Pirandello's Henry IV (7 page)

BELCREDI
   He won't hurt you.

DI NOLLI
   It'll be over before you know it.

FRIDA
   Yes, but alone with him, and it'll be dark . . .

DI NOLLI
   I'll be close by—and the others will be behind the door waiting, ready to rush in. As soon as he sees your mother, your part's over.

BELCREDI
   What
I'm
afraid of, on the other hand, is that it'll all be for nothing.

DI NOLLI
   Oh, don't you start! I have every faith in this cure.

FRIDA
   So have I. I'm getting quite excited.

BELCREDI
   But, you see, darlings, what we're forgetting is that madmen, though sadly they don't know it, bless them . . . don't think rationally!

DI NOLLI
   What's that got to do with anything?

BELCREDI
   What!—when he sees her (
pointing at Frida
) and then her mother, aren't we counting on him to apply his reason?—we've orchestrated the whole thing just for that.

DI NOLLI
   What do you mean, reason? The Doctor's just confronting him with his own make-believe doubled up, that's all.

BELCREDI
   For the life of me I can never understand why these people are allowed to call themselves doctors.

DI NOLLI
   What people?

BELCREDI
   Psychiatrists. Why do they graduate in
medicine
?

DI NOLLI
   What else should they graduate in?

BELCREDI
   Linguistics . . . It's only about who has the best lines . . . “coherence typical of systematised delusion” . . . “melancholic reflex” . . . The first thing they tell you is they don't perform miracles when a miracle is exactly what's needed—they know that's how to be taken seriously . . . and the miracle is they get away with it.

BERTOLD
   (
peeping
) They're coming! Coming this way!

DI NOLLI
   Are you sure?

BERTOLD
   It looks like he's seeing them out! Yes . . . here he comes!

DI NOLLI
   Let's get out of here. You stay.

BERTOLD
   Me?

Di Nolli, Frida, and Belcredi hurry out, leaving Bertold behind, confused and lost. Landolf enters bowing, followed by Matilda, with cloak and coronet, as in Act One, and the Doctor, in the robes of the Abbot of Cluny. Henry IV is between them, in regal attire, followed by Ordulf and Harold.

HENRY
   I'm asking you: do you think I'm mulish or foxy? (
pause
) A mule, then.

DOCTOR
   A mule? Heaven forbid that I . . .

HENRY
   So you think I'm really a fox?

DOCTOR
   No, not a mule and not a fox either.

HENRY
   Come, Abbot, since one can't be both I was hoping that in denying me the obstinacy of the one you'd grant me the cleverness of the other. I assure you I could do with a little of it. But I suppose you reserve it all for yourself.

DOCTOR
   Who, me? Do I seem clever to you?

HENRY
   No, Monsignor! What an idea! (
addressing Matilda
) Could you spare me a moment before you go? (
anxiously, in private
) Do you truly love your daughter?

MATILDA
   Yes, of course I do . . .

HENRY
   So, do you wish me to love and cherish her to make up for all the wrongs I've done her? . . . not that you should credit the debauchery my enemies accuse me of.

MATILDA
   I don't. I never did.

HENRY
   Well, then, what would you have me do?

MATILDA
   What?

HENRY
   Fall in love with your daughter again? (
pauses, looks at her intently
) Watch out for the Countess of Tuscany—she's not to be trusted.

MATILDA
   But—as I told you—she's begged and beseeched His Holiness no less than we have . . .

HENRY
   Don't say that! Don't! Can't you see what it does to me?

Matilda looks at him and speaks to him quietly, sharing a confidence.

MATILDA
   Do you still love her?

HENRY
   Still? What do you mean, still? Nobody knows about that—nobody must know it.

MATILDA
   But perhaps she knows . . . and that's why she went on her knees to the Pope for you . . .

HENRY
   And you say you love your daughter! (
pause; lightly
) Well, Monsignor! It's all too true, about me finding out too late—far too late . . . that I had a wife . . . and still have her, there's no doubt about that . . . and I swear I never give her
a thought. It may be a sin but I feel nothing for her. What's astonishing, though, is neither does her mother! Admit it, Duchess, you don't give a damn about her. (
agitated
) She keeps on about that other woman! She goes on and on about her—I can't think why.

LANDOLF
   Perhaps, Your Majesty, it's because she thinks you've got the wrong idea about the Countess of Tuscany. (
embarrassed
) I mean the wrong idea just at the present time.

HENRY
   Why, do you think I can trust her, too?

LANDOLF
   At the present time I do, Your Majesty.

MATILDA
   You see? And that's why . . .

HENRY
   Yes, I see. So, it's not that you think I love her. I see. I see. Nobody has ever thought so. So much the better. So that's enough about that.

Henry stops. He turns to the Doctor with a completely different mood and expression.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Monsignor, did you notice this?—the conditions the Pope has made for the revoking of my excommunication have absolutely nothing to do with the reason he excommunicated me in the first place. Tell Pope Gregory we'll meet in Brixen. And you, my lady, if you happen to see your daughter in the castle courtyard of your friend the Countess . . . what can I say? Tell her she can come up here. We'll see whether she's the one who'll stay by me as wife and Empress. I've had lots of them coming here assuring me that they were her . . . though they knew I'd already . . . and sometimes I'd . . . well, why not?—it's my wife! But they all . . . when they'd tell me they were Bertha, and from Susa . . . I don't know why, they'd all start giggling, (
confidentially
) You know
what I mean—in bed—not dressed up like this—the woman, too, naked . . . stripped down to male and female as nature made us, we forget who we are. Our clothes hanging up, watching over us like ghosts . . . (
to the Doctor
) What I think, Monsignor, is that ghosts for the most part are fragments of the unconscious escaping from our dreams. When we sometimes see them wide-awake, in broad daylight, they startle us. I'm always frightened in the night when they appear—all those disjointed images, people laughing, riders got down from their horses . . . I'm frightened sometimes by the blood pounding through my veins in the stillness of the night, like the heavy thud of footsteps in distant rooms . . . But I've kept you in attendance long enough. My respects, Duchess, and Monsignor, your obedient servant.

Matilda and the Doctor bow in return, and leave. Henry closes the door and turns around, changed.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) What a bunch of wankers! I played them like a kiddy piano with a different colour for every key—it only needed the lightest touch . . . white, red, yellow, green . . . and that other one, Peter Damian!—Ha! I saw through him all right! He didn't dare show his face again!

Henry, in an exuberant frenzy, suddenly sees Bertold, who is both stunned and frightened. Henry stops in front of him, pointing out Bertold to his three companions, and shakes him by the shoulders.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Look at this idiot here, with his mouth open! Do you understand now?—how I got them dressed up to perform for me?—those clowns wetting their pants in terror . . . in case I whip off their masks!—as if it wasn't me who made them dress up for my own entertainment while I play the madman!

LANDOLF
,
HAROLD
, &
ORDULF
   Eh?—What?—What's he—?

HENRY
   Well, I'm sick of this! Enough! You're all getting on my tits! My God, the nerve of that woman!—showing up here with her lover! With that air of stooping to this charade out of the goodness of their hearts!—so as not to make even madder a poor wretch already shut off from the world, from life! Well, who else would put up with that kind of persecution? These are people who every living moment expect everyone else to be how they see them!—oh, but this can't be persecution!—not at all!—it's only their mode of thinking, living, feeling—each to his own! And you to yours, right? Of course! But what is yours? To be sheep!—feeble, flock-driven . . . and they make the most of that, they have you seeing and thinking and feeling the same as them. Or so they like to think. Because, when all's said and done, what do they do it with? Words, words, words. Simple words which anyone can make mean whatever they like. That's what's called public opinion! God help anyone who finds the public's got a word for him . . . “crazy,” or, I don't know, “imbecile”? Tell me something. Would you be so calm if you knew that there are people out there determined to make the world see you the way they want you to be seen?—to force their view of you and their valuation of you on everyone else? “Loony!” “Crackpot!” Don't imagine I'm doing all this as a madman now. Before I hit my head falling off a horse . . .

Henry suddenly stops, noticing the four young men are agitated, dismayed, and confused.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Why are you staring at each other? Trying to decide? Is he or isn't he? All right, then, I'm a loony! Well, by God, on your knees, then! Kneel! I command
you to get on your knees and touch the ground with your foreheads, three times. Get down! That's what you do when you're confronted by a maniac! (
jeers
) Oh, get up for God's sake! Sheep! Why didn't you put me in a straitjacket? You're crushed by the weight of a word that weighs less than a fly. Our whole lives, crushed by the weight of words, empty words. Here I am. Hello. Do you really think Henry IV is alive? Yet, you're alive—and you let me order you about. Do you think it's funny, a dead man running your lives? Well, maybe it's funny in here. Go outside in the real world, and the joke wears a little thin. The day breaks—it's dawn, the day's ahead of us, you say, it's ours to make. Really? You really think so? Start talking. Repeat all the words that have ever been said. Do you think you're living now? Well, you're not. You're chewing on dead men's cud. (
stopping in front of Bertold, who is now completely dazed
) You haven't understood a thing, have you? What's your name?

BERTOLD
   My name . . . er, Bertold.

HENRY
   Bertold, my arse. Just between you and me, what's your name?

BERTOLD
   Well, actually, it's Fino.

HENRY
   Fino what?

BERTOLD
   Fino Pagliuca, sir.

HENRY
   I've often heard you using your names. You're Lolo?

LANDOLF
   Yes, sir. (
joyfully
) Oh, my God, you mean . . . ?

HENRY
   (
sharply
) I mean what?

LANDOLF
   No . . . I only . . .

HENRY
   Aren't I crazy anymore? No, of course not, let's have a really good laugh at those who think I am. (
to Harold
) You're Franco . . . (
to Ordulf
) And you, let me think . . .

ORDULF
   Momo!

HENRY
   That's it! Momo! Nice name.

LANDOLF
   But then . . . Oh, God . . .

HENRY
   What? Nothing, let's have a good laugh about it, just the five of us. After three. Three. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Landolf, Harold, and Ordulf are unsure, confused, glad, and bewildered at the same time. They are whispering together.

HENRY
   (
cont.
) Stop that whispering! (
to Bertold
) You're not laughing? Did I offend you? I wasn't talking about you, you know. It's everyone. It suits them to make out that someone is crazy so they can shut him away. Do you know why? Because they can't bear to hear what he might say . . . what I might say about those three who just left. I might say one's a slut, one's a dirty lecher, and the third's a quack. Surely not!—who'd believe such a thing! Yet they'd all be listening, horrified. But why? If it's not true? That's what I'd like to know. You shouldn't believe a madman. But they listen, wide-eyed with horror. Explain that to me. Go on—I'm quite calm as you see.