Collected Novels and Plays (61 page)

JOHN:

When Julie and I are married I shall urge her to leave Europe and go back with me. Gilbert is very entertaining but I hope he will not follow us. She has gone about with him for so long that now, even when she wants to, she cannot do justice to the beautiful seriousness I know is in her. Gilbert on the other hand belongs in Italy. For myself I do not enjoy living by the sea. I find a warm climate corrupting.

Here in this sweetness I am not quite at ease.

I should prefer Venice in the winter

All flooded and misted and emptied, fixed in a frown,

To this lax glitter, this warm loose life

Of drifting palaces and uprooted foreigners.

Yet these, for they do not flinch at small misfortunes,

Are what endure

While our cold virtues, once thought durable

But now abstract and frail as snowflakes,

Alter to lazy water in the sun.

Fluidity is proof against major disasters.

The marbles melt and wink at me. “Survive,”

They whisper, dimpling, “be like us,
straniero!

It won’t be Venice or the foreigners

That have gone up in spray, when the end comes.

Survive! We have foreseen a gondola

And in the gondola a German woman

Grandly rejoicing over whatever cornice

Shall have been left standing to elicit

The warm salt water from her eyes.” Waiter!

A coffee!

A VOICE:

Yes Mister.

JOHN:

I would not speak
their
language …. And yet it may be that the world is nothing more than an impersonal backdrop, that Venice and the sea discuss endlessly one another, with never a glance at ourselves. But no. To place Julie now against that other setting she described to me this afternoon, can I pretend that I had not somehow foreseen it? It rang a bell, it had to be. Even before she spoke I saw the fishing-boat, felt the brightness of the
day, the blueness of the Gulf Stream where they sat trolling for big fish. The things we do not understand are dangerous. All this had positively worked on her. It calls her still over and over back into bewilderment. Over and over she enters that scene to work on
it
, sounding the motives like a sea, wondering …

JULIE:

Stop!

JULIE:

What did they do when I was with them?

What did they mean to do?

GILBERT:

Is he steering us the right way?

I know we’ve passed that patch of seaweed once before, today.

JULIE (
sings
):

Ah gardez-vous de me guérir!

J’aime mon mal, j’en veux mourir!

GILBERT:

Was that the last beer, Julie?

It seems a pity, don’t you think,

That we have nothing more to drink?

And didn’t I tell you to make more sandwiches?

To be hard of hearing has its advantages.

JULIE:

Desormais je ne parlerai que français.

From now on I shall only speak French.

GILBERT:

And it would serve her right, wouldn’t it, Charles?

It must be by design that nobody speaks to me.

Have I done something wrong? You see

I am reduced to the simplest interrogatives.

JULIE:

We know what happens when we talk to you.

Nous savons bien ce qui arrive—O what’s the use!

Why is Charles frowning?

GILBERT:

Charles isn’t frowning.

That is the way his face looks in repose.

He is a naturally melancholy person.

JULIE:

He knows

That we are looking at him.

GILBERT:

Rubbish.

JULIE:

He knows

How nervous we become when he ignores us.

GILBERT:

He also knows how nervous you become

When I’m not there to keep you from talking to one another.

JULIE:

Idiot.

GILBERT:

Fishwife.

JULIE:

Cretin.

CHARLES:

Look! Something’s at the line! Wait!

GILBERT:

It is only your wife’s beer bottle.

CHARLES:

Fish won’t strike a damaged bait.

GILBERT:

I think that’s rather decent of them.

JULIE:

O what a beautiful day! What soft air!

See how the light moves through the water

Like strings of a piano. And the water

Is not blue but purple. Look out there!

Think of them threading down, the strings of light,

To where an absolute darkness begins,

How they must sound against a thousand cutting fins

And mouths that would swallow me up in a bite.

CHARLES:

If you’re not careful we’ll put
you
on the hook.

GILBERT:

The water
is
purple, with the blood of talkative wives.

I do appreciate Charles’ point of view. He strives

Overmuch perhaps for integrity. Yet one can but admire

Those moments, admittedly frequent, when like a chestnut from the fire

He attains his object. Look at him now. He is perfectly at ease

Baiting his line with a fresh mullet. Deep in the purple seas

How shall mere fish, without a fraction of my high-handedness,

Be able to resist such a display of single-mindedness?

JULIE:

Why is it that we become so interesting

As soon as Charles is listening?

GILBERT:

How shall I, if it comes to that? You are at one with your bait.

And I have swallowed it, Charles, I’ve got you, it’s too late.

CHARLES:

It would seem in that case that I had
you.

GILBERT:

I suppose it would and I daresay you do.

JULIE:

It would seem you both had
me.

GILBERT:

I hope we always shall. I’m sure Charles will agree.

CHARLES:

Nobody ever has
her
for very long.

JULIE:

What a nasty remark! Gilbert, tell him he’s wrong.

GILBERT:

He’d never believe me.

JULIE:

A brother ought to defend

His sister’s reputation.

GILBERT:

But Charles is my friend!

I couldn’t lie to him!

JULIE:

O you’re the end!

GILBERT:

See how we have you?

JULIE:

Did you have this in mind

When you arranged for me to marry Charles?

GILBERT:

I arranged for you to marry Charles?

What can you mean? I did nothing of the kind.

JULIE:

You brought Charles home. You said we should make a perfect match.

GILBERT:

Well haven’t you? Of course you have. Charles was a catch.

And today it is his turn to catch us.

Tomorrow we shall let you win at cards.

What could conceivably be more stimulating

Than for three people to catch one another

In so many different ways? It keeps us going.

GILBERT:

I have had many fascinating fishing experiences …

JULIE (
to JOHN
):

You understand I was talking lightly that day.

GILBERT:

… though I am not a serious sportsman like yourself.

JULIE:

O I knew what I was saying, but I said it

More as a spell to keep it from becoming.

And I am talking lightly now, not laughing

But lightly talking.

GILBERT:

Why the first time I ever went deep-sea fishing

I landed a fifty-pound something-or-other,

The marvel of all my friends, such a powerful one.

JULIE:

There is that attribute of speech

That makes for lightness.

GILBERT:

I was only a little shaver.

I had it three-quarters of an hour on the line.

JULIE:

I want to dive down,

Discover, bring back whatever it is, the black

Pearl, the sense of whatever I am,

But my bones are full of air, my words are larks,

The sun is sparkling on the surface of the water

In all directions except from underneath.

GILBERT:

Forty-five minutes is a long time.

CHARLES:

A long time for a fish.

GILBERT:

A longer time for anybody who wasn’t a fish.

JULIE:

I have not wanted to talk lightly. Do you hate me?

I shall rise above it, such is my lightness.

CHARLES:

I don’t know. I’m a fairly good swimmer.

JOHN:

Julie, be near me. This was long ago.

GILBERT:

O my dear Charles, don’t consider it!

CHARLES:

I suppose you were only joking.

GILBERT:

Can you for a moment imagine I wasn’t only joking?

JULIE:

You hear him? He wasn’t only joking.

GILBERT:

Why nobody in his right mind would risk
Dipping his big toe in these waters. Besides—

CHARLES:

You think I couldn’t hold out?

GILBERT:

You couldn’t possibly hold out for five minutes.

JULIE:

That was how it began. Charles said he could hold out

At the end of a line, like a hooked dolphin.

I shall die remembering all that, die!

JOHN:

Darling, it doesn’t
matter!

CHARLES:

Gilbert, sometimes you annoy the hell out of me.

JULIE:

I tried to reason with them. There had been a man

Whose leg was taken off by a shark in Bermuda.

People on the beach saw the blood streaming out of him

But he kept on swimming, he hadn’t felt it.

It was when he looked behind him that he died.

CHARLES:

Would you care to make a little bet?

GILBERT:

A little bet?

JULIE:

A little bet!

GILBERT:

Mercenary Charles! No. Why in ten minutes—

CHARLES:

Hook me up to that line. You’ll see.

GILBERT:

I’ll do nothing of the sort.

JULIE:

He wanted him to do it. He said five minutes the first time.

CHARLES:

I mean it. Fasten me to the line. Use the harness.

GILBERT:

Can you really be such a good swimmer? No,

I refuse to fall in with this absurd exhibition.

CHARLES:

Stop laughing at me. Hook me to the line.

JOHN:

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

GILBERT:

You’d positively enjoy it?

CHARLES:

Why not?

GILBERT:

All right. Why not?

JULIE:

It was all at once a question of something terribly funny. They were both wearing those ridiculous harnesses that keep you from being yanked out of your chair when something big hits your line. O the idiots, I kept saying to myself. Gilbert was fastening the line to Charles’ harness. The boatman had stopped the motor. One can imagine what he must have thought, which didn’t help matters, imagining, I mean, what he must have thought.

GILBERT:

Come, little sister, lend a hand.

JOHN:

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:

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 monsters are at dalliance far below

On beds of weed and wantonness.

It’s not on us they will grow fat.

CHARLES:

I’ve often wondered where they go.

JULIE:

I never have.

GILBERT:

All ready?

CHARLES:

Yes.

JULIE:

Darling—

CHARLES:

Julie?

JULIE:

At least take off your hat!

GILBERT:

Ten minutes, mind you. Nothing less.

GILBERT:

Now we shall let him swim a certain distance from the boat. How quiet it is. One would hope to hear suitable music, some light premeditated Impromptu, perhaps the Mad Scene from
The Chocolate Soldier.
Charles
is
a good swimmer. You asked why you were laughing. I daresay you knew no other way of participating in that curious moment.