The Road to Damascus, a Trilogy Part 48

LADY. To part. The word alone's terrible enough.

STRANGER. Then what are we to do?

LADY. I don't know.

STRANGER. No, one knows nothing, hardly even that one knows nothing; and that's why, you see, I've got as far as to _believe_.

LADY. How do you know you can believe, if belief's a gift?

STRANGER. You can receive a gift, if you ask for it.

LADY. Oh yes, if you ask; but I've never been able to beg.

STRANGER. I've had to learn to. Why can't you?

LADY. Because one has to demean oneself first.

STRANGER. Life does that for one very well.

LADY. Mizzi, Mizzi, Mizzi!... (She has taken a shawl she was carrying over her arm, rolled it up and put it on her knee like a baby in long clothes.) Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Think of it! I can see her here! She's smiling at me; but she's dressed in black; she seems to be in mourning too! How stupid I am! Her mother's in mourning! She's got two teeth down below, and they're white--milk teeth; she should never have cut any others. Oh, can't you see her, when I can? It's no vision. It _is_ her!

CONFESSOR (in the door of the ferryman's hut; sternly to the STRANGER).

Come. Everything's ready!

STRANGER. No. Not yet. I must first set my house in order; and look after this woman, who was once my wife.

CONFESSOR. Oh, so you want to stay!

STRANGER. No. I don't want to stay; but I can't leave duties behind me unfulfilled. This woman's on the road, deserted, without a home, without money!

CONFESSOR. What has that to do with us? Let the dead bury their dead!

STRANGER. Is that your teaching?

CONFESSOR. No, yours.... Mine, on the other hand, commands me to send a Sister of Mercy here, to look after this unhappy one, who... who... The Sister will soon be here!

STRANGER. I shall count on it.

CONFESSOR (taking the STRANGER by the hand and drawing him away.) Then come!

STRANGER (in despair). Oh, G.o.d in heaven! Help us every one!

CONFESSOR. Amen!

(The LADY, who has not been looking at the CONFESSOR and the STRANGER, now raises her eyes and glances at the STRANGER as if she wanted to spring up and hold him back; but she is prevented by the imaginary child she has put to her breast.)

Curtain.

ACT II

CROSS-ROADS IN THE MOUNTAINS

[A cross-roads high up in the mountains. On the right, huts. On the left a small pool, round which invalids are sitting. Their clothes are blue and their hands cinnabar-red. From the pond blue vapour and small blue flames rise now and then. Whenever this happens the invalids put them hands to their mouths and cough. The background is formed by a mountain covered with pine-wood, which is obscured above by a stationary bank of mist.]

[The STRANGER is sitting at a table outside one of the huts. The CONFESSOR comes forward from the right.]

STRANGER. At last!

CONFESSOR. What do you mean: at last?

STRANGER. You left me here a week ago and told me to wait till you came back.

CONFESSOR. Hadn't I prepared you for the fact that the way to the white house up there would be long and difficult.

STRANGER. I don't deny it. How far have we come?

CONFESSOR. Five hundred yards. We've still got fifteen hundred.

STRANGER. But where's the sun?

CONFESSOR. Up there, above the clouds....

STRANGER. Then we shall have to go through them?

CONFESSOR. Yes. Of course.

STRANGER. What are those patients doing there? What a company! And why are their hands so red?

CONFESSOR. For both our sakes I want to avoid using impure words, so I'll speak in pleasant riddles, which you, as a writer, will understand.

STRANGER. Yes. Speak beautifully. There's so much that's ugly here.

CONFESSOR. You may have noticed that the signs given to the planets correspond with those of certain metals? Good! Then you'll have seen that Venus is represented by a mirror. This mirror was originally made of copper, so that copper was called Venus and bore her stamp. But now the reverse of Venus' mirror is covered with quicksilver or mercury!

STRANGER. The reverse of Venus... is Mercury. Oh!

CONFESSOR. Quicksilver is therefore the reverse side of Venus.

Quicksilver is itself as bright as a calm sea, as a lake at the height of summer; but when mercury meets firestone and burns, it blushes and turns red like newly-shed blood, like the cloth on the scaffold, like the cinnabar lips of the wh.o.r.e! Do you understand now, or not?

STRANGER. Wait a moment! Cinnabar is quicksilver and sulphur.

CONFESSOR. Yes. Mercury must be burnt, if it comes too near to Venus!

Have we said enough now?

STRANGER. So these are sulphur springs?