OLGA
(OLGA and EZRA kiss.)
You’ve lost weight. And your hair’s all white.
EZRA
So, you finally up and traipsed yourself across the ocean.
OLGA
(Referring to SHERI)
Why didn’t Dorothy warn me?
SHERI
(Gathering her things)
I’m leaving.
EZRA
(To OLGA)
Let me get you something to eat, Lynx.
(He bustles around, assembling scraps of food in various tins. Offers OLGA the caviar.)
SHERI
(At the door)
Not the caviar!
(No response. EZRA serves OLGA caviar on a piece of bread.)
Goodbye, Grandpaw. I’ll see you tomorrow.
(She exits, loud noises from the hall.)
OLGA (Furious)
WHO IS SHE?
EZRA
A friend. A … disciple. A painter—
OLGA
Dorothy promised me there would be no one here!
EZRA
Waall … she took herself off … didn’t say you was coming … not today anyway …
OLGA
Falsehoods and subterfuges! It’s been so long, mi amore, you don’t even answer my letters, and then to find—
EZRA
Please, Olga. No “argymints”!
OLGA
Confusion, mess, lies! The usual.
EZRA
When a man’s down a well, you don’t jump in on top of him!
OLGA
Seven years since we’ve seen each other!
(Pause)
Do you ever miss me?
EZRA
Yes, Ma’am. I want you back …
(He tries to embrace her. She pushes him away.)
OLGA
WHO IS THAT GIRL?
EZRA
Why, just Sheri—Sheri Martinelli.
OLGA
That girl I’ve been reading about in the newspapers …
EZRA
She’s one of my students, brings me treats. She’s very talented—
OLGA
Enough! Not another word!
EZRA
Spare me, Olga!
OLGA
No self-pity—we’ve never traded in that. You used to tell me, when I was wretched, to look inside for the cause—
EZRA
In here for twelve years—
OLGA
Do you think I was living high on the hog, in Sant’Ambrogio?
EZRA
You were free!
OLGA
Free—to struggle! Free—to worry!
EZRA
You’re looking … fine, Lynx.
(He pats her.)
OLGA (Softening)
You’re leonine, still!
(She kisses him.)
Do you remember, at the beginning, in Paris—I started keeping a journal—
(She brings it out of her bag.)
EZRA
Didn’t you bring your violin?
OLGA
I’m not a traveling circus!
EZRA
Antheil said, after you played his concert: “I’ll never find another fiddler like Olga, but she’s getting careless.”
OLGA
When do I have time to myself, to practice?
(Looking at journal)
Today is my fifty-seventh birthday …
EZRA
(Presenting her with an olive from his collection of food.)
’Gratulations, Miss, I’m sure …
(As she kisses him)
OLGA
I was hoping, somehow, to add more…?
EZRA
Not much privacy here.
OLGA
(Turning pages of journal)
I recorded each time we … your birthdays, our first Vivaldi concert, the evening we finished playing all the Mozart violin sonatas, the night after you first sung me your Villon opera—see, I’ve marked an x for each … sometimes two …
EZRA
Copulation and poetry flow from the same source. Not much of either left now.
(OLGA intensifies the embrace, EZRA pulls away.)
What have you been doing in Washington? Did you see your aunt?
OLGA
Still asking me why I never married! I told her I am married—in the eyes of God!
EZRA
How’s Rapallo—much changed?
OLGA
The Café Yolanda is going in for ices, and Dante—our waiter—has a new white coat. Of course I don’t have time to go lollygagging there. I’ve been working night and day to get you out. Gli Amici di Ezra Pound—we have almost three hundred signatures.
EZRA
Dorothy’s agin it. Afraid they’ll still have a trial if I get out—finally do it this time—
(Garroting gesture)
OLGA
(Ignoring this)
Your old friends haven’t forgotten you. But you’re not making it easier with the disreputable characters you let visit you here.
EZRA
Please—they amuse me.
OLGA
(Pulling out newspaper)
Even this John Kasper? You’ve seen the article in the Herald Tribune?
EZRA
You know how the Jew press pillories—
OLGA
(Showing him the headline)
“SEGREGATIONIST KASPER IS EZRA POUND DISCIPLE.”
How can you, Caro?
EZRA
Well, at least he’s a man of action, and don’t sit around looking at his navel.
(He leans back in his chair, closes his eyes. After a moment of watching him, OLGA seems to relent.)
OLGA
All these years, waiting for a word from you, and almost nothing came.
(EZRA gestures.)
Oh yes, a letter every now and then, and once you sent me gladioli—when I saw the boy carrying them along the Zattere, I thought, “They can’t be for me.”
(Furiously)
WHAT IS SHE WAITING ALL HER LIFE FOR—NOW REACHING THE LAST DROP …
EZRA
(Indicating Olga)
The victim is always culpable.
OLGA
Knowing Dorothy was here with you, legally in charge, seeing you night and day!
EZRA
I did hope you’d bring your violin. No musick in the nuthouse, just the TV ravin’ in the hall.
OLGA (Ominously)
You’ve forgotten the first evening the three of us spent together …
EZRA
(His baby voice)
She to have mercy, now.
OLGA (Relentless)
The afternoon you and Dorothy moved up to my apartment at Sant’Ambrogio—dragging God knows how much stuff! I was trying to be tactful. I went to my room early to leave you two alone, picked up my violin, played the Mozart Concerto in A Minor as well as I’ve ever done. Dorothy said NOTHING to me about it, good, bad, or indifferent, spoke to me later as she might have to a housekeeper. I never played—or was asked to play—again.
EZRA
Last time I heard music at Sant’Ambrogio.
OLGA
After that you two sat in the dark every evening, listening to the news on the BBC, while I tried to put together something to eat.
EZRA (Faintly)
“Some cook, some do not….”
OLGA
All the cooking, the shopping, the cleaning, and she never thanked me, just told everybody, “We’re spending a while up at Olga’s house.” Oh, we were civilized!
EZRA
(Pottering around)
Little Jimmy Laughlin, my American publisher, just sent me a fresh pineapple.
(He cuts her a slice.)
He wants to see my new Cantos, publish them in New Directions. More like No Directions.
OLGA
(Refusing pineapple)
You can work here, you can get on
with it. But when do you think I have a moment, between your daughter’s unsuitable alliance with her make-believe prince, and my twenty-four hours a day running the Siena Accademia? It’s been hand to mouth since the start of the war—hand to mouth! I’ve guarded your things in Sant’Ambrogio—but I intend to let that place go, now! I’ve scraped together enough to buy a little place in Venice—start over! I’m fifty-seven … it’s not too late. Great musicians go on and on …
(She runs down.)
EZRA
You fritter away your time.
OLGA
The war stopped me. Dorothy made use of me to the fullest, commandeered my house while I worked like a slave—just so you wouldn’t suffer! I cannot understand to this day her terrible meanness—always in terror lest I have some advantage over her—her, with all the income, her child taken care of, I with no rights of any kind, high and dry in a country I never would have chosen except to be near you—
EZRA
You’d have preferred to spend your life in Youngstown, Ohio?
(Pause)
OLGA
No.
EZRA
Any funds coming in from your parking lot?
OLGA
I can’t get at them since the war.
EZRA
Too bad you always have to pinch so hard.
OLGA (Flaring)
I never took money from you, except once, for Mary’s schooling, and now Dorothy’s been showering me with thousand-lire notes …
EZRA
I told her to pay your rent, long as you was in Sant’Ambrogio.
(A pause. Again, OLGA relents.)
OLGA
(Opening purse, taking out papers)
I’m moving to Venice as soon as I get back to Italy—you’ll always be welcome there. And I’ve been putting together a group of your broadcasts, for publication—edited, of course.
(Shows him the manuscript)
I’m calling it “If This Be Treason …”
EZRA
Tom Eliot’s against it, and my lawyer. Says it’ll stir up trouble.
OLGA
I thought if people read what you actually said—
EZRA
Best forget it, for now.
(OLGA starts to protest …)
I was PAID, Olga. That’s the only thing they care about. PAID—by a gov’ment the blamed-dad US of A was a-fighting…. Don’t give a fig-nut I had to put food on the table for three people.
OLGA
Twelve years! People forget.
EZRA
MacLeish, Eliot—they’re raking the prizes in.
OLGA
When all this business is over and forgotten, your Cantos will be remembered. Not Eliot. Not Frost.
EZRA
You believe that?
OLGA
You’ll be the one studied at Harvard!
EZRA
“Said Mr. Adams, of education
Teach? At Harvard?
Teach? It cannot be done.”
OLGA
I’ve staked my life on it!
EZRA
Mebbe you wuz a fool.
(As she is absorbing this)
How long you plan on staying?
OLGA
Three visits, two hours each—that’s all your Dr. Overholser granted me! Because I’m not “kin.”
EZRA
Waall … you ain’t.
OLGA (Deadly)
That girl is not kin.
EZRA
Overholser makes an exception for my students. I call it the Ez-uversity.
OLGA
(Gathering up her things)
If Dorothy had not told me a direct LIE in answer to a simple question, I would have been prepared for what I’ve found here! I won’t be needing the other two visits. Goodbye, Ezra.
(Turns to go)
EZRA
Wait!
OLGA
I’ve waited too long.
EZRA
Please—Lynx—after all these years—
OLGA
Yes, Ezra. After all these years.
EZRA
I’ve missed you. I’ve missed Mary …
(She turns to leave.)
Send me your photo—please. A new one.
OLGA
Your memory will have to suffice.
EZRA
(Reaching for her)
Let those I love try to forgive what I have made.
OLGA
Bats in the belfry—as always.
EZRA
If love be not in the house, there is nothing.
OLGA
Yes. Nothing.
(OLGA exits. EZRA sits down dejectedly.)
EZRA
“Oh Lynx, my love, my lovely lynx …”
(SHERI enters, having overheard this. She goes to him. She rubs his neck and shoulders.)
SHERI
She doesn’t carry her life on her fingernails.
(Shows him her paint-stained fingers)
Each one a different color, because I’m a working painter!
(EZRA groans, turns away.)
A fighter, like you, in the Ethical Arena where you know what’s really wrong because you did it all yourself!
EZRA
Yes, all of it—
SHERI
(Embracing him)
Artist! Maestro!
EZRA
So much for him who puts his trust in a woman.
(SHERI begins, slowly, to undress. EZRA slowly looks up at her.)
CURTAIN
Act II
SCENE 1
Setting: The same, EZRA’s room, St. Elizabeths Hospital. A few days later, 1958
DR. OVERHOLSER
(Testimony, as though in court, over a miocrophone.)
Ezra Pound is not a dangerous person and his release would not endanger the safety of other persons, property, or other interests of the United States.
(Recording of ELDER SOLOMON LIGHTFOOT MICHAUX in all his glory, in his Radio Church of God. We hear him deliver the end of a sermon and go into one of his famous gospel numbers. Note on EZRA’s costume at St. Elizabeths: Tan shorts too big for him, tennis shoes and a loose plaid shirt, or a loose sweatshirt, an old GI overcoat, baggy trousers, heavy white socks, bedroom slippers, long underwear showing in his lower legs.)
ELDER LIGHTFOOT MICHAUX
(Shouting into the microphone)
Pilgrims! There’s going to be a meeting in the air, Pilgrims. With Saints from Everywhere! W! J! S! V! W for Willingly! J for Jesus! S for Suffered! V for Victory! Willingly Jesus Suffered for Victory! W! J! S! V! H - A - P - P - Y - A - M - I. Is everybody happy? The whole world is happy!
(Begins singing)
HAPPY AM I …
(The room in St. Elizabeths is if possible more disordered: trampled books, torn newspapers, dead flowers, boxes of leftover food, discarded clothes. EZRA is doing yoga. His movements have become less energetic; he is showing his age. On the radio, ELDER LIGHTFOOT MICHAUX continues to sing.
JOHN KASPER enters, carrying books, papers, a doughnut box, etc. He stands watching EZRA, who does not for a moment see him.)
KASPER
Unpretzel yourself, Pops.
EZRA
Kasp!
(He jumps up. A bear hug.)
KASPER
What’s this crap—?
(He snaps off radio.)
EZRA
Most famous colored man in America—him can TALK! And him can SING!
KASPER
(KASPER grimaces.)
And him a nigger.
EZRA
What did you bring me?
KASPER
(Opening box)
Crullers—best in Greenwich Village.
EZRA (Disappointed)
Only two?
KASPER
I had my breakfast on the train.
EZRA
I wait hours for the gosh-darned bell to ring, meaning breakfast—
(As EZRA beg
ins to devour the crullers, KASPER spreads out papers and books on the bed.)
KASPER
I’ve found the best corner in the Village for the bookstore.
(EZRA nods.)
Put together the circular for the first of your Square Dollar books.
(He begins to read from circular.)
“Square Dollar is starting with American writers who can hold their own either as stylists or historians against any foreign competition whatsoever: “The Chinese Written Character, A History of Monetary Crimes, Bank of the United States, Roman and Muslim Moneys”—
EZRA (Eating)
Basic education at a price every student can afford: one square dollar. You hear from Marshall McLuhan?
KASPER
He’s agreed to serve on the advisory committee for the bookstore, also Norman Holmes Pearson, from Yale—
EZRA
I don’t hear none of the lingo I give you for that thar circular.
KASPER
Wait!
(Reading from circular)
“JAIL NAACP, alien, unclean, unchristian;
BLAST irreverent ungodly leaders.”
EZRA
Good old Kasp! You sign the lease for the bookstore?
KASPER
Yes, five years—landlord insisted.
EZRA
(Mouth full of crumbs)
Yid?
KASPER
Name of Mordecai. You guess.
(They laugh. KASPER brushes crumbs off EZRA’s chest.)
You’re one hell of a mess, Pops.
EZRA
What you aiming to call your place of business?
KASPER
(Showing design for the bookstore sign)
MAKE IT NEW.
(EZRA crows.)
You approve?
EZRA
My gospel! The critics—they thought I meant words—just words. I was talking about THE WORLD! MAKE IT NEW! Had a chance, too—before the First War killed …
(He scrabbles through papers, brings out manifesto. KASPER waits tolerantly. EZRA reads.)
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