Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) Part 12

LULU. (Sitting down uncertainly.) Why didn't you tell me so yesterday, then?

SCHoN. Please, nothing now about yesterday. I did tell you two years ago.

LULU. (Nervously.) Oh, yes,--Hm!

SCHoN. Please be kind enough to cease your visits to my house.

LULU. May I offer you an elixir--

SCHoN. Thanks. No elixir. Have you understood me? (Lulu shakes her head.) Good. You have the choice. You force me to the most extreme measures:--either act in accordance with your station--

LULU. Or?

SCHoN. Or--you compel me--I should have to turn to that person who is responsible for your behavior.

LULU. What makes you imagine that?

SCHoN. I shall request your husband, himself to watch over your ways.

(Lulu rises, goes up the steps, right.) Where are you going?

LULU. (Calls thru the curtains.) Walter!

SCHoN. (Springing up.) Are you mad?

LULU. (Turning round.) Aha!

SCHoN. I have made the most superhuman efforts to raise you in society.

You can be ten times as proud of your name as of your intimacy with me.

LULU. (Comes down the steps and puts her arm around Schon's neck.) Why are you still afraid, now that you're at the zenith of your hopes?

SCHoN. No comedy! The zenith of my hopes? I am at last engaged: I have now the hope of bringing my bride into a clean house.

LULU. (Sitting.) She has developed delightfully in the two years!

SCHoN. She no longer looks thru one so earnestly.

LULU. She is now, for the first time, a woman. We can meet each other wherever it seems suitable to you.

SCHoN. We shall meet each other nowhere but in the presence of your husband!

LULU. You don't believe yourself what you say.

SCHoN. Then =he= must believe it. Go on and call him! Thru his marriage to you, thru all that I've done for him, he has become my friend.

LULU. (Rising.) Mine, too.

SCHoN. Then I'll cut down the sword over my head.

LULU. You have, indeed, chained me up. But I owe my happiness to you.

You will get friends by the crowd as soon as you have a pretty young wife again.

SCHoN. You judge women by yourself! He's got the sense of a child or he would have tracked out your doublings and windings long ago.

LULU. I only wish he would! Then, at last he'd get out of his swaddling-clothes. He puts his trust in the marriage contract he has in his pocket. Trouble is past and gone. One can now give oneself and let oneself go as if one were at home. That isn't the sense of a =child=!

It's ba.n.a.l! He has no education; he sees nothing; he sees neither me nor himself; he is blind, blind, blind....

SCHoN. (Half to himself.) When =his= eyes open!!

LULU. Open his eyes for him! I'm going to ruin. I'm neglecting myself.

He doesn't know me at all. What am I to him? He calls me darling and little devil. He would say the same to any piano-teacher. He makes no pretensions. Everything is alright, to him. That comes from his never in his life having felt the need of intercourse with women.

SCHoN. If that's true!

LULU. He admits it perfectly openly.

SCHoN. A man who has painted them, rags and tags and velvet gowns, since he was fourteen.

LULU. Women make him anxious. He trembles for his health and comfort.

But he isn't afraid of =me=!

SCHoN. How many girls would deem themselves G.o.d knows how blessed in your situation.

LULU. (Softly pleading.) Seduce him. Corrupt him. You know how. Take him into bad company--you know the people. I am nothing to him but a woman, just woman. He makes me feel so ridiculous. He will be prouder of me. He doesn't know any differences. I'm thinking my head off, day and night, how to shake him up. In my despair I dance the can-can. He yawns; and drivels something about obscenity.

SCHoN. Nonsense. He is an artist, though.

LULU. At least he believes he is.

SCHoN. That's the chief thing!

LULU. When _I_ pose for him.... He believes, too, that he's a famous man.

SCHoN. We =have= made him one.

LULU. He believes everything. He's as mistrustful as a thief, and lets himself be lied to, till one loses all respect! When we first knew each other I informed him I had never yet loved-- (Schon falls into an easy-chair.) Otherwise he would really have taken me for a fallen woman!

SCHoN. You make G.o.d knows what exorbitant demands on =legitimate= relations!

LULU. I make no exorbitant demands. Often I even dream still of Goll.

SCHoN. He was, at any rate, not ba.n.a.l!

LULU. He is there, as if he had never been away. Only he walks as tho in his socks. He isn't angry with me; he's awfully sad. And then he is fearful, as tho he were there without the permission of the police.

Otherwise, he feels at ease with us. Only he can't quite get over my having thrown away so much money since--

SCHoN. You yearn for the whip once more?

LULU. Maybe. I don't dance any more.