Collected Novels and Plays (62 page)

JULIE:

I have found another way.

GILBERT:

My point is that people simply don’t do what they don’t want to do. In other words, if there is something they don’t want to do, they don’t do it. This is amusing.

JULIE:

You are doing what you wanted. You are doing it now.

GILBERT:

Yes.

JULIE:

You have made him and me do what you wanted.

GILBERT:

No. I have made it easy for you to do what you yourselves desired. Here we have the example of Charles doing a thing both absurd and dangerous. He is doing it because he wants to. He is not doing it at my suggestion. Soon he will be out far enough.

JULIE:

You gave him no other choice.

GILBERT:

Is it for me to provide alternatives for Charles when there are, as they say in Shreveport, seventeen different things he might be doing at this very moment? Think, Julie! To pretend, as you have all your life, that other people oblige you to do distasteful things is no more than a failure to admit your own taste for doing them. I admit my taste for doing them. I shall enjoy treating Charles, my old friend, to the experience of nearly drowning. If I admit that,
there is no reason why you in turn should not confess that you will enjoy watching your husband nearly drown. Charles himself at this very moment is bound to be thinking of how he will profit—It is strange. Whenever you stop listening to me I begin to feel that I have been talking out of sheer nervousness.

JULIE:

I’m sorry.

GILBERT:

These were things I felt you ought to know. Is there anything on your mind?

JULIE:

It’s as though I were a little girl again, after my bath, in a white and yellow dress, all delicate and pure. I can hear Father telling me in that voice of his—you know, you talk very much like him sometimes—“Do one thing and do it well,” he used to say. And I would nod with great round eyes …

GILBERT:

Nonsense. Your eyes were always small, even as a child.

JULIE:

… and my little chin would quiver, and before long it would be as though I had
done
my one thing, and done it well, just by listening to him, you see. And I would feel grave and pure and peaceful, the way I feel now. Isn’t it silly?

GILBERT:

Perhaps now you can tell me what it is you have done and done well, for you to feel this way.

JULIE:

I couldn’t possibly. That’s why I say isn’t it silly.

GILBERT:

Ask Charles whether it’s silly or not.

JULIE:

I’d nearly forgotten Charles. What’s the matter with me?

Did you see the expression on his face? He was very angry.

GILBERT:

I never get angry, why should he?

Charles! Are you ready?

CHARLES (
offstage
):

Ready!

GILBERT:

Now you will see that for all his struggling

I need only keep mischievously pulling at the line.

He will be drawn backwards through the brine.

He will want to breathe and will breathe water.

His every gesture will be cut short, he will go

Counter to his wish and to the motion of the waves.

In no time at all he will be utterly exhausted.

If he is angry, the minutes that follow

Will fit his anger like a glove. Fight, Charles, fight!

CHARLES:

I am not one to think much about pain.

I would not choose to dwell upon myself

In public, sipping at a tumbler of stale water.

It has never been my thought to preach to the fish.

Nevertheless, if I am ever in my life

To think profitably, to see with clear eyes,

Let it be now. Although my throat and eyes

Burn with seawater as with such tears of pain

No innocent man could shed in his whole life,

let me achieve a clearness about myself,

For it is neither her brother nor big fish

fear, nor even the white jaws of water

That hurt and hold me, but an unkinder water

Chilling and deepening in Julie’s eyes.

It is there blindly I thrash now, as a fish

Gasping in air is amazed by the pulse and pain

Of an element newly thrust upon itself.

She might have said, “You have made a mess of your life,

But I into whose care you gave that life

Am weeping. Taste, my love, this healing water.

Test me with your hands, your lips, your eyes.”

She might have said, “I couldn’t care less myself

Whether you sink in pride or swim in pain.

That is for you to decide, you poor fish!”

Instead, neither caring nor careless, she chose to fish,

To fish using as bait my only life,

Waiting in what suspense for the inevitable pain

To swallow me where I hang in her scorn’s water.

And indeed, a recognition with phosphorous eyes

Glides slowly upward from the depths of myself.

Innocent visions are those that proceed from self.

Dolphin, medusa, hammerhead shark, starfish

Shall look at me henceforth with Julie’s eyes,

Telling me ever and over to give my life

Up to those eyes, sink, as I do through water,

Towards the dark love children would call pain.

Julie! this pain is sweet as a loss of self.

Draw me from water, leave me to the fish—

You cannot save my life. I have seen your eyes.

JOHN:

Julie?

JULIE:

Yes. I’m here.

JOHN:

Your voice is so strange. Are you all right?

JULIE:

I’m all right.

JOHN:

I love you.

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.

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.

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 sides.