Three Plays Part 26

DONNA MATILDA. But I explained exactly where it was!

(_impatiently_). And Frida ... where is Frida?

BELCREDI (_looking out of the window_). Perhaps she is in the garden with Charles....

DOCTOR. He'll talk her out of her fright.

BELCREDI. She's not afraid, doctor; don't you believe it: the thing bores her rather....

DONNA MATILDA. Just don't ask anything of her! I know what she's like.

DOCTOR. Let's wait patiently. Anyhow, it will soon be over, and it has to be in the evening.... It will only be the matter of a moment! If we can succeed in rousing him, as I was saying, and in breaking at one go the threads--already slack--which still bind him to this fiction of his, giving him back what he himself asks for--you remember, he said: "one cannot always be twenty-six years old, madam!" if we can give him freedom from this torment, which even _he_ feels is a torment, then if he is able to recover at one bound the sensation of the distance of time....

BELCREDI (_quickly_). He'll be cured! (_then emphatically with irony_). We'll pull him out of it all!

DOCTOR. Yes, we may hope to set him going again, like a watch which has stopped at a certain hour ... just as if we had our watches in our hands and were waiting for that other watch to go again.--A shake--so--and let's hope it'll tell the time again after its long stop. (_At this point the Marquis Charles Di Nolli enters from the princ.i.p.al entrance_).

DONNA MATILDA. Oh, Charles!... And Frida? Where is she?

DI NOLLI. She'll be here in a moment.

DOCTOR. Has the motor arrived?

DI NOLLI. Yes.

DONNA MATILDA. Yes? Has the dress come?

DI NOLLI. It's been here some time.

DOCTOR. Good! Good!

DONNA MATILDA (_trembling_). Where is she? Where's Frida?

DI NOLLI (_shrugging his shoulders and smiling sadly, like one lending himself unwillingly to an untimely joke_).

You'll see, you'll see!... (_pointing towards the hall_).

Here she is!... (_Berthold appears at the threshold of the hall, and announces with solemnity_).

BERTHOLD. Her Highness the Countess Matilda of Canossa!

(_Frida enters, magnificent and beautiful, arrayed in the robes of her mother as "Countess Matilda of Tuscany," so that she is a living copy of the portrait in the throne room_).

FRIDA (_pa.s.sing Berthold, who is bowing, says to him with disdain_). Of Tuscany, of Tuscany! Canossa is just one of my castles!

BELCREDI (_in admiration_). Look! Look! She seems another person....

DONNA MATILDA. One would say it were I! Look!--Why, Frida, look! She's exactly my portrait, alive!

DOCTOR. Yes, yes.... Perfect! Perfect! The portrait, to the life.

BELCREDI. Yes, there's no question about it. She _is_ the portrait! Magnificent!

FRIDA. Don't make me laugh, or I shall burst! I say, mother, what a tiny waist you had? I had to squeeze so to get into this!

DONNA MATILDA (_arranging her dress a little_). Wait!...

Keep still!... These pleats ... is it really so tight?

FRIDA. I'm suffocating! I implore you, to be quick!...

DOCTOR. But we must wait till it's evening!

FRIDA. No, no, I can't hold out till evening!

DONNA MATILDA. Why did you put it on so soon?

FRIDA. The moment I saw it, the temptation was irresistible....

DONNA MATILDA. At least you could have called me, or have had someone help you! It's still all crumpled.

FRIDA. So I saw, mother; but they are old creases; they won't come out.

DOCTOR. It doesn't matter, Marchioness! The illusion is perfect. (_Then coming nearer and asking her to come in front of her daughter, without hiding her_). If you please, stay there, there ... at a certain distance ... now a little more forward....

BELCREDI. For the feeling of the distance of time....

DONNA MATILDA (_slightly turning to him_). Twenty years after! A disaster! A tragedy!

BELCREDI. Now don't let's exaggerate!

DOCTOR (_embarra.s.sed, trying to save the situation_). No, no! I meant the dress ... so as to see ... You know....

BELCREDI (_laughing_). Oh, as for the dress, doctor, it isn't a matter of twenty years! It's eight hundred! An abyss! Do you really want to shove him across it (_pointing first to Frida and then to Marchioness_) from there to here?

But you'll have to pick him up in pieces with a basket! Just think now: for us it is a matter of twenty years, a couple of dresses, and a masquerade. But, if, as you say, doctor, time has stopped for and around him: if he lives there (_pointing to Frida_) with her, eight hundred years ago....

I repeat: the giddiness of the jump will be such, that finding himself suddenly among us.... (_The doctor shakes his head in dissent_). You don't think so?

DOCTOR. No, because life, my dear baron, can take up its rhythms. This--our life--will at once become real also to him; and will pull him up directly, wresting from him suddenly the illusion, and showing him that the eight hundred years, as you say, are only twenty! It will be like one of those tricks, such as the leap into s.p.a.ce, for instance, of the Masonic rite, which appears to be heaven knows how far, and is only a step down the stairs.

BELCREDI. Ah! An idea! Yes! Look at Frida and the Marchioness, doctor! Which is more advanced in time? We old people, doctor! The young ones think they are more ahead; but it isn't true: we are more ahead, because time belongs to us more than to them.

DOCTOR. If the past didn't alienate us....

BELCREDI. It doesn't matter at all! How does it alienate us?

They (_pointing to Frida and Di Nolli_) have still to do what we have accomplished, doctor: to grow old, doing the same foolish things, more or less, as we did.... This is the illusion: that one comes forward through a door to life. It isn't so! As soon as one is born, one starts dying; therefore, he who started first is the most advanced of all.

The youngest of us is father Adam! Look there: (_pointing to Frida_) eight hundred years younger than all of us--the Countess Matilda of Tuscany. (_He makes her a deep bow_).

DI NOLLI. I say, t.i.to, don't start joking.

BELCREDI. Oh, you think I am joking?...

DI NOLLI. Of course, of course ... all the time.

BELCREDI. Impossible! I've even dressed up as a Benedictine....