Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants (Oxford World's Classics) (20 page)

LADY MATILDA
[
trembling, in a whisper
]. Of course, of course, immediately …

DOCTOR
. We’ll do it, yes, we’ll do it.

HENRY IV
. And another thing. One more thing. [
He calls them around him and whispers secretively
] Granting an audience won’t be enough. You know that he can do anything—anything, I say. He even conjures up the dead. [
Beating his breast
] Here I am! You see me!—And there’s no magic art that he doesn’t know. Well, Monsignor and my lady, my real punishment is this—or
that
—look at it [
pointing, as if in fear, to his portrait on the wall
], the fact that I can never free myself from that magic work.—Now I am penitent and I shall remain so; I swear that I shall remain penitent until he receives me. But then, once he has lifted my excommunication, you two must beg him—for only he can do it—to set me free from
that
[
again indicating the portrait
] so that I can live it all out, the whole of this poor life of mine, from which I am cut off … One can’t be twenty-six for ever, my lady. And I ask you this for your daughter’s sake as well, so that I can love her as she deserves, well disposed as I now am, moved as I am by her compassion. There. That’s all. I am in your hands. [
Bowing
] My lady, Monsignor.

He is about to bow his way out through the door by which he entered when he suddenly notices that
BELCREDI
,
who has drawn near to hear him, has turned his head to look upstage. Thinking that
BELCREDI
wants to steal the imperial crown which has been placed on the throne
,
HENRY
runs back, seizes it, and hides it under his sackcloth amid general surprise and dismay. Then, with his eyes and mouth set in a cunning smile, he resumes his incessant bowing and disappears. The
MARCHESA
is so overcome that she collapses fainting onto a chair
.

Curtain
.

Another room in the villa, adjoining the throne room. Severe antique furniture. On the right, raised about a foot above the floor, there is a kind of platform with a wooden railing around it on little pillars. Steps lead up to it at the front. On this platform there is a table with five period chairs, one at the head and two on either side. The main entrance is at the back of the stage. To the left two windows look out onto the garden; to the right a door leads to the throne room. Late afternoon of the same day
.

LADY MATILDA
,
the
DOCTOR
,
and
TITO BELCREDI
are already in conversation
.
LADY MATILDA
is gloomily aloof, clearly annoyed by what the others are saying; but she cannot help listening because in her present restless state everything interests her in spite of herself, preventing her from grasping and developing an irresistible idea which has flashed temptingly across her mind. Her attention is attracted by the words of the others because in that moment she feels instinctively that she needs to be restrained
.

BELCREDI
. It may be as you say, dear doctor, but that’s my impression.

DOCTOR
. I’m not saying you’re wrong; but believe me when I say that it’s only an impression.

BELCREDI
. Come on: he even said so, and clearly. (
Turning to the
MARCHESA
) Isn’t that so, Marchesa?

LADY MATILDA
[
distractedly, turning round
]. Said what? [
Then, disagreeing
] Oh yes … But not for the reason you think.

DOCTOR
. He meant the clothes we put on: your cloak [
referring to
LADY MATILDA
], our Benedictine habits. And all this is childish.

LADY MATILDA
[
abruptly, turning again, indignant
]. Childish? What do you mean, doctor?

DOCTOR
. On the one hand, yes, childish. Just let me finish, Marchesa. But on the other hand far more complex than you can imagine.

LADY MATILDA
. On the contrary, for me it’s perfectly clear.

DOCTOR
[
with the indulgent smile that a specialist bestows on the uninformed
]. Ah yes. You need to understand the special psychology of the mad. You can be sure, for example, that a madman is perfectly capable of recognizing a disguise when he sees it; and he accepts it as such. And yet, my good friends, he can still believe in it, like a
child for whom it’s both play and reality. That’s why I called it childish. But then it’s complicated in this sense, see: that he is and must be completely aware of being an image in and to himself—that image of himself in there! [
Pointing to the left and referring to the portrait in the throne room
]

BELCREDI
. That’s what he said.

DOCTOR
. Right, fine!—An image that has been faced by other images—our own, if you follow me. Now in his delirium, but sharp-witted and clear-headed, he immediately noticed a difference between his image and our images—that in us, in our images, there was something fictive. And he became suspicious. All madmen are armed with a constant and vigilant distrust. But that’s all there was to it. Naturally, he couldn’t see that our game, in response to his, was being played out of pity for him. And his game seemed to us all the more tragic in that he wanted to reveal it precisely as a game—as a kind of challenge, coming from his distrust, if you take my meaning. Yes, his too, presenting himself with the dye on his temples and a spot of rouge on his cheeks, and telling us he’d done it deliberately for a laugh.

LADY MATILDA
[
breaking out again
]. No, that’s not it, doctor, that’s simply not it!

DOCTOR
. And why isn’t that it?

LADY MATILDA
[
firm and vibrant
]. Because I’m absolutely sure that he recognized me.

DOCTOR
. Impossible, quite impossible.

BELCREDI
[
at the same time
]. Come off it!

LADY MATILDA
[
even more decisive, trembling with emotion
]. He recognized me, I tell you. When he came up close to speak to me and looked me in the eyes, straight in the eyes—he recognized me.

BELCREDI
. But he was talking about your daughter …

LADY MATILDA
. Not true. About me. He was talking about me.

BELCREDI
. Yes, perhaps, when he mentioned …

LADY MATILDA
[
at once, unashamed
]. My dyed hair! Didn’t you notice that he immediately added ‘or the dark hair if you were dark’? He remembered perfectly well that I was dark-haired at the time.

BELCREDI
. Don’t you believe it!

LADY MATILDA
[
ignoring him and turning to the
DOCTOR
]. In fact, doctor, my hair is dark—just like my daughter’s. And that’s why he started to talk about her.

BELCREDI
. But he doesn’t know your daughter. Never even seen her.

LADY MATILDA
. Exactly. You don’t understand a thing. When he talked about my daughter he meant me; me as I was back then.

BELCREDI
. This madness is catching! It must be catching!

LADY MATILDA
[
in a low scornful voice
]. You and your ‘catching’! Idiot!

BELCREDI
. Hold on. Have you ever been his wife? In his madness, it’s your daughter who’s his wife, Bertha of Susa.

LADY MATILDA
. Exactly! Because I appeared before him—not dark, as he remembers me, but like this, fair, presenting myself as ‘Adelaide’, the mother. My daughter doesn’t exist for him—he’s never laid eyes on her, you said so yourself. So how can he know whether she’s dark or fair?

BELCREDI
. But he said dark-haired in a general kind of way, for God’s sake, meaning that a man might want to fix the memory of his youth in the colour of a woman’s hair, whether it’s dark or fair. And you’re letting your imagination run riot as usual. Doctor, she says I shouldn’t have come here, but she’s the one who shouldn’t have come.

LADY MATILDA
[
cast down for a moment by
BELCREDI
’
s remarks and lost in thought, she now recovers; but her tone is desperate with doubt
]. No … no … he was talking about me … speaking to me all the time, with me, about me …

BELCREDI
. Lord have mercy! He didn’t give me a moment to catch my breath and you say he was talking about you all the time? Unless you think he was talking about you even when he was speaking with Peter Damian.

LADY MATILDA
[
with a defiant air, as if unrestrained by decorum
]. And who’s to say that he wasn’t? Can you tell me why, right from the start, from the very first moment, he took such a dislike to you, and only you?

The tone of the question invites the more or less explicit reply: ‘Because he understood that you’re my lover.’
BELCREDI
grasps this so well that for the moment he just stands there as if lost, with a vacuous smile
.

DOCTOR
. But, if I may, it could also be because the only visitors announced were the Duchess Adelaide and the Abbot of Cluny. When he was faced by a third visitor, who had not been announced, then the mistrust …

BELCREDI
. That’s it, exactly, the mistrust made him see me as his enemy Peter Damian—But since she keeps insisting that he recognized her …

LADY MATILDA
. There’s no doubt about it. He eyes told me as much, doctor: you know, when someone looks at you in a way that … that leaves no room for doubt. Maybe it was just a moment, what can I say?

DOCTOR
. A lucid moment can’t be excluded.

LADY MATILDA
. Maybe that’s it. And then I felt that everything he said was so full of regret for my youth and his, for this horrible thing that happened to him and locked him up there, in the mask he has never been able to escape, and which he longs, longs so much to escape!

BELCREDI
. Of course! So that he can start making love to your daughter. Or to you, as you seem to think—moved to it by your compassion.

LADY MATILDA
. Which is very great, I can assure you.

BELCREDI
. That’s obvious, Marchesa. So obvious that a miracle-worker would think it was probably a miracle.

DOCTOR
. Do you mind if I speak now? I don’t perform miracles, because I’m a doctor, not a miracle-worker. I listened very carefully to everything he said, and I repeat that in him that element of analogical elasticity which is typical of all systematized delirium is clearly already … how can I put it? … considerably slackened. In short, the various aspects of his delirium are no longer mutually supportive. Now, I think, he’s reached a stage where he finds it very difficult to achieve a balance in this superimposed personality of his, because sudden recollections jerk him out—and this is very encouraging—not from a state of incipient apathy, but rather from morbid relaxation into a state of reflexive melancholy, which indicates … yes, truly considerable cerebral activity. Very encouraging, I repeat. Now then, if by this violent trick we’ve agreed on …

LADY MATILDA
[
turning to the window, in a querulous tone
]. Why hasn’t the car come back yet? Three and a half hours …

DOCTOR
[
taken aback
]. What’s that?

LADY MATILDA
. That car, doctor. It’s more than three and a half hours!

DOCTOR
[
fishing out his watch
]. Eh, more than four by this.

LADY MATILDA
. It could have been here half an hour ago, at least. But as usual …

BELCREDI
. Perhaps they can’t find the gown.

LADY MATILDA
. But I told them exactly where it is. [
Highly impatient
] And what about Frida? Where’s Frida?

BELCREDI
[
leaning slightly out of the window
]. Maybe she’s in the garden with Carlo.

DOCTOR
. He’ll be persuading her to overcome her fear.

BELCREDI
. But it’s not fear, doctor, don’t you believe it! She’s just fed up with all this.

LADY MATILDA
. Do me a favour and don’t even try to convince her. I know how she is.

DOCTOR
. We’ll have to be patient and wait. In any case, it will all be over in a moment and it has to be at night. If we succeed in shaking him up, I was saying, if, with this sudden wrench, we can suddenly break the already loosened threads that still bind him to his fiction, giving him what he himself requests (he said ‘One can’t be twenty-six for ever, my lady’), I mean freedom from this sentence, from what he himself considers a sentence—In short, if we succeed in suddenly giving him a sense of the distance in time …

BELCREDI
[
cutting in
]. He’ll be cured! [
Then, with ironic stress on every syllable
] We’ll pull him out of it!

DOCTOR
. We can hope to restart him, like a watch that has stopped at a certain hour. Yes, almost as if, with our watches in our hands, we were waiting for that hour to come round again—and then, give it a shake—and let’s hope that it starts marking the time again after being stopped for so long.

At this point the
MARCHESE CARLO DI NOLLI
comes in through the main entrance
.

LADY MATILDA
. Ah, Carlo … And Frida? Where’s Frida gone?

DI NOLLI
. She’s coming, she’ll be here in a moment.

DOCTOR
. Has the car arrived?

DI NOLLI
. Yes.

LADY MATILDA
. Ah yes, and with the gown?

DI NOLLI
. It’s been here quite some time.

DOCTOR
. Excellent!

LADY MATILDA
[
trembling
]. Where is it? Where is it?

DI NOLLI
[
shrugging his shoulders with a sad smile, as if lending himself reluctantly to a joke in bad taste
]. Well … Now you’ll see. [
Indicating the main entrance
] Here she is …

Berthold appears on the threshold and solemnly announces:

BERTHOLD
. Her Highness the Countess Matilda of Canossa.

FRIDA
enters immediately, stately and beautiful, dressed in her mother’s original gown as ‘Countess Matilda of Tuscany’, so that she seems to be the living image of the figure represented in the throne-room portrait
.

FRIDA
[
with haughty disdain to
BERTHOLD
who bows as she passes by
]. Of Tuscany, of Tuscany, please. Canossa is one of my castles.

BELCREDI
[
admiring
]. Look at her! Just look at her! She seems another woman.

LADY MATILDA
. She seems
me
.—Heavens above, do you see that?—Stop there, Frida—You see? She’s my portrait come to life.

DOCTOR
. Yes, yes … Perfect. Perfect. The portrait.

BELCREDI
. Yes, indeed. There’s no question. She’s really it. Just look at her. What class!

FRIDA
. Don’t make me laugh or I shall burst. I say, Mother, what a tiny waist you had! I had to hold my breath to get into it.

LADY MATILDA
[
nervously adjusting the gown
]. Hold on … Stand still … These creases … Is it really so tight on you?

FRIDA
. I can hardly breathe! Let’s get it over quickly, for heaven’s sake.