Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  I refuse to fall in with this absurd exhibition.

  CHARLES:

  Will you stop laughing! Hook me to the line.

  JAN:

  He wanted it, too. Charles was asking for it, Julie.

  GILBERT:

  You’d positively enjoy it?

  CHARLES:

  Why not?

  GILBERT:

  If you put it that way—why not!

  JULIE:

  It was all at once a question of something terribly funny. Charles had rigged himself into one of those little harnesses that hold you in your chair when something big hits your line. Oh, I kept saying to myself. Gilbert was fastening the line to the back of Charles’s harness. The captain had stopped the motor. He could have stopped them while he was at it. What could he have been thinking? Was he deaf and dumb?

  GILBERT:

  Come, little sister, lend a hand.

  JAN:

  In time such incidents grow dim.

  JULIE (reentering the boat):

  I think you’re crazy, both of you.

  CHARLES:

  It’s a warm day.

  JULIE:

  But understand

  If they should tear you limb from limb

  I’m not to blame.

  GILBERT:

  I hear a distant band

  Strike up in honor of our acrobat.

  CHARLES:

  I’m just as pleased to have a swim.

  JULIE:

  Why am I laughing? What you do

  Is dreadful, Gilbert.

  GILBERT:

  To whom?

  JULIE:

  To him.

  To me as well.

  GILBERT:

  I don’t see that.

  CHARLES:

  The sea is calm.

  GILBERT:

  The sky is blue.

  JULIE:

  The blue’s all wrong, the sea’s too flat.

  GILBERT:

  The sharks are playing hooky far below.

  JULIE:

  I never have.

  GILBERT:

  All ready?

  CHARLES:

  Yes.

  JULIE:

  Darling—

  CHARLES:

  Honey?

  JULIE:

  At least take off your hat!

  GILBERT:

  Ten minutes, mind you. Nothing less.

  (CHARLES disappears over the side of the boat.)

  GILBERT:

  Now we shall let him swim a certain distance from the boat. How quiet it is. This is the moment for your Barcarolle. You don’t feel like singing? Shall I try the Mad Scene from The Chocolate Soldier? I haven’t done that for ages. Charles is a good swimmer. You asked why you were laughing. Perhaps you had no other way to participate in that curious moment.

  JULIE:

  I have found another way.

  GILBERT:

  My point is that people simply don’t do what they don’t want to do. In other words, if there is something they don’t want to do, they don’t do it. This is amusing.

  JULIE:

  You are doing what you wanted. You are doing it now.

  GILBERT:

  Yes.

  JULIE:

  You have made him and me do what you wanted.

  GILBERT:

  No. I have made it easy for you to do what you yourselves desired. Here we have the example of Charles doing a thing both absurd and dangerous. He is doing it because he wants to. He is not doing it at my suggestion. Soon he will be out far enough.

  JULIE:

  You gave him no other choice.

  GILBERT:

  Is it for me to provide alternatives for Charles when there are, as we used to say on the plantation, seventeen different things he might be doing at this very moment? Think, Julie! To pretend, as you have done all your life, that other people oblige you to do distasteful things is no more than a failure to admit your own taste for doing them. I shall enjoy treating Charles, my old friend, to the experience of nearly drowning. If I admit that, why shouldn’t you in turn admit that you’ll enjoy watching your husband nearly drown. Charles himself at this very moment is bound to be thinking—It’s strange. Whenever you stop listening I begin to feel that I’ve been talking out of sheer perversity.

  JULIE:

  I’m sorry.

  GILBERT:

  These were things I felt you ought to know. Is there anything on your mind?

  JULIE:

  We must have been almost babies, you and I, taking our bath together one afternoon. We had toys in the bathtub—a little boat, a floating goldfish that could roll its eyes, a little deep-sea diver. He was attached to a bulb, bubbles came out of him when you squeezed. We were fighting, or I got soap in my eyes. Father must have heard us, he came storming in, pulled out the plug, yanked us out of the water and dried us off. I remember to this day how it hurt, being put into my pajamas. That must have been our last bath together. I can see the drained tub, with its green stain where the faucet joined the enamel, like a beard of seaweed hanging down. Our toys were lying every which way on the bottom. Isn’t it silly to remember all that?

  GILBERT:

  Ask Charles whether it’s silly or not.

  JULIE:

  I’d nearly forgotten Charles. What’s the matter with me? Did you see the look on his face? He was very angry.

  GILBERT:

  I never get angry, why should he?

  Charles! Are you ready?

  CHARLES (far off):

  Ready!

  GILBERT:

  Now you will see that for all his struggling

  I need only keep playfully pulling at the line.

  He will be drawn backwards through the brine.

  He will want to breathe and will breathe water.

  His every gesture will be cut short, he will go

  Counter to his wish and to the waves.

  In no time at all he will be utterly exhausted.

  If he is angry, the minutes that follow

  Will fit his anger like a glove. Fight, Charles, fight!

  (As GILBERT begins the struggle, everything goes dark. CHARLES now appears, eerily lit.)

  CHARLES:

  I am not one to think much about pain.

  I would not choose to dwell upon myself

  In public, sipping at a tumbler of stale water.

  It has never been my thought to preach to the fish.

  Nevertheless, if I am ever in my life

  To think usefully, to see with clear eyes,

  Let it be now. Although my throat and eyes

  Burn with seawater—or such tears of pain

  No innocent man could shed in his whole life—

  Let me attain a clearness about myself.

  For it is neither her brother nor big fish

  I fear, nor even the white jaws of water

  That hurt and hold me, but an unkinder water

  Chilling and deepening in Julie’s eyes.

  It’s there blindly I thrash now, like a fish

  Gasping in air, shocked by the pulse and pain

  Of an element newly thrust upon itself.

  She might have said, “You’ve made a mess of your life

  But I into whose care you gave that life

  Am weeping. Taste, my love, this healing water.

  Test me with your hands, your lips, your eyes.”

  She might have said, “I couldn’t care less myself

  Whether you sink in pride or swim in pain.

  That is for you to decide, you poor fish!”

  Instead, neither caring nor careless, she chose to fish,

  To fish using as bait my only life,

  Keen at line’s end for weariness and pain

  To swallow me, spun giddily in water.

  And sure enough, insight with phosphorous eyes

  Glides upward, a slow law unto itself.

  Inborn vortex, pressures of unself,

  First love, deep-water spell, b
efore the fish

  Grew legs and clambered up with narrowing eyes

  Onto the rocks. Who wouldn’t give his life

  For that lost paradise of the first water—

  Rapture of depths, no turning back, no pain!

  Julie, pain sweeter than a loss of self,

  Draw me from water, leave me to the fish—

  You cannot save my life. I see your eyes.

  (CHARLES disappears. JAN and JULIE, on either side of the dark stage, light cigarettes, holding the burning matches before their faces.)

  JAN:

  Julie?

  JULIE:

  Yes. I’m here.

  JAN:

  Your voice—are you all right?

  JULIE:

  I’m all right.

  JAN:

  I love you.

  (JULIE blows out her match. Lights. GILBERT helps CHARLES into the boat. CHARLES collapses, exhausted.)

  GILBERT:

  You see, dear Charles, there are things stronger than yourself. Be still. You are weak and bewildered. Do you feel pain? You must not think ill of me. I wish you’d open your eyes.

  CHARLES:

  Think? Of you?

  GILBERT:

  Well, I should have thought so, yes.

  I should have thought that out there in the water

  You would be thinking of the line your life

  Depended from, and of who held the line.

  CHARLES:

  Of Julie.

  GILBERT:

  It seems to you that Julie—?

  Ah, Charles, you’re a deep one. Drink this water.

  Do you mean that the scales have fallen from your eyes,

  Revealing Julie as wretchedly herself?

  Or do you mean—perish the thought—that I myself

  Simply don’t matter?

  CHARLES:

  Julie …

  JULIE:

  Here I am.

  CHARLES:

  We were together there—

  It was a honeymoon—

  JULIE:

  Be still. Don’t speak.

  CHARLES:

  A honeymoon, salty and sweet—deeply together—

  I thought, I had to think. Come closer. Listen.

  JULIE:

  Darling, you’re not on your deathbed. I see no need

  For any show of thought.

  CHARLES:

  But you are angry?

  JULIE:

  When have you ever seen me angry? I confess

  My own thoughts, these past minutes, leave me less than—

  CHARLES:

  Well, that’s flattering! I should have thought

  It was for me to be resentful of the pain,

  The risk I ran with my one and only life—

  And not for my own amusement. But to my eyes

  Nobody’s amused, least of all yourself.

  GILBERT:

  Perhaps you should jump back into the water

  And take your chances with the fish.

  CHARLES:

  You ought not to be angry. If you are angry

  It cannot be because of what I’ve done

  But what I’m doing now—because of what I am.

  If what I did was to have angered you

  You would have been angry earlier, I think.

  JULIE:

  I am not angry with you.

  GILBERT:

  And there is no earthly reason I can see

  For her to be angry with me.

  CHARLES:

  And what am I doing now, what am I trying to say

  But that I’m yours in spite of all—in spite—

  JULIE:

  In spite of all my what? My ways? My wiles?

  Pompous! Ponderous! The Prince of Whales!

  CHARLES:

  Don’t try to misunderstand me, Julie.

  JULIE:

  You’ve lost your bet. You’re a bad loser, Charles.

  GILBERT:

  No. He has won his bet. He’s a bad winner.

  He means we’ve sought to corrupt him, and he’s right.

  JULIE:

  Speak for yourself.

  GILBERT:

  I do. Speaking for myself,

  You are an extremely difficult person, Charles,

  In your simple goodness. We suspect that. More,

  We’ve wanted you a trifler like ourselves.

  JULIE:

  Would anyone mind if we started back to shore?

  GILBERT:

  Don’t pretend you don’t know. You have undergone

  Trial by water—that trial whereby

  The accused was flung, bound, into a ditch.

  If he was innocent he stayed afloat;

  If guilty, he sank to the bottom like a stone.

  I suppose the secret then was breath control.

  In any event it sounds like a cynical business.

  CHARLES:

  You meant for me to sink, was that it, Julie?

  JULIE:

  Of course not, darling. How can you allow

  Gilbert to talk that way? You’ll find me at the prow

  Like a figurehead. I’ve had enough for now.

  (Exit JULIE. JAN leaves the stage at the same time.)

  GILBERT:

  We meant for you to rise up from the waves

  Like a revengeful triton, brandishing

  Your spear thrice-pronged with wrath,

  Embarrassment and pain. We did not want

  Meekness on the half-shell. We wanted proof

  That you as well could turn down an occasion

  For much self-knowledge, use it up idly

  Thrashing about on the surface of your act.

  CHARLES:

  What did I do instead?

  GILBERT:

  Instead you did the serious human thing,

  The earnest painful thing, the thing that we,

  Or she particularly—she’s very touchy—

  Cannot forgive. So we condemn you. The code

  Is evidently of our own contrivance.

  CHARLES:

  It’s a brand-new experience, Gilly,

  For once to take something less seriously than you.

  GILBERT:

  You’re lighthearted because your conscience is clear.

  Wait and see.

  CHARLES:

  My conscience is clear. I am not lighthearted.

  GILBERT:

  Always so scrupulous. But you have a higher

  Specific gravity than you did this morning.

  You know what happens to carbons under pressure—

  They become gems. Keep at it, you’re turning precious.

  CHARLES:

  Precious to Julie? To myself?

  What on earth are you talking about?

  GILBERT:

  I have observed

  That is a question people do not ask

  Unless they know the answer. Wait and see.

  (Exit GILBERT. We see CHARLES silhouetted in the boat during this final scene. Enter, in Venice, JAN and JULIE. It is night.)

  JULIE:

  That was a very good suggestion of Gilbert’s. We’ll take the bus tomorrow at noon, and arrive before dark. Gilbert is very fond of Ravenna. He says the mosaics are beyond words glorious.

  JAN:

  They must be, if he says so.

  JULIE:

  They do sound the slightest bit deadly, just the same. Asking things of one, you know. Venice is more my cup of tea. If I am tired of Venice it’s because I’m tired of myself. My exquisite stagestruck façades, my smell of money and hair, my watery reflections. It is clever of a city to have risen where there was only water, just as I am clever to be talking of Venice when Venice is the last thing on my mind.

  JAN:

  We must be up early tomorrow.

  JULIE:

  Do I bore you? What does that pained smile mean?

  JAN:

  I was about to ask you the same question.

 
JULIE:

  What does my pained smile mean?

  JAN:

  No. Do I bore you?

  JULIE:

  Forgive me. It’s been a long day and I’m tired. I am.

  JAN:

  I believe you. Julie, couldn’t we just stay here? Let Gilbert go off by himself? We’d have these days to ourselves. Everything would come right between us.

  JULIE:

  Come right? Are things so wrong between us?

  JAN:

  You know what I mean. We’d have this time, we’d have each other. You’re tired? So am I. I’m still a little girl, I need my naps.

  JULIE:

  I should hate to miss Ravenna.

  JAN:

  We don’t care about Ravenna.

  JULIE:

  Besides, we don’t know the language as well as Gilbert. If we were here alone we should be outrageously cheated on all sides.

  JAN:

  That kind of cheating is fairly innocent.

  JULIE:

  By comparison with …?

  JAN:

  All right, we’ll go to Ravenna.

  JULIE:

  By comparison with what, dearest?

  JAN:

  Julie, help me to love you!