Read Collected Novels and Plays Online
Authors: James Merrill
Collected Novels and Plays (69 page)
FANYA:
It makes me shiver.
TITHONUS:
It is a symbol of eternity and of wisdom.
OLGA:
Also of evil, I’ve been told.
KONSTANTIN (
entering with the filled flask
):
Come quickly! The spring’s not a hundred steps from here! There’s a waterfall—at this season!—and ferns taller than Fanya Alexandrovna!
FANYA:
Oh, let’s see it!
OLGA:
Later, perhaps.
KONSTANTIN:
The light’s on it now—it won’t wait!
OLGA (
laughing
):
And there are a dozen little rainbows, and snails, and gnats. I know. Run along then, drink it all in.
(
KONSTANTIN puts down the flask and goes out with FANYA.
)
And now that
we’re
unchaperoned, let us have a quiet tea.
TITHONUS:
How lazy one is, not to have a look at something beautiful, only a few steps away ….
OLGA:
How old one is, you mean.
We
should see nothing remarkable, you and I.
TITHONUS:
That young man—
OLGA:
Konstantin? He’s my godson.
TITHONUS:
He appears full of ideals.
OLGA:
He picked a quarrel with you, didn’t he? Do you enjoy that?
TITHONUS:
Quarreling with people? No. I despise quarrels. Yet I have known others—my own father—who, out of some insane zest for experience, seemed almost to revel in it. Your godson will never permit himself to compromise. I admire that.
OLGA:
Never to compromise? But you pass up a great blessing! Compromise is to our souls what sleep is to our bodies. And who would choose never to sleep? It is the compromise of the body with death, a delicious thing! We don’t agree ….
(
All at once she stiffens with pain, her hand at her throat. The spasm passes unremarked by TITHONUS,
)
Konstantin Stepanovitch has a good mind, a trifle pedantic still, but clever, resourceful …. He is entering into a match with that child whose principal charm is an enormous dowry.
TITHONUS:
Pardon me, isn’t the girl very much in love with him?
OLGA:
True. What bearing has that upon her charm?
TITHONUS:
It is charming to he loved.
OLGA (
impatiently
):
Well, of course, if one is a child or an invalid ….
(
Laughing.
)
My godson once had me read a pamphlet by a psychologist, proposing love as a cure for all kinds of illnesses.
TITHONUS:
Now that is rubbish!
OLGA:
Ah well, he gave it to me as a joke. I told him, anyhow—“There’s nothing comic,” I said, “in having grown so old and so poor that nobody who comes along will look twice at you.”
TITHONUS:
You’re right. There is nothing comic in such a thought.
OLGA (
making the best of an unexpected answer
):
It takes an unusual man to understand that. I’d never met one, till now, who didn’t resort to a lot of idiotic compliments. “Why, Olga Vassilyevna, what nonsense! You’re hardly out of your cradle!” At least I know better than to believe them.
TITHONUS:
How indelicate of me! You mustn’t think I meant—
OLGA:
There, there! I’m teasing you!
TITHONUS:
Teasing me? Why should you want to tease me?
OLGA (
deciding to ignore this
):
As for Fanya, she’ll be married, that’s the main thing. What if in five years her husband chooses to regret his freedom? He’ll never leave
her—unless he
truly
refuses to compromise. And then—well, I ask only that Konstantin not make a silly mistake.
TITHONUS:
You oughtn’t to look so much on the dark side! Why, he struck me as caring for her so deeply, so passionately—
OLGA:
Ah, you’ve forgotten! A young man cares for
everybody
passionately. What’s more, you don’t know poverty! I should myself care passionately for any pliable person who would not only provide me with absolute material comfort but bring about my advancement in the world.
(
To the samovar.
)
Boil, why don’t you?
TITHONUS:
A watched pot ….
(
They laugh together.
)
No! What shocking things you say! Material comfort! Advancement in the world! Am I to believe that all that has any hold over a person such as yourself?
OLGA:
Are we talking seriously?
(
In a dramatic whisper.
)
Yes! All that
has
a hold over me! I am the soul of worldliness!
(
The look on his face sends her into a burst of laughter.
)
Come, my friend, I like you! I shall brew you a glass of tea and draw you out.
TITHONUS:
Am I so innocent?
OLGA:
Pristine. Don’t frown!
TITHONUS:
Do I frown?
OLGA:
Or are you one of those innocent men who turn out to be the ruin of us all?
(
TITHONUS is embarrassed.
)
Dear friend, forgive me. It’s as if we had known each other before, in a different life. Think of me as laughing for joy, to have found you once again.
(
Gives him her hand.
)
TITHONUS:
Yes, it is so …. I have no defenses. I feel an extraordinary ease, as though something clogged had been set running again, a stopped watch shaken and set running ….
OLGA (
alert to something else
):
Do you hear? The cry of a strange bird ….
TITHONUS:
For years something has gone untouched, a spring inside me …. What you said just now—reverberates. There is a stirring, as of roots
at the end of winter. Yes. When I turned and saw you standing there, I knew that I … had not had a happy life. Forgive me.
OLGA:
One can say anything to a stranger.
TITHONUS (
excited
):
But in all fairness to yourself, you must know—I am not free.
OLGA:
Few of us are!
TITHONUS:
I mean, I told you earlier—I am married.
OLGA (
as if that had anything to do with it
): Married!
TITHONUS:
Yes. To Au—
OLGA:
Hush, ridiculous man! Married! What do you take me for? On an acquaintance of ten minutes!
TITHONUS:
But you said—! Forgive me, I am a fool. I have never understood the motives of others.
OLGA (
laughing
):
I should say you have not! I feel like La Fontaine’s dolphin, who thought to save a man from drowning only to discover it was a monkey—and just in time!
TITHONUS:
I beg you—
OLGA:
Back into the sea he went, poor ape! What a fiasco! “But you said—!”
(
More gently.
)
What did I say? I proposed an orgy of conversation, the only kind permitted to strangers who have reached the age of discretion.
(
TITHONUS smiles with her, unwittingly relieved.
)
Come now! Let us forget this unfortunate passage. It is behind us and casts an amusing light, quite as if we had
had
the miserable liaison, after all. Nothing draws people closer than a misunderstanding.
TITHONUS:
How true that is! In my own life, at perhaps the very moment that determined my life—
(
He is interrupted by renewed laughter.
)
Now
why are you laughing?
OLGA:
What an egotist you are! First you imagine that I want you to make love to me, next that I want to hear about your life! Haven’t you understood? I
know
your life, I know it without your telling me.
TITHONUS:
What then do you want from me?
OLGA (
with sad intensity
):
Want! Want! Mightn’t it be enough to live and breathe? Must one always—?
(
She is overcome by a second spell of illness.
)
TITHONUS (
rising in alarm
):
What is it? You’re not well!
OLGA (
choking
):
No! Leave me!
TITHONUS:
Leave you! No! Never!
OLGA (
recovering
):
It is of no importance whatsoever.
(
He helps her to her feet.
)
There, you see, it’s over. The laughter brought it on. Last year, it is true, I was ailing. But now I am well, remarkably well. You see, I know my own life, also …. Listen, the water’s boiling ….
(
She brews tea.
)
TITHONUS (
humorously scolding
):
You know, you frightened me!
(
Producing a sheaf of photographs.
)
Ha! These might interest you. My wife is an amateur photographer.
(
Showing them.
)
Here is a remarkable view of her family’s home—see how clearly you distinguish the mountaintop. It was taken from the temple below …. Here am I, only last year, in the Alps … again in Burgos … in Amsterdam. A heavenly effect of light there on the canal. She develops all her own photographs. I wonder sometimes if she’s ever really happy outside of her little darkroom …. Ah! here is
one of her
early efforts. That is myself, in the first year of our marriage. Forty years ago.
OLGA (
who by now has given up trying
):
You were very handsome.
TITHONUS:
Yes. I was young.
(
A pause.
)
You spoke just now of wanting. At that age I wanted—oh, scandalous, impossible things. Since then, I have learned that we can alter our wants.
OLGA:
No. We can uproot them, as I have done. Where I had planted an alley of chrysanthemums there is now a little row of herbs.
(
Pouring tea.
)
Be honest now, haven’t you done the same?
TITHONUS:
I? I have done nothing. And I want nothing.
(
Pause.
)
But I would accept, if pressed, a glass of tea.
OLGA (
handing it to him
):
Sugar? Cream? Rum?
TITHONUS:
Nothing.
OLGA:
No turkey? Not a single tart? They’re all for me …. I was thinking of an old woman who read tea leaves, old Varya—she’s dead, poor soul ….
TITHONUS (
after a pause
):
How agreeable this moment is! If only it would not pass away ….
OLGA:
Agreeable things
do
pass away. That is how we distinguish them from disagreeable things. They pass away and they reappear, the seasons, the lovers in the landscape. Sometimes the very faces seem to be repeating themselves, faces from long ago.
TITHONUS:
The leaves are falling, but they will return. We read their meaning as in the bottom of a glass of tea. One must be content to sit, to let it run its course.
(
Pause.
)
You look at me with—what is it?—mockery? Impatience?
OLGA:
Drink your tea, my friend.
TITHONUS:
Do not fear, I shall not launch into a tedious account of my life, my little daily miseries. Why should one speak of these things? One is never understood. Many of your Russian writers succumb to this—shall we say, gossip of the soul?—and go their way, poor men, without ever achieving that refinement we look for in an enduring life.
(
Pause.
)
An enduring work, I meant to say. At every turning, now, what does one hear but the cries of men whose feelings are too overwhelming to be contained? Feelings indeed! If only they knew what it meant to have a fountain in the breast, flowing, quenching, musical—where I have only a stone! I cannot feel! My heart is dry as dust! You see, I laugh at it, yet … I have a wife, I have an unborn child! The deeds we do in the name of
love!—not love, for I feel nothing. My wife, do you understand?—dressed in a Chinese robe of the clearest blue! “Husband,” she said, “is it I who have failed you? What have I done,” she said, “to deserve your reproach?”—I who cannot even feel reproach!—And taking my hand, she laid it below her heart where through the silk and her young flesh I might feel that other heart, the heart of my own child. I felt it,
yes, but felt nothing else, not even envy of the child who will never give up the blessing I—I cannot even reproach myself! She rose from the table, upsetting her cup of chocolate. It shattered to the floor, staining us both, a piece of miraculous Sèvres given her by Lady Hamilton. She took my face between her hands, passionately, then pressed her chin against my skull—but not before I had seen her own face wet and bright as a spring dawn.
(
No longer looking at OLGA, but holding before him the photograph of himself as a young man.
)
A dawn, an everlasting dawn!—but for me, no night, no tempest, no cause to rejoice in it. I long for that night in which things lose themselves, the dark negative of my soul, my mild, trivial, terrible soul.
(
Slowly, almost tenderly, TITHONUS begins to tear up the photograph.
)
I have remembered everything and experienced nothing. Sunlight in cities, brilliance of theaters, the phosphorescence of names and places in the mind bent on darkness—nothing but light, light, light! It is not to be borne.