A Charmed Life (21 page)

EIGHT

T
ITUS REGINAM BERONICEN, CUI
etiam nuptias pollicitus ferebatur … statim ab Urbe dimisit invitus invitam.”
Miles cleared his throat and looked around the Coes’ living room. The dinner dishes were cleared, and the play-reading was about to begin. Warren and Jane Coe sat by the fireplace, sharing a book and a hassock. They had elected not to take parts; it would be more fun, they said, just to listen. The rest of the company was paired: Martha was looking on with the vicomte; Dolly with Harold Huber, a thin white-haired man in a red flannel shirt who used to be a lawyer and now ran a duck farm; Miles with Harriet Huber, a big pink woman with a gray pompadour. Helen Murphy had not come. The child was sick, and Helen had been calling all day, to try to change the date to next week, but somebody on the line had left the receiver off the hook, so in the end Miles had driven over alone, not to let the Coes down. Martha was alone too, and for a while, at dinner, it had looked as if she and Miles were going to play opposite each other, as the Emperor and the Jewish queen, but Martha had insisted that Bérénice be given to Dolly. Martha was quite high; the gin-and-french, without ice, before dinner, had evidently gone to her head, and she had gulped a lot of claret. Warren had not seen her that way for years, not since she had been married to Miles, and he had felt troubled as he repeatedly filled her empty wine glass. Her dark eyes glittered in her pale oval face, and she spoke very positively, interrupting Miles in the middle of his harangues. At the same time, she looked very pretty, with her tapering neck and gold knot of hair, like a girl in a locket; she had not reached the usual New Leeds state, where the eyes would narrow and the features slip out of drawing, like a loose mask—a thing Warren hated, no matter how many times he saw it happen. He was apprehensive for Martha, knowing her as he did and sharing her nervousness about Miles. An outsider might not have realized that she was tight, but Dolly Lamb, Warren noticed, when she came in after dinner with the vicomte, had given her a quick, quizzical look, the minute she heard her laughing, in clear, sharp peals, at something that was not awfully funny. Martha had noticed the look too and hastily set aside her glass of B and B. She asked for more coffee, but unfortunately it had run out, and Warren did not want to bother Jane, who seemed tired and preoccupied, with making a fresh pot. Instead, he hopped out to the kitchen and brought everybody a glass of water.

“Titus reginam Beronicen,”
Miles began again.
“Reginam,”
murmured Martha to the vicomte, with a grimace, making the g hard. “I hate that soft, squelchy church Latin; after all, it’s
Tacitus
he’s quoting.” The vicomte furled his lower lip, like a little flag, and shrugged. “A matter of taste,” he said. “Who knows how the Romans pronounced?” “We
do
know,” whispered Martha.
“Quiet!”
Warren begged. “I want to hear Miles translate it.” “Say,” said Harold Huber, “include me out on the Latin. We came here to
parler français,
the way Harriet got it.” “It’s just the preface,” explained Dolly in an undertone, pointing to the text. “Racine gives the
locus classicus
he got the plot from.” “Oh,” replied Harold Huber. “Shoot,” he said to Miles. “‘Against his will and hers, Titus sent Queen Bérénice, whom, it is said, he had even promised to marry, away from the City.’” Miles glanced at Martha for confirmation. She nodded. “‘He, unwilling, sent her, unwilling, away,’” she said dreamily. “
‘Statim’.
‘At once.’”

“Pronto,” Miles chuckled. “Forthwith.
Subito.
There you have it, boys and girls. Yet in Racine it takes five acts to bring off.” He took out a handkerchief and blew a trumpet blast on his long nose. “Racine’s a microscopist,” he explained. “A slow-motion camera trained on the passions.” “Precisely,” said Martha. “Unlike Corneille,” continued Miles, “he’s interested in
process.
Racine’s a kind of scientist—bear in mind that this is the seventeenth century, the great age of French science and invention.” Warren nudged Jane. “Gee, this is interesting,” he said. “Racine,” Miles went on, with a gimlet stare at his audience, “is a scientific observer of human behavior; he takes a single action and enlarges it, under his microscope, the way you might study a plant or the organs of an animal.” “Yes,” put in Martha, excitedly. “How clever of you, Miles. That’s why the unities were necessary to Racine. People think the unities were arbitrary and artificial—a convention of academicians. But I can see that you could look at them as scientific, as if he were setting up a laboratory, for a controlled experiment.” “Excuse me for living,” Warren bashfully interjected, when he saw that she was through, “but what are the unities?” The vicomte sighed and laced his broad red hands over his belly; Harriet Huber yawned. “Time, space, and action,” ventured Dolly. Martha nodded. “The action takes place in one day on a single set. Here it’s the
cabinet
or closet, as they used to call it—Titus’s glorified private study, where he transacts his personal business. Next door, on one side, stage right, I think, are his imperial apartments; stage left, on the other side, are the apartments of the queen, Bérénice. Rome and Jerusalem, and the parley-ground between.” “What’s she doing there, anyway?” inquired Harold Huber. “She’s his guest,” said Martha. “She and her suite. In history, her brother Agrippa was with her.” “Isn’t she Titus’s mistress?” Jane wondered. “Evidently,” said the vicomte, widening his blue eyes. Miles and Martha exchanged an interrogatory look. “I don’t
think
so,” said Martha. “No,” said Miles. “She isn’t. Racine doesn’t set it up that way. For five years, they’ve been engaged, but he hasn’t tampered with her. Racine makes that plain in the preface”—he tapped the book—“where he compares her to Dido. Bérénice, he says, doesn’t have to die in the end because she, unlike Dido with Aeneas, hadn’t gone the whole way with young Titus.”

“Oh, I bet they slept together,” said Jane airily. “Everybody knows about those long engagements. You can’t tell me they didn’t have intercourse.” She giggled. A look of amusement passed between Miles and Martha. “Not in Racine, Jane,” said Martha. “He says they didn’t, and you have to suspend your disbelief for the purposes of the play.” “Maybe they did in history, dear,” said Warren. “But this is a work of art, and you have to accept the artist’s convention.” “Oh, pooh,” said Jane. “If they didn’t sleep together, that was the whole trouble. That’s why their affair fizzled out. If he’d had them sleep together, he could have had a happy ending.” “Maybe that’s why he didn’t,” suggested Dolly gravely. “He didn’t want a happy ending, you mean?” put in Warren. “Right,” said Miles.

“Will somebody please tell us what this is all about?” Plump Harriet Huber querulously patted her pompadour. Except for her batik robes and the priests’ vestments she sometimes wore, she was a very ordinary woman, who had formerly been a singer. Harold Huber was brighter than she was and keen as a whip, Warren had found, on his specialty, which had been railroad law. He had come a cropper through some arbitrage deal and nearly been put in jail, but he had a sharp head for business and had made good, up here, with his duck farm, which he had bought up cheap from a derelict writer who had mortgaged the ducks to go to Paris. Everybody ate ducks, to help Harold, but poor Harriet always seemed a little out of things, like somebody’s mother. “All you people,” she complained now, “seem to have read the play ahead of time.” “Yes, Miles, give us the story,” chimed in Harold Huber. “I think Paul should do it,” said Jane with a hostess’s eye on the vicomte, who sat blinking drowsily in his canvas chair. “Let the baron tell it,” Miles conceded grandly. “Ah well,” said the vicomte, opening his eyes, “it is many years since I have seen it performed.
Mon oncle, le duc,
took me when I was a little shaver, to see Bernhardt in the role. It was before her break with the
Comédie Française.
He had a mistress, I believe, who was playing the part of the confidante—your part, my dear girl,” he added, to Martha. “Later, there was a quarrel between her and Bernhardt.” “Let’s get on with the story,” Miles said impatiently.

But Paul was offended. “You tell it, my friend,” he said. “It’s nothing. A
ficelle. ‘Marion pleure, Marion crie; Marion veut ąu’ on la marie,’
as Voltaire wittily said.” He broke off into a fit of coughing. “I don’t believe he knows it at all,” Jane whispered to Warren. “Not Voltaire—” began Martha. “Ssh,” said Warren. “Titus,” commenced Miles, “the new Emperor of Rome, loves Queen Bérénice of Judaea.” “What you would call today a puppet queen,” interjected the vicomte, smoothing his long bob. “Titus,” said Miles, “has conquered Jerusalem.” “The Arch of Titus,” whispered Dolly, to Harold Huber. “Quiet!” implored Warren. “Titus,” Miles resumed at a brisker pace, “has brought the vassal queen to Rome, where he conceives the notion of marrying her. His father—” “Vespasian,” announced Martha. “Damn it, Martha,” exclaimed Miles. “Stop helping me. Tell the story yourself.” He folded his arms and scowled. “Shall I?” Martha appealed to the company, as Miles remained stubbornly silent, his narrow lips set. “Go ahead, Martha,” said Jane. “All right, then,” said Martha. “When the play opens, it’s Titus’s wedding day. His father, Vespasian, has died, just a few days before, I think, and Titus is now Caesar. In her apartments, Bérénice is waiting to be married. She doesn’t realize (dramatic irony) that Titus has decided to renounce her, because Roman law and custom forbid Caesar to marry a queen and a foreigner.” “Why?” said Harriet Huber. “Prejudice,” said the vicomte, looking at them over a large pair of glasses, which he had produced from his pocket. “It is the same as with us in France. Ever since they threw their own kings out, the Romans
détestaient les rois.”
“The Senate,” resumed Martha, “has reminded Titus of his duty and he comes to tell Bérénice that he’s going to send her back to Judaea—unwillingly.” The vicomte looked up from the text. “But Bérénice is naughty,” he supplied. “She takes it in a bad spirit—not nobly—protests that he is tired of her and threatens to kill herself.
Eh bien,
Titus, who loves her still, becomes a bad boy too and threatens to kill
him
self. When the lovely Bérénice hears this, she knows that he loves her and rises to her full height.” The vicomte sat up in his chair, threw his chest out and held himself at attention. “She renounces Titus, of her own volition, and sets sail for Judaea, promising not to die. Titus stays in Rome and takes up his job as Emperor.”

“And that’s all?” said Harriet Huber, curiously. “That’s all,” said the vicomte, settling back in his chair with a somewhat triumphant expression. “You forgot Antiochus,” prompted Martha. “Ah yes,” said the vicomte. “The king of Comagena. It is the part I will take. Another Oriental, like Bérénice. Another barbarian. He is Titus’s rival. He loves Bérénice and hopes to get her, what do you say, on the rebound. But in the end he too renounces. He gives up his crafty design and becomes like a Roman.” There was a silence. Dolly frowned. “It’s rather like an Austen novel, isn’t it?” she timidly observed. “All the characters become educated; they grow up and buckle down to their duties, like Emma marrying Mr. Knightley.” She screwed up her brows. “It sounds awfully uncomfortable,” she added, with a little shiver. “But naturally,” said the vicomte. “The characters have growing pains. That is what tragedy is.”

“Let me ask you a question,” said Warren, who had been waiting dutifully for an opening in the conversation. “Why doesn’t Titus give up the job of Emperor and just marry Bérénice and live like a plain citizen?” “Like the Duke of Windsor,” exclaimed Harriet. “I knew it reminded me of something. ‘The woman I love.’” She laughed a little and looked at her husband. But Jane, who seemed out of sorts for some reason this evening, turned impatiently on Warren. “Oh, Warren,” she said, “you know the answer to that. It’s right there in the play.” “I forget,” confessed Warren.

Miles opened the book. “Act V, Scene 6,” he noted, and began to declaim, addressing himself to Dolly:

“Oui, madame, et je dois moins encore vous dire Que je suis prêt pour vous abandonner l’empire, De vous suivre, et d’aller, trop content de mes fers, Soupir avec vous au bout de l’univers.”

“Isn’t that just
like
the Duke of Windsor?” cried Harriet. “‘To sigh with you at the ends of the earth’? Wasn’t there something like that in that record he made?” She hunted in her text.
“Je suis prêt pour vous abandonner l’empire
… ?” She turned a questioning glance on her husband. “Probably the Duke of Windsor copied it out of Racine,” declared Jane, rounding her eyes and dropping her jaw. “Hardly,” said Miles, with a curt, silencing nod in her direction. He continued, his green eyes fixed on Dolly:

“Vous même rougieriez de ma lâche conduite Vous verriez à regret marcher à votre suite Un indigne empereur sans empire, sans cour, Vil spectacle aux humains de la faiblesse de l’amour.”

Dolly colored, as if in character, under Miles’s stare. “There, you see, Warren,” said Jane. “Think of poor Titus giving up his empire, trailing around after her, and with all those trunks. …” “What trunks, darling?” Warren turned to her anxiously. “I don’t get your point.” “Why, the Duchess of Windsor’s, of course,” retorted Jane. “Everybody knows about her traveling with seventy trunks of dresses. In Titus’s day, probably, in Palestine, it would have been on camels.” Harold Huber guffawed. “But Jane is quite right,” interposed the vicomte, with an air of virtuous reproof. “That is what Titus would have become if he had married the queen for love—a flunkey.”
“‘Un indigne empereur … vil spectacle aux humains de la faiblesse de l’amour,’
” quoted Miles again in a sonorous voice; his French was extremely fluent, but he spoke with a rolling accent that made it sound like an Irish brogue. The vicomte and Martha smiled. “But is love a weakness?” cried Warren in alarm. “Does anybody here think love is a
weakness?”
“In a king, certainly,” said the vicomte, folding his hands. “Do you agree with that, Miles?” Warren turned to his friend. “Not only in a king,” he said finally, in his drawling voice. “In any man, I would say. Love is for boys and women.” Martha’s fair brows made two skeptical arcs, but she said nothing. Warren looked hopefully around the circle, but nobody rose to love’s defense. “What about Plato?” he said to Miles, in a tone of diffident reminder. “That isn’t what Plato says.” “Plato meant something different,” Miles replied brusquely. “The concept you’re thinking of—romantic love—was unknown to him.” “That’s not what
I
got out of him,” protested Warren. “If that isn’t romantic love in the Symposium, what is it?” he said. “Transcendence. Idealization,” said Martha. “Plato despairs of love, mortal love, as we understand it.” Miles tapped his foot in its fancy shoe. “Oh, excuse me,” she said, demurely. “I interrupted again.” “I agree with Miles,” Jane suddenly proclaimed. “In a man, love
is
a weakness.” Warren jumped up from the hassock. He was quivering all over. “You don’t mean that,” he said incredulously. “Oh yes,” said Jane. “Well, all I can say—” he began, and then words failed him. “I could eat that
rug,”
he finally announced, pointing to a cotton string rug of a tattletale gray shade that lay in front of the fireplace. Dolly’s humorous eyebrows lifted inquiringly as she examined the rug and then Warren. “Not really?” she murmured.
“Really!”
replied Warren fiercely, clenching and unclenching his jaws as if he were about to bite into it. “Calm down, dearie,” said Jane. “Why not get on with the play?” suggested Harold Huber. “Let’s postpone the arguments of counsel till after the case had been presented.”