The Lonely Way-Intermezzo-Countess Mizzie Part 36

JOHANNA

As soon as possible. I have still the courage left. Who knows what may become of me later, if I stay here alone.

SALA

As long as you are young, all doors stand open, and the world begins outside every one of them.

JOHANNA

But the world is wide and the sky infinite only as long as you are not clinging to anybody. And for that reason I want to go away.

SALA

Away--that's so easily said. But preparations are needed for that purpose, and some sort of a scheme. You use the word as if you merely had to put on wings and fly off into the distance.

JOHANNA

To be determined is--the same as having wings.

SALA

Are you not at all afraid, Johanna?

JOHANNA

A longing free from fear would be too cheap to be worth while.

SALA

Where will it lead you?

JOHANNA

I shall find my way.

SALA

You can choose your way, but not the people that you meet.

JOHANNA

Do you think me ignorant of the fact that I cannot expect only beautiful experiences? What is ugly and mean must also be waiting for me.

SALA

And how are you going to stand it?--Will you be able to stand it at all?

JOHANNA

Of course, I am not going to tell the truth always as I have done to you. I shall have to lie--and I think of it with pleasure. I shall not always be in good spirits, nor always sensible. I shall make mistakes and suffer. That's the way it has to be, I suppose.

SALA

Of all this you are aware in advance, and yet...?

JOHANNA

Yes.

SALA

And why?... Why are you going away, Johanna?

JOHANNA

Why am I going away?... I want a time to come when I must shudder at myself. Shudder as deeply as you can only when nothing has been left untried. Just as you have had to do when you looked back upon your life. Or have you not?

SALA

Oh, many times. But just in such moments of shuddering there is nothing left behind at all--everything is once more present. And the present is the past. (_He sits down on the stone seat_)

JOHANNA

What do you mean by that?

SALA (_covers his eyes with his hand and sits silent_)

JOHANNA

What is the matter? Where are you anyhow?

[_A light wind stirs the leaves and makes many of them drop to the ground._

SALA

I am a child, riding my pony across the fields. My father is behind and calls to me. At that window waits my mother. She has thrown a gray satin shawl over her dark hair and is waving her hand at me.... And I am a young lieutenant in maneuvers, standing on a hillock and reporting to my colonel that hostile infantry is ambushed behind that wooded piece of ground, ready to charge, and down below us I can see the midday sun glittering on bayonets and b.u.t.tons.... And I am lying alone in my boat adrift, looking up into the deep-blue Summer sky, while words of incomprehensible beauty are shaping themselves in my mind--words more beautiful than I have ever been able to put on paper.... And I am resting on a bench in the cool park at the lake of Lugano, with Helen sitting beside me; she holds a book with red cover in her hand; over there by the magnolia, Lillie is playing with the light-haired English boy, and I can hear them prattling and laughing.... And I am walking slowly back and forth with Julian on a bed of rustling leaves, and we are talking of a picture which we saw yesterday. And I see the picture: two old sailors with worn-out faces, who are seated on an overturned skiff, their sad eyes directed toward the boundless sea. And I feel their misery more deeply than the artist who painted them; more deeply than they could have felt it themselves, had they been alive.... All this--all of it is there--if I only close my eyes. It is nearer to me than you, Johanna, when I don't see you and you keep quiet.

JOHANNA (_stands looking at him with wistful sympathy_)

SALA

The present--what does it mean anyhow? Are we then locked breast to breast with the moment as with a friend whom we embrace--or an enemy who is pressing us? Has not the word that just rings out turned to memory already? Is not the note that starts a melody reduced to memory before the song is ended? Is your coming to this garden anything but a memory, Johanna? Are not your steps across that meadow as much a matter of the past as are the steps of creatures dead these many years?

JOHANNA

No, it mustn't be like that. It makes me sad.

SALA (_with a return to present things_)