Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants (Oxford World's Classics) (26 page)

LUMACHI
. Why does she have to make such a fuss over nothing?

SACERDOTE
. But it’s true that we all said it.

LA SGRICIA
[
crossing herself
]. It’s like being stuck with a bunch of heathens.

SPIZZI
[
facing up to
CROMO
]. You coward! How dare you?

CROMO
[
pushing him back
]. Out of the way. It’s time we put an end to all this.

SPIZZI
. ‘A quick deal’, to keep the show on the road … You’d have sold your own wife!

CROMO
. What show on the road, you idiot! I was talking about the fellow who killed himself.

ILSE
[
breaking away from those who are trying to restrain her and coming forward
]. Did you all say it?

SPIZZI
. No, that’s not true.

DIAMANTE
. I said nothing.

BATTAGLIA
. Neither did I.

ILSE
[
to her husband
]. Is it true that you thought so as well?

COUNT
. Of course not, Ilse. That’s absolute nonsense. And in front of strangers …

COTRONE
. If that’s what’s troubling you, Count …

ILSE
. That’s just what does trouble us. Arriving here like this …

COTRONE
. Don’t worry about us. We’re on holiday here and we’re open-hearted, dear Countess.

ILSE
. Countess? I’m an actress, and I’ve had to remind him [
indicating
CROMO
] that it’s an honourable title—remind him, who’s an actor like all the others.

CROMO
. And I don’t boast of it, no, and neither should you, not in front of me, at least. Because I’ve always been an actor, a respected actor, and I’ve followed you as far as this. But you—remember, there was a time when you chose not to be an actress any longer.

COUNT
. Not true. It was me who forced her to give up the stage.

CROMO
. And you did very well, old chap! If it had stayed that way—you a count and me a poor wretch—I wouldn’t be using such familiar terms right now. [
To the
COUNTESS
] You had married a count—[
to the others, as an aside
] he was rich—[
to the
COUNTESS
again
] you weren’t an actress any longer, anxious to remain chaste, chaste as you had so proudly kept yourself up to then—I know, I understood that’s what you meant to say …

ILSE
. Yes, that’s it, yes.

CROMO
. But you made a bit too much of your chastity, dear. For heaven’s sake, you were a countess now. And surely, as a countess, you could have given him a pair of horns. Countesses are more generous; they do these things. Then that poor devil wouldn’t have killed himself, and you yourself, and that sad chap over there, and all the rest of us—we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.

ILSE
holds herself straight, rigid, almost stony; then with a sudden tremor that seems to surge up from her very entrails, she breaks into the same convulsive laughter that she spoke of before
.

ILSE
. Hehee, hehee, hehee … [
Lifting her hands and using her index fingers to make the sign of horns on her forehead, gasping out in a raucous voice
] On butterflies they’re called antennae.

COUNT
[
barely controlling his anger, going up to
CROMO
]. Clear off! Just go! You can’t stay with us.

CROMO
. Go? Me? And where do you reckon I can go now? What will you pay me with?

ILSE
[
promptly, to her husband
]. That’s right. What will you pay him with? Did you hear him? [
Turning to
COTRONE
] That’s the whole problem, sir: we don’t make enough to pay the wages.

SPIZZI
. Ah no, Ilse, you can’t say that about us.

ILSE
. I was talking about
him
. What’s it got to do with you?

CROMO
. It’s not true. You can’t say it about me either. Pay? If it were pay, I’d have left long ago, like the others. I’m still here because I admire you. I speak out because you make me so angry, still so …

ILSE
[
with a despairing cry
]. What more do you want me to do?

CROMO
. Nothing now, I know that. I’m talking about before. Before that fellow killed himself and became, for you and for all of us, the cancer that’s eaten into our very bones. Look at us: mangy dogs, starving strays, kicked around from pillar to post … and you there, with high head and drooping wings, like a dangling bird, one of those they sell in bunches, strung up through holes in their beaks.

QUAQUÈO
. But who killed himself?

The question falls amid the violent emotions of
CROMO
’
s companions who have been upset by his words. Nobody answers
.

LA SGRICIA
. One of them?

ILSE
[
noticing her, with a sudden impulse of sympathy
]. No, dear
granny, not one of them. Someone who was on a higher plane than ordinary people. A poet.

COTRONE
. Ah no, madam, forgive me. Not a poet!

SPIZZI
. The Countess is speaking of the author of
The Fable of the Changeling Son
which we have been performing for the past two years.

COTRONE
. I guessed as much.

SPIZZI
. And you dare to say he wasn’t a poet.

COTRONE
. If he was, that wasn’t why he killed himself.

CROMO
. He killed himself because he was in love with her! [
Pointing to the
COUNTESS
]

COTRONE
. Ah, that’s it. Because the Countess, I suppose, being faithful to her husband, chose not to return his love. Poetry’s got nothing to do with it. A poet writes poetry: he doesn’t kill himself.

ILSE
[
gesturing towards
CROMO
]. He says I should have responded to that love, didn’t you hear? Now that I was a countess! As if the title gave me the right …

COUNT
. And not the heart.

CROMO
. You keep quiet. She loved him too!

ILSE
. Me?

CROMO
. Yes, you; yes, you did. And I think a lot better of you for it. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to understand anything. [
Points to the
COUNT
] And now he’s paying for the sacrifice you made when you didn’t give in. Which goes to show that you should never disobey when the heart commands.

COUNT
. Have you finished telling our business to all and sundry?

CROMO
. Since we’re already talking about it. I wasn’t the one who started.

COUNT
. Yes, you started it.

QUAQUÈO
. So much so that you even got a slap for it. [
General laughter at this sally of
QUAQUÈO
]

ILSE
. Yes, poor dear, a slap in the face [
she goes up to
CROMO
and strokes his cheek
] which now I’ll cancel like this. You’re not the enemy, even if you do show me up in public.

CROMO
. No, not me.

ILSE
. Yes you do, and you stab me in front of all these onlookers.

CROMO
. Stab you? Me?

ILSE
. That’s how I feel it … [
Turning to
COTRONE
] But it’s natural, once we show ourselves in public. [
To the
COUNT
] Poor man, you’d like to keep your dignity. Don’t worry, it will be over soon enough, I can feel we’re near the end.

COUNT
. No, Ilse. You just need to rest a while.

ILSE
. What do you still want to hide? And where? If your soul hasn’t sinned, you can show it like a child, naked or in rags. The sleep in my eyes, that too has been torn away in rags … [
Looking around and gazing into the distance
] We’re in the country here, oh heaven, and it’s evening … And these people in front of us … [
To her husband
] I loved him, you see. And I made him die. Now that he’s dead I can say that, my dear, say it of someone who got nothing from me. [
She goes up to
COTRONE
] Sir, this feels almost like a dream, or another life, after death … This sea that we crossed … In those days I was called Ilse Paulsen.

COTRONE
. I know, Countess.

ILSE
. I had left a good name on the stage …

COUNT
[
glaring at
CROMO
]. Unsullied!

CROMO
[
sharply
]. Whoever said it wasn’t! She was always some kind of wild enthusiast. Just imagine, before she married him she wanted to become a nun.

SPIZZI
. You can say that and still argue that once she became a countess …

CROMO
. I’ve already explained why I said that.

ILSE
. For me it was a sacred debt! [
To
COTRONE
again
] There was a young man, his friend [
gestures towards her husband
], a poet: one day he came to read me a play he was writing—for me, he said—but with no hope of seeing me perform it because I was no longer an actress. But I thought it was so beautiful that, yes, [
looking across at
CROMO
] I became wildly enthusiastic right away. [
To
COTRONE
again
] But a woman doesn’t take long to notice these things—I mean when a man thinks about her in a certain way. And I understood perfectly well that through the fascination of that play he wanted to lure me back to my old life; not for the sake of the play
itself, but to have me for his own. Yet I felt that if I rejected him outright, he would leave it unfinished. And so for the sake of that play’s beauty, not only did I not reject him, but I fed his illusion right up to the end. When the play was finally completed, I drew back from the fire—but I was already aflame. How can’t you understand, since you see me reduced to this. He’s right [
referring to
CROMO
], I was never to break free of him. The life I denied to him I now had to give to his work. And even he understood it [
indicating her husband
] and agreed that I should return to the stage in order to pay this sacred debt. Return for this one play.

CROMO
. Consecration and martydom! Because he [
meaning the
COUNT
] was never jealous, even afterwards.

COUNT
. I had no reason to be.

CROMO
. But don’t you feel that for her he isn’t dead? She wants him to live. And there she is, ragged as a beggar, dying of it and condemning the rest of us to death, all so that he can live on.

DIAMANTE
. Now who’s jealous!

CROMO
. Well done, you guessed it.

DIAMANTE
. See, you’re all in love with her.

CROMO
. No, it makes me angry—and sorry for her.

ILSE
[
at the same time, to
SPIZZI
]. He wants to drag me down, and he lifts me even higher.

SPIZZI
. He wants to seem nasty, even though he’s not.

BATTAGLIA
[
also at the same time
]. What a spiritual earthquake! I’m shaken to bits.

LUMACHI
[
folding his arms
]. I ask you, is this situation really possible?

ILSE
[
to
CROMO
]. Of course I’m dying of it. I’ve accepted that, like an inheritance. Though I must say that at the start I little thought that, with his work, he would bring me all this suffering, the suffering that he knew and that I have found there.

COTRONE
. And this play—the work of a poet, but performed before the ignorant crowd—has been your ruin? How I understand! How I understand!

BATTAGLIA
. Right from the first performance.

COTRONE
. Nobody was interested?

SACERDOTE
. They all hated it.

CROMO
. Booing that shook the walls.

COTRONE
. Really? Really?

ILSE
. You’re glad, are you?

COTRONE
. No, Countess, it’s just that I understand it so well. The work of a poet …

DIAMANTE
. Nothing did any good. Not even the most amazing stage-sets ever seen! The dogs!

BATTAGLIA
[
sighing as usual
]. And the lighting! What lighting!

CROMO
. All the wonders of a spectacular production. Forty-two of us, what with actors and extras …

COTRONE
. And now you’re down to so few?

CROMO
[
showing his clothes
]. And like this. That’s the work of a poet.

COUNT
[
bitter, scornful
]. You too!

CROMO
[
showing the
COUNT
]. A whole estate eaten up.

COUNT
. I don’t regret it. It was my choice.

ILSE
. How lovely! And worthy of you!

COUNT
. That’s not it. I’m not some wild enthusiast. I really believed in the play.

COTRONE
. Ah, but you know, Countess, when I said ‘the work of a poet’, I wasn’t damning the play: on the contrary, I was damning the people who turned against it.