David Hare Plays 2

by David Hare

  Peter I have a divorce.

  Valentina Well done. It’s hard.

  Sophia Divorce is possible.

  Valentina Yes.

  There is a pause. Nobody moves.

  Sophia Mother, it’s possible.

  Valentina Yes.

  Valentina looks at her a moment, with the calm of someone who suddenly knows they have an unanswerable argument.

  Peter, I know nothing about you. For all I know, you’re a kind and decent man. I’m sure you managed a divorce. But I am sure … I would stake my life … you are not in the Party.

  There is a silence.

  Peter No.

  Valentina nods very slightly, acknowledging the admission. Sophia looks between them. Quietly:

  Sophia Mother, neither am I.

  Valentina looks at her steadily.

  I have already written to the paper. To place an advertisement.

  Valentina Does Grigor know?

  Sophia No.

  Valentina It means nothing. When did you write?

  She doesn’t answer.

  Peter She wrote a week ago.

  Valentina How long will it take?

  Peter The waiting-list is nine months, to get your item in. At the moment. Some people have waited a year.

  Valentina Nine months for the advertisement?

  Peter That’s right. Unless …

  Valentina What?

  Sophia (finishing for him) … it can be brought forward.

  Valentina What? Are you thinking of moving out of Leningrad?

  Peter and Sophia look at one another.

  Sophia No …

  Peter We …

  Sophia No, there are towns, we know of towns … not far away … where the queue is not so long for the local paper. And the papers there give more space. A month. Two months. But you must prove residency. You must room there. And … there’s no question … Peter can’t leave his job.

  Peter (smiles) No money.

  Sophia And I can’t leave mine. I can’t take the children.

  Valentina Well, here they won’t print it. They will ask Grigor first.

  Sophia That’s not the law.

  Valentina They will ask him. He won’t agree to publication. Let alone to all the Court procedures which follow.

  Sophia It doesn’t matter. I still have the right.

  Valentina suddenly gets angry.

  Valentina Don’t use that word. You have the right? What does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything. Be a person. Do what you have to. Don’t prattle about rights.

  Sophia looks to Peter for support.

  Sophia Mother, there are ways. It can be speeded.

  Valentina I’ve never heard of it.

  Sophia If you spoke to Grigor.

  Valentina If I spoke?

  Sophia Yes.

  Valentina Is this what you came here to ask me?

  Sophia If you said you’d seen me … and you knew how deeply I felt. You know what the legal criterion is for divorce? It’s quite simple. The criterion for divorce is necessity.

  There is a pause.

  Mother, I need to be free.

  Valentina smiles. Lightly:

  Valentina Grigor’s not free. You’re not free. Child, you’ve lived thirty-six years. How can you be so naïve?

  Sophia Is it naïve?

  Valentina Of course. There’s no freedom.

  Sophia Oh, really? That’s not what I’ve heard.

  Valentina Where? Where do you think there is freedom?

  Sophia Well, I’ve always heard … from what you say of Paris …

  Valentina Don’t be ridiculous.

  Sophia Your life there.

  Valentina I was seventeen!

  Sophia With … how many lovers? My mother always told me … (She turns to Peter.)

  Peter Goodness.

  Sophia While she was meant to be learning to draw.

  Valentina That was Paris. (She pauses, as if protecting a memory.) Paris was different.

  Sophia Oh, I see. And is Paris the only place where people may be happy? (She waits a moment. Then quietly) Or is it just you who wants it that way?

  There is a silence. Sophia waits. But Valentina just seems amused.

  Valentina I see. And you think freedom is happiness, do you?

  Sophia doesn’t answer.

  You think it’s the same thing? Do you, Peter?

  Peter Well I … I don’t know. I’m pressed to make a living. Half goes to my ex-wife. My children are grown-up. They work in a factory making bottles. One’s doing quite well. The other was born a bit slow. So I am always thinking of him. Most days. Most hours. (He smiles thinly.) I’m not an expert on freedom.

  Valentina Yes, well, you’re wiser than her.

  Peter looks a little nervously to Sophia.

  Peter I only know I’ve not had much luck in things. I find myself nearly sixty-three. And … never really had the chance to take a risk in my life. What else is there now for me but Sophia? I don’t mean it unkindly but … well, I live alone, I have a room, I’m a great lover of walking, I meet in the park with other model aircraft collectors …

  Sophia His aircraft are beautiful.

  Peter No, they’re … quite average. But without Sophia I might as well die. (He takes another look at her.)

  Valentina You didn’t think that before?

  Peter What do you mean?

  Valentina Before you met her?

  Peter No. I mean, no. Hardly. How could I? But I think it now.

  Valentina Well, that’s love for you, isn’t it? Before you met her you were happy.

  Peter Not happy, no.

  Valentina But not ‘Oh, I’ll die’. (She suddenly raises her voice.) You’re Stravinsky’s grandfather.

  Peter I don’t understand.

  Valentina Stravinsky’s grandfather died trying to scale the garden fence on his way to an assignation with his mistress. He was a hundred and eleven years old at the time.

  Peter smiles. Valentina laughs. Only Sophia is not amused.

  Sophia Don’t say that of Peter.

  Valentina And what … what anyway … (She moves suddenly and decisively on to the attack.) What if you succeeded? What if she uses you to get her a divorce?

  Sophia I’m not doing that.

  Valentina What then?

  Peter What do you mean?

  Valentina Love is pain. Am I right?

  He looks mistrustfully, fearing a trap.

  Peter Not entirely.

  Valentina Look at you now. You’re in torture. You shift from one foot to another …

  Peter Well, I …

  Valentina You’re forever taking sidelong glances at her, checking up on her, seeing she approves of everything you say. Thinking all the time, how does this go down with Sophia? In fiction it makes me laugh when books end with two people coming together. Curtain! At last they fall into one another’s arms! The reader applauds. But that’s where books should really begin. (She smiles.) This fantasy that love solves problems! Love makes you raw. It strips the skin from you. Am I right?

  Peter In part.

  Valentina Suddenly everything has to matter so much. Really, who cares? Suddenly to be aware, to be prey to every exaggerated detail, every nuance of someone else’s feelings. How demeaning! What possible point? And then what? What in the future? What will you do? Spend two years in the courts? Two years of little sidelong glances, and oh, is it all right? Is she weakening? Do I love her? Does she love me? And at the end, what? You’ll suddenly realize – not a plateau. Oh no. Not safety. Not if it’s love. Really love. Just as likely agony. Oh yes. A pure gambler’s throw. And for this? For this? Chuck out everything. Husband. Jobs. Children. Grigor. Yes. Destroy Grigor’s life. For a bet placed by two shivering tramps at the racetrack. (She leans forward.) And there’s nothing guaranteed at the end. (She gets up, her case proved.) People should stick. They should stick with what they have. With what they know. That’s character.

  Sophia You think so?
>
  Valentina Certainly. But these days people just can’t wait to give up.

  Sophia smiles, as if not threatened by any of this.

  You make such a fuss about everything. I just get on with it. I know what life is. And what it cannot be.

  Peter is puzzled by Sophia’s calm. Now Valentina insults him aimlessly, with no real feeling.

  You’re a silly bald man. You’re old and you’re bald. Your shirt is too young for you. Your trousers are absurd. Is there anything worse than men who can’t grow old with dignity? (She sits at the side of the room, the storm blown out.) I was promised tea. (She suddenly shouts, as if she can’t think of anything else to say.) They promised me tea.

  Peter I will get it for you.

  Sophia No. Let me go.

  She smiles and goes out. Peter is left standing near the canvas, Valentina sitting.

  Valentina She’s a good girl. There’s no harm in her. She’s just weak. And talentless. Her father was a soldier. I knew him three weeks. He claimed there was a war. What did I know? He said his battalion had to move. Perhaps it was true. I never saw his battalion. He said the French had a war to go to in Abyssinia. I’ve never checked. Was there such a thing?

  Peter I’ve never heard of it.

  Valentina There’s no way to tell.

  Peter This was in Paris?

  Valentina Yes. Paris and Leningrad. It’s all I’ve known.

  Peter waits a moment.

  Peter You must have met everyone. I mean, the famous.

  Valentina Certainly not. It wasn’t like that. I had no interest. I once was asked to a party to meet Ford Madox Ford.

  Peter There you are.

  Valentina Him I had heard of. Because they said he was the least frequently washed of all modern novelists. So I didn’t go. (She shakes her head.) People get it wrong. They have no idea of it. Remember, we were poor. We had no ambitions for ourselves. At school we were a strange group. All penniless. Hungarians, a Chinese, some Americans. Well, Americans have money, but no one else. One boy wanted to pose in the life class. He was one of us. He needed to make money. He said ‘Well, why not?’ All day we looked at naked people. Men, women. ‘You’re not embarrassed,’ he said, ‘people come in, take their clothes off. It’s fine. Why not me? Why not give me the money?’ But we all had a meeting. We said no. A line would be crossed. (She pauses, deep in thought.) A naked stranger is one thing. But one of us naked – no. It’s all wrong.

  Peter waits respectfully.

  Peter This was an art school?

  Valentina School of painting. At the Sacred Heart Convent. In the Boulevard des Invalides.

  Peter Who taught you?

  Valentina A man who said he wanted to turn his lambs into lions.

  Peter Who was that?

  Valentina Henri Matisse.

  There is a pause.

  Peter Matisse?

  Valentina Yes.

  Peter You mean Matisse?

  Valentina I said Matisse.

  Peter Yes, I know.

  Valentina Why, you admire him?

  Peter Just the idea that he was alive. And he taught you. It seems unbelievable.

  Valentina Well, it’s a fact.

  Peter I didn’t know he taught.

  Valentina He taught for three years.

  Peter Then?

  She turns and looks at him.

  Valentina Then he didn’t teach any more.

  Peter looks down a moment.

  Peter You mean … look, I know nothing – art! – but I’ve seen some things he’s done … but what I mean, did he feel there was no point in teaching?

  Valentina How would I know? He taught us rules. He believed in them. Not Renaissance rules. Those he was very against. He disliked Leonardo. Because of all that measuring. He said that was when art began to go wrong. When it became obsessed with measuring. Trying to establish how things work. It doesn’t matter how they work. You can’t see with a caliper. (She smiles.) Of course there were rules. He was a classicist. This is what no one understood. He disliked in modern painting the way one part is emphasized – the nose, or the foot, or the breast. He hated this distortion. He said you should always aim for the whole. Remember your first impression and stick to it. Balance nature and your view. Don’t let your view run away of its own accord. For everything he did there was always a reason. No one saw this to begin with. On the walls of Paris, people painted slogans: Matisse is absinthe, Matisse drives you mad. But to meet, he was a German schoolmaster with little gold-rimmed glasses.

  Peter I’ve seen those drawings he did of himself. I like him in the mirror when he’s drawing a nude.

  Valentina Yes, it’s witty.

  There is a pause.

  Even with colour … the colours were so striking, people thought, why is this face blue? This is modern. But it wasn’t. Each colour depends on what is placed next to it. One tone is just a colour. Two tones are a chord, which is life. (She turns a moment, thoughtfully.) It was the same with the body. No line exists on its own. Only with its relation to another do you create volume. He said you should think of the body as an architect does. The foot is a bridge. Arms are like rolls of clay. Forearms are like ropes, since they can be knotted and twisted. In drawing a head never leave out the ear. Adjust the different parts to each other. Each is dissimilar and yet must add to the whole. A tree is like a human body. A body is like a cathedral. (She smiles.) His models were always very beautiful. Sometimes he worked with the same model for years. No one drew the body better than him. The lines of a woman’s stomach. The pudenda. A few curls. He could make you think of bed. And yet when he was working he said, he took a woman’s clothes off and put them back on as if he were arranging a vase of flowers.

  There is a pause.

  He loved going to the mountains. When he was tired, he said it was a relief. Because it’s impossible to paint them. You can’t paint a mountain. The scale is all wrong.

  Peter That’s funny.

  She looks at him, suddenly resuming her original answers.

  Valentina As to teaching, yes, of course, his teaching was inspiring. But it was as if Shakespeare had taught. It gave you an idea. But then when you pick up your own brush, you’re faced with the reality of your own talent.

  Peter Frustrating?

  Valentina Not always. But how do I say? It’s a very different thing. Talking is easy. Oh yes, and Matisse could talk. But genius is different.

  Peter frowns a moment.

  Peter Did it depress you?

  Valentina No. I went on painting. Although I knew my limitations. I painted by will.

  Peter By will?

  Valentina Yes.

  Peter It’s odd.

  Valentina What?

  Peter Last night, now, Sophia used that same phrase. ‘By will.’

  Valentina Yes. She used it to me. (She looks at him a moment.) He taught a few years, then he went travelling. He went to Italy, Algeria, Tangiers. By then he was yet more famous. He’d given Picasso one of his paintings. Picasso’s friends, who were all very stupid and malicious, used it as a dartboard. But it didn’t matter. Matisse’s reputation was made. He bought a house in Clamart. People mocked him because it had such a big bathroom. On the ground floor. Too much contact with Americans, that’s what people said. He’d developed an interest in personal hygiene. But it wasn’t true. Matisse was always clean. (She smiles.) I went there a couple of times. Madame Matisse used to cook. She served a jugged hare which was better than anything in Europe. And with it, a wine called Ranio. It’s a sort of Madeira. Heavy but excellent. I’ve never had it since.

  Peter I don’t know it.

  Valentina Years later in Berlin, he went for a great exhibition of his work. And waiting for him was the most enormous laurel wreath. ‘To Henri Matisse, cher maître …’ or whatever. He said, ‘Why do you give me a wreath? I’m not dead.’ But Madame Matisse plucked a leaf and tasted it. She said, ‘This will make the most wonderful soup.’

  There is a pau
se.

  Peter Yes.

  Valentina It was all one progress. I can’t explain. I lost touch with him. I think everyone did. He simply moved out of all our lives. Yet whenever I heard later stories, they fitted. With him, everything belonged.

  Peter I can see that.

  Valentina I’ve seen photographs of him when he was dying. He’s painting on his walls with a brush tied to the end of a long stick. He’s too frail to move from his pillows. It’s the same man I knew almost fifty years ago. (She smiles.) There was only one little – oh – what? – one tiny denial. Which was love. He told me he was too busy. To think of love properly. I mean, to explore it. No, he said. I have no time for that.

  Peter I find that strange.

  Valentina He was asked by an American journalist how many children he had. Four, he said. What are their names? Let me see. There’s Marguerite. And Jean. And Pierre. He said suddenly, ‘No, I have three.’

  Peter But isn’t that …

  Valentina What?

  Peter A bit callous?

  Valentina I think it’s admirable.

  Peter Why?

  Valentina Priorities!

  Peter smiles.

  Peter It seems a bit chilly to me.

  Valentina He loved his family. He painted faces above his bed. He said he slept badly, but he always felt better if he could imagine his grandchildren. So he put them on the ceiling above him. That way he said, ‘I feel less alone.’

  Peter But what did they feel?

  Valentina Does it matter? Marguerite was tortured by the Gestapo. She was in the Resistance. When she came home and told him, he couldn’t paint for two weeks. Then he abandoned the work he’d been doing when he heard. Her pain was real to him. He was in anguish. But he could not incorporate her suffering. He didn’t want to. He went on painting in just the same way.

  There is a pause.

  Peter What about you?

  Valentina Me?

  Peter Were you like that? Disciplined?

  Valentina Good Lord, no. No. I wasted my time. Love was all I had time for. At least until the twenties.

  Peter Sophia said … (He pauses.)

  Valentina Yes?

  Peter She suggested … that for some reason you decided to come home.

  Valentina That’s right. (She waits.) What else did she say?

  Peter No, nothing, just … she said, you didn’t have to.

  Valentina I didn’t have to. It was a choice of my own.