by Susan Sontag
MYRTHA
Just move, you’ll discover. The strength you don’t know.
(She resumes twirling very slowly. EMILY still sits beside KUNDRY, stroking her hair. MARGARET retrieves her book.)
ALICE
You’re asking me to dance.
EMILY
You are moving. But the velocity of the ill is that of the snail.
(KUNDRY opens her eyes, partly sits up.)
KUNDRY
It’s a cycle. Dejection Revolt Sleep Reconciliation.
MYRTHA
A circle. Just move.
MARGARET
It’s a council. We’re here to advise you.
ALICE
Advice. It’s enough if you console me. If you kindle my imagination. Draw close.
(Sees them hesitating.)
But don’t think I’m jealous of your attentions to Kundry. Closer. Whisper to me. Tell me what you know. I feel so small.
EMILY
What I know is so small …
MYRTHA
I wish I could stay …
MARGARET
You already know what you want to know …
KUNDRY
Sleep …
(MYRTHA leaves.)
ALICE
Oh stay.
(Turns to the others.)
I disappointed her.
(M I and M II come in with stretcher and take KUNDRY away on it.)
MARGARET
I’m going to see Emily part of the way back. Opposites attract.
ALICE
And who am I the opposite of. Don’t be disappointed with me.
MARGARET
We’ll come again.
EMILY
We’ll write to each other.
ALICE
I’ll be here. In my place. (Laughs) You know where to find me. Oh Margaret when I think of all the places you’ve been. And I stay in my lair. I’d wanted to ask you about Rome. About the layers. And the shock. Just a few more minutes. Emily won’t be bored.
(Lights are dimming.)
Emily. Margaret.
(Blackout.)
SCENE 6
ALICE, in portion of bedroom magnified so she seems very small. Sitting on a child’s chair, stage front. Only half the giant bed, with a gigantic red pillow, is visible behind her.
ALICE
My mind. I can travel with my mind. With my mind I’m in Rome, where Margaret lived. Where Harry descended. I’ve put aside their books. My turn now. I walk on the streets. That’s the power of a mind. I see the washerwomen. The palaces. I smell the garlic. Orange peels in the gutter. I hear the bells of the nearby convent. People are bawling and gesturing, trying to sell you things. Children beg, mothers with children beg. They’re professionals, I suppose. Carriages go smashing past me. Not smashing, I meant to say rumbling. I’d watch the excavations. There’s still so much more to dig up. Ruins are beautiful I think. They’re so—speaking. Don’t you think. And the marvelous sunsets, burnishing the ocher walls. I’d see that too, I do see it. Monuments. In my mind. It’s supposed to be the most beautiful city in the world, although other people say Paris. And some say Venice, but Venice has too many odors, and Venice makes everyone think of death. But Rome makes you think of survival, and that thought would be in my mind when I’m in Rome. In my mind, in that beauty. If I did see all that beauty I know it would make me very happy. It would fill me. I would write about it in my diary, I would sketch it—yes, one more tourist recording her impressions. I would be very humble. Who am I, compared with Rome. I come to see Rome, it doesn’t come to see me. It can’t move. (Pauses) In my mind—here: in Rome—I know I would like Rome. I do like it, I’m thrilled by it, exalted when I travel there, in my mind. It’s everything I imagine. But then I am only imagining, that’s right. But that’s a mind. The power of a mind. With my mind I can see, I can hold all that in my mind. Everyone says it’s so beautiful. I’ve looked at the pictures, the engravings. Yes, Piranesi. I receive letters from people in Rome who tell me how happy they are. You know what I mean by people: foreigners. If I did see all that beauty I know it would make me very happy, but I don’t know how I would separate from it. When would I have had enough. I would become so attached to Rome I would want to stay there forever. I would never have enough. I would walk on the streets and cross the squares and there would always be another street, another view. Perspectives, colonnades. The obelisks. And the cats, homeless, impudent. Shadows at night and the hot breeze. Harry told me about a girl who went to the Colosseum at night and caught pneumonia and died. It’s dangerous to be alone—she wasn’t, she went there with a man—but I like to think of being alone, in my mind I’m alone in Rome, even though it’s a city where women are harassed when walking about alone, I can be alone there, quite invulnerable, altogether safe—in my mind, in Rome. Alone I loiter in the churches, crossing myself furtively. I want to cross myself, it feels right, but I don’t want anyone to see me. How shocked Father would be. Wim not. (Pauses) You see I am not Catholic of course—and my mind is, I dare flatter myself, relatively free of superstitions, including Popish ones. (A dry laugh) Of course, I flatter myself. My mind must be chock-full of superstitions. Ones I don’t even know about. The superstitions of this new time. With my mind I am hinged to the time I live in whether I like it or not. (Pauses) It’s the power of a mind to know that, too. It takes me quite past myself. I can be very big and see myself quite small, and it’s still me; in my mind. In this new ugly time. Is it ugly. Yes. I can’t help feeling that, in my mind. Am I a snob in my mind, in Rome, like all those visiting Americans abasing themselves before Italians with titles. Am I nostalgic for another Rome, the one before this one, which is the only one I can know, if I were to go there, though I haven’t. Do I, even when I come to Rome, a novice in these sympathies, ally myself with the past. Like Margaret and Harry, with their idyllic memories of a separate, papal Rome. Irrevocably past. Perhaps. We are always looking for the past, especially when we travel. And I am in my mind, traveling, and the mind is the past, and the mind is Rome. And this time is in the mind, too. I will not fall into the gulf of history. I will cling to the side. Because I’m in my mind (she starts to rock), which is like a boat or a chair or a bed or a tree. Or a rope bridge. And in my mind I can be high up, too. There are vantage points in the mind, in the world. A panorama of roofs and domes, clear-cut against the Roman sky. I see that, from a hill, from my mind, though Rome is not a city one wants to see from afar, except in one’s mind, like Aeneas. No not like Aeneas, he didn’t really see anything, he just plunged. Whereas I can have an overview, in my mind. Held in the beak of a bird, I’m flying over Rome, it rushes past me, the S of the Tiber, the hills, the fountains, and tiny carriages, drawn by brightly caparisoned toy horses, prancing over warm stones. In Rome, in my mind, there is a whole world underneath, subterranean chambers, lost foundations, dead rooms with floor-wide mosaics whose tiny cubes of color hiss in the darkness, cloaca maxima. In the mind. One can’t see everything. But on the surface there’s so much. In Rome wherever you turn there’s another view, another stained wall, all that you don’t see, the walls hung with silk, piano nobile, the hidden gardens, monsters of stone. So much stone; this stony lump in my breast. Broken stones, which means broken writing. The letters are all capitals. Their authors thought themselves very important, which is what makes you important: work of the mind. Who built, who made, who gave, who honored, who lies—almost always I can make out what it says. There is Latin in my mind, too, which Father put there, as he had put it in the minds of my brothers. He could not, he said, do less for me; for my mind. They made, they claimed, they died, they are still remembered. But remembered wrong, which is what remembering is. The views push on, one view translates into another, there are walls, doors, arches, terraces, another view, another change, but it’s still the same place: Rome—in my mind. I can go as far as I want, I can do what I can’t do, what I shouldn’t do, in my mind. Something troubles me, I ache, an urchin is trailing me, c
urly hair, rags, sores on his arms, yellow mucus on his upper lip, he tugs at my skirt, he holds out his hand, if you give to one you should give to all is what the visitor is told, sagely. The child, there is something wrong with his thumb, he still holds out his hand, the child is in my mind too, the life I do not lead, the suffering I do not know, how can I, dare I, suffer not suffer for that. I pull away from the child or I give him everything I have or I give him one round warm coin, everything I do, in my mind, is wrong. And he vanishes, because I don’t know what to do with him, for him, in my mind. Leaving an ache. And his twisted blackened little thumb, he’s left his thumb in my mind. I keep moving, it is such a pleasure to move; in my mind. And when the church bells ring, it will be time, time for some people, better than consulting watches. But I don’t go indoors, though all manner of invitations have been extended to me, perhaps only out of politeness, I stay outdoors, in my mind, in the sun, and I walk freely, my legs like stout stilts, I cross bridges, the river is shallow, I watch the low-flying black birds boiling above the bridges at sunset, the angel watches from the top of the angel’s castle. I walk vigorously, dressed properly for whatever the weather is, it is not often a trial, not feeling in any way diminished by the grandeur of the spectacle, for the mind has its own swellings and diminishings, and who is to say what is the right size. Or the right age. How old am I. I won’t say how old anything is. Rome is famous for being very old. I won’t say how big or how small anything is. My mind doesn’t have a size. One size fits all.
(Slow fade.)
SCENE 7
ALICE’S bedroom, another angle. Night light. ALICE asleep.
ALICE, snoring, turns in the bed, then is quiet again. Sound of the lock on the doors to the balcony being forced open; or perhaps a pane of glass being cut out with an awl, after which a hand reaches in to unlock the doors from the inside.
A YOUNG MAN, around eighteen, shabbily dressed, pushes open the doors. He has a coil of rope and a canvas sack on his shoulder, and carries a lantern, a small bag of tools, and a small carpetbag. He stares for a long moment at ALICE in bed, sleeping; hesitates, listens to her breathing. Then he enters, puts down the lantern, removes his shoes. On tiptoe he goes to take the small ornate Empire clock, puts it in the sack.
Rifles desk drawer, puts something in the carpetbag; from top drawer of the chest he pulls out what could be a brooch and a necklace and puts them in the bag. His back is to ALICE.
ALICE opens her eyes, watches him for a while before speaking.
ALICE
Take the mirror.
YOUNG MAN
Hell an’ damnation.
(Doesn’t turn. He has a Cockney or Irish accent.)
ALICE
The mirror is in the second drawer.
(YOUNG MAN covers his ears.)
In the drawer. Should be.
(He turns.)
YOUNG MAN
(Furious) What bloody mirror.
ALICE
Ah the voice of the real world. I knew it.
YOUNG MAN
(Staring at her) Yer mad. Right. Right.
ALICE
Is that the verdict in the dens from which you spring.
YOUNG MAN
They tol’ me you was ill. That it’d be easy.
ALICE
Are you not very experienced. It sounds as if you’re a rank beginner.
YOUNG MAN
I don’t believe this is bloody ’appening.
ALICE
A sentiment of which I partake almost daily.
YOUNG MAN
It ain’t suppose to be like this.
ALICE
Don’t be so conventional. Very few things are really impossible. What’s your name.
YOUNG MAN
I said to one of me pals, you come along, I ain’t sure about this job, it may be too big for me to go up alone, but he say, nah Tommy—
ALICE
Tommy.
YOUNG MAN
Why don’t ya scream.
ALICE
It appears that I’m not frightened.
YOUNG MAN
Scream for help, go on. This ain’t a dream, right. Yer rich. You ’ave servants. Rich people can do anything they want. Why don’t ya scream.
ALICE
You don’t frighten me.
(Off-stage noise of footsteps, voices. YOUNG MAN precipitously hides behind curtain of French doors—or under bed. ALICE slides down under covers, closes her eyes. Door opens: NURSE and HARRY enter. HARRY in evening dress—white tie, tails.)
HARRY
(Whispering) I merely wanted to see how, see if, see that, see whether—
NURSE
She’s been restless. She hardly ate today. Orange marmalade for breakfast.
HARRY
I don’t want to wake her.
ALICE
(Tossing in the bed, her eyes still shut) Dejection. Innocence. Oh. The music. Harry.
HARRY
Just looking in dear heart.
ALICE
(Opens eyes) Where are you. I mean where were you.
HARRY
After the play—
NURSE
Wending his way home your ever-thoughtful—
ALICE
This is not the real world. I’m feeling quite large tonight. (Laughs) Quite broad-minded.
HARRY
I shall come tomorrow.
NURSE
I shall look in later.
(ALICE sighs.)
You’ll ring if you need me.
(They leave. YOUNG MAN emerges from hiding.)
YOUNG MAN
Why did ya do that. I mean, why didn’t ya tell ’em.
ALICE
You’re sweating with fear.
YOUNG MAN
I’m not scared. It’s hot under there. Sweet Jesus, me pals won’t never believe this.
(Turns to go, then hesitates.)
ALICE
I’d just offered you the mirror.
YOUNG MAN
(Turns back) Who was that.
ALICE
My brother.
YOUNG MAN
Thought it was yer father.
(ALICE laughs.)
You ain’t so old as I imagined.
ALICE
At what age did you take up burglary. Am I correct in supposing that there are not many women in your occupation.
YOUNG MAN
Women!
ALICE
Are there no women burglars.
YOUNG MAN
(Jeering) A woman cracksman. How could that be. That’s what I am. An’ then there’s a crow, that’s always a bloke, who keeps guard on the street, watchin’ for a peeler or someone who might notice. A canary, that’s a woman who carries the tools, if it’s a big job, an’ sometimes she keeps watch on the street, like the crow does, but I don’t see a woman goin’ up walls. That couldn’t be. You don’t know nothin’ about it.
ALICE
But why can’t women climb walls, I could imagine a woman climbing walls. In my country, in the West, women carry guns and ride horses and perform feats of daring quite unknown in this old-fashioned kingdom of yours.
YOUNG MAN
Funny you talkin’ about a woman climbin’ walls, an’ you in bed all the time. You don’t ‘ave a ’usband, right.
(ALICE shakes her head.)
Say, are you ailin’ or are you, y’know, cracked. It sure sounded as you was ill.
ALICE
(As before, trance-like) Dejection. Innocence. Oh. The music. (In a normal voice, without pausing) What’s your name.
YOUNG MAN
You mean yer pretendin’, that’s all. Really?
ALICE
No I’m really ill. I just like to make fun of myself. I can’t even get out of bed on my own.
(She gets up. YOUNG MAN looks alarmed.)