Writers (7 page)

THE
CAPTIVE

 

 

CAST OF
CHARACTERS

Marcel Proust
,
writer, author of the monumental novel
À
la recherche du temps perdu
(
In Search of Lost Time
)

The Angel of Death
,
female,
wearing
a
black
cape
and
cowl

SETTING

The
bedroom
of
Marcel
Proust,
Paris,
France,
1922
.
He
is
lying
on what
will
very
soon
be
his
deathbed.
The
furnishings
are
sumptuous albeit
stuffy,
overly done; a claustrophobic
atmosphere.

 

 

PROUST
is on the bed surrounded by
the scattered
printer's
page
proofs
of
his
massive novel.
He
is revising the volume
entitled
La prisonnière
(
The
Captive
).

PROUST

Oh, the agony!
It's
bad enough to know that
I'm
about to die,
but worse to realize that my book will never be properly finished.
I'm
barely
able
to
breathe
and
here
I
am
mincing
my
words—Alber
tine's
words—regarding anal intercourse. Of course she must
be made
to
make
reference
to
it
obliquely,
even
reluctantly.
She
cannot be allowed to say it straight out,
“me
faire casser le
pot.” Not
even the boys in my hotel would use such a term.
No,
she must let
the word
“asshole”
slip out, as if she is perhaps conversing with one
of her
girlfriends,
and
immediately
be
ashamed
for
having
even
referred
to
the
act
in
my—the
narrator's—presence.
Here,
I'll
fix
it.

Proust
crosses out words on the page
in front of him, writes in
others.

There,
done!
I
suppose
I'll
be
dead
and
never
know
if
even
this
sanitized sentence
survives.

The door to the bedroom flies open
and there appears in the doorway
THE
ANGEL
OF
DEATH.
A female of
indeterminate age, she spreads the folds of
her great cape like a peacock displaying
its wings and tail.
PROUST
looks up
from his manuscript and sees
her.

PROUST

No,
no, not yet!
I've
not finished revising my
masterpiece.

ANGEL

(advancing toward the
bed)

Don't
insult my intelligence, Marcel.
Your
masterpiece, you call
it. Scribbling about ass-fucking. Forcing Albertine to speak of
your favorite activity, bending over to accommodate the stiffened
members of street
boys.

PROUST

They
were
always
well
paid!
None
ever
complained.

ANGEL

What
about
ordering
them
to
pierce
live
rats
with
hatpins
while you watched and
masturbated?

PROUST

If anyone refused to do so, they
weren't
forced.

ANGEL

They
weren't
paid, then, either.
Nor
invited
back.

PROUST

Why pay someone for what he
wouldn't
do?

ANGEL

I suppose you expect to go to
heaven?

PROUST

If there were such a place, no doubt it would be
restricted.

ANGEL

If
indeed
there
were
such
places
as
heaven
and
hell
your
being
a Jew would not determine your fate.
You're
a captive of your
own devices.

PROUST

Leave
me
be,
can't
you?
I
want
to
get
this
right.
The
novel
is
all
I have to leave for
posterity.

ANGEL

You
and I both know that
you've
never had any intention of
completing it.

PROUST

I want it to be perfect. Is that too much to
ask?

ANGEL

Yes,
it
is.

PROUST
writes a bit more, then
lays down his pen, rests his head back on
his pillows, and closes his
eyes.

PROUST

I've
always thought an exception would be made in my
case.

The
ANGEL
covers
PROUST
with
her cape.

END

 

 

THE
TRUE
TEST
OF
GREATNESS

 

 

CAST OF
CHARACTERS

Herman Melville
,
author
of
Moby
Dick
,
Billy
Budd
,
and
other books

A Policeman

SETTING

Melville
is
walking
on
a
dock
along
the
waterfront
in
New
York
City on October
18, 1888
. Night has fallen. He stops and
looks out over the Hudson
River.
Melville is wearing a long overcoat
and a hat. A uniformed policeman approaches
him.

 

 

POLICEMAN

Out for a stroll, are
we?

MELVILLE

I'm
just off work. Looking at the river helps me clear my
head.

POLICEMAN

Where do you
work?

MELVILLE

At the Customs House.
I'm
a clerk
there.

POLICEMAN

I
don't
think
I'd
like
bein'
cooped up inside an office all day
long.
I'd
rather be
walkin'
a
beat.

MELVILLE

I wasn't always at a desk. Before I was a writer, I was a merchant seaman.

POLICEMAN

A writer? I thought you worked at the Customs
House.

MELVILLE

I do. Before that I wrote stories, novels. And before that I went
to sea.

POLICEMAN

I'm
not
much
of
a
reader,
except
for
the
newspaper.
Wrote
anything that was popular?

MELVILLE

Early
on,
I
did.
Omoo
,
Typhoo
.
As
long
as
I
kept
to
tales
of
adventure, I did right well, made a good living, good enough to
support my
family.
Then I made the mistake of a
lifetime.

POLICEMAN

You
didn't
kill
nobody,
I
hope.

MELVILLE

I did. Thirty-seven years ago
today,
on October
18, 1851
, I
murdered Herman
Melville.

POLICEMAN

Who was he?

MELVILLE

The writer I told you about, the author of
boys'
sea
stories.

POLICEMAN

Come again?

MELVILLE

Myself, I murdered myself, in the belief that readers would
understand where I was trying to take them. They jumped ship, and
the publishers thought
I'd
gone
crazy.
So did
Hawthorne.

POLICEMAN

Is that why
you're
workin'
down here
now?

MELVILLE

Better the Customs House than the
poorhouse.

POLICEMAN

It's no crime to be doin' government work. Right honorable, in fact.

MELVILLE

In some
men's
eyes, honor alone might amount to a criminal
condition.

POLICEMAN

I
don't
know as I can rightly judge your meanin',
sir.

MELVILLE

That's
at the heart of it, officer. Meaning depends upon
whoever's
doing the judging.

POLICEMAN

I'd
better be
makin'
my way along
now.
You
wouldn't
be thinkin'
of
doin'
anything foolish, would
you?

MELVILLE

Though
I
am
sleepy,
I
dare
not.
If
there
is
one
thing
that
I
have learned,
it's
that
there
is
more
power
and
beauty
in
the
well-kept secret
of
one's
self
and
one's
thoughts
than
in
the
display
of
a
whole heaven that one may have inside
him.

POLICEMAN

I'll be saying good
evenin',
then,
sir.

The
POLICEMAN
walks
away.

MELVILLE

(to the
river)

Until the oozy weeds about me twist, I'll say it: I
ain't
crazy.

END

 

 

FAREWELL
LETTER

 

 

CAST OF
CHARACTERS

Charles Baudelaire
,
French
poet,
most
famously
author
of
Les Fleurs du Mal
. He is twenty-three years
old.

The Voice of Jeanne Duval
,
an
actress

SETTING

Baudelaire's
atelier,
Paris,
1844

 

 

BAUDELAIRE
enters his apartment, sees a letter addressed to him that has
been slipped under his
door. He
picks it
up, opens the envelope, removes the
missive and sits down at his table. As he reads,
we hear
THE
VOICE
OF
JEANNE
DU
VAL
reciting the contents of the
letter.

THE VOICE OF JEANNE DUVAL

Charles,
from
the
beginning
you
always made
me
laugh.
Sending
flowers
to
my dressing
room
at
Le
Théâtre
du
Panthéon as
if
I
were
a
real
actress

not just a piece of
fluff

trotted out for a few
moments in a brief costume

to make the
boys'
cocks
hard.

You
had
money,
you were
charming

and respectful.
You
appeared
impervious to the fact of my blackness.

When we entered a café
together

you were like a proud buck with his
doe. All eyes were on us as we paraded
through, and you treated me as if I were a great
lady; you had the finest
manners.

The apartment you bought for
me was furnished
exquisitely.

It
resembled a
Kaliph's
boudoir. If only you had been a
Kaliph!

That would have made my being a
whore more palatable. Expensive
whores

live longer that the
rest.

Nadar knew me before you,
yes, as did
Banville.

When you first brought me to your
suite at the Hôtel Lauzun I
pretended

never to have been there
before.

But I had, several times, with different
men, men who knew how to satisfy a
woman, and
themselves.

You created me for yourself as an object only, a stone creature whom you could idealize

and pretend to worship and
torture yourself
over.
It
was
madness!

I'm
a slut, yes, perhaps
worse; a drunkard, too. But I am
real! I exist here in this time, not
in any other and I never
will.

Your
reliance on women such as Luchette and Madame Meurice has stunted
you. They encourage your
impotence.

“My
vampire!” you called me.
It's
what you wanted, begged
for,
demanded.

Only by cruelty could you be
convinced of anything. Being cruel
is

a soul-consuming task, and one which amuses me to a lesser
degree than you would
suppose.

I plead exhaustion, Charles.

I release myself from this obligation to
you.
My
sweet, poetry is not
enough.

 

Jeanne

BAUDELAIRE
lays the letter down
on his table.

BAUDELAIRE

So, I achieve what I deserve. The
petals part to reveal the flower of evil.
It's
what I was after all along, of course,

a cause to vent my premature
spleen.

O, Death, old captain, shall I
waste

my breath before our time to meet
arrives? What better to do but spit beauty at despair?

END