Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants (Oxford World's Classics) (28 page)

ILSE
. But you don’t believe in Spirits …

COTRONE
. Of course I do. We create them.

ILSE
. Ah, you create them …

COTRONE
. Forgive me, Countess. I never expected
you
to talk to me like that. It’s impossible that you shouldn’t believe in them, just as we do. You actors take phantoms and give them your bodies so that they can live—and they do live! We do the opposite: we take our bodies and turn them into phantoms: and we too make them live. Phantoms … no need to go looking for them: it’s enough to just draw them out of ourselves. You called yourself a shadow of what you once were.

ILSE
. Well, just look at me …

COTRONE
. So there! The woman you once were. All you need to do is draw her out. Don’t you think she’s still living inside you? And what of the spirit of the young man who killed himself for you, isn’t he still living? He’s inside you as well.

ILSE
. Inside me?

COTRONE
. And I could make him appear. Look, he’s in there. [
Pointing to the villa
]

ILSE
[
getting up
]. No!

COTRONE
. Here he is!

SPIZZI
appears on the threshold of the villa, dressed up as a young poet, like the one who killed himself for the
COUNTESS
.
He has used clothes from the curious wardrobe that the villa reserves for apparitions—a black cloak thrown over his shoulders, the kind that used to go with formal evening dress; a white silk scarf round his neck; a top hat on his head. His hands hold the two corners of his cloak which billows out elegantly in front, allowing him to conceal an electric torch that he is also holding and that lights up his face from below with a ghostly effect. As soon as she sees him, the
COUNTESS
lets out a scream and falls back on the bench, hiding her face
.

SPIZZI
[
running to her
]. No, Ilse … Oh my God … I meant it as a joke.

COUNT
. You, Spizzi! Ilse, it’s Spizzi …

COTRONE
. Drawn out of himself to appear as a phantom.

COUNT
[
angry
]. What have you got to say now?

COTRONE
. The truth.

SPIZZI
. I was only joking.

COTRONE
. And I have always invented truths, my dear sir. And people have always thought I was telling lies. One never tells the truth as well as when one invents it. Here’s the proof! [
He points to
SPIZZI
] Only joking? It was an act of obedience. We don’t choose our masks by chance. And here are more proofs, more proofs …

Back on stage, emerging from the villa, come
DIAMANTE, BATTAGLIA, LUMACHI
,
and
CROMO
,
and in that order
COTRONE
will present them. They are dressed up in costumes from the wardrobe and lit by the various colours of the torches they hold hidden from view. All the others follow them
.

COTRONE
[
taking
DIAMANTE
by the hand
]. You, of course, dressed as a countess … [
To the
COUNT
] Did you, by any chance, have some function at court?

COUNT
[
puzzled
]. No. Why?

COTRONE
[
showing
DIAMANTE
’
s costume
]. Because this is very clearly the dress of a Lady-in-Waiting. [
Turning to
BATTAGLIA
] And you, like a tortoise in its shell, found yourself perfectly at home as a bigoted old hag. [
Now he presents
LUMACHI
who has put on a donkey-skin with a cardboard head
] And you were thinking of the donkey you need so badly. [
Then, as he goes to shake hands with
CROMO
] And you’ve made yourself into a Pasha. Congratulations. You obviously have a kind heart.

COUNT
. But what
is
this? A carnival parade?

CROMO
. Back in there [
referring to the villa
] there’s a whole storeroom of ghost stuff.

LUMACHI
. You should just see those costumes. You won’t find more in any theatrical stores.

COTRONE
. And each one of you went and took the mask that suited him best.

SPIZZI
. Not me. I did it …

COUNT
[
annoyed
]. For a joke? [
Pointing to
SPIZZI
’
s costume
] Is that get-up your idea of a joke?

ILSE
. He was only obeying someone …

COUNT
. Who is …?

ILSE
[
indicating
COTRONE
]. Him. He’s the one who plays the Magician. Didn’t you hear?

COTRONE
. No, Countess …

ILSE
. You keep quiet. I know! Don’t you invent the truth?

COTRONE
. In all my life I’ve never done anything else. Without wanting to, Countess. All those truths that we consciously reject. I draw them out from the secret crannies of the senses or, in some cases, the most fearsome, from the dark caves of instinct. In my home town I invented so many that I had to run away, pursued by scandals. Here and now I try to dissolve such truths into evanescent phantoms. Passing shadows. With these friends of mine I contrive to blur and dissolve even external reality into a glowing mist, by pouring my soul, like flakes of coloured cloud, into the dreaming night.

CROMO
. Like fireworks?

COTRONE
. But without all the noise. Silent enchantments. Foolish folk get scared and stay away, so we are left here as masters. Masters of nothing and everything.

CROMO
. And what do you live on?

COTRONE
. Like this. On nothing and everything.

DOCCIA
. You can’t have everything, except when you’ve got nothing left.

CROMO
[
to the
COUNT
]. Hear that? That’s us all right. So then, we must have everything.

COTRONE
. Well, no; because you still
want
to have something. When you really don’t want anything more, then yes.

MARA-MARA
. You can sleep without a bed …

CROMO
. Badly …

MARA-MARA
. But still you sleep!

DOCCIA
. Who can stop you sleeping when God, who wants you healthy, sends you sleep and tiredness like a benediction? Then you can sleep, even without a bed.

COTRONE
. And you need hunger too, eh, Quaquèo? So that a crust of bread can give you the pleasure of eating in a way that all the rarest foods can never do when you’re full or have no appetite.

Smiling and nodding his agreement
,
QUAQUÈO
rubs his stomach with his hand as children do when they want to show how much they enjoy what they are eating
.

DOCCIA
. Only when you no longer have a home does all the world become yours. You walk and walk, and then let go, sink down into the grass beneath the silent skies; and you are everything and you are nothing … nothing and everything.

COTRONE
. That’s how beggars speak—refined people, Countess, with very special tastes—who have managed to reduce themselves to the exquisitely privileged condition of beggary. There are no mediocre beggars. The mediocre are all sensible and thrifty. Here we have Doccia as our banker. He spent thirty years putting aside that little extra cash which men dole out for the luxury of giving alms when asked; and he came here to devote it to the freedom of dreaming. He pays for everything.

DOCCIA
. Yes, but if you don’t go easy …

COTRONE
. He acts the miser to make it last longer.

THE OTHER SCALOGNATI
[
laughing
]. It’s true, it’s true.

COTRONE
. Perhaps I too could have been a great man, Countess. I resigned. Resigned from everything—status, honour, dignity, virtue, all those things that, by God’s grace, the animals in their blessed innocence know nothing of. Freed from all those hindrances, the soul is left vast as the air, full of sunshine and clouds, open to every lightning flash, abandoned to every wind, the superfluous and mysterious stuff of wonders that lifts and scatters us in fabled horizons. We look back at the earth, what sadness! Perhaps there is someone down there who imagines that he is living our life, but it isn’t true. Not one of us is in the body that others see, but in the soul that speaks from who knows where; no one can know: semblance amid semblances, with this silly name of Cotrone … and Doccia for him, and Quaquèo for him. A body is death: darkness and stone. Pity the poor man who sees himself in his body and his name. We create phantoms. Phantoms of whatever comes to mind. Some are obligatory. For example, the Scotswoman with her umbrella [
points out
MARA-MARA
] or the Dwarf and his blue cape. [
QUAQUÈO
’
s gesture shows that this is his particular attribute
] Specialities of the villa. The others are all the fruit of our fantasy.
With the divine prerogative of children who take their games seriously, we pour the wonder that is within us into the things we play with, and let ourselves be enchanted by them. It is no longer a game, but a marvellous reality, a reality we live in, cut off from everything, even to the point of madness. So, ladies and gentlemen, let me say to you what they used to say to pilgrims: unfasten your sandals and put down your staff. You have reached your goal. For years I have been waiting for folk like you to give life to other phantoms that I have in mind. But we shall also put on your
Fable of the Changeling Son
as a wonder in itself without asking anything from anybody.

ILSE
. Here?

COTRONE
. Just for ourselves.

CROMO
. He’s inviting us to stay here for ever, don’t you see?

COTRONE
. Of course. What do you keep looking for in the world of men? Can’t you see where it has got you?

QUAQUÈO AND MILORDINO
. Yes, stay with us, stay here with us.

DOCCIA
. Hold on, there are eight of them!

LUMACHI
. I’m for it.

BATTAGLIA
. It’s a nice place.

ILSE
. Which means that I shall have to go on by myself—at least to give readings of the
Fable
since I can’t stage it.

SPIZZI
. No, Ilse. Those who want can stay. I shall always follow you.

DIAMANTE
. So shall I. [
To the
COUNT
] You can always rely on me.

COTRONE
. I understand that the Countess cannot renounce her mission.

ILSE
. Never. To the very end.

COTRONE
. So not even you want the work to live for itself—as it could only do here.

ILSE
. It lives in me, but that’s not enough. It must live in the world of men.

COTRONE
. Poor play! Just as the poet had no love from you, so his play will have no glory from men. Enough. Now it’s late and we had better get some rest. Since the Countess declines my offer, I have another idea: I shall propose it to you tomorrow at dawn.

COUNT
. What idea?

COTRONE
. Tomorrow at dawn, dear Count. The day is dazzlement, the night is for dreams, and only the twilight hours are made for men. Dawn for the future, sunset for the past. [
Showing the way into the villa with a sweep of his arm
] Until tomorrow!

Curtain

The storeroom for the apparitions, a large room in the middle of the villa with four doors, two on each side, indicating entry from two parallel corridors. The backdrop, flat and empty, can become transparent when required so that, as in a dream, one sees first a dawn sky with scudding white clouds, then the tender green of a gentle slope at the foot of the mountain, with trees around an oval pond; and finally (during the second dress rehearsal of
The Fable of the Changeling Son
) a lovely seascape with harbour and lighthouse. The room seems to be filled with the oddest collection of household objects, furniture that is not real furniture but big dusty broken toys; yet everything in fact has been made ready so that the scenery of
The Fable of the Changeling Son
can be set up in the twinkling of an eye. There are also a number of musical instruments: a piano, a trombone, a drum, and five colossal skittles with human faces painted on their heads. Set awkwardly on the chairs are several puppets: three sailors, two little whores, a long-haired old man in a frock coat, and a sour-faced woman from the army stores
.

As the curtain rises the stage appears flooded with an unnatural light that seems to come from nowhere. In this light the puppets on the chairs look disturbingly human, even though the immobility of their masks reveals them as puppets. Through the first door on the left, running away from something, comes
ILSE
,
followed by the
COUNT
who seeks to restrain her
.

ILSE
. No, I say, I want to go outside. [
Stopping all of a sudden, surprised and almost frightened
] Where are we?

COUNT
[
also stopping
]. Hmm! Maybe it’s what they call the apparition store.

ILSE
. And this light, where does it come from?

COUNT
[
pointing to the
PUPPETS
]. Look at these. Are they puppets?

ILSE
. They seem real …

COUNT
. You’re right, as if they were pretending not to see us. But look, you’d say they were made specially for us, to fill the gaps in the Company. Look, the ‘Old Piano Man’ and the ‘Woman who Runs the Café’, and the ‘Three Little Sailors’
^*
that we never manage to find.

ILSE
.
He
must have set them up.

COUNT
. Him? What does he know about it?

ILSE
. I gave him the
Changeling Son
to read.

COUNT
. Ah, that explains it. But what can we do with puppets? They can’t speak. I still don’t understand where we’ve ended up. And in this uncertainty I’d like to feel that you at least—[
Tender and timid, he moves to touch her
]

ILSE
[
with a sudden exasperated start
]. God above, how do we get out of here?

COUNT
. Do you really want to go outside?

ILSE
. Yes, yes. Out, out!

COUNT
. Out where?

ILSE
. I don’t know. Outside. In the open.

COUNT
. At night? It’s the middle of the night. Everybody’s asleep. You don’t want to be out in the cold at this hour?

ILSE
. I have a horror of that bed.

COUNT
. Yes, it is horrible, I agree. So high.

ILSE
. With that moth-eaten purple coverlet.

COUNT
. But after all it’s still a bed.

ILSE
. You go and sleep in it: I can’t.

COUNT
. And you?

ILSE
. There’s that bench outside, in front of the door.

COUNT
. But you’ll be even more afraid alone, outside. Up there at least you’ll be with me.

ILSE
. You’re precisely the one I’m afraid of, dear, only you. Can’t you understand?

COUNT
[
taken aback
]. Afraid of me? Why?

ILSE
. Because I know you. And I see you. You follow me around like a beggar.

COUNT
. Shouldn’t I be by your side?

ILSE
. Not like that. Not looking at me like that. I feel somehow all sticky: yes, yes, sticky from your timid suppliant softness. It’s in your eyes, your hands.

COUNT
[
mortified
]. Because I love you.

ILSE
. Thanks very much! You have a special gift of thinking of it in the wrong places or when I feel practically dead. All I can do is clear off. Or start screaming like a madwoman. You know something: yours is a horrible kind of usury.

COUNT
. Usury?

ILSE
. Yes, usury. Aren’t you trying to get back out of me everything that you’ve lost?

COUNT
. Ilse! How can you think such a thing?

ILSE
. Go on. Now you’ll force me to ask your pardon.

COUNT
. Me? What can you mean? I’ve lost nothing. I don’t feel that I’ve lost anything, as long as I have you. Is that what you call usury?

ILSE
. Horrible. Unbearable. You’re always trying to look into my eyes. I can’t stand it.

COUNT
. I feel that you’re miles away. I want to call you back …

ILSE
. Always for the same thing.

COUNT
[
hurt
]. No. To what you once were for me.

ILSE
. Ah, once! When? Tell me, in what other life? But can you really look at me and see the woman I used to be?

COUNT
. Aren’t you still and always my Ilse?

ILSE
. I don’t even recognize my own voice any more. I speak, and for some reason my voice, and the voices of others, and all the sounds around me—well, it’s as if they fell on an air that’s gone deaf to them; so that all the words are cruel to me. For heaven’s sake, spare me those words!

COUNT
[
after a pause
]. So it’s true?

ILSE
. What’s true?

COUNT
. That I’m alone. You no longer love me.

ILSE
. What? I don’t love you? What a thing to say, you silly man! When you know I can’t imagine being without you. What I’m saying, dear, is that you mustn’t
expect
it: because you know, good God, you know that for me it’s only possible when you’re not even thinking about it. You need to feel it, dear, without
thinking
about it. Come on, be reasonable.

COUNT
. Well, I know I’m never supposed to think of myself.

ILSE
. You always say you want the good of others.

COUNT
. And my own too from time to time. If I could ever have imagined …

ILSE
. I can’t even think of anything that I regret any more.

COUNT
. What I mean is that your feelings for me …

ILSE
. They’re the same, the same as always.

COUNT
. No, it’s not true. Before …

ILSE
. Are you quite sure about before? Sure that my feelings would have lasted unchanged under those conditions? This way at least they last as best they can. But don’t you see the way we are? It’s a wonder we don’t feel the certainty of our own bodies evaporating at the touch of our hands.

COUNT
. That’s just why.

ILSE
. Why what?

COUNT
. Why at least I want to feel you near me.

ILSE
. Aren’t I here with you now?

COUNT
. Maybe it’s a passing mood, but I feel totally lost. I have no idea where we are or where we’re going.

ILSE
. There’s no going back now.

COUNT
. And I see no way forward.

ILSE
. This man here says that he invents the truth …

COUNT
. Oh yes, he invents it, easy for him …

ILSE
. The truth of dreams, he says, more true than we are ourselves.

COUNT
. Him and his dreams!

ILSE
. And really, look, no dream could be more absurd than this truth—that we’re here tonight and that this is true. If you think about it, if we let ourselves get caught up, we’ll go mad.

COUNT
. I’m afraid we let ourselves get caught up a good while ago. We just kept on going and now we’ve arrived. I’m thinking of when we came down the steps of our old palace for the last time with all the servants there to say farewell. I was carrying poor little Riri. You never think about her; I always do. With that silky white coat.

ILSE
. Once we start thinking about everything we’ve lost!

COUNT
. All those candelabra lighting up the marble staircase! As we
came down, we were so happy and confident that what we found outside, the cold, the rain, the dense dark mist …

ILSE
[
after a pause
]. And yet, believe me, all told we’ve lost very little, even if it was a lot in material terms. If that wealth served to buy us this poverty, we shouldn’t feel cast down.

COUNT
. And you’re saying this to me, Ilse? It’s what I’ve always told you: you shouldn’t feel cast down.

ILSE
. Yes, yes; now let’s go; you’re a good man; let’s go back upstairs. Maybe now I shall manage to get some rest.

They go out through the same door by which they entered. As soon as they have left, the
PUPPETS
lean forward, place their hands on their knees and break into mocking laughter
.

PUPPETS
. —How complicated, good Lord, how they complicate things!

—And then they end up by doing

—Just what they would have done quite naturally

—Without all those complications.

All by itself the trombone comments ironically with three grumbling notes; the drum, shaking like a sieve, beats its agreement without drumsticks, while the five skittles spring upright, showing their impudent heads. Then the
PUPPETS
throw themselves back in their chairs with another mocking laugh—a ‘hee-hee’ this time, if the first was ‘ho-ho’. All of a sudden they stop and resume their original positions just as the upstage right door opens and an exultant
SGRICIA
enters to announce:

LA SGRICIA
. The Angel Hundred-and-One! The Angel Hundred-and-One! He’s come with all his cohort to take me. Here he comes. Here he comes. Down on your knees, everybody. On your knees!

At her command, the
PUPPETS
automatically kneel while the large backdrop lights up and becomes transparent. Two columns of the souls in Purgatory file past in the form of winged angels and in their midst on a majestic white horse rides the
ANGEL HUNDRED-AND-ONE
.
A chorus of soft treble voices accompanies the procession
.

Bearing the gentle arms of peace

When night bids strife and tumult cease,

With gifts of faith and love,

To those who struggle in the fray

And all poor souls who go astray

Help comes from God above.

When the procession is about to end
,
LA SGRICIA
gets up to follow it and goes out of the second door on the left which remains open after her exit. Behind the last pair of souls, as they gradually move out of sight, the backdrop becomes opaque again. The music lasts a little longer, slowly fading away. One by one the
PUPPETS
stand up and then fall back motionless on their chairs. A few moments later
CROMO
backs into the room through the door that has been left open. His appearance keeps changing in a dreamlike way: at first we see his face, then the mask of the ‘Customer’, and the nose of the ‘Prime Minister’ from
The Fable of the Changeling Son.
Although his backward steps would suggest that he is retreating in fear, he seems to be seeking in vain the source of some faint sound; he is quite certain that he has heard it and it seemed to come from the well at the end of the corridor. At the same time, through the first door on the right
DIAMANTE
enters dressed as the witch ‘Vanna Scoma’
^*
but with her mask pushed up on her forehead. She sees
CROMO
and calls out to him
.

DIAMANTE
. Cromo! [
And as soon as
CROMO
turns round
] What’s that face you’re making?

CROMO
. Me? Making a face? What about you? You’re dressed up like Vanna Scoma and you’ve forgotten to lower your mask over your face.

DIAMANTE
. Don’t make me laugh. Me, as Vanna Scoma? Now you, you’re dressed as the ‘Customer’ and you’re wearing the nose of the ‘Prime Minister’. I’m still dressed as a Lady-in-Waiting and I’m getting undressed. But you know something? I’m afraid I’ve swallowed a pin.

CROMO
. Swallowed it? Is it serious?

DIAMANTE
[
showing her throat
]. I can feel it here.

CROMO
. But look here, do you really think you’re still dressed as a Lady-in-Waiting?

DIAMANTE
. I was getting undressed, I tell you; and just as I was getting undressed …

CROMO
. Getting undressed? Come off it! Look what you’re wearing. You’re got up like Vanna Scoma. [
As she bends her head to look at her clothes, he flicks the mask down over her face
] And there’s the mask.

DIAMANTE
[
putting her hand to her throat
]. Oh God, now I can’t speak.