Pirandello's Henry IV (5 page)

Henry goes to look at her hair.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Oh, I see that you, too . . . Italians!
Tsk
! Far be it for me to criticize . . . None of us likes to acknowledge the mortality that sets limits to our will. But if you're born you die, that's what I say! Did you ask to be born, Monsignor? I didn't. And between birth and death, neither of our choosing, many things happen we wouldn't have chosen, which reluctantly—we have to live with.

DOCTOR
   (
studying Henry closely
) True . . . sad but true . . .

HENRY
   You see, when we refuse to resign ourselves, what's the result? Wishful thinking at its most futile. A woman who wishes she were a man . . . an old man who wishes he were young . . . None of us lies or pretends—what happens is, in all sincerity, we inhabit the self we have chosen for ourselves, and don't let go. But while you're holding tight, gripping on to your monk's robe, Monsignor, from out your sleeve something slips away without you noticing: your life! And how surprised you'll be when you suddenly see it going, gone—how you'll despise yourself—and how sorry you'll be, oh yes, if you only knew how often I've
grieved over mine, slithering off—it had my face but was so disfigured I had to turn away.

Henry approaches Matilda.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Has that never happened to you, my lady? Do you think of yourself unchanging and unchanged? Oh God, but there was a day . . . How could you? How could you have done that?

He stares into Matilda's eyes.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Yes—that. We understand each other. Don't worry, it's our secret. And you, Peter Damian . . . that you could be friends with someone like that!

LANDOLF
   Your Majesty . . .

HENRY
   No names. I know how upset people get.

Henry turns to Belcredi.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Do you agree? We all hug our idea of ourselves to ourselves. As our hair turns greyer, we keep pace with the colouring bottle. It's of no consequence that I fool nobody. You, Duchess, don't fool yourself or anybody else—perhaps the image in your mirror, just a tiny bit. I do it to amuse myself. You do it in earnest. But no amount of earnestness stops it being a masquerade, and I'm not referring to your cloak and coronet. I'm talking about a memory of yourself you want to hold tight, the memory of a day gone by when to be fair-haired was your delight—or dark-haired if you were dark: the faded memory of being young. With you, it's different, Peter Damian. The memory of who you were, what you did, is no more than a dream that's safe with you—isn't that so?—a bad dream. It's the same for me. Dreams, many of them, now I think of it,
with no meaning I can explain. Oh, well!—nothing to be done, and tomorrow will be more of the same.

Henry flies into a sudden fury, grabbing the sackcloth he's wearing.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) This sackcloth . . . !

Then with a wild joy, Henry makes as if to rip the sackcloth off, while Harold and Ordulf, frightened, rush to stop him.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Oh God!

(
backing away, shouting, taking off his sackcloth
) Tomorrow in Brixen, twenty-seven bishops from Germany and Lombardy will sign my petition for the removal of that impostor Gregory VII!

ORDULF
   Your Majesty, please, for God's sake . . .

HAROLD
   (
urging him with signs to put his sackcloth back on
) Don't say that Your Majesty . . . The Abbot's here with the Duchess to intercede on your behalf.

Surreptitiously Harold makes signs to the Doctor, urging him to say something quickly.

DOCTOR
   (
confused
) Ah—yes—that's it—we're here to intercede . . .

Henry allows the three Counsellors to put the sackcloth back on his shoulders.

HENRY
   Yes—forgive me . . . God be my witness, it's the burden of excommunication lying on me like a dead weight . . . Forgive me . . . my lady . . . Monsignor . . . (
quietly to Landolf, Harold, and Ordulf
) I don't know what it is, but I just can't bring myself to grovel to that man.

LANDOLF
   That's because, Your Majesty, you've convinced yourself he's Peter Damian when he isn't!

HENRY
   He isn't?

HAROLD
   No, he's just some poor monk, Your Majesty.

HENRY
   We're none of us the best judge of our actions when we act on instinct. Perhaps it takes a woman to understand me. Think of your daughter, Duchess—think of Bertha—I told you how my heart has changed.

Henry suddenly turns to Belcredi and shouts in his face, as if he had denied it.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Changed—changed—by the love and devotion she has shown me at this terrible time!

Henry stops, shaken by his own outburst of fury, and tries to contain himself, with a cry of exasperation in his throat; then he turns back to Matilda, in gentle and sorrowful humility.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) She's come with me, my lady, she's waiting in the courtyard. She chose to follow me like a beggar, and she's frozen from two nights out in the snow! You're her mother, doesn't it stir you to pity?—to go with him (
He points at the Doctor
.) and implore the Pope to receive me and grant forgiveness?

MATILDA
   (
shaking
) Oh, yes . . . yes . . . and at once . . .

DOCTOR
   We'll do it! We'll do it!

HENRY
   And another thing! One more thing!

Henry calls them all round him and whispers in great secret.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Receiving me is not enough. The Pope can do . . . anything. Even raise the dead. (
beating his chest
) Well, here I am. As you see me. There's no magic he can't overcome. My real punishment is this—

Henry points at his picture on the wall, almost fearful.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) That!—look at it—to be shackled to that apparition! I'm a penitent now and a penitent I'll remain, I swear to God, until His Holiness receives me. But once the anathema has been lifted, please, both of you, beg the Pope to do this one thing, because he can do it: set me free from that, there, so that—wretched as it is—I can live my own life. (
pointing at the picture on the wall
) You can't stay twentysix forever! I'm asking this for your daughter, too—so I can love her as she deserves to be loved.

There. That's it. I am in your hands.

(
bowing
) My lady! Monsignor!

Henry heads back still bowing, but then he notices Belcredi, who has come closer to listen: he fears he may want to steal the imperial crown, which is sitting on the throne. Henry rushes to pick it up and hide it under his sackcloth. Then, with a sly smile he bows repeatedly and exits. Matilda is so shocked she collapses into a chair, almost fainting.

Another room in the villa, adjoining the throne room, furnished in a plain antique style. Late afternoon of the same day. Onstage are Matilda, the Doctor, and Belcredi. Matilda is keeping apart, preoccupied and on edge.

BELCREDI
   Well . . . pretty straightforward so far, wouldn't you say? a) He's off his trolley and b) he smelled a rat. He wasn't fooled . . . He told us himself in so many words, (
to Matilda
) You heard him, didn't you?

MATILDA
   What . . .? Yes, but it wasn't what you think.

DOCTOR
   He responded to our costumes the way a child would.

MATILDA
   A child? What are you talking about?

DOCTOR
   On one level. On another it's more complicated than you can imagine.

MATILDA
   Not to me—it was plain as day.

DOCTOR
   To you, perhaps, but we must bear in mind the peculiar psychology of the mad—they can see right through any pretence, while at the same time suspending their disbelief, like children at play believing in their make-believe. That's why I say he is in one sense like a child while in another it's complicated—because, you see,
his
make-believe—and he is well aware of it—is that he is the image of that image in the picture frame.

BELCREDI
   He did say that.

DOCTOR
   There you are. Then what happens?—his image is joined by other images: us, do you follow me? And with
that shrewd insight of the madman, he immediately spotted the difference between us and him; he spotted the pretence, which made him suspicious. But he kept his suspicions to himself. That's what madmen do. And that's all there is to it! Of course, he didn't see that we were doing it all for his sake. What made the game all the more pitiful is that he kept trying, in his coy, obstinate way, to tell us it was only a game—
his
game—hence the makeup and how he only puts it on for fun, and so on.

MATILDA
   No, you haven't got it.

DOCTOR
   What do you . . . ?

MATILDA
   The plain fact is he recognised me.

DOCTOR
   That's impossible.

BELCREDI
   (
at the same time
) He couldn't have.

MATILDA
   I'm telling you he recognised me. When he looked into my eyes, he knew me.

BELCREDI
   But he was talking to you about Bertha, your daughter.

MATILDA
   He was talking about me—me!

BELCREDI
   Well, yes, he did mention . . .

MATILDA
   My dyed hair, exactly—and how quickly he added—didn't you notice?—“or dark-haired if you were dark.” He remembered perfectly well that back then my hair was dark.

BELCREDI
   No, no . . .

MATILDA
   (
to the Doctor
) My hair is naturally dark, like Frida's. That's what got him talking about my daughter.

BELCREDI
   What daughter? He's never seen your daughter.

MATILDA
   That's my point, you idiot—everything he said about my pretend daughter
now
, he was saying about me
then
!

BELCREDI
   It's catching!

MATILDA
   Oh, don't be so stupid.

BELCREDI
   Excuse me but when were you ever his wife? He's got a wife—in his mad mind she's Bertha of Susa and you're her mother.

MATILDA
   I'm not denying that I came to him as Adelaide—being blond and not dark anymore, the way he remembered me, I decided to be the mother-in-law. But the daughter doesn't exist for him. He's never seen her. He doesn't even know I've got a daughter—so how can he know what colour her hair is?

BELCREDI
   He didn't say he knew. He was just speaking generally . . . Good God, he was only making a point about people colouring their hair to look younger than they are—blondes, brunettes . . . and as usual you go off at a tangent.

MATILDA
   No . . . no . . . I don't care what you say, he was talking to me about me, everything he said . . .

BELCREDI
   I couldn't get a word in edgeways, and it was all about you!—what?—even when he was talking to Peter Damian?

MATBLDA
   Indirectly, yes. Or perhaps you have another explanation why he took an instant dislike to you?

DOCTOR
   (
after an awkward pause
) Well, perhaps it was simply that it was only Duchess Adelaide and the Abbot of Cluny
who were announced . . . and seeing there was a third person there made him mistrustful.

BELCREDI
   There you are. His mistrust made him leery of me, and she has to insist it was because he recognised her.

MATILDA
   Well, he did! You know that look where you just
know.
It was just a flash . . . I don't know how to put it . . .

DOCTOR
   A moment of lucidity . . .

MATILDA
   Yes! And from then on everything he said seemed to be steeped in regret, for his youth, and mine, because of the awful thing that happened to him, that froze him in that mask he longs to be free of.