(JULIE blows out her match. Lights. GILBERT helps CHARLES into the boat. CHARLES collapses, exhausted.)
GILBERT:
You see, dear Charles, there are things stronger than yourself.
Be still. You are weak and bewildered. Do you feel pain?
You must not think ill of me. I wish you would open your eyes.
CHARLES:
Of you I don’t think. Should I?
GILBERT:
Well I should have thought so, yes.
I should have thought that out there in the water
You would be thinking of the line from which your life
Depended, and of who held the line.
CHARLES:
Of Julie?
GILBERT:
It seems to you that Julie—?
Ah Charles, you’re a deep one. Can you mean
That at last the scales have fallen from your eyes
To reveal poor Julie as her own vicious self?
Or do you mean, as I fear, that I myself
Simply don’t matter?
CHARLES:
Julie …
JULIE:
What is it?
CHARLES:
Come here,
Take my hand. I have thought of something.
JULIE:
Charles, you are not on your deathbed. I see no need
For any show of thought.
CHARLES:
But you are angry!
JULIE:
What else can I be? Yes I am angry.
I find what I am thinking disagreeable.
CHARLES:
I suppose that is flattering. I should have thought rather
It was for me to be angry, to be resentful of the pain
Of having endangered what is after all my own life,
And for not only my own amusement. But to my eyes
None of us is amused, least of all yourself.
GILBERT:
Perhaps you should jump back into the water
And take your chances with the fish.
You can always get a laugh out of them.
CHARLES:
You ought not to be angry. If you are angry
It cannot be because of what I have done
But because of what I am doing now.
If what I did was to have angered you
You would have been angry earlier, I think.
JULIE:
I am not angry with you.
GILBERT:
And there is no earthly reason that I can see
For her to be angry with me.
CHARLES:
And what am I doing now, what am I trying to say
But that I am incorruptibly yours?
JULIE:
O pompous! Incorruptibly!
You talk as if I were a disease.
CHARLES:
Don’t try to misunderstand me, Julie.
JULIE:
You’ve lost your bet. You’re a bad loser, Charles.
GILBERT:
No. He has won his bet. He’s a bad winner.
He means we have sought to corrupt him. He is right.
JULIE:
Speak for yourself.
GILBERT:
I do. Speaking for myself
You are an extremely difficult person, Charles.
Being, as we are not, simple and good, we suspect you.
More, we have wanted you idle like ourselves.
JULIE:
Would anybody object if we started back to the dock?
GILBERT:
Don’t pretend you don’t know what has happened. You have undergone
Trial by water—that trial whereby
The accused was flung, bound, into a ditch.
If he was innocent he stayed afloat.
If guilty, he sank to the bottom like a stone.
I suppose the secret then was breath control.
In any event it sounds like a cynical business.
CHARLES:
You meant for me to sink, did you, Julie?
JULIE:
Of course not, darling. How can you allow
Gilbert to talk that way? You’ll find me at the prow
Sunning myself. I’ve had enough for now.
(Exit JULIE, At the same time JOHN rises and strolls out.)
GILBERT:
We meant for you to rise up from the waves
Like a revengeful triton, brandishing
Your spear thrice-pronged with wrath,
Embarrassment and pain. We did not want
The meek pearl it appears you offer us now.
We wanted proof that you could, like ourselves,
Fail to profit by an occasion
For much self-knowledge, use it up idly
Thrashing about on the surface of your act.
CHARLES:
Well what did I do instead to anger you?
GILBERT:
Instead, you did the serious human thing,
The earnest painful thing, the thing that we,
Or she particularly—she’s very touchy—
Will not forgive. So we condemn you. The code
Is evidently of our own contrivance.
CHARLES:
It is a novel experience, Gilly,
For once to take something less seriously than you.
GILBERT:
You are lighthearted because your conscience is clear. Wait and see.
CHARLES:
My conscience is clear. I am not lighthearted.
GILBERT:
Ah, you’re too scrupulous. But you have
Become of permanent value.
CHARLES:
To Julie? To myself?
hat are you talking about?
GILBERT:
I have observed
That people do not ask that question
Unless they know the answer. Wait and see.
(Exit GILBERT. We see the silhouette of CHARLES, alone in the boat, throughout this final scene. Enter, from Venice, JOHN and JULIE. It is night.)
JULIE:
I think it is a very good suggestion of Gilbert’s. We can take the bus at noon tomorrow, and arrive before dark. Gilbert is very fond of Ravenna. He says the mosaics are beyond words glorious.
JOHN:
They must be, if he says so.
JULIE:
They do sound the slightest bit deadly just the same. Asking things of one, you know. Venice is somewhat more my cup of tea. If I am tired of Venice it is because I am tired of myself. Here I see myself wherever I turn, in the exquisite stagestruck façades, in the smell of money and hair, and that green water almost moving. It is very clever of a city to have risen where there was only water, just as I am very clever to be talking about Venice when Venice is the last thing on my mind.
JOHN:
It’s late. We must be up early tomorrow.
JULIE:
Do I bore you? What does that pained smile mean?
JOHN:
I was about to ask you that very question.
JULIE:
What does my pained smile mean?
JOHN:
No. Do I bore you?
JULIE:
Forgive me. I’m very tired and very nervous. I am.
JOHN:
I believe you. O Julie, can’t we just stay here? Can’t Gilbert go off by himself? We need these days to ourselves, everything would come right once more between us.
JULIE:
Come right? Are things then so wrong between us?
JOHN:
You know what I mean. We’d have this time, we’d have each other. You’re tired. So am I. It’s hectic, having to go about together, the three of us, always.
JULIE:
I should hate to miss Ravenna.
JOHN:
We don’t care about Ravenna.
JULIE:
Besides, we don’t know the language as well as Gilbert. I’m certain, if we were here alone, we should be outrageously cheated on all sid
es.
JOHN:
That kind of cheating is very innocent, by comparison.
JULIE:
By comparison with what?
JOHN:
All right, we’ll go to Ravenna.
JULIE:
By comparison with what?
JOHN:
Julie, I love you. Help me to love you. Be honest with yourself.
JULIE:
Go on. Tell me more about my dishonesty. You asked if I was bored. Far from it, I’m fascinated!
JOHN:
I don’t ask you for absolute honesty. There is a need for delicacy between people. I daresay only you know what to tell me and what not to tell me. But when from yourself you disguise things—
JULIE:
For instance?
JOHN:
What you told me today. It’s not for myself I want to know, but for you. I don’t ask for an explanation. What matters is that you be able to explain it to yourself.
JULIE:
Explain what?
JOHN:
Why you left Charles.
JULIE:
There are times when you remind me forcibly of him. I foresaw that we should resume the topic before long.
CHARLES (to himself):
Did Gilbert mean that she will leave me? Wait and see, he said.
JULIE:
O John, you are such a reproach to me. I can hear the excuses you are making for me. You are saying “I must bear with her because she is suffering.”
JOHN:
Not at all. I don’t feel that you are suffering.
JULIE:
You’re right. I’m not suffering.
CHARLES (to himself):
She has arranged it so that there is nothing I can do. I can’t talk to her.
JULIE:
Does one like, however, to feel that one has done something arbitrary and ungenerous, and isn’t even capable of shedding an honest tear over it?
CHARLES (to himself):
But if she leaves me I shall be able to write to her. She will have to understand eventually. She will want to come back.
JULIE:
That’s why I can’t read his letters. They shame me.
JOHN:
They don’t shame Gilbert? No. Gilbert is possessed of a remarkable integrity.
JULIE:
And I am not?
JOHN:
It’s all to your credit I guess. But you have tried to blame him.
JULIE:
He was to blame. He taunted Charles until it happened.
JOHN:
And what happened made you leave Charles? Isn’t that a fantastic pretext, unless—
JULIE:
Yes?
JOHN:
Unless you had been waiting for an excuse to leave him, and ever since have used yourself up pretending it was not your responsibility.
JULIE:
No! You mustn’t talk to me this way!
JOHN:
Ah you’re selfish, Julie!
JULIE:
I know. I ask everything.
JOHN:
You’ve talked to me all day of this thing, less, I think, for my enlightenment than your own pleasure. I am not even allowed to comment upon what you have said.
CHARLES (to himself):
But if she shouldn’t come back, what then? She might fall in love with somebody else.
JULIE:
I’ll say no more then.
JOHN:
That’s not what I mean!
CHARLES:
How strange! I can already feel sorry for him, the next one to love her.
JULIE:
O why are we quarreling? I have tried only to describe the one inexplicable action of my life. If you love me—
JOHN:
Julie, Julie …
JULIE:
The one who loves isn’t the loser. Charles
Isn’t the loser. By hurting him I have
Empowered him to unveil within my mind
As in a public square
An image tasteless and cheap, which is my own.
Not even a tourist would stop to look at it
All thickened as if by dreadful squatting birds.
But Charles—my dear, I even dream of him.
I see him continue to act in honest concern
According to what he feels. I see his face
Turn beautiful under the pumice of disappointment.
One could almost pretend I had made him a gift of it.
JOHN:
And to me what gift do you make?
JULIE:
I have been happy with you here.
One is encompassed by things so rich and rare
They can’t be hurt by the conscience one brings to them.
We stand in the center of this glimmering square
As we might stand in my own mind, at its most charitable.
Tomorrow we shall stand in Ravenna, I suppose
Quite as if standing in the mind of God.
Much constellated gold, dolphin and seraphim
Shall blind us with the blessing
Of something fully expressed, the sense of having
Ourselves somehow become expressive there.
The very prospect is unburdening. Kiss me.
JOHN:
They say it is not the ornament but the architecture
That is meant to move one most at Ravenna.
JULIE:
John, you are sublime, so solemn and sweet.
Isn’t it strange how little difference
CHARLES (to himself):
I have observed
That people do not ask that question
Unless they know the answer.
JOHN (to himself):
Now for the first time it is strangely myself I feel
Endangered. The lover may not be the loser.
I should not care to win at her expense.
CHARLES (to himself):
No matter what the lines were baited with,
The prize was that the fishermen could spare
Themselves the knowledge I am weighted with.
JULIE:
There is such lightness in the midnight air,
Do you imagine even an insect capable
Of resting on your wrist? The orange peel
Floats by, but on a tide of air. Kiss me.
JOHN:
What is this beauty that perpetually
Ignores its consequences, like a flare
Lighting the field where innocent men hide?
JULIE:
All that I’ve said today, let it go by.
Kiss me. The weightless air
Has taken my words up into its high gauzes
Before the first of them could reach your ear.
JOHN (to himself):
No it is not the danger or the hurt I fear
But vagueness, secrecy, the shapeless sky,
The iridescent sea, whatever causes
Us, when all is said and done, to die
Lightly, not knowing …
JULIE:
Do not think, my dear,
That we contrive this lightness. No.
JOHN (to himself):
How to endure? O God, must I
Feel the next kiss I give her disappear
As music melts into its pauses?
JULIE:
Something makes light of us. Kiss me. Come here.
I could rise up into the night like a dancer!
JOHN:
How to endure?
JULIE:
Kiss me. Kiss me.
(JOHN turns and kisses her.)
CHARLES (to himself):
I know the answer.
(CURTAIN)
THE IMMORTAL HUSBAND
A PLAY
(1955)
Characters
Act I:
Mrs. Mallow
Maid
Tithonus
Gardener
Laomedon
Aurora
Act II:
Konstantin
Fanya
Tithonus
Olga
Aurora
Act III:
Mark
Aurora
Enid
Memnon
Tithonus
Nurse
The play calls for a cast of six. With the exception of AURORA and TITHONUS, the remaining roles must be doubled or tripled by the same actors in each successive act, in this fashion:
Mrs. Mallow, Olga, Nurse
Maid, Fanya, Enid
Gardener, Konstantin, Mark
Laomedon, Memnon
ACT ONE
(England,. A parlor in disarray. Beyond shut French doors, a garden. It is a rainy morning in late spring.)
(MRS. MALLOW, in black from head to toe, sits mending a dress. The MAID packs a trunk with dresses and other clothes that lie here and there about the room. She hums a little tune. A second trunk stands against the wall. TITHONUS paces up and down, occasionally pausing to watch the two women.)
MRS. MALLOW:
You’re standing in my light, dear. It’s hard enough to see as it is.
(TITHONUS moves.)
Why you should care to watch us at our dismal task, I can’t imagine.