Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

Is a painter and Mr. Knight is a magician.

  I’m nobody in particular, but Charles

  Always invites me because he knows how much

  I like to meet his interesting friends.

  Won’t you sit down? How old are you, Raymond?

  RAYMOND:

  Nineteen.

  MAX:

  Happy Birthday! (Pause.)

  RAYMOND:

  I don’t know what you mean by that. My birthday

  Is not until October twenty-first.

  MAX:

  No please don’t spoil the party; we were told

  This was your birthday. We’re all here today

  To drink your health. Many happy returns!

  (MAX has by this time opened the wine, poured it, and offered glasses to MRS. CRANE and RAYMOND, at the end of the speech. He now takes a glass to KNIGHT, who refuses it.)

  RAYMOND:

  Who told you it was my birthday? Was it Charles?

  MRS. C.:

  Yes, but good heavens, we should know his tricks by now.

  We can all have a glass of wine at any rate

  (With not altogether forced sentiment.)

  And drink to your birthday on October twenty-first

  And to all birthdays in an aging world.

  That’s all one ever drinks to.

  RAYMOND (who does not drink):

  Who is Charles?

  MAX:

  Charles is the most wonderful person in the world.

  He’s simply rather hard to understand.

  To your health, Raymond.

  (Drinks.)

  RAYMOND:

  But who is he, what does he do?

  KNIGHT:

  I am obliged to intervene.

  Now really, Max, you can be dreadfully gauche.

  Today is your birthday in the sense that every day

  Is a birthday, every minute the minute of one’s birth.

  You have been asked here, this celebration has been arranged,

  Only that you may begin to realize this.

  RAYMOND:

  Thank you for being so explicit.

  KNIGHT:

  I cannot speak plainly to you: I cannot speak plainly

  To myself.

  MRS. C.:

  I can speak plainly, Raymond. Today

  Is your birthday. You must accept that to begin with.

  Everything that we may say …

  RAYMOND:

  But it’s not true.

  My birthday’s not today.

  MRS. C.:

  Please let me finish.

  Everything that we may say this afternoon

  Is of the greatest importance. We are here

  Because we are all so deeply involved in you.

  Do you understand, will you take my word for it?

  RAYMOND (indicating them all):

  Who are you?

  MAX:

  We are you. (Pause.) I hope you’re not disappointed.

  (Before RAYMOND can speak, KNIGHT begins.)

  KNIGHT:

  Raymond, have you ever traveled on the sea?

  RAYMOND:

  I think we went to Europe when I was nine.

  KNIGHT:

  The waters are of different colors; the shallows

  Pink and green where the reefs are and fish look

  Like colored advertisements; where the ocean is grey,

  Grey-black, fish lunge like weapons; but far out

  In the purple Gulf Stream, blue, it is as though

  One were pulling up a cluster of angels seen

  Through the reverse end of a telescope.

  Sailors, too, with their sense of stylization,

  Tattoo blue hips on their arms, rococo veins,

  Calling them images of the sea. There are

  Innumerable relations, all quite useless.

  A drop of human blood, as you will remember,

  In chemical proportion is equivalent

  To simple seawater.

  MAX:

  That will be my next painting.

  RAYMOND:

  You were explaining why I should be here.

  KNIGHT:

  I was explaining nothing, nothing. Communication

  Is a peeling leprosy. I was speaking of the sea.

  MAX:

  Isn’t it splendid? I told you it would be.

  MRS. C:

  Raymond, listen to me.

  RAYMOND:

  What is it now?

  MRS. C.:

  What are your memories? I always feel

  A person is what he remembers. We

  Must know who you are. Tell us about yourself.

  RAYMOND:

  There’s not too much. I like to go horseback riding.

  My father always laughed when I fell off.

  (He is embarrassed.)

  When I was a child I walked between two hedges,

  It was late September and there had been a frost,

  I remember finding a robin’s egg in the grass

  And picking it up. But when I turned it over

  The bird’s foot was sticking through the shell.

  It was all frozen, of course. I don’t know why

  I bother to tell you, except that I’ve never forgotten it.

  MRS. C.:

  My poor child.

  RAYMOND:

  There was one room in our house

  I never saw. It was just an empty room.

  My cousin went inside and laughed at me

  Because I was afraid. I hadn’t been afraid,

  I simply didn’t want to go inside.

  But I threw a chestnut once and broke the window.

  MRS. C:

  My poor child. Raymond, listen to me.

  RAYMOND:

  Yes.

  MRS. C.:

  Raymond, this is the hour of your birth. (Pause.)

  I am your mother. (She rises.)

  RAYMOND (rising angrily):

  This is quite enough.

  I’ve tried to humor you all with a great deal of patience,

  And I don’t know whether or not you are being amusing

  And I may be gullible but really—Good afternoon.

  (He goes to the door; it is locked; he is a little frightened now.)

  This is no longer a joke. Will you please let me out?

  MAX:

  (After an exchange of glances, rises, crosses to him.)

  Charles always locks the door. You’ve scarcely arrived

  And you haven’t even touched your glass of wine.

  Charles will let you go shortly, but not yet.

  Resign yourself to that. Now just sit down.

  Perhaps you would like to see my watercolors.

  This is the best one, Helen with her mouth open.

  Are you fond of painting at all? Oh, forgive us,

  We must be annoying you dreadfully, but truly

  We are sane, normal people, differing from you

  Only in point of view. You must talk with us.

  If you don’t it will be very difficult.

  MRS. C:

  How shall we speak to each other if you will not listen?

  KNIGHT (softly to Max):

  Baudelaire’s mother, I believe, used those same words.

  MAX (aloud):

  I resent the implication that Mrs. Crane

  In any way resembles Baudelaire’s mother.

  MRS. C.:

  Max, please go on.

  MAX (to RAYMOND):

  No matter how little you speak,

  How little you believe, you must listen. Mrs. Crane

  Has already told you what she means to you.

  Let me tell you about myself: I am a painter,

  And Charles thinks you will become a lot like me.

  Heaven knows, it’s confusing enough to me.

  It appears that you will more or less somehow share

  My reactions to the world, to people and scenes

  And things. Perhaps if I tell y
ou what I’m like

  It may grow clearer. I am, people tell me,

  Supposed to be very naive. Actually,

  I’m rather proud of that. My paintings show it

  And all my teachers have told me I should never

  Be afraid of my simplicity. I think

  The really brilliant people never think.

  I wish I might have been the one to find

  That robin’s egg of yours. Please have some wine,

  Or hold your glass at least; I’m beginning to feel

  Somewhat foolish talking to you while you just sit there.

  (RAYMOND rather condescendingly takes his glass and sips.)

  Ah, that’s so much better. Tell me, is there a chance

  Of your believing anything we say?

  RAYMOND:

  I’m afraid not. It’s rather amusing however.

  Since you won’t let me go, there’s nothing else I can do.

  Keep on talking if you like.

  (He rises, while listening to MAX, and wanders with more assurance around the room, glancing unappreciatively at the Nativity on the wall.)

  MAX:

  Mrs. Crane is your mother. I am what you shall be.

  It’s hard to say these things in simple words.

  I don’t mean, of course, that Mrs. Crane will raise you

  From an actual childhood—it’s beyond that; or that I

  Shall die so that you may become the person I am.

  RAYMOND:

  Well, that makes it convenient for both of us.

  MAX:

  You are arrogant; you lose so much by assurance.

  MRS. C.:

  How shall we speak of goodness or achievement

  If you will mock us? The world does not last forever.

  (KNIGHT has risen, and with an effort begins to speak.)

  KNIGHT:

  There are as many worlds as cells in the body. They are

  Evolving continually: the falling of your hand

  Is the birth of a universe, the smile on your face

  Is the curtain lowering on one brief world

  We might perhaps have shared, or two or three perhaps.

  (He stops with a gesture of hopelessness, a kind of anguish?)

  RAYMOND:

  Are you ill?

  KNIGHT:

  There is a possibility

  That I am very ill.

  MRS. C.:

  Raymond, sit down. You must be very careful.

  Sit down with me. What is happening now has nothing

  To do with us. You have no choice.… We are here

  Like godmothers in a fairy tale.

  MAX (warningly):

  Mrs. Crane …

  (KNIGHT at last takes up his glass. RAYMOND watches him with interest)

  KNIGHT:

  Allow me to propose a toast to the organs of the body.

  I raise my cup to the hand, the hip and the collarbone.

  To the health of the wrist, breast and ankle who have served us so well!

  I salute the mouth and the muddy city in the eye …

  They have remained our close friends.

  For you may protest until your eyes are coppered

  That what is behind the face, behind the breast,

  Surpasses nerve and muscle, but you shall never see it

  Except in the mouth’s corners and in the wandering eye.

  I would deny profundity and choose to be faithful,

  As long as I shall desire faith, to this unbelievable,

  Most impermanent superficiality.

  The body is the most difficult thing there is

  But the world has discovered a means of dealing with it.

  If one should wish to suppose the existence of a will,

  Of a language—as in the past men supposed God—

  We should all grow quickly into monsters and rebuke

  The air, the rainwater that separates my house

  From your house, and realize that what is spoken

  Directly behind these fabulous eyeballs is this:

  That we are unhappy, uncertain, unable to perfect

  A single moment, word or smile. Something

  Is eternally thrust in; eternally not yet—

  That is the only serpent in the garden

  And the only angel in hell.

  RAYMOND:

  Who are you?

  KNIGHT:

  I am the person you will always love.

  MRS. C. (deeply concerned):

  Good God, it’s worse than the Pied Piper! Max,

  Don’t laugh. There isn’t much time left.

  Oh, it’s preposterous.

  (She has risen, moved to the window; she lights a cigarette.)

  MAX:

  Please, Mrs. Crane; everything will be all right.

  (Turning now to RAYMOND.)

  Let me tell you a story, Raymond, about a child—

  ho was myself, of course—who dreamed of painting

  A world existing only in his heart.

  My father said, “You have never seen this world.

  Why should you paint it?” But I had seen that world,

  A world of beckoning hands, plants, animals

  Parading in the brilliant corridor

  Beyond the eye. I think it was a dream.

  But I had entered it; I am in it now.

  I painted it and that was how I came

  To enter it. In it I found my Helen—

  You saw her portrait among the orange trees …

  But what I mean is that I found this world

  Because I risked it, as one takes a chance

  And throws a chestnut at a secret window

  And breaks the window. There’s nothing else to say.

  You, who have risked nothing, have not yet

  Found your proper countryside. It is my hope,

  The hope of all of us, that you may find it here

  Or privately, where you found your robin’s egg.

  Perhaps you understand …?

  RAYMOND:

  And you are?

  MAX:

  I am the person you will always be.

  MRS. C. (advancing):

  Raymond, my world is not a difficult one.

  I mean, not difficult to understand

  But a costly world to enter. A world of goodness,

  Courage and love, where all activity

  Exists like an accommodation of virtue,

  Like a mirror that is not vanity. To stand

  Watching one’s hand in sunlight, the face of one’s sweetheart

  Laughing in a warm climate; to watch the sea

  And the changing colors and bright fish that are

  So bright, so beguiling—these become different things,

  Of small importance in themselves, except

  In the honest structure of a human world.

  For a man must be above the things he sees

  And snap his fingers at them, and recognize

  That they are good only if he is more so.

  I sound as if I were preaching, and I’m sorry

  That you should have to think of me this way.

  I’m not a saintly woman; I am a mother,

  And I understand the problems of my

  sons Because they are my sons. I don’t like pride

  But I am proud in some ways of my life.

  It is a life I will gladly help you live

  With all the blessings and guidance I can give.

  RAYMOND:

  And you, as you said, are my mother?

  MRS. C.:

  No.

  I am the person you will always remember.

  (Pause. RAYMOND is nearly convinced. Nobody moves. At last MRS. CRANE takes a step towards him. He backs away from her.)

  RAYMOND:

  I don’t accept it. It’s humiliating; it’s vulgar—

  I doubt if you even know what I mean. I have

  A mother; I’ve already fallen in love.
/>   Listening to these cheap arguments I blushed

  And blushed again that I should have to blush.

  Where is Charles? I want to go home now.

  MRS. C.:

  What you mean, my dear, is that it’s sudden, isn’t it?

  It takes only a moment for a life to change

  But hours of preparation must come before.

  RAYMOND:

  You talk like one who has never lived, as though

  The things you know and the things you believe

  Are somehow different.

  MAX:

  Perhaps you mean

  We’ve been a trifle blunt? How could we have been

  Less so in the brief time we were allotted?

  There are some others beside you, you understand.

  RAYMOND:

  I understand nothing, not even your audacity.

  KNIGHT:

  Perhaps you deplore the obvious symbolism

  Of the red walls, that tactless Madonna and Child

  Above the sofa, the congratulatory wine?

  They make me shudder too. You feel perhaps

  Our words are in bad taste and I agree.

  MRS. C.:

  We may have said things you already know,

  Which is unpardonable; but one forgets

  The importance of things already known.

  KNIGHT:

  Or else you have guessed that we are here, in part,

  As elaborate temptations to accept a point of view

  That is, after all, only a point of view.

  Our language crumbles, our makeshift masks betray us.

  It is all an artifice—that is what makes it valid.

  MAX:

  Perhaps it’s us that anger you? You wonder

  Why we were chosen. Oh, we’re not so bad.

  Mrs. Crane is an angel compared with our other mothers,

  And you should see who you nearly got instead of me.