The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy Part 49

CONFESSOR. Yes. And the sulphur flames purify or burn everything rotten!

So when the source of life's grown tainted, one is sent to the sulphur springs....

STRANGER. How does the source of life grow tainted?

CONFESSOR. When Aphrodite, born of the pure seafoam, wallows in the mire.... When Aphrodite Urania, the heaven-born, degrades herself to Pandemos, the Venus of the streets.

STRANGER. Why is desire born?

CONFESSOR. Pure desire, to be satisfied; impure, to be stifled.

STRANGER. What is pure, and what impure?

CONFESSOR. Have you got back to that?

STRANGER. Ask these men here....

CONFESSOR. Take care! (He looks at the STRANGER, who is unable to support his gaze.)

STRANGER. You're choking me.... My chest....

CONFESSOR. Yes, I'll steal the air you use to form rebellious words, and ask outrageous questions. Sit down there, I'll come back--when you've learnt patience and undergone your probation. But don't forget that I can hear and see you, and am aware of you, wherever I may be!

STRANGER. So I'm to be tested! I'm glad to know it!

CONFESSOR. But you mustn't speak to the wors.h.i.+ppers of Venus.

(MAIA, an old woman, appears in the background.)

STRANGER (rising in horror). Who am I meeting here after all this time?

Who is it?

CONFESSOR. Who are you speaking of?

STRANGER. That old woman there?

CONFESSOR. Who's she?

STRANGER (calling). Maia! Listen! (Old Maia has disappeared. The STRANGER hurries after her.) Maia, my friend, listen! She's gone!

CONFESSOR. Who was it?

STRANGER (sitting down). O G.o.d! Now, when I find her again at last, she goes.... I've looked for her for seven long years, written letters, advertised....

CONFESSOR. Why?

STRANGER. I'll tell you how her fate was linked to mine! (Pause.) Maia was the nurse in my first family... during those hard years... when I was fighting the Invisible Ones, who wouldn't bless my work! I wrote till my brain and nerves dissolved like fat in alcohol... but it wasn't enough! I was one of those who never could earn enough. And the day came when I couldn't pay the maids their wages--it was terrible--and I became the servant of my servant, and she became my mistress. At last... in order, at least, to save my soul, I fled from what was too powerful for me. I fled into the wilderness, where I collected my spirit in solitude and recovered my strength! My first thought then was--my debts! For seven years I looked for Maia, but in vain! For seven years I saw her shadow, out of the windows of trains, from the decks of steamers, in strange towns, in distant lands, but without ever being able to find her. I dreamed of her for seven years; and whenever I drank a gla.s.s of wine I blushed at the thought of old Maia, who perhaps was drinking water in a poorhouse! I tried to give the sum I owed her to the poor; but it was no use. And now--she's found and lost in the same moment!

(He gets up and goes towards the back as if searching for her.) Explain this, if you can! I want to pay my debt; I can pay it now, but I'm not allowed to.

CONFESSOR. Foolishness' Bow to what seems inexplicable; you'll see that the explanation will come later. Farewell!

STRANGER. Later. Everything comes later.

CONFESSOR. Yes. If it doesn't come at once! (He goes out. The LADY enters pensively and sits down at the table, opposite the STRANGER.)

STRANGER. What? You back again? The same and not the same? How beautiful you've grown; as beautiful as you were the first time I ever saw you; when I asked if I might be your friend, your dog.

LADY. That you can see beauty I don't possess shows that once more you have a mirror of beauty in your eye. The werewolf never thought me beautiful, for he'd nothing beautiful with which to see me.

STRANGER. Why did you kiss me that day? What made you do it?

LADY. You've often asked me that, and I've never been able to find the answer, because I don't know. But just now, when I was away from you, here in the mountains, where the air's purer and the sun nearer....

Hus.h.!.+ Now I can see that Sunday afternoon, when you sat on that seat like a lost and helpless child, with a broken look in your eyes, and stared at your own destiny.... A maternal feeling I'd never known before welled up in me then, and I was overcome with pity, pity for a human soul--so that I forgot myself.

STRANGER. I'm ashamed. Now I believe it was so.

LADY. But you took it another way. You thought...

STRANGER. Don't tell me. I'm ashamed.

LADY. Why did you think so badly of me? Didn't you notice that I drew down my veil; so that it was between us, like the knight's sword in the bridal bed....

STRANGER. I'm ashamed. I attributed my evil thoughts to you. Ingeborg, you were made of better stuff than I. I'm ashamed!

LADY. Now you look handsome. How handsome!

STRANGER. Oh no. Not I. You!

LADY (ecstatically). No, you! Yes, now I've seen through the mask and the false beard. Now I can see the man you hid from me, the man I thought I'd found in you... the man I was always searching for. I've often thought you a hypocrite; but we're no hypocrites. No, no, we can't pretend.

STRANGER. Ingeborg, now we're on the other side of the river, and have life beneath us, behind us... how different everything seems. Now, now, I can see your soul; the ideal, the angel, who was imprisoned in the flesh because of sin. So there is an Above, and an Earlier Age. When we began it wasn't the beginning, and it won't be the end when we are ended. Life is a fragment, without beginning or end! That's why it's so difficult to make head or tail of it.

LADY (kindly). So difficult. So difficult. Tell me, for instance--now we're beyond guilt or innocence--how was it you came to hate women?

STRANGER. Let me think! To hate women? Hate them? I never hated them. On the contrary! Ever since I was eight years old I've always had some love affair, preferably an innocent one. And I've loved like a volcano three times! But wait--I've always felt that women hated me... and they've always tortured me.

LADY. How strange!

STRANGER. Let me think about it a little.... Perhaps I've been jealous of my own personality; and been afraid of being influenced too much. My first love made herself into a sort of governess and nurse to me. But, of course, there _are_ men who detest children; who detest women too, if they're superior to them, that is!

LADY (amiably). But you've called women the enemies of mankind. Did you mean it?

STRANGER. Of course I meant it, if I wrote it! For I wrote out of experience, not theory.... In woman I sought an angel, who could lend me wings, and I fell into the arms of an earth-spirit, who suffocated me under mattresses stuffed with the feathers of wings! I sought an Ariel and I found a Caliban; when I wanted to rise she dragged me down; and continually reminded me of the fall....

LADY (kindly). Solomon knew much of women; do you know what he said? 'I find more bitter than death a woman, whose heart is snares and nets and her hands as bands; whoso pleaseth G.o.d shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.'

STRANGER. I was never acceptable in G.o.d's sight. Was that a punishment?

Perhaps. But I was never acceptable to anyone, and I've never had a good word addressed to me! Have I never done a good action? Is it possible for a man never to have done anything good? (Pause.) It's terrible never to hear any good words about oneself!

LADY. You've heard them. But when people have spoken well of you, you've refused to listen, as if it hurt you.