Swann (40 page)

ROSE
(daintily picking at her food): Well, as for myself, I was kind of disappointed. You see, I’d been thinking I might ask her if, well, if she’d care to donate the journal to our little museum, and maybe the rhyming dictionary, too, but I don’t want to be an Indian giver —

BUSWELL
(chewing and gesturing with his fork): Dictionary?

ROSE
(rambling): Since you were in Nadeau we’ve got ourselves a new room in the museum, a real nice display of, well, you’ll have to come and have yourself a look. It’s up over the library —

BUSWELL:
I’m sure you understand about my comments this morning. Just wanted to point out —

ROSE:
Oh well, I’m pretty proud of our library. You see, in the old days, when it was in the post office, we didn’t even have —

BUSWELL:
 … just wanted to make the point about the idiocy of influences. Jimroy did the same thing in his Starman book, said Starman’s work had been influenced by
Moby Dick
. He exaggerates. Romances. The bugger should have been a novelist, not a bloody biographer —

ROSE
(applying sauce to salmon): I haven’t actually read —

BUSWELL
(ramming a roll into his mouth): He’s all talk. He talks documentation, but lives in fairyland —

ROSE:
Oh, he’s very famous. I looked him up in
Who’s Who—

BUSWELL:
Inflated reputation. Happens too frequently. Conjecture. Ha! What about proof! The straight goods.

ROSE:
Well, of course, Mrs. Swann and myself … we used to talk about … we were friends you know. We used to discuss this and that and sometimes we —

BUSWELL
(bored): Yeah?

MERRY EYES:
 … hard to understand how a thing like this can happen —

BLUE-SPOTTED TIE:
 … valuable documentation like that, well, should have been archived of course. I always make sure prime materials are duplicated and archived —

MERRY EYES:
It’s only common sense.

BLUE-SPOTTED TIE:
Especially when you take the view, as I do, that this kind of documentation belongs to the whole scholarly —

MERRY EYES:
 … and not to any one individual. That’s certainly the view I take. And as for Professor Lang sitting on the love poems —

BLUE-SPOTTED TIE:
 … really no excuse —

MERRY EYES:
Even my working papers I keep in a little fireproof safe we have —

BLUE-SPOTTED TIE:
Sense of responsibility.

MERRY EYES:
Exactly!

CRUZZI
(rising slowly with an old man’s stiffness; his voice, too, creaks): Ms. Maloney?

SARAH:
Mr. Cruzzi! I … didn’t see you there. I thought you’d … you’d gone in with the others, for lunch.

CRUZZI
(pulling himself erect): I was hoping to speak to you alone. If you can spare —

SARAH:
Of course. (She descends the platform and, somewhat tentatively, approaches him.)

CRUZZI:
May I suggest that, instead of joining the others, we escape for an hour. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, and—there’s quite a good restaurant downstairs. Or perhaps the coffee shop might be quicker.

SARAH
(pausing, smiling): Yes, let’s. I’d like to get away for an hour. Especially after … (She gestures toward the platform.)

CRUZZI:
Well, then. (He offers his arm in a rather old-world manner.) I don’t move very quickly, I’m afraid.

SARAH:
In that case (takes his arm), we can take our time.

CRUZZI
(tapping the glass softly): Our woman of mystery.

SARAH:
Yes. (She smiles at Cruzzi, and then the two of them proceed slowly down the corridor toward the elevator.

MUSIC:
organ, the upper ranges; dissolve.)

CRUZZI
(relaxed and talkative, a man who expands in the company of women): This really is very pleasant—to escape. I’m not sure why it is, but I find that a roomful of “scholars” tends to bring on an attack of mental indigestion. That Delphic tone they love to take. And something chilly and unhelpful about them too. I’m speaking generally, of course.

SARAH
(smiling; she too is beginning to relax): What I can’t understand is Jimroy’s attitude. To me, I mean. The antagonism.

CRUZZI
(eyeing her keenly): Can’t you?

SARAH:
I’ve never met him before this morning. (She chews a piece of celery thoughtfully.) Not face to face. But we’ve been corresponding, writing back and forth … for more than a year now.

CRUZZI:
I see.

SARAH:
And (continuing to chew) to be truthful, he’s a good letter writer. Very amusing, if you appreciate ironic edges—and I do. And surprisingly intimate at times. Open. He must have written me half a dozen times to say how much he looked forward to our meeting. (She puts down her celery branch.) But today—I can’t figure it out. He was … baiting me. He was … today he was—(She stops herself, bites her lip.)

CRUZZI
(patiently prompting): Today?

SARAH:
Today—well you were there when Willard Lang introduced us. At first Jimroy seemed scared to death. Went all cold-fish. And during the question time, after my presentation, I had the feeling that he—this may be putting it in a bit strongly, but I had the distinct feeling … he actually … hated me.

CRUZZI
(calmly): Hmmmm.

SARAH:
And … I don’t know why. That’s the scary part. The minute Willard Lang mentioned that I’d got married—did you see his face, Jimroy’s? As though I’d smashed him in the stomach. I suppose, well, maybe I should have mentioned in my last letter that I was getting married, but … I didn’t decide … the wedding was sort of a sudden decision. I’d been seeing someone else, another man, and that didn’t work out and … Why am I blathering away like this?

CRUZZI:
I wouldn’t worry about Jimroy. Some men, you know—forgive me if I sound like a wizened sage—but some men only relate to women in the … abstract. And not in the actuality. A letter, even an intimate letter, is still somewhat of an abstraction.

SARAH:
I hate to be hated. It’s a failing of mine. Especially when I don’t know what I’ve done to earn it.

CRUZZI:
It’s just a thought, but—(he pours mineral water into a glass, with deliberation)—could it be that you have something he wants?

SARAH
(looking up abruptly from her salad): Like what?

CRUZZI:
Perhaps—(he shrugs elegantly)—perhaps something he imagined to be in Mrs. Swann’s notebook. Her journal.

SARAH:
But I told him … you heard me … I told everyone in the room, and it’s the truth, that there’s nothing
in
the
notebook. I know it sounds as though I’m making excuses. I did lose it. Okay. I’ll never know how it happened, but I have to take responsibility for
that
. One day I had it, and the next day I didn’t.
Mea culpa
. Eeehh! But I’m
not
concealing anything. There’s nothing
in
the journal.

CRUZZI:
Not what you hoped.

SARAH:
I thought I was going to get a look right inside that woman’s head. That she’d be saying the unsayable, a whole new level of revelation, you know what I mean. Instead I found “Tire on truck burst,” “Rain on Tuesday,” “Down with flu.” Nothing.

CRUZZI:
Yes, but —

SARAH:
But?

CRUZZI
(taking his time): As I understand it, you
did
have the notebook for some time. Three, four years? And you’ve steadfastly resisted the idea of publishing it.

SARAH
(shrugging, regretful, but grinning): I know, I know. I kept reading it over and over. I kept thinking—there’s just got to be
something
here. Like maybe she’s got a symbol system going. Or maybe it’s written in some elaborate, elegant cipher that … but (she shrugs again) in the end I had to conclude that there just wasn’t anything! I hated like hell to admit she was so …

CRUZZI:
Ordinary? (He swirls his drink and looks upward.)

SARAH
(sending him a shrewd look): You know, Mr. Cruzzi, you are looking just the slightest bit doubtful. As though … you think I might be withholding something when I say there was nothing there.

CRUZZI:
No. I believe you. Mrs. Swann, in my judgement,
was
an ordinary woman. Whatever that word means. Of course you were disappointed.

SARAH:
And maybe, I have to admit it, a little protective.
About her … ordinariness. Sometimes I’ve wondered if that’s why Willard Lang hasn’t published the love poems. He’s had them long enough.

CRUZZI:
You’re suggesting they might be of doubtful quality?

SARAH
(shrugging): Sentimental, maybe. Soft-centred. Valentine verse. You probably know how he found them? He bribed the real-estate agent at the Swann house, and then found these papers under a loose bit of linoleum.

CRUZZI:
You may be right. Of course we have only his word that what he found were love poems.

SARAH:
And
you
may be right, too, that Jimroy wants something.

CRUZZI
(thoughtfully): Whatever I may think of Morton Jimroy personally, I am forced to admit he is a thorough biographer. You’ve read his books. I think he, quite simply, wants it all.

SARAH:
All what?

CRUZZI:
He wants Mrs. Swann’s life. Every minute of it if he could have it. Every cup of tea that poor woman imbibed. Every thought in her tormented head. And what’s more, he wants her death. Or some clue to it.

SARAH
(looking puzzled): The notebook was written in 1950. And Mary Swann was murdered in 1965. Does he actually think he’s going to find —

CRUZZI:
 … that there might be a hint? A portent? A scrap of prophecy? Yes, I
do
think so. I met the man —

SARAH:
Jimroy?

CRUZZI:
Yes. I met him only once. He paid me a brief visit in Kingston a year ago, and we spent some time talking. To be honest, I found him a dry stick, but I do recall some of our conversation. And I remember how hard he pressed me about Mrs. Swann’s death. Did I have any
“theories?” (Sardonically): He was, I thought, more than a little obsessive about the
cause
of Mrs. Swann’s death.

SARAH:
The cause?

CRUZZI:
He feels … he made it quite clear that he’ll never be able to understand Mrs. Swann’s life until he understands her death.

SARAH:
He actually said that?

CRUZZI:
I find it a whimsical notion myself.

SARAH:
Romantic.

CRUZZI:
But then, he has a somewhat romantic view of a human life. Sees it as something with an … aesthetic shape. A wholeness. Whereas—whereas the lives of most people are pretty scrappy affairs. And full of secrets and concealments. As I’m almost sure you will agree.

SARAH
(suddenly): I’m pregnant.

CRUZZI
(smiling): Splendid.

SARAH:
I just wanted you to know. What I was concealing. (She lifts a glass of milk to her lips, as though giving a toast.)

CRUZZI
(also lifting his glass): And I am in love.

SARAH
(pleased): Ahh.

CRUZZI:
With a seventy-five-year-old widow. In love, but somewhat frightened of it.

SARAH:
I
was
in love.

CRUZZI:
And now?

SARAH:
It didn’t work out.

CRUZZI:
Do you mind? Much?

SARAH:
Terribly. I think he loved me too. But he loved a lot of other things more.

CRUZZI:
Things?

SARAH:
Money, chiefly. He never seemed to get enough. He didn’t want to end up like his father, a working stiff.

CRUZZI:
So you understand—
why
, I mean?

SARAH
(pausing): Yes. And (patting stomach) this seems more important.

CRUZZI:
Probably it is. In the long run.

SARAH:
And what will you do? About your love? Your widow?

CRUZZI:
Think about it a little. Try to get used to it. To be calm about it.

SARAH:
Is that why you decided to come to the symposium? To give yourself time?

CRUZZI
(nodding thoughtfully): Mrs. Swann
is
a puzzle, and puzzles are … (he shrugs) diverting.

SARAH:
Her
death
is a puzzle? Is that what you mean?