Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) Part 26

LULU. (Poking him with her toe.) Sh! (Hugenberg disappears. Alva is shown in by Ferdinand.)

ALVA. (In evening dress.) Methinks the matinee will take place with burning lamps. I've-- (Notices Schigolch painfully climbing the stairs.) What the ---- is that?

LULU. An old friend of your father's.

ALVA. Wholly unknown to me.

LULU. They were in the campaign together. He's awfully badly--

ALVA. Is my father here then?

LULU. He drank a gla.s.s with him. He had to go to the stock market.

We'll have lunch before we go, won't we?

ALVA. When does it begin?

LULU. After two. (Alva still follows Schigolch with his eyes.) How do you like me? (Schigolch disappears thru the gallery.)

ALVA. Had I not better be silent to you on that point?

LULU. I only mean my appearance.

ALVA. Your dressmaker manifestly knows you better than I may permit myself to know you.

LULU. When I saw myself in the gla.s.s I could have wished to be a man--my man!--

ALVA. You seem to envy your man the joy you offer to him. (Lulu is at the right, Alva at the left, of the centre table. He regards her with shy satisfaction. Ferdinand enters, rear, covers the table and lays two plates, etc., a bottle of Pommery, and hors d' oeuvres.) Have you a toothache?

LULU. (Across to Alva.) Don't.

FERDINAND. Doctor Schon ...?

ALVA. He seems so puckered-up and tearful to-day.

FERDINAND. (Thru his teeth.) One is only a man after all. (Exit.)

LULU. (When both are seated.) What I always think most highly of in you is your firmness of character. You're so perfectly sure of yourself.

Even when you must have been afraid of quarreling with your father about it, you always stood up for me like a brother just the same.

ALVA. Let's drop that. It's just my fate-- (Moves to lift up the table-cloth in front.)

LULU. (Quickly.) That was me.

ALVA. Impossible! It's just my fate, with the most frivolous ideas always to seize on the best.

LULU. You deceive yourself if you make yourself out worse than you are.

ALVA. Why do you flatter me so? It is true that perhaps there is no man living, so bad as I--who has brought about so much good.

LULU. In any case you're the only man in the world who's protected me without lowering me in my own eyes!

ALVA. Do you think that so easy? (Schon appears in the gallery cautiously parting the hangings between the middle pillars. He starts, and whispers, "My own son!") With gifts from G.o.d like yours, one turns those around one to criminals without ever dreaming of it. I, too, am only flesh and blood, and if we hadn't grown up with each other like brother and sister--

LULU. That's why, too, I give myself to you alone quite without reserve. From you I have nothing to fear.

ALVA. I a.s.sure you there are moments when one expects to see one's whole inner self cave in. The more self-restraint a man loads onto himself, the easier he breaks down. Nothing will save him from that except-- (Stops to look under the table.)

LULU. (Quickly.) What are you looking for?

ALVA. I conjure you, let me keep my confession of faith to myself! As an inviolable sanct.i.ty you were more to me than with all your gifts you could be to anyone else in your life!

LULU. How do you come to think on that so entirely differently from your father? (Ferdinand enters, rear, changes the plates and serves broiled chicken with salad.)

ALVA. (To him.) Are you sick?

LULU. (To Alva.) Let him be!

ALVA. He's trembling as if he had fever.

FERDINAND. I am not yet so used to waiting ...

ALVA. You must have something prescribed for you.

FERDINAND. (Thru his teeth.) I'm a coachman usually-- (Exit.)

SCHoN. (Whispering from the gallery.) So, he too. (Seats himself behind the rail, able to cover himself with the hangings.)

LULU. What sort of moments are those of which you spoke, where one expects to see his whole inner self tumble in?

ALVA. I =didn't want= to speak of them. I should not like to lose, in joking over a gla.s.s of champagne, what has been my highest happiness for ten years.

LULU. I have hurt you. I won't begin on that again.

ALVA. Do you promise me that for always?

LULU. My hand on it. (Gives him her hand across the table. Alva takes it hesitatingly, grips it in his, and presses it long and ardently to his lips.) What are you doing. (Rodrigo sticks his head out from the curtains, left. Lulu darts an angry look at him across Alva, and he draws back.)

SCHoN. (Whispering from the gallery.) And there is still another!

ALVA. (Holding the hand.) A soul--that in the hereafter rubs the sleep out of its eyes.... Oh, this hand....

LULU. (Innocently.) What do you find in it?...

ALVA. An arm....

LULU. What do you find in it?...

ALVA. A body.....