Collected Novels and Plays (59 page)

MRS. C:

My poor child. Raymond, listen to me.

RAYMOND:

Yes.

MRS. C.:

Raymond, this is the hour of your birth. (
Pause.
)

I am your mother. (
She rises.
)

RAYMOND (
rising angrily
):

This is quite enough.

I’ve tried to humor you all with a great deal of patience,

And I don’t know whether or not you are being amusing

And I may be gullible but really—Good afternoon.

This is no longer a joke. Will you please let me out?

MAX:
(
After an exchange of glances, rises, crosses to him.
)

Charles always locks the door. You’ve scarcely arrived

And you haven’t even touched your glass of wine.

Charles will let you go shortly, but not yet.

Resign yourself to that. Now just sit down.

Perhaps you would like to see my watercolors.

This is the best one, Helen with her mouth open.

Are you fond of painting at all? Oh, forgive us,

We must be annoying you dreadfully, but truly

We are sane, normal people, differing from you

Only in point of view. You must talk with us.

If you don’t it will be very difficult.

MRS. C:

How shall we speak to each other if you will not listen?

KNIGHT (
softly to Max
):

Baudelaire’s mother, I believe, used those same words.

MAX (
aloud
):

I resent the implication that Mrs. Crane

In any way resembles Baudelaire’s mother.

MRS. C.:

Max, please go on.

MAX (
to RAYMOND
):

No matter how little you speak,

How little you believe, you must listen. Mrs. Crane

Has already told you what she means to you.

Let me tell you about myself: I am a painter,

And Charles thinks you will become a lot like me.

Heaven knows, it’s confusing enough to me.

It appears that you will more or less somehow share

My reactions to the world, to people and scenes

And things. Perhaps if I tell you what I’m like

It may grow clearer. I am, people tell me,

Supposed to be very naive. Actually,

I’m rather proud of that. My paintings show it

And all my teachers have told me I should never

Be afraid of my simplicity. I think

The really brilliant people never think.

I wish I might have been the one to find

That robin’s egg of yours. Please have some wine,

Or hold your glass at least; I’m beginning to feel

Somewhat foolish talking to you while you just sit there.

Ah, that’s so much better. Tell me, is there a chance

Of your believing anything we say?

RAYMOND:

I’m afraid not. It’s rather amusing however.

Since you won’t let me go, there’s nothing else I can do.

Keep on talking if you like.

MAX:

Mrs. Crane is your mother. I am what you shall be.

It’s hard to say these things in simple words.

I don’t mean, of course, that Mrs. Crane will raise you

From an actual childhood—it’s beyond that; or that I

Shall die so that you may become the person I am.

RAYMOND:

Well, that makes it convenient for both of us.

MAX:

You are arrogant; you lose so much by assurance.

MRS. C.:

How shall we speak of goodness or achievement

If you will mock us? The world does not last forever.

KNIGHT:

There are as many worlds as cells in the body. They are

Evolving continually: the falling of your hand

Is the birth of a universe, the smile on your face

Is the curtain lowering on one brief world

We might perhaps have shared, or two or three perhaps.

RAYMOND:

Are you ill?

KNIGHT:

There is a possibility

That I am very ill.

MRS. C.:

Raymond, sit down. You must be very careful.

Sit down with me. What is happening now has nothing

To do with us. You have no choice.… We are here

Like godmothers in a fairy tale.

MAX (
warningly
):

Mrs. Crane …

KNIGHT:

Allow me to propose a toast to the organs of the body.

I raise my cup to the hand, the hip and the collarbone.

To the health of the wrist, breast and ankle who have served us so well!

I salute the mouth and the muddy city in the eye …

They have remained our close friends.

For you may protest until your eyes are coppered

That what is behind the face, behind the breast,

Surpasses nerve and muscle, but you shall never see it

Except in the mouth’s corners and in the wandering eye.

I would deny profundity and choose to be faithful,

As long as I shall desire faith, to this unbelievable,

Most impermanent superficiality.

The body is the most difficult thing there is

But the world has discovered a means of dealing with it.

If one should wish to suppose the existence of a will,

Of a language—as in the past men supposed God—

We should all grow quickly into monsters and rebuke

The air, the rainwater that separates my house

From your house, and realize that what is spoken

Directly behind these fabulous eyeballs is this:

That we are unhappy, uncertain, unable to perfect

A single moment, word or smile. Something

Is eternally thrust in; eternally not yet—

That is the only serpent in the garden

And the only angel in hell.

RAYMOND:

Who are you?

KNIGHT:

I am the person you will always love.

MRS. C. (
deeply concerned
):

Good God, it’s worse than the Pied Piper! Max,

Don’t laugh. There isn’t much time left.

Oh, it’s preposterous.

MAX:

Please, Mrs. Crane; everything will be all right.

Let me tell you a story, Raymond, about a child—

ho was myself, of course—who dreamed of painting

A world existing only in his heart.

My father said, “You have never seen this world.

Why should you paint it?” But I had seen that world,

A world of beckoning hands, plants, animals

Parading in the brilliant corridor

Beyond the eye. I think it was a dream.

But I had entered it; I am in it now.

I painted it and that was how I came

To enter it. In it I found my Helen—

You saw her portrait among the orange trees …

But what I mean is that I found this world

Because I risked it, as one takes a chance

And throws a chestnut at a secret window

And breaks the window. There’s nothing else to say.

You, who have risked nothing, have not yet

Found your proper countryside. It is my hope,

The hope of all of us, that you may find it here

Or privately, where you found your robin’s egg.

Perhaps you understand …?

RAYMOND:

And you are?

MAX:

I am the person you will always be.

MRS. C. (
advancing
):

Raymond, my world is not a difficult one.

I mean, not difficult to understand

But a costly world to enter. A world of goodness,

Courage and love, where all activity

Exists like an accommodation of virtue,

Like a mirror that is not vanity. To stand

Watching one’s hand in sunlight, the face of one’s sweetheart

Laughing in a warm climate; to watch the sea

And the changing colors and bright fish that are

So bright, so beguiling—these become different things,

Of small importance in themselves, except

In the honest structure of a human world.

For a man must be above the things he sees

And snap his fingers at them, and recognize

That they are good only if he is more so.

I sound as if I were preaching, and I’m sorry

That you should have to think of me this way.

I’m not a saintly woman; I am a mother,

And I understand the problems of my

sons Because they are my sons. I don’t like pride

But I am proud in some ways of my life.

It is a life I will gladly help you live

With all the blessings and guidance I can give.

RAYMOND:

And you, as you said, are my mother?

MRS. C.:

No.

I am the person you will always remember.

RAYMOND:

I don’t accept it. It’s humiliating; it’s vulgar—

I doubt if you even know what I mean. I have

A mother; I’ve already fallen in love.

Listening to these cheap arguments I blushed

And blushed again that I should have to blush.

Where is Charles? I want to go home now.

MRS. C.:

What you mean, my dear, is that it’s sudden, isn’t it?

It takes only a moment for a life to change

But hours of preparation must come before.

RAYMOND:

You talk like one who has never lived, as though

The things you know and the things you believe

Are somehow different.

MAX:

Perhaps you mean

We’ve been a trifle blunt? How could we have been

Less so in the brief time we were allotted?

There are some others beside you, you understand.

RAYMOND:

I understand nothing, not even your audacity.

KNIGHT:

Perhaps you deplore the obvious symbolism

Of the red walls, that tactless
Madonna and Child

Above the sofa, the congratulatory wine?

They make me shudder too. You feel perhaps

Our words are in bad taste and I agree.

MRS. C.:

We may have said things you already know,

Which is unpardonable; but one forgets

The importance of things already known.

KNIGHT:

Or else you have guessed that we are here, in part,

As elaborate temptations to accept a point of view

That is, after all, only a point of view.

Our language crumbles, our makeshift masks betray us.

It is all an artifice—that is what makes it valid.

MAX:

Perhaps it’s
us
that anger you? You wonder

Why
we
were chosen. Oh, we’re not so bad.

Mrs. Crane is an angel compared with our other mothers,

And you should see who you nearly got instead of me.

MRS. C.:

And so, my boy, goodbye. Good luck. God bless you.

RAYMOND:

You mean it’s over?

MRS. C.:

Charles is coming now.

RAYMOND:

I won’t go now. I won’t go until something at least—

I don’t care what—is clear to me. You’ve told me

Nothing. There’s not a thing I’ve understood.

Why was I brought here? If I am being born,

Into what am I being born, what am I entering?

What world do you belong to? I won’t go

Until you tell me something I understand.

CHARLES:

Aha! A scene! The birthday’s not a success?

KNIGHT (
bitterly
):

Let’s speak of it rather as a miscarriage, Charles.

RAYMOND:

How can he laugh?

KNIGHT:

God always laughs, Raymond.

Comedy exists in a distance between two points.

CHARLES:

Well, Raymond, what would you like me to explain?

RAYMOND:

I don’t know why you all have to act as though

I understood. You seem to think it’s an accomplishment.

I’ve understood nothing and I’m glad of that;

I’m bewildered and annoyed and want to forget

Whatever has happened. There’s nothing you can do

To keep me from that.

CHARLES:

So the child enters the world.

There are so many ways of understanding

Bewilderment and anger and forgetfulness

Are ways of understanding. There’s nothing you can do,

To keep yourself from that.

RAYMOND:

It’s cruel, it’s nonsense.

CHARLES:

In spite of all this violence, you shall find—

Walking home tonight, perhaps—against your will

You shall discover something has been shown

Profounder than all your easy barriers.

KNIGHT:

It is only as one scrapes at a frog’s skull, scrapes and scrapes,

Till only the thinnest pane of bone remains

Between the small brain and the instrument;

This breaks at last, and wisdom like a bright dye

Makes every part distinct.