The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy Part 47

STRANGER. Where will you go?

LADY (sobbing). I don't know.

STRANGER. So you're in despair? You see no reason for living and no end to your misery! How like me you are! What a pity there's no monastery for both s.e.xes, so that we could pair off together. Is the werewolf still alive?

LADY. You mean...?

STRANGER. Your first husband.

LADY. He never seems to die.

STRANGER. Like a certain worm! (Pause.) And now that we're so far from the world and its pettiness, tell me this: why did you leave him in those days, and come to me?

LADY. Because I loved you.

STRANGER. And how long did that last?

LADY. Until I read your book, and the child was born.

STRANGER. And then?

LADY. I hated you! That is, I wanted to be rid of all the evil you'd given me, but I couldn't.

STRANGER. So that's how it was! But we'll never really know the truth.

LADY. Have you noticed how impossible it is to find things out? You can live with a person and their relations for twenty years, and yet not know anything about them.

STRANGER. So you've discovered that? As you see so much, tell me this: how was it you came to love me?

LADY. I don't know; but I'll try to remember. (Pause.) Well, you had the masculine courage to be rude to a lady. In me you sought the companions.h.i.+p of a human being and not merely of a woman. That honoured me; and, I thought, you too.

STRANGER. Tell me also whether you held me to be a misogynist?

LADY. A woman-hater? Every healthy man is one, in the secret places of his heart; and all perverted men are admirers of women.

STRANGER. You're not trying to flatter me, are you?

LADY. A woman who'd try to flatter a man's not normal.

STRANGER. I see you've thought a great deal!

LADY. Thinking's the least I've done; for when I've thought least I've understood most. Besides, what I said just how is perhaps only improvised, as you call it, and not true in the least.

STRANGER. But if it agrees with many of my observations it becomes most probable. (The LADY weeps into her handkerchief.) You're weeping again?

LADY. I was thinking of Mizzi. The loveliest thing we ever had is gone.

STRANGER. No. You were the loveliest thing, when you sat all night watching over your child, who was lying in your bed, because her cradle was too cold! (Three loud knocks are heard on the ferryman's door.) 's.h.!.+

LADY. What's that?

STRANGER. My companion, who's waiting for me.

LADY (continuing the conversation). I never thought life would give me anything so sweet as a child.

STRANGER. And at the same time anything so bitter.

LADY. Why bitter?

STRANGER. You've been a child yourself, and you must remember how we, when we'd just married, came to your mother in rags, dirty and without money. I seem to remember she didn't find us very sweet.

LADY. That's true.

STRANGER. And I... well, just now I met Sylvia. And I expected that all that was beautiful and good in the child would have blossomed in the girl....

LADY. Well?

STRANGER. I found a faded rose, that seemed to have blown too soon. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were sunken, her hair untidy like that of a neglected child, and her teeth decayed.

LADY. Oh!

STRANGER. You mustn't grieve. Not for the child! You might perhaps have had to grieve for her later, as I did.

LADY. So that's what life is?

STRANGER. Yes. That's what life is. And that's why I'm going to bury myself alive.

LADY. Where?

STRANGER (pointing to the monastery). Up there!

LADY. In the monastery? No, don't leave me. Bear me company. I'm so alone in the world and so poor, so poor! When the child died, my mother turned me out, and ever since I've been living in an attic with a dressmaker. At first she was kind and pleasant, but then the lonely evenings got too long for her, and she went out in search of company--so we parted. Now I'm on the road, and I've nothing but the clothes I'm wearing; nothing but my grief. I eat it and drink it; it nourishes me and sends me to sleep. I'd rather lose anything in the world than that!

(The STRANGER weeps.) You're weeping. You! Let me kiss your eyelids.

STRANGER. You've suffered all that for my sake!

LADY. Not for your sake! You never did me an ill turn; but I plagued you till you left your fireside and your child!

STRANGER. I'd forgotten that; but if you say so.... So you still love me?

LADY. Probably. I don't know.

STRANGER. And you'd like to begin all over again?

LADY. All over again? The quarrels? No, we won't do that.

STRANGER. You're right. The quarrels would only begin all over again.

And yet it's difficult to part.