Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants (Oxford World's Classics) (23 page)

BERTHOLD
. Because … maybe they think that …

HENRY IV
. No, my dear chap, no. Look me straight in the eye—I’m not saying it’s true, don’t worry—Nothing is true—But look me straight in the eye.

BERTHOLD
. Yes, all right. And so?

HENRY IV
. There! You see it, don’t you? Yes, now you have it too, that fear in your eyes. Because now I strike you as mad. That proves it! That proves it! [
He laughs
]

LANDOLPH
[
exasperated, summoning up his courage and speaking for the others
]. What proves it?

HENRY IV
. This dismay of yours because now you think I’m mad again. And yet, for God’s sake, you know! You believe me. Until now you thought I was mad. Is it true or not? [
He looks at them for a moment and sees that they are terrified
] But can you see it? Do you feel how this dismay of yours can turn into terror, as if something were making the earth give way beneath your feet and taking away the air you breathe? Inevitably, gentlemen. Because do you know what it means to find yourself face to face with a madman? Face to face with someone who shakes the very foundations of everything you have built up in and around yourself—the very logic of all your constructions. Ah, what do you expect? Madmen construct without logic, lucky them! Or with a logic of their own which floats around like a feather. Changing, ever-changing! Like this today, and tomorrow who knows how? You stand firm, and they no longer stand at all. Changing, ever-changing! You say: ‘This can’t be so’—and for them anything can be. But you say it’s not true. And why? Because it doesn’t seem true to you, or you, or you [
indicating three of them
] or to a hundred thousand others. Ah, my dear friends! We’d do well to see what seems true to these hundred thousand others who are not called mad, and what kind of show they make of their agreements, their flowers of logic. I know that when I was a
child the moon in the well seemed real. So many things seemed real and true. I believed everything that others told me, and I was happy. Because terrible things await you unless you hold fast to what seems true to you today, to what will seem true tomorrow, even if it’s the opposite of what seemed true yesterday. And how terrible if, like me, you should sink into this horrible thought which truly drives one mad: that if you stand beside someone and look into his eyes—as one day I looked into a certain pair of eyes—then you’ll know what it’s like to be a beggar standing before a door through which he can never enter: the one who enters will never be you, with your own inner world as you see it and touch it; instead it will be someone you do not know, just as that other person, in his own impenetrable world, sees and touches you …

A long pause. The shadows deepen in the room, increasing that sense of uncertainty and anxiety which envelops the four masqueraders and distances them ever further from the great Masquerader who remains absorbed in the contemplation of a terrible sadness that is not his alone but that of all mankind. At last he pulls himself together, seems to look for the four whom he no longer feels around him, and says:

HENRY IV
. It’s gone dark in here.

ORDULPH
[
coming forward at once
]. Shall I go and get the lamp?

HENRY IV
[
ironic
]. The lamp, yes … you think that I don’t know that as soon as I turn my back and go off to bed holding my oil lamp, you go and switch on the electric light for yourselves, here and in the throne room too? I pretend not to see it.

ORDULPH
. Ah, so you’d rather …

HENRY IV
. No, it would dazzle me. I want my lamp.

ORDULPH
. Right. It will already be waiting for you, here behind the door.

He goes to the main door, opens it, goes out for a brief moment and returns with an antique lamp, the kind that is held by a ring at the top
.

HENRY IV
[
taking the lamp and pointing to the table on the platform
]. Here, a bit of light. Now sit down there around the table. But not like that. In nice relaxed poses. [
To
HAROLD
] Here, you like this [
arranges his pose; then to
BERTHOLD
] And you like this, so [
posing him
]. And me here. [
He sits down himself and turns his head towards one of the windows
] We should get the moon to send
down a fine decorative beam. It’s useful to us, the moon, it really is. I certainly feel the need of it and I often lose myself in gazing at it from my window. Looking at that moon, who would believe that she must know how eight hundred years have passed and how I can’t be Henry IV sitting at the window and looking at the moon like any common man? But look, look, what a magnificent nocturnal scene: the Emperor among his faithful counsellors … Aren’t you enjoying it?

LANDOLPH
[
to
HAROLD
,
in a low voice so as not to break the enchantment
]. Well, you understand? Knowing it wasn’t true …

HENRY IV
. What wasn’t true?

LANDOLPH
[
hesitating, seeking an excuse
]. No … it’s that with him [
indicating
BERTHOLD
] being new to the job, I was saying this very morning what a pity … dressed like this, and with so many fine costumes in the wardrobe, and with a throne room like that. [
Gesturing towards the throne room
]

HENRY IV
. And then? It’s a pity, you say?

LANDOLPH
. Yes … that we didn’t know …

HENRY IV
. That all this play-acting was just a joke?

LANDOLPH
. Because we believed that …

HAROLD
[
helping him out
]. Yes, that it was serious.

HENRY IV
. So what is it then? Do you think it’s not serious?

LANDOLPH
. Well, if you say …

HENRY IV
. I say you’re a bunch of fools. You should have been able to play out this whole deception for yourselves: not to perform it for me or before the visitors who come here from time to time, but like this, for the way you are naturally every day, without spectators [
to
BERTHOLD
,
taking him by the arms
], for yourself, you understand; because this was a fiction where you could eat, sleep, and even scratch your shoulder if it itched; [
turning to the others
] feeling yourselves alive, truly alive in eleventh-century history, here at the court of your Emperor Henry IV. And to think from here, from this remote age, so colourful and sepulchral—to think that in the meantime, eight whole centuries further on, men of the twentieth century are struggling and striving, with a restless burning desire to know how their affairs will turn out, to see what they
will add up to, all those events that keep them in such agonizing suspense. While you are already a part of history. With me! However sad my fortunes and terrible my troubles, bitter my struggles and grievous their outcomes, now they’re all history and they won’t change, they can’t change, you understand? Fixed for ever so that you can feel at ease with them, admiring how every effect follows obediently from its cause with perfect logic and how every event unfolds clear and coherent in every detail. Ah the pleasure, the pleasure of history, how great it is!

LANDOLPH
. Wonderful, wonderful!

HENRY IV
. Yes, wonderful; but that’s enough! Now that you know, I couldn’t go on with it. [
He takes the lamp to go off to bed
] And nor could you, for that matter, if you still haven’t grasped the reason behind it. Now I’m sick of it. [
Almost to himself, with repressed rage
] But by God, I’ll make her sorry she came here! Dressed up as my mother-in-law … and him as an abbot. And they bring along a doctor to examine me. Who knows, they may even hope to cure me. Clowns! I’m looking forward to giving one of them a slap in the face:
him!
A fine swordsman, isn’t he? So he’ll run me through, will he? We’ll see about that. [
Someone knocks at the main door
] Who is it?

GIOVANNI
[
off
]. Deo gratias.

HAROLD
[
delighted, anticipating a joke
]. Ah, it’s Giovanni coming to play the poor monk as he does every evening.

ORDULPH
[
rubbing his hands
]. Yes, yes, let’s have him do it, let him do it.

HENRY IV
[
immediately severe
]. Idiot! Don’t you see? Why? To play a joke at the expense of a poor old man who’s doing this for my sake?

LANDOLPH
[
to Ordulph
]. It must seem true! Don’t you see?

HENRY IV
. Exactly. It must seem true. Because that’s the only way truth stops being a joke. [
He goes to open the door for
GIOVANNI
who enters dressed as a humble friar with a roll of parchment under his arm
] Come in, Father, come in. [
Assuming a voice of tragic gravity and dark resentment
] All the documents relative to my life and reign that spoke in my favour were deliberately destroyed by my enemies: the only surviving record is this account of my life written by a humble
monk
^*
who is devoted to me. And you want to laugh at him? [
He turns affectionately to
GIOVANNI
and invites him to sit at the table
] Sit here, Father. With the lamp beside you. [
He puts down the lamp he has been holding
] Write, write.

GIOVANNI
[
unrolls the parchment and prepares to take dictation
]. I’m ready, Your Majesty.

HENRY IV
[
dictating
]. The peace proclaimed at Mainz gave sustenance to the poor and the righteous, just as it confounded the wicked and the mighty. [
As the curtain slowly descends
] It brought abundance to the former, hunger and poverty to the latter …
^*

Curtain

The throne room, dark. In the darkness the back wall can hardly be seen. The canvases with the two portraits have been removed and in their place, in the frames that enclose the niches, holding the same poses as the portraits, stand
FRIDA
,
as we saw her in Act Two, dressed as the ‘Countess of Tuscany’, and
CARLO DI NOLLI
in the costume of ‘Henry IV’
.

As the curtain rises, the stage seems empty for a moment. The left door opens and
HENRY IV
enters, holding the lamp by its ring and turning to speak to the four young men offstage who are presumably in the adjoining room with
GIOVANNI
,
as at the end of Act Two
.

HENRY IV
. No, stay where you are. I’ll manage by myself. Goodnight.

Closing the door, sad and tired, he starts to cross the room towards the second right door which leads to his apartments
.

FRIDA
[
as soon as she sees that he has passed the throne, she whispers from the niche like someone fainting with fear
]. Henry …

HENRY IV
[
stopping at the voice as if treacherously stabbed in the back, he casts a terrified look at the back wall and instinctively half-raises his arms to ward off a blow
]. Who’s calling me?

It is less a question than an exclamation which breaks out with a shuddering of fear and does not expect a reply in the terrible silence and darkness of the room which for him are suddenly heavy with the suspicion that he might indeed be mad
.

FRIDA
[
at that terrified exclamation, no less terrified herself by what she has agreed to do, repeats a little louder
]. Henry …

FRIDA
cranes her neck out a little, looking towards the other niche, though still trying to play the part assigned to her
.
HENRY IV
drops the lamp with a great cry, holds his head in his hands, and makes ready to flee. She jumps down from the niche onto the ledge screaming madly:

FRIDA
. Henry … Henry … I’m frightened … I’m frightened.

DI NOLLI
also jumps down from his niche onto the ledge and then onto the floor and runs to
FRIDA
who is still screaming and seems about to faint: at the same time from the left door, all the others burst in: the
DOCTOR, LADY MATILDA
,
also dressed as the ‘Countess of Tuscany’
,
TITO BELCREDI
,
LANDOLPH, HAROLD, ORDULPH, BERTHOLD, GIOVANNI
.
One of them quickly switches on the light—a strange light coming from bulbs hidden in the ceiling so that only the space high above the stage is really illuminated. While
HENRY IV
looks on, stunned by this sudden invasion after the terrifying moment that has left his whole body shaking, the others pay him no attention and hurry to support and comfort
FRIDA
who is still trembling, sobbing, and raving in the arms of her fiancé. General confusion as they all speak at the same time
.

DI NOLLI
. No, no, Frida … Here I am … I’m with you.

DOCTOR
[
arriving with the others
]. That’s enough! That’s enough! There’s nothing more we need to do.

LADY MATILDA
. He’s cured, Frida. Look, he’s cured. Don’t you see?

DI NOLLI
[
astonished
]. Cured?

BELCREDI
. It was just for a laugh. Don’t worry.

FRIDA
. No! I’m afraid. I’m afraid!

LADY MATILDA
. What of? Look at him. None of it was true, it wasn’t true.

DI NOLLI
. It wasn’t true? What do you mean? That he’s cured?

DOCTOR
. So it seems. If you ask me …

BELCREDI
. Of course he’s cured. They told us. [
Indicating the four young men
]

LADY MATILDA
. Yes, and for quite some time. He admitted as much when he told them.

DI NOLLI
[
now more indignant than surprised
]. How on earth? When just now he was still …

BELCREDI
. That’s it. He was playing a part so he could have a laugh at your expense, and at ours too, since we all honestly believed …

DI NOLLI
. Is that possible? Even at his sister’s expense, right up to her death?

HENRY IV
,
peering now at one and now at the other, has remained hunched up under the hail of accusations and derision for what all consider as a cruel joke that has now been revealed. His flashing eyes show that he is meditating a revenge which the scorn raging within prevents him from seeing clearly. At this point, wounded as he is, he breaks out with the intention of assuming as true the fiction that they have insidiously set up for him, shouting at his nephew:

HENRY IV
. Go on with it, go on!

DI NOLLI
[
stunned by Henry’s shouting
]. Go on with what?

HENRY IV
. It’s not only ‘your’ sister who’s dead?

DI NOLLI
. ‘My sister’! I mean your sister whom you forced to come here, right to the end, as your mother Agnes.

HENRY IV
. And wasn’t she your mother?

DI NOLLI
. My mother? Of course she was my mother.

HENRY IV
. But when she died I was old and far away, whereas you’ve just jumped down, spanking fresh, from up there. [
Pointing to the niche
] And how do you know that I didn’t weep for her, long, long and in secret, even dressed like this?

LADY MATILDA
[
anxious, looking at the others
]. What’s he saying?

DOCTOR
[
highly impressed, observing him
]. Go easy, easy, for heaven’s sake!

HENRY IV
. What am I saying? I’m asking you all if Agnes wasn’t the mother of Henry IV. [
He turns to
FRIDA
,
as if she really were the Countess of Tuscany
] You, Countess, you should know, I’d say.

FRIDA
[
still frightened, clinging more tightly to
DI NOLLI
]. No, not me. Not me.

DOCTOR
. It’s the delirium coming back … Go easy, go easy, my friends.

BELCREDI
[
scornful
]. Delirium? Come off it, doctor! He’s simply gone back to play–acting.

HENRY IV
[
quickly
]. Me? It’s you who’ve emptied those two niches there. He’s the one standing before me dressed as Henry IV.

BELCREDI
. That’s enough. It’s time we dropped this joke.

HENRY IV
. Who used that word ‘joke’?

DOCTOR
[
raising his voice, to
BELCREDI
]. Don’t provoke him, for God’s sake!

BELCREDI
[
paying him no attention, louder
]. They did! [
Indicating the four young men
] They told me. Them, them!

HENRY IV
[
turning to look at them
]. You? Did you say it was a joke?

LANDOLPH
[
timid, embarrassed
]. No, not really … more like that you were cured.

BELCREDI
. And so that’s it. It’s all over. [
To
LADY MATILDA
] Don’t you think it’s becoming unbearably infantile, the way he looks [
indicating
DI NOLLI
], and you too, Marchesa, dressed up like this.

LADY MATILDA
. Oh shut up! Who cares about the costumes if he’s really cured!

HENRY IV
. Cured? Yes, I’m cured. [
To
BELCREDI
] But not to have it all over and done with just like that, the way you think. [
Aggressively
] Do you know that in twenty years nobody has ever dared to appear before me dressed like you and this gentleman? [
Indicating the
DOCTOR
]

BELCREDI
. Of course, I know that. In fact, this morning I too appeared before you dressed …

HENRY IV
. As a monk!

BELCREDI
. And you took me for Peter Damian. And I didn’t laugh, because I believed …

HENRY IV
. That I was mad. Do you feel like laughing now, seeing her in that state, now that I’m cured? Yet, after all, you might have thought that to my eyes the way she looks now … [
He breaks off with a burst of scorn
] Ah! [
Addressing the
DOCTOR
] Are you a doctor?

DOCTOR
. Yes I am.

HENRY IV
. And was it you who decided to dress her up as the Countess of Tuscany, her as well? Do you realize, doctor, that for a moment you risked darkening my brain all over again? For God’s sake—making portraits speak, making them jump down from their frames … [
He looks at
FRIDA
and
DI NOLLI
,
then at the
MARCHESA
,
and finally at his own costume
] Eh, a very pretty stratagem … Two couples … Nice, doctor, very nice: for a madman … [
Gestures slightly towards
BELCREDI
] To him it’s like carnival out of season, eh? [
Turning to look at him
] So off with it then, off with my carnival costume as well. So I can come along with you, right?

BELCREDI
. With me? With us!

HENRY IV
. Where? To the club? In white tie and tails? Or back to the Marchesa’s house, the two of us together?

BELCREDI
. Wherever you like. After all, would you rather remain here, all alone, perpetuating what was a disastrous carnival-day game? It’s incredible, really incredible, how you managed to go on with it, once you’d recovered from its disastrous effects.

HENRY IV
. Yes, but you see, when I fell from my horse and hit my head, I really did go mad. I don’t know for how long.

DOCTOR
. Ah, indeed, indeed. And was it a long time?

HENRY IV
[
very quickly, to the
DOCTOR
]. Yes, doctor, a long time: about twelve years. [
Addressing
BELCREDI
again
] And I saw nothing of all that happened after that carnival day, happened for you, not for me—how things changed, how friends betrayed me, how someone took my place, for example … well, let’s say in the heart of the woman I love: and who had died and who had disappeared … all that, you know, it wasn’t just a joke for me, as you seem to think!

BELCREDI
. Hold on, I’m not saying that. I mean afterwards.

HENRY IV
. Ah yes? Afterwards? One day … [
He stops and turns to the
DOCTOR
] A most interesting case, doctor. Study me, study me carefully. [
Trembling as he speaks
] I don’t know how, but one day, the damage here [
touching his forehead
] simply repaired itself. I open my eyes little by little, not knowing at first whether I’m awake or asleep; but yes, I’m awake; I touch this and that: I start to see things clearly again. Ah then, as he says [
nodding to
BELCREDI
]—away with it, off with this pageant costume, this nightmare! Open the windows, let’s breathe the air of life. Let’s run outside, off and away! [
Suddenly checking his ardour
] Where? To do what? To be pointed at by everybody, on the sly, as Henry IV, no longer like this, but arm-in-arm with you, among my dear friends in this life?

BELCREDI
. Not at all. What do you mean? Why on earth?

LADY MATILDA
. Who could behave like that? It’s unthinkable. After all, it was an accident.

HENRY IV
. But they all said I was mad, even before. [
To
BELCREDI
] And you know it. You were the angriest of all when someone tried to defend me.

BELCREDI
. Oh come on! It was just for a joke.

HENRY IV
. And here, look at my hair. [
Showing him the hair on the nape of his neck
]

BELCREDI
. But my hair’s grey as well.

HENRY IV
. Yes, with this difference: that I went grey here, as Henry IV, you see? And I hadn’t the faintest idea. I realized it all of a sudden, in one day, the day I opened my eyes, and it was a shock because I immediately understood that it wasn’t just my hair that had gone grey like that, but everything, everything collapsed, everything over and done with; and I saw that I’d be arriving at a banquet, hungry as a wolf, only to find the whole feast already cleared away.

BELCREDI
. And what about the others?

HENRY IV
[
quickly
]. I know, they couldn’t wait around for me to be cured, not even those who were behind me in the pageant and pricked my caparisoned horse until it bled.

DI NOLLI
[
shocked
]. What? What?

HENRY IV
. Oh yes, a nasty trick to make the horse rear up and throw me off.

LADY MATILDA
[
horrified
]. This is the first I’ve heard of it.

HENRY IV
. Maybe that was meant for a joke as well.

LADY MATILDA
. But who was it? Who was riding behind the two of us?

HENRY IV
. It doesn’t matter who. All those who carried on feasting and who by then would have left me their scraps, Marchesa—their leftovers of pity, fat or lean, or some fishbone of remorse stuck to the dirty plate. Thank you very much! [
Suddenly turning to the
DOCTOR
] And so, doctor, see if this case isn’t something really new in the annals of madness. I preferred to stay mad, finding everything here ready and prepared for this new form of pleasure— to live out my madness with a perfectly lucid mind, and thus to avenge myself for the brutality of a stone that had bruised my head. This solitude—squalid and empty as it seemed when I opened my eyes—I chose at once to clothe it again, but better, with all the colours and the splendour of that far-off carnival day, when you [
looking at
LADY MATILDA
and indicating
FRIDA
], yes, you there, Marchesa, had your triumph. And so—now, by God, for
my own amusement—I could force all those who came before me here to carry on with that famous old pageant which—for you and not for me—had been the game of a single day. To make it become for ever—not a game, no, but a reality, the reality of a true madness: here, all of you disguised, with a throne room, and these four counsellors of mine—privy counsellors and, of course, traitors. [
Turning to them abruptly
] I’d like to know what you gained by telling them I was cured. If I’m cured, you’re no longer needed, so you can be fired. Confiding in someone, yes, that’s real madness. Well, now, it’s my turn to denounce you. You know something? These men thought they could join with me and have their own share in this joke at your expense.