Darconville's Cat (40 page)
It was late, with Harriet and Loretta fingering a
few last nookshotten pieces, when, alerted by a noise, Loretta
quickly put her finger to her lips as a sign for silence. Closing
their eyes, they listened: those were voices. Loretta, unable to
control it, squelched juice from the candy in her mouth, when
Harriet, midway across the room on tiptoe, turned and gritted her
teeth to chastise her—and then continued in high exaggerated steps
to the door of the front parlor where she peered through the
keyhole.
There stood a couple facing each other, talking.
XLIV
Heroic Couplet
Much speche they ther expoun of druries greme and
grace.
—
Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight
DARCONVILLE
Your hand is of a temperature, my love,
As to persuade me now against my hope
That you, indeed, must hate me always—
(
pause
)
If I hadn’t but been promised otherwise
With what life and limb I still believe.
I love you. I can tell you that again.
ISABEL
You put it well, but then you always do.
DARCONVILLE
I shouldn’t then, and always shouldn’t?
Stammer no such words? Pouch up my mouth?
And stand away from love as best I can,
Mum like Mumphezard, hanged for saying nothing?
I have questions that outnumber themselves.
ISABEL
You can be as cold as winter light—
DARCONVILLE
A light, then, very like your hand.
ISABEL
—or mild and warm, exactly as you choose.
DARCONVILLE
(
ironic bow
)
As my crippled heart wills, you mean.
That logical distinction serves more true
In choice or will (or is and seem!)
For, tell me, when is not, with both, one first
That mistakenly seems joint with the other?
(
pause
)
I fixed upon your hand just now with guile
And you addressed with passion, nothing less,
For can one better greet what turns a smile
From hot to cold than that which turns it so?
Who in sorrow speaks of choice? O cruel!
For you, to make your absence now a studied one?
For me, to take it so to win myself
What proverbs like to call a fonder heart?
I pray I’m less a blackguard than a fool,
Yet here I spy an artifice in art:
For on Love’s sweetest arrow’s tipped a dart.
But when with passion, please, had choice to do
Which, improvising, turns and turns and turns
about
To disavow methodically that pleasure for this
pain?
No matter now: my mind begins to shout.
So here, Necessity, allow what more weeks will.
I’ll be resigned to play it well until
I’m told to shift about a mood again.
I see, if I’m to keep my love for you,
(
moves
closer
)
I may, I must, I can, I will, I do.
ISABEL
You are more and more to me a stranger.
DARCONVILLE
“What a strange man is Chichikov,” thought
Tententikov.
“What a strange man is Tententikov,” thought
Chichikov.
ISABEL
(
almost inaudibly
)
And sometimes you’re—you’re frightening.
DARCONVILLE
Yes? Is it so? Or does it simply seem?
Does passion invigorate expression, then, to
grimace?
Why then surely here it greets itself—
Think, however, not so with surprise,
For passion passion meets with a rolling in the
eyes.
It cues its own posture over nothing in fact,
And though a comrade it wants, a double in
spleen,
It self-begets selves unnaturally
And worships what cannot be put in a creed,
Yet wants when it isn’t what it wants to be.
The nature of passion’s the nature of strife, as
well,
Where in thinking a thought it makes it a deed;
Who can actually speak of its brutish routine?
When it is what it wants then it’s also in hell.
Between passion and another way of life
There is no question of choice at all—
Only between passion sought and madness seen;
Its heights are high, from heights we fall.
True enough, indeed, but more truth worth.
Passion and madness are one regardless, quite:
The putting off of both, this desperate
relation,
Is as much an accident as their birth.
But madness holds fast with no end in sight,
While passion’s a mock, a spoof of duration.
The triumph of passion is found in its defeat;
And victory’s won by honest love’s retreat.
(
pause
)
The defeat of passion, just between us, is
inevitable.
ISABEL
(
archly
)
It seems we know what’s between us, then.
DARCONVILLE
Or between you and anyone else.
ISABEL
(
her scar whitening
)
Yes? Yes? Tell me more
.
(
pause
)
You can make so much of what’s never been done,
Raising up issues like raising the dead!
You can make a person feel ever so small!
You always never stop writing a book in your
head!
I promise I’ve nothing to tell you at all.
You can make a trifling relation with anyone—
DARCONVILLE
Or someone.
ISABEL
Or
someone
, yes, if you insist on that.
DARCONVILLE
Although it could be anyone, yes?
This to clarify: for since no one is anyone,
Until of course he’s someone, see,
Why then someone is equal to one and won
(
shrugs
)
And everyone else can anyone be.
ISABEL
What are you saying?
DARCONVILLE
I hear a footfall in my head, moving in circles.
ISABEL
I hear whispers that girls exchange in rooms,
Of jealousy, scorn, reproaches, and hate,
Injuries, words of deceit, matters of doom.
DARCONVILLE
(
to himself
)
And early believe what never comes too late?
ISABEL
I don’t believe everything I hear.
DARCONVILLE
But judge, is it possible otherwise? I’d know
Of that wily mouse that breeds in a cat’s ear.
I smell reformationists
(
pause
)
And betrayal.
(
pause
)
You weep at the word? It’s that accurate?
ISABEL
There may be someone here. Outside.
DARCONVILLE
(
darkly
)
The devil.
ISABEL
You frighten me, you frighten me.
DARCONVILLE
The creature causes what affects you still.
I say I love; you stall.
Why are you troubled? Have you felt ill?
ISABEL
No.
DARCONVILLE
Not ill, is it, because not at all?
(
pause
)
There is something I must ask you now:
Has anything happened, intentionally or not,
Whereby you should suspect I do not love you?
ISABEL
(
lowers eyes
)
No.
DARCONVILLE
Brief.
ISABEL
Too brief is what you mean, isn’t it, and
You’ll insist on that, won’t you, forever and
ever?
Just absolutely forever and ever, won’t you!
A stupid victory is what you want.
DARCONVILLE
I want you
And would only ask the same of you for me.
ISABEL
(
pleading
)
I want you to know I want what you want
When you may want to think I want what I don’t.
DARCONVILLE
Dark. As a thief s pocket.
ISABEL
(
twicking her thumbs
)
I want to be safe. I can’t say it any better, I
can’t think anymore, I feel something will happen to me, I failed
my courses and now have to take a terrible job, I have no friends
but you, and you’ll go away, I know you will, I would want to go
with you but couldn’t, I know, what bothers me is missing you and
wanting to be with you, like everyone does, yes, I appreciate you
trying to find out what’s wrong with me, most people wouldn’t do
that, which is why I’m afraid of them, and, O, I know I’m lucky
about so many many things and shouldn’t be sad, I know that, but
then I think of all the wasted opportunities in my life and begin
to believe I actually deserve so much trouble for that and all the
unhappiness I’ve caused in the past—
DARCONVILLE
(
swallowing
)
The past?
(
pause
)
I feel about me the presence of something
Not of this world, a bleak forbidden remnant
Standing in this room.
ISABEL
(
stirs up
)
In this room?
DARCONVILLE
A shadow.
ISABEL
(
frightened
)
A shadow?
DARCONVILLE
I hear a perfect echo, making dialogue a mock.
It now arises you must tell me what
Not asked would truly send me mad, in shock.
Please don’t give to me an answer, though,
Born of a desire less than mine,
No answer of deliberation, nor answer fine,
I beg you neither from a page of fairy,
Fantasy, silly fescue, or of formal wit,
Your name below a paraph lovely writ
That might distract me from a truth you owe.
But only give to me an answer. So.
(
pause
)
Speak it plain. Are you in love with Govert?
(
shaking
uncontrollably, Isabel cries out
)
I have named the name then? Govert.
The simple truth, miscalled simplicity.
ISABEL
You simply do not understand.
DARCONVILLE
I think I’ve not been asked to understand.
ISABEL
The person that you mentioned—
DARCONVILLE
Govert.
ISABEL
Govert, yes! Govert van der Slang
! I do not
love him!
I do not! I do not! I do not! I never did!
(
pause
)
A few years ago, that family moved down the road
from us to a farm at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, in
Fawx’s Mt, as you know. It’s hard to recollect how I—. I remember
only seeing them at school, the boys, well, not all of them, I
don’t know. I would just visit Zutphen Farm, they were like a
family to me, but what does it matter anyway? I guess I—pitied
Govert, who was the outsider of the family and different; no one
understood him or cared or took the time to listen to him, no, not
his mother and his father was always somewhere else. They ridiculed
his music, he plays the guitar, and so I tried to do what little I
could, although I know what you’re going to think, but it’s not
true and never was. So anyway he depended on me, I guess, and I
grew closer to him and he to me because his brother, more
successful supposedly, were never at home eidier but were always
away at—
(
pause
)
sea.
DARCONVILLE
That would be the coast guard?
ISABEL
The navy.
DARCONVILLE
In which case, you didn’t see any of them.
ISABEL
Not when they didn’t visit.
DARCONVILLE
Which however they sometimes did and sometimes
do?
(
pause
)
Come, any news nourishes the gnawer of himself.
ISABEL
Sometimes, yes.
DARCONVILLE
Whereupon you knew it. You are close to this
family.
ISABEL
(
softly
)
I would say—I don’t know.
DARCONVILLE
(
ruefully
)
Every division of a line produces another line.
(
pause
)
My God, will jealousy make questions of itself?
I’m deuce-eyed. I’m shillaber and shaman.
I never metamorphosis I didn’t like.
Creeps in the dusk, it’s true, before
One begins to look about for it.
I can imagine lovers trooping out
To you in afternoons of any weather,
Stealing as they did in Sparta old,
Legally, carelessly, and turning me, dumb,
Beruffianized, an out-fooled fool, sold,
The stupid, unpiperly make-bate I’ve become.
They come to kneel before you, penitential,
Or crouch in the spawl and wood and bits!
