I cannot make this sound as if it happened.
He was passing us by, keeping to the water’s edge. He was clearly heading nowhere—hadn’t he become his destination? (But 50 yards more & he would hit the path to the slaughterhouse.)
I felt my eyes sting—L. at Epidauros, surprised by the turn of events. I ran down the gangplank, caught up with him, could not speak, took his arm, & led him onto the caïque.
The dimness under the awning dazed him, otherwise he was in complete possession of himself. Even with my beard he had known me. I turned to him now, arms open. We said each other’s names & embraced.
“This is what I meant in my letter,” he said, stepping back, hands still on my shoulders. “What I have wanted & never had from you.”
I turned away confused.
Part of me is still glowing with pleasure at those words. Part of me is still running away from them.
He was still Orson, in any case. In a moment he too had turned & was replying to the N.’s offers of rest, refreshment, medication in his familiar “teacher’s” voice—the voice that says, “I understand these things far better than you. They are useful but irrelevant.” Mrs N. made him accept a glass of cognac. He sipped it & set it down. Then Mr N. took him below to bathe his face. Out of sight, Orson could be heard suddenly exclaiming, “But, pardon me, haven’t we met before? Long ago, wasn’t it you who, etc.”—in tones of amazed discovery, & Mr. N.’s replies, too melodious to make out, until a door clicked shut.
Mrs N. went to the rail & said something into the crowd below. Several boys made a dash for the café. Whoever got there 1st, it was George who returned carrying O.’s knapsack. He stood at the top of the gangplank, holding it. Mrs N. thanked him & asked him to put it down. I forget what distracted her; when she looked again he was still there, radiantly waiting, so she thanked him again & he went away.
They were going to take Orson to Athens. Good.
Before she could include me in the assumption, I approached Mrs N. & said I would have to leave them now. I held out my hand. Like an automaton’s hers rose, hesitated, came to rest in mine.
I’ve promised to call on her in Athens this week. She absolutely did not understand. But then, to do justice to the moment, neither did I.
I went up into the hills behind the town. I climbed & climbed, stumbling, not stopping, wanting to think. I felt excited and confused over the way I was acting.
I saw at least how little any of it had been my doing—for better or worse. Orson hadn’t known I was on Diblos. No one had drawn him here but himself, his life. Betrayal & rejection are what he has always needed in his dealings with people. When Dora didn’t answer his letters, what could he do but seek satisfaction at her son’s hands? He hadn’t deserved his whipping, rather he had all but made it happen, acting, as he had, in good faith as in bad taste, out of his own blind hopeless allegiance to this country of his dreams. And he had carried it off, made it seem like justice. Even I, in the notebook’s blackest depths, would never have dared to construct such a denouement—coincidence, melodrama, every earmark of life’s (the rival’s) style. Il miglior fabbro!
How not to admit admire
How not to envy him the total experience? With courage or cunning or luck he had paid
O. had found a currency in which to pay the full price for what he believed. His view of things, his “tragic” view, would never be wholly an illusion, once having interlocked so perfectly with his suffering. I ought to have felt by contrast as I did when the Army rejected me, or like the saints who died painlessly in bed, not complaining really, only whispering the dry fact that they hadn’t been found worthy of the martyr’s crown.
Instead, I kept breaking into smiles—of pure aesthetic pleasure? Not entirely. I had been part of it. I had even paid a little price of my own: that of “missing” Lucine. Missing her, as Mrs N. had implied, by sitting here, doing whatever I was doing. Missing in her something I could or should have had, or have wanted at least enough to go after. What I hadn’t missed by sitting on Diblos was my moment with Orson. All of it—the running after him, & his words, his hand on my shoulder; and the running away, while my heart was still full.
I still feel somewhat as if I had brought off a little raid on life, & escaped with my treasure intact.
I had reached the hilltop with its white chapel, door & window sliced out of unbaked meringue, a baby’s confection—yet wholly itself, an innocent, arbitrary shape. I sat in the white shade, sweating, looking back. The wind blew. There below, at different points round the lagoon, were all my landmarks. I felt light & happy, & at rest.
I let the day’s events play themselves once more in my head. As they did, I had a sense of other, less personal elements, beauty, joy, truth, splendor—things ideas all whose ebbing over the years had been so gradual that I’d never registered it—flowing back now to their place at the heart of the scene, pure & compelling. In their light, Byron himself seemed not so much a spiteful neurotic as a proud
B. himself, in their light, stood forth in dark, glowing colors, velvet & gold braid, & dagger handle flashing—a costume from the vendetta country of Crete or the Mani. Banked like a coal, his pride had burst into flame at last. He raised
In my head he raised his beautiful clenched hand. The riding crop descended, once, twice, again, upon my
once, twice, again, inscribed its madder penstroke upon my brother’s face, at the tempo of a slowly pounding tempo of a giant’s drugged pulse—
of the dolphin’s progress through glittering foam
at the tempo of those 3 blows whereupon the curtain of the Comédie rises to reveal, as foreseen, that universe of classical unity whose suns blaze & seas glitter & whose every action however brutal is nobly, inflexibly ordered & the best of each of us steps forth in his profound dark spotlight with poetry on his lips.
Had anyone discovered me up there, I would have been caught in flagrante with a myth-making apparatus every bit as vigorous as O.’s & probably a trifle more depraved. I come back today to how little I cared for him, how much for the idea of him.
Today I tend, in my better moments, toward chagrin & scruple. That orgy must never be repeated!—as with a moistened cloth I dab primly at my mind, where there are telltale stains.
There is evidently no excuse for my having left the caïque.
From my vantage I could watch it sail. I walked down the hill & began to pack.
6.viii.61
My last day. Tonight I shall be in Athens. Tomorrow I’ll make peace with Orson. I’ve got to, I want to, before sailing home.
It has all been at one remove anyhow. Has the time come to tackle the Houston novel?
George looked in this morning. “You no go caïque? Why?”
“I go vapóri. Today.”
Again: “Why?” The palm turned out & up as if to catch a grapefruit from above, the face blindly smiling, shaken from side to side—I shall miss the Greek “Why?”
I’d left out the blue slacks he liked, & gave them to him. He printed his name & address for me. “Good my friend,” he said, leaving.
I have made peace with Chryssoula, too. We have held each other, foreheads touching sadly, reflectively. My photograph is tucked facedown in her brassiere. A young Englishman has arrived with whom she can laugh tomorrow. She will find a present under my pillow—some money & a little flagon of perfume.
(While in Italy Dora & Orestes & Sandy can stop in Urbino to see the Piero Flagellation which O. has greatly admired in black & white.)
Orestes’ disappointment was keen to discover that the punishment of the god, for all its monumental aspect in reproduction, was in fact quite small, and unexpectedly subtly, vividly colored.
I must be mad. I’ve given up this novel.
“The only solution is to be very, very intelligent.” Intelligence, it is implied, will dissimulate itself, will lose itself in simplicity. By the same token, any extended show of Mind may be taken as the work of some final naïveté.
&n
bsp; On deck. We have sailed past the House. The Sleeping Woman has veered & reshifted into new, nonrepresentational masses. Diblos lies far astern. Here is the open water. A sun preparing to sink. Other islands.
*far from mortal—here’s my mistake. My Dialogue pits 2 dreams against each other, instead of living antagonists. Life, Art—they are words. It’s on a lower level that the mongoose closes with the cobra. In a footnote. In the dust.
THE PLAYS
THE BIRTHDAY
A PLAY IN VERSE
(1947)
Characters
Charles, the host
Mrs. Crane, the mother
Max, the innocent
Mr. Knight, the wizard
Raymond
(Scene: Charles’ living room. Six o’clock in the afternoon.)
PROLOGUE
(CHARLES appears before the curtain.)
CHARLES:
Ladies and gentleman: this is a play about birth.
(Scene: A pleasant living room whose chief feature is red walls, arranged with a neatness that can mean only a party; it is furnished in no particular period but with good taste. There is a low sofa between the door, R, and window, L, concealed by Venetian blinds. In front of the sofa there is a low table with a bottle of wine and four glasses. There may be flowers in the room, a few books, and a Nativity—preferably Picasso’s Mother and Child—above the sofa facing the audience.)
(As the curtain rises, MRS. CRANE, the first guest, is seated alone on the sofa; she is poised and congenial, on the brink of fifty. She rises, wanders about, inspects her makeup, fingernails, hair, and returns to the sofa at last as CHARLES enters, ushering in two more guests: MAX, the primitive painter, somewhat carelessly dressed, extremely young in appearance, carrying a portfolio; and MR. KNIGHT, slightly past thirty, but also with an unusually young, though tired, expression. CHARLES himself looks uncomfortably like a man of distinction. In his first speech, he speaks as much to the audience as to any of the actors.)
CHARLES:
I believe you all know one another. Mrs. Crane,
Our leading lady for the afternoon,
Who always makes these gatherings so pleasant.
My good friend Max, who not only paints à ravir
But to my knowledge has no surname. And Mr. Knight.
Mr. Knight is a wizard; indeed, we are all wizards—
My dear Mrs. Crane, my good Max, you are wizards also,
And perhaps more fortunate in that you are
Comparatively unaware of your powers.
MAX:
Charles is the most embarrassing person I know.
MRS. C.:
It has been quite a while since I was here last, Charles,
And I shan’t say you should entertain more often—
I know you give your parties constantly
And I suppose it’s just as well I stay away
Occasionally—but really you might have asked me
Before you changed this room. I scarcely know it.
CHARLES:
You dislike it, of course?
MRS. C.:
Oh, no, except for the walls
Which make me think of …
MAX:
… Of the inside of the mouth!
Exactly! Oh I like them enormously now.
That red is exactly like the inside of the mouth.
You know, Charles, I have just discovered the mouth.
And I spent all of the past week painting Helen
With her mouth open and a background of orange trees.
I brought some sketches with me.
(He unfastens portfolio.)
Look at this one.
MRS. C.:
Gracious, what splendid teeth! You do have talent.
Don’t you agree, he has talent, Mr. Knight?
MAX:
I believe in painting only what I see.
Perhaps in these I have tried to be too precise.
MRS. C.:
But Max, they are lovely.
KNIGHT:
And it is precisely
This precision of yours, this splendid confidence
In your own eye, that makes your paintings good
And in the bargain unbelievable.
A painting is to the face it transforms as a balloon
Is to the hand that holds the string. The worthiness
Of art exists in this tenuous relation.
This will never disturb Max, he is a painter;
But you, Mrs. Crane, and Charles, and I, we are all
Doomed to walk the battlements of the abstract.
MRS. C.:
I’m sure you exaggerate. Who is coming today, Charles?
CHARLES:
He should be here any minute. His name is Raymond.
And allow me to express once more my wishes
As to your attitudes. There must be no argument
Among yourselves; for everything that takes place
Must happen through him, as actors assume credit
For the dazzling lines they speak. You have all attended
Enough of these parties to guess their limitations
That, once imposed, like masks, are not discarded
Till the play ends, sometimes not even then.
Remember also that he is not a wizard.
The single purpose of this celebration
Is that Raymond meet you and opaquely gather
Your more than luminous importance. You know—
Give him a cigarette, a glass of wine;
Ask him your riddles: What is your home town?
How old are you? Were you a happy child?
He’s not, however, applying for a job.
I’ll fetch him now. Let me wish you in advance
A congenial hour. (Exit.)
MAX:
It always has such a flavor of excitement.
Charles should have been a seventeenth-century king.
MRS. C.:
The glamour wore off rather suddenly for me.
I don’t mind admitting the only reason I come
Is from a sense of obligation to Charles.
KNIGHT:
Obligation, indeed! You deceive yourself, Mrs. Crane.
MRS. C.:
That is why I am here. If anyone is deceiving …
I should like just once, however, to be absent.
We might as well, for that matter, be puppets
Or wooden ducks on a lake that might be real.
KNIGHT:
Though you will never stay away, if once you should keep
From coming when Charles needs you, it would be
Impossible to estimate the confusion
And helplessness and anguish of our guest.
MRS. C.:
Are you trying to be clever?
KNIGHT:
No.
MRS. C.:
Thank you.
MAX:
Do you mean to say you don’t like these afternoons?
It’s funny, but there’s nothing I enjoy
As much as being here. As a little boy
I sailed in a glass-bottomed boat. There were circus tunes
Across the water. I always think of them here.
KNIGHT:
This is because you are the spirit of change.
I am Heraclitus barefoot in the streams,
But you are the flattered current. I do not see change,
I create it. I do not see it because,
Like music to a deaf man, it is all
I can believe. Therefore when I come here …
When I come here, I come with a single promise.
I swear that in this room I will not explain
Myself, I will not analyze, I will
Not even speak. Once here, I am made to speak,
I am made to reveal.
(He has risen in agitation.)
MRS. C.:
But you are the wizard, Charles said.
KNIGHT:
&
nbsp; That, like change, is what I cannot bear.
How dare we wear these masks before we accept
What we are masking!
MAX:
I hear them coming. Sit down.
KNIGHT:
I will not speak.
MAX:
So fascinating!
MRS. C.:
I feel
So sorry for them, they could be my own children.
(Enter CHARLES with RAYMOND, a young man rather ill at ease.)
CHARLES:
Raymond, I should like you to meet Mrs. Crane,
Max …
MAX:
I have no last name.
CHARLES:
… And Mr. Knight.
(MRS. CRANE and MAX shake hands with RAYMOND. There is a pause before KNIGHT rises, crosses, shakes hands and speaks.)
KNIGHT:
I am very pleased to meet you, Raymond.
CHARLES:
I hope you don’t mind if I leave you now.
I will see you later, Raymond, I am sure.
RAYMOND:
Would you mind before you go telling me what …?
CHARLES:
You will have to excuse me now. (Exit.)
MRS. C.:
You will have to excuse Charles. He’s so often that way.
I don’t suppose you’ve known him very long;
Tell me, where did you meet him?
RAYMOND:
We shared a taxi.
MAX (to KNIGHT):
I’ll never get over being amazed at Charles.
MRS. C.:
Charles always meets such interesting people.
I don’t know what you do, of course, but Max
Collected Novels and Plays Page 44