time I thought so, it was merely a trap to tempt me to prolong my miseries. If ripe fruit fell into my hand, it was poisoned or rotten at the core.
LADY. What is your religion—if you'll forgive the question?
STRANGER. Only this: that when I can bear things no longer, I shall go.
LADY. Where?
STRANGER. Into annihilation. If I don't hold life in my hand, at least I hold death.... It gives me an amazing feeling of power.
LADY. You're playing with death!
STRANGER. As I've played with life. (Pause.) I was a writer. But in spite of my melancholy temperament I've never been able to take anything seriously—not even my worst troubles. Sometimes I even doubt whether life itself has had any more reality than my books. (A De Profundis is heard from the funeral procession.) They're coming back. Why must they process up and down these streets?
LADY. Do you fear them?
STRANGER. They annoy me. The place might be bewitched. No, it's not death I fear, but solitude; for then one's not alone. I don't know who's there, I or another, but in solitude one's not alone. The air grows heavy and seems to engender invisible beings, who have life and whose presence can be felt.
LADY. You've noticed that?
STRANGER. For some time I've noticed a great deal; but not as I used to. Once I merely saw objects and events, forms and colours, whilst now I perceive ideas and meanings. Life, that once had no meaning, has begun to have one. Now I discern intention where I used to see nothing but chance. (Pause.) When I met you yesterday it struck me you'd been sent across my path, either to save me, or destroy me.
LADY. Why should I destroy you?
STRANGER. Because it may be your destiny.
LADY. No such idea ever crossed my mind; it was largely sympathy I felt for you.... Never, in all my life, have I met anyone like you. I have only to look at you for the tears to start to my eyes. Tell me, what have you on your conscience? Have you done something wrong, that's never been discovered or punished?
STRANGER. You may well ask! No, I've no more sins on my conscience than other free men. Except this: I determined that life should never make a fool of me.
LADY. You must let yourself be fooled, more or less, to live at all.
STRANGER. That would seem a kind of duty; but one I wanted to get out of. (Pause.) I've another secret. It's whispered in the family that I'm a changeling.
LADY. What's that?
STRANGER. A child substituted by the elves for the baby that was born.
LADY. Do you believe in such things?
STRANGER. No. But, as a parable, there's something to be said for it. (Pause.) As a child I was always crying and didn't seem to take to life in this world. I hated my parents, as they hated me. I brooked no constraint, no conventions, no laws, and my longing was for the woods and the sea.
LADY. Did you ever see visions?
STRANGER. Never. But I've often thought that two beings were guiding my destiny. One offers me all I desire; but the other's ever at hand to bespatter the gifts with filth, so that they're useless to me and I can't touch them. It's true that life has given me all I asked of it—but everything's turned out worthless to me.
LADY. You've had everything and yet are not content?
STRANGER. That is the curse....
LADY. Don't say that! But why haven't you desired things that transcend this life, that can never be sullied?
STRANGER. Because I doubt if there is a beyond.
LADY. But the elves?
STRANGER. Are merely a fairy story. (Pointing to a seat.) Shall we sit down?
LADY. Yes. Who are you waiting for?
STRANGER. Really, for the post office to open. There's a letter for me—it's been forwarded on but hasn't reached me. (They sit down.) But tell me something of yourself now. (The Lady takes up her crochet work.)
LADY. There's nothing to tell.
STRANGER. Strangely enough, I should prefer to think of you like that. Impersonal, nameless—I only do know one of your names. I'd like to christen you myself—let me see, what ought you to be called? I've got it. Eve! (With a gesture towards the wings.) Trumpets! (The funeral march is heard again.) There it is again! Now I must invent your age, for I don't know how old you are. From now on you are thirty-four—so you were born in sixty-four. (Pause.) Now your character, for I don't know that either. I shall give you a good character, your voice reminds me of my mother—I mean the idea of a mother, for my mother never caressed me, though I can remember her striking me. You see, I was brought up in hate! An eye for an eye—a tooth for a tooth. You see this scar on my forehead? That comes from a blow my brother gave me with an axe, after I'd struck him with a stone. I never went to my father's funeral, because he turned me out of the house when my sister married. I was born out of wedlock, when my family were bankrupt and in mourning for an uncle who had taken his life. Now you know my family! That's the stock I come from. Once I narrowly escaped fourteen years' hard labour—so I've every reason to thank the elves, though I can't be altogether pleased with what they've done.
LADY. I like to hear you talk. But don't speak of the elves: it makes me sad.
STRANGER. Frankly, I don't believe in them; yet they're always making themselves felt. Are these elves the souls of the unhappy, who still await redemption? If so, I am the child of an evil spirit. Once I believed I was near redemption—through a woman. But no mistake could have been greater: I was plunged into the seventh hell.
LADY. You must be unhappy. But this won't go on always.
STRANGER. Do you think church bells and Holy Water could comfort me? I've tried them; they only made things worse. I felt like the Devil when he sees the sign of the cross. (Pause.) Let's talk about you now.
LADY. There's no need. (Pause.) Have you been blamed for misusing your gifts?
STRANGER. I've been blamed for everything. In the town I lived in no one was so hated as I. Lonely I came in and lonely I went out. If I entered a public place people avoided me. If I wanted to rent a room, it would be let. The priests laid a ban on me from the pulpit, teachers from their desks and parents in their homes. The church committee wanted to take my children from me. Then I blasphemously shook my fist... at heaven!
LADY. Why did they hate you so?
STRANGER. How should I know! Yet I do! I couldn't endure to see men suffer. So I kept on saying, and writing, too: free yourselves, I will help you. And to the poor I said: do not let the rich exploit you. And to the women: do not allow yourselves to be enslaved by the men. And—worst of all—to the children: do not obey your parents, if they are unjust. What followed was impossible to foresee. I found that everyone was against me: rich and poor, men and women, parents and children. And then came sickness and poverty, beggary and shame, divorce, law-suits, exile, solitude, and now.... Tell me, do you think me mad?
LADY. No.
STRANGER. You must be the only one. But I'm all the more grateful.
LADY (rising). I must leave you now.
STRANGER. You, too?
LADY. And you mustn't stay here.
STRANGER. Where should I go?
LADY. Home. To your work.
STRANGER. But I'm no worker. I'm a writer.
LADY. I know. But I didn't want to hurt you. Creative power is something given you, that can also taken away. See you don't forfeit yours.
STRANGER. Where are you going?
LADY. Only to a shop.
STRANGER (after a pause). Tell me, are you a believer?
LADY. I am nothing.
STRANGER. All the better: you have a future. How I wish I were your old blind father, whom you could lead to the market place to sing for his bread. My tragedy is I cannot grow old that's what happens to children of the elves, they have big heads and never only cry. I wish I were someone's dog. I could follow him and never be alone again. I'd get a meal sometimes, a kick now and then, a pat perhaps, a blow often....
LADY. Now I must go. Good-bye. (She goes out.)
STRANGER (absent-mindedly). Good-bye. (He remains on the seat. He takes off his hat and wipes his forehead. Then he draws on the ground with his stick. A BEGGAR enters. He has a strange look and is collecting objects from the gutter.) White are you picking up, beggar?
BEGGAR. Why call me that? I'm no beggar. Have I asked you for anything?
STRANGER. I beg your pardon. It's so hard to judge men from appearances.
BEGGAR. That's true. For instance, can you guess who I am?
STRANGER. I don't intend to try. It doesn't interest me.
BEGGAR. No one can know that in advance. Interest commonly comes afterwards—when it's too late. Virtus post nummos!
STRANGER. What? Do beggars know Latin?
BEGGAR. You see, you're interested already. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. I have always succeeded in everything I've undertaken, because I've never attempted anything. I should like to call myself Polycrates, who found the gold ring in the fish's stomach. Life has given me all I asked of it. But I never asked anything; I grew tired of success and threw the ring away. Yet, now I've grown old I regret it. I search for it in the gutters; but as the search takes time, in default of my gold ring I don't disdain a few cigar stumps....
STRANGER. I don't know whether this beggar's cynical or mad.
BEGGAR. I don't know either.
STRANGER. Do you know who I am?
BEGGAR. No. And it doesn't interest me.
STRANGER. Well, interest commonly comes afterwards.... You see you tempt me to take the words out of your mouth. And that's the same thing as picking up other people's cigars.
BEGGAR. So you won't follow my example?
STRANGER. What's that scar on your forehead?
BEGGAR. I got it from a near relation.
STRANGER. Now you frighten me! Are you real? May I touch you? (He touches his arm.) There's no doubt of it.... Would you deign to accept a small coin in return for a promise to seek Polycrates' ring in another part of the town? (He hands him a coin.) Post nummos virtus.... Another echo. You must go at once.
BEGGAR. I will. But you've given me far too much. I'll return three-quarters of it. Now we owe one another nothing but friendship.
STRANGER. Friendship! Am I a friend of yours?
BEGGAR. Well, I am of yours. When one's alone in the world one can't be particular.
STRANGER. Then let me tell you you forget yourself...
BEGGAR. Only too pleased! But when we meet again I'll have a word of welcome for you. (Exit.)
STRANGER (sitting down again and drawing in the dust with his stick). Sunday afternoon! A long, dank, sad time, after the usual Sunday dinner of roast beef, cabbage and watery potatoes. Now the older people are testing, the younger playing chess and smoking. The servants have gone to church and the shops are shut. This frightful afternoon, this day of rest, when there's nothing to engage the soul, when it's as hard to meet a friend as to get into a wine shop. (The LADY comes back again, she is noun wearing a flower at her breast.) Strange! I can't speak without being contradicted at once!
LADY. So you're still here?
STRANGER. Whether I sit here, or elsewhere, and write in the sand doesn't seem to me to matter—as long so I write in the sand.
LADY. What are you writing? May I see?
STRANGER. I think you'll find: Eve 1864.... No, don't step on it.
LADY. What happens then?
STRANGER. A disaster for you... and for me.
LADY. You know that?
STRANGER. Yes, and more. That the Christmas rose you're wearing is a mandragora. Its symbolical meaning is malice and calumny; but it was once used in medicine for the healing of madness. Will you give it me?
LADY (hesitating). As medicine?
STRANGER. Of course. (Pause.) Have you read my books?
LADY. You know I have. And that it's you I have to thank for giving me freedom and a belief in human rights and human dignity.
STRANGER. Then you haven't read the recent ones?
LADY. No. And if they're not like the earlier ones I don't want to.
STRANGER. Then promise never to open another book of mine.
LADY. Let me think that over. Very well, I promise.
STRANGER. Good! But see you keep your promise. Remember what happened to Bluebeard's wife when curiosity tempted her into the forbidden chamber....
LADY. You see, already you make demands like those of a Bluebeard. What you don't see, or have long since forgotten, is that I'm married, and that my husband's a doctor, and that he admires your work. So that his house is open to you, if you wish to be made welcome there.
STRANGER. I've done all I can to forget it. I've expunged it from my memory so that it no longer has any reality for me.
LADY. If that's so, will you come home with me to-night?
STRANGER. No. Will you come with me?
LADY. Where?
STRANGER. Anywhere! I have no home, only a trunk. Money I sometimes have—though not often. It's the one thing life has capriciously refused me, perhaps because I never desired it intensely enough. (The LADY shakes her head.) Well? What are you thinking?
LADY. I'm surprised I'm not angry with you. But you're not serious.
STRANGER. Whether I am or not's all one to me. Ah! There's the organ! It won't be long now before the drink shops open.
LADY. Is it trueyoudrink?
STRANGER. Yes. A great deal! Wine makes my soul from her prison, up into the firmament, where she what has never yet been seen, and hears what men never yet heard....
LADY. And the day after?
STRANGER. I have the most delightful scruples of conscience! I experience the purifying emotions of guilt and repentance. I enjoy the sufferings of the body, whilst my soul hovers like smoke about my head. It is as if one were suspended between Life and Death, when the spirit feels that she has already opened her pinions and could fly aloft, if she would.
LADY. Come into the church for a moment. You'll hear no sermon, only the beautiful music of vespers.
STRANGER. No. Not into church! It depresses me because I feel I don't belong there.... That I'm an unhappy soul and that it's as impossible for me to re-enter as to become a child again.
LADY. You feel all that... already?
STRANGER. Yes. I've got that far. I feel as if I lay hacked in pieces and were being slowly melted in Medea's cauldron. Either I shall be sent to the soap-boilers, or arise renewed from my own dripping! It depends on Medea's skill!
LADY. That sounds like the word of an oracle. We must see if you can't become a child again.
STRANGER. We should have to start with the cradle; and this time with the right child.
LADY. Exactly! Wait here for me whilst I go into the church. If the café were open I'd ask you please not to drink. But luckily it's shut.
(The LADY exits. The STRANGER sits down again and draws in the sand. Enter six funeral attendants in brown with some mourners. One of them carries a banner with the insignia of the Carpenters, draped in brown crêpe; another a large axe decorated with spruce, a third a cushion with a chairman's mallet. They stop outside the café and wait.)
STRANGER. Excuse me, whose funeral have you been attending?
FIRST MOURNER. A house-breaker's. (He imitates the ticking of a clock.)
STRANGER. A real house-breaker? Or the insect sort, that lodges in the woodwork and goes 'tick-tick'?
FIRST MOURNER. Both—but mainly the insect sort. What do they call them?
STRANGER (to himself). He wants to fool me into saying the death-watch beetle. So I won't. You mean a burglar?
SECOND MOURNER. No. (The clock is again heard ticking.)
STRANGER. Are you trying to frighten me? Or does the dead man work miracles? In that case I'd better explain that my nerves are good, and that I don't believe in miracles. But I do find it strange that the mourners wear brown. Why not black? It's cheap and suitable.
THIRD MOURNER. To us, in our simplicity, it looks black; but if Your Honour wishes it, it shall look brown to you.
STRANGER. A queer company! They give me an uneasy feeling I'd like to ascribe to the wine I drank yesterday. If I were to ask if that were spruce, you'd probably say—well what?
FIRST MOURNER. Vine leaves.
STRANGER. I thought it would not be spruce! The café's opening, at last! (The Café opens, the STRANGER sits at a table and is served with wine. The MOURNERS sit at the other tables.) They must have been glad to be rid of him, if the mourners start drinking as soon as the funeral's over.
FIRST MOURNER. He was a good-for-nothing, who couldn't take life seriously.
STRANGER. And who probably drank?
SECOND MOURNER. Yes.
THIRD MOURNER. And let others support his wife and children.
STRANGER. He shouldn't have done so. Is that why his friends speak so well of him now? Please don't shake my table when I'm drinking.
SECOND MOURNER. When I'm drinking, I don't mind.
STRANGER. Well, I do. There's a great difference between us! (The MOURNERS whisper together. The BEGGAR comes back.) Here's the beggar again!
BEGGAR (sitting down at a table). Wine. Moselle!
LANDLORD (consulting a police last). I can't serve you: you've not paid your taxes. Here's your name, age and profession, and the decision of the court.
BEGGAR. Omnia serviliter pro dominatione! I'm a free man with a university education. I refused to pay taxes because I didn't want to become a member of parliament. Moselle!
LANDLORD. You'll get free transport to the poor house, if you don't get out.
STRANGER. Couldn't you gentlemen settle this somewhere else. You're disturbing your patrons.
LANDLORD. You can witness I'm in the right.
STRANGER. No. The whole thing's too distressing. Even without paying taxes he has the right to enjoy life's small pleasures.
LANDLORD. So you're the kind who'd absolve vagabonds from their duties?
STRANGER. This is too much! I'd have you know that I'm a famous man. (The LANDLORD and MOURNERS laugh.)
LANDLORD. Infamous, probably! Let me look at the police list, and see if the description tallies: thirty-eight, brown hair, moustache, blue eyes; no settled employment, means unknown; married, but has deserted his wife and children; well known for revolutionary views on social questions: gives impression he is not in full possession of his faculties.... It fits!
STRANGER (rising, pale and taken aback). What?
LANDLORD. Yes. It fits all right.
BEGGAR. Perhaps he's on the list. And not me!
LANDLORD. It looks like it. In any case, both of you had better clear out.
BEGGAR (to the STRANGER). Shall we?
STRANGER. We? This begins to look like a conspiracy.
(The church bells are heard. The sun comes out and illuminates the coloured rose window above the church door, which is now opened, disclosing the interior. The organ is heard and the choir singing Ave Maris Stella.)
LADY (coming from the church). Where are you? What are you doing? Why did you call me? Must you hang on a woman's skirts like a child?
STRANGER. I'm afraid now. Things are happening that have no natural explanation.
LADY. But you were afraid of nothing. Not even death!
STRANGER. Death... no. But of something else, the unknown.
LADY. Listen. Give me your hand. You're ill, I'll take you to a doctor. Come!
STRANGER. If you like. But tell me: is this carnival, or... reality?
LADY. It's real enough.
STRANGER. This beggar must be a wretched fellow. Is it true he resembles me?
LADY. He will, if you go on drinking. Now go to the post office and get your letter. And then come with me.
STRANGER. No, I won't. It'll only be about lawsuits.
LADY. If not?
STRANGER. Malicious gossip.
LADY. Well, do as you wish. No one can escape his fate. At this moment I feel a higher power is sitting in judgment on us and has made a decision.
STRANGER. You feel that, too! I heard the hammer fall just now; and the chairs being pushed back. The clerk's being sent to find me! Oh, the suspense! No, I can't follow you.
LADY. Tell me, what have you done to me? In the church I found I couldn't pray. A light on the altar was extinguished and an icy wind blew in my face when I heard you call me.
STRANGER. I didn't call you. But I wanted you.
LADY. You're not as weak as you pretend. You have great strength; and I'm afraid of you....
STRANGER. When I'm alone I've no strength at all; but if I can find a single companion I grow strong. I shall be strong now; and so I'll follow you.
LADY. Perhaps you can free me from the werewolf.
STRANGER. Who's he?
LADY. That's what I call him.
STRANGER. Count on me. Killing dragons, freeing princesses, defeating werewolves—that is Life!
LADY. Then come, my liberator!
(She draws her veil over her face, kisses him on the mouth and hurries out. The STRANGER stands where he is for a moment, surprised and stunned. A loud chord sung by women's voices, rather like a cry, is heard from the church. The rose window suddenly grows dark and the tree above the seat is shaken by the wind. The MOURNERS rise and look at the sky, as if they could see something terrifying. The STRANGER hurries out after the LADY.)
[Courtyard enclosed on three sides by a single-storied house with a tiled roof. Small windows in all three façades. Right, verandah with glass doors. Left, climbing roses and bee-hives outside the windows. In the middle of the courtyard a woodpile in the form of a cupola. A well beside it. The top of a walnut tree is seen above the central façade of the house. In the corner, right, a garden gate. By the well a large tortoise. On right, entrance below to a wine-cellar. An ice-chest and dust-bin. The DOCTOR'S SISTER enters from the verandah with a telegram.]
SISTER. Now misfortune will fall on your house.
DOCTOR. When has it not, my dear sister?
SISTER. This time.... Ingeborg's coming and bringing... guess whom?
DOCTOR. Wait! I know, because I've long foreseen this, even desired it, for he's a writer I've always admired. I've learnt much from him and often wished to meet him. Now he's coming, you say. Where did Ingeborg meet him?
SISTER. In town, it seems. Probably in some literarysalon.
DOCTOR. I've often wondered whether this man was the boy of the same name who was my friend at school. I hope not; for he seemed one that fortune would treat harshly. And in a life-time he'll have given his unhappy tendencies full scope.
SISTER. Don't let him come here. Go out. Say you're engaged.
DOCTOR. No. One can't escape one's fate.
SISTER. But you've never bowed your head to anyone! Why crawl before this spectre, and call him fate?
DOCTOR. Life has taught me to. I've wasted time and energy in fighting the inevitable.
SISTER. But why allow your wife to behave like this? She'll compromise you both.
DOCTOR. You think so? Because, when I made her break off her engagement I held out false hopes to her of a life of freedom, instead of the slavery she'd known. Besides, I could never love her if I were in a position to give her orders.
SISTER. You'd be friends with your enemy?
DOCTOR. Oh...!
SISTER. Will you let her bring someone into the house who'll destroy you? If you only knew how I hate that man.
DOCTOR. I do. His last book's terrible; and shows a certain lack of mental balance.
SISTER. They ought to shut him up.
DOCTOR. Many people have said so, but I don't think him bad enough.
SISTER. Because you're eccentric yourself, and live in daily contact with a woman who's mad.
DOCTOR. I admit abnormality has always had a strong attraction for me, and originality is at least not commonplace. (The syren of a steamer is heard.) What was that?
SISTER. Your nerves are on edge. It's only the steamer. (Pause.) Now, I implore you, go away!
DOCTOR. I ought to want to; but I'm held fast. (Pause.) From here I can see his portrait in my study. The sunlight throws a shadow on it that changes it completely. It makes him look like.... Horrible! You see what I mean?
HATER. The devil! Come away!
DOCTOR. I can't.
SISTER. Then at least defend yourself.
DOCTOR. I always do. But this time I feel a thunder storm gathering. How often have I tried to fly, and not been able to. It's as if the earth were iron and I a compass needle. If misfortune comes, it's not of my fee choice. They've come in at the door.
SISTER. I heard nothing.
DOCTOR. I did! Now I can see them, too! Heisthe friend of my boyhood. He got into trouble at school; but I was blamed and punished. He was nick-named Caesar, I don't know why.
SISTER. And this man....
DOCTOR. That's what always happens. Caesar! (The LADY comes in.)
LADY. I've brought a visitor.
DOCTOR. I know, and he's welcome.
LADY. I left him in the house, to wash.
DOCTOR. Well, are you satisfied with your conquest?
LADY. I think he's the unhappiest man I ever met.
DOCTOR. That's saying a great deal.
LADY. Yes, there's enough unhappiness for all of us.
DOCTOR. There is! (To his SISTER.) Would you ask him to come out here? (His SISTER goes out.) Have you had an interesting time?
LADY. Yes. I met a number of strange people. Have you had many patients?
DOCTOR. No. The consulting room's empty this morning. I think the practice is going down.
LADY (kindly). I'm sorry. Tell me, oughtn't that woodpile to be taken into the house? It only draws the damp.
DOCTOR (without reproach). Yes, and the bees should be killed, too; and the fruit in the garden picked. But I've no time to do it.
LADY. You're tired.
DOCTOR. Tired of everything.
LADY (without bitterness). And you've a wife who can't even help you.
DOCTOR (kindly). You mustn't say that, if I don't think so.
LADY (turning towards the verandah). Here he is!
(The STRANGER comes in through the verandah, dressed in a way that makes him look younger than before. He has an air of forced candour. He seems to recognise the doctor, and shrinks back, but recovers himself.)
DOCTOR. You're very welcome.
STRANGER. It's kind of you.
DOCTOR. You bring good weather with you. And we need it; for it's rained for six weeks.
STRANGER. Not for seven? It usually rains for seven if it rains on St. Swithin's. But that's later on—how foolish of me!
DOCTOR. As you're used to town life I'm afraid you'll find the country dull.
STRANGER. Oh no. I'm no more at home there than here. Excuse me asking, but haven't we met before—when we were boys?
DOCTOR. Never.
(The LADY has sat down at the table and is crocheting.)
STRANGER. Are you sure?
DOCTOR. Perfectly. I've followed your literary career from the first with great interest; as I know my wife has told you. So that if wehadmet I'd certainly have remembered your name. (Pause.) Well, now you can see how a country doctor lives!
STRANGER. If you could guess what the life of a so-called liberator's like, you wouldn't envy him.
DOCTOR. I can imagine it; for I've seen how men love their chains. Perhaps that's as it should be.
STRANGER (listening). Strange. Who's playing in the village?
DOCTOR. I don't know. Do you, Ingeborg?
LADY. No.
STRANGER. Mendelssohn's Funeral March! It pursues me. I never know whether I've heard it or not.
DOCTOR. Do you suffer from hallucinations?
STRANGER. No. But I'm pursued by trivial incidents. Can't you hear anyone playing?
DOCTOR. Yes.
LADY. Someoneisplaying. Mendelssohn.
DOCTOR. Not surprising.
STRANGER. No. But that it should be played precisely at the right place, at the right time.... (He gets up.)
DOCTOR. To reassure you, I'll ask my sister. (Exit through the verandah.)
STRANGER (to the LADY). I'm stifling here. I can't pass a night under this roof. Your husband looks like a werewolf and in his presence you turn into a pillar of salt. Murder has been done in this house; the place is haunted. I shall escape as soon as I can find an excuse.
(The DOCTOR comes back.)
DOCTOR. It's the girl at the post office.
STRANGER (nervously). Good. That's all right. You've an original house. That pile of wood, for instance.
DOCTOR. Yes. It's been struck by lightning twice.
STRANGER. Terrible! And you still keep it?
DOCTOR. That's why. I've made it higher out of defiance; and to give shade in summer. It's like the prophet's gourd. But in the autumn it must go into the wood shed.
STRANGER (looking round). Christmas roses, too! Where did you get them? They're flowering in summer! Everything's upside down here.
DOCTOR. They were given me by a patient. He's not quite sane.
STRANGER. Is he staying in the house?
DOCTOR. Yes. He's a quiet soul, who ponders on the purposelessness of nature. He thinks it foolish for hellebore to grow in the snow and freeze; so he puts the plants in the cellar and beds them out in the spring.
STRANGER. But a madman... in the house. Most unpleasant!
DOCTOR. He's very harmless.
STRANGER. How did he lose his wits?
DOCTOR. Who can tell. It's a disease of the mind, not the body.
STRANGER. Tell me—is he here—now?
DOCTOR. Yes. He's free to wander in the garden and arrange creation. But if his presence disquiets you, we can shut him up.
STRANGER. Why aren't such poor devils put out of—their misery?
DOCTOR. It's hard to know whether they're ripe....
STRANGER. What for?
DOCTOR. For what's to come.
STRANGER. Thereisnothing. (Pause.)
DOCTOR. Who knows!
STRANGER. I feel strangely uneasy. Have you medical material... specimens... dead bodies?
DOCTOR. Oh yes. In the ice-box—for the authorities, you know. (He pulls out an arm and leg.) Look here.
STRANGER. No. Too much like Bluebeard!
DOCTOR (sharply). What do you mean by that? (Looking at the LADY.) Do you think I kill my wives?
STRANGER. Oh no. It's clear you don't. Is this house haunted, too?
DOCTOR. Oh yes. Ask my wife.(He disappears behind the wood pile where neither the STRANGER nor the LADY can see him.)
LADY. You needn't whisper, my husband's deaf. Though he can lip read.
STRANGER. Then let me say that I've never known a more painful half-hour. We exchange the merest commonplaces, because none of us has the courage to say what he thinks. I suffered so that the idea came to me of opening my veins to get relief. But now I'd like to tell him the truth and have done with it. Shall we say to his face that we mean to go away, and that you've had enough of his foolishness?
LADY. If you talk like that I'll begin to hate you. You must behave under any circumstances.
STRANGER. How well brought up you are! (The DOCTOR now becomes visible to the STRANGER and the LADY, who continue their conversation.) Come away with me, before the sun goes down. (Pause.) Tell me, why did you kiss me yesterday?
LADY. But....
STRANGER. Supposing he could hear what we say! I don't trust him.
DOCTOR. What shall we do to amuse our guest?
LADY. He doesn't care much for amusement. His life's not been happy.
(The DOCTOR blows a whistle. The MADMAN comes into the garden. He wears a laurel wreath and his clothes are curious.)
DOCTOR. Come here, Caesar.
STRANGER (displeased). What? Is he called Caesar?
DOCTOR. No. It's a nickname I gave him, to remind me of a boy I was at school with.
STRANGER (disturbed). Oh?
DOCTOR. He was involved in a strange incident, and I got all the blame.
LADY (to the STRANGER). You'd never believe a boy could have been so corrupt.
(The STRANGER looks distressed. The MADMAN comes nearer.)
DOCTOR. Caesar, come and make your bow to our famous writer.
CAESAR. Is this the great man?
LADY (to the DOCTOR). Why did you let him come, if it annoys our guest?
DOCTOR. Caesar, you must behave. Or I shall have to whip you.
CAESAR. Yes. He is Caesar, but he's not great. He doesn't even know which came first, the hen or the egg. But I do.
STRANGER (to the LADY). I shall go. Is this a trap? What am I to think? In a minute he'll unloose his bees to amuse me.
LADY. Trust me... whatever happens! And turn your face away when you speak.
STRANGER. This werewolf never leaves us.
DOCTOR (looking at his watch). You must excuse me for about an hour. I've a patient to visit. I hope the time won't hang on your hands.
STRANGER. I'm used to waiting, for what never comes....
DOCTOR (to the MADMAN). Come along, Caesar. I must lock you up in the cellar. (He goes out with the MADMAN.)
STRANGER (to the LADY). What does that mean? Someone's pursuing me! You told me your husband was well disposed towards me, and I believed you. But he can't open his mouth without wounding me. Every word pricks like a goad. Then this funeral march... it's really being played! And here, once more, Christmas roses! Why does everything follow in an eternal round? Dead bodies, beggars, madmen, human destinies and childhood memories? Come away. Let me free you from this hell.
LADY. That's why I brought you here. Also that it could never be said you'd stolen the wife of another. But one thing I must ask you: can I put my trust in you?
STRANGER. You mean in my feelings?
LADY. I don't speak of them. We're taking them for granted. They'll endure as long as they'll endure.
STRANGER. You mean in my position? Large sums are owed me. All I have to do is to write or telegraph....
LADY. Then I will trust you. (Putting away her work.) Now go straight out of that door. Follow the syringa hedge till you find a gate. We'll meet in the next village.
STRANGER (hesitating). I don't like leaving the back way. I'd rather have fought it out with him here.
LADY. Quick!
STRANGER. Won't you come with me?
LADY. Yes. But then I must go first. (She turns and blows a kiss towards the verandah.) My poor werewolf!
[The STRANGER enters followed by the LADY. A WAITER.]
STRANGER (who is carrying a suitcase). Is no other room free?
WAITER. No.
STRANGER. I don't want this one.
LADY. But it's the only one: the other hotels are all full.
STRANGER (to the WAITER). You can go. (The LADY sinks on to a chair without taking off her hat and coat.) What is it you want?
LADY. I wish you'd kill me.
STRANGER. I don't wonder! Thrown out of hotels, because we're not married, and pestered by the police, we're forced to come to this place, the last I'd have wished. To this very room, number eight.... Someone must be against me!
LADY. Is this eight?
STRANGER. What? Have you been here before?
LADY. Have you?
STRANGER. Yes.
LADY. Then let's get away. Onto the road, into the woods. It doesn't matter where.
STRANGER. I should like to. But after this terrible time I'm as tired as you are. I felt this was to be our journey's end. I resisted, I tried to go in the opposite direction, but trains were late, or we missed them, and we had to come here. To this room! The devil's in it—at least what I call the devil. But I'll be even with him yet.
LADY. It seems we'll never find peace on earth again.
STRANGER. Nothing's been changed. The dying Christmas roses. (Looking at two pictures.) There he is again. And that's the Hotel Breuer in Montreux. I've stayed there, too.
LADY. Did you go to the post office?
STRANGER. I thought you'd ask me that. I did. And as an answer to five letters and three telegrams I found a telegram saying that my publisher had gone away for a fortnight.
LADY. Then we're lost.
STRANGER. Very nearly.
LADY. The waiter will be back in five minutes and ask for our passports. Then the landlord will come up and tell us to go.
STRANGER. Then only one course remains.
LADY. Two.
STRANGER. The second's impossible.
LADY. What is the second?
STRANGER. To go to your parents in the country.
LADY. You're beginning to read my thoughts.
STRANGER. We no longer have any secrets from one another.
LADY. Then the whole dream's at an end.
STRANGER. It maybe.
LADY. You must telegraph again.
STRANGER. I ought to, I know. But I can't stir from here. I no longer believe that what I do can succeed. Someone's paralysed me.
LADY. And me! We decided never to speak of the past and yet we drag it with us. Look at this carpet. Those flowers seem to form....
STRANGER. Him! It's him. He's everywhere. How many hundred times has he.... Yet I see someone else in the pattern of the table cloth. No, it's an illusion! Any moment now I'll hear my funeral march—then everything will be complete. (Listening.) There!
LADY. I hear nothing.
STRANGER. Am I... am I....
LADY. Shall we go home?
STRANGER. The last place. The worst of all! To arrive like an adventurer, a beggar. Impossible!
LADY. Yes, I know, but.... No, it would be too much. To bring shame, disgrace and sorrow to the old people, and to see you humiliated, and you me! We could never respect one another again.
STRANGER. It would be worse than death. Yet I feel it's inevitable, and I begin to long for it, to get it over quickly, if it must be.
LADY (taking out her work). But I don't want to be reviled in your presence. We must find another way. If only we were married—and divorce would be easy, because my former marriage isn't recognised by the laws of the country in which it was contracted.... All we need do is to go away and be married by the same priest... but that would be wounding for you!
STRANGER. It would match the rest! For this honeymoon's becoming a pilgrimage!
LADY. You're right! The landlord will be here in five minutes to turn us out. There's only one way to end such humiliations. Of our own free will we must accept the worst.... I can hear footsteps!
STRANGER. I've foreseen this and am ready. Ready for everything. If I can't overcome the unseen, I can show you how much I can endure.... You must pawn your jewellery. I can buy it back when my publisher gets home, if he's not drowned bathing or killed in a railway accident. A man as ambitious as I must be ready to sacrifice his honour first of all.
LADY. As we're agreed, wouldn't it be better to give up this room? Oh, God! He's coming now.
STRANGER. Let's go. We'll run the gauntlet of waiters, maids and servants. Red with shame and pale with indignation. Animals have their lairs to hide in, but we are forced to flaunt our shame. (Pause.) Let down your veil.
LADY. So this is freedom!
STRANGER. And I... am the liberator. (Exeunt.)
[A hut on a cliff by the sea. Outside it a table with chairs. The STRANGER and the LADY are dressed in less sombre clothing and look younger than in the previous scene. The LADY is doing crochet work.]
STRANGER. Three peaceful happy days at my wife's side, and anxiety returns!
LADY. What do you fear?
STRANGER. That this will not last long.
LADY. Why do you think so?
STRANGER. I don't know. I believe it must end suddenly, terribly. There's something deceptive even the sunshine and the stillness. I feel that happiness if not part of my destiny.
LADY. But it's all over! My parents are resigned to what we've done. My husband understands and has written a kind letter.
STRANGER. What does that matter? Fate spins the web; once more I hear the mallet fall and the chairs being pushed back from the table—judgment has been pronounced. Yet that must have happened before I was born, because even in childhood I began to serve my sentence. There's no moment in my life on which can look back with happiness.
LADY. Unfortunate man! Yet you've had everything you wished from life!
STRANGER. Everything. Unluckily I forgot to wish for money.
LADY. You're thinking of that again.
STRANGER. Are you surprised?
LADY. Quiet!
STRANGER. What is it you're always working at? You sit there like one of the Fates and draw the threads through your fingers. But go on. The most beautiful of sights is a woman bending over her work, or over her child. What are you making?
LADY. Nothing. Crochet work.
STRANGER. It looks like a network of nerves and knots on which you've fixed your thoughts. The brain must look like that—from within.
LADY. If only I thought of half the things you imagine.... But I think of nothing.
STRANGER. Perhaps that's why I feel so contented when I'm with you. Why, I find you so perfect that I can no longer imagine life without you! Now the clouds have blown away. Now the sky is clear! The wind soft—feel how it caresses us! This is Life! Yes, now I live. And I feel my spirit growing, spreading, becoming tenuous, infinite. I am everywhere, in the ocean which is my blood, in the rocks that are my bones, in the trees, in the flowers; and my head reaches up to the heavens. I can survey the whole universe. Iamthe universe. And I feel the power of the Creator within me, for I am He! I wish I could grasp the all in my hand and refashion it into something more perfect, more lasting, more beautiful. I want all creation and created beings to be happy, to be born without pain, live without suffering, and die in quiet content. Eve! Die with me now! This moment, for the next will bring sorrow again.
LADY. I'm not ready to die.
STRANGER. Why not?
LADY. I believe there are things I've not yet done. Perhaps I've not suffered enough.
STRANGER. Is that the purpose of life?
LADY. It seems to be. (Pause.) Now I want to ask one thing of you.
STRANGER. Well?
LADY. Don't blaspheme against heaven again, or compare yourself with the Creator, for then you remind me of Caesar at home.
STRANGER (excitedly). Caesar! How can you say that...?
LADY. I'm sorry if I've said anything I shouldn't. It was foolish of me to say 'at home.' Forgive me.
STRANGER. You were thinking that Caesar and I resemble one another in our blasphemies?
LADY. Of course not.
STRANGER. Strange. I believe you when you say you don't mean to hurt me; yet youdohurt me, as all the others do. Why?
LADY. Because you're over-sensitive.
STRANGER. You say that again! Do you think I've sensitive hidden places?
LADY. No. I didn't mean that. And now the spirits of suspicion and discord are coming between us. Drive them away—at once.
STRANGER. You mustn't say I blaspheme if I use the well-known words: See, we are like unto the gods.
LADY. But if that's so, why can't you help yourself, or us?
STRANGER. Can't I? Wait. As yet we've only seen the beginning.
LADY. If the end is like it, heaven help us!
STRANGER. I know what you fear; and I meant to hold back a pleasant surprise. But now I won't torment you longer. (He takes out a registered letter, not yet opened.) Look!
LADY. The money's come!
STRANGER. This morning. Who can destroy me now?
LADY. Don't speak like that. You know who could.
STRANGER. Who?
LADY. He who punishes the arrogance of men.
STRANGER. And their courage. That especially. This was my Achilles' heel; I bore with everything, except this fearful lack of money.
LADY. May I ask how much they've sent?
STRANGER. I don't know. I've not opened the letter. But I do know about how much to expect. I'd better look and see. (He opens the letter.) What? Only an account showing I'm owed nothing! There's something uncanny in this.
LADY. I begin to think so, too.
STRANGER. I know I'm damned. But I'm ready to hurl the curse back at him who so nobly cursed me.... (He throws up the letter.) With a curse of my own.
LADY. Don't. You frighten me.
STRANGER. Fear me, so long as you don't despise me! The challenge has been thrown down; now you shall see a conflict between two great opponents. (He opens his coat and waistcoat and looks threateningly aloft.) Strike me with your lightning if you dare! Frighten me with your thunder if you can!
LADY. Don't speak like that.
STRANGER. I will. Who dares break in on my dream of love? Who tears the cup from my lips; and the woman from my arms? Those who envy me, be they gods or devils! Little bourgeois gods who parry sword thrusts with pin-pricks from behind, who won't stand up to their man, but strike at him with unpaid bills. A backstairs way of discrediting a master before his servants. They never attack, never draw, merely soil and decry! Powers, lords and masters! All are the same!
LADY. May heaven not punish you.
STRANGER. Heaven's blue and silent. The ocean's silent and stupid. Listen, I can hear a poem—that's what I call it when an idea begins to germinate in my mind. First the rhythm; this time like the thunder of hooves and the jingle of spurs and accoutrements. But there's a fluttering too, like a sail flapping.... Banners!
LADY. No. It's the wind. Can't you hear it in the trees?
STRANGER. Quiet! They're riding over a bridge, a wooden bridge. There's no water in the brook, only pebbles. Wait! Now I can hear them, men and women, saying a rosary. The angels' greeting. Now I can see—on what you're working—a large kitchen, with white-washed walls, it has three small latticed windows, with flowers in them. In the left-hand corner a hearth, on the right a table with wooden seats. And above the table, in the corner, hangs a crucifix, with a lamp burning below. The ceiling's of blackened beams, and dried mistletoe hangs on the wall.
LADY (frightened). Where can you see all that?
STRANGER. On your work.
LADY. Can you see people there?
STRANGER. A very old man's sitting at the table, bent over a game bag, his hands clasped in prayer. A woman, so longer young, kneels on the floor. Now once more I hear the angels' greeting, as if far away. But those two in the kitchen are as motionless as figures of wax. A veil shrouds everything.... No, that was no poem! (Waking.) It was something else.
LADY. It was reality! The kitchen at home, where you've never set foot. That old man was my grandfather, the forester, and the woman my mother! They were praying for us! It was six o'clock and the servants were saying a rosary outside, as they always do.
STRANGER. You make me uneasy. Is this the beginning of second sight? Still, it was beautiful. A snow-white room, with flowers and mistletoe. But why should they pray for us?
LADY. Why indeed! Have we done wrong?
STRANGER. What is wrong?
LADY. I've read there's no such thing. And yet... I long to see my mother; not my father, for he turned me out as he did her.
STRANGER. Why should he have turned your mother out?
LADY. Who can say? The children least of all. Let us go to my home. I long to.
STRANGER. To the lion's den, the snake pit? One more or less makes no matter. I'll do it for you, but not like the Prodigal Son. No, you shall see that I can go through fire and water for your sake.
LADY. How do you know...?
STRANGER. I can guess.
LADY. And can you guess that the path to where my parents live in the mountains is too steep for carts to use?
STRANGER. It sounds extraordinary, but I read or dreamed something of the kind.
LADY. You may have. But you'll see nothing that's not natural, though perhaps unusual, for men and women are a strange race. Are you ready to follow me?
STRANGER. I'm ready—for anything!
(The LADY kisses him on the forehead and makes the sign of the cross simply, timidly and without gestures.)
LADY. Then come!
[A landscape with hills; a chapel, right, in the far distance on a rise. The road, flanked by fruit trees, winds across the background. Between the trees hills can be seen on which are crucifixes, chapels and memorials to the victims of accidents. In the foreground a sign post with the legend, 'Beggars not allowed in this parish.' The STRANGER and the LADY.]
LADY. You're tired.