The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy Part 59

WOMAN (rising). No, thank you! I won't sit here and be picked to pieces.

Where's your wife?

STRANGER. She left me just now.

WOMAN. Why?

STRANGER. Why did you leave me?

WOMAN. I felt you wanted to leave me; so, not to be deserted, I went myself.

STRANGER. I dare say that's true. But how could you read my thoughts?

WOMAN (sitting down again). What? We didn't need to speak in order to know one another's thoughts.

STRANGER. We made a mistake when we were living together, because we accused each other of wicked thoughts before they'd become actions; and lived in mental reservations instead of realities. For instance, I once noticed how you enjoyed the defiling gaze of a strange man, and I accused you of unfaithfulness.

WOMAN. You were wrong to do so, and right. Because my thoughts were sinful.

STRANGER. Don't you think my habit of 'antic.i.p.ating you' prevented your bad designs from being put in practice?

WOMAN. Let me think! Yes, perhaps it did. But I was annoyed to find a spy always at my side, watching my inmost self, that was my own.

STRANGER. But it wasn't your own: it was ours!

WOMAN. Yes, but I held it to be mine, and believed you'd no right to force your way in. When you did so I hated you; I said you were abnormally suspicious out of self-defence. Now I can admit that your suspicions were never wrong; that they were, in fact, the purest wisdom.

STRANGER. Oh! Do you know that, at night, when we'd said good-night as friends and gone to sleep, I used to wake and feel your hatred poisoning me; and think of getting out of bed so as not to be suffocated. One night I woke and felt a pressure on the top of my head. I saw you were awake and had put your hand close to my mouth. I thought you were making me inhale poison from a phial; and, to make sure, I seized your hand.

WOMAN. I remember.

STRANGER. What did you do then?

WOMAN. Nothing. Only hated you.

STRANGER. Why?

WOMAN. Because you were my husband. Because I ate your bread.

STRANGER. Do you think it's always the same?

WOMAN. I don't know. I suspect it is.

STRANGER. But sometimes you've even despised me?

WOMAN. Yes, when you were ridiculous. A man in love is always ridiculous. Do you know what a c.o.x-comb is? That's what a lover's like.

STRANGER. But if any man who loves you is ridiculous, how can you respond to his love?

WOMAN. We don't! We submit to it, and search for another man who doesn't love us.

STRANGER. But if he, in turn, begins to love you, do you look for a third?

WOMAN. Perhaps it's like that.

STRANGER. Very strange. (There is a silence.) I remember you were always dreaming of someone you called your Toreador, which I translated by 'horse butcher.' You eventually got him, but he gave you no children, and no bread; only beatings! A toreador's always fighting. (Silence.) Once I let myself be tempted into trying to compete with the toreador.

I started to bicycle and fence and do other things of the kind. But you only began to detest me for it. That means that the husband mayn't do what the lover may. Later you had a pa.s.sion for page boys. One of them used to sit on the Brussels carpet and read you bad verses.... My good ones were of no use to you. Did you get your page boy?

WOMAN. Yes. But his verses weren't bad, really.

STRANGER. Oh yes, they were, my dear. I know him! He stole my rhythms and set them for the barrel organ.

WOMAN (rising and going to the door.) You should be ashamed of yourself.

(The TEMPTER conies in, holding a letter in his hand.)

TEMPTER. Here's a letter. It's for you. (The WOMAN takes it, reads it and falls into a chair.) A farewell note! Oh, well! All beginnings are hard--in love affairs. And those who lack the patience to surmount initial difficulties--lose the golden fruit. Pages are always impatient.

Unknown youth, have you had enough?

STRANGER (rising and picking up his hat). My poor Anna!

WOMAN. Don't leave me.

STRANGER. I must.

WOMAN. Don't go. You were the best of them all.

TEMPTER. Do you want to begin again from the beginning? That would be a sure way to make an end of this. For if lovers only find one another, they lose one another! What is love? Say something witty, each one of you, before we part.

WOMAN. I don't know what it is. The highest and the loveliest of things, that has to sink to the lowest and the ugliest.

STRANGER. A caricature of G.o.dly love.

TEMPTER. An annual plant, that blossoms during the engagement, goes to seed in marriage and then sinks to the earth to wither and die.

WOMAN. The loveliest flowers have no seed. The rose is the flower of love.

STRANGER. And the lily that of innocence. That can form seeds, but only opens her white cup to kisses.

TEMPTER. And propagates her kind with buds, out of which fresh lilies spring, like chaste Minerva who sprang fully armed from the head of Zeus, and not from his royal loins. Oh yes, children, I've understood much, but never this: what the beloved of my soul has to do with.... (He hesitates.)

STRANGER. Well, go on!

TEMPTER. What all-powerful love, that is the marriage of souls, has to do with the propagation of the species!

STRANGER and WOMAN. Now he's come to the point!

TEMPTER. I've never been able to understand how a kiss, that's an unborn word, a soundless speech, a quiet language of the soul, can be exchanged, by means of a hallowed procedure, for a surgical operation, that always ends in tears and the chattering of teeth. I've never understood how that holy night, the first in which two souls embrace each other in love, can end in the shedding of blood, in quarrelling, hate, mutual contempt--and lint! (He holds his mouth shut.)