Three Plays: Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV, The Mountain Giants (Oxford World's Classics) (7 page)

She says all this in a very rapid and agitated manner. After raising her voice on ‘bastards’, she speaks the final ‘coward’ softly, as if spitting it out
.

MOTHER
[
deeply distressed, to the
DIRECTOR
]. I implore you, in the name of these two helpless little ones … [
feeling faint, on the verge of collapsing
]—Oh my God …

FATHER
[
rushing to support her, joined by most of the
ACTORS
in amazement and dismay
]. A chair, for pity’s sake! A chair for this poor widow!

ACTORS
[
running to help
].—Is it real, then? Is she really fainting?

DIRECTOR
. Get a chair, quick!

One of the
ACTORS
provides a chair; the others gather anxiously round. The
MOTHER
,
seated, tries to prevent the
FATHER
from raising the veil that hides her face
.

FATHER
. Look at her, sir. Look at her …

MOTHER
. No. Stop it, for heaven’s sake!

FATHER
. Let them see you! [
He lifts the veil
]

MOTHER
[
rising and hiding her face in her hands for despair
]. Oh sir, I implore you, don’t let this man go through with his plan—it’s horrible for me!

DIRECTOR
[
bewildered, stunned
]. Now I’m lost. I don’t understand where we are or what it’s all about! [
To the
FATHER
] Is this your wife?

FATHER
[
promptly
]. Yes, sir, my wife.

DIRECTOR
. So how can she be a widow, if you’re still alive?

The
ACTORS
find relief for their astonishment in a loud burst of laughter
.

FATHER
[
wounded, bitterly resentful
]. Don’t laugh! Don’t laugh like that, for God’s sake! Because, sir, that’s just where her drama lies. She had another man. Another man who should be here!

MOTHER
[
with a scream
]. No! No!

STEPDAUGHTER
. Luckily for him, he’s dead: two months ago. I told you that. We’re still wearing mourning, as you can see.

FATHER
. He’s not here; but, you see, it’s not so much because he’s dead. He’s not here because—just look at her and you’ll understand! Her drama couldn’t be about the love of two men, because she’s quite incapable of feeling anything for either of them—except perhaps a touch of gratitude (for the other one, not me!)—She’s not a woman: she’s a mother! And her drama—how powerful it is!—is all there, in fact, in these four children by the two different men that she had.

MOTHER
. I had them? You dare to say that I had them, as if I’d wanted them myself? It was him, sir. He forced that other man on me. He made me go away with him, he made me do it.

STEPDAUGHTER
[
suddenly indignant
]. Not true.

MOTHER
[
stunned
]. What do you mean, not true?

STEPDAUGHTER
. Not true. It’s not true.

MOTHER
. And what can you know about it?

STEPDAUGHTER
. It’s not true! [
To the
DIRECTOR
] Don’t you believe her. You know why she says it? For him, over there. [
Indicating the
SON
] That’s why she says it. Because she’s wasting away and torturing herself, and all for the indifference of that son there. She wants him to think that if she abandoned him when he was two, it was because
he
[
referring to the
FATHER
] forced her into it.

MOTHER
[
vehemently
]. He did, he forced me: God be my witness! [
To the
DIRECTOR
] Go and ask him if it isn’t true. [
Pointing to her husband
] Let him tell you himself! … She can’t know anything about it. [
Indicating her daughter
]

STEPDAUGHTER
. I know that as long as my father was alive you lived with him calm and content. Deny it, if you can.

MOTHER
. I don’t deny it, no …

STEPDAUGHTER
. Always full of loving care for you. [
To the
YOUNG BOY
,
angrily
] Isn’t it true? Tell him. Why don’t you speak up, you idiot?

MOTHER
. Leave the poor boy alone! Why do you want to make me look ungrateful? I don’t want to insult your father’s memory. I told this gentleman that it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t for my own pleasure that I left his house and abandoned my son.

FATHER
. It’s true, sir. It was my doing.

LEADING MAN
[
to his fellow actors
]. How’s that for a show!

LEADING LADY
. One that they’re putting on for us.

YOUNG ACTOR
. For once in a while.

DIRECTOR
[
beginning to get seriously interested
]. Give them a hearing. Let’s give them a hearing.

So saying, he goes down the steps into the auditorium and stands facing the stage as if to survey the scene from a spectator’s viewpoint
.

SON
[
without moving from his place; cold, quiet, ironic
]. Yes indeed. Now just wait for his chunk of philosophy! He’ll tell you all about the Daemon of Experiment.

FATHER
. You’re a cynical fool, and I’ve told you so a hundred times. [
To the
DIRECTOR
down in the auditorium
] He mocks me because of this phrase that I use in my own defence.

SON
[
with scorn
]. Phrases!

FATHER
. Phrases! Phrases! As if, when we’re faced by some inexplicable fact, some devouring evil, we didn’t all find comfort in a word that means nothing and that simply serves to calm us down.

STEPDAUGHTER
. And calm your remorse as well. That above all.

FATHER
. Remorse? It’s not true. Words alone have never calmed my remorse.

STEPDAUGHTER
. No, it took a bit of money too; yes, yes, a bit of money! Like the hundred lire he wanted to pay me, gentlemen.

SON
[
to his half-sister, with contempt
]. That’s despicable.

STEPDAUGHTER
. Despicable? It was there in a blue envelope on the mahogany table in Madame Pace’s back room behind the shop. You know, sir. One of those
madames
who use the pretext of selling
Robes et Manteaux
^*
to attract us poor girls from good families into their
ateliers
.

SON
. And she’s bought herself the right to bully the whole family with that hundred lire he was going to pay her—and which, luckily—mark my words—he had no call to pay.

STEPDAUGHTER
. But we were right on the verge, you know. [
With a burst of laughter
]

MOTHER
[
protesting
]. Shame on you, daughter! Shame!

STEPDAUGHTER
[
sharply
]. Shame? It’s my revenge! I’m burning, burning, sir, to live that scene! The room … over here the window with the cloaks; over there the sofa bed; the mirror, a screen; and in front of the window the little mahogany table with the pale blue envelope containing the hundred lire. I can see it. I could take it. Oh, but you gentlemen should turn your backs: I’m almost naked! I’m not blushing now, though; now it’s his turn to blush! [
Pointing to the
FATHER
] But I can assure you he was very pale, very pale in that moment! [
To the
DIRECTOR
] Believe me, sir.

DIRECTOR
. I don’t understand a thing any more.

FATHER
. I bet you don’t. After being set on like that. Call everyone to order, and let me have my say; and pay no attention to her vicious slanders about me, until you’ve heard all the explanations.

STEPDAUGHTER
. No stories here. No telling stories.

FATHER
. I’m not telling stories. I want to explain to him.

STEPDAUGHTER
. Yes, in your own way! Very nice!

At this point the
DIRECTOR
climbs back onto the stage to restore order
.

FATHER
. But this is where all the trouble starts! With words! We all have a world of things inside us; everyone has his own world of things! And how can we understand each other if in my words I put the meaning and the value of the things inside me; while my listener inevitably receives them with all the meaning and value that they have for him, in his own inner world? We think we understand each other: we never understand each other! Look here: my pity, all my pity for this woman [
referring to the
MOTHER
] has been taken by her as the most ferocious cruelty.

MOTHER
. But if you drove me out?

FATHER
. There. Do you hear that? Drove her out. She thinks I drove her out.

MOTHER
. You know how to talk; I can’t … But, believe me, sir: after he married me … who knows why, a poor simple woman …

FATHER
. But that’s just it, I married you for your simplicity; it’s what I loved in you, I thought … [
He breaks off at her signs of protest. Seeing how impossible it is to make himself understood, he throws wide his arms in a gesture of despair and turns to the
DIRECTOR
] No, you see? She says no. It’s frightening, sir, frightening, [
striking his forehead
] her deafness, her mental deafness! A good heart, yes, for her children! But deaf, brain-deaf, desperately deaf!

STEPDAUGHTER
. Yes, but now get him to tell you how lucky we’ve been to profit from his intelligence.

FATHER
. If only we could foresee all the evil that can come from the good we think we’re doing.

The
LEADING LADY
has had enough of seeing the
LEADING MAN
flirting with the
STEPDAUGHTER
;
she now comes forward to the
DIRECTOR
.

LEADING LADY
. Excuse me. Are we going to carry on with the rehearsal?

DIRECTOR
. Of course, of course! Just let me hear this out!

YOUNG ACTOR
. It’s such an unusual case!

YOUNG ACTRESS
. And so interesting!

LEADING LADY
. For those who are interested! [
With a dark look at the
LEADING MAN
]

DIRECTOR
[
to the
FATHER
]. But you’ll need to explain things clearly. [
Sits down
]

FATHER
. Well now, you see, sir, there was a poor fellow who worked for me, my assistant, my secretary, loyal to the core. And he got along absolutely perfectly with her [
indicating the
MOTHER
]; without the faintest shadow of any wrongdoing, mind you! Good and simple, like her. Both of them incapable of any evil in deed or thought.

STEPDAUGHTER
. Instead, he thought it up for them—and did it!

FATHER
. Not true! What I did I meant for their good—and my own too, I admit. I had reached the point where I couldn’t say a word to one or the other without seeing them exchange a glance of mutual understanding, without seeing one looking straight in the other’s eyes for advice on how to take my words so as not to make me angry. This, of course, as you must understand, was enough to keep me in a state of permanent anger, unbearable exasperation.

DIRECTOR
. So why didn’t you sack him then, this secretary chap?

FATHER
. Good question. In fact, I did sack him, sir. But then I saw this poor woman mooning around the house like a lost soul, like some stray animal you’d take in out of pity.

MOTHER
. Well, no wonder.

FATHER
[
suddenly turning, as if to forestall her
]. It’s about our son, isn’t it?

MOTHER
. He’d torn my son from my breast!

FATHER
. But not out of cruelty. To make him grow up strong and healthy, in contact with the earth.

STEPDAUGHTER
[
pointing to the
SON
,
ironic
]. And how it shows!

FATHER
[
immediately
]. Am I to blame if he grew up like this? I gave him to a wet-nurse in the country, sir, a peasant girl, because his mother didn’t seem strong enough, for all her humble birth. It was the same impulse that had made me marry her. A silly prejudice, perhaps; but that’s the way it is. I’ve always had these damned yearnings towards a kind of solid moral health. [
Another loud burst of laughter from the
STEPDAUGHTER
] Make her stop that! It’s unbearable!

DIRECTOR
. Stop that! Let me hear him out, for God’s sake!

Once again, she responds to the reproaches of the
DIRECTOR
by becoming withdrawn and distant, her laughter suddenly cut off. The
DIRECTOR
goes down from the stage again so that he can get an overall view of the scene
.

FATHER
. I couldn’t bear to see this woman next to me any longer. [
Pointing to the
MOTHER
] But not so much, believe me, because of what I went through—the suffocation, the real suffocation—as for the pity—the terrible pity that I felt for her.