Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) Part 10

SCHWARZ. You =are mine=. But you are never more ensnaring than when you ought for G.o.d's sake to be, just once, real ugly for a couple of hours!

Since I've had you, I have had nothing more. I'm entirely lost to myself.

LULU. Not so excited! (Bell rings in the corridor.)

SCHWARZ. (Pulling himself together.) Confound it!

LULU. No one at home!

SCHWARZ. Perhaps it's the art-dealer--

LULU. And if it's the Chinese Emperor!

SCHWARZ. One moment. (Exit.)

LULU. (Visionary.) Thou? Thou? (Closes her eyes.)

SCHWARZ. (Coming back.) A beggar, who says he was in the war. I have no small change on me. (Taking up his palette and brushes.) It's high time, too, that I should finally go to work. (Goes out, right.) (Lulu touches herself up before the gla.s.s, strokes back her hair, and goes out, returning leading in Schigolch.)

SCHIGOLCH. I'd thought he was more of a swell--a little more glory to him. He's sort of embarra.s.sed. He quaked a little in the knees when he saw =me= in front of him.

LULU. (Shoving a chair round for him.) How can you beg from him, too?

SCHIGOLCH. That's why I've dragged my seventy-seven summers just here.

You told me he kept at his painting in the mornings.

LULU. He hadn't got quite awake yet. How much do you need?

SCHIGOLCH. Two hundred, if you have that much handy. Personally, I'd like three hundred. Some of my clients have evaporated.

LULU. (Goes to the writing-table and rummages in the drawer.) Whew, I'm tired!

SCHIGOLCH. (Looking round him.) That's just what brought me, too. I've been wanting a long time to see how things were looking now with you.

LULU. Well?

SCHIGOLCH. It just sweeps over you. (Looking up.) Like with me fifty years ago. Instead of the loafing chairs we still had rusty old sabres then. Devil, but you've brought it pretty far! (Scuffing.) Carpets....

LULU. (Giving him two bills.) I like best to walk on them bare-footed.

SCHIGOLCH. (Scanning Lulu's portrait.) Is that you?

LULU. (Winking.) Pretty fine?

SCHIGOLCH. If all that's genuine.

LULU. Have something sweet?

SCHIGOLCH. What?

LULU. (Getting up.) Elixir de Spaa.

SCHIGOLCH. That doesn't help me--Does he drink?

LULU. (Taking a decanter and gla.s.ses from a cupboard near the fireplace.) Not yet. (Coming down stage.) The cordial has such various effects!

SCHIGOLCH. He comes to blows?

LULU. He goes to sleep. (She fills the two gla.s.ses.)

SCHIGOLCH. When he's drunk, you can see right into his insides.

LULU. I'd rather =not=. (Sits opposite Schigolch.) Tell me about it.

SCHIGOLCH. The streets keep on getting longer, and my legs shorter.

LULU. And your harmonica?

SCHIGOLCH. Has bad air, like me with my asthma. I just keep a-thinking it isn't worth the trouble to make it better. (They clink gla.s.ses.)

LULU. (Emptying her gla.s.s.) I thought you'd come to an end a long time ago--

SCHIGOLCH. To an end--already up and away? I thought so, too. But no matter how early the sun goes down, still we aren't let lie quiet. I'm hoping for winter. Perhaps then my (coughing) --my--my asthma will invent some opportunity to carry me off.

LULU. (Filling the gla.s.ses.) Do you think they could have forgotten you on the other side?

SCHIGOLCH. Would be possible, for it certainly isn't going like it usually does. (Stroking her knee.) Now you tell--not seen you a long time--my little Lulu.

LULU. (Jerking back, smiling.) Life is beyond me!

SCHIGOLCH. What do you know about it? You're still so young!

LULU. That you call me Lulu.

SCHIGOLCH. Lulu, isn't it? Have I ever called you anything else?

LULU. In the memory of man my name has no longer been Lulu.

SCHIGOLCH. Another way of naming?

LULU. Lulu sounds to me quite ante-diluvian.

SCHIGOLCH. Children! Children!

LULU. My name now is--

SCHIGOLCH. As if the principle wasn't always the same!

LULU. You mean--?