The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy Part 57

LADY. What have you got from me?

STRANGER. How can you ask me that?

LADY. All the same--I'm not sure that you think it, though I feel you feel it--you wish me far away.

STRANGER. I must be a certain distance from you, if I'm to see you. Now you're within the focus, and your image is unclear.

LADY. The nearer, the farther off!

STRANGER. Yes. When we part, we long for one another; and when we meet again, we long to part.

LADY. Do you really think we love each other?

STRANGER. Yes. Not like ordinary people, but unusual ones. We resemble two drops of water, that fear to get close together, in case they should cease to be two and become one.

LADY. This time we knew the dangers and wanted to avoid them. But it seems that they can't be avoided.

STRANGER. Perhaps they weren't dangers, but rude necessities; laws inscribed in the councils of the immortals. (Silence.) Your love always seemed to have the effect of hate. When you made me happy, you envied the happiness you'd given me. And when you saw I was unhappy, you loved me.

LADY. Do you want me to leave you?

STRANGER. If you do, I shall die.

LADY. And, if I stay, it's I who'll die.

STRANGER. Then let's die together and live out our love in a higher life; our love, that doesn't seem to be of this world. Let's live it out in another planet, where there's no nearness and no distance, where two are one; where number, time and s.p.a.ce are no longer what they are in this.

LADY. I'd like to die, yet I don't want to. I think I must be dead already.

STRANGER. The air up here's too strong.

LADY. You can't love me if you speak like that.

STRANGER. To be frank, there are moments when you don't exist for me.

But in others I feel your hatred like suffocating smoke.

LADY. And I feel my heart creeping from my breast, when you are angry with me.

STRANGER. Then we must hate one other.

LADY. And love one another too.

STRANGER. And hate because we love. We hate each other, because we're bound together. We hate the bond, we hate our love; we hate what is most loveable, what is the bitterest, the best this life can offer. We've come to an end!

LADY. Yes.

STRANGER. What a joke life is, if you take it seriously. And how serious, if you take it as a joke! You wanted to lead me by the hand towards the light; your easier fate was to make mine easier too. I wanted to raise you above the bogs and quicksands; but you longed for the lower regions, and wanted to convince me they were the upper ones. I ask myself if it's possible that you took what was wicked from me, when I was freed from it; and that what was good in you entered into me? If I've made you wicked I ask your pardon, and I kiss your little hand, that caressed and scratched me... the little hand that led me into the darkness... and on the long journey to Damascus....

LADY. To a parting? (Silence.) Yes, a parting!

(The LADY goes on her way. The STRANGER falls on to a chair by the table. The TEMPTER puts his head in at the window, and rests himself on his elbows whilst he smokes a cigarette.)

TEMPTER. Ah, yes! C'est l'amour! The most mysterious of all mysteries, the most inexplicable of all that can't be explained, the most precarious of all that's insecure.

STRANGER. So you're here?

TEMPTER. I'm always everywhere, where it smells of quarrels. And in love affairs there are always quarrels.

STRANGER. Always?

TEMPTER. Always! I was invited to a silver wedding yesterday.

Twenty-five years are no trifle--and for twenty-five years they'd been quarrelling. The whole love affair had been one long shindy, with many little ones in between! And yet they loved one another, and were grateful for all the good that had come to them; the evil was forgotten, wiped out--for a moment's happiness is worth ten days of blows and pinp.r.i.c.ks. Oh yes! Those who won't accept evil never get anything good.

The rind's very bitter, though the kernel's sweet.

STRANGER. But very small.

TEMPTER. It may be small, but it's good! (Pause.) Tell me, why did your madonna go her way? No answer; because he doesn't know! Now we'll have to let the hotel again. Here's a board. I'll hang it out at once. 'To Let.' One comes, another goes! C'est la vie, quoi? Rooms for Travellers!

STRANGER. Have you ever been married?

TEMPTER. Oh yes. Of course.

STRANGER. Then why did you part?

TEMPTER. Chiefly--perhaps it's a peculiarity of mine--chiefly because--well, you know, a man marries to get a home, to get into a home; and a woman to get out of one. She wanted to get out, and I wanted to get in! I was so made that I couldn't take her into company, because I felt as if she were soiled by men's glances. And in company, my splendid, wonderful wife turned into a little grimacing monkey I couldn't bear the sight of. So I stayed at home; and then, she stayed away. And when I met her again, she'd changed into someone else. She, my pure white notepaper, was scribbled all over; her clear and lovely features changed in imitation of the satyr-like looks of strange men.

I could see miniature photographs of bull-fighters and guardsmen in her eyes, and hear the strange accents of strange men in her voice. On our grand piano, on which only the harmonies of the great masters used to be heard, she now played the cabaret songs of strange men; and on our table there lay nothing but the favourite reading of strange men. In a word, my whole existence was on the way to becoming an intellectual concubinage with strange men--and that was contrary to my nature, which has always longed for women! And--I need hardly say this--the tastes of these strange men were always the reverse of mine. She developed a real genius for discovering things I detested! That's what she called 'saving her personality.' Can you understand that?

STRANGER. I can; but I won't attempt to explain it.

TEMPTER. Yet this woman maintained she loved me, and that I didn't love her. But I loved her so much I didn't want to speak to any other human being; because I feared to be untrue to her if I found pleasure in the company of others, even if they were men. I'd married for feminine society; and in order to enjoy it I'd left my friends. I'd married in order to find company, but what I got was complete solitude! And I was supporting house and home, in order to provide strange men with feminine companionship. _C'est l'amour_, my friend!

STRANGER. You should never talk about your wife.

TEMPTER. No! For if you speak well of her, people will laugh; and if you speak ill, all their sympathy will go out to her; and if, in the first instance, you ask why they laugh, you get no answer.

STRANGER. No. You can never find out who you've married. Never get hold of her--it seems she's no one. Tell me--what is woman?

TEMPTER. I don't know! Perhaps a larva or a chrysalis, out of whose trance-like life a man one day will be created. She seems a child, but isn't one; she is a sort of child, and yet not like one. Drags downward, when the man pulls up. Drags upward, when the man pulls down.

STRANGER. She always wants to disagree with her husband; always has a lot of sympathy for what he dislikes; is crudest beneath the greatest superficial refinement; the wickedest amongst the best. And yet, whenever I've been in love, I've always grown more sensitive to the refinements of civilisation.

TEMPTER. You, I dare say. What about her?

STRANGER. Oh, whilst our love was growing _she_ was always developing backwards. And getting cruder and more wicked.

TEMPTER. Can you explain that?

STRANGER. No. But once, when I was trying to find the solution to the riddle by disagreeing with myself, I took it that she absorbed my evil and I her good.