The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy Part 56

STRANGER. The first? I've never met Ingeborg; I've never known you, as you are, sitting here in our home! Home! An enchanting word. An enchanting thing I've never yet possessed. A home and a wife! You are my first, my only one; for what once happened exists no longer--no more than the hour that's past!

LADY. Orpheus! Your song has made these dead stones live. Make life sing in me!

STRANGER. Eurydice, whom I rescued from the underworld! I'll love you to life again; revivify you with my imagination. Now happiness will come to us, for we know the dangers to avoid.

LADY. The dangers, yes! It's lovely in this house. It seems as if these rooms were full of invisible guests, who've come to welcome us. Kind spirits, who'll bless us and our home.

STRANGER. The candle flames are still, as if in prayer. The flowers are pensive.... And yet!

LADY. Hush! The summer night's outside, warm and dark. And stars hang in the sky; large and tearful in the fir trees, like Christmas candles.

This is happiness. Hold it fast!

STRANGER (still thinking). And yet!

LADY. Hush!

STRANGER (getting up). A poem's coming: I can hear it. It's for you.

LADY. Don't tell it me. I can see it--in your eyes.

STRANGER. For I read it in yours! Well, I couldn't repeat it, because it has no words. Only scent, and colour. If I were to, I should destroy it.

What's unborn is always most beautiful. What's unwon, most dear!

LADY. Quiet. Or, our guests will leave us.

(They do not speak.)

STRANGER. This _is_ happiness--but I can't grasp it.

LADY. See it and breath it; for it can't be grasped.

(They do not speak.)

STRANGER. You're looking at your little room.

LADY. It's as bright green as a summer meadow. There's someone in there.

Several people!

STRANGER. Only my thoughts.

LADY. Your good, your beautiful thoughts....

STRANGER. Given me by you.

LADY. Had I anything to give you?

STRANGER. You? Everything! But up to now my hands have not been free to take it. Not clean enough to stroke your little heart....

LADY. Beloved! The time for reconciliation's coming.

STRANGER. With mankind, and woman--through a woman? Yes, that time has come; and blessed may you be amongst women.

(The candles and lamps go out; it grows dark in the dining-room; but a weak ray of light can be seen, coming from the bra.s.s standard lamp in the LADY's room.)

LADY. Why's it grown dark? Oh!

STRANGER. Where are you, beloved? Give me your hand. I'm afraid!

LADY. Here, dearest.

STRANGER. The little hand, held out to me in the darkness, that's led me over stones and thorns. That little, soft, dear hand! Lead me into the light, into your bright, warm room; fresh green like hope.

LADY (leading him towards the pale-green room). Are you afraid?

STRANGER. You're a white dove, with whom the startled eagle finds sanctuary, when heaven's thunder clouds grow black, for the dove has no fear. She has not provoked the thunders of heaven!

(They have reached the doorway leading to the other room, when the curtain falls.)

[The same room; but the table has been cleared. The LADY is sitting at it, doing nothing. She seems bored. On the right, down stage, a window is open. It is still. The STRANGER comes in, with a piece of paper in his hand.]

STRANGER. Now you shall hear it.

LADY (acquiescing absent-mindedly). Finished already?

STRANGER. Already? Do you mean that seriously? I've taken seven days to write this little poem. (Silence.) Perhaps it'll bore you to hear it?

LADY (drily). No. Certainly not. (The STRANGER sits down at the table and looks at the LADY.) Why are you looking at me?

STRANGER. I'd like to see your thoughts.

LADY. But you've heard them.

STRANGER. That's nothing; I want to see them! (Pause.) What one says is mostly worthless. (Pause.) May I read them? No, I see I mayn't. You want nothing more from me. (The LADY makes a gesture as if she were going to speak.) Your face tells me enough. Now you've sucked me dry, eaten me hollow, killed my ego, my personality. To that I answer: how, my beloved? Have _I_ killed your ego, when I wanted to give you the whole of mine; when I let you skim the cream off my bowl, that I'd filled with all the experience of along life, with incursions into the deserts and groves of knowledge and art?

LADY. I don't deny it, but my ego wasn't my own.

STRANGER. Not yours? Then what is? Something that belongs to others?

LADY. Is yours something that belongs to others too?

STRANGER. No. What I've experienced is my own, mine and no other's. What I've read becomes mine, because I've broken it in two like gla.s.s, melted it down, and from this substance blown new gla.s.s in novel forms.

LADY. But I can never be yours.

STRANGER. I've become yours.