Collected Novels and Plays (76 page)

GILBERT:

But Charles is my friend,

I couldn’t lie to him!

JULIE:

Oh you’re the end!

GILBERT:

See how we have you?

JULIE:

Did you have this in mind

When you arranged for me to marry Charles?

GILBERT:

I arranged for you to marry Charles?

What can you mean? I did nothing of the kind.

JULIE:

You brought Charles home. You said we’d make a perfect match.

GILBERT:

Well, haven’t you? Of course you have. Charles was a catch,

And today it is his turn to catch us.

Tomorrow we shall let you win at cards.

What could conceivably be more stimulating

Than for three people to catch one another

In so many different ways? It keeps us going.

GILBERT:

I have had many fascinating fishing experiences …

JULIE (
to JAN
):

You understand I was talking lightly that day.

GILBERT:

… though I am not a serious sportsman like yourself.

JULIE:

Oh, we knew what we were saying, I suppose,

But doesn’t one talk lightly of a thing

With fingers crossed to keep it from becoming?

GILBERT:

Why, the first time I ever went deep-sea fishing

I landed a fifty-pound something-or-other,

The marvel of all my friends, such a powerful one.

JULIE:

Words lend themselves to lightness, then too late

The veils float off, leaving the naked threat.

GILBERT:

I was only a little shaver then.

I had it three-quarters of an hour on the line.

JULIE:

I want to dive down,

Discover, bring back whatever it is, the black

Pearl, the sense of whatever I am,

But my bones are full of air, my words are larks,

The sun is sparkling on the surface of the water

In all directions except from underneath.

GILBERT:

Forty-five minutes can be a long time.

CHARLES:

A long time for a fish.

GILBERT:

A longer time for anybody who isn’t a fish.

JULIE:

I hadn’t wanted to talk lightly. What’s worse,

Such is my lightness, I shall rise above it.

CHARLES:

I don’t know. I’m a fairly good swimmer.

JULIE:

You hear him? He wasn’t only joking!

GILBERT:

Why, nobody in his right mind would risk

Dipping his big toe in these waters. Besides—

CHARLES:

You think I couldn’t hold out?

GILBERT:

You couldn’t hold out for five minutes.

JULIE:

That was how it began. Charles said he could hold out

At the end of a line, like a hooked dolphin.

JAN:

Love, it’s
over!

CHARLES:

Gilbert, sometimes you annoy the hell out of me.

JULIE:

I tried to reason with them. There had been a man

Whose leg was taken off by a shark in Bermuda.

People on shore saw the blood streaming out of him

But he kept on swimming, he hadn’t felt it.

It was when he looked behind him that he died.

CHARLES:

Would you care to make a little bet?

GILBERT:

A little bet?

JULIE:

A little bet?

GILBERT:

Mercenary Charles! No. Why in ten minutes—

CHARLES:

Hook me up to that line. You’ll see.

GILBERT:

I’ll do nothing of the sort.

JULIE:

Gilbert wanted it. He said five minutes the first time.

CHARLES:

I’m serious. Fasten me to the line. Use the harness.

GILBERT:

Can you really be such a good swimmer? No,

I refuse to fall in with this absurd exhibition.

CHARLES:

Will you stop laughing! Hook me to the line.

JAN:

He wanted it, too. Charles was asking for it, Julie.

GILBERT:

You’d positively enjoy it?

CHARLES:

Why not?

GILBERT:

If you put it that way—why not!

JULIE:

It was all at once a question of something terribly funny. Charles had rigged himself into one of those little harnesses that hold you in your chair when something big hits your line. Oh, I kept saying to myself. Gilbert was fastening the line to the back of Charles’s harness. The captain had stopped the motor. He could have stopped
them
while he was at it. What could he have been thinking? Was he deaf and dumb?

GILBERT:

Come, little sister, lend a hand.

JAN:

In time such incidents grow dim.

JULIE (
reentering the boat
):

I think you’re crazy, both of you.

CHARLES:

It’s a warm day.

JULIE:

But understand

If they should tear you limb from limb

I’m not to blame.

GILBERT:

I hear a distant band

Strike up in honor of our acrobat.

CHARLES:

I’m just as pleased to have a swim.

JULIE:

Why am I laughing? What you do

Is dreadful, Gilbert.

GILBERT:

To whom?

JULIE:

To him.

To me as well.

GILBERT:

I don’t see that.

CHARLES:

The sea is calm.

GILBERT:

The sky is blue.

JULIE:

The blue’s all wrong, the sea’s too flat.

GILBERT:

The sharks are playing hooky far below.

JULIE:

I never have.

GILBERT:

All ready?

CHARLES:

Yes.

JULIE:

Darling—

CHARLES:

Honey?

JULIE:

At least take off your hat!

GILBERT:

Ten minutes, mind you. Nothing less.

GILBERT:

Now we shall let him swim a certain distance from the boat. How quiet it is. This is the moment for your Barcarolle. You don’t feel like singing? Shall I try the Mad Scene from
The Chocolate Soldier?
I haven’t done that for ages. Charles
is
a good swimmer. You asked why you were laughing. Perhaps you had no other way to participate in that curious moment.

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 we used to say on the plantation, seventeen different things he might be doing at this very moment? Think, Julie! To pretend, as you have done 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 shall enjoy treating Charles, my old friend, to the experience of nearly drowning. If I admit that, why
shouldn’t you in turn admit that you’ll enjoy watching your husband nearly drown. Charles himself at this very moment is bound to be thinking—It’s strange. Whenever you stop listening I begin to feel that I’ve been talking out of sheer perversity.

JULIE:

I’m sorry.

GILBERT:

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

JULIE:

We must have been almost babies, you and I, taking our bath together one afternoon. We had toys in the bathtub—a little boat, a floating goldfish that could roll its eyes, a little deep-sea diver. He was attached to a bulb, bubbles came out of him when you squeezed. We were fighting, or I got soap in my eyes. Father must have heard us, he came storming in, pulled out the plug, yanked us out of the water and dried us off. I remember to this day how it
hurt, being put into my pajamas. That must have been our last bath together. I can see the drained tub, with its green stain where the faucet joined the enamel, like a beard of seaweed hanging down. Our toys were lying every which way on the bottom. Isn’t it silly to remember all that?

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 look on his face? He was very angry.

GILBERT:

I never get angry, why should he?

Charles! Are you ready?

CHARLES (
far off
):

Ready!

GILBERT:

Now you will see that for all his struggling

I need only keep playfully 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 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 usefully, to see with clear eyes,

Let it be now. Although my throat and eyes

Burn with seawater—or such tears of pain

No innocent man could shed in his whole life—

Let me attain a clearness about myself.

For it is neither her brother nor big fish

I 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’s there blindly I thrash now, like a fish

Gasping in air, shocked by the pulse and pain

Of an element newly thrust upon itself.

She might have said, “You’ve 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,

Keen at line’s end for weariness and pain

To swallow me, spun giddily in water.

And sure enough, insight with phosphorous eyes

Glides upward, a slow law unto itself.

Inborn vortex, pressures of unself,

First love, deep-water spell, before the fish

Grew legs and clambered up with narrowing eyes

Onto the rocks. Who wouldn’t give his life

For that lost paradise of the first water—

Rapture of depths, no turning back, no pain!

Julie, pain sweeter than a loss of self,

Draw me from water, leave me to the fish—

You cannot save my life. I see your eyes.

JAN:

Julie?

JULIE:

Yes. I’m here.

JAN:

Your voice—are you all right?

JULIE:

I’m all right.

JAN:

I love you.

(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’d open your eyes.

CHARLES:

Think? Of you?

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 your life

Depended from, and of who held the line.

CHARLES:

Of Julie.

GILBERT:

It seems to you that Julie—?

Ah, Charles, you’re a deep one. Drink this water.

Do you mean that the scales have fallen from your eyes,

Revealing Julie as wretchedly herself?

Or do you mean—perish the thought—that I myself

Simply don’t matter?

CHARLES:

Julie …

JULIE:

Here I am.