Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants (Oxford World's Classics) (12 page)

LEADING LADY
. ‘No, sir …’

LEADING MAN
. ‘So you have been here before? More than once?’

DIRECTOR
. No, wait! First let her nod agreement [
indicating the
LEADING LADY
]. ‘So you have been here before?’

The
LEADING LADY
raises her head a little with eyes half-closed to suggest disgust; then, when the
DIRECTOR
says ‘Now’, she nods her head twice
.

STEPDAUGHTER
[
unable to resist
]. Oh my God! [
And she puts a hand to her mouth, stifling her laughter
]

DIRECTOR
[
turning round
]. What is it?

STEPDAUGHTER
. Nothing, nothing.

DIRECTOR
[
to the
LEADING MAN
]. Now you, now you. Take it from there.

LEADING MAN
. ‘More than once? Come now, no need to be like this … Allow me to remove that hat.’

The
LEADING MAN
says the last line with such a voice, accompanied by such a gesture, that the
STEPDAUGHTER
,
even with her hands at her mouth, cannot keep from laughing, however hard she tries. The laugh escapes between her fingers, loud and irresistible
.

LEADING LADY
[
indignant, going back to her seat
]. I’m not going to play the fool for that woman!

LEADING MAN
. Me neither! Let’s have done with it.

DIRECTOR
[
shouting at the
STEPDAUGHTER
]. Pack it in! Pack it in!

STEPDAUGHTER
. I will, I’m sorry … so sorry …

DIRECTOR
. Atrocious manners! A little guttersnipe, that’s what you are! Arrogant too!

FATHER
[
trying to intervene
]. Quite right, sir, quite right. But you must forgive her …

DIRECTOR
[
coming back onto the stage
]. How can you expect me to forgive her? It’s disgraceful!

FATHER
. Yes, sir, it is. But believe me, all this gives us such a strange feeling …

DIRECTOR
. Strange? Strange in what way? Why strange?

FATHER
. I admire your actors, sir, I really admire them: that gentleman there [
pointing to the
LEADING MAN
], that lady [
indicating the
LEADING LADY
], but the fact is … well, they’re just not us …

DIRECTOR
. You bet they’re not you! How can they be? They’re the actors.

FATHER
. That’s just it, actors. And they both do our parts very well. But, you see, to us it looks like something different, something that tries to be the same, and yet it isn’t.

DIRECTOR
. What do you mean, ‘it isn’t’? What is it then?

FATHER
. Something that … becomes theirs. It’s no longer ours.

DIRECTOR
. But there’s no other way. I’ve told you that already.

FATHER
. Yes, I understand, I understand …

DIRECTOR
. So that’s enough! [
Turning to the
ACTORS
] This means that later on we’ll rehearse on our own, the proper way. For me it’s always been a curse, having to rehearse with the authors present. They’re never satisfied. [
Turning to the
FATHER
and
STEPDAUGHTER
] Right then, we’ll go back to doing it with you; and let’s see if you can stop laughing.

STEPDAUGHTER
. I won’t laugh. I won’t laugh! Now comes the best part for me; you can count on it.

DIRECTOR
. So then, when you say ‘Think no more about what I said … I too, you can imagine …’ [
turning to the
FATHER
] you come straight in with ‘I see, ah, I see’ and then you ask her …

STEPDAUGHTER
[
interrupting
].—Ask what? What does he ask?

DIRECTOR
. The reason why you’re in mourning.

STEPDAUGHTER
. Not at all, sir. Look, when I told him that I really shouldn’t remember the way I’m dressed, do you know what he answered? ‘Very well, then. Let’s take it off, let’s take this little dress off straightaway.’

DIRECTOR
. Splendid! Wonderful! That’ll bring the house down.

STEPDAUGHTER
. But it’s the truth.

DIRECTOR
. You and your truth, do me a favour! This is the theatre. Truth, yes, up to a certain point.

STEPDAUGHTER
. So what do you want to do then?

DIRECTOR
. You’ll see, you’ll see. Now leave it to me.

STEPDAUGHTER
. No, sir. Out of my revulsion, out of all the factors, one more vile and cruel than the next, that have made me the way I am, do you want to cobble up some soppy sentimental romance? With him asking why I’m in mourning and me answering in tears that my papa died two months ago? No, no, my dear sir. He must say what he did say: ‘Let’s take this little dress off straightaway.’ And with all that grief in my heart, after barely two months, I went there, do you see? There, behind that screen, and with these fingers, trembling with shame and disgust, I undid my corset, my skirt …

DIRECTOR
[
with his hands in his hair
]. For God’s sake! What are you saying?

STEPDAUGHTER
[
shouting, frantic
]. The truth! The truth, sir!

DIRECTOR
. Yes, I’m sure it’s the truth. I don’t deny it … and I understand, I really do, all the horror you feel. But then you must understand that all this is quite impossible on the stage.
^*

STEPDAUGHTER
. Impossible? Then thanks very much, you can count me out of it.

DIRECTOR
. No, look …

STEPDAUGHTER
. Count me out! Count me out! What’s possible on the stage is something you’ve cooked up back there, the two of you,
thanks a lot. I know perfectly well what’s going on. He wants to get straight to the scene of his [
with ironic emphasis
] ‘spiritual torments’; but I want to act out
my
drama. Mine!

DIRECTOR
[
irritated, with an angry shrug of his shoulders
]. Oh, give it a break! Yours! There’s not just your drama, you know. There are the others too. There’s his [
indicating the
FATHER
], there’s your mother’s. We can’t have one character pushing forward like this, upstaging everybody else and taking over the whole scene. They must all be contained in a harmonious framework and act out what can be acted. I know very well that everyone has a whole interior life that he or she would like bring out into the open. But that’s where the difficulty lies: how to bring out only what matters in relation to the other characters; and, at the same time, with the little that is shown, suggest all the life that remains within. It would all be too easy if every character could be given a monologue or … why not? … a lecture where he could serve up to the audience whatever’s cooking in his head. [
In a good-natured conciliatory tone
] You must control yourself, young lady. And believe me, it’s in your own interest; because, I warn you, you can give a very bad impression with all this destructive fury, this extreme revulsion—especially, if I may say so, when you yourself have admitted that you went with other men at Madame Pace’s, and more than once.

STEPDAUGHTER
[
bowing her head and speaking in a deep voice, after a meditative pause
]. That’s true. But remember that for me all those others were him too.

DIRECTOR
. How do you mean, the others were him?

STEPDAUGHTER
. When someone falls into evil ways, sir, isn’t the one who caused the first fall responsible for all the evils that follow? Well, for me that’s him, and has been since before I was born. Look at him and see if it isn’t true.

DIRECTOR
. Very well. And don’t you think the remorse that weighs on him should count for something? Give him the chance to act it out.

STEPDAUGHTER
. How can he do that? Tell me how he can act out all his ‘noble remorse’, all his ‘moral torments’ if you choose to spare him the horror of being one fine day in the arms of a woman, after suggesting she take off her dress, her mourning dress—and
then discovering that this woman, this fallen woman, is the same little girl he used to go and watch as she came out of school?

She says these last words in a voice that trembles with emotion. The
MOTHER
,
hearing her speak like this, is overwhelmed by an unbearable anguish, expressed first by stifled sobs and then by a flood of tears. Everyone is deeply moved. A long pause
.

STEPDAUGHTER
[
grave and resolute, as soon as the
MOTHER
seems to be calming down
]. Here and now there’s only us; the audience hasn’t heard of us yet. Tomorrow you can make of us whatever spectacle you like, arranged as you think fit. But do you really want to see this drama? See it explode the way it actually did?

DIRECTOR
. I ask for nothing better, so that I can already take whatever I can use.

STEPDAUGHTER
. Then have my mother go out.

MOTHER
[
rising up from her weeping with a cry
]. No, no. Don’t allow it, sir. Don’t allow it!

DIRECTOR
. But it’s only for us to see, madam.

MOTHER
. I can’t. I can’t!

DIRECTOR
. But if it’s all happened already? I don’t understand.

MOTHER
. No, it’s happening now, it happens all the time. My agony’s not feigned, sir. I’m alive and present, always, in every moment of my torment which is itself renewed, alive and ever-present.
^*
But those two little ones there, have you heard them speak? They can no longer speak, sir. They still cling on to me to keep my torment alive and present; but as themselves they are not there, they no longer exist! And this girl, sir [
indicating the
STEPDAUGHTER
], she’s gone away, run away from me, and now she’s lost, lost … If I see her here now, it’s only for that—always, always to renew, alive and present, the torment that I have suffered on her account as well.

FATHER
[
solemnly
]. The eternal moment, as I told you, sir. She [
indicating the
STEPDAUGHTER
] is here to catch me, fix me, hold me hooked and hanging, pilloried for ever, in that one fleeting shameful moment of my life. She can’t give it up, and you, sir, can’t really spare me.

DIRECTOR
. Exactly. I don’t say we shouldn’t play the scene: in fact, it will be the nucleus of the whole first act right up to the moment when she discovers you. [
Indicates the
MOTHER
]

FATHER
. That’s it. Yes. Because that’s my condemnation. All our passion must reach a climax in her final cry! [
He too points to the
MOTHER
]

STEPDAUGHTER
. It’s still ringing in my ears. It has driven me insane, that cry. You can have me played any way you like, sir: it doesn’t matter. Even clothed, provided at least the arms are bare—only the arms because, look, as I stood like this [
she goes up to the
FATHER
and leans her head on his chest
], with my head like this and my arms round his neck, I could see a vein throbbing in my arm here; and then, as if it were only that vein that made me shudder, I closed my eyes, just like this, and hid my head on his chest. [
Turning towards the
MOTHER
] Scream, Mama, scream! [
She buries her head in the
FATHER
’
s chest, and with her shoulders hunched as if not to hear the cry, adds in a voice of stifled suffering
] Scream, the way you screamed then!

MOTHER
[
rushing in to separate them
]. No! Daughter, my daughter! [
And when she has torn her daughter from his arms
] Brute, you brute! Don’t you see that she’s my daughter?

DIRECTOR
[
backing up to the footlights as he hears the cry, amid the bewildered
ACTORS
]. Splendid, yes, splendid. And then, curtain, curtain!

FATHER
[
hurrying to him in excitement
]. That’s it, yes. Because it really was like that, sir.

DIRECTOR
[
with admiration, convinced
]. Yes, right here. Absolutely! Curtain, curtain!

At the repeated shouts of the
DIRECTOR
,
the
TECHNICIAN
lowers the curtain, leaving the
DIRECTOR
and the
FATHER
standing outside in front of the footlights
.

DIRECTOR
[
looking up with arms raised
]. What an idiot! I say ‘curtain’ meaning that this is where the act should end, and he really goes and lowers the curtain! [
Lifting the hem of the curtain in order to go back on stage, to the
FATHER
] Splendid! Marvellous! A real knockout. There’s our ending for Act One. A knockout! Take my word for it!

DIRECTOR
and
FATHER
go off behind the curtain
.

The curtain rises again to reveal that the
TECHNICIANS
and
STAGEHANDS
have dismantled the improvised set and replaced it with a small garden fountain
.