Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  (Turns to go.)

  AURORA:

  Oh wait! Please!

  LAOMEDON:

  I have nothing to say to you.

  AURORA:

  No, it’s not that! Oh, please—

  (To TITHONUS.)

  Darling, I’m frightened. You said something just now …. Darling, there’s nothing in it about not growing old!

  TITHONUS (not understanding):

  What?

  AURORA:

  Perhaps it doesn’t matter. I hope it doesn’t matter, but—you know, you won’t stay young. You’ll never die, but—well, you’ll grow old, naturally, the way people do.

  MRS. MALLOW (to herself):

  Yes.

  TITHONUS (aghast):

  But that’s the whole point!

  AURORA:

  You didn’t ask for that! You never said you wanted to stay young!

  TITHONUS:

  Then you’ve never understood!

  AURORA:

  You never bothered to explain!

  TITHONUS:

  I knew it was too simple! I said so, didn’t I? But you smiled and—You can have it changed, you can ask again!

  AURORA:

  No … I’m afraid not ….

  TITHONUS:

  But you must!

  AURORA:

  I can’t. Once only ….

  TITHONUS:

  But what will become of me?

  AURORA:

  Oh my dearest, my only love—what can I say? That it’s my fault—does that help? It’s a terrible thing, I suppose, but it doesn’t change us! I don’t see that it does! I’m yours, entirely, eternally ….

  TITHONUS:

  Don’t say that! Think what I’ll be in—Oh God, less than a hundred years! A horrible old man, drooling, deaf!

  AURORA:

  You needn’t be! I’ve seen some very beautiful old men!

  TITHONUS:

  But I will be! And you won’t love me then—wait and see!

  AURORA:

  I’ll love you always, I think.

  TITHONUS:

  Ah, now you’re thinking! It’s high time.

  AURORA:

  My youth, when your own is gone, shall be yours—not yours, but at your disposal. Till the end of time.

  TITHONUS (closing his eyes):

  And there is no end ….

  MRS. MALLOW:

  It may be only the threat of dying presses us to live, and he is luckier than he knows.

  AURORA:

  How?

  MRS. MALLOW:

  Old age is a kind of death, Aurora. It may be one will do as well as the other.

  (TITHONUS turns to her for comfort, like a child. She strokes his hair.)

  Ah but Tithonus, what you have feared is not death so much as—

  AURORA (wonderingly):

  Life! Fear life? But one’s not meant to do that!

  (With a new tenderness.)

  Tithonus!

  TITHONUS:

  Let me be!

  AURORA:

  I want to come close to you. You asked me to come to you suffering—I’m suffering now. Something hurts, here …. Try to imagine how I feel, knowing what I’ve done.

  TITHONUS:

  You’ve never felt anything but sunlight and pleasure! I have to be by myself now. Can’t you understand even that?

  AURORA:

  Ah don’t!

  TITHONUS (through his teeth):

  I’ll be back. Don’t forget, we have an eternity ahead of us, all to ourselves!

  (He starts out. But the GARDENER enters with an armful of mistletoe.)

  GARDENER:

  Here you are, Sir, look! That tree will live forever now, just like you, Miss, and the young—

  (He falls silent. TITHONUS snatches the mistletoe from him and goes out. A long pause. AURORA is weeping silently. LAOMEDON and MRS. MALLOW turn to go.)

  AURORA (suddenly looking at her hands, puzzled):

  What is it? My eyes are full of water!

  LAOMEDON:

  Those are tears, Aurora.

  ACT TWO

  (Russia, 1894. A grove on the slope of a mountain, A tree stump, scattered leaves. It is a lovely afternoon in early autumn.)

  (TITHONUS, nearly sixty, sits at an easel, painting. His clothes suggest the dilettante rather than the bohemian. Laughter offstage. Enter the young lovers, FANYA followed by KONSTANTIN, The latter carries a rug and a large picnic basket. They do not at first see TITHONUS.)

  KONSTANTIN:

  Laugh all you wish, and run, but I am carrying this basket. Can we Russians go nowhere without a samovar? In ten years I shall have instigated reforms. Tea will be drunk only in the parlor.

  FANYA:

  But let us stop here then! I’m overheated myself, and here there’s a breeze ….

  (Konstantin puts down his burden and embraces her.)

  Kostya, Kostya. Where is Olga Vassilyevna? Can we have left her so far behind?

  KONSTANTIN:

  Don’t think of her. Fanya, my soul, my life!

  FANYA:

  Sick people have such a power. I’d be afraid not to obey her.

  KONSTANTIN:

  Come!

  FANYA:

  She will tell Mamma we ran away together.

  KONSTANTIN:

  That will be my first reform—the abolition of the chaperon. They’ll be herded out in their black dresses and shot like turkeys, if they don’t recant.

  FANYA:

  You’re terrible!

  KONSTANTIN:

  So come with me! We’ll leave the basket in this clearing, where she will be sure to stumble on it. She’ll decide we’ve gone only a bit farther, to look at the view.

  FANYA:

  You know we can’t!

  KONSTANTIN:

  Fanya, she refuses to acknowledge her illness, and you’ve seen how it vexes her whenever we do. Come! She will want to doze off after her climb, like any self-respecting person. While

  “Deep in the greenwood who shall spy

  Where I and my beloved lie,

  Unless the nightingale—”

  FANYA:

  The wood isn’t green. Why aren’t you silly more often?

  KONSTANTIN:

  I? Silly?

  FANYA:

  The nightingales have gone.

  KONSTANTIN:

  They have flown into your throat and make their music there.

  FANYA (seeing TITHONUS):

  Oh! We didn’t know—

  (As TITHONUS does not respond, she exchanges a look of pulled amusement with KONSTANTIN, then moves forward gaily into TITHONUS’s line of vision.)

  Forgive us, please, for interrupting your work.

  TITHONUS:

  Not at all, Mademoiselle, I stopped listening almost at once.

  FANYA:

  You are an artist!

  KONSTANTIN:

  Fanya Alexandrovna, let us move on. We are intruding upon a rich mind at work.

  FANYA:

  I am passionately fond of nature. What a satisfaction for you! And what application! Did you climb from the village? Think, Kostya, isn’t it inspiring? I must find out from Nurse what became of my sketch-book. I remember doing some rather pretty things, even last year. But now ….

  KONSTANTIN:

  Now you are busy with clothes and carriage rides.

  FANYA:

  And with you, Kostya, with you! But when we are married I shall do a watercolor every day!

  (To TITHONUS.)

  Imagine, we are to be married next year! Mamma thinks I am too young. I can’t agree with her, and yet I don’t mind waiting. I am so happy! If you knew him as I do—!

  KONSTANTIN:

  There are few who would have her patience in that respect. Come, Fanya.

  (In an undertone.)

  Do try to avoid subjects you know nothing about.

  (To TITHONUS.)

  Good day, Sir.

  TITHONUS:

  Good day
.

  FANYA:

  But we haven’t seen his painting!

  KONSTANTIN:

  Whoever told you that he wanted us to see it?

  FANYA:

  Ah, you don’t understand artists! It used to give me extreme pleasure to have somebody look over my shoulder.

  (To TITHONUS.)

  Mayn’t we see it?

  (TITHONUS gestures indifferently that they may, and they do.)

  What exquisite colors! Oh, it’s much better than mine!

  KONSTANTIN:

  Have you given it a title?

  TITHONUS:

  Not really. As you see, it’s no more than a view of the village.

  KONSTANTIN:

  Ah! That’s the village down in there ….?

  FANYA:

  Of course that’s the village! Kostya, I’m ashamed of you.

  KONSTANTIN:

  You must understand I know nothing about painting. I should never have thought that was the village, though.

  TITHONUS:

  The village seen through leaves.

  KONSTANTIN: Interesting ….

  FANYA:

  Well, I think it’s truly lovely.

  TITHONUS:

  I don’t ask for flattery.

  FANYA:

  No, it is!

  KONSTANTIN:

  Can you tell me your purpose in painting such a picture?

  TITHONUS:

  My purpose? All the young men are talking about purpose nowadays. It may be I did so myself as a young man, but I have forgotten. Yes. And having forgotten, I cannot regret. I am what I am, and it is soothing to know that. The pain that comes from wishing to be what we are not! As for this picture, I’m afraid I had no purpose. Is that old-fashioned of me?

  KONSTANTIN:

  Far from it, unfortunately. Yet it’s curious. Here you have given yourself the bother of a long climb, with your easel on your back—in order to paint the village. And look! The village has vanished! There are only the dimmest traces left on your canvas—a few odd shapes, a few drab colors, like a village destroyed by fire, seen a week later, through a mass of red-gold foliage ….

  TITHONUS:

  Perhaps my purpose was precisely that.

  KONSTANTIN:

  But why, then?

  TITHONUS:

  I don’t understand you.

  FANYA:

  Neither do I!

  KONSTANTIN:

  The village is real! There is an inn and a blacksmith, there are dogs, men, living, dying! All this is hidden away—behind leaves!

  TITHONUS:

  The leaves are real as well.

  KONSTANTIN (shouting):

  Very good! Paint leaves then!

  FANYA:

  Kostya!

  KONSTANTIN:

  Excuse me. I don’t like to see a village hidden by leaves, that’s all. I didn’t mean to offend you.

  FANYA:

  You see, he does have very good manners. Most of the time you’d never dream he was a Nihilist.

  (KONSTANTIN glares at her.)

  Oh dear, it slipped out! We haven’t yet told my parents.

  TITHONUS:

  Told them?

  FANYA (proudly):

  That Konstantin Stepanovitch is a Nihilist. They would surely be opposed to the match. And yet he’s so brilliant! His professors at the Medical School cannot find words to praise him. He has such ideas, so new, so fascinating!

  TITHONUS:

  Is it possible we have advanced to an age in which men are praised for new ideas? In my day we had our Nihilism. We called it that.

  KONSTANTIN:

  I believe in mankind. Nihilism is only a name, a negative belief.

  (Pause.)

  Have you ever seen a man’s hand cut off at the wrist? The blood leaps out, the man’s eyes roll backwards, his cries are—

  FANYA (grasping her wrist):

  Oh stop!

  (TITHONUS listens unmoved.)

  KONSTANTIN:

  Even to hear it described is painful. We cannot help thinking of our own mutilation. Isn’t this proof of a deep human sympathy that binds all men together? Kuvshenko would agree with me.

  TITHONUS (bored):

  Ah.

  KONSTANTIN:

  You are objecting, “But does he overlook a man’s environment?” I do not. It is the source of every individual mannerism. Take yourself. Already I can tell—what?—that you are a foreigner. How do I know? By observing that you repress your curiosity. Perhaps curiosity isn’t the word. One sees that you have traveled much, and reflected ….

  TITHONUS:

  You are right. I have no curiosity.

  KONSTANTIN (taken aback):

  We all have curiosity. No, I mean rather a kind of outward-goingness, a very Russian trait. We are constantly wanting to know about others—their forebears, their professions, their lives. The Germans and the English intellectualize their curiosity. The French restrict it to their private sensations. Our Russian curiosity is human. We are forever inquiring into our own destinies.

  TITHONUS:

  That is strange. Our destiny is one of the few matters revealed to us.

  KONSTANTIN:

  But revelation comes to those who seek it!

  TITHONUS:

  Perhaps.

  FANYA:

  I know what he means, Kostya. There have been hours when I’ve seen my whole life ahead of me, like a sunlit valley. I used not to be able to imagine myself living past the age of nineteen. But now that I am nineteen—

  OLGA (who has entered unnoticed):

  You can see all the way to thirty-nine?

  (They turn, surprised. She is out of breath and dressed in gray or black with touches of white.)

  And when, dear, you have passed that milestone, you will be able to see yourself at a hundred and three, as I do now after this brutal climb!

  KONSTANTIN:

  Welcome, Olga Vassilyevna!

  FANYA:

  We’ve been wondering what became of you.

  OLGA:

  Have you? I doubt it. Spread out the rug for me, Konstantin. I can’t walk another step.

  (She struggles to catch her breath. FANYA touches her arm.)

  It’s nothing.

  (Vivaciously.)

  We’ll have our tea here, shall we? If this gentleman will pardon us.

  TITHONUS:

  Please! Don’t think of me!

  OLGA:

  We come opportunely, perhaps?

  TITHONUS:

  You do, after a lonely day.

  FANYA:

  He is an artist!

  OLGA:

  So I see. Well, I shall not embarrass him by looking at his picture. Artists hate that. Besides, I should have nothing good to say of it, I warn you, Monsieur.

  FANYA:

  You should, though! It’s very well done.

  OLGA:

  No doubt it is. But today I am out for air and exercise. I can look at pictures all winter if I choose. And in a few weeks these colors will be gone, these wonderful dying leaves ….

  TITHONUS (to KONSTANTIN):

  The real leaves.

  KONSTANTIN (with a shrug and a smile):

  The real leaves.

  OLGA (to TITHONUS, while unpacking the basket):

  You’ll join our little feast, I hope?

  TITHONUS:

  Thank you. I should enjoy a glass of tea.

  OLGA:

  Ah, you’re not the glutton I am! I can do without tea, but not without my smoked meats and preserves.

  (To the others.)

  But my dear friends! Where is the water?

  FANYA:

  Oh, the water!

  OLGA:

  Haven’t you found the spring yet? What have you been doing? Our guest is thirsting for his tea.

  (To TITHONUS.)

  We call this our mountainside. We come here every year.

  (To KONSTANTIN, giving him a flask.)

  Don’t you remem
ber where it was?

  KONSTANTIN (patiently):

  Yes, of course.

  OLGA:

  Then find it!

  (To FANYA, who makes to follow him.)

  Stay with us, chérie, it will bring him back sooner.

  (KONSTANTIN runs out.)

  Where is your embroidery? A young girl should always be doing something with her hands.

  (To TITHONUS.)

  You’re a stranger here. Do you plan to stay long?

  TITHONUS:

  It’s not likely. For years we have had, my wife and I, no fixed home. A pied-à-terre in Paris, nothing more. But now we are at the age—or rather I am at the age, for my wife is still young—when a home becomes a necessity. I am no longer thrilled by restaurants.