"Go to your whore, see if I care," Raul said.
"What's Alec doing?" John Henderson asked Raul with a wink.
"Guildenstern aspires to the bed of nobility."
John didn't seem to quite understand.
Raul looked at him. "It's a round-trip ticket he's cashing in."
The cast was peeking through the curtain to catch. a glimpse of the audience, although they had been warned it was unprofessional and undignified behavior. "Ah," Raul said to no one, "look at the rabble beg." He paused, then peeked himself, turning quickly on his heels. "Oh, my God. I shouldn't have done that. I saw my parents."
He walked rapidly, to work off his tension, to one of the wings. The clock there read eight twenty-five. Raul slumped into a chair. "Five minutes," he gasped. Four or five people wished him luck. He saw Alec and walked rapidly toward him. Alec was as pale as Raul. The stage was cleared of people, the audience hushed as the lights dimmed. Raul and Alec clasped hands. For a moment the two black figures were ghosts—solitary and foreboding—to be called to life by the lights of the stage.
The level of mental tension that an actor on stage must maintain is phenomenal. Raul, in addition to the normal rigors, to move gracefully with his ungainly body was drugged heavily by fullness of mind. What to an audience are natural moves and speech, to an actor are ghostly echoes, fixed moments viewed peripherally, reverberating among the lights of the bare stage.
Speech, which you know is arranged in a text, becomes a natural extension of this self you have gained by denying your own. It is a time without memory or place for an actor; a birth, or death, a moment of the eternal graced by some omnipotent hand.
This fluid quality, the simple transition of personalities, gives an actor a superhuman energy and power. Raul knew that if at any time during the play this energy, this personal world dissipated, if a line was de-livered badly, the momentum would be lost. Only twice did that happen, both times due to other members of the cast. Their clumsiness, their lack of a world, depressed Raul's and Alec's.
The poetry of their movements was outlined clearly against the harsh lighting and bare stage. The invisible tide that carried them, the rhythm of their moods, flowed impossibly on. The performance had an unbearable vitality for Raul. The contact with the audience was, at times, so thorough as to move him, emotionally, more than he had ever been.
Alec and he were on the high surge of this tide. They sculptured the tension of the play to greater and greater points of tolerance, until it seemed miraculous that it had not climaxed. And gleefully, marvelously playing the trick on the audience, it did not climax, but vanished. Like the withdrawing tide.
The curtain fell. Alec and Raul embraced, laughing, running to separate wings for the curtain call. They laughed and smiled to each other as the cast went out, individually, for their reward. As more and more .of the principles went out, the applause rose higher, sometimes lower, slightly, for a specific actor. Alec and Raul grinned maliciously at this. Al Hinton walked out, the applause plateauing on the level for Davis. And Raul began to move, oceans with him. As he stepped out onto the stage, the audience broke out louder. It was as if hundreds were calling his name, and he felt complete.
Alec walked out, the audience maintaining, incredibly, its hysteria. He and Raul clasped hands mid-stage, stepping out of the line for their individual bows. The curtain came down, both of them cackling and stopping abruptly as it went up again. Down, and up again, until finally it ended.
With the curtain down, the stage lights were on full. Raul and Alec swung about, leaping into each other's arms, shaking hands, laughing, screaming with joy.
The cast milled about, Alec standing as if in a trance, Raul running about the stage, trying to rid himself of the unbearable energy and joy that possessed him.
In minutes people were coming backstage and soon it was crowded. Miller came over to Raul and Alec, putting a hand behind Raul's head, giving it a good shake, saying it was great. "Even Fred liked it," Raul yelled.
One after another people came to Raul and Alec, congratulating them. The sense of ego was overpowering. Some said it was better than the Broadway production. "Surely an exaggeration," Alec said, smiling.
"Not at all," a man replied. "The production as a whole certainly wasn't. However, the two of you, I think, were more effective than Broadway."
"Thank you in any case," Raul said.
Bowden and Henderson came by, obviously very pleased with Raul. "You see how well it has turned out," Henderson said.
"Yes," Raul said, beaming.
"Have patience in the future. Good luck." He shook Raul's hand. There was little joy in this. But parents kept coming, countless hands were taken and compliments given.
Raul and Alec stood together regally receiving the line of well-wishers. The students' admiring eyes were the most satisfactory, but to see adults so respectful was joyous. They laughed within at their modestly gracious thank yous.
As the crowd thinned, they ran to the dressing rooms, taking off their make-up. Because of Raul's pleading, Miller allowed them to keep their costumes on. "You'll have to pay for them if you ruin them."
"Fred," Raul said, a leg thrust forward arrogantly, "I would no more tear these than I would my soul."
They were boisterous in the dressing room, arranging with the self-important, obese Black to be driven to the cast party. Raul was pleased that Black, usually so . arrogant, became servile with them. He turned away others, saving room for Alec and Raul in his car.
Capes billowing, boots resounding on the pavement, they went out into the black clear night. They lit cigarettes, Raul's parched, hungering throat mad for the taste. They rolled all the windows down to be in contact with the wild air, yelling at the top of their lungs.
Driving with blind reckless force, they tried to drown their energy in suicidal haste. Arriving at a fashionable East Side apartment house, they strutted in, full-blown from the vital air.
The noise of the party stopped, startled by their presence. They were surrounded, in moments, by people. Sandwiches and drinks paraded before them. Within ten minutes they were up in the emergency staircase smoking grass.
Soon they returned, delivering their obscure epigrammatic lines. Their parts were more than second natures now: they had replaced real life. No joy was insupportable or lasting, no sorrow withstood the degenerating process of dramatic self-pity. Only the exuberance and vitality of performance controlled them. Emotion became a ghost, called to life briefly, intensely, disappearing again to phantasm.
They exhausted themselves as degenerate artists, at once cruel, mocking, and whimsical of human convention. Proudly arrogant, they flaunted their talents before the audience of this world. Nothing could weaken their strength of unity in acting. They slept badly, ate worse, abusing and exploiting their bodies, but this seemed to add to their energy.
This climaxed their relationship, their superb coordination. Their arrogance and power did not arise from charlatanism, but from a firm belief in their own worth. Their lives, for them, were not mere lives, but history.
8
A marvelous purity descended upon Raul as he spent the days in his high-ceilinged scholarly room after the play was over. For the first time in quite a while he was not seized by intense longings for an answer, to create. He could—and he was amazed—find joy in simple occupation.
He slept peacefully, at a regular hour, eating well and spending his days reading and listening to music.
What are you doing? he was asked. I'm on vacation. The words were wondrously simple and true.
The two-week spring vacation had begun the day after the last performance. Alec had gone off somewhere, so the two didn't see each other.
Alec called after a week or so.
"Where are you?" Raul asked.
"Skiing."
"Ah, your first love. Well, not really. After theater and fucking."
"I'm only without one."
"Ah-hah! Who is she?"
"A
blonde named Carol."
"A blonde nymphomaniac, or just occasionally horny?"
"Can't tell. Has quite a talent, though."
"In what area?"
"Blowing."
Raul laughed. "A very rare area."
"Oh, that was awful." Alec laughed loudly. "You're obscene."
"I do it just to see how shocked people are. Any particular trait that is endearing, besides her body?"
"Her free use of it."
"Naturally."
"And an affection for lying naked and smoking grass."
"Hey, that's very charming."
"In a hotel room."
"The atmosphere is superb." Raul paused thoughtfully. "Quite good, really quite marvelous—I like the image."
"I knew you'd approve. What have you been doing?"
"Relaxing. I've never been so relaxed in my life."
"Good."
"I've been writing poetry."
"Really? Anything good?"
"My style's changed. It has become very simple. I mean that in a good sense—direct and charming. Yes, if I had to describe it, my poetry has become charming."
"I shall read it when I get home. What else?"
"Well, I've been doing a lot of reading. And I started reading Henry James."
"You're making me feel ashamed."
"What? You mean by my productivity?"
"Yes."
"That's silly. What you've done, you've done. Your activities' worth is concrete. Mine can only be judged by time, and even then the verdict will probably be ambiguous. I'll burn my poetry in a few months, and in a week or so I'll be criticizing James from head to foot and never read him again. As it is, I've become wary of him. This is the third, short story I've read that ends in a female suicide."
"Well, I must hang up—it's long distance."
"When will you be back?"
"In time for school. I'll see you in the theater Monday."
"Say hello to Carol, will you?"
School. For Raul, an important time of the year. The question of who was to get Iago for next year's production of Othello was paramount. What was paramount in the administration's mind was his making up of work. Unless Raul got rid of some of his incompletes, he would have to go to summer school. In an effort to keep promises, Miller directed Raul to Mr. Alexander. If Raul wanted to get in, he would have to make an appointment.
Raul was wary of a creative writing course, and he felt investigation was needed. Questioning Alec, he got a forceful response. "He's a brilliant man," Alec said. "Brilliant. I'll give you an example of how different he is from other teachers. He said to our class once that there were three beautiful things in life: poetry, love, and grass."
"I can't believe it. The middle one sounds too much like a love child. But the last one! In this school! I can't believe it."
"So you see what I mean?"
"Yeah, but that doesn't prove his brilliance."
Alec spoke on. How the class was unstructured: students read their writings and other students commented on them; of the man's gentleness and poetic nature; of his brilliance.
Raul's English teacher, Mr. Bowden, who, while teaching Catcher in the Rye, passed Raul's poetry around to the class, showed it to Mr. Alexander. Bowden reported back to Raul that Alexander was impressed by it.
"Maybe," Raul said to Alec about this, "I now have proof of his brilliance."
It was all very attractive to Raul. An informal class, group, of poets exchanging and discussing their work; and, despite his sarcasm, it seemed that he had the security of knowing that Alexander respected his talents.
Among the senior class there were no limits to the deference shown to this man. In his presence, one faced all that was immortal and poetic in this world. His room was hushed from the burden of his compassion for all of man's sufferings.
"He sounds a lot like Beckett," Raul commented to Alec. All this made the prospect of seeing him awesome. Raul decided he would put it off for a month or so.
And then Henderson resigned. He had been asked to serve, he explained to the students, in a manner that seemed false. It was preventing him from having what he both wished and felt necessary: greater contact with the student body.
The school was in an uproar. Over eighty per cent of the student body signed a petition to the trustees asking them to retain Henderson. It was clear, the petition read, that pressure had been put on Henderson to resign; it asked that such pressure be alleviated.
A representative group of students went down to the Board itself to present their views. In a week, the trustees and Henderson had come to an understanding. He was to remain, and another man would act for him in those duties that conflicted with his function at the school. Students breathed a sigh of relief.
Raul, after it was over, surprised Alec by saying, "It was a power play."
"You mean you think Henderson isn't sincere?"
"No, no. You have such a limited view of human affairs. I think Henderson got some sort of an ultimatum from the trustees. In order to show them the extent of his influence, he jumped the gun. Henderson knew the student response would be forceful, and he knew such a response would get him what he wanted much more quickly than any other means. He's sincere, but he's not averse to the reflected glory."
"I thought you were an idealist."
"Not about the bourgeoisie."
"You're middle class yourself."
"So much the more do I understand them."
"Touché!"
"My problem isn't that I'm middle class but that I'm a coward."
"Coward? What about?"
"I know exactly what bullshit this school is, but I'm scared to death of leaving it. My cutting is a half-assed way of doing it. My courage goes only so far as giving the school the initiative of getting me out of here."
"You keep changing your mind. I thought you wanted to stay."
Raul sighed. "Yes. I do want to stay."
Alec, as part of his Senior Project, took on the direction of the second-form play and became the stage manager for Iolanthe. Raul showed up at all the rehearsals and joined the stage crew to work on the production. He and Alec tried to remain inseparable, but it was hopeless to recreate the situation.
With Anita, Alec's mother, back, Raul went through the process of acceptance. She already credited him with being a remarkable talent in the theater, but Alec, eager to show him off, made Raul show her his poetry.
Impressed, and aware that this was a powerful influence on her son, she tried to feel out this unharnessed intelligence. Raul's peculiar communism ran up against the usual clichés. Her efforts in the thirties and forties, the progress made with blacks, her friends, and the wanton, superfluous violence of S.D.S. and the Panthers.
Raul began calmly, pointing out that, indeed, the violence of S.D.S. had never exceeded breaking a few windows, at great expense to their skulls. And as for the Panthers, the most they had ever been accused of was killing one of their own members; nothing, when compared to the numbers that died at the hands of the police. In any case, he said, over objections to that, any amount of violence on their part was not only justified but their duty.
There was no turning back after that point, and Raul had little patience when the obvious conclusions he drew from history were questioned. But they didn't really question his points, they questioned his methods. There must be something better than violence, they would say, we've had too much of that. Sweating, upset, and furious, he yelled that it was very simple to oppress and kill a race for hundreds of years and, when they turned an avenging fist, start talking about peaceful solutions. He walked out on both of them, his system in violent disorder.
He hated such talks. To what end was he speaking? He didn't hope, or believe, he could convince them. All it left behind was a bitterness and anger he didn't wish for or enjoy. That kind of violent accusation is better left for mass circulation: in speeches, where whole masses are moved to action. How worthless to say it to a fellow actor and his m
other. Pointless masturbation.
He was an artist, that was his duty. Politics is a pile of human excrement that, as Joyce put it, his soul would have to fly by. His mind needed to be free, not ensnared by partisan rhetoric.
Anita was redoubly impressed. The more articulate and passionate he proved himself to be, the more dangerous his influence.
Alec and Raul had never disagreed; over politics they fought for the first time. Alec, one night walking the dog with Raul, his parents away for the weekend at their country house, asked Raul to explain an action of S.D.S.'s. Raul disliked the position of having squeamishly to excuse an action; an action, not a revolutionary act, just a seizure of a building. To explain required wading through the quagmire of rhetoric. More angry at the words he had to choose, Raul bullied Alec.
"Don't try and convert me," Alec said angrily.
They separated not speaking to each other. Raul went home. He was amazed. Where had that comment come from? He had never spoken to Alec about politics before Alec's mother came home. That was the answer. Suddenly he found himself in a position that Alec's mother had defined for him. In a minute or so he called Alec.
"I was going to call you," Alec said.
"I'm sor…"
"Let's forget it. We're both sorry."
"Yeah, I mean I didn't mean to… Look, let's not talk about politics any more. I hate it, I've told you I hate it, so don't ask me to any more."
"I wanted Mother to hear what you had to say, and after that, I was interested, you know? Well, let's forget it. You wanna come over and smoke?"
"Baby, I never turn down the grass."
Anita had forbidden Alec to have anyone at the house while they were away on weekends. Alec, of course, paid no attention to the rule. But since Alec had a neighbor who, by his mother's request, would come and check on him, a system had to be created.
At the slightest noise, Raul would leap into Alec's closet, hiding there until the danger passed. Alec's door stayed shut, so none of the grass' odor penetrated the other rooms, and a strict watch on noise and incense was maintained. Record player and all other noise ceased on the ring of the telephone, Alec being, of course, the only one to pick it up. Going in and out of the apartment, Alec would look ahead to see if the neighbor's door was shut.
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