Witkacy Plays

'

the winter repertory

7 Stanislaw lgnacy

Witkiewicz tropical madness

FOUR PLAYS TRANSLATED BY

DAI'\IEL Ar\0 ELEANOR GEROULD

INTRODUCTION: MARTIN ESSLIN

WINTER HOUSE L TO

NEW YORK

Copyright © 1972 by Daniel and Eleanor Gerould. Introduction Copyright © 1972 by Winter House Ltd. International Copyright secured. All Rights Reserved. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 72-85747. Manufactured in the United States of America by The Haddon Craftsmen.

Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that all the plays in this volume are fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, the British Empire, the Dominion of Canada, and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, and are thereby subject to royalty arrangements. All performance rights, including professional and amateur, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, and radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is laid on readings, permission for which must be secured from the author or his agent in writing. All inquiries concerning rights should be addressed to the author's agent, Ms. Toby Cole, 234 West 44h Street, Suite 402, Sardi Building, New York, N.Y. 10036.

The Pragmatists first appeared in Drama & Theatre, Fall, 1971; selections from Gyubal Wahazar, in Arts in Society, Fall-Winter, 1971.

Photographers: for the Poznan production of Gyubal Wahazar, Wyszomirska; for The Pragmatists, Ambroz; for Mr. Price, Mitchell; for the Warsaw production of Gyubal Wahazar, Lubak; for Metaphysics, Kazmiarski. Photographs of Witkiewicz from Anna Micinska and Grzegorz Dubowski; self-portraits from the Institute of Art, Polish Academy, Warsaw; drawings from the National Museum, Warsaw.

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., TRANSLAT(;Rs; NOTE: Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for invaluable help and advice in preparing the translations, obtaining the photographs and gathering the materials dealing with Witkiewicz's life: Anna Micinska, Grzegorz Dubowski, Janusz Degler, Lech Sokol, Zbigniew Lewicki, Jan Leszczynski, Grzegorz Sinko, Halina and Zdzislaw Najder, Stuart Baker, Bernard Dukore, Louis lribarne, Paul Berman, Maria Szwecow-Szewczyk, Danuta Zmij-Zielinska, Tomasz Burzecki.

Introduction Martin Esslin page 1

The Pragmatists 5

Mr. Price Or: Tropical Madness 37

Gyubal W a hazar Or: Along the Cliffs of the Absurd 99

Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf 173

"Witkacy" Daniel Gerould page 237

Left: Flaytrix, Scabrosa, and Morbidetto in the waiting room, Gyubal Wahazar; Poznan, Poland, 1966 Over: Plasfodor and the Mummy, The Pragmatists; Zielona Cora, Poland, 1967

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INTRODUCTION The Search for

A Metaphysical Dimension in Drama

What, in centuries to come, will be the central theme of the history of our own epoch, the twentieth century? There can be little doubt that, on such a secular scale, our age will be regarded as faced with the immense problem of filling the vacuum left in Western civiliza-tion by the decline and collapse of the firm framework of religious faith-and the social and ethical structure based on it-in the after-math of the scientific and industrial revolution that was the outcome of the nineteenth century. The vast outbursts of mass violence in the two world wars, the orgies of mass madness in the totalitarian coun-tries, the turning away of the younger generation from the empty materialism of the "democratic" countries, they all can be seen as symptoms of the same phenomenon.

With the loss of a belief in a supernaturally ordained structure and purpose in the world, life seems empty, meaningless and absurd. Material satisfactions become all-important; but, once they arc sa-tisfied, nothing remains. Everything there is appears explicable, but on a very banal, superficial level. The world loses its grandeur, its mystery.

Such a picture of the world is, moreover, palpably false: the scope of human knowledge is extremely limited; a refusal to look beyond the purely practical and material aspects of life is a form of blindness; and, beyond that, man has an instinctive craving for the metaphysical dimension of experience.

When the natural outlet for that metaphysical yearning in reli-gious ritual and myth is blocked-as it is today by the emptiness, routine and intellectual poverty of most organized religion-it seeks its satisfaction in other forms. Art, which in a society with a living religious and mythical dimension merely serves to express the emo-tional and intellectual truths religion proclaims, becomes autono-mous. Through it individual artists try to communicate their own

THE WINTER REPERTORY 2

unique experience of the mysteriousness of existence, through it sensitive individuals can recapture some of these, basically religious, emotions.

The theatre, which has its origin in religious ritual and which is the social art form par excellence, because it can only be ex-perienced by a group of assembled human beings, an audience analo-gous to a congregation in religious ritual, can thus become something like a secularized church, a place of communion with the metaphysi-cal dimension. The development of drama in our epoch must be seen in the light of these considerations.

Stanislaw lgnacy Witkiewicz, whose importance is only now emerging more than thirty years after he died, was not only one of the earliest practitioners of the style and vocabulary of this contempo-rary drama, he was also one of the most clcarsightcd and lucid expo-nents of its theory. As a man who straddled several worlds in space as well as in time-the sophistication of Western Europe as well as the feudalism of Eastern Europe and the primitivism and mystery of the Far East; the archaic social life of Tsarist Russia as well as the utopian horror of Bolshevism-Witkiewicz had a unique vantage point; and as a playwright who was also a philosopher and painter he had the breadth of outlook and clarity of vision to diagnose the situation (which others merely sensed instinctively and intuitively) with the maximum of conscious understanding.

Witkiewicz realized that in a scientific age which was unable to provide mankind with a metaphysical explanation of the external world, a mythology which also worked on the practical external plane (thunderstorms explained as the wrath of the gods, for example), the sense of mystery must turn inwards: it is in experiencing the unique-ness of our own self, the problematic nature of our own identity, the hidden depths of our inner life that we arc most directly in touch with the metaphysical dimension, the real emotional groundswcll of our lives. Witkicwicz's theory of Pure Form derives from these considera-tions: for him Pure Form was the unfettered expression of the artist's existential experience from within, without the need to copy external appearances. Through Pure Form the sense of unity could be restored to human experience, which is constantly fragmented by the assault of external, objective, independent facts. In drama, where the pres-ence of flesh and blood actors always provides an element of realism, the achievement of such a unified impact is much more difficult. For

INTRODUCTION 3

Witkicwicz the answer to this problem was the abandonment of any attempt to portray life as it appears in favor of a series of seemingly arbitrary happenings without benefit of realistic psychological moti-vations or external verisimilitude. Events should follow each other in a play like chords in a piece of music for no other reason than that they seemed right to the author in that sequence.

The banishment of realistic psychological motivation, on the other hand, does not mean that the psychological dimension itself is gone. On the contrary: an author who no longer has to worry about the motivations of his characters as objectively existing autonomous human beings outside himself will inevitably be projecting the sub-conscious contents of his own psyche, Witkiewicz's theories, which have much in common with those of the surrealists, result in a theatre of dream images which give a very deep insight into the author's mind as well as establishing, through the archetypes which spring from his depths, a level of communication with his audience which lies far deeper than that which results from realistic drama.

Again and again in Witkiewicz's plays-and the four plays in this volume bear this out-the hero is a young man searching for his identity, deeply dissatisfied with life, hating his overpowering mother and yet in love with a younger image of that very same mother, in doubt about the identity of his true father, fascinated by female figures which either are, or could become, masculine (Masculette in The Pragmatists, the attempts at masculinization of girls in Gyubal Wahazar). And again and again the theme of suicide dominates. But perhaps the most persistent archetypal image is that of the corpse that returns to life: as in dreams where the dead live again those who have been killed reappear, sometimes as ghosts, sometimes as not having been really dead, and sometimes without rational explanation.

The concentration on an inner, dreamlike reality does not, for an intellectual and thinker like Witkiewicz, exclude the realm of ideas. If these are dreams, they are dreams about highly lucid intellec-tual conversation; the characters are engaged in heated debate about the ideas of their author: artistic, philosophical, scientific and politi-cal. Gyubal Wahazar, dating as it does from 1921, is an astonishing piece of political prophecy: it forecasts the character of totalitarian dictators like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin with deadly accuracy, right down to the curious mixture of madness, delusions of personal gran-deur and scientific claptrap (purity of race, scientific Marxism) on

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which these psychopaths based their claim to absolute power. How can such prophetic power in a literature of dream images be ex-plained? By the fact, I believe, that, as all our external reality ulti-mately originates from the subconscious motivations of human be-ings, it is in the world of subconscious fantasies that the springs of future reality lie. There is, of course, much of Witkiewicz himself in the superhuman energy and vitality of Gyubal Wahazar. In project-ing his own subconscious fantasies of ruthless power he uncovered the motivations and actions of people who, less intelligent and controlled than he, actually got into situations where they could realize them.

Uniquely individual and original though he is, Witkiewicz also belongs to his national tradition. There has always been a trend toward the dreamlike and fantastic in Polish literature, exemplified, to cite but two great names, by Count Jan Potocki (1761-1815), author of the strange, fantastic novel The Manuscript of Saragossa, and by Zygmunt Krasinski (1812-1859) whose Ungodly Comedy contains political prophecy of a mechanized totalitarianism very much in tune with some of Witkiewicz's images. Contemporary Polish drama continues the trend with playwrights---{)penly acknowl-edging their debt to Witkiewicz-like Slawomir Mrozek and Tadeusz Rozewicz.

In the wider European and Western context Witkiewicz is now secure of an important place: he takes up and continues the vein of dream and grotesque fantasy exemplified by the late Strindberg or by Wedekind; his ideas are closely paralleled by those of the surrealists and Antonin Artaud which culminated in the masterpieces of the dramatists of the absurd-Beckett, lonesco, Genet, Arrabal---{)f the late nineteen forties and the nineteen fifties.

It is high time that this major playwright should become better known in the English-speaking world.

Martin Esslin London

THE PRAGMATISTS ( 1919)

To Wlodzimierz Mazurkiewicz

Over: The Mummy terrorizes Mammalia, Zielona Cora, Poland, 1967

CHARACTERS

PLASFODOR MIMECKER: 32 years old, thin, completely clean-shaven, jerky movements; dark eyes deeply sunken and outlined by very dark rings, dark hair parted on one side, quite long.

MAMMALIA: His dumb, but not deaf mistress. Medium height, dark eyes, a great deal of red hair, 26 years old.

GRAF FRANZ voN TELEK: Rather fat, stands straight. Dark red hair combed smooth, large red beard. Sure of himself in both his movements and in his manner of speech; only the expression on his face is uneasy: his eyes rove. 37 years old.

CHINESE MUMMY: A Chinese mask instead of a face. A yellow garment wound around the body. Flowing, "bulging" move-ments. At rest completely rigid. She speaks with a woman's voice, but as though it had been filtered through a few cellars. Huge clawlike fingernails up to two inches long.

MASCULETTE: Sexless person, tending more however to the female side. A blonde with a high brush-cut. Slender and slight. Very thin ankles. Movements full of grace, 17 years old.

TWO GENDARMES: In the style of Italian carabinieri, in tri-cor-nered hats.

NOTE: Everyone is to speak without exaggerated emotions and to say the speeches with particular attention to the significance of the words themselves.

ACT I

A room with one door upstage center, and another very far downstage left. To the right a window, through which some-what orange afternoon sunlight falls. The walls are black with a yellow oriental motif. Stage center a small red three-legged table, on which there is equipment for making black coffee. To


the left, a black sofa. Near the sofa a small cabinet made of black wood. On the floor a black rug with a red rectilinear design. Four dark red chairs.

PLASFODOR sits at the table, his face hidden in his hands. HE

is dressed in white silk pajamas, patent leather shoes on his bare feet. MAMMALIA, dressed in a dark cheny-colored dressing gown, trimmed with white fur, sits on the small sofa to the left, not moving, gazing straight ahead. A long moment of silence.

PLASFODOR (Without taking his hands away from his face) That's enough! Oh, that's enough!-! can't stand it.

MAMMALIA looks anxious.

I don't know if I'll manage to live through this day.

MAMMALIA gets up slowly and stands wavering; her whole figure expresses unbearable tension.

And yet this ghastly torture is the essence of my life. Talking with a woman! My god! (HE uncovers his face and looks straight ahead with an expression of frightful insatiability) Was I created only to be something through which the stream of existence could flow, without ever stopping for even a second?

MAMMALIA comes over behind him and listens to his words, visibly tormented; her lips move.

There are two ways out: either to be what flows, or to be the screen on which the flowing creates a fleeting image. Which is more significant?

Stzll standing behind him, MAMMALIA covers his eyes with her hands and seems to be trying to transfer her own thoughts di-rectly into his head.

Write, damn it, you filthy old hag!

THE PRAGMATISTS 9

MAMMALIA runs over to the cabinet on the left, gets paper and a pencil, takes the tray oH the table and puts it on the floor, then kneels by the table. PLASFODOR takes her hand \Y/ith the other, MAMMALIA begins to write, looking hopelessly out into space. PLASFODOR reads slowly what SHE writes.

"Barren torture guides the hand in the abyss of words, where senselessness meets sense and creates the soul of a nonexistent creature. Be that creature born of the word, who docs not exist among the living." We've had all that before! Answer me clearly, or I'll kill you! I Ohl She doesn't know what torture this is 1

HE squeezes her hand with all his might. MAMMALIA sways back and forth. Enter on tzjJtoe MASCULETTE, in a short rose-colored skirt and black stockings. The expression on her face is mischie-vous. The .OTHERS don't sec her.

Answer me, damn it, or I'll torture you to death like the low-est . !I

MAMMALIA begins to write again. PLASFODOR stops swearing and looks intently at the paper. HE mumbles something incompre-hensible, then begins to read

"Transform yourself and me into one inexpressible word, which no living creature can utter. He'll come to your aid-he's draw-ing ncar-! feel him .

MASCULETTE observes this scene with a laugh. Suddenly the up-stage door opens (in fact, the door to the left remains closed until the end of the play) and, without knocking, FRANZ VON TELEK

enters, dressed in a cutaway and striped pants with a white vest, a derby in his hand and a white cane with a gold knob. MAM-

MALIA springs up and runs over to him; MASCULETTE runs to him from the other side.

That's all we needed! \Vhat do you want here, you personifica-tion of the most poisonous emptiness?

THE WINTER REPERTORY: JQ

MASCULETTE (Hanging on VON TELEK's arm) Don't you remember, Mr. von Tclek7 Don't you remember where we last met?

VON TELEK (Shoves her away brutally; turning to MAMMALIA) I'm strong and healthy as a bull. I'm simply bursting with life.

PLASFODOR (To voN TELEK) You're just a poor puppet that anyone can dupe.

MAMMALIA takes FRANZ by the arm and pulls him toward PLASFODOR, indicating a desire to reconcile the two of them; voN TELEK oHers his hand to PLASFODOR, who puts his hands in his pockets. MASCULETTE laughs ind goes to MAMMALIA.

MASCULETTE Everything will work out all right. Don't try to get the better of Plasfodor. I know what he's like.

voN TELEK Quiet, women. I'm healthy as a bull, so I can afford the luxury of having that putrid carcass refuse to shake hands with me. I'm sure he'll talk differently in a few minutes. (To PLASFO-ooR) You know, Plasfodor, I've invented a new kind of artistic creation. Perhaps you'd like to take it up? It's something be-tween non-spatial sculpture and music which comes to a stand-still in space. I even have an instrument .

PLASFODOR You wretch: you want to rob me of my last disbelief. I know your devious ways. You're an ordinary businessman. Now that you've run out of ideas for new alkaloids, you're selling nonexistent drugs.

voN TELEK Well now, there's an insolent beast lurking in this anemic milksop of ours! Remember the famous "apotrans-formine"* that I extracted from the innocent bush of the Holparian tamarisk? Remember the wild visions you had then7

*An alkaloid like morphine, etc. ( \Y/itkiewicz 's note to the French translation)

THE PRAGMATISTS: JJ

PLASFODOR Shut up: don't remind me of those moments of decline and fall.

MAMMALIA twists about between them, as if SHE were connecting some kind of threads. The MEN calm down.

voN TELEK Yes, I'm healthy as a bull. That's my essential strength. Now I'm director of the Department of Poisons at the Ministry of Trade. We want to monopolize all the poisons and form an independent union made up of the greatest good-time teetotal-ers.

HE sits down on the sofa, PLASFODOR next to him. THEY talk quietly. MAMMALIA goes over to them.

PLASFODOR (In a conciliatory tone, pointing to MAMMALIA) Here's my last poison.

voN TELEK Stop pretending, you quick-change artist! You're the one who's been poisoning her with your program of systematic sterility. To live means to create the unknown. After all, I learned that from you, didn't P

MASCULETTE What about me7

PLASFODOR (To MASCULETTE) You're forgetting you're only the maid.

MASCULETTE Oh, is that so? Then can I tell the count about the latest scene? Here arc the papers'

Grabs papers from the table and reads them out loud, avoiding MAMMALIA, who tries to snatch them out of her hand.

"Transform yourself and me into one inexpressible word, which no living creature can ... "

MAMMALIA snatches the papers away from her and tears them into tiny pieces; voN TELEK laughs in a deep bass.

THE WINTER REPERTORY: 12

PLASFODOR (Getting up) I've grown younger in your company. Maybe all this is just an illusion. (Pulls himself together) Oh, I love life too. Masculette' Come here. Can't a hundred and thirty pounds of live Masculette take the place of imaginary artistic creativity? But then why doesn't anything satisfy me? Von Telek is completely at home in his idiotic ministry, in his union of teetotaling good-timers. I alone have no place anywhere.

MASCULETTE (Going to him; naively) There's a totally unknown poison in my heart. Whoever guts my heart out will get some really wild thrills from it.

VON TELEK Now it's my turn.

HE embraces MAMMALIA, who, slipping away, leads him to the door.

You're the one who's going to give me what I don't have and create a web of complex feelings in me. I conquer and discard. Just once I'd like to get in so deep that I won't be able to see the horizon at all.

HE embraces MAMMALIA and THEY go out through the door. MASCULETTE and PLASFODOR sit down on the sofa.

PLASFODOR ( Who has taken in this scene at a glance, speaks to MASCULETTE) That was all just an illusion. Now, once again, I'm the same young boy I used to be years ago.

MASCULETTE (Ironically, but in a kindly way) Poor baby.

PLASFODOR Now I can understand my life over again from the very beginning-nothing ever happened to me. And yet I could have been whatever I wanted. I didn't have that certain little spring.

MASCULETTE You didn't have what creates a sense of reality so strong that you have to accept it-just the way it is, and not some other way. I've known that torment of disbelief in one's own love. But absurdity I'll never comprehend.

THE PRAGMATISTS 13

PLASFODOR You always understand everything in terms of love, even though you're a notoriously sexless person. There's a cer-tain analogy, but in my case the object of doubt was all of life. The only way out was suicide. But I couldn't do it with a clear conscience; it wouldn't have been any solution at all. Oh, this conversation's wearing me out.

MASCULETTE But you were young again-just a moment ago.

PLASFODOR Yes, yes. My friends at the Cafe Illusion think I'm a madman because I don't write poetry.

MASCULETTE Don't let yourself get taken in by Francis' new swin-dle. I know what he's like.

PLASFODOR I don't trust him either.

OHstage voN TELEK can be heard swearing frightfully. HE

comes rushing in, his clothes rumpled, traces of blood on his white vest.

voN TELEK The beasts! I treat you all like well-behaved ghosts, and they're more real than my whole ministry.

MASCULETTE (Getting up) Did you kill her?

VON TELEK (Angrily) What are you talking about? I got stabbed in the breastbone with a Japanese knife because I didn't want to be sufficiently real.

PLASFODOR (Getting up with satisfaction) At last it's beginning ...

MASCULETTE (To PLASFODOR) Stop making speeches. (To voN

TELEK) How did it happen?

VON TELEK Quite simply, I refused her a certain little crime. She wanted me to kill her, today, right away, just like that, on the spot. It drove her into a perfect frenzy.


PLASFODOR Then even she's incapable of doing it herself. Oh, that really impresses me.

MASCULETTE Oh, so she couldn't either. (Points at PLASFODOR) I tell you, Francis, he's stronger than you thought.

voN TELEK (Wiping himself oH with a napkin) There are certain moments when each of us is stronger than he really is.

PLASFODOR I'm not concerned with any particular moment, but with their coming one after the other.

MAMMALIA enters and draws near PLASFODOR.

The infernal banality of existence. It's four o'clock in the after-noon. Then there'll be supper, then an orgy, then a seance, then the nightly bad dreams, then the usual dose of pills to give us strength to go on. Oh, it's unbearable!

voN TELEK If you had to work the way I do, you wouldn't talk like that. There's only one life. It's so trite and obvious, yet few living creatures really understand it. The only thing that saves me is that I'm healthy as a bull.

MAMMALIA embraces PLASFODOR with languorous movements; VON TELEK turns away in disgust and embraces MASCULETTE.

MASCULETTE (Yielding) Francis, is that true? You're not rejecting me, are you7

VON TELEK (Coldly) I'm still not where they are yet. I'm still hold-ing myself back. But whoever unleashes all the strength I've got in me-watch out. There'll be bloody mincemeat, bright red fluff coagulating on the blue sky of an ordinary everyday day.

MASCULETTE (To VON TELEK) Has she arrived?

VON TELEK She's waiting for me at the hotel.

THE PRAGMATISTS 15

PLASFODOR (Shouting) I've had enough of that' I've blocked off all the exits forever. Only death, hers and mine, will be my sole work. Masculette, coffee!

MASCULETTE goes out.

voN TELEK Ohl Here's where I can help you. With your kind permission, I'll go now-just across the street, to the hotel. The memory of a certain event that hasn't happened yet is locked away in my room there.

MAMMALIA approaches FRANZ and clasps her hands together in supplication.

PLASFODOR Co ahead. I'm not afraid of anything now.

voN TELEK All right then, I'm going ...

MAMMALIA tries to stop him; voN TELEK pushes her away bru-tally and goes out.

PLASFODOR Well, what now? The usual program. It's terrible how k the strangeness of life has died out in us.

By her movements MAMMALIA expresses her innermost tor-ment.

Stop twisting around like a marionette. Even talking with you has become a burden to me. Why can't I be lonely the way I used to be?

HE sits down with the same gestures of despair as at the beginning of the act. MAMMALIA stands behind him, her hands hanging limply. Pause. Enter VON TELEK leading the CHINESE MUMMY

by the hand. MAMMALIA runs over to the MUMMY, who with bulging movements, advances slowly to stage center. The MUMMY kisses MAMMLIA On the forehead. PLASFODOR sits with his face in his hands.


voN TELEK Plasfodorl Plasi' \Vake up and accept a new reality into your dried-up depths. (Screams with all his might) Get up this instant''

PLASFODOR (Gets up and tums towards the MUMMY. To FRANZ, indiHerently) Is that alP

voN TELEK (To the MUMMY) Speak'

MASCULETTE (Enters with coHee) Something new, at last. I thought I was going to die of boredom.

MUMMY (To PLASFODOR, in a voice which seems to come from the bottom of a bucket) Remember that night in Saigon? When the opium entered our veins, swelling them with desire for the unknown ..

MAMMALIA stands between PLASFODOR and the MUMMY, with her face fumed towards PLASFODOR.

PLASFODOR (In a hard tone) I don't remember anything. You're Franz's new medium. But your Chineseness seems suspect to me.

MUMMY And do you remember that night when you seduced me in the little bamboo hut in the shadow of the Ping-Fangs and drank the last drop of my blood through a straw made of dried Wu grass7

PLASFODOR I seem to remember something like that. Yes, I think I really was somewhere near Saigon once.

Placing herself between PLASFODOR and the MUMMY, MAM-MALIA dances her desire to create an impenetrable wall between them.

VON TELEK (llarshly, to the MUMMY) Go on, Princess Tsui.

PLASFODOR Tsui? That name is not unknown to me.

THE PRAGMATISTS 17

MUMMY Remember when you sated your wild white lust, and your black-yellow lust was still unsated, do you remember what you did to me then? ( \Vith her sharp claws pointed at MAMMALIA) That was when she went dumb, for the rest of her days.

vor-; TELEK (In a hard tone) Go on, keep going!

PLASFODOR Yes, now I know I was in Saigon with you, five years ago, in May.

MASCULETTE holds up MAMMALIA, who is about to faint, and leads her to the sofa. MAMMALIA weeps and moves despairingly.

voN TELEK (Wlith the voice of authority) Tsui' Tell him the final word. Transform both him and her into that word which no living creature will ever utter.

MAMMALIA springs up and goes over to PLASFODOR, but stops a step away from him and moves as if unable to pass through a charmed circle. MASCULETTE observes the scene, laughing. The MUMMY puts her arms around PLASFODOR's neck and whispers something in his ear.

PLASFODOR (Falling to the Boor) No! No' I don't want to ... I don't want to ... (I lis voice trails oH in a faint and HE collapses on the Boor)

VOl\ TELEK (To the MUMMY, with curiosity) What did you tell him, Tsui, Princess of the Sky-blue Lotus? I'm healthy as a bull and I can take anything.

MAMMALIA and MASCULETTE carry PLASFODOR fo the sofa.

MUMMY (To voN TELEK) I told him the word that could kill you too, you healthy bull. The word that she-(Points to MAM-MALIA)-couldn't tell him, because she went dumb at that very moment.


voN TELEK Tell me what it is. Because I actually don't know what I'm creating here involuntarily, as a completely insignificant waste-product of my being. I'll make a new poison out of it.

The MUMMY takes a step toward him; voN TELEK moves back in terror. MAMMALIA goes over to him, takes his hand and escorts him to the door.

voN TELEK (Going out the door) This time I may have gone a bit too far.

The MUMMY slowly draws near the sofa on which PLASFODOR

lies unconscious.

MASCULETTE (Holding PLASFODOR 's head up) Jt would seem that my master has had what the people at the Illusion call a signifi-cant experience. If only it hasn't been too significant for this anemic milksop.

MUMMY (Kneeling by PLASFODOR) Shut up and hold his head straight.

ACT II

The same room as in Act I. Night. The little red table is placed near the sofa. On the table three candles are burning in a single candelabrum.

PLASFODOR is lying on the sofa. The MUMMY sits to his right on the rug, her profile to the audience. MAMMALIA walks back and forth between PLASFODOR and the MUMMY, wringing her hands in despair, expressing terrible fear and anxiety by all her move-ments.

MUMMY Now you remember quite well who I am. Plas-fo-dor car-ried me off from the summer residence of my ancestors when I was still beautiful and young. The life I imagined for him was like an improbable dream, shadowy and bloody, white and inno-

THE PRAGMATISTS: 19

cent. He had everything: long, long ago he could have been a wise man and a warrior. I wanted to give him all that in the dream. You woke him up to your vile existence, where every-thing small and practical has enmeshed his great soul. Only his soul was beautiful; his body, eaten away by the terrible disease that consumes your common humanity, couldn't stand the fire of his spirit, which blazed like an inextinguishable torch in the immense black Nothingness of Absolute Existence.

MAMMALIA falls on her knees before the MUMMY, bowing until her forehead touches the ground; straightens up and bows again repeatedly.

And what good will that do you now, Countess von Telek? Even your brother's turned his back on you, your brother who loved you in your childhood with a love that wasn't at all brotherly. Get up and revive him now. How will he hear the mute cry that tears your insides out and burns you up with an unspeakable fire7

MAMMALIA springs up and keeps turning about in the same spot in terrible torment. SHE creates the impression that a scream is trying to tear itself out of her and cannot.

PLASFODOR (\Vithout waking up from his dream) I feel as though I'm falling with infinite speed into bottomless abysses, soft as down and black as the starless night.

MAMMALIA listens intently.

Everything's drifting over me in the shape of a hideous, bloated shirt front. For each point in reality there's a corresponding point in that cursed shirt front that keeps moving back and forth, drawing near me and then moving away. I could connect all the corresponding points with thread and join the dream to real life. But I keep sinking deeper and deeper and my torment will never end.

MAMMALIA dashes over to him, then stops, and with sudden decision pulls a revolver out of the cabinet and, from where she's

T H E W I NT E R R E P E R T 0 R Y 20

standing, shoots the MUMMY. The MUMMY does not move. MAMMALIA comes extremely close to the MUMMY and shoots her in the breast, almost pressing the revolver against her clothes. The MUMMY doesn't bat an eyelash. MAMMALIA once again prostrates herself before her.

MUMMY (Calmly) Don't get excited, Mammalia von Telek. That's not the way to overcome the essential strangeness of exis-tence.

MASCULETTE (Enters in a rose-colored dressing gown and cap; ter-nlied) Why are you shooting, you naughty children? \Viii that help any? Ohl Francis told me such dreadful things before he left. All the time I kept on dreaming abciut monstrous teetotal-ing snouts slurping up horrible poisons: monopolized, systema-tized, mechanized. Oh, it wasn't a night of love in the normal sense.

MUMMY The night of love will come only tomorrow. Only death can resolve something as petty and insignificant as Francis von Telek's love.

MASCULETTE Tell me, Princess Tsui, you dominate him com-pletely7

MUMMY Nothing dominates anything; everything comes into being by itself as part of the whole world, which is only the eye of Nothingness turned in on itself.

MAMMALIA gets up and looks wildly at the MUMMY.

MASCULETTE And who is she, Mrs. Mimecker, my mistress, whom I despise so much?

MUMMY She is punishment personified, which is self-embodied in life without anyone directing it, for the existence of the Supreme Being is based on His being His own sleep without dreams in the Infinity of all that is and ceases to be.

THE PRAGMATISTS: 21

MASCULETTE You're boring, mummy of an eminent person. I prefer your impresario, the bearded Franz. (sHE goes out)

The MUMMY grows abstracted and lost in contemplation. MAM-MALIA prostrates herself before her. A pause. Enter VON TELEK, in black palamas.

VON TELEK I thought there'd be at least a few corpses here. But it's only a short lecture course on metaphysics in the style of master Teng-Ts'en. (To MAMMALIA) Get up, my poor poor little sister, then sit down and don't let the situation upset you. We've known a lot worse.

MAMMALIA lumps up, her movements expressing the utmost indignation. SHE pushes away some nonexistent thing in the air, tries to cry out but cannot. Finally SHE throws herself at PLASFO-DOR and tries to wake him. SHE tugs at hirn, embraces and kisses him-all in vain. VON TELEK laughs in a deep bass, the MUMMY loins in with subterranean chortles. MAMMALIA throws herself on her knees before VON TELEK, who, his right hand on the MUM-MY's head, laughs ironically.

Humble yourself, you elownerina! I alone am the master of otherworldly powers despite my great sense of reality. You all wanted to cheat the most essential laws of existence and form a unity without content beyond life? I'll show you howl

The MUMMY gets up slowly and stands beside voN TELEK, who puts his arms around her waist.

MUMMY (Tersely) \Vake him up, Franz.

VON TELEK Gladly. I don't specially care to have that idiot kick the bucket.

HE goes over to PLASFODOR; MAMMALIA, standing behind him, leans forward and watches each of voN TELEK' s movements. He takes PLASFODoR' s hand, turns it three times in a circle and tosses it on the sleeper's chest. PLASFODOR lumps to his feet.

THE WINTER REPERTORY: Z2

PLASFODOR (Rubbing his eyes and adiusting his clothes; to voN TELEK) What, you here again? You wet nurse for incubi! You lesbian pimp.

voN TELEK (Slightly taken aback) Plasi, express yourself more mod-erately: there arc ladies present.

PLASFODOR hits him in the face with all his might. VON TELEK covers his face with his hands.

MUMMY Hit himl Hit him as hard as you can! Don't show him any mercy! (sHE chortles with satisfaction)

PLASFODOR (In a rage) Take that, you incestuous saltimbanquc! Take that, you kept man of Astarte!

MAMMALIA looks on in mute rapture; voN TELEK Bees to the door and stops there.

How dare you trick me in such a vile way? Who's master here?

voN TELEK (Rubbing his face) How about talking calmly? You don't think I'm going to fight you, do you?

MUMMY Now that score's been settled. Franz, I'm taking responsi-bility for your honor. And you, Plasfodor, tell us frankly once and for all if you love that woman even though she's mute and unbalanced, as far as everyday life is concerned.

PLASFODOR (Embracing MAMMALIA) Oh! if I could only find out what love is, I'd gladly tell you, Princess Tsui. A long time ago, a very long time ago I knew what it was, alas. But in those days I used to write stupid little poems. Today it's all an extinct desert in which even all the weeping and earthly whimpering for mercy have fallen silent.

MAMMALIA presses up against him.

voN TELEK Tsui! Are you against me too?

T H E P RAG MAT I S T S 23

MUMMY I only fulfill the role thrust on me by the Great Connec-tion of Everything with Everything.

PLASFODOR (To MAMMALIA) It's just ordinary determinism. Or maybe it's simply that I do love you? To me you're what a mother is to her invalid son, who was once, perhaps in another existence, a titan.

MAMMALIA winds herself around him submissively, with rather dog/ike, yet at the same time catlike movements.

voN TELEK Everything here looked so promising, but where is the strangeness of it all?

MUMMY You only see strangeness in what excites your crude nerves: a strangeness of the second degree. But you don't have the slightest idea what a true transformation of the personality is.

voN TELEK You forget you're only my baggage. You don't exist, you don't have any papers. But I've got a claim check for you, Princess.

The MUMMY slowly goes to VON TELEK; PLASFODOR suddenly iumps up from the sofa where HE has been sitting, and runs out of the room.

Let's take advantage of the absence of that hysterical character and talk frankly for once. What have we really met here for?

The MUMMY turns to him and slowly raises her arm; voN TELEK staggers and cries out in terror.

Mercy! I don't ask for anything! I love you, Tsui, and I'm afraid of you. I'm healthy as the Farnese bull and, damn it all, I love life, just as it is.

HE finishes on a lighter tone, noticing that the MUMMY is lower-ing her hand.

T H E W I NT E R R E P E R T 0 R Y : 24

MUMMY (With contempt) Coward! (Points to MAMMALIA) If she weren't mute she could tell you such atrocious things that you'd die just from the torture of having to hear them.

MAMMALIA looks at her in horror and makes a half-negative gesture. £nter PLASFODOR, followed by MASCULETTE in a night-gown.

PLASFODOR (Holding a notebook) Here's the kind of reading our maid does at night: The Memoirs of Count Von Telek.

HE thumbs through the pages; voN TELEK looks on indifferently.

voN TELEK I forgot about that, carried away by the madness of a purely sensual love for your soubrette, Plasi. But sooner or later we'd have had to put our cards on the table. You can stop looking through those papers. Now I'm going to tell you the principal mystery.

PLASFODOR (Reads)" .. . Then we could tour the entire world with that pair of lunatics ... " (To Mammalia) That means us, and the noble Princess. He wanted to usc us to open some kind of ghastly cabaret theater!

VON TELEK grabs the notebook away from him; PLASFODOR laughs nervously.

voN TELEK The second mystery is much more important

MUMMY

VON TELEK Tsui

(Interrupts him) It's not time yet .

(Proudly) Sometimes I too have a will of my own, Miss

MUMMY (Ironically) Knights appear on the stage in cabarets, but it's the titled riffraff who rule the peoples of the world .

voN TELEK (Interrupts her) Right now this is life, not cabaret or metaphysics. \\.'ith your kind permission I'm the one who di-rects events in life.

T H E P RAG MAT I S T S 25

The MUMMY squats down, facing the audience.

(To PLASFODOR) Mammalia has certainly told you about that mysterious man who seduced her when she was eight years old. I was that man. So I have more rights than you think.

MAMMALIA stands petrified looking at the ground, then she moves as if attacked by a swarm of bees. PLASFODOR keeps silent.

MUMMY White people say so many useless things both in life and on stage. Slave of your own tongue, don't you know that what's going to happen tomorrow has to happen, even if you stir up all the demons in the world today?

voN TELEK (Ignoring her words) Doesn't that fill you with ha-tred, Plasi? Have you really lost the possibility of feeling any-thing?

PLASFODOR (In ecstasy) I didn't know I owed my happiness to you. And my happiness is just that-that she is the way she is. At the thought of losing her, I simply cease to exist. Come here, my little Ma-Ma-Mammalia, give me your lips.

MAMMALIA falls to her knees before PLASFODOR, who kisses her on the mouth, while raising her up from the floor.

MASCULETTE Oh, how I despise my mistress, Franz.

PLASFODOR Your despising her is another indispensable chord in this symphony.

MUMMY (Indifferently like an automaton) Take me back to the hotel, Franz.

voN TELEK (Angrily) I can sec I'm really not needed here. Thanks for last night, Masculettc. I can't stand women who are rash or indiscreet.

MASCULETTE (Regretfully) You're not really abandoning me, are you, Franz7

T H E W I N T E R R E P E R T 0 R Y : 26

VON TELEK (Taking the MUMMY by the ann) Definitively and for ever.

MASCULETTE laughs nervously.

PLASFODOR (\Vith MAMMALIA in his arms) Don't forget tomorrow morning, Franz. I'll be waiting for you at nine o'clock for a decisive talk.

VON TELEK and the MUMMY go out, followed by MASCULETTE.

Completely exhausted, PLASFODOR throws himself on the sofa. MAMMALIA paces nervously about the room.

Don't let your forebodings get the best of you. I'm so tired-let me rest a moment.

MAMMALIA stops pacing and gestures wzldly as zf SHE were going to jump out of her own skin.

Isn't conversation the most significant way of experiencing life? Let's talk about anything at all ... Actually, just the fact of talking itself . . With words the wealth of possibilities is far greater than with events. If only it were possible to grasp what flows as the flowing itself, in its own terms, and not as something standing for something else.

MAMMALIA seems to want to answer: "Oh, yes, that's just it. "

I can't decide on death. The fatigue felt by the individual, isolated being in his amorphous struggle against absurdity. En-closed in a ball of glass, we roll among shattered worlds. And when I said that over there, at the Illusion, Hildesheim got up and asked me in all seriousness: "Well, all right, but have you read chapter three of Meyerspritz about triactical eudomnesia," or something like that. I haven't read it and I'm not going to. That pigeonholing of everything. Actually nothing can satiate me. I've lost the ability to feel any kind of pleasure, even if it's ten times removed from the immediate experience. Even the mystery seems to me to be something dead, ancient and fossil-

T H E P RAG MAT I S T S : 27

ized in its unchanging sameness. Another idiot, Stanghuyzen, told me with a serious look on his face: "Dementia praecox." But for me it remains absolute. The criteria of those gentlemen don't interest me in the least. (Stretches) Only formulating something like this has value. It's something which doesn't get lost in the universe. Everything else passes and is scattered in nothingness.

HE yawns. MAMMALIA goes to him and takes his head in her hands. Suddenly SHE begins to listen intently, then stealthily goes to the window at the right. SHE stands there a moment, and listens.

I beg you, put aside these forebodings. For one moment at least I wanted to float in pure dialectics above life, even a life as unreal as ours. To keep in check the centrifugal expansiveness, the tension which goes in to transforming reality.

MAMMALIA draws the shade and opens the window.

Oh, stop ·

MAMMALIA leans out the window and listens. In the distance the sounds of a mandolin can be heard. Nearer by, an oriental song without any melody, sung in a stifled, indifferent voice.

MUMMY (Sings across the way in a window opening on the hotel courtyard)

Ma a a a Ia ra ga a a a ta Ka rna ra ta ka a a Ia. Ma ga ra ta rna ga ha a Me ge ere ka Ia wa ta pa a a.

MAMMALIA listens. PLASFODOR gets up and goes to the window. THEY both listen for a moment. MAMMALIA shakes with fear, turns away from the window, wrings her hands and writhes in despair. PLASFODOR angrily slams the window and lowers the black shade. HE takes MAMMALIA by the hand and pulls her toward the sofa.

T H E W I N T E R R E P E R T 0 R Y 28

PLASFODOR (Sitting down) That's enough, that's enough. That damned Mummy is the most real character of us all. It's because of her that reality's crept in among us.

MAMMALIA stands in front of him and moves as if beseeching PLASFODOR to tell her something.

You want to know what she whispered in my ear then? It seems totally unimportant to me now. She assured me that there is a future life, giving herself as supposed evidence. All that's a fraud. The life which is is the strangest. I don't need any other world. We'll never fathom eternity; and the other world, if it docs exist, is only a certain variation on what exists here. That's not where the strangeness of existence lies. That's something to scare chil-clren with, third-rate mysteries, ghosts at seances. Oh! How that bores me!

MAMMALIA implores him with gestures to stop talking as If his words were a sort of sacrilege for her. The MUMMY's song can be heard faintly through the closed window.

ACT III I SCENE 1

The next moming. The same room. MAMMALIA and PLASFODOR arc drinking chocolate at the small table. MASCULETTE waits on them. Enter VON TELEK dmnk.

voN TELEK (Throwing himself down on the sofa) Now let's talk seriously. Does this life satisfy you? Is this really what we dreamed about as children, when I wanted to be a pirate, and you wanted to be an artist? No. There's no place in society for us. :'\ot even for me, despite the fact that my position is all too clearly delineated. What was great in former times has become today-through the process of social pulverization-paltry, flat small-scale swinishness.

PLASFODOR (Ironic) What's the use of making me realize those bitter truths7 Even my sufferings are in another dimension.

T H E P R A G M A T I S T S : 29

Desire, apathy, pleasure and pain, those concepts are foreign to me.

voN TELEK (Gets up quickly and pulls out his tic pin, sticking it into PLASFODOR 's hand) Does this leave you indifferent, too?

MAMMALIA pulls him away.

PLASFODOR (Cries out in pain) Aaaah! You're a brutal beast. (Sucks his hand)

voN TELEK sits down on the sofa.

I've got a body, damn it all to hell. What I'm talking about isn't any lousy teetotaling spirituality.

VON TELEK And I don't like fraud.

PLASFODOR (Continues to drink his chocolate) You understand ev-erything in a different dimension. You're too real a bull, Francis, and you're far from understanding the way she and I live.

VON TELEK Don't say anything more to me about that water hen, that whore-till-when. A dumb little animal. If she could talk, then you'd sec her total nothingness. Besides, a woman should never talk. If I were absolute dictator, I'd have the tongues of all the women in my realm torn out, even if kissing lost some of its charm in the process.

MAMMALIA writhes in indefinable suffering on the sofa.

PLASFODOR (\Vith boredom) We're using the same words, but we're talking about totally different things. That's where the poverty and wealth of language lie.

voN TELEK That's enough palaver. What I'm interested in is creat-ing a certain reality. Not necessarily a cabaret, but rather a sort of club, an association, various oddities, and you're the only one who could be the director of it.


PLASFODOR I understand. Socializing and adapting certain towering creations of past ages to the leveling conditions of the present. You won't get me to fall for that.

voN TELEK Why would that have to be a comedown? Isn't it worth the trouble to gather those fruits that heroism or true power once produced in this world, or in some other?

PLASFODOR I wouldn't be able to go on being myself. I'd lose that don't -give-a-damn attitude to life that my total isolation has g1ven me.

MAMMALIA quietly sneaks up on VON TELEK, who doesn't notice what SHE 's doing.

voN TELEK But that's just it-to rise above present-day life doesn't mean isolating oneself at all. In this very life you've got to produce the centers of infection that will destroy it. Points of inflammation throughout the whole society that no inventor of universal happiness will be able to control.

MAMMALIA tips voN TELEK 's chair over onto the Boor and sinks her hands into his throat; VON TELEK grabs her by the hair and THEY roll around on the Boor. PLASFODOR calmly goes on drink-ing his chocolate and glances through a photograph album. VON TELEK roars hollowly.

Let go of me!! I'm choking ... You slut .

MASCULETTE (Runs in and dashes over to save voN TELEK) Francis! My poor Francis' Oh, how I despise my poor mistress.

MAMMALIA lets go of voN TELEK and dances with joy stage right. PLASFODOR hasn't batted an eyelash.

VON TELEK (Getting up; to PLASFODOR) I kept telling you she was a stupid little animal.

THE PRAGMATISTS 31

MASCULETTE Francis! I beg you, keep on loving me. Don't leave me in this horrible house.

voN TELEK (Impatiently) Beat it, sour jelly-roll.

MASCULETTE (Falling on her knees before him) Francis! I implore you, take me into your cabaret-there's no life for me apart from you!

Suddenly voN TELEK pulls a large upholstery hammer out of the side pocket of his tailcoat and smashes in MASCULETTE 's head with it as SHE kneels in front of him. SHE collapses on the rug without a groan. voN TELEK breathes hard. PLASFODOR calmly closes the album and takes another sip of chocolate. MAMMALIA continues to do her joyous dance.

PLASFODOR (Suddenly rushing at voN TELEK) Oh! I've had enough familiarities out of that "coq de Ia walk."

HE throws voN TELEK out and locks the door with the key; comes back, sips some more chocolate. After having reached the high point of satisfaction expressed by her dance, MAMMALIA calms down. HE leads her over to the sofa.

Even the death of asexual people doesn't affect me anymore. Masculette made the chocolate too sweet today. Well now, getting back to the subject before last, I've invented a new way of life. We're going to push our inner anxiety to a climax-by lying completely motionless ...

THEY lie down side by side on the sofa. The curtain falls as HE is speaking.

SCENE 2

The same room, evening of the same day. Dusk is falling. Three candles are burning. The stage is empty except for MASCU-

THE WINTER REP E R T 0 R Y 32

LETTE 's corpse, which sits on the sofa, its head heavily bandaged. There must be a pronounced cadaverous stiHncss to the legs and arms. Enter MAMMALIA, quietly, on tiptoe. SHE examines the whole room thoroughly, then listens attentively at the door and looks behind the window curtain. Suddenly SHE is overcome by fear. SHE is afraid of the corpse and the wide open door with the gaping blackness beyond. SHE goes stiH with fear, then seems to want to run away, then goes stzH again. Enter quietly the MUMMY, bulging. MAMMALIA throws up her hands and freezes in a state of monstrous fear. The MUMMY slowly draws ncar, embraces MAMMALIA, who is petrified with fear, and begins to kiss her passionately. MAMMALIA collapses. The MUMMY holds her up, then carries her over to the sofa and makes her sit down next to MASCULETTE 's corpse. MAMMALIA is wide-eyed with fear.

MUMMY (Screams, pointing at the sofa with her claw) Get up!

MASCULETTE 's corpse and MAMMALIA get up simultaneously lzkc two automatons.

On the floor! Out of here!!

MASCULETTE 's corpse falls Bat on its face and crawls on its elbows toward the door. MAMMALIA watches this for a moment, beside herself with fear, then falls in a faint on the sofa. The MUMMY still standz!zg in the same place, leads MASCULETTE's crawling corpse toward the door by moving her finger with its giant claw. Voices can be heard outside the door. As THEY enter, PLASFODOR and VON TELEK pass the crawling corpse in the doorway. THEY step over the corpse without noticing it. The door remains open. The MUMMY sits down on the Boor ncar the sofa.

voN TELEK (Finishing a conversation already in progress) And finally that way we'll get to the coast. I mean India, the Sunda Islands, and then Australia.

PLASFODOR (Distracted) Yes, yes; but will I be able to create in all that a system isolated enough for my creativity in the realm of life?

THE PRAGMATISTS 33

MAMMALIA awakens from her state of terror, rubs her eyes and goes unsteadily to PLASFODOR.

voN TELEK (Noticing the MUMMY) What independence! There's my baggage taking a stroll without any claim check, going wher-ever it feels like.

MUMMY (To voN TELEK) You're careless like a husband or too trusting a lover whose sweetheart slips out of his hands imper-ceptibly without his knowing it.

voN TELEK (Waving his hand contemptuously) I've got more im-portant things on my mind than the problem of life beyond the grave. Sit down, Plasfodor, and send off that mute little animal of yours.

With a gesture, PLASFODOR dismisses MAMMALIA, who paces up and down making odd gestures. The MUMMY emits uneasy mur-murings, which, during the course of the two men's conversation, slowly change into an oriental song as in Act /1. As the MUMMY sings, MAMMALIA's movements become calmer, but PLASFODOR becomes more and more distracted and responds to voN TELEK like an automaton. voN TELEK sits stage left with his back to the MUMMY, PLASFODOR stage right; VON TELEK talks into space, not looking at PLASFODOR.

(Persuasively) You think that this is only some kind of mysteri-ous business deal for me. Please, don't think that; from now on you don't have any right to think that. I can't live in what surrounds us either, and I'm looking for a way out. Only I don't have the strength, the way you do, to create it by isolating myself from the environment. I'd rather try and change the environ-ment according to our metaphysical concept. Produce metaphy-sical delirium on a mass scale, but not anything like the Ameri-can sects-that's pure fraud, those are actually death throes ...

PLASFODOR (More and more distracted) Yes, of course-I see that. That's truly great. But sometimes I have the feeling the game's not even worth the candle on the birthday cake.


voN TELEK (Interrupts him) But can you be alone? Perhaps before, you could have become a hermit, but now that Mammalia is really yours, through the silence that surrounds her, you won't be able to be alone anymore.

PLASFODOR (Looking at the slowly-rising MUMMY) I certainly won't. Death is the only thing that .

voN TELEK (Speaks staring into space) That's what irritates me, your constant flirtation with death. You won't kill yourself, that's for sure. You'd have done it a long time ago, if you were destined to. Now I'm dreaming of a wonderful life, in which humanity could blaze up one more time in a terrible flame of wild creation before plunging into the gray abyss that awaits it.

PLASFODOR (Unable to take his eyes oR the MUMMY, answers totally without thinking about what HE's saying) Oh, yes, now I under-stand you. That's a fabulous idea.

MAMMALIA goes over to the MUMMY, who bulges in various contortions and sei:<:es MAMMALIA's hand; MAMMALIA begins to sway ill time to the MUMMY's soJJg, which grows faiJJter aJJd fainter.

VON TELEK (Not tumiJJg arouJJd) Ah, at last that Chinese goat's finally stopping bleating. Now you can see, moJJ cher Plasfodeur, how you've underestimated me. For the sake of the great infec-tion center of new creativity that we're going to ignite, I forgive you everything. But you've got to promise me one thing: that you'll get that poor little sister of mine ready in a suitable way. That's the only thing I'm not taking on myself, even though I'm actually healthy as a bull. Perhaps I did rub out your soubrette needlessly, but it's given me a new dimension for metaphysical crime without any motive whatsoever.

PLASFODOR (Gets up aJJd stretches) Why, of course-naturally-that's a mere detail ...

THE PRAGMATISTS 35

voN TELEK (Looking at him for the first time) Plasi1 You look like a perfect idiot. \Vhat's the matter with yme

PLASFODOR goes over to the MUMMY, who takes him by the hand and slowly, with tenible bulging movements, leads MAMMALIA by the right hand, PLASFODOR by the left, toward the dark gulf of the open door; voN TELEK turns around and, stepping back-wards towards the audience, looks at the others, his arms out-stretched THEY pass by in sileJJce without looking at him and disappear through the open door; VON TELEK stands there as though JJJiled to the spot. After a moment there can be heard, apparently from the stairs, the MUMMY's song aJJd, with that in the background, a frightful scream from MAMMALIA, as if all her skin had suddenly been tom oR at once, and then some unintelli-gible cries and gibbering from PLASFODOR. voN TELEK screams.

Mammalia'''

Suddenly there is dead silence beyoJJd the door; voN TELEK falls down heavily OJJ the rug, his head toward the audience. A pause. Through the door at left-used for the first time-enter TWO

GENDARMES in tricomered hats and black uniforms. Looking around timorously, THEY go over to voN TELEK, who is prone, and start prodding him with their feet. vor-; TELEK sits up on the floor and looks at them wide-eyed

GE!'."DARME 1 Your papers, sir7

voN TELEK (A1echanically pulls papers out of his pocket and hands them over) I don't understand a thing.

GENDARME 2 You'll understand soon enough.

GE:-!DARME 1 (Reads) "Graf Franz von Telek. Department head at the Ministry of Trade. Division of Poisons." You're just the person we're looking for, Count.

VON TELEK (Getting up) That's not true; there's a different name there. My name is Lambdon Tyger.

T H E WI NT E R R E P E R T 0 R Y : 36

GENDARME 2 grabs him.

GENDARME I (Giving him back the card) There it is.

voN TELEK (Reads) "Graf Franz von Tclek." Yes, really, every-thing's conspired against me.

GEC\IDARME 2 Where are your things?

VON TELEK (Laughs sadly) My things? All my baggage came to life a moment ago and went out that door. (Points to the center door)

GENDARME I (To GENDARME 2) Stay here with this gentleman. I'll go have a look at that other exit. (HE goes to the door and leaves)

voN TELEK (Laughs in a deep bass) This is only a dream, noble torturer. That card belongs to a friend of mine long since deceased.

GENDARME 2 looks uneasily about; GENDARME I comes back.

GENDARME I (Uneasily to GENDARME 2) There's no way out through there. Or have I gone off my rocker?

GENDARME 2 (Terrified) Let's get out of here. There aren't enough of us to handle this kind of business.

GENDARME I looks at him wide-eyed with fear and THEY both rush to the left door in unison. Bumping into each other at the door, THEY By oH like madmen; VON TELEK stands there calmly.

voN TELEK (Pulling himself together) In our family no one has ever admitted defeat. (Pulls out his watch) Starting tomorrow, I'm beginning a new life. (Looks at his watch) Actually, starting today, which is much more difficult. (HE puts on his derby, takes his cane and with an assured step goes out through the center door. In the distance HE can be heard whistling a kind of two-step)

MR. PRICE Or: Tropical Madness A Small Drama in Three Acts (1920), written in collaboration

with Eugenia Dunin-Borkowska

Dedicated by Borkowska to Wladyslaw Borkowski

and by Witkiewicz to Leon Reynel

AUTHOR's NOTE: Neither my collaborator nor I was ever in Rangoon. I'm somewhat acquainted with other port cities in the tropics. Since the action was to take place in the tropics (it would indeed have been hard to put that whole group in Zakopane or Rabka, or even in Warsaw), and it had always been my dream to visit Rangoon, we decided jointly to transfer the action to that city. The names of the streets are fantastic-but that doesn't matter. I don't think anyone will be offended. As for the disease, "tropical madness," opinions are divided. Some consider it pure fiction, a sickness invented by the colonial European sadists to justify the crimes they commit against the colored people--or even against the representatives of the "superior" white race. Others believe in the reality of this insanity, considering it

Left: Price and Elinor Act Three; first American production, Towson State College, Baltimore, Maryland, 1971

on a par with paranoia or dementia praecox. On the basis of personal experience we arc inclined toward the latter opinion. "Tropical madness" is actually a serious nervous disease in the tropics, arising from the influence of the terrific temperature (of which no Ukranian heat wave can give the faintest idea) and also the influence of spicy foods, alcohol, and the constant sight of naked bodies.

The other problems taken up in the play don't seem to need any explanation.

S.I.W. April 29, 1920

CHARACTERS

RICHARD GOLDERS: 40 years old. Head of the Colders East India Rubber Company. Large, bull-like, handsome, dark-haired. Close-shaven mustache. Hair slightly graying. His face charac-terized by devilish strength and intelligence. A searching glance.

ELINOR GOLDERS: 29 years old. His wife. Daughter of Herbert Fierce, eleventh Duke of Brokenbridge. A slender and subtle blonde. Devilishly seductive.

STRANGER: A young man, 32 years old. Slender, elegant, light-haired. Completely clean-shaven. Refined movements. Eyes with a deep and thoughtful look. Strong jaws.

GEORGIANA FRAY: Called the Black Pelican. 24 years old. Co-cotte. Half Siamese, half English. Colden skin, slanting black eyes. Black hair. Siamese lewdness to the nth degree.

ALBERT BRITCHELLO: Formerly Wojciech Brzechajlo before he anglicized his name-a true Pole, owner of a great trade corpora-tion in Singapore. Bull-necked, florid face, large gray mustache. Thickset, medium height. 65 years old.

BERTHA BRITCHELLO: Nee Whitehead-matronly, thin ex-blonde, completely gray-haired, 55 years old. Dried-up looking.

LILY RADCLIFFE: Their red-haired freckled daughter. 26 years old. Very pretty, but unfortunately common.

TOM RADCLIFFE: Dark-haired, broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, with incredible jaws. Her husband. 30 years old. Owner of a coffee firm in Rangoon.

JACK BRITCHELLO: son of Albert and Bertha. 18 years old. Half gentleman, half sissy.

JIM: Chinese waiter in the cafe of the Malabar Hotel. In a yellow jacket, white trousers and shoes.


DAN: Malayan, servant of Mr. and Mrs. Golders. In a red turban and dinner jacket.

ACT I

The action takes place in Rangoon. Night. Veranda of the Hotel Malabar. Red pillars, topped by Indian arches decorated in rich ornaments, frame the doorway from which stairs lead down to the street. To the right and left of the doorway, gray-yellow drapes as tall as a man hang between the pillars. Above, the starry sky can be seen. A small table to the right, another to the left. A larger table center. To the left the door to the billiard room; to the right a drape, which curtains off that section of the veranda. Upstage, through the doorway, we can sec the street: small houses surrounded by palms, further out a quay and the lights of ships out at sea.

JIM stands by the left wall, dressed in a yellow jacket, white trousers and black shoes. HE wears a pigtail. At the small table in the curtained area to the right ELINOR GOLDERS sits, dressed in a white outfit and tropical hat with a green band, sipping a cold drink through a straw. The small table to the left is empty. These small tables are further upstage than the large table center, at which the BRITCHELLO FAMILY sits, in the following order from right to left: TOM RADCLIFFE, his right profile to the audience; ALBERT BRITCHELLO, facing the audience; LILY, turned three-quarters to the audience showing her left profile somewhat; BER-

THA BRITCHELLO, her /eft profife to the audience. JACK sits slightly further downstage, his left profile toward the audience. THEY are all dressed in white. Every minute, someone in the group slaps a mosquito on his forehead, neck, cheeks, in the air in front of his nose, or somewhere else, clapping it in the palms of his hands-the way we kill moths. THEY drink iced drinks-cocktails and lemon squash.

BRITCHELLO How could you do something like that, Tom .

TOM (Aghast) But Father .

MR. PRICE: 41

BRITCHELLO (Pounding his list on the table) No, no and no! Jim! Two rainbows!

JIM goes out.

I'm warning you, Tom, you're going to end up on the gallows. I've never done dirty business. In the last cargo of coffee there were three cases of opium .

TOM (Interrupts him, trying to warn him and calm him down) Quiet, Father. There's a lady sitting over there.

BRITCHELLO (Looks around somewhat uneasily, then waves his hand contemptuously) Oh, some sleepwalker from another world. (Again angrily) Three cases of opium! And to ship it to my agents! That's outrageous! I intercepted your letter to Hold.

TOM looks confused.

I can't fire him now, I need him. I have to look at that ugly mug for another month. But he'll be fired, don't worry. I didn't want to tell you this till after the fact. But you drove me to it.

JIM brings two rainbows. THEY drink.

TOM (Disconcerted, wants to avoid the issue) All right, Father. Let's have a drink and make up. One way or another. We'll do some kind of business anyhow.

BRITCHELLO Another episode like that, and Lily']] come home to us. I've had enough of your shenanigans.

THEY clink glasses and drink.

LILY Only please don't get me mixed up in business. We're the flowers that grow in your crates, shipments, cargoes, and em-bargoes. I don't understand anything about this, but it's the flowcrbed I grow in. And I'm not going to wither away yet. Tom! Do whatever Papa tells you, that's my advice.


BRITCHELLO (To LILY, impatiently) Fine, fine. Tell him all that at night when you're alone. And above all, don't let your fantasies run away with you. (To TOM) I've got to be at Colders' tomor-row. I don't know him personally yet, but we're forming a colossal gum and cocoa trust. If you'll behave yourself, Tom, I'll take you on as chief secretary. Well-but that's enough busi-ness. Let's at least take a little break.

Enter from the street the STRANGER dressed in a white tropical costume, a pith helmet on his head. EVERYONE looks around. BRITCHELLO stops talking and sips his liqueur.

JACK Business in the tropics has a special kind of charm. You're all so keen on Europe. But I'm telling you, those years there were a deadly bore. Here the most insignificant shopkeeper is some-thing fantastically strange, far stranger than a millionaire in Europe. To say nothing of such creatures as papa or you, Tom.

BERTHA Jack! Behave decently. How can you talk like that about your father?

JACK (Slapping a mosquito on his right cheek-it's important to remember that THEY 're all constantly slapping mosquitoes) I don't think it's insulting. Here in the tropics everyone's like some kind of strange creature. They're beautiful, like tigers in the jungle. (Looking at ELINOR) That woman's talking to herself. Lily, don't stare at her like that.

THEY all turn and look in ELINOR's direction.

ELINOR (Aloud, to herself) What strange eyes that man has. They remind me of something, but I can't remember what.

BERTHA (Loudly; THEY all speak loudly all the time) There are quite a few deranged people here. Everything seems different in this country. I have the feeling life's floating backward. That woman looks like some sort of society person, but I wouldn't trust her.

JACK She seems to be a foreigner from an unknown country.

MR. PRICE 43

ELINOR The sun here is like a ball of blood that strikes people down instead of giving them life, and the darkness of night is white-hot like Satan's bowels. Oh! My poor head. (sHE massages her temples)

LILY Unlike anyone I've ever seen in my life. I can't take my eyes off her. I've been infected by your perverse fantasies, Jack.

JACK Unfortunately the only thing you're learning how to do is work yourself up into a nervous state.

LILY I think that's what we're all doing.

BRITCHELLO You're all exaggerating. If you worked the way I -:lid ...

JACK (Looking at the STRANGER) That man at the right also noticed our lady stranger. They've noticed each other. They're looking at each other.

LILY Look, what's happening to him?

STRANGER (HE shows anxiety in his movements and suddenly, as if not knowing what to do with himself, calls to JIM, in an unnatu-rally serious tone) Bring me some water! Plain ice water! Under-stand?

HE half-rises, then sits down again. At the sound of his voice, ELINOR covers her face with her hands and keeps them there. The STRANGER, making an cHart to control himself, sits stimy with clenched teeth and looks determinedly straight ahead. Enter JIM with a glass of water on a tray. HE comes up to the STRANGER, who glances at him, then gets up, pushes him away and with a firm step goes over to ELINOR. The glass falls to the Boor; JIM picks up the pieces. With the exception of BRITCHELLO, the OTHERS all watch in silence. The STRANGER stops in front of ELINOR, as if not knowing what to do next.


Madam, this is unbelievable, but I couldn't do anything else. am Sydney .

ELINOR (Who has from the beginning been staring at him in amaze-ment, makes a gesture with her hands to repel him) Don't say anything' I don't want to know anything. Please go away'

STRA:-IGER No, it can't be that you'd send me away without saying a single word. You understand, I'm sure, that a person can bring himself to do something like this only once in a lifetime .

ELINOR (Slowly weakens. Her hands fall. SHE speaks with an ef-fort, dragging out the words, which seem to stick in her throat) You frightened me. I wish it hadn't happened. You behaved like a person in a trance. There are people all around us. I my-self .

STRANGER That doesn't matter. It was you who brought me here. Look me in the eye.

ELINOR involuntarily raises her eyes and looks with terror into the STRANGER 's face. During the STRANGER 's last speech, BRITCH-

ELLO turns and looks threateningly at him. Seeing ELINOR 's ter-ror-stricken look, HE gets up and, clenching his fists, approaches the STRANGER; JACK bursts into spasmodic laughter.

BRITCHELLO (To the STRANGER) How dare you accost women you don't even know? Can't you see this lady doesn't feel well as it is? Get out of here this minute!

The STRANGER looks at him, stunned.

ELINOR (Suddenly regaining her composure) Gentlemen! Don't get so excited. My husband will be here any minute.

BRITCHELLO What do I care about your husband? I'd be willing to swear you only think you've got a husband. I'm an old man and won't let any young whippersnapper .

MR. PRICE 45

BERTHA (Sharply) Albert! Oh, those Polish aristocratic manners!

LILY (At the same time) Papa'

At the sound of their voices BRITCHELLO stops short. HE makes a conciliatory gesture to his family and immediately starts talking again.

TOM (To the women) Don't worry. Papa bas to work off some of his Polish love of fantasy.

BRITCHELLO (To the STRANGER, thrusting his fist under his nose) I'll show you, you anemic milksop'

JACK laughs, pounding his fists against his thighs.

STRANGER (Completely calmly) You won't show me anything. (HE

grabs BRITCHELLO by the arm and twists it in a way that proves harmless enough)

BRITCHELLO (Crying out a little) Oh! He's some sort of thug!

ELINOR (Getting up) But, gentlemen ... I implore you ... There'll be a dreadful scandal.

At this moment GOLDERS runs up the stairs from the street, in tropical costume, with a pith helmet on his head. All the while JIM stands by the left wall looking on at the scene indifferently.

GOLDERS (Seeing his wife with two strange men) Ellie! Who are those men?

TOM runs up to BRITCHELLO and says something in his car.

JACK (Loudly) Ob, this is marvelous' It could only happen in the tropics'

ELINOR (Stammering) I ... I don't know ... Actually I don't know anything about it.


GOLDERS (Astonished) Have you gone out of your mind? (To the MEN) Gentlemen! You've got to tell me what this means this instant' I'm Golders of the East India Rubber Company. Tell me this minute!

The STRANGER is completely flabbergasted.

ELINOR Richard! It's actually my fault!

GOLDERS (To his wife) I'll talk to you later. (To the STRANGER) I'm asking you for the last time what this means.

BRITCHELLO (Finally sorting things out) Good heavens! You're Golders? I've got to talk to you this minute. I am Britchello from Singapore. I came here especially to see you. I defended this lady from that whippersnapper. (Points to the STRANGER)

GOLDERS Britchello? I'm at your service. We'll talk to that man later. (Points to the STRANGER) Business before everything.

STRANGER (To BRITCHELLo) You're Britchello. I've got to talk with you immediately. I didn't think you'd come back from your trip.

GOLDERS and ELINOR look at him in amazement.

BRITCHELLO You're a common thug. I don't have any time to talk. I don't even know your name.

STRANGER Mr. Britchello! I beg you, talk to me before you talk to Mr. Golders. I can't tell you who I am. Not right now. Every-thing will become clear later on. I'll tell you just as soon as we're alone.

GOLDERS realizes that HE's got to keep the STRANGER away from BRITCHELLO. HE quickly runs up to his wife and says something to her in her ear with terrible force, beating his fists on the table; HE simply hypnotizes her. BRITCHELLO listens to TOM's whispers. ELINOR nods her head in agreement and sits down at the small table. GOLDERS goes over to BRITCHELLO and TOM.

MR. PRICE 47

ELINOR (To the STRANGER, looking at him with a hypnotizing gaze) You won't refuse me your company, Monsieur Comment-vous-appelez-vous, Mr. What's-your-name. Do sit down. Our conver-sation was so rudely interrupted.

The STRANGER hesitates. It's clear that HE's waging a terrible battle with himself. GOLDERS waits for TOM to finish whispering to BRITCHELLO. Finally HE loses his patience and slaps BRITCH-ELLO on the shoulder.

GOLDERS All right, Mr. Britchello! Let's go discuss that business. You'll be so kind as to introduce me to your associate.

The STRANGER sits down at ELINOR 's table.

BRITCHELLO Not right now. (To TOM) Tom! Go entertain the family.

JACK (Stealing a furtive glance of admiration) Papa's marvelous. I'm getting to love you more and more, Papa!

BRITCHELLO (To GOLDERS with relief) At last. Later on you'll be so kind as to introduce me to that lady.

GOLDERS Of course, with great pleasure.

THEY cross to the left, sit down at the table where the STRANGER had been sitting and talk quietly.

STRANGER (To ELINOR) You are like a cobra, and I am like a squir-rel: I'm rushing into the jaws of the unknown. It may end fatally for me. I'm abandoning my most sacred duties for you. (HE looks around toward BRITCHELLO and GOLDERS)

ELINOR Oh, stop it. For once I want to stop thinking about real life. It all happened so suddenly. I'm in a daze. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to you. I'm afraid that this moment will escape irrevocably, that people will separate us and I'll never again manage to . . .


STRANGER Right now just let me apologize to you. I behaved like a savage. This country brings out people's natural instincts. Madam, we're living in a country of indecent flowers, monstrous deities and mysterious people. Oh, madam, those deities-what a profoundity of concepts .

ELINOR I'm sure deranged people pray to them .

STRANGER Here no one interferes with them; they can be as mad as they like. Even I feel that nothing is what it seems. Nothing. Do you understand? People say that's the first symptom of madness. (Gets up) But this business deal has got to be .

ELINOR (Interrupts him, talking mysteriously) You remind me of something in a dream. In my castle in England there was a portrait I was afraid of. You have the eyes of one of my ill-fated ancestors.

STRANGER (Somewhat disconcerted, sits down again) You have a castle? Why were they ill-fated?

ELINOR (Smiling) I am, as someone once called me, a white bird drowned in a sea of blood. I have the feeling that I really am swimming in the red depths of the blood my ancestors shed, and my wings are tied by fetters of gold.

STRANGER The shadow of whole centuries hangs over you. You're a ghost from worlds long dead.

ELINOR (In a different tone, suddenly making light of the whole thing) It's not so ominous as it seems. Actually I'm dreadfully bored. Unfortunately, I'm bored with you too.

STRANGER No one can escape his fate. I sec it clearly: there's a little gray-green snake dozing in your heart, hidden under a sticky web of subtle dreams. That snake is all cruel longing.

ELINOR (Artificially profound) You're casting the spell of eternal things upon me. I'm beginning to be afraid. I wish somebody

M R . P R I C E : 49

would blindfold me. I was brought up in an old castle, where from my earliest youth, my nanny poured words of pious renun-ciation into my ears. Those words were killing me gradually. Slowly my heart was closing and I certainly would have lived out this earthly existence without ever awakening, if it hadn't been for this tropical landscape and this unbearable heat. (Smiles faintly) But to open one's eyes-what is that really? Women know how to love, I know that. People always say that, and some of them write about it, men I don't know personally, and even women. But in my heart there's a secret dozing, and I don't know what it is-a crime or a great sacrifice. In any case it isn't love. Oh! How bored I am!

STRANGER That sounds like a judgment on me.

ELINOR (In a markedly coquettish way) In a moment I'll take my husband's arm and go off to our villa. Just in case, remember the address: 15 Malabar Road.

The STRANGER hastily jots it down in his address book.

I may never meet you again. When I return to my country, on a cold, foggy day, perhaps this moment will bloom like a flower, and I'll smile at it gratefully.

JACK suddenly gets up and comes over to them.

STRANGER (Vehemently) I can't stand any more of this ... (HE stops short seeing JACK right beside him) This is called the denoue-ment of the situation.

JACK (Bowing) Pardon me, but really in Europe ... I've never seen anything like this ... And now .

ELINOR (Looks at him amused. To the STRANGER) You see what frayed nerves can bring you to.

STRANGER (Getting up) Forgive me-this is the last moment .

(:)


ELINOR (To the STRANGER, a request in which a firm command can be felt) You won't go away. You've thrown everything into a state of confusion and now you want to leave me. That would be cruel of you.

JACK Yes, don't go. That lady (Bows to ELINOR) speaks so marvel-ously. I am Britchello. That's my father there talking with Mr. Golders.

THEY shake hands.

BERTHA Jack! Come here immediately.

STRANGER (Sits down again) This is the end. I'm lost.

JACK (To his mother) Not on your life. (To the STRANGER) How I wish I could be lost. How I envy you.

ELINOR (To the STRANGER) You see. That boy has more common sense than you do, although you're already graying at the tem-ples. You must have suffered a great deal. Suffering always does strange things to me. Not just my own, but anyone's. Right now you personify a turning point in my whole existence.

STRANGER (Looks at her wildly) Madam, I don't know if you're joking or not. My life is being decided for me right now. I don't know if I can talk . . .

ELINOR (Indicating JACK with a gesture) We can talk in front of that child. He looks at everything through the heat of the tropical sun. We're not living people for him. Rather, we represent visions of a reality never fulfilled even in his wildest dreams. Isn't that so, Mr. Jack?

JACK Everything you say is true.

ELINOR How I envy you. There are still so many, many things ahead for you to experience in life.

MR. PRICE 51

STRANGER I'm only afraid of .

ELINOR You don't have to be afraid of my husband.

JACK But Tom says he's not your husband.

STRANGER Madam, don't insult me. I'm afraid of something a hun-dred times worse. You must promise me that there can ·be no misunderstandings between us.

ELINOR (Contrarily) I don't know anything and I'm not promising anything. I don't even know who you are. Aren't you only the phosphorescence of my white-hot imagination? For a whole year now I haven't seen any people and I've been living only with ghosts. I can't distinguish any longer between a ghost and a real living being--cat or human, it doesn't matter.

JACK It's marvelous the way you talk. Nobody knows anything about anybody, and there's something going on, but actually there's no telling what.

STRANGER My name is Sydney Price.

ELINOR Perhaps you're the son of my cousin, Sir Alfred Price of Pricefield.

PRICE No, Madam. No one in my family has a title. I'm Price from Brixton. My father was a cockney.

ELINOR That means you're a free man. You don't know what the web of conventions and intrigues in high society is like. But it's odd. I sec it clearly: you look like my dead brother.

PRICE Sometimes these freaks of nature occur to wreck a person's whole life. It can happen to anyone, if it comes at the right time, at the proper moment.

ELINOR Oh, I see, you're obsessed with telling the truth. But in the depths of your soul you're just a normal well-behaved gentleman.


PRICE (Completely incapacitated) No, quite the contrary. Actually I'm a man from another epoch. You're marvelous. In half an hour you've changed me into a completely different person. Frankly speaking, that's what they call great love. I didn't know it could happen again in my life. Now I'm sure it has happened.

ELINOR Aren't you deciding too fast? You yourself said that I have a snake in my heart. My snake may turn out to be a murderer. A terrible destroyer of everything that's important.

PRICE No, no. Don't talk like that. You don't know what's hap-pened. I'm ready for literally anything.

ELINOR (Looks at him intently) You keep reminding me more and more of my brother. Perhaps fate sent you to me on purpose so that I could find out what I'm really like.

JACK Madam, I can't stand this anymore. I think I shall write a great epic poem about all this. May I dedicate it to you?

ELINOR laughs sadly. At this moment GEORGIANA FRAY comes up the stairs, in a white dress with yellow sashes and a white hat with a black feather and yellow band.

PRICE (Not seeing her) Nothing exists for me except you. Nothing matters to me. I can stand alone against the whole world.

HE looks at the table top, holding his clenched fists on it. GEOR-GIANA stops at the door.

ELINOR (Trembling, suddenly catching sight of GEORGIANA) Yes, but why .

BOTH WOMEN look at each other. The conversation at the table to the right grows louder.

BRITCHELLO Fine, but in that case let's issue mutual shares.

GOLDERS Of course-before they find out .

.\1R. PRICE: 53

HE goes on more quietly. Beyond the left door the clicking of a game of billiards can be heard, continuing to the end of this sequence.

ELINOR (Looking at GEORGIANA as SHE talks to PRICE) So you agree to go through the labyrinth of breakneck fantasies7 I'm bored and have to have something really extraordinary.

PRICE (Looking at her) All right-I accept the challenge (HE fol-lows ELINOR's look and sees GEORGIANA) Now comes the mo-ment of trial.

JACK (Getting up) Oh, what a beautiful woman!

GEORGIANA (Not moving from her place by the column) Sydney! \Vho is that lady? (Points to ELINOR) You made a date with me and now you're sitting there with some pale worm. You won't even condescend to recognize me. And just yesterday you said you loved me, that you felt it was a great love, that you'd never expected anything like it in this life. Oh, the way you lie, you pasty-faced beanpole, you washed-out sea slug'

Pf.!CE (Springing up out of his chair) This is just what I was so horribly afraid of. It's happened. Now I'll see what the truth is.

ELINOR (Getting up) So you said the same thing yesterday to that poor creature. Ohl How cheap it all is. (sHE falls into her chair again, covering her face with her hands)

GEORGIANA (To ELINOR) So you've been cheated by this anemic milksop too7 He's just an ordinary white Don Juan. I prefer even colored roues to him now.

PRICE (To ELINOR) Don't you believe it. Believe in the incredible. Yesterday I said it one way, and today I'm saying it another way. Yesterday I didn't believe my own words. Ohl Those damned words' Why do they always stay exactly the same, when our thoughts are constantly changing?


ELINOR (Uncovering her face) Don't lie. It's disgusting. I'm closer to her (Points to GEORGIANA) than to you. You've killed the one strange moment in my life. I detest you.

PRICE (Taking his head in his hands) Oh, how horrible!

JACK (To GEORGIANA) Never mind. He's a lost man. He said so himself a moment ago.

PRICE makes a gesture of denial. BRITCHELLO and GOLDERS get up from the table. THEY have been too busy talking to hear the scene at left.

GOLDERS (Shaking BRITCHELLO' s hand) Fine. Then our business is all taken care of. (HE sees the group of characters at right and instantly goes over to them)

GEORGIANA (While this is going on) It wasn't enough for you to deceive a poor girl of the streets, a poor half-breed. You had to deceive that lady. (Points to ELINOR) You didn't even give me money for dinner yesterday. Today I ate with the Chinese on Baldwin Street. (To ELINOR) Oh, Madaml Don't believe him. He's a monster.

JACK goes over and whispers to comfort her; PRICE gives her his wallet, which SHE throws on the ground.

GOLDERS (Coldly to PRICE) Sir! It's my fault for leaving my wife with a perfect stranger. I thought you were a gentleman. Fine company you've chosen for Mrs. Golders, the daughter of the Duke of Brokenbridge.

TOM

PRICE looks at ELINOR in astonishment.

Do you know whom you're dealing with? With Golders, my dear sirl Maybe you don't even know who Golders is? Get out, while you still have all your teeth!

So that's who she is! The famous, invisible Mrs. Goldersl

' l

MR. PRICE 5)

LILY registers emotion. BERTHA sits motionless.

PRICE (Proudly) I know perfectly well who you are. I was supposed to talk with you tomorrow. I am Price from the Central Indian Rubber Union. Perhaps you've heard something about me too. Because of your machinations I lost my job today-right now-this very minute. I was sent here specially to work out an agree-ment with Mr. Britchello. I was supposed to catch him in Singapore. You beat me to it in a most repulsive way, by handing your wife over to me for the sake of a good business deal.

THEY a/1 look at him petrified. ELINOR bursts out laughing.

GOLDERS (Frothing) Shut up I So that's the famous Price I I'll teach you, you whippersnapper. I challenge you to a boxing match. That way, please, to the billiard parlor. (To JIM) Throw every-body out of there.

HE points to the left door. JIM runs out. The clicking of the billiard ba//s stops. To PRICE.

This way' It'll all be settled in there. (HE points again to the left door)

PRICE (Leaving, to ELINOR) I'm the one who was deceived. I've lost everything.

HE goes out, followed by GOLDERS. BRITCHELLO and TOM start to follow them, but stop at the door and look into the billiard room In a moment the sounds of a fight and the cries of the enraptured JIM can be heard.

BERTHA (To JACK) Jackl Stop talking to that woman this instant. I'\ ice things they teach you in that Europe of yours.

JACK I know well enough how to behave myself. (To GEORGIAC'IA)

Miss, I'll be your knight. Do sit down. (HE shouts) J iml Three rainbows'-may I offer you ladies a drink7


LILY Really, that Jack's impossible.

JIM (Runs in, madly overjoyed, scratching his head) Yes, sir!

JACK Three rainbows, you yellow monkey. I'm buying.

JIM Yes, sir. (Runs out)

JACK (To ELINOR) You have no objections if we all sit together, do you? (Not waiting for an answer, to GEORGIANA) Do sit down. We need to fortify the nervous system. There's no telling what will happen next.

THEY sit down and talk quietly. LILY begins to observe the scene jealously.

LILY (To BERTHA) I didn't know that woman was a duchess. She has a right to do anything she pleases. We're the only ones who cling to stupid prejudices.

BERTHA I see you're getting ideas too. It's all Jack's fault.

BRITCHELLO (At the door) He really smacked him one' I never thought he could keep it up this long.

TOM He's in great shape. In something like this weight doesn't mean anything.

THEY keep on watching. JIM passes them with three rainbows on a tray and goes to the table with JACK and the LADIES.

JACK (Gaily) Have a drink, ladies, and we'll talk. (To GEORGIANA)

What's your name?

GEORGIANA ( AHectedly) Georgiana.

JACK Drink up. You're really a marvelous flower. From now on, I'm beginning to live. You don't understand that. We Europeans are the only people who can really appreciate the tropics.

MR. PRICE 57

ELINOR Poor Price. After all, I do feel sorry for him. My husband will make mincemeat out of him.

GEORGIANA It'll serve him right. That'll teach him that you can't insult women and get away with it. (Tuming to ELINOR) It'll be revenge for me and for you.

ELINOR (Taking her hand) Calm down. Mr. Price met me for the first time half an hour ago. I just found out what his name was. I see that you're very interested in him, but actually ..

GEORGIANA That anemic milksop told me to come here. He picked the time himself. He begged me to. And now when I came in he didn't even condescend to look at me. It's my own fault. Men are brutes you have to keep on a leash.

ELINOR Have you known him for long?

GEORGIANA Heavens, no. I never waste my time in long involve-ments. He just met me yesterday at a ball at Wilton Hall. I glanced over at him a few times. He was so well-dressed and he took me home with him. This morning I promised him I'd be here. I turned down a couple of old friends. And then he lets me down like this!

ELINOR But I'm not standing in your way at all. You can have him all to yourself anytime you want.

GEORGIANA Yes, with his face all beaten up-your husband will fix him nicely. It'll serve him right. He should stop playing the gentleman.

ELINOR He told you he loved you?

GEORGIANA He swore it to me. I have a method of toying with them till their guts come spilling out. But he has a certain something that's even more special. I couldn't do it to him. I fell for his great love. Love for me-for a colored girl of the streets!

T H E W I NT E R REP E R T 0 R Y 58

ELINOR Apparently men say things like that all the time.

GEORGIANA Oh, Madam! Please don't think I'm a complete failure. I'm not going to die of love-that's for sure.

JACK (To GEORGIANA) Your life must be one huge orgy.

GEORGIANA Does that enchant you, my little man, that continuous orgy?

JACK Oh, yes. Everything here has a special charm. After a day full of dazzling brilliance, the night here is darker than in Europe and it holds more secrets.

ELINOR Yes, you're a sorceress of the night. I'm glad I've met you. This is the first and last time I'll ever set foot in this hotel.

GEORGIANA I'd advise you not to come here anymore. Especially if your husband intends to beat up all my lovers.

ELINOR Oh, he's not so frightening as he seems.

JACK (To GEORGIANA) Yes, you're a nocturnal vision. I can't imagine you existing by day.

GEORGIANA During the day I sleep, or at least lie down somewhere in the dark and think about things I wouldn't tell a soul.

JACK (Looking around at LILY) And my sister's so anxious to come join us, she's simply frothing at the mouth.

ELINOR Do ask her to; she's so lovely.

JACK (Calls to LILY) Come join us. You're infernally bored over there.

BERTHA (Indignantly) Lily!

MR. PRICE 59

LILY goes over to ELINOR's table. BERTHA lapses back into her mummified state.

ELINOR Your brother's getting completely carried away in all this confusion and he's going into ecstasies over literally everything.

LILY He loves everything that's unusual. He just came back from Europe a couple of days ago. Did you know that?

ELINOR Oh, let's not talk about Europe. I've had enough of Europe to last me the rest of my life. This evening is a veritable whirl-pool of events. There's no telling what will happen next.

At this moment the fight stops.

BRITCHELLO (Going into the billiard parlor) Bravo, Price! I say, you're some real jaw-buster!

TOM (To the OTHERS) He squashed Mr. Golders like a mosquito!

HE goes into the par/or. ELINOR, GEORGIANA, LILY and JACK spring out of their chairs and rush to the hall door. BERTHA sits like a mummy, slapping mosquitoes. At the door THEY meet GOLDERS, who is leaning with his right arm on PRICE. With his left hand HE holds a compress to his left jaw. PRICE has a distracted look on his face.

GEORGIANA Look what that thug did to him. He doesn't deserve to fight with real gentlemen ...

JACK stops her.

ELINOR Richard! How do you feel?

GOLDERS (Speaks with difliculty) Price is a real gentleman. I can introduce him to you now. (To PRICE) Sydney! This is my wife, Elinor.

THEY exchange greetings.


LILY (To TOM) You can learn something from this, Tommy. That's the way real gentlemen act.

TOM is taken aback.

BRITCHELLO Now for the last round of drinks. (To JIM) Jim! Six rainbows!

JIM goes out.

A glorious evening. (To ELINOR) Don't worry, it's nothing. He'll get over it soon enough. A glancing blow, his ear is only slightly torn off. Jack, I'll even let you have a drink.

GOLDERS (To PRICE) Don't worry, Sydney. You'll get a better job.

PRICE But the Union, the Union will go to hell!

BRITCHELLO Never mind. We'll merge the Union with our trust company.

JIM brings in the drinks. THEY all take their glasses.

We'll drink to the success of our General Rubber and Coffee Trust. Long live coffee and gutta-percha, welded together in an invincible mass of power and glory. Long live tropical fantasy'

GOLDERS (Weakly) Hip! Hip! Hurrah!!

THEY all cry "hurrah" along with him. Even BERTHA gets up. Meanwhile there is a pantomime scene between GEORGIANA and JACK upstage, a little to the right of the door. JACK shows her a pile of banknotes. THEY look at the others. Then JACK grabs her by the arm and THEY both run quickly out into the street.

BERTHA (Cries out) Jack! My Jack's run off with that slut!

THEY all look around. ELINOR and LILY burst out into wild laughter.

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GOLDERS That's what I call taking advantage of the general confu-sion. (To PRICE) Sydney! That youngster made up for your faux pas. He rid us of that woman's company.

BRITCHELLO (To BERTHA) Take it easy, Mother. Let the boy have his fun for once. I've done so well today I can't get mad at anybody. (HE calms her down with a few hugs)

TOM This isn't Singapore. I'm afraid he might fall into the hands of the Siamese opium smokers.

BRITCHELLO Tom' No smart remarks. Remember your recent es-capades.

PRICE (Suddenly awakens from his stupor. To GOLDERS) Richard, I don't accept your job. (With extraordinary intensity) I love Mrs. Golders. It's my ultimate love.

ELINOR (Scornfully) But I don't love you, Mr. no need to feel embarrassed.

. Price. There's

BRITCHELLO Now that is real Polish frankness. (To JIM) Jim-the check. I'm paying for everything. (Pays JIM)

TOM Vv'hat great generosity-two or three rainbows.

GOLDERS (\Vho till now has kept silent, lost in thought; to his wife) Even if you did love him, I wouldn't see anything extraordinary in that. He's got very fine manners, and he's an athlete and a bit of a madman as well.

LILY (To TOM) You see, Tommy! That's the way real gentlemen act.

PRICE (Crushed) I don't know who I'll be, Richard I You're so devilishly magnanimous that I really ...

GOLDERS (To PRICE) Didn't you hear? I'm giving you a better job than with the Union. I'm giving you twice the salary. Don't let


a few little scruples bother you. You'll just get a special secretary who'll protect you from your own insanities.

PRICE (Suddenly carried away) Starting tomorrow you'll all see who I am. I'm beginning a new existence. All of my energies will be devoted entirely to your trust company. In my personal life I'll be a corpse to the end.

GOLDERS (Slaps him on the shoulder with his right hand) There, there. Stop making speeches. Maybe it'll all turn out differently.

LILY Mr. Golders! You're simply wonderful.

GOLDERS ignores this and goes out with PRICE, taking him by the arm, all the while holding the compress to his left cheek. ELINOR goes out alone after them. The BRITCHELLO FAMILY

follows her.

JIM (Cleaning up the table) At last those European monkeys have gone! (He shakes his fist at them as THEY exit)

ACT II

Garden of the Golders' villa, 15 Malabar Road. Night. The scene is drenched in bright moonlight. To stage left, a set of red wicker lawn furniture. To the right a sculptured bench, three-quarters toward the audience, stands under a group of tall shrubs covered with huge purple and orange flowers. At the left there are some more shrubs, mango trees and palm trees. In the background the Golders' villa, in the style of an Indian bunga-low, surrounded by palms and tall trees with strange silhouettes. A tea service is on the wicker table, a hot plate on its own small table nearby.

ELINOR, alone, in a pearl-gray dress, paces nervously back and forth between the bench and the table. A red shawl lies on the arm of the chair nearest the shrubs at left.

M R . P R I C E : 63

ELINOR (Sitting on the bench and glancing at her watch) It's 8:30 already and that idiot's not here yet. (Gets up) And he said he couldn't stand waiting till evening. (Stretches) Oh! Aren't there any men in the world? And to think that a type like that is being wasted on colored street girls. (Begins to pace again) What terrible eyes that man has. Exactly like Henry Fierce's. Strange. Three hundred years ago. But that's impossible. (Stops) Well, perhaps he's a reincarnation. Perhaps those yellow monkeys are right. (Sighs) Oh, if only Richard were different. If only it weren't for those devilish business deals. (Paces nervously again) This continual loneliness and suffering, barren suffering in a setting created for something It's unbearable. Still, Richard's the best of them. (Resentfully) Oh, you idiot! Why don't you come? He's one in a million, and then he goes and plays around like all the rest. What brutes these men are! (Stops) To say the same thing to that colored animal' The first time I went out of the house, to see him and then be abandoned forever! (Sits on the bench and buries her face in her hands) No, it's more than I can bear. What do these people really want out of me? (Sobbing quietly) I'm sick of trying to go on with such a senseless life.

From the right, behind the shrubs, enter GOLDERS. HE comes up to her and strokes her hair. The left side of his face is black and blue, but HE no longer has the compress.

GOLDERS Ellie, calm down. I don't want to bother you, but after all, you could do something for me too.

ELINOR I keep telling you that I don't know anything about the gum trade, all those figures are Greek to me. You people with your trusts and lockouts have your lives all mapped out. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It all has its own charm and I don't hold it against you, but just let me be myself.

GOLDERS (Hiding his irritation) You know, that's right, but when you get married, you've got to realize once and for all what marriage is.


ELINOR I don't see why it has to mean my annihilation. That's what you want, the way you force me to do what's foreign to my nature. You'll lose me completely. I'll cease to be a living being. I'm too much of an individual to be able to keep on changing like a chameleon, according to your fantasies. Oh, it bores me frightfully. My soul is floating in some unknown direction. Im-ages of fantastically transformed phenomena whirl about me, as if through the fog at sea.

GOLDERS (Coldly) Leave that style of rhetoric to Sydney Price. (More gently) You're a sleepwalker and you've never really lived. You have to be considered a sick person.

ELINOR I don't know whether you're trying to insult me or pay me a compliment. But one thing's certain, you never had the slight-est trouble with me.

GOLDERS Because I'm strong as a bull. You'd like to devour every man in the world, despite that sweet little face of yours. But not me. You have a pair of suicides on your conscience as it is. It's called getting sick, cracking up, and so forth. But when you come right down to it, those two boys took their own lives because of you.

ELINOR That's not true. You want to drive me to despair, you want to make me helpless so that you can get me to do anything you want. You're forcing me to remember dreadful things. I was so young then-1 thought everyone was an angel. I couldn't even have killed a fly, and you .

GOLDERS (With irony) That's a lot of hot air. You're killing mos-quitoes, aren't you? And besides, remember your early youth.

ELINOR It was frightful-but only for me.

GOLDERS (Emphatically) Remember the kind of home you were brought up in. It was your mother's fault. That damned permis-siveness about everything. I don't blame your father at all. You came into the Price household like a destructive ghost. Sir Al-fred went mad-because of you. Young Price went to Australia

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MR. PRICE 65

and the devil knows what became of him-because of you. Cunningham took poison, and although Sir Alfred's daughter is alive, she can't really be counted among the living. All because of you. Why did it happen to them? Because they assumed the roles of your parents and did all they could when your father died and that blockhead Robert Fierce became heir to Broken-bridge.

ELINOR Don't forget, if it weren't for Robert, I'd never have been your wife.

GOLDERS (Sarcastically) Yes, I owe that to him, and to a certain other chance event about which ...

ELINOR (Springing up from the bench) You're cruel. What are you reminding me of all this for? Oh! It's horrible! Richard, you're the destructive force. For you I gave up a world in which I could at least have died in peace. All that's closed off to me for-ever ...

GOLDERS What I'm giving you is nice enough. Look at those fantas-tic tropical trees. You're surrounded by such magnificence that you couldn't even begin to imagine it back there in that cold country of yours. I'm giving you all this, and it's of the highest quality too.

ELINOR You're my lord and master. You keep me here like a white slave. I'm bored-1 don't want to know all those friends of yours and all those colored monarchs straight out of an operetta. I'm bored-understand?

GOLDERS I can't figure out what else you want. I agree to everything. I'm your real friend. Maybe you'd have preferred to stay at Brokenbridge and be a nuisance to Robert and have to listen to his reproaches? Because with your past .

ELINOR (Threateningly) Shut up ...

GOLDERS (Somewhat disconcerted) All right. I won't ask anything of you anymore. Be the way you are. Forget I asked you to be


polite to Price. If you can't stand him, don't worry about it. After all, I'll cope with him myself. Maybe I did act rudely today, but the way you behave sometimes drives me to it. I've got to invite Price since he's useful to me, and you should at least make an effort not to discourage him.

ELINOR (Sits down, dejected) One has to bear the consequences of the errors of one's youth. Alas. I lived utterly unknown to the world. You dragged me away from my home and made me suffer again. (Irritated) Why doesn't that Price of yours come and get it over with? I don't see that he's in very much of a hurry to accept your invitation.

GOLDERS (Helplessly) Ellie! Calm down. It's really easier to create fifty trusts than talk with you for one minute. I just wanted you to try to be a little nice. Nothing more. Apparently even that's too much.

ELINOR (In a rage, with tears in her voice) Stop it. You're using means that go beyond the demonic. Remember, I won't take any responsibility for what's going to happen ...

SHE catches sight of PRICE, who steps out from behind a clump of shrubs at the right. SHE jumps up, goes to the hot plate and adjusts it.

GOLDERS But, Ellie! (Turns around and sees PRICE) How are you, Sydney? How glad I am you've come. I was just going to phone for you.

PRICE (Greeting them) Your garden is fascinating. I was passing by and naturally I couldn't resist.

ELINOR (With a trace of the former irritation in her voice) You're extremely kind to our trees and flowers, Mr. Price.

GOLDERS In any case you've done just the right thing. Sit down. Have some tea with us.

MR. PRICE 67

ELINOR I've learned how to spice tea the Siamese way. It's supposed to be fantastically stimulating.

PRICE If you fix it, just tea, plain, ordinary tea, will be an absolutely unknown drug to me.

HE takes some tea and sits in the chair at left. ELINOR sits to his right, the hot plate at her right hand; GOLDERS upstage, facing the audience.

ELINOR Only if I fix it? I should think Miss Fray could take my place quite well.

PRICE Miss Fray only filled a momentary emptiness.

ELINOR A drug always fills an emptiness. That's what Richard told me when he forbade me to smoke opium. He took away my only pleasure.

PRICE All drugs are equally bitter and all of them leave an emptiness afterward. Only love, what they call great love, isn't a drug. And as far as love is concerned, I lost my last hope for that yesterday: I'm growing more and more afraid of you.

ELINOR (Laughs; points to her husband) He must have told you something horrible about me already. That man's known me such a long time and he still persists in regarding me as a monster!

GOLDERS (Angry) The tea you're g1vmg him is too strong, Ellie. Today Sydney's got to be sober as he's never been be-fore.

PRICE Unfortunately, I'm getting soberer and soberer. I'm afraid I've got so sober I won't be able to go on existing at all.

The Malay servant, DAN, appears from behind the bushes at right.


DAN (To GOLDERS, bowing) Tuan, the bell calls you to a talk. (HE leaves)

GOLDERS (Getting up) All right. (To his wife and PRICE) I'll be right back. (To his wzfe) In the meantime entertain Sydney. But not too strenuously. He's got some hard work ahead of him, (HE leaves)

ELINOR Mr. Price, you're an atrocious person. You've ensnared my husband. You've managed to get a wise man like that under your control so as to be able to go on seeing me. I don't think he'll be able to live without you now.

PRICE Does that make you angry? After all, I really am useful to him. Besides, I love you. I already said that to you yesterday. And I'm saying it again today, although I don't believe it serves any real purpose.

ELINOR Oh, you should just be glad that I didn't slam the door of my house in your face. You talk about purpose like a real coffee merchant. I can't be anyone's purpose. I thought you were a man who didn't pay any attention to consequences. That's what I like. How naive I was last night.

PRICE That was my fate: my relationship with you has been ruined by a girl of the streets who for a few hours served as the setting for a scene which had to follow. Don't be offended if I used the expression "purpose." I'd be happy as long as you didn't totally reject my company.

ELINOR I understand everything, even what a beggar you are in love. But you must forgive me. I have no desire to wrong a poor little girl of the streets who went without her dinner once because of you.

PRICE What a devastating memory you have! If you could only forget! Your eyes were so expressive then. Still, I don't know what there was about it, but I can't get rid of the memory of that first meeting. Think whatever you like: that it's all my

MR. PRICE 69

imagination, or a madman's fantasy; only don't drive me away, don't be cruel. I know you're trying to talk yourself into despis-ing me. Feelings like mine can't go unrequited. I'll do everything for you. I've got unexplored potentialities. That's not just my idea-other people say so too. I ruin everything for myself by my uncontrollable fits of madness. If you'll be my sole insanity, you'll create in me what I lack to be truly great. The earth's a small planet. I feel that I can go beyond the possibilities of our life. I'll give you a sense of strength that will free you from this world in which we live.

ELINOR \Vhat you're saying amuses me. What can you do? Be an even better businessman than my husband? I have no such ambitions, Mr. Price. I prefer to go my own little way. A poor thing, but my own.

PRICE (Furious and ashamed) You don't love me .

ELINOR (Interrupts him) Mr. Price, even if I told you I do, what would that accomplish?

PRICE (Gets up quickly and goes to her) Elinor! Is that true?

ELINOR gently pushes him away.

You have the eyes of a child, but hell is lurking in them. Let me show you your own soul, in the mirror of my love.

ELINOR (Gets up and goes to the bench) You're tempting me, and I'm so weak, so exhausted from today and last night. I'd just like to fall asleep quietly. (Sitting) You all torture me so. Even Dan, you know? My husband's Malay is in love with me. Oh, why are there men in the world'

PRICE (Gloomily, sitting on the bench at ELINOR's right) \Vho's torturing whom, that is the question. Since yesterday I've been living like an automaton. Actually, I have absolutely no desire to live.


ELINOR Maybe it would be better if you stopped coming to sec us. Life is so beautiful. You'll always find some girl of the streets, here or there.

.. PRICE You don't know how unhappy I am. I suffer constantly, L although no one knows it. My life has all the appearances of

being happy, which deceives people who don't see the essential mysteries.

ELINOR You'd never know it to look at you. You look like a man whose every moment in life must be filled with some mysterious charm.

PRICE (Ironic) Oh yes, each and every moment. (With quite unwar-ranted fervor) Madam! I am the most unhappy man on earth. But my unhappiness is within me. There arc two people inside me fighting terribly over a third-the person I'd be if either of them won.

ELINOR (Feigning sympathy) Really? I'm sorry for you, Mr. Price. But I' rn not torturing you, am I? I'd like everything to be the best possible for you. You're torturing yourself. And it would be so easy to eliminate that. Maybe it's all just an illusion?

PRICE (Angry) I wish it were. I'm really dazed and going around in circles; you don't understand that. There are two people inside of me-a cold calculator, the one all the firms arc clamoring for, you know, the expert on coffee, sugar, rubber and human weak-ness. And then there's that other person, the one I'm afraid of.

ELINOR That's interesting. I find a certain similarity between what you're saying and the way I am. Of course that has absolutely nothing to do with the coffee trade, but ...

PRICE (Angry, interrupts her) Have you ever really suffered?

ELINOR I too have my own emptiness, which I escape into so that I can weep over the loss of what never existed. But I'm trying to forget about it, and I don't like people who remind me of it.

MR. PRICE 71

PRICE (Moving closer to her) I don't want to remind you of any-thing. I loathe all memories. I don't want you to suffer, but don't drive me mad. (Suddenly) That's enough banal talk. A reddish fog is covering my brain. I'm suffocating .

ELINOR (Moving away from him with a satisfied smile; provoca-tively) I've never been made to suffer by anyone else yet, only by myself, I suppose. Still, there's something about you I like. But at the same time I feel a secret revulsion, linked with fear. I once knew a Malayan prince. He had a kind of wild insanity in his eyes and he used perfume 'that reminded me ...

PRICE (In a rage) I can't stand it any ...

Enter GOLDERS. ELINOR and PRICE look like people caught in the act. GOLDERS looks at them searchingly.

ELINOR (Controlling herself quickly) Richard, Mr. Price talks mar-velously about business. If you'd ever been able to describe these financial matters to me so beautifully, I'd have been working in your office long ago.

GOLDERS (Laughing) The world-wide market in gutta-percha would look lovely.

"RICE (Jumps up suddenly) Richard. I can't stand it any longer. I'll go mad. Today I worked like an ox all day long. I tried to get hold of myself and I can't. I love your wife with a totally new, satanic kind of love. By the way-I forgot to tell you: all the rubber in Ceylon belongs to our trust. Coffee's fluctuating, but I've sent two cables to Colombo. One old Picton is with us.

GOLDERS (Lays his hand on PRICE's arm) Wait a minute-we'll talk about that later. I have interesting news for you. And for you, Ellie. My agents were a day late with the news. They'll be fired for that. (To ELINOR) If it hadn't been for a chance meeting in a cafe, your beautiful Sydney might have ruined the whole business deal for me. But the chief thing is this: Price is your half-brother, Ellie. That's the reason for all his fits of madness.


PRICE Stop joking, Richard! (HE sits down on the bench, looking wildly at GOLDERS)

ELINOR (Calmly) There wouldn't be anything strange about that. His eyes are exactly like those of Henry Fierce, second Duke of Broken bridge. You know, the one who hangs in the corner to the left.

GOLDERS That's it. Price is your father's son. (To PRICE) I don't mean to insult your mother, Sydney, but my wife's father se-duced her. It's an actual fact. Hudson telephoned me just now. That's why you got such a thorough education, that's where those beautiful manners come from-I've got the marks of them on my ear and jaw.

PRICE (Jumps up) Now I understand! (To ELINOR) But you-you won't want to look at me again. And without you I won't be able to work any longer. That's how I felt this morning. I never intended to come here. (To GOLDERS) Believe me, I never wanted to be here now but ... I couldn't help it.

GOLDERS (Pleased) I understand you completely, Sydney. There's nothing odd about it. I was the same way some years ago. (To ELINOR) Isn't that right, my dear? (To PRICE) She's a real Hindu love goddess. She's only developed so magnificently since she's been here.

PRICE I have to go. Everything's hitting me from all sides at once, as if someone had turned on an infernal machine. I'll blow my brains out.

GOLDERS Don't you dare. I'm going right now to see the Rajah of Gomong. He'll join us. The biggest rubber forests on the eastern peninsula. You've got to draw up a proposal for tomorrow. But now you'll stay with her. You have a lot to talk about. And then -to work.

ELINOR (To PRICE) You will stay, won't you, brother dear? (To GOLDERs) I can call him that, can't I?

MR. PRICE 73

GOLDERS Call him Baphomet if you want to, my dear. (To PRICE) Price! Remember: no fits of madness, no suicides. (To ELINOR) You don't know. He's the one who ruined the copper trust on Borneo; he wrecked the negotiations between the Tropical Gold Company and the Sumatran rajahs. And yet he was the entire hope of the Union-he has such brilliant ideas. Everyone's fighting for him. Only we won't fight for him. Will we, Ellie? Goodbye. Only remember; be nice to him and see that his nerves don't get too excited. At least until tomorrow he mustn't make any blunders. (HE goes out)

ELINOR (To PRICE, seductively, egged on by her husband's revela-tions) Sydney, you'll stay! Won't you, brother dear?

PRICE I would have prefered him just to kill me. He despises me. And you don't care a rap for my most desperate feelings. And now there's the problem of our being related, too. He didn't have to tell me that. Oh, it's hell! He leaves me alone with you, in private, saying I'm your brother. That's real cruelty. Now you won't want to talk to me anymore except on that basis.

ELINOR (Coquettishly) Why wouldn't I talk to you? My late brother, the Marquis of Turnborough, had eyes exactly like yours, Mr. Price. I mean-like yours, Sydney dear.

DICE Don't talk to me that way. I'll go mad.

ELINOR Why? I loved my brother very much.

PRICE Yes. You loved him like a brother. You don't know what's happening to me. I won't survive this .

ELINOR How I loved him is my own business.

PRICE Let me go now.

ELINOR All right, I'll tell you. I was in love with Henry Fierce's portrait when I was twelve years old. I was in love, do you hear, Sydney? I was madly in love. You don't know how little girls

T H E W I NT E R R E PERT 0 R Y 74

suffer, and even grownup young ladies. Eight years of pretending -it simply drove me mad. And you can't pretend for even half an hour, you dear beautiful madman. (Suddenly) Or perhaps you're upset because your mother ...

PRICE What do I care about my mother! I never knew her. That's enough of these jokes. I'm going now to write up that report for Golders, then I'll shoot myself. I've had enough of life. I bid you farewell.

ELINOR (Leaps up and stops him) Don't you want to love your only sister? Why do you absolutely insist on being a brutal animal? We can love each other at a distance. You'll come here after office hours and talk to me about flowers, snakes, stars, and entanglements in the make-believe world of psychic perversities. (sHE speaks the last words in a long, drawn-out, lascivious way)

PRICE Don't torture me. There can't be anything between us. I'm your brother. It's all over.

ELINOR Whatever happens, you can talk with me now for the last time, can't you, Mr. Price? You've got to calm down, because my husband's going to want your nerves to be steady for that terrific deal in gutta-percha. (Goes to the table and pours him tea) Your nerves are immensely valuable. If you don't calm down, I shall have all the engine wheels and surgical instruments in the whole world on my conscience. Come, have some tea.

SHE serves tea. PRICE takes a cup mechanically and sits down on the bench.

PRICE This is sheer torture .

ELINOR (Sitting on his left) There, you see, it's your mother's violent temperament, a poor girl from Brixton that they married off to some drunkard. You don't know how to be patient.

PRICE (Puts his cup on the bench to his right and pounds his fist on his knee) Stop it! Either you're my sister and we're seeing each

MR. PRICE 75

other for the last time in our lives, or you're going to be my mistress. I was talking nonsense. Forget about that. Actually this isn't love, but only a wild, gloomy kind of frenzy. I could tear you apart and devour you like a wild animal. I'm talking frankly, I'm not going to make pretty speeches. I'm completely dehu-manized and brutalized. You've transformed me into a raging beast. I'm a beast who deals in coffee, that's all I am.

ELINOR (Listens to him with her eyes closed, smiling voluptuously) You excite me now. Always be like this if you want women to love you. For me you're lost forever. Oh! How I could have loved you!

PRICE Why, tell me, why can't you love me now? Is it because I'm your brother?

ELINOR shakes her head no without opening her eyes.

Then why? Tell me! Don't drive me mad. Elinor darling, you're my one and only. All the past and all future life, fu-ture forms of existence and all eternity are nothing compared to this moment. Don't you understand that in the infinity of existence there's only one such moment? I implore you, be mine!

ELINOR (Stretching herself voluptuously, not opening her eyes) Oh, if this moment could be eternity! That's what you're really saying. But when I think of tomorrow ... (Turns to him and looks him straight in the eye with madness and terror) Richard seems somehow strangely excited. It's a year now since I've been what I'm supposed to be to him. If he wanted me to be his wife again, could I deny him? Sydney, just think, could you accept that?

PRICE (Controls himself; tries to convince her) Then leave him. We'll go somewhere far away. I've just received an offer to go to South China as the director of a huge new cotton trading company.


ELINOR Oh' Always those eternal business deals. Just once I'd like to forget about that. To live in some make-believe world where there isn't any sugar, or coffee, or cotton, or gold .

PRICE Elinor, take pity on me. I've got to be someone. You have to have all the things you're accustomed to. Life in a bamboo hut in a clearing in the savage wilderness, growing rice and bananas, that's no future for you.

ELINOR Oh, don't talk about that. You're my brother, my father's son, and that's who you'll always be. Oh, how ghastly it is. Go away, go away forever. I want to forget I ever knew you.

PRICE Just today. At least this one evening. Don't drive me away. I can't stand it any longer. It doesn't matter what happens. We live only once and this moment is eternity.

Voices are heard behind the shrubbery to the right. JACK appears, followed by DAN. JACK's white clothing is dirty, HE has spots on his face, HE's pale and his hair's dishevelled. No hat, vacant stare. HE stands and gasps, unable to speak.

DAN This crazy white man forced his way in here. I couldn't stop him.

ELINOR and PRICE get up from the bench.

JACK Help me! Mr. Price! Mrs. Golders! I beg you. Father and Tom are chasing me. I'm afraid they'll beat me. (HE stands there petrified)

ELINOR (Signals to DAN, who leaves. Turns her head slightly toward PRICE, who is standing behind her, his back to the audience) Look, Sydney, isn't he wonderful! It's youth and that devilish tropical degeneration. He's been smoking opium. Look at his eyes. It's a vision from all the hells of wildest rapture.

PRICE, behind her, tenses up in wild desire, staring at the nape of her neck.

MR. PRICE 77

I want rapture and degeneration too-really and truly, for once in my life. Sydney' I'm yours . (sHE leans backward toward him)

PRICE Oh' The perverse little creature'

HE plants a w1ld kiss on her neck below her ear. SHE trembles all over in a voluptuous shudder. THEY go into a long embrace. JACK

takes a couple of steps toward them with great cHart. BRITCH-

ELLO and TOM msh in from behind the bushes.

BRITCHELLO Aha! I've got you, you disgrace to the whole family'

HE notices ELINOR and PRICE, who quickly tear themselves out of their embrace.

Oh, sorry, so sorry, as the English say on such occasions. You'll forgive me. I've been looking for this brat in all the dives ever since this morning. Tom and I saw him coming out of the worst den on Great Commercial Road with a couple of colored street girls. He got away from us at the corner of Picton Street; we ran after him. He got a rickshaw, we got another one. He came here -didn't even pay. But what a mad chase' (To JACK) You wretch' That's what you arc' To make your mother worry so and me waste the whole day in this devilish town' Tom, give me the whip. You'll forgive me, Mrs. Golders. I'm handling this the Polish way. Right here and now-in those bushes. I'll teach him.

JACK rushes toward ELINOR and PRICE. TOM grabs him by the collar.

Over there' Behind the bushes'!

TOM drags JACK oH, giving BRITCHELLO the whip. THEY disap-pear to the right. JACK's shrieks and BRITCHELLO 's swearing can be heard.

PRICE But we've got to save him. That old Slav will beat him to death.


ELINOR (Turning to him, faintly) No! Let him scream! I like it that way. Kiss me again, Sydney. You're strong as an elephant and sinuous as a boa constrictor. Kiss me. (PRICE embraces her and kisses her on the lips in wild delirium. ELINOR tears herself away from him) No, no, not here. Not in this house, or in this garden. I have the key to the back gate. It lets out on Great Gopuram Square. We can slip off to your house that way.

PRICE (Grabs her red shawl SHE wraps it around his head) Ohl what does it matter!

THEY run out through the shrubs on the left. The shrieking stops. BRITCHELLO comes out from behind the bushes. HE throws the whip on the ground and wipes the sweat from his forehead. TOM

comes next, dragging the sobbing JACK by the arm.

BRITCHELLO Once more, forgive me . . (Notices that there's no-body there) Look, Tom. They've run away! Oh, now I under-stand. They took advantage of the confusion and ducked into the bushes.

Confused and enraged, TOM lets go of JACK, who sits on the ground and weeps.

TOM Oh, how disgusting' That scum Price! How could he, in some one else's house!

BRITCHELLO It would seem that everything's just fine. The Duchess is having some fun. You only wish you were the one. Remember, I've got a grip on you like this. (Squeezes his fist) One false step and you're off to the penal colony in the Pengamen swamps.

TOM is upset. To the left the shouts of people running can be heard. BERTHA, LILY, GOLDERS and DAN COme dashing in.

BERTHA Where's Jack? (Sees him) My poor Jack! Even out in the street I could hear him screaming.

MR. PRICE 79

BRITCHELLO I gave him a beating. That brat's developed a taste for opium and girls.

BERTHA Jack! What have you done? (SHE kneels down beside him and embraces him)

JACK (Pushes her away, weeping) That's the way it is. If Father didn't beat me, Mother would, and then Father would kiss me. I remember that's how it's always been.

BERTHA calms him down. LILY whispers to TOM.

GOLDERS (To BRITCHELLO) I met these ladies in the street. They were nearly beside themselves with anxiety. I was afraid they wouldn't be able to get along without help and invited them here to our place. But why didn't you come to the Rajah's? I had to talk to that colored monkey all by myself. You're supposed to be famous for your cleverness in fleecing all these natives.

BRITCHELLO I've been chasing this disgrace to the whole family ever since morning. You don't know what hell I've been having at home ...

GOLDERS Business before everything. But where's my wife and that genius of ours, Price?

BRITCHELLO They were here a minute ago. They must have run away because of Jack's screams when I started thrashing him.

GOLDERS (With some anxiety) They're not in the house. What in hell-! (To DAN) Dan, search the garden. Tell the white Mem I'm waiting for her.

DAN bows and runs oH left.

(To BRITCHELLO) The Rajah is ours. It's a good thing you've come. (Looks at his watch; it's half past ten) In a moment they'll all be here to sign the final contract. Price is to get the proposal ready for tomorrow. We'll see if he's really such a genius.


LILY Mr. Golders, for the first time today I see what business is. You're the greatest man I've ever met.

GOLDERS Apparently you don't know many people, at least not real people.

TOM What about me? Can I be of some use to you?

GOLDERS (Looking at him dubiously) We'll see.

BRITCHELLO He's a good boy. But he's got to be kept on a tight rein.

Enter DAN.

DAN Tuan! The white Mem is not here. Neither is the new white Tuan who came here today for the first time. (Points oH left) The gate to Great Gopuram Square was open. I locked it. Here is the key.

GOLDERS (Gives a start, but controls himself. Taking the key) All right-you can go.

DAN goes out right.

(To BRITCHELLO) It's simply that my wife, yes, my wife went for a walk with Price.

BRITCHELLO At eleven at night, by the back gate, which she didn't lock. They were in quite a hurry to go on that walk. Ha, ha!

GOLDERS Mr. Britchello, I'm the only one who should make any judgments about that.

BRITCHELLO (Not at all disconcerted) And now too, are you going to say, "business before everything?"

GOLDERS Yes, sir. Business is business, Mr. Britchello. Let's go to the meeting. I see a light still on in the front parlor. But what about Price's proposal? It's got to be ready by ten tomorrow.

MR. PRICE: SI

BRITCHELLO Maybe between eight and nine tomorrow mornin = Price will find a moment or two. Ha! Ha! Really, you're a dum h ox. (HE wants to give him a hug in the Polish manner)

GOLDERS (Pulls gently away from him) You're wasting your needlessly. Save it for the colored rulers, Mr. Britchello. (HE goc: · out right, not looking at the rest of the group)

BRITCHELLO All right, children. Clear out of here. Stop compromis -ing your father. Jack-get to bed. Put a compress on his heac and-wherever else he needs one. I beat him like the lowes-= Malay. (HE follows GOLDERS out)

LILY You can learn from this, Tommy, you can learn from this. you behave yourself, maybe these men will let you copy out some_-of the less important papers.

During this BERTHA lifts up JACK, who starts sobbing all ovc: again.

TOM (Very crestfallen) Lily--don't get me into a rage.

LILY You can stop playing Golders; it won't work.

BERTHA Come along, children! Don't fight. Tom will be a great man yet.

THEY all go out right.

ACT III

The living room of SYDNEY PRICE's apartment at North Terrace_ an ordinary suite of furnished rooms in the tropical style. other room can be seen through the door upstage center; in it a bed with torn mosquito netting, shreds of which are still hanging on the poles. A sofa to the right of the upstage door. a desk to the left. Further left, armchairs and a table, then a dooi" leading to the hall.

\

- j


PRICE is m pajamas with a blue border and a sash; ELINOR is dressed as in Act Two, but her dress is very wrinkled. THEY are sitting on the sofa looking through some sort of manuscript. It's 7-30 a.m. The blinding daylight shines through the lowered shut-ters. From the beginning of Act Three to a point which will be indicated, the pace of the acting must be irritatingly slow and drawn out. Long pauses.

ELINOR (Slowly in a long drawn-out manner) It's marvelous now. Leave it as it is. I have the feeling my husband will be here soon.

PRICE (The same way) Just a second, just a second. I'll just fix up the next-to-last paragraph. I've got to make it so airtight that no one can find any loopholes in it. I've got to do what I agreed to do. Remember, I have the reputation of being Price, the genius who never slips up.

HE goes to the desk and starts writing. ELINOR crosses one leg over the other, swinging it impatiently.

ELINOR Anyhow, it's only thanks to you that I've finally come to understand all this tropical demonism. Now I'm beginning to understand Richard. Ohl Why didn't he ever let me know what it was all about?

PRICE (Writing) Just a second, I'm almost finished.

ELINOR I am sorry you're not an artist as well. Don't you ever write poetry, Sydney?

PRICE (Getting up) I'm done. Poetry? No. Sometimes I paint in water colors, but it's quite strange. Things get painted all by themselves. I don't have anything to do with it. (Throws the paper on the table) Still, wouldn't it be better if you went home, Ellie? By ten o'clock I'll have to bring them back at least a rough draft.

ELINOR (Stretching) Somehow I just don't feel like it. I don't even know what I do feel like doing. (Suddenly) You know, I've got

MR. PRICE 83

to tell you something. Nobody ever appealed to me as much as you do, Sydney. Nobody ever did. I'm telling the absolute truth. But still ...

PRICE (Standing beside her, with sudden anxiety) But still? Go on, say it.

ELINOR (Looking at him) You know what I mean. It was awful, what you did to me, but still it wasn't at all what I'd ...

PRICE (In a broken voice) It was exactly the same for me. Today everything is so pale, petty, colorless, and worst of all--common. So common and ordinary that deals in coffee seem a kind of fantastic fairytale world in comparison.

ELINOR (Lost in thought) It's awful.

PRICE Yes, it's not very cheerful. I'm also telling you the absolute truth. You didn't appeal to me then and that's not all. I felt something awful, something verging on the desire to commit a brutal murder, something verging on superbestial madness.

ELINOR Don't talk like that. Last night will be repeated all over again-and then another morning just like this will happen all over again--empty and colorless as today.

PRICE Yes-it's ghastly. (Pause) Perhaps it's because we're cousins.

ELINOR And quite close ones, too. But no-that doesn't matter. This is something far more horrible. I don't feel that you're real. I have the feeling that you're a ghost, all the more terrifying because you have a body and burning lips, and such terrible knowledge of love ... I don't even know if I love you. You're some sort of sinister automaton.

PRICE Don't say anything more. I feel my life has come to an end. It already happened back then, at the Malabar Hotel. It's only now that I understand what it was.


ELINOR (Waking up from her reverie) Tell me, do you love life very much? You haven't told me anything about yourself.

PRICE (With irony) When have we had time for that? When you fell asleep, I immediately got down to work on that damned proposal, and I have a feeling it was the farewell performance of Price, the genius. I can't go on with this whole business. It seems I can't do anything at all anymore.

ELINOR You're not answering me, Sydney. Do you really love life? Do you very much want to go on living?

PRICE (After a moment's reflection) I never had that vulgar attach-ment to life.

ELINOR (Suddenly radiant) But tell me, could you go on living without me now?

PRICE (After a moment's reflection) No. And not with you either.

ELINOR (In a state of great excitement, getting up from the sofa) Sydney! What I'm saying may seem strange to you, but why not let me kill you? Don't get mad at me for asking.

PRICE (Covering his eyes with his hands as if HE felt ashamed) Oh, Ellie! Do you know what you're saying?

ELINOR (Taking him by the hands) Yes, I do. It'd be marvelous. What about letting me?

PRICE (Turning his head, but not taking his hands away) You're quite shameless. This is more appalling than all of that whole hellish night.

ELINOR (Passionately) Be shameless with me all the way. Give me that highest ecstasy. I don't want to murder you. I want you to fall asleep forever in my arms. Do you have any poi-son?

MR. PRICE 85

PRICE (Looks her in the eye) I have some Indian poison--one drop of it injected into the veins puts a person to sleep forever.

ELINOR (Thrilled) Give it to me.

Pause. PRICE gently frees his hands from hers and goes into the bedroom. ELINOR sits down on the sofa and falls back slowly as if SHE were fainting away in the highest ecstasy. Pause. PRICE

comes out of the bedroom, cheerful and calm. HE gives ELINOR

a little smoked-glass vial.

PRICE Here take it.

ELINOR trembles all over as if SHE'd been awakened from a dream. For a moment SHE looks at him wide-eyed with fear. Then SHE seems to recognize him and reaches out her hands toward him in ecstatic delight. PRICE falls on his knees before her, putting both his arms around her waist. HE doesn't let go of the vial in his right hand.

How beautiful you are now. Do you have a pin?

ELINOR Oh 1 You're marvelous' You don't know how beautiful you arc now. (Unpins a brooch from her collar, looking at him all the whde) This isn't courage. It's beyond my comprehension. What's fighting tigers or dying on the battlefield in comparison? And yet I understand you so well, I possess you so deeply at this moment. And you understand me as no one has ever been able to understand anyone ever before. And I'm yours, as no woman has ever been or ever will be again. We' rc unique, there's no one else like us in the whole world. (Pause) Whcre's the vial?

PRICE (Leans his left elbow on her knees and gives her the vial) Here, take it.

HE remains kneeling, embracing her hips. ELINOR takes the vial and dips the pin from her brooch in it, carefully. SHE puts the stopper back on the vial and places it near her left hand on the sofa. \XIhile SHE does this, PRICE speaks:


Prick me on the lips so that you won't be able to kiss me anymore. You've got to live-but that kiss would be fatal .

ELINOR That's just what I was thinking at this very moment. Really -we're not two people. We're one spirit. (Raises her right hand with the pin in it)

PRICE (Catching her right hand in his left) Wait. How will you go on living? I want to know.

ELINOR Something is opening up before me. An immense space, filled with the smile of Infinity.

PRICE Don't say another word.

ELINOR Bite your lower lip. Give me your lips.

SHE pricks him lightly on the lips while looking in his eyes. PRICE rolls over on top of her. SHE turns him gently to the right and watches as his eyes close. Loud knocking at the left door. Enter GOLDERS. ELINOR speaks, not turning around

Richard! Sydney's not feeling well. Help me.

From this point on, the performance should go at normal speed

GOLDERS (Going to them) Taking a walk at night wasn't good for him. You're looking after your darling brother very tenderly, Ellie dear.

ELINOR He wore himself out writing. If it hadn't been for me, he wouldn't have created anything half so brilliant.

GOLDERS Some story. (To PRICE) Say' Sydney' Get up. The boss is speaking to you.

ELINOR gets up, extricating herself with a certain amount of difficulty from under PRicE's corpse. Then SHE stretches. GOLD-ERS feels PRICE's pulse. HE speaks with a certain terror.

MR. PRICE 87

Why, he's dead! There's blood coming out of his mouth!

ELINOR (\Vith pretended astonishment) Dead? That's impossible. He bit his lip while he was thinking over the sixth paragraph. (sHE touches PRICE's forehead)

GOLDERS Ellie! You've got a suspicious look. Aren't those the marks of your teeth on that corpse's lips? He looks like a person who's died of a heart attack. That bluish shade. Listen, you were unfaithful to me with that idiot and as a result he had a heart attack and died, you Messalina! Tell me the truth this minute!

ELINOR Unfaithful to you with my half-brother? Have you gone mad, Richard? Messalinal For a year now I've been living like a nun, and you insult me and call me a Messalina. (With sudden resolution) But I'll tell you the truth. I killed Price.

GOLDERS (In terror) You killed him? Why? How could you do away with someone else's property? He belonged to me and to our trust. And besides, that's taking quite a responsibility! How did you kill him?

ELINOR (Pointing to the vial and brooch lying on the sofa) With his own poison and that brooch.

GOLDERS rushes over and stuHs them in his pocket.

Look out, don't prick yourself! That's instant death!

GOLDERS Where's the proposal?

ELINOR (Looking lzke a little girl who's gotten into mischief) There on the table.

GOLDERS goes to the table, takes the manuscript and glances through it. Pause. ELINOR stands with a bewildered little look on her face.


GOLDERS Marvelous. Price acquitted himself excellently before he died. Listen, Ellie. The only way out of this is for me to shoot Sydney Price's corpse. I caught you in the very act-to judge by the look of things-understand?

ELINOR But you can't compromise me. That's a horrible idea. You'll just make a fool of yourself and nothing more.

GOLDERS Besides, you appeal to me. For years you haven't appealed to me as much as you do today. I like dangerous animals. But even I'm talking nonsense right now. I don't know how to get out of this.

ELINOR Oh, you perverse bull of a man. Oh, you naive monster. (sHE rubs up against him)

GOLDERS (Embracing her) Oh, damn it, tell me what to do!

ELINOR (Caressingly) You can't leave me-can you? Besides, I wrote that proposal almost entirely by myself. I dictated the most important points to him.

GOLDERS That's not true. That's one thing I won't believe.

ELINOR (Jokingly) Didn't I tell you the truth a moment ago, and wasn't it a hundred times worse?

GOLDERS But why in holy hell did you kill that poor wretch?

ELINOR I was afraid. I was afraid I might fall in love with him. I didn't want to be unfaithful to you. He showed me the vial, the idea came into my head and I simply couldn't get rid of it. I admit I felt like being unfaithful to you then, last night. You kept pushing me in that direction yourself. That's why I went with him. Then we started writing and I didn't feel like it anymore. But he kept begging me. Then he tried to drag me in there ... (Points to the bedroom)

GOLDERS All right, all right. But what arc we going to do now?

MR. PRICE 89

ELINOR (After a moment's reflection) Listen, I'm sure he's got a revolver on him. Take it and shoot him point blank through the heart. They'll think it was suicide. I'll write a letter in his handwriting. You know I can imitate anyone's handwriting. Besides, if anyone hears the shot, we'll say he shot and killed himself right in front of us. In any case, aim well. I'll cover you with the pillows. Maybe no one will hear. Remember how he was always saying in public that he was in love with me. This is working out very nicely.

GOLDERS (Looking at her dumbfounded) You know? I'm beginning to believe that it was you who wrote that proposal. Quick-give me the pillows. If he doesn't have a revolver, I'll shoot him down with my own.

ELINOR (Laughing) You don't have any reason to shoot him down now. You can just shoot him up. And don't be sorry you've lost him. I'm going to take his place for you. I'm going to join the company and take up business. I've had enough of this life of leisure. You can add my name to the firm. Now it'll be: Golders, Fierce and Company. That's what you were always begging me to do.

GOLDERS (Searching PRICE 's corpse; HE pulls a revolver out of the pocket) He does have a revolver. What an idea, to keep a gun in your pajamas. Give me the pillows. Really, Ellie, I feel we're going to have a second honeymoon. I love you. Me, Golders-I really love you.

ELINOR gives him a tender look and goes to the bedroom, return-ing instantly with the pillows. GOLDERS props up PRICE 's corpse on the sofa and presses the revolver against his chest.

Now cover my hand completely on both sides.

ELINOR covers his hand and holds the pillows there. A muffled shot is heard. ELINOR drops the pillows down, Buffs them up, cauies them off to the bedroom and returns instantly. GOLDERS

places the revolver in PRICE 's hand.


ELINOR There! Now I've got to write the letter. You know, I'm really quite impressed with you now. Killing him was nothing. But shooting up the corpse-I couldn't have done that. I'd be afraid he'd haunt me in the night.

GOLDERS Didn't he even defend himself? How did you do it?

ELINOR I dipped the pin in the poison while he was busy writing. He wrote the last paragraph himself. I was so tired. When he finished, he wanted to kiss me. Then I pricked him.

GOLDERS All right. But tell me the truth, why did you kill him? I keep feeling you're hiding something from me.

ELINOR I'll tell you the truth. I don't know. Understand? I don't even know myself. I feel so good now. So light and free some-how. Anyhow, he used to say he didn't want to go on living since I didn't love him. The poor thing would simply have gone on torturing himself, and he certainly couldn't have done it himself. I actually killed him because I felt sorry for him. But also because he would have come between us, Richard!

GOLDERS (Kisses her passionately on the lips) I love you, Ellie! Now I know you're mine. A good old family really does count for something after all. I love you madly. For the first time in many years I feel I'm not Colders, not an automaton in the gum trade, but really a human being.

ELINOR (Gently freeing herself from his embrace) I can see that. Let me write the letter, you great big baby! Give me Sydney's manu-script. I've got to get into the spirit of his handwriting.

SHE takes the manuscript which GOLDERS gives her, goes to the desk and writes.

GOLDERS (Sits in the armchair and starts thinking; after a while) Still, damn it all, there's something about these women that makes it impossible ever to know anything really and truly.

MR. PRICE 91

ELINOR (Comes back with the letter and gives the manuscript to GOLDERS) Here's what I've written: "Elinor! I can't live without you. I'm your brother, but I love you with a sort of affection that's far from brotherly. Yours forever, Sydney."

GOLDERS (Takes the card and compares it to the manuscript) Mar-velous. Put it on the desk. No one's come. Apparently nobody heard the shot. Lucky I came here on foot.

ELINOR There's no one upstairs. It's a one-story house. A money-lender, Miss Hackney, and some colored hanger-on of hers live downstairs.

There is a knock at the door.

Come in!

JACK (Enters, very pale, but elegantly dressed; red spots on his face) Oh, excuse me ...

GOLDERS Mister Jack! Price killed himself here a short while ago. A frightful accident. Have they all gone deaf out there? No one's coming.

JACK (Looks at the corpse) Oh! That's so sad. (To GOLDERS) Some hideous Siamese let me in. No one knows anything about it out there. (To ELINOR) Poor Price. He was in love with you. I know all about it. I'm completely grown up. Please believe me, Mrs. Colders. I went through so much yesterday. Mr. Colders, I slipped out of the house this morning. I went to your place. The people there told me where you'd gone. I want to start a new life. Starting at the very beginning. Just like you and Father. They don't want to give me any money at home. I've got to have my own money. I beg you, make me a lift-boy in your office. I know you won't refuse me. I want to be a great businessman too. But I've got to start from the beginning. I won't smoke opium! It's hideous. If you knew how seasick it made me, and no pleasure at all.


GOLDERS I like that. All right, my boy. You'll be my lift-boy.

JACK Thank you, sir. I knew you were a good judge of people. Papa is too, but only about people who aren't in his own family.

ELINOR (Goes to JACK and hugs him) Poor boy. How much he must have gone through during the last few hours. Poor little Jack. Whenever you take me up in the lift, I'll give you some nice candy. And on Sunday I'll invite you to visit us if it's not nice for you at home. Right? You won't say no to me?

JACK All right, Madam. Only I'm afraid I;ll fall in love with you the way Price did. But I won't commit suicide. I feel sorry for him, but I must say he was stupid. Life's so wonderful.

GOLDERS signals ELINOR to let go of JACK.

GOLDERS (To his wife) You're not that old yet, my child. (To JACK) All right, but will you say that to me in two weeks, my boy!

JACK Certainly, sir. I have strong will power. We've been testing it back there in Europe. I won two contests for strong will power.

Knocking at the door. Enter BRITCHELLO, BERTHA, LILY, and TOM.

BRITCHELLO Jack! You didn't run away again, did you? Oh! The rascal!

GOLDERS Excuse me. Quiet please. There's a corpse in the room. My wife and I found-(Emphatically) do you understand, Mr. Britchello, do you understand, Mr. Radcliffe-my wife and I found Sydney Price's dead body here. He committed suicide after writing a proposal for the activities of our trust. That Price had a brain tough as an ox! But at the same time so subtle, like a spiderweb. Here's the manuscript. Mr. Radcliffe, I'm taking you on as secretary of our association, to take Price's place. I hope you'll do well at it. (To his wife) Here's a new victim for you, Elinor. (To TOM) Mr. Price killed himself because of his

M R . P R I C E : 93

unhappy love for my wife. I'm giving you fair warning, Mr. Radcliffe. That's right.

TOM bows, confused.

Jack's going to be my lift-boy. (To BRITCHELLO) Don't waste your breath, Mr. Britchello. It was his own idea. That's right. Isn't it so, Mr. Jack?

JACK Yes, Mr. Golders. You're a second father to me. It's like in that tragedy by Mr. Miczynki called Basilissa of Teophan. I read it in Conrad's translation. There, it says, "What did my father give me? By chance my father gave me life. You, cosmocrator, gave me faith in the existence of new spiritual peaks." It was on our reading list at Eton. But Papa says Miczynki is totally un-known in Poland. They think he's a madman there. But I even know his biography; the Russian Bolsheviks killed him-be-cause ..

GOLDERS Stop it, Jack! Try to get over the habit of being so long-winded. You get that from your Slavic ancestors ..

BERTHA That's right, Mr. Golders. Keep a tight rein on him ...

GOLDERS I certainly don't need your authorization. Jack's my em-ployee. Besides he's a free man. Nobody's going to beat him, but nobody's going to pamper him either. He may smoke opium now, but he's not going to. Right, Jack?

JACK That's right, sir.

GOLDERS You see, Mr. Britchello, noble Slav, and Mrs. Britchello, grumpy colonial wife- Mrs. Britchello, you don't understand what the tropical sun is like in the shade of a Singapore cathedral or something like that, in the words of Conrad, your counterpart in the arts, Mr. Britchello.

BRITCHELLO We only came because they gave us this address at your house. I haven't slept at all today. Jack had already run off by six o'clock. My family really raked me over the coals. Hadn't


we better get down to business, Mr. Golders? Anyhow, those are purely, how shall I put it, personal matters.

GOLDERS (Cofdfy, giving BRITCHELLO the manuscript) Of Course. Here's Price's proposal. You'll be so kind as to take it with you and show it to the rajahs. You're our only antidote to the natives -that's all you're good for.

BRITCHELLO (Equally coldly) Don't forget I know a great deal. Maybe even more than you do, Mr. Golders.

GOLDERS I know one thing-that without me, right now you're nothing but a candidate for president of the West India Rubber Syndicate, which that dreamer (Points to PRICE's corpse) ruined long ago. Nothing more, Mr. Britchello.

BRITCHELLO (Good-naturedly) Then let's stick together and stop quarreling. I'll give you Jack and Tom.

Meantime, BERTHA and LILY lind the letter supposedly written by PRICE on the table and read it.

They can both go straight to hell.

ELINOR (To BRITCHELLo) Please remember that now I'm a partner in the Golders firm. You've got to reckon with me as well, Mr. Britchello.

BRITCHELLO Why of course, dear Madam. I believe I've already given you proof of that, of ... my consideration for your royal highness. Long live the union of gutta-percha and coffee, and everything else can go straight to hell!

THEY shake hands. BRITCHELLO holds her hand and tums on the charm for her in the Polish manner. LILY goes over to ELINOR with the letter supposedly written by PRICE.

LILY (With great emotion) Why, the poor thing, he really did die of love for you.

MR. PRICE 95

ELINOR (As if SHE doesn't know what SHE's saying, still holding BRITCHELLO 's hand) Oh yes, he probably did.

SHE smiles at LILY insincerely and conventionally. Short pause, during which it suddenly grows dark and the sound of a gale can be heard.

GOLDERS What's that? It can't be the monsoon already?

PRICE 's corpse suddenly gets up and walks to stage center. EVERYONE is dumbfounded.

PRICE Don't be frightened and don't think these are symptoms of tropical madness, which I've been said to personify on the is-lands for a long time now. That poison was a hoax. It was a sample of a new liquid nail polish, not curare. Mrs. Golders, your perversity has exceeded my demands. I don't love you anymore. Perhaps you'll find others who'll volunteer to be killed. I've had enough for the time being.

GOLDERS But I ... you! And besides, you had absolutely no pulse at all then.

PRICE That's right-you shot me up-that's what you meant, isn't it? You see, I have a special peculiarity. I can stop my heart from beating whenever I feel like it. If I wanted to, I could die that way. As for shooting me up, you didn't aim very accurately, evidently thinking you just had a corpse to deal with. It did give me a slight scare-I admit it frankly. But I managed to change the direction of the barrel of your revolver under the pillows. I got a slight scrape on my left side.

BRITCHELLO affairs.

Now that's a fine state of affairs, that's a fine state of

ELINOR Sydney, and so now ... my God ... I want to tell you ...

PRICE No, Mrs. Golders, we'd better not talk about anything. I've said too much in front of strangers as it is. But I did it on


purpose. I want your husband to suffer a little too. I loathe him. I'm handing him over to Mr. Britchello along with you and his secret. Now he's not going to let you get away quite so easily.

BRITCHELLO Thank you, Mister Price, thank you with all my heart. (lie holds out his hand to PRICE)

PRICE (Drawing back) That's not necessary, I'm not doing it for you, I'm only doing it for myself. I'm completely cured of my madness-my tropical madness, that is-because perhaps I've got another kind now. I won't torment black women anymore or molest white ones with my great love. I'm just an ordinary swme.

ELINOR You're a real demon! Sydney, don't leave me. I've just started to appreciate you now.

GOLDERS grabs her roughly and throttles her, covering her mouth with his hand.

PRICE Oh-I don't like all this going to extremes ... Can't you see I'm cured. I must admit you're right about one thing. You're a genius as a businesswoman, absolutely first-class. Your proposal is marvelous. Ha, ha, ha, ha! How small I seem to myself now. From now on I'm giving up my commercial activities. I'll be-come an amateur water-color painter. You'll all forgive me, I'm leaving now to buy my boat ticket to England. I've had my fill of all of you and the tropics too. Goodbye! (Goes out in his pajamas, without a hat; at the door HE says) I hope when I come back that you'll all be gone.

GOLDERS He's gone out into the street in his pajamas! After all of this he didn't really go mad until just now. (Throttling ELINOR) Will you be quiet or won't you?

LILY Serves her right. She's a monster, not a woman ...

JACK Mr. Golders ... (HE tries to defend ELINOR)

M R . P R I C E : 97

GOLDERS (Gives him a knockout blow with his left hand) What? My lift-boy dares to? ...

JACK falls down.

BRITCHELLO You'll pay me back for that, Mr. Golders.

JACK tries to hurl himself at GOLDERS all over again.

Don't touch him, Jack; they're ordinary criminals that we'll keep under our thumbs for as long as we want. If I like the idea, this woman will become your mistress, Jack. You're not going to need colored girls off the streets. All right, Mr. and Mrs. Gold-ers, off to work with you' (HE points to the door with his finger and holds that pose)

JACK Father, you can't do that, she ...

TOM forces him to keep quiet.

GOLDERS Come along, Ellie, for the time being we've lost the game. But I find you so attractive now that I've got to go on living just a bit longer.

Stooping over, HE goes to the door. ELINOR follows him. At the door SHE pulls a revolver out of his pocket.

;::LINOR And you thought? ... It's all your fault! You idiot' So you thought I'd keep you company and be the slave of that old blackmailer too? (SHE shoots herself in the temple and falls over)

JACK (Dashing toward her) Oh-that's horrible! (Kneels beside her) She's dead.

BRITCHELLO \Veil, how about that, Mr. Golders! Can you live through even this?

GOLDERS At this very moment, in a single second, I've developed a new outlook on life. I'll survive without her or her brilliant proposals. I'm stronger than I thought.


BRITCHELLO You know, I really am impressed! I hope we're going to create great things together. I'll use blackmail only when all else fails.

GOLDERS Provided I don't give myself up to the police and report you first-for concealing both my wife's crime and my covering it up for business reasons. Even Price couldn't have forseen that.

JACK kneels nestling against ELINOR's corpse. Sound of winds and rain; darkness.

BRITCHELLO You're trying to force me so that right now .

GOLDERS How about a race to the first policeman, Mr. Britchello? No sir, you won't want to lose a partner like me quite so rashly. W c' d better abandon all thoughts of blackmail and keep work-ing together in peace and harmony. Too bad Ellie didn't live to sec my new idea.

BRITCHELLO Still, you've come off your high horse a little, Mr. G. Our relationship has grown so complicated it's beyond my nor-mal powers of comprehension. I've got to think it over all by myself. Let's go.

HE goes out arm in arm with GOLDERS. The FAMILY follows them.

LILY I have the impression that we're the ones who've gone mad now. You see, Tom, they're the real big shots-Papa and Gold-ers. You'll never be one of them, not even if you spend a million years trying.

JACK I'll be an even bigger shot yet. I've learned so much today! I'm not starting at the beginning and I am accepting Papa's help. But even the devil himself doesn't know where I'll end up. That you can't imagine, not even in a fit of tropical madness.

THEY go out.

GYUBAL WAHAZAR Or: Along the Cliffs of the Absurd A Non-Euclidean Drama in Four Acts (1921)

To Tadcusz Langier

"Es doch teuer zu l'vfacht zu kommen-dic l'vfacht verdummt."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Over: Father Unguenty and his disciples; V/arsaw, Poland, 1968

(1885-1939)

"Better to end in beautiful madness than in gray, boring banality

and stagnation."-Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz

Left: Witkacy, about the time he wrote Cockroaches Above: In his 20's, with his father at Lovrano, Adriatic retreat

,

";&.

"WIT K A C Y" : 239

At the end of World \VarOne, upon his return to the newly-created country of Poland after four years in Russia, the 3 3-year-old artist Stanislaw lgnacy Witkiewicz created his most important character and his most intriguing work when he regularly began signing his paintings "Witkacy," a name and identity he invented to distinguish himself from his famous father-also a Stanislaw and a painter-who, although dead by then, was still very much a dominant figure in his son's life. Through the rest of his career the son used the signature Witkiewicz or lgnacy Witkiewicz for his conventional real-istic portraits, but saved Witkacy for those works to which he at-tached special importance.

And so the legend began. To the outside world, insofar as it paid him any attention, the young painter-writer-philosopher became "that madman Witkacy"-a sex fiend, drug addict, and demented dilettante whose plays seemed the wildest nonsense. To his select circle of friends, including celebrities like Artur Rubenstein, and the group of admiring females he called his "metaphysical harem," he was simply and affectionately known as "Witkacy" -the new self, or rather myriad of selves, he created before the world, a fascinating, induplicable character so intensely protean it was always in danger of disintegrating.

Witkacy wrote his self-chosen name in dozens of different ways: Witkac, Witkatze, \Vitkacjusz, Vitkacius, Vitecasse (the latter French version giving his own view of his destiny-"breaks quickly"). The many photographs taken of him in the 193o's in various cos-tumes, guises, and poses, as well as his long series of self-portraits, are reflections of the same ontological obsession with the mystery of being. Constantly amazed by his own existence, Witkacy was abnor-

Left: A formal portrait, Witkacy in his early 4o's Over: Some of the innumerable "faces" from the series done in the 1930's

II

--

"wiTKACY": 241

mally conscious of the accidental nature and impermanence of all identities in a world of accelerating change. As he wrote of the hero of one of his novels:

He had fallen from somewhere onto this earth by chance (the most terrifying of chances, because it is unavoidable; that is the mystery) and no one was responsible for it, not even his mother and still less his father ... The huge world and him, metaphysi-cally alone ... without any possibility of understanding . despite that, there was a kind of anguished voluptuousness in this feeling of loneliness.

But for Witkacy, in the partitioned and nonexistent Poland of the last part of the nineteenth century, the relationship of father and son proved as decisive to the formation of the playwright as that of individual and universe. No matter how he might imagine himself, Witkacy was to an extraordinary degree the creation of his father. Witkiewicz senior-handsome, dynamic, charismatic-was one of the principal creators of Polish intellectual and artistic life around the turn of the century, and had become, by the time of his death in 1915, something of a national hero. From his home in Zakopane in the Tatras mountains, the older Witkiewicz promoted the new Im-pressionist movement in the arts, and also the folklore and regional handicrafts of the mountaineers, something in the manner of Ruskin and Morris. A humanitarian socialist, he opposed both capitalism and oppressive, authoritarian governments like the Tsarist regime (which controlled a third of Poland); he saw as his mission the teaching of native values embodied in the Polish countryside and life of the people, which would make for a free, independent country.

His other passion was for his only child, Stanislaw Ignacy, born in 1885, who became not only the recipient of his excessive love and adulation but at the same time the object of an unusual experiment in education: the application of his father's ideas about art, culture, and civilization to form an exceptional, unique individual who would be an outstanding artist. The more than 500 letters which Witkiew-icz senior wrote to his son are full of exhortations to be free, indepen-dent, lofty, sublime, creative, untrammeled-interspersed with appropriate citations from Nietzsche, in German, about standing above the morass of life. "As your painting progresses," his father told


the young Witkacy, "you're going to be a marvelous proof of the truth of my theories of art." The characteristic closure of these letters is, "Be radiant!"

As a believer in individuality, independence of character, and the development of personal talent, Witkiewicz senior was violently opposed to all schooling and formal education, on the grounds that they taught only mediocrity and conformism. Accordingly, Witkacy was never sent to school and had no formal education (though he did take the secondary school examinations and received the gymnasium diploma). Instead, he was truly self-educated, allowed to study what he wanted when he wanted and to develop his talents freely and precociously, aided by his father and various tutors. By the age of five he was already absorbed in painting and the piano (his mother, whom he adored, was a music teacher), as well as engaged in various scien-tific ventures--collecting rocks and insects and putting them on display. Next, he showed a special interest in everything written in dialogue form, reflecting, it was said in the household, the spirit of his godmother, the great Polish-American actress Helena Modjeska. By the time he was eight he had set up a small theater in the house and written a dozen or more short plays under the influence of Shakespeare, Maeterlinck, Gogo!, and the Polish comic writer Fre-dro, whom his father read aloud to him. One of these plays, Cock-roaches, about the invasion of a kingdom by a horde of cockroaches from "Ameri ... ," the eight-year-old Witkacy published himself, on his own printing press, as Volume I of his Comedies.

A perceptive critic of his son's work, Witkiewicz senior recog-nized the curious mixture of farce, parody, and seriousness in these childhood plays as showing the potential of a brilliant writer. But at this point there was no pressure for crystallization; as child and adolescent, Witkacy was free to play at being this and that, and he regarded life, his own and others', as a great game-in which he was encouraged by the intellectual and artistic elite who called on the father and made much of his son. For example, Sholem Asch, five years Witkacy's elder, visited the house frequently, a protege of Witkiewicz senior, and became a friend and enthusiast of the boy's.

However, Witkacy's two closest c0mpanions from earliest child-hood, with whom he maintained stormy relations throughout his life, were Bronislaw Malinowski, the anthropologist, and Leon Chwistek, the mathematician, philosopher, and painter. Together they read

" W IT K A C Y " 243

plays and poetry, wrote mock-scientific treatises, and invented bizarre names for one another, which Witkacy later used in his plays. Mali-nowski was Edgar, Duke of Nevermore; Chwistek, Baron Brummel de Buffadero de Bluff; and Witkacy, Dorian Fidious-Ugenta-re-fl.ecting the strong appeal of Poe, Oscar Wilde, and the dandies and decadents.

In 1901, when he was sixteen, \Vitkacy made his first trip to St. Petersburg, where he dutifully saw the paintings in the Hermitage. Later the same year he participated for the first time in an exhibition in Zakopane where his two paintings were singled out for praise. The following year he studied higher mathematics, worked on languages (he read English, French, German, and Russian) and wrote two philosophical treatises-"On Dualism" and "Schopenhauer's Philos-ophy and His Relation to His Predecessors" -which became part of his first book, completed in 1905 but never published, Unproductive Daydreams: Metaphysical Palaver. And in 1905 when at the age of twenty Witkacy enrolled in the Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, his first major overt conflict with his father erupted. Witkiewicz senior wrote instantly to his son, opposing this decision:

Don't think, my precious, I want to restrict you. I want you to progress as individually and as independently as possible-and that's what I advise you to do .... You, who as a child were independent and proud of your self-sufficient spirit, now would have to hand over responsibility for your own art to some lousy school-yes, all schools are lousy!

You won't go along with the herd-you'll go alone.

His father's predictions were, as usual, accurate. Witkacy proved to be an indifferent student, little interested in academic discipline and nature studies. He dropped out of the Academy and more and more went his own way. By 1908 he had turned from landscapes, the genre his father favored, and begun painting portraits of his friends and creating his "monsters" -grotesque drawings with titles like "The Prince of Darkness Tempts Saint Theresa with the Aid of a Waiter from Budapest" and "A Man with the Dropsy Lies in Wait for His Wife's Lover."

Despite his father's warning that he would dissipate his creative energies, Witkacy at this time was initiated into what he called "the

T H E WI NT E R R E P E R T 0 R Y 244

metaphysical monstrosity of sexuality," in the form of a prolonged love affair with the celebrated actress Irena Solska (1878-1958), who both on stage and off played the role of a demonic woman who devoured men. Solska achieved her greatest successes in the works of Stanislaw Przybyszewski (1868-1927)-satanic author ("In the be-ginning was Lust"), dabbler in demonology and black magic, friend and associate of the Scandinavians Munch and Strindberg-whose dramas were storehouses of fatal triangles, crimes of passion, and desperate suicides.

Throughout his career Witkacy enjoyed playing variations on the demonic, combining his own experiences and turn-of-the-century literary treatments in the form of grotesque parody. His first experi-ment in this direction was a long, unpublished autobiographical novel, The 622 Downfalls of Bungo, or The Demonic Woman, in which Solska is the heroine Acne (a passing but embarrassing ailment of adolescence) and Witkacy himself is the artist-hero Bungo, an unfocused, introspective young man totally absorbed with his inner life-his discovery and creation of himself, his personality as an artist, and his artistic theories. "Art, for me," Bungo maintains, "has noth-ing in common with life; as conversely the life of the artist has nothing to do with his creation." In fact, despite his father's attempts to interest him in the larger world around him and such great political events of the time as the revolution of 1905, Witkacy remained indifferent to history and, through the person of Bungo, defended the artist's right to develop himself first and be concerned with the metaphysical nature of man, rather than with national or social issues. Yet at the same time he put into the mouth of one of Bungo's friends a warning: ''I'm afraid that, although you might be an artist, you may become-and what is worse, remain for your whole life-a little boy playing at art."

At 25, Witkacy was without a profession or genuine direction in life, solely preoccupied with the enigma of who and what he was, incapable of supporting himself and forced to live at his parents' expense-a fact his father did not hesitate to call to his attention. Witkacy felt himself on the verge of a breakdown and threatened by madness.

I put out the light and I experienced a monstrous feeling, the feeling that I was going mad-this time not figuratively, but really.

WITKACY 245

I did a couple of compositions with monsters and got into a state of extreme nervous hysteria bordering on madness. I'm afraid I won't be able to come out of it. Today it came into my mind-hadn't I already crossed the line?

On the advice of friends, in 1913 \Vitkacy went for treatment to Dr. Karol Beaurain, the first Polish Freudian psychiatrist, and although doubtful about the success of his own cure, he began a lifelong interest in Freud and the discoveries of psychoanalysis, which -like all his own cherished beliefs-he often parodies and distorts.

I had a session with Dr. Beaurain-my psychoanalysis is now near completion. But I haven't acquired any faith in it. If I come out of this, it won't be due to my realizing that I have an embryo complex.

The embryonic phase of Witkacy's life came to a sudden end in February, 1914, when his fiancee, Jadwiga Janczewska, shot herself (her body was found at the foot of a cliff, a bouquet of flowers lying beside her) as the result of an unexplained imbroglio involving Wit-kacy's friend, the elegant, handsome composer Karol Szymanowski. To help Witkacy overcome his overwhelming despair at this suicide, it was arranged for him to accompany Malinowski on the an-thropologist's first expedition to Australia and New Guinea. Al-though Witkacy had been abroad several times before, the trip to Australia via Ceylon and the tropics opened his eyes for the first time to the outside world in all its color and strangeness and had a dazzling, staggering effect on him, which he attempted to convey to his father:

I'm unable to describe the wonders I'm seeing here ... The vegetation madder and madder, and the people more and more gaudily, but wonderfully dressed (violet, yellow, and purple, sometimes emerald green), which along with the chocolate and bronze bodies, and the strange plants in the background, creates a devilish effect .... The trees are covered with flowers going from scarlet and orange vermillion to violet and lacquer with white ... All this causes me the most frightful suffering and unbearable pain, since she's not alive with me. Only the worst despair and the senselessness of seeing this beauty. She won't see this-and I'm not an artist. . . Everything is poison which

\


brings close thoughts of death. \\'hen, when will this inhuman suffering end?

The insight which \Vitkacy acquired into non-\Vestern cultures provided the inspiration for his tropical plays, but the outbreak of the First \Vorld \Var a month later brought to an end his participation in the expedition even before Malinowski left for New Guinea. Since he had been born in Warsaw and was a Russian subject, Witkacy volunteered to serve in the I mpcrial Army, despite the fact that as an only son he could have been exempt from service. His father, a confirmed anti-Tsarist, took his decision very hard, never returning to Poland from the retreat on the Adriatic where he had gone for his health, and where he died in 1915 without ever seeing his son again. Witkacy's mother, on the other hand, defended his action.

In September, 1914, \Vitkacy arrived in St. Petersburg, was accepted in officers' training school, and began a new life, which one of his aunts who lived there described with some astonishment:

He never was like this before. Calm, almost joyful, he holds himself straight with his head raised high-he has completely shaken off the despairing state of apathy in which we saw him when he came back. He looks very well in his uniform; neither the heavy boots, nor the thick coat, nor the saber bothers him in the least.

\Vitkacy served in the elite Pawlowski Regiment of the Left Guards and was wounded at the front in 191 5; he claimed to have worked out the basic principles of his philosophical system during an artillery barrage. In St. Petersburg, where he spent much of the war, \\7itkacy painted extensively, became acquainted with the works ol Picasso (a lifelong enthusiasm), and tried drugs for the first time. As an officer in the guards, he experienced first-hand "the last days of St. Petersburg": The orgies, wild debauchery, and court intrigues revolving around the demonic, grotesque figure of Rasputin left a deep impression that comes to the fore in his many subsequent works depicting a decadent, crumbling old order.

When the Revolution broke out, Witkacy was elected a political commissar by his regiment, or at least that was his guarded account of what happened. As a former Tsarist officer he was in a dangerous

\VITKACY 247

position, lived in constant fear, and probably had little choice if he was to survive.

After the armistice, Witkacy managed to return to Poland and, at the age of 3 2, finally became an artist. His whole life till then had been a long and slow preparation for the vast outpouring that fol-lowed during the next twenty years: over 200 literary works and several thousand paintings and portraits. At last free of his father, \\7itkacy found all of his creative forces were released and focussed, as his father had predicted, due to "some chance happening, some pressure from life" -the violent experiences of war and revolution in Russia, which had plunged him into "history as it is being lived" and "the cauldron of life on a mass scale." Now, to a large extent, Wit-kacy stopped living and began creating: From 1919 to 1924, in a wild outburst of productivity, he wrote some thirty plays, many of which are now lost-including such intriguing titles as Kind-Hearted Auntie \Valpurgia and Philosophers and Martyrs, or The !lariats from Ec-batana, "a Persian Tragedy in Three Acts."

At the same time, he developed his theory of Pure Form in the theater-an attempt to liberate drama from realistic psychology and story-telling and put it on the same bases as modern art and music -and tried to stage his plays along these principles, despite the hostility and indifference of critics and spectators. But playwriting and the theatre were only a sideline for Witkacy, who continued his career as a painter, writing books and essays on the nature of art, participating in avant-garde exhibits, and creating a large number of fantastic compositions, in which the explosion of colors recalls the tropical foliage.

Then, in 1924, \\7itkacy suddenly abandoned painting as an art form forever: thereafter he painted only portraits, which he regarded as an applied art or commercial activity. Like Marcel Duchamp (who gave up his career in art at the same time), \\7itkacy felt that this phase of his artistic activity was over; he had accomplished what he had set out to and had nothing more to say. But whereas Duchamp took up chess, \Vitkacy, more and more concerned with philosoph-ical and social issues, now turned to the novel-"a bag into which he can cram everything without paying any attention to Pure Form."

In his two masterpieces of prophetic nightmare fiction, Farewell to Autumn (1927) and lnsatiabdity (1930), Witkacy presents bewil-dered young heroes, artists manques, whose sexual initiations and

I I,


private pursuits of the mystery of existence are interrupted by vast social cataclysms, and who are finally swallowed up and destroyed by leveling Communist revolutions. In Insatiability it is the Chinese Communists who, with their superior organization and discipline, take over the Soviet Union and all of Europe-which has already gone Communist but is as flabby and disoriented as Russia.

In both these works Witkacy developed his view of the fate that was going to overtake Western civilization and the last handful of "metaphysical individuals" still left. Along with Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West and Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses, Witkacy was a catastrophist, seeing nothing ahead but the collapse of the old, exhausted values and the coming of totalitarian regimentation: "No one will complain· anymore about anything in the wonderfully run ant hill."

In 1919, when he published his treatise, New Forms in Painting, Witkacy still saw art as the only possible way to confront the horror and absurdity of contemporary existence, since religion had died long ago and philosophy was in the process of dying through narrow over -specialization.

Nowadays art is the sole crack through which it is possible to get a glimpse of the horrible, painful monstrosity which is passed off as the development of social progress ... In the art forms of our age we find the atrociousness of our existence and a final, dying beauty which probably nothing will be able to bring back any-more.

By the end of the 192o's, however, Witkacy had lost his belief in even the dying beauty of art:

Aren't we right to have contempt for art nowadays? A good drug can still be tolerated, but a drug that's falsified, counterfeit, that doesn't work the way it's supposed to, that has side effects, is something disgusting, and its producers are cheats.

Since the mid-192o's Witkacy had been studying the nature and effects of real drugs, as well as the figurative ones of art and ideology. For a number of years he made controlled experiments, painting portraits under the influence of various narcotics in order to see how

" W I T K A C Y " : 249

they would enlarge his perceptions and understanding. But Witkacy was no addict or believer in drugs as a solution to the problem of "existence in its metaphysical horror." In the book he published in 1932 on his experiences with drugs, Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine, Peyote, Morphine, and Ether, he singled out cigarettes and vodka as the most harmful-the drugs of the masses that destroy the ability of the brain to function clearly. Throughout these years Witkacy himself struggled unsuccessfully to give up smoking and drinking; the portraits he painted at this time often bear the signs NP (no smoking) or N 1r (no drinking), followed by the number of months or, more frequently, days of abstinence.

Always beset by severe financial difficulties, Witkacy had to make his living by painting portraits commercially. In order to distin-guish these commissioned works (done in pastels at top speed) from what he regarded as art, and to treat his role as paid portraitist with appropriate irony, Witkacy established "The Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm" in 1928, publishing a short brochure of "The Rules of the Firm" that explained the conditions under which portraits would be undertaken. "Any kind of criticism on the part of the customer is absolutely ruled out," was one of the principal clauses.

While he was turning out these hackworks (very popular in fashionable society) by the hundreds, Witkacy also did free of charge remarkable psychological portraits of his friends and favorite female subjects, often studying the same face dozens of different times, as well as numerous terrifying self-portraits which he called "Auto-Witkacies."

In the 193o's, while conducting the Firm in order to survive, Witkacy devoted more and more of his time and energy to philoso-phy-the only pursuit which seemed to enable him to deal with the essential questions, where all other drugs had failed. Pressed for money, overworked, in ill health (trouble with his teeth, his knee, his right arm), often in a state of despair, Witkacy read extensively in philosophy in four languages, prepared and delivered lectures, at-tended philosophical congresses, wrote a hundred-and-eighty-page philosophical magnum opus, Concepts and Pnnc1ples Implied by the Concept of Existence (which he doubted that any one ever read), and dozens of articles, and carried on voluminous correspondence and polemical discussions with professional philosophers in Poland and in Germany. But even with philosophy to help him, his fits of depression


became more frequent, and \Vitkacy grew obsessed with suicide-a motif that had constantly appeared in his life and works over a long period. In 193 7 he wrote to a friend:

I often think about suicide-that it's going to be necessary to bring my life to an end a bit earlier that way, out of a sense of honor, so as not to live to see my own total comedown. Even philosophy unfortunately won't see me to the very end, despite the fact that without it it already would have been too lousy.

An attempt to revive the avant-garde theatre in Zakopane in the late 193o's momentarily reawakened \Vitkacy's interest in playwrit-ing. In 1938 he wrote an essay on "The Artistic Theatre" (a term he preferred to "experimental theatre," which implied something tenta-tive, lacking the total faith and commitment of art) and at least began a new play, So-called Humanity Gone Mad-of which only the title page and cast of characters survive-apparently inspired by his fear of Fascism and the coming apocalypse. For future performances of his plays, Witkacy, who like Stendhal predicted his later discovery with unusual accuracy, left the following instructions:

Still if anyone does decide to stage any of my plays, I would like to ask the directors and actors for:

a) as unemotional, straightforward, articulate delivery of the lines as possible, b) as mad a pace of performance as possible, consistent with adherence to the preceding condition, c) as strict an observance as possible of my "directorial" indica-tions as to the position of the characters, as well as to the settings, according to my descriptions of them, d) no attempts to make anything stranger than it is in the text through setting-atmosphere-hit-them-in-the-guts gimmicks and an abnormal method of delivering the lines, e) minimal cuts.

When the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Wit-kacy was in Warsaw. He reported to the mobilization point, but was not accepted because of his age (54) and ill health. On September

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Above: A drawing done when \Vitkacy was 38 Right: A detail of the drawing, whose German inscription

encapsulates an idea central to the plays-"Nothing is absurd enough to express the mystery of existence."

The notation indicates that on the day the drawing was made, April 8, 1923, Witkacy went half the day without

smoking and then smoked for the duration

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WIT K A C Y 257

5, with his love of many years, Czeslawa Korzeniowska, Witkacy joined the thousands of refugees fleeing to the East. They took the evacuation train to what was then the Polish city of Brzesc (now Brest in Byelorussia) where they spent the night in a hotel. While they were in Brzesc, the city was bombed by the Germans and badly destroyed; due to the explosions, Witkacy's hearing, which was al-ready bad, grew worse and it became necessary to shout at him.

The next day they left Brzesc and went a few miles on foot, but Witkacy had a bad heart and his legs were in no condition to do the long hiking necessary to escape the oncoming Nazis--{)ver bad roads, in the heat of early September, carrying a heavy knapsack full of essential food and clothing. When Witkacy could go no further, they hitched rides in passing wagons and carts and made prolonged stops at peasant farms. Finally they stopped for good at the little village of Jeziora. The Germans were approaching, and then on September 17 the Russians attacked from the East. There was no place to go. The following account of what happened next comes from Czes-lawa's diary.

September 18, morning, after breakfast. 8 o'clock. We went to the woods. We sat down under an oak. Stas began to take ephedrine tablets.

"What are you taking those for?" I asked. "My blood will circulate more quickly, it will come out of

me faster," Stas answered, planning to slash his veins. He dissolved 18 luminal tablets and 2 cybalgine tablets in

a small pot. We drank it at about eleven o'clock. Then we said goodbye ... He began to slit his wrist with a razor ... I woke up in the night. I was vomiting. Stas wasn't beside me ... I fell asleep again. When I woke up again, it was already morning. His jacket was under my head, he must have put it there. He was lying beside me on his back, with his left leg drawn up, he had his arms bent at the elbows and pulled up. His eyes and mouth were open ... On his face there was a look of relief. A relaxing after great fatigue. I started to yell. To say something to Stas. I wanted to bury him, raking up dirt on him with my hands. With water from the mug for the luminal I washed his face and covered it with ferns ... Then I grew faint again .

"WIT K A C Y" : 259

The next day, Tuesday, September 19, friends of Witkiewicz began looking for him. Czeslawa Korzeniowska was found semi-con-scious, in a state of severe shock. Witkacy was buried in an old Orthodox cemetery in a coffin made of simple planks of wood; his walking stick, from which he was inseparable, was buried with him. The grave was marked by a pine cross, his name scratched on it with a penknife.

Ncar the entrance in the old graveyard in Zakopane, Witkacy has a second grave with a regular tombstone next to his mother. His father's grave is at the other end of the cemetery.

Daniel Gerould

Documents

Witkacy Plays