Collected Novels and Plays (60 page)

CHARLES:

At any rate,

Goodbye. Good luck. I’ll take you to the door.

RAYMOND:

Don’t ever touch me! (
He runs out.
)

CHARLES:

Sometimes I feel like saying to hell with it.

MRS. C.:

Then why do you keep on?—Your little party

Has been, as usual, Charles, about as amusing

As a crucifixion.

MAX:

What an interesting simile.

What will happen to him, Charles?

CHARLES (
sitting
):

I’ve told you already.

He will always be the person you are, Max.

He will always love the wizardry Mr. Knight

Embodies. He will always remember Mrs. Crane.

He will die after a certain amount of joy.

MAX:

Is it always that simple?

CHARLES:

It is always that simple.

MRS. C.:

It’s frightful. Charles, you have never been a person,

Never. I’m sorry I ever came here. You are children

Playing with all the cruelty of children

Who laugh in the face of honor.

CHARLES:

We shan’t squabble.

I’ll see you next week, Mrs. Crane. Good night.

MRS. C.:

If it weren’t so clumsy …

CHARLES:

What can you expect?

MAX (
taking his portfolio
):

I think I’ll have to be going.

Good night, Charles. I’ll see you soon, I hope.

Would anyone care to join me for a cocktail?

KNIGHT:

I’d be delighted if you don’t mind. Charles,

As I’ve said before, you are an incredible artist.

I understand you, envy you, admire you,

And despise you utterly. You are the evil

That we have sought all through our lives. Good night.

CHARLES:

Good night.

MAX:

Good night, Charles.

CHARLES:

Good night.

MRS. C:

Charles, Charles …

CHARLES:

What is your anguish and your innocence?

The hall of mirrors that you have not seen

Expands the grey sky like the sight of Echo.

The feasting faces, darting or serene,

Have fallen all to mould and gaze no more.

But reflections have never ceased. Usurping silver,

Blood and bone once thrust itself between

The grey visage of God and This His Glass—

Groping, endearing. For centuries these have been

Forever moving delicately through brightest air

Within my hall, from side to mirrored side.

Their image is their essence, and except

For their brief birth and living they have not died.

CHARLES:

Ladies and gentleman: this has been a play about birth.

JOHN:

You have never told me this before.

JULIE:

I do not understand what I have told you. That may be why you have not heard it before.

JOHN:

Go on. After you got back to the dock what happened? What happened that night?

JULIE:

Evidently I am not able to tell a story. I feel as if I had been talking ever since lunch. And now I’m all talked out and I’ve missed my siesta.

JOHN:

I know the sense of imprisonment that comes from being in a very small boat, so far from shore. You can see the land, a ribbon of beach with colorless trees. The ocean calls into play our deepest subjectivity. All this might never have happened under different circumstances.

JULIE:

What did happen was that in two weeks I left him.

JOHN:

Left … Charles?

JULIE:

You don’t imagine I’d ever leave Gilbert? Well. One would rather not talk about what one has not understood.

JOHN:

Yet it has given you pleasure to do so.

JULIE:

Are we going to sit down? No. I see only one chair. And we have talked enough.

JOHN:

But could anyone have endured? I mean, was it simply Charles not trying to hold out, when he went into the water? Could anyone have held out? Am I of no help to you?

JULIE:

I don’t see that you need be so solemn, John.

JOHN:

We have talked of solemn things.

JULIE:

It has, you are right, given me pleasure to talk about what I have not understood. Probably I had known that I should fail, but I feel myself virtuous for trying once again to understand it.

JOHN:

You are not a simple person.

JULIE:

I am. Only I have not been able to simplify. One wants a complicated person to do that. Look at those pigeons, how can they bear it?—eating out of people’s hands. Yes, you have helped me by letting me talk about it. It is less real now that someone other than myself has failed to understand it.

JOHN:

You are not to blame.

JULIE:

Not to blame for leaving my husband?

JOHN:

Not to blame for the circumstances.

JULIE:

That is the kind of remark that never fails to dazzle me. It makes me feel that my total experience is somehow
here
, within easy reach, like so many rolls of film on a shelf.

JOHN:

I mean simply that the circumstances would seem to narrow down to your brother.

JULIE:

Yes. Gilbert is to blame. I am finer than Gilbert.

JOHN:

I like Gilbert. He makes me laugh.

JULIE:

Gilbert makes everybody laugh. No. He never made Charles laugh. That’s conceivably why they were such good friends.

JOHN:

But I laugh more easily with you. When I’m with Gilbert I’m not really laughing.

JULIE:

Neither am I. It must be a power he has over me. Look! There he sits in the
pensione
and here I am giggling …

JOHN:

At the risk of irritating you, it does seem curious to me that Gilbert should …

JULIE:

Should what?

JOHN:

That Gilbert should be so much in the picture. He goes everywhere you go, he knows everything you do.

JULIE:

You
are
possessive!

JOHN:

Do you mind?

JULIE:

No. I think it’s rather sweet. Now what are you saying about Gilbert?

JOHN:

I don’t remember.

JULIE:

He is after all one’s brother.

JOHN:

There are limits. You say he virtually picked out your husband for you.

JULIE:

Well he didn’t pick
you
out darling. I did that.

JOHN:

I don’t like to believe that you are as close to him as you seem to be.

JULIE:

But isn’t that the delightful thing about relatives? They have to love you, you have to love them! After a certain age one meets few enough people of whom that holds true.

JOHN:

You don’t really think in those terms.

JULIE:

Don’t I? I sometimes think it’s a wonder I think at all.

JOHN:

Did Charles like Gilbert? Afterwards, I mean.

JULIE:

O God in heaven! Did Charles like Gilbert! Does Gilbert like me! Did like them! Why we positively doted upon one another! We shared an eye and a tooth and woe to the unwary stranger who came our way!

JOHN:

Forgive me.

JULIE:

It’s just that I’m so weary! Charles writes, Gilbert talks—

JOHN:

You have had another letter from Charles?

JULIE:

You ask
questions!

JOHN:

I feel I have a right to know.

JULIE:

Yes, I have had a letter from Charles. I must really stop going to American Express. Nobody else writes to me there.

JOHN:

You needn’t go. You needn’t accept his letters.

JULIE:

Gilbert says it makes me feel like a bright young person, the kind who would get such letters from her divorced husband.

JOHN:

“Such” letters? Does Gilbert read them?

JULIE:

Do you suppose
I
do? O what an unkind thing to say! You must not make me talk about Charles. I’ll say anything that comes into my head.

JOHN:

I
make
you talk? Gilbert
makes
you laugh? It doesn’t seem to me that you are made to do anything.

JULIE:

Now you’re angry and you don’t love me.

GILBERT:

O! Ben trovato! Ah! Flirting at Florian’s!

My sweet little sister is beautifully bad!

Come with me, cara, we’ll go in a gondola!

Gondoliere!

JULIE:

Gilbert, you’re mad!

GILBERT:

I’ve dawdled all day with impossible people.

John will you join us?

JULIE:

Keep up our morale?

JOHN:

No, I must really—

GILBERT:

Then be a wet blanket,

I’m for a ride down that crazy Canal!

JOHN:

What is this passion of Gilbert’s for boating?

JULIE:

See you are laughing! I knew you would be!

JOHN:

Then why
are you
laughing?

JULIE:

I’m not
really
laughing.

But I’m going with Gilbert.

GILBERT:

We’ll meet you for tea! (
They go.
)