beyond your wildest dreams,
eh, children, eh, my lambs?
BRAND: If you yield now, you’re lost.
ONE OF THE CROWD: Fish in the fjord – the most
there’s ever been!
MAYOR: Billions!
DEAN: Bread for your little ones,
gold coins in your pockets.
MAYOR: Don’t question luck; it’s
high time for you to learn
what things to leave alone
and where to stake a claim.
Fare forth, my friends, bring home
the bounty of the deep.
No need for blood and sweat,
no need at all. Let’s keep
sacrifice out of it.
BRAND: Sacrifice is written in words
of fire, blazing high in the clouds!
DEAN: It depends how you feel,
of course. Any fine Sunday I’ll
be happy to extol
sacrifice to one and all.
MAYOR: Yes, some fine day, eh, dean?
SEXTON [to DEAN]:
Look, sir … you’ll keep me on?
SCHOOLMASTER [to DEAN]:
You’ll not have me dismissed
(heaven forbid) from my post?
DEAN [quietly]:
Well, again, that depends –
a quiet word with your friends …
Make the crowd walk our way,
then, no doubt, leniency …
you understand? h’m? h’m?
MAYOR: Come on, we’re wasting time!
SEXTON: I’m off to find my boat.
ONE OF THE CROWD: The pastor … what about?
SEXTON: Argh! Let him rot, the fool …
SCHOOLMASTER: ’Tis the Lord’s will, the Lord’s will.
MAYOR: Act as God’s law requires
with all such thieves and liars.
ONE OF THE CROWD: He lied to us!
ANOTHER: He lied
to us!
DEAN: Nothing but lies.
If you ask me, he’s
not even qualified!
ONE OF THE CROWD: The nerve!
ANOTHER: What has he got?
MAYOR: The Order of the Boot!
SEXTON: That fellow’s a wrong
’un; I’ve said so all along!
DEAN: He cursed his dear mother
as she lay at death’s door,
refused her communion.
MAYOR: He killed his own son.
SEXTON: He broke his poor wife’s heart.
A WOMAN: Men like that should be shot.
DEAN: Cruel father, cruel spouse!
What, I ask, could be worse?
ONE OF THE CROWD: He tore the old church down.
ANOTHER: Locked us out of the new ’un.
MAYOR: The scoundrel stole my plan,
my gift to the insane.
BRAND: That gift? It’s yours, mayor,
all yours: madness, despair!
ONE OF THE CROWD: Flay him!
ANOTHER: Throttle him!
ANOTHER: Shut
his mouth!
ANOTHER: Out! Out!
CROWD [bellowing]:
Out! Out! Out! Out!
BRAND is driven and stoned across the wastelands. Then, gradually, his pursuers return.
DEAN: My children, O my lambs,
return to your homes!
Gaze with repentant eyes
on God, all-good, all-wise.
He’ll not eat you. He’ll
not pack you off to hell.
You’ll find the government
extremely tolerant;
the justices of the peace
will fold you in their embrace
while I, in my own right,
exude sweetness and light.
MAYOR: We’re ready to appoint –
(by ‘we’, of course, I mean
myself and the dean) –
a regional committee
to deal with each complaint
in peace and charity.
A clergyman or two,
the schoolmaster, he’ll do;
the sexton; plus a couple
more, two sturdy sons of toil
picked out from the people
to sit with their betters.
We’ll give you all you want,
progress, enlightenment,
self-help? free thought? We’ll
knock off your fetters!
just as you’ve lightened mine
(I can rest easy again!)
so rejoice and be glad.
And now, get back to work.
Good fishing, and good luck!
SEXTON: True Christians both, as fine
as ever I’ve seen!
ONE OF THE CROWD: Oh yes! They know what’s right.
SEXTON: They don’t tell you to ‘fight,
fight till you drop’!
SCHOOLMASTER: You feel those two can cope
with more than mere pieties.
They know what life is.
The CROWD begins to move down the slopes.
DEAN [to MAYOR]:
Well, that’s improved the tone,
all the harm’s been undone
and reaction’s restored,
praise be to the Lord!
MAYOR: And who, may I inquire,
came and put out the fire?
Who else but yours truly!
DEAN: Tch, mayor, that’s a wholly
uncalled-for remark!
’Twas the Lord’s handiwork.
MAYOR: You think so?
DEAN: Yes, that shoal
in the fjord …
MAYOR: That wasn’t real.
DEAN: You uttered an untruth?
MAYOR: I just opened my mouth –
hey Bingo – out it came!
Don’t tell me that’s a crime.
DEAN: Such sleights may be allowed,
my son, in time of need.
MAYOR: In dire emergencies
what are a few white lies?
DEAN: I’m neither prig nor prude.
[Looks across the barren wastes.]
Good heavens above! Look there –
isn’t that our friend
limping over the ground?
MAYOR: Like a lost warrior
seeking his lost crusade.
DEAN: And trudging close behind –
MAYOR: Poor Gerd, I do declare!
Well, they’re two of a kind.
DEAN [jestingly]:
He’ll need an epitaph.
How’s this for a laugh?
‘Here lies a pure young pastor.
He was a pure disaster.
He’s left, of all he had,
one convert, and she’s mad.’
MAYOR [with his finger on his nose]:
But, come to think of it,
his treatment’s not been quite –
how can I put it – fair.
DEAN [shrugging]:
Vox populi, vox Dei,30 mayor!
Exeunt.
SCENE 3
Out on the great open heights. The storm is gathering strength and driving the clouds, low and heavy, over the snowy wastes; black pinnacles and peaks now and then appear and are again blurred by the mist. BRAND comes, bruised and bleeding, across the heights.
BRAND [stopping and looking back]:
A thousand followers. And not one
followed me here. Where have they gone,
then, the struggle and all the great
yearning to reach the farthest height?
Their pitiful vainglorious dream
of sacrifice! Have they no shame;
or do they think Christ Crucified
made all sins decent when he died?
We battle for our sou
ls. I knew
fear in my time; watched it; it grew;
it moved as I moved, as I tried
to find my heart a place to hide:
‘The trolls are dead; and it is not
night; and the sun grows round and hot
above the fjord in its round dance,
in pure midsummer radiance.’
How fearful, then, when I awoke
from vividness into the shock
of dark where men moved shadowy
like ghosts beside the frozen sea;
sad mockeries of that old king
of Norway,31 his weird suffering,
locked in his grief for his dead queen,
her heartbeats locked inside his brain.
You cannot bury death in dreams
of life; and nothing else redeems
death from itself but life-in-death,
the live seed buried in the earth.
But now this hideous age ordains
blood and iron (for as few pains
as possible). Some flinch. And some
go in good faith to fight the storm.
The best go. The worst wring their hands,
groaning, ‘The age, the age demands!’
Worse times, worse visions, they are here
already: locust swarms of fear,
war clouds and clouds of industry –
rich England’s shame, stormclouded rack,
shedding her bale of fiery smoke –
drawing their filth across the sky.
Deep down, the soulless dwarfs who made
an empire quarrying men’s greed
set free the stony-fettered ore
the better to constrain its power.
They labour so, grow old and die
enslaved by their own mastery;
the clicking water of the mine
cold requiem when they are gone!
Truth is not seen or else is seen
too late, ruins where storms have been.
A nation smug amid the gloom
savours its penitential psalm:
‘Not for us His cup was drained,
not for us the kiss that burned,
not for us the thorny crown
rooted in His blood that ran.
Not for us, O not for us
to seek salvation at His Cross.
For us only the whip that rakes
fresh scars across our spineless backs!’
[He throws himself down in the snow and covers his face with his hands. After some moments he looks up.]
Am I now waking from a sleep
of sickness, from some demon’s grip?
Did I hear once, through the world’s din,
the song of the soul’s origin?
CHORUS OF SPIRITS: God is God and man can never
Be like Him. You thing of dust,
Defy him; be His abject lover;
Either way your soul is lost!
BRAND: I have been dispossessed by God.
God has withdrawn from His own Word;
His clouds of wrath blot out the sun,
accursèd is the altar-stone.
CHORUS: God is God and is for ever.32
You shall live your life of death,
Self-inspiring self-deceiver,
Cheated by your dying breath.
BRAND: I sacrificed my wife, my child,
and all my comfort in this world,
and yet the serpent was not slain!
And was my sacrifice my sin?
CHORUS: God is God. He grants no favour,
No return for life that’s past.
All your sacrificial savour
Smells like any carnal feast.
BRAND [beginning to weep quietly]:
Agnes, my wife; and oh, my son,
my son, Alf – what have I done,
and why? And do you – poor ghosts –
cling together in these weeping mists?
BRAND looks up; an area of growing light opens and spreads itself in the mist; the spectral form of a woman stands there, dressed in light colours, with a cloak over her shoulders. It is AGNES.
SPECTRE OF AGNES: Look at me, Brand.
BRAND: Love! Is it you?
SPECTRE: Yes, I am Agnes.
BRAND: The child, too,
is he …?
SPECTRE: He is safe and sound.
He misses you. No, Brand!
Stay where you are. The stream
divides us now.
BRAND: A dream!
SPECTRE: No dream.
I stay as long as you desire.
BRAND: For ever, then!
SPECTRE: Brand, all my care
has been for you. When you were filled
with frantic rage against the world
I tried to calm you. I was beside
you, even though you dreamed I died.
BRAND: You are alive!
SPECTRE: And you shall live
once more in what you have.
I’ve said, the child is well;
he’s with your mother. Oh how tall
he’s grown! The village church still stands
or falls at your will. Your friends
are watching for the day
of your return. Love, come away!
Surely the good days wait for us!
BRAND: It is a dream.
SPECTRE: Refuse
these gifts of life? Be lost
for ever in a mist?
Love, love, come and be healed.
BRAND: I still
know, despite all, that my own will
is my salvation, my true peace.
You plead for a false sacrifice.
SPECTRE: Brand, I am your salvation now!
Our friend, the old doctor, saw
deep, deep into your soul
where you hid from us all,
enraptured by your cruel visions.
He called you a man of dark passions.
‘Most passionate for each extreme.
He must will himself to be calm,’
he said, ‘teach his heart a new tune.
“All or nothing” is good for no one.’
BRAND [turning away]:
Is this true?
SPECTRE: As true as I live;
true as your way of death. O love,
all that I did was for your good!
BRAND: That you have never understood!
You condemn me. Your care betrays
me, and insinuates old ways.
You have betrayed us both. A sword
gleams between us, and always would!
SPECTRE: Be gentle, Brand. In my embrace
the anguish and the fearful price
can be forgotten. No more pain …
BRAND: Old wounds won’t bleed again.
Anguish of dreams is dead.
Life’s horror comes instead.
Follow me, Agnes.
SPECTRE: But the child,
Brand!
BRAND: Leave him!
SPECTRE: No! No wild
nightmares of riding at your back
like a dead woman wide awake!
BRAND: All or nothing. Truth, not lies.
My vision, not your fantasies!
SPECTRE: The seraph with the sword of flame,
remember, Brand? And Adam’s doom,
remember? And the dread abyss
before the gate? You shall not pass
into your self-willed paradise!
BRAND: God left one last approach for us:
the way of longing!
SPECTRE OF AGNES disappears as in a thunderclap; the mist rolls in over the place where she stood; there is a sharp and penetrating cry, as from one fleeing.
SPECTRE: Die, Brand, die!
&nbs
p; All life disowns your destiny!
BRAND [standing for a few moments as if stunned]:
It vanished so suddenly.
Cheated of what it came to seek –
my soul’s blood on its claws and beak –
it screamed for its lost prey.
Was that the ghost of compromise?
GERD [enters, carrying a rifle]:
The hawk! Did you see him?
BRAND: This time,
yes, there was a hawk.
It came so very close.
GERD: Which way has he flown? Quick,
tell me! I’ll follow him.
BRAND: Shape-shifter that it is, sometimes
it vanishes. Sometimes it looms
large and terrible. We imagine
it is dead; then, at the margin
of vision, watch it reappear,
playing catch-who-can with the wild air.
GERD: See what I have!
BRAND: A bullet?
GERD: Made of pure silver. I stole it
from a huntsman. They say it works
wonders against demons.
BRAND: And hawks?
Real phantom-hawks?
GERD: Who knows?
BRAND: Well, aim
to kill.
He starts to leave.
GERD: Hey, preacher-man, you’re lame!
Why are you lame?
BRAND: My own
people – the people – scourged and stoned
me; hunted me down.
GERD: Blood’s pouring from your face;
and your clothes are stained.
BRAND: Everything and everyone –
GERD: Your voice,
it’s rasping like dead leaves …
BRAND: Betrayed –
I have been betrayed!
GERD [looking at him, wide-eyed]:
I know
who you are; I know you now!
You’re not the preacher, not a bit
like him. He makes me spit.
You’re some great man!
BRAND: I dreamed so indeed.
Was I mad?
GERD: Show me your hands.
It’s true, it’s true! … those wounds!
Oh, and your lovely head,
all snagged and smeary from the thorn!
Dear saviour-man, why aren’t you dead,
like in the stories I was told?
Long, long ago, and far away,
a little gypsy-boy was born;
and he was king of all the world,
and so they killed him on a cross.
It was my father told me this.
Why did he tell me such a lie?
O Saviour, let me kiss your feet!
BRAND: Out of my sight!
GERD: Your blood can save us all!
BRAND: Not even my own soul.
GERD: I’m canny; I can shoot;
you told me, ‘Aim to kill.’
I can! I can do it!