by David Malouf
HARRY:
I will stick closer than anyone.
I will sit under the platform.
BELLE:
Laura, Laura. Return to us. Return.
MRS BONNER:
Think of Mercy. The child. The child.
HARRY:
I saw a white bird fly out,
out of the bones of death.
Wings opened like hands
and a white bird went sailing …
(He dies)
BELLE:
Laura. Laura. Return to us. Return.
MRS BONNER:
The child, Laura, the child.
LAURA:
The journey has three stages.
Of God into Man. Man. And the return
to God. The return.
Oh who will love him when I am gone? I pray
that God will. God will.
VOSS:
When I was a boy I would go out on the hills
with kites, and tied
to their tails were messages. They would sail off
into the blue,
up, up, till the kite strings
broke and my messages
were carried to far places,
Bohemia, Italy …
The finders would track them down
in the wet grass, and the messages
invisible with rain
would melt into the blue
distance of their eyes,
would enter the blue spaces.
(LAURA rises out of her sickbed and begins to cross the stage towards where VOSS is lying)
BELLE:
Laura. Laura. Return to us. Return.
MRS BONNER:
The child, Laura, the child.
LAURA:
The journey has three stages.
Of God into Man. Man. And the return
to God. The return.
(VOSS has also risen. They meet. And embrace)
VOSS:
Ah, these lilies, Laura. Look. Look,
there are fields of them, a paradise
of lilies, a paradise of lilies.
Your prayers, your words, these lilies.
LAURA:
They are the prayers that I let fall
on my journey out to your coronation.
Now on the return
their pale flesh will feed us. Let us eat
together. This is our love feast.
(He sinks down. She cradles him a moment, then rises and moves away)
BELLE:
Laura, Laura, return to us. Return.
MRS BONNER:
The child, Laura, the child.
(Suddenly VOSS starts up. JACKY is there with the knife)
VOSS:
Ah Jacky. It was you.
(JACKY wrestles with him)
Oh Jesus, rette mich nur. Du lieber!*
(As JACKY struggles to cut off VOSS’ head, the voices of the women, LAURA’s words ringing out triumphantly as JACKY raises the severed head)
BELLE:
Return to us, return.
MRS BONNER:
The child. The child.
LAURA:
When man learns that he is not God,
then is he truly nearest God.
And Man is God decapitated.
ORCHESTRAL INTERLUDE
EPILOGUE
The scene is TOM and BELLE RADCLYFFE’s house in Sydney, twenty years later. Fashionable people dancing, a group of children, playing blind man’s buff. BELLE, with TOM at her side, claps her hands and calls for their attention. During her speech, she takes TOM’s hands affectionately. One or two of the younger children come to her skirt.
BELLE:
I have asked you all here because I value
each of you for some special quality.
Is it not possible for each of you
to discover that quality in his fellows,
so that we might at least be happy in this house
and in this country of ours?
TOM:
The old days when we lived here as strangers
are gone. We have our city,
our houses stand solid
and the land about us is settled. It is ours. We have made it
ours. We are at home here. Friends
go back to your dancing. Children,
go back to your games.
BELLE:
Be happy in this house
and in this country of ours.
CHILDREN:
Blind man, blind man,
Which is best,
Turn to the east or
Turn to the west?
Blind man, seek us, Near and far.
Blind man, tell us,
Who we are!
(A waltz begins. Some people begin to dance)
Blind man, etc.
(LAURA appears, with MERCY at her side, a tall gaunt figure in black, very incongruous among the others. BELLE immediately goes to her)
BELLE:
Laura, my dear. My dear Laura.
And Mercy.
Come let me show you to people.
LAURA:
No, Belle, I shall sit here.
I have never learned the language.
I shall sit here and look at the dresses.
WOMEN:
Have you ever seen such a crow? Laura
Trevelyan. Such a crow. Voss’ woman. Such a scarecrow. But have
You seen? – The explorer’s woman. Such a crow.
… twenty years. Who? Voss. Twenty years lost was Voss. Have you ever seen such a crow?
Such a crow. Laura Trevelyan. Such a scarecrow.
MEN:
Have you ever? Such a crow. Such a scarecrow.
The explorer’s woman.
The explorer’s woman. Such a crow. Voss. Lost for twenty years. Lost
Voss. Lost. Twenty years lost was Voss.
(humming)
The explorer’s woman. Such a scarecrow.
(The NEWSPAPER REPORTER approaches LAURA)
REPORTER:
Miss Laura Trevelyan?
LAURA:
Yes. You are one of the newspaper reporters.
REPORTER:
Miss Trevelyan, you knew him,
Voss the man become myth.
There are people out there
who want to know the truth.
LAURA:
All truths are particoloured
save the greatest truth of all.
I know nothing.
REPORTER:
You knew him.
And have been today
to the unveiling of his statue.
LAURA:
Ah yes, the statue.
He is safe now, Johann Ulrich. He has been
hung with garlands of newspaper prose.
He has entered the books. They will speak
of his place in history.
He is safe, now he is dead.
CHILDREN:
Blind man, blind man … etc.
REPORTER:
And the survivor? You have seen the survivor?
You must let me introduce him. Judd!
(JUDD turns among the crowd and approaches)
Judd. Miss Laura Trevelyan.
LAURA:
So you are Judd.
JUDD:
I am Judd. Ex-convict.
Escapee. Survivor.
REPORTER:
Miss Trevelyan, Judd, was a friend
of Voss, the explorer.
JUDD:
He is lost.
LAURA:
No, not lost.
JUDD:
He left his mark on the country.
He was cutting his initials on the trees.
He is still there in the heart of the country
and always will be.
LAURA:
Always? Always?
JUDD:
If you suffer long enough in a place
your spirit returns to it. Always. Always.
REPORT
ER:
Like a god, in fact, like a god.
JUDD:
I cried when I saw him dead.
LAURA:
You saw him?
(The game of blind man’s buff has been proceeding quietly nearby. JUDD turns away confused, the game surrounds him and the blindfold figure moves to touch JUDD as he cries out)
JUDD:
With the spear in his side.
It was me who closed his eyes.
(The game turns away. JUDD is led off. The dancers stop, watching, then resume)
REPORTER:
So your saint is canonised.
LAURA:
I am content.
REPORTER:
On the evidence of a poor madman?
LAURA:
Whether Judd is mad, or an imposter, or simply
a poor creature who has suffered too much,
I am convinced that he, like Voss, and all men,
has a little of Christ in him.
(MERCY returns)
MERCY:
Shall we away into another room, mother? Or home
even. No one will miss us.
LAURA:
No, Mercy. I will not go now.
I am here. I will stay.
(BELLE comes to her again)
BELLE:
Laura. Laura, my darling.
LAURA:
Belle, I am so happy at last, so happy.
I know I have seen little
and suffered little. I know
nothing of this land.
But knowledge is more
than maps.
(She is surrounded now by a small group: BELLE, the REPORTER, MERCY, TOPP. She speaks to them, but then more generally to the audience. As her vision opens out into the present, the crowd moves back into the shadows to leave her, at the end, alone)
LAURA:
Some of us,
some of you, will express what you know
by living. Others (she indicates TOPP)
will make music of it.
We will inherit this country
at last. It will be ours.
BELLE:
Ah, this country!
TOM:
Friends, go back to your dancing.
Children, go back to your games.
BELLE:
Be happy in this house
and in this country of ours.
REPORTER:
Ah, yes. A country with a future.
But when does that future become the present?
LAURA:
Now. Now. Every moment
that we live, and breathe, and love
and suffer. Now. Now.
(As the others have been moving back, the shadow of VOSS’ statue falls across the stage. LAURA is alone with it)
LAURA:
Voss, Johann, Ulrich
my love. You are there
still, there in the country,
your legend will be written
in the air, in the sand,
in thorns, in stones
by those who are troubled by it.
And what we do not know
the air will tell us,
the air will tell us.
MER DE GLACE
CHARACTERS
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY/FRANKENSTEIN
Tenor
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN, MOTHER TO WILLIAM Mezzo
Soprano
CLAIRE CLAIRMONT / ELIZABETH
Soprano
LORD GEORGE BYRON / MONSTER
Baritone
JOHN WILLIAM POLIDORI
Baritone
WILLIAM, BROTHER TO FRANKENSTEIN
Treble
CHORUS OF TOURISTS, VILLAGE YOUTHS AND MAIDENS One Tenor Soloist,
One Baritone Soloist
CHORUS OF CHILDREN
The scene at the opening is Florence in the late 1780s, later at Geneva and on the shores of Lake Geneva, May–June 1816, and on the Mer de Glace at Chamounix above the lake.
ACT I
CLAIRE CLAIRMONT’s house in Florence in the 1870s, a large dark room: CLAIRE in a white nightgown, a night-cap, very old and stooped. Behind in silhouette, the figures of SHELLEY, MARY SHELLEY and BYRON.
SHELLEY:
Claire, Claire, Claire Clairmont! Are you listening?
Can you hear me, Claire?
MARY:
Leave her, Shelley. Leave the girl. Claire, don’t listen to him, Claire.
SHELLEY:
Claire?
CLAIRE:
Oh, I am listening. I can hear you all. In here, out there. I know you are ghosts. I am almost a ghost myself, I am so old –
BYRON:
Claire Clairmont – I knew her once –
CLAIRE:
My flesh is thin as paper.
BYRON:
She bore my child.
CLAIRE:
No trouble, at my age, to draw breath a moment in sleep and listen to the bones.
BYRON:
How old were you? Eighteen, on the lake –
SHELLEY:
Where are you, Claire? Where have you got to at this hour of night?
BYRON:
In the fields, on the lake.
SHELLEY:
Come to bed –
BYRON:
In my life, when I was alive in my own life.
SHELLEY:
Lie here by me, lie here, lie here. What are you doing?
MARY:
This is my bed, Shelley. No, Claire, not here. Shelley is mine now, he is mine. Keep off, Claire, keep off.
BYRON:
Claire Clairmont – I knew her once.
CLAIRE:
I am living. Unlike the rest of you. Hanging on to breath.
MARY:
Leave us alone, Claire Clairmont, at least on this side of our life.
CLAIRE:
Live for the future – you said that, Shelley – one of us said that. Well, this is the future. I am living in it. Alone with my ghosts, alone with my voices. You, Shelley, drowned, Byron lost in Greece, Polidori with a bullet in his brain. And you, Mary, for thirty years with a skeleton in the cupboard – you, Shelley – and a ghost in her bed – you, Shelley, you pure spirit! I knew you in the flesh. I could call you up in a soiled shirt, all sweat, you pure spirit!
MARY:
Claire! No! Leave Shelley to me –
SHELLEY:
Call me, Claire! Into the flesh.
MARY:
I am the warden of his spirit.
SHELLEY:
Call me, Claire!
CLAIRE:
Shelley, where are you, Shelley?
SHELLEY:
In the flesh. Call me! Call me!
CLAIRE:
Ah, la Mer de Glace. So this is where I have got to. So this is where we are.
(The walls of CLAIRE’s room rise and we are on the Mer de Glace. CLAIRE throws off her nightcap and gown, is a girl of eighteen again. BYRON exits. SHELLEY, MARY and CLAIRE join hands to form a circle, leaning outwards and away from one another, singing wordlessly in a trance. Mont Blanc looms above them)
SHELLEY:
I never dreamed, I never imagined, what mountains were,
the immensity and grandeur of the ice-peaks,
their mass, their cruel simplicity, their power.
CLAIRE:
It is like a dream. I am sleepwalking, far out on the Mer de Glace – an ecstatic wonderment not unallied to madness.
SHELLEY:
Where are you, Claire?
CLAIRE:
Shelley, Shelley.
SHELLEY:
Claire, is that you, Claire? Where are you, Mary?
MARY:
One would think it was some sleeping animal, Mont Blanc,
and the frozen blood forever crawling
in its stony veins. If it should wake! If I should wake it!
CLAIRE/MARY:
Shelley! Shelley! Why are you so far away?
SHELLEY:
F
ar, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears –
CLAIRE/MARY:
Where are we? Where? So far away, Shelley, where are we? Shelley –
SHELLEY/CLAIRE/MARY:
On the Mer de Glace.
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy and serene.
(Their circle swings slowly, then faster and faster as the music swells. Suddenly stops. Silence. A TOURIST GUIDE and TOURISTS enter. SHELLEY, MARY and CLAIRE are gathered into the crowd)
GUIDE:
Ladies and gentlemen, you are walking on the Mer de Glace, a great slow-moving glacier. And above you – hats off, gentlemen! – one of the seven wonders of nature: Mont Blanc – no charge for looking – He does not exact a fee – one of the Deity’s incomparable masterpieces. Look on his works, you poets, and despair! Look on his works, you good people of his eternal kingdom, you butchers and their wives, you candlestick-makers; take your hats off, clasp your hands, and cry Amen.
(During the sequence that follows, the GUIDE continues his spiel, the TOURISTS strike up a hymn, CLAIRE and MARY sing wordlessly as before and SHELLEY sings his paean to Mont Blanc)
GUIDE:
(spoken) Oh how great, ladies and gentlemen – sons and daughters, butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, tinkers, tailors, thieves – Oh how glorious are the works of our loving Deity. How sublime! How eloquent! How they tower above us till we crawl like worms before his piercing majesty. What humility they teach us. What patience. What submissiveness. What lowly and proper obedience to the duties he has imposed upon us, the order of the unchanging universe, the status in life he has determined for us, our place in the nature of things. Oh lovely in his sight are the humble poor, the nigger in his chains, the chimney sweep in his coat of soot, the woman dragging her load with a light heart through the darkest mine. He sees all and is pleased. He smiles upon us. He sees all and He rains down savage thunder. Blessed be His Name.
CHORUS:
Immortal, invisible, God only wise
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.
(SHELLEY turns his back on them in disgust)