Faustus (6 page)

MAGUS:
From which you conclude? (
Pause
)

FAUSTUS:
Where is my family?

MAGUS:
Yes? Are you frightened?

FAUSTUS:
Show them to me.

MAGUS:
They are dead, you have murdered them.

FAUSTUS:
Strong, striking verbiage, yet hardly discourse. You recur to causality. Then I have you, sir. For, name me the system of philosophy, or physics wherein effect may be without cause. For what freak do you suppose to punish me? Respond. I charge you.

MAGUS:
You made a wager.

FAUSTUS:
A wager? That is your plea? You rest the destruction of my happiness upon a bet? O, the wronged, are ever disadvantaged in debate. For the aggressor,
may assert now this, now that, unfettered by fact, truth, or history. While the betrayed …

MAGUS:
No more betrayed, but called to account. You contracted a wager.

FAUSTUS:
I repudiate it.

MAGUS:
One may repudiate the payment but of that which one holds in possession. Else it is called “chagrin.”

FAUSTUS:
Then I defy you, parse me the wager, sir, in justice.

MAGUS:
But we delighted. To revile the advocates of justice; how we decried as puerile those who served; reason, and tradition, custom, law … Your work, your discourse, and, in fact your life were dedicated to the abrogation of commonalities.

FAUSTUS:
Is it for this I am punished?

MAGUS:
You are not punished, but foreclosed.

FAUSTUS:
Then save me the gloss, and assert the forfeit. By your terms, sir, by your terms.

MAGUS:
I will not foul the laws of fair debate.

FAUSTUS:
So you have said. Then show me the default, sir, or restore all.

MAGUS:
I name your magnum opus.

FAUSTUS:
(
As he holds up the book
) It survives.

MAGUS:
You still seek fame?

FAUSTUS:
Yes, I am arrogant. Nay, arrogance itself, spare me the lesson. My work survives. You asserted it contained a flaw.

MAGUS:
I did.

FAUSTUS:
Indeed, a theft, which would disqualify it from renown save as a jest. A fool, a vicious, and unwarranted asseveration.

MAGUS:
Which, were it to be established …

FAUSTUS:
… I complete, which, were it proved supportable, would, would, would. (
Pause
) You taunted me. You dared me, as I understood, to take an oath. I took it as a jest.

MAGUS:
You swore to the false, that which you staked was forfeit.

FAUSTUS:
That my work was purloined? I defy you, sir, to suggest my work the subject of… yes, say, yes, incomprehension, yes, but impossibly of scorn. Let us grant you the passage of time. I cede you the truth of your illusion. Does my work not survive? (
He holds up the book
.)

MAGUS:
But as a curio.

FAUSTUS:
A
curio?
I call you to render justice.

MAGUS:
Justice is blind, you have said she is also deaf.

FAUSTUS:
But you are neither. You structure your chicanery in the mechanic mode: if this then that. Then
habeas deleatur:
show me the fault.

MAGUS:
(
Of the book
) Read.

FAUSTUS:
I am acquainted with it—I composed it. ’Tis mine entire. You charge me as a plagiarist. Show me the fault. I defy you.

MAGUS:
Turn to the end.

FAUSTUS: (FAUSTUS
turns to the end
) Indeed I shall.

MAGUS:
Turn the last leaf and read.

FAUSTUS:
Yes, yes, it is the final formula, and the apotheosis of the argument, where number is revealed but as progression.

MAGUS:
Yes.

FAUSTUS:
You feign I am undone in the conclusion? That it is debarred as purloined? It cannot be purloined, for it is pure imagination.

MAGUS:
Turn the leaf:

FAUSTUS:
What viciousness is this? (
Reads
)“Three swift swallows in the summer sky, gone in the twinkling of an eye. One for the heart, one for the head, one for the lad who tarries abed.” (
Pause
) It is the child’s poem.

MAGUS:
The manuscript appears under your name. Yet, you deny the conclusion’s authorship.

FAUSTUS:
The poem. How found it its way into my composition?

MAGUS:
Take the page from your tunic. And read.

(
FAUSTUS
does so and reads:
)

FAUSTUS:
“… that number signifies not a quantity, but a progression …” This is not forfeit, sir, but mere prestidigitation.

MAGUS:
Ah, sir, do you now conceive the world as a balance? Must one not then suppose one to read the scale? Which supposition you have dedicated your life, nay, in fact, this work, to disprove?

FAUSTUS:
What power sends you as a plague, or are you an excrudescence of the general theme? Of envy. (
Pause
) What of my family?

MAGUS:
They ran the extended limit of their course. They died. They perhaps continue, in a parallel world. As before. As e’er we ever met. Say it is true. Take comfort, and believe it.

FAUSTUS:
Is it true?

MAGUS:
Is it true? And you transfigured, from our brave savant, into a missish postulate who wished to know: the weight of the world, the run of time, the final construction of matter … as the poor fool who wished to understand grief. Your wish has been granted.

FAUSTUS:
I could not have foreseen.

MAGUS:
…
truly
…? Then you should not have spoke. Or have your vaunted experiments in science taught you to pray that cause has no effect?

FAUSTUS:
I understand. That I’ve offended, in some wise, or you, or, say if I go amiss, or, say, a tradition, or a power you represent. I pray to you to accept my regrets, and teach me how to particularize my homage. How shall I address you?

MAGUS:
Well begun. Call me a merchant.

FAUSTUS:
What do you seek?

MAGUS:
As any merchant. That which in my realm is scarce.

FAUSTUS:
What have you brought?

MAGUS:
Say I have brought you fire.

FAUSTUS:
Will not the gods be angry?

MAGUS:
Suppose it their constant state. (
Pause
)

FAUSTUS:
From whence do you come?

MAGUS:
Shall you know more when I have told you?

FAUSTUS:
Fit the response to my understanding.

MAGUS:
Say from the future. Or the past. Say from another realm.

FAUSTUS:
I am afraid.

MAGUS:
You balked at the transmutation of a card. As the rock-dwelling savages recoiled at fire. You conflate: number, speech, thought, the mental and physical, and call your work complete. You are unfit e’en to frame the problem as a dog to speak; it lacks the mechanism. (
Pause
)

FAUSTUS:
Sir … (
Pause
) Sir… Ah, sir. Ah, good sir. Ah worthy preceptor, to school in atonement. To strip from me, the prop of self-regard. To offer that omnipotent admixture of grief and self-humiliation …

MAGUS:
Whom do you think confronts you? (
Pause
) You hesitate.

FAUSTUS:
Yes.

MAGUS:
From confusion?

FAUSTUS:
No. No, from … (
Pause
)

MAGUS:
You must supply the word.

FAUSTUS:
From awe. (
Pause
)

MAGUS:
I attend … (
Pause
)

FAUSTUS:
We have heard voices. In the dark. In childhood, in extremity Perhaps at death … we have construed them as … (
Pause
) those promptings religion derogates as survival of savagery. Of ancient, superceded nature …

MAGUS:
The power of which you speak. Does it possess a name?

FAUSTUS:
What do you want of me?

MAGUS:
I await your suggestion.

FAUSTUS:
No, the gods, would damn me, can it be, for the ignorance of a formula?

MAGUS:
Upon what then, should they rely?

FAUSTUS:
Upon … upon the evidence, say of my contrition.

MAGUS:
What leads you to believe they prefer it to the entertainment of your pain?

FAUSTUS:
I cannot credit it.

MAGUS:
Are they, then, in contradistinction to your avowed thesis, omniscient and benign?

FAUSTUS:
My works are empty I abjure them. They are the toy of an overfed mind.

MAGUS:
Truly?

FAUSTUS:
I have been wrong. In which I am but human. God spare me. My life was not without merit.

MAGUS:
What merit might that be?

FAUSTUS:
My family … My wife loved me, my child.

MAGUS:
He loved you?

FAUSTUS:
He penned me a poem.

MAGUS:
Did you not derogate it?

FAUSTUS:
Did I? Then may God forgive me.

MAGUS:
Read it to me …

FAUSTUS:
… Why?

MAGUS:
To conflate the two.

FAUSTUS:
I confess, the two productions are one, my manuscript, and the child’s poem. Yes. I am taught. His is superior.

MAGUS:
Why?

FAUSTUS:
His … His was writ in love. I…

MAGUS:
Confess—

FAUSTUS:
I… shall confess … to my petted self-adoration. To coward miching, to entertainment of the establishment which I was licensed to decry. I was a whore, corrupt for all time, and unfit for any purpose greater than debauchery.

MAGUS:
You divert, but fail to convince of your sincerity. Confess.

FAUSTUS:
To what end?

MAGUS:
To the end that you cease to enquire, for my entertainment, for no end at all.

FAUSTUS:
God help me.

MAGUS:
God spare me, the frightened call, and confect endless, elaborate self-castigation. Spared, they employ reprieve in sin. Thus coupling cowardice to comedy.

FAUSTUS:
Until…?

MAGUS:
Shall we turn to the coda? Shall we exhibit those upon whom you practiced your charade? Shall we show you your family?

FAUSTUS:
You have said they are dead.

MAGUS:
As if they never lived, or dwelt, solely in your imagination. (
Pause
) Or the imagination of another.

FAUSTUS:
Of what other?

MAGUS:
Shall I tell you? (
Pause
)

FAUSTUS:
Show me my family.

MAGUS:
Your son’s in heaven, and beyond my sway.

FAUSTUS:
My wife?

MAGUS:
She is damned as a suicide—with
her
you may be reunited.

FAUSTUS:
Yes, I see.

MAGUS:
So you perceive the tariff. (
Pause
)

FAUSTUS:
Sir, you have seduced me, you have played upon my weakness. You indict me of hypocrisy, of greed, of self-blind egoism; your victory makes good your claim. You now taunt me with cowardice. Where I confront you. I wish to see my wife.

MAGUS:
Nothing may be had for nothing.

FAUSTUS:
Yes, merchant—yes, I see that for which you have come. I close the bargain. And am shed of you. Give me the dagger.

MAGUS:
In truth, sir, then you do impress.

FAUSTUS:
Indeed I care not. Give me the knife.

(
The
MAGUS
hands
FAUSTUS
the dirk. The
MAGUS
retires upstage, leaving
FAUSTUS
alone, as the doors close
.)

FAUSTUS:
Omnipotent winter which alone reveals the underlying structure of the land—he who has sought beauty in the ruined, how otherwise than reap this empty sad, perpetual requital. Who sickens to the point where wisdom lies with the ironmonger. Here is damnation, then. And there’s an end to hypocrisy…

(
He puts the knife to his throat. Upstage the doors blow open to reveal Hell, from which we see appear
FAUSTUS
’s
WIFE
,
in torn, soot-blackened garments. Pause. As
FAUSTUS
looks at his
WIFE:
)

FAUSTUS:
My wife, my angel wife.

(
FAUSTUS
hesitates. The
MAGUS
appears at his side
.)

MAGUS:
You may continue.

FAUSTUS:
How may I frame my contrition? … For what may I beg …?

MAGUS:
For pardon …?

FAUSTUS:
May I beg for pardon?

MAGUS:
You hesitate.

FAUSTUS:
I would not waste the least of her attention. I beg the one moment to compose the speech.

MAGUS:
It makes no odds, as she cannot hear. We to her are less than phantoms. (
Pause
)