Faustus (2 page)

FRIEND:
I do not have it.

FAUSTUS:
Give it in any case.

FRIEND:
I would not vex you on this party day.

FAUSTUS:
I warrant you I shall survive what your reluctance indicates as their displeasure.

FRIEND:
They have, we must note, historically praised you.

FAUSTUS:
They praise me, as they praise the mother of the bride, to mask their own concupiscence. What is their praise, they are, as dolt schoolchildren bent over their sums, they round their inclusivities, into the most proximate low error. Their censure and applause are one. But th’ extorted approbation of the mob. Crowds who cry up this slaughterer, that
thief as great? Give me sufficient ink and paper, I’ll make a dog’s bone beloved of the world.

FRIEND:
Do you shun fame?

FAUSTUS:
I accept it. I pursue knowledge.

FRIEND:
Would you then publish your work anonymously?

FAUSTUS:
Discovered, I confess. Am I a libertine? A thief? A murderer? I covet fame. And, like the criminal I plead first, what have I done, and next, who suffered? Yes. I would have fame. For my works, and fame surpassing them, til Faustus’s renown shines free of accomplishment. Read me the journal.

FRIEND:
Read it to you?

FAUSTUS:
The honest man—must in good modesty avert his gaze. It is a disgraceful proclivity. The journals.

FRIEND:
To write them?

FAUSTUS:
To
read
them. To write them is a crime against nature. What do they say of me?

FRIEND:
Pray, delay it past this festive time. How is the boy?

FAUSTUS:
He has a cold upon the chest. Read the report to me.

FRIEND:
(
Takes out a newspaper and reads)…
that…

FAUSTUS:
… please …

FRIEND:
… my eyes as you know are weak.

FAUSTUS:
… supply the lack with concentration.

FRIEND:
“Our celebrated polymath, our local champion …”

FAUSTUS:
Now we enlarge the epigram: even a dead pig finds a truffle. Read on …

FRIEND:
“Faustus: our premier: physician, philosopher, savant-scientist…”

FAUSTUS:
A linguistic supererogation …

FRIEND:
“… having labored for,” et cetera …

FAUSTUS:
… I shall respond to them.

FRIEND:
“Proceeds, our sources inform us …”

FAUSTUS:
… who might these sources be?

FRIEND:
Friends of yourself, and friends of knowledge?

FAUSTUS:
Ah yes, the hopeful constituency of the seekers-after-light, the talented who worship genius, the mediocre, who doubt its existence. Whom do I lack?

FRIEND:
The Average Man. You omit that creature.

FAUSTUS:
Has he, then, heard of me?

FRIEND:
Does he not read the journal?

FAUSTUS:
As the mariner rivets his gaze to the lighthouse.

FRIEND:
What must he make of you—Faustus?

FAUSTUS:
Please … ?

FRIEND:
In truth, accomplished, celebrated, wealthy, loved … how may he compass it? This average man?

FAUSTUS:
How can we know? Our Biblia Sacra treats not of him, but of ourself. Say on …

FRIEND:
Are you immune?

FAUSTUS:
Let’s make the trial. (
Pause
)

FRIEND:
“… that we have tired of the oft-reiterated phrase that we may expect, momentarily, the completion of the long awaited …” I had rather not continue.

FAUSTUS:
Does it turn combative? (
Pause
) Does it suggest I have been o’erpraised? And that a new, unsentimental day, judge between merit and nostalgia? Does it suggest “brief Comet, in the firmament, and long-deferred hope of its return …”?

FRIEND:
Are you, then, clairvoyant, to read the hidden page?

FAUSTUS:
They are a newspaper. How may continued praise be news? It may not. Read on, though I could have writ it.

FRIEND:
(
Reads
)“… as an uncontracted burden, upon our intellectual establishment; the tax of continued praise for this juvenilia, of long-deferred hope for completion of a notional magnum opus. The repeated postponement of which must call to doubt its very existence … Our praise of Faustus …”

FAUSTUS:
I have completed my work.

FRIEND:
Say again.

FAUSTUS:
I have completed it.

FRIEND:
When?

FAUSTUS:
(
Passing him the paper
) Smudge the fresh ink with your finger, and add your mark to the colophon.

FRIEND:
Would it were so …

FAUSTUS:
You’d wish it?

FRIEND:
You speak from Parnassus, to him the gods delight to ignore. Will you license me, Faustus, to
express my deep honor, and my profound sense of occasion?

FAUSTUS:
Equally my friend, who have supported me. For in my doubt I treasured your belief.

FRIEND:
You doubted, Faustus … ?

FAUSTUS:
How could I but doubt? Who played with this or that prideful manipulation. Til I found not the piece I sought, but an inversion of the paradigm. I have been a fool occupied with toys. I have misused the gifts vouchsafed to me.

FRIEND:
How possibly?

FAUSTUS:
Through the very conjectural disclaimers of worth, each calculated or to increase my fame, or to propitiate nemesis. You wish to ruin a man, praise him for his self-known hypocrisies. For gold’s ever fresh-minted in delight, but its worth is untied to the form, but part of the earth’s primal store. (
Pause
) In fine, praise God, and let them say this of me: He was rewarded for his brute persistence. Not for an act but for a submission.

FRIEND:
A submission?

FAUSTUS:
For is not the answer constantly before us …

FRIEND:
And your work treats of the Answer?

FAUSTUS:
… as you say.

FRIEND:
And may you capsulate it?

FAUSTUS:
Read … Read. Here: it is a mathematic formula. That is all. It is a numeric reduction.

FRIEND:
(
Takes the paper
) Surely its study requires diligence.

FAUSTUS:
Indeed.

FRIEND:
The computation is abstruse, the equation beyond my mathematic skills.

FAUSTUS:
Here is the coda …

FRIEND:
How shall I grasp it absent the foundation?

FAUSTUS:
Attend:

(
The
WIFE
enters
)

WIFE:
Fabian.

FRIEND:
My dear, I understand that I am doubly to felicitate you.

WIFE:
Fabian, welcome. Faustus …

FAUSTUS:
In the one moment… will it hold?

WIFE:
For the one moment, of course …

FRIEND:
(
TO
WIFE
) Will you hear my speech? I shall extemporize th’ addition …

WIFE:
With thanks, but presently, I must see to the boy. (
She exits
.)

FRIEND:
Is he unwell?

FAUSTUS:
Children, like the Mass, act in the responsive state, they quaver to the air, the moon, a drop in the glass, the helictic motion of the spheres. How could he otherwise than resonate at my discovery? See, now the very humors in the sway of periodic power.

FRIEND:
Of periodic Power.

FAUSTUS:
(
Of his manuscript page
) See, see here. Read:

FRIEND:
It is beyond me.

FAUSTUS:
Read the preamble. See. That Number. That all is reducible to periodicity To cipher, to a formula, expressed in number; and that number signifies not quantity … not quantity. But a progression. (
Pause
)

FRIEND:
… I am at a loss, my friend.

FAUSTUS:
No—stay—I shall parcel it slowly.

FRIEND:
Fit your description to my limits.

FAUSTUS:
Consider the boy.

FRIEND:
For which my felicitations.

FAUSTUS:
Many thanks. Now see him age.

FRIEND:
Which, may God in his beneficence permit.

FAUSTUS:
Amen, with all my heart. Now we admit him as a youth, surprised, by first love, later by betrothal, marriage, and conception. Each, to his eye, a personal, nay idiosyncratic ebullition. Yet, from our remove, inevitable, universal.

FRIEND:
Thus?

FAUSTUS:
And thus predictable. There is a generalized periodicity … Which, once revealed’s encountered everywhere. I instance: the recurrence of drought, famine, fire, and, by extension, those eruptions we, untutored, understand, as acts of will: war, civic growth, invention, and decay … Had one sufficient remove, one could plot the concordance.

FRIEND:
Of?

FAUSTUS:
Of acts of nature, and supposed acts of will. In short, of human movement. (
Pause
) There is a consonance.
It is a code. It is called periodicity. It is the secret engine of the world.

FRIEND:
You here profess to comprehend it?

FAUSTUS:
Read. (
Pause
)

FRIEND:
Is it not blasphemy?

FAUSTUS:
Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.

FRIEND:
But should one stray too far … ?

FAUSTUS:
How might one stray too far?

FRIEND:
Permit me, if I may, to counsel respect for the jocular proclivities we know to be the gods. Were it not better to refrain? Do not tempt fate.

FAUSTUS:
What is my charge but to tempt fate? Each time I commence and each conclude?

FRIEND:
Until?

FAUSTUS:
Until God recoil at the impertinence? (
Pause
) He bids the farmer find delight in the pristine, the entrepreneur in the ruined, the philosopher in the occluded. As sentries on the battlement, shall we not be drawn to the edge?

FRIEND:
And cautioned to refrain.

FAUSTUS:
Yet incited to leap.

FRIEND:
By?

FAUSTUS:
An echo of forgotten power, as in the life of birds.

FRIEND:
Do we descend from birds? Say angels.

FAUSTUS:
Both, you remark, can fly.

FRIEND:
You frighten me.

FAUSTUS:
Is it not my duty? Hand me the journal—I will respond to them.

FRIEND:
Would I were more intelligent, or to dispute or second your conclusions.

FAUSTUS:
Each trade must bear its occupation mark. The ploughman’s gnarled hands, the blacksmith’s seared forearm.

FRIEND:
And the philosopher?

FAUSTUS:
A certain melancholy—the dual conviction of futility and prescience. A cook with but two spices, ever attempting to amend with one, his error with
the other. (
Pause
) Enough. I have transgressed, not the prerogatives of the gods, but the more comprehensible strictures of good manners. Today’s the boy’s.

FRIEND:
Indeed.

FAUSTUS:
He wrote to me.

FRIEND:
He did?

FAUSTUS:
A poem. (
FAUSTUS
hands the poem to his
FRIEND
.)

(
The
FRIEND
reads the poem
)

FRIEND:
“What mystic light illumes the night. A father’s care …” This is a sign of grace.

FAUSTUS:
Is that a scientific term?

FRIEND:
Never a cynic but concealed acolyte
in potentia
.

FAUSTUS:
And what brave man divulged the theory?

FRIEND:
You did.

FAUSTUS:
Your learning does you credit. “A father’s care.” Perhaps it is grace.

FRIEND:
What a concession.

FAUSTUS:
Yes, why should I be chosen?

FRIEND:
All are chosen.

FAUSTUS:
All are chosen? Then what possible meaning has the term?

FRIEND:
We are all subject to God’s grace.

FAUSTUS:
Bless me, he treads damn near the theological.

FRIEND:
You say you seek a greater power.

FAUSTUS:
A greater power than
that
, certainly.

FRIEND:
Than what?

FAUSTUS:
Than
religion
.

FRIEND:
There is no greater power.

FAUSTUS:
Then why does one find, under its aegis, nay, in its name, more progressed misery, murder, and starvation than exists in an unbeneficed state of nature? Answer me that and go free.

FRIEND:
Many find it a source of strength.

FAUSTUS:
The leaf of the camomile, parboiled in water, conduces to calm. And yet I do not worship it.

FRIEND:
You spoke of a greater power—

FAUSTUS:
I spoke
of number
.

FRIEND:
Number.