Читать книгу The Venetian - Frank J. Morlock - Страница 6

ACT I, SCENE 1

The Proscribed.

The interior of the Bravo’s house, in a secluded section of Venice. Open window giving on the gulf lit by the moon.

BRAVO

So, Milord, the visit you are paying me this evening is to speak to me of the affairs of Your Excellency and not those of the Republic.

COUNT

It’s a service that I have to ask of you, and I don’t doubt for a moment that—

BRAVO

I will be at your orders, right? As I am those of the Council of Ten.

COUNT

Of which I am one—don’t forget.

BRAVO

What can I do for Your Excellency?

COUNT

A lot.

BRAVO

I am listening.

COUNT

I’m in love.

BRAVO

With the Courtesan, Theodora, I know.

COUNT

And how’s that?

BRAVO

A week ago, at the foot of the Lion column, where I habitually hang out, I saw you pass by, as a member of a cortege which ordinarily accompanies the Venetian to church.

COUNT

Yes, it’s true. I had, like all there is noble and elegant in Venice, placed myself at the feet of this woman as strange as she is beautiful, a modern Aspasia, who intends to see at her knees all the celebrities of her century, to adorn herself with lovers as other women adorn themselves with jewels. Theodora overwhelmed me with her good graces—but this easy happiness tired me, and I’ve discovered behind the Bridge of La Paglia, facing the house of the Gondolier Luigi, a diamond.

BRAVO

There are few diamonds in Venice which are not for sale, Your Excellency, is rich and can buy the one he desires.

COUNT

She’s refused all my offers.

BRAVO

Double them.

COUNT

No use—I have to deal with an old geezer who is guarding her—who is her father or something like that—He’s made of honor, delicacy, rigid virtue.

BRAVO

(with irony)

The wretch!

COUNT

And he’s gone so far as to tell me that if I reappear in the street, although he’s old and a plebeian, and I am young and of the nobility—he will find a way to get rid of me.

BRAVO

(with irony)

The insolent.

COUNT

I cannot involve myself with this man, you understand?

BRAVO

Surely—these sorts of folks ought to be very happy when a lord of race and birth, like you, deigns to covet his wife or his daughter; that dishonors them but that ennobles them.

COUNT

Well! Now that’s what he fails to understand.

BRAVO

The beast.

COUNT

Then I thought of you to rid me of this man: arrived only a few days ago in Venice, he doesn’t know anyone and public rumor announces that he raised this delicious creature from charity, and she has, outside this old geezer, neither friends nor relatives under heaven.

Now the young girl is orphaned; the Republic, which is a good mother, adopts the abandoned child. A powerful man, a member of the Council of Ten, I, for example, I take responsibility, for the love of Humanity of placing her in a convent—I’ll pay her dowry—I’ll make a gift of a Raphael or a Titian to the Chapel of the monastery and the young girl is mine.

BRAVO

It’s a marvelous scheme, Milord, and I don’t see anything which is preventing this plan from succeeding for you have without doubt for me an order from the Council.

COUNT

What do you mean?

BRAVO

Which enjoins me to rid Venice of an old geezer suspected of virtue, forearmed with delicacy and very religiously determined to guard the honor of a young girl!

COUNT

Why haven’t you understood me?

BRAVO

On the contrary, Milord, I have understood you and perfectly. Why you told me the first, what you wanted and it’s my turn now to tell you what I want, an order from the Council.

COUNT

(pulling out a purse full of money)

Wait, here it is.

BRAVO

(pushing it away)

The Republic is magnificent, Milord; it rewards richly those who serve it, it covers with gold the weapon each time it spills blood—it’s a jealous mistress to whom I do not wish to be unfaithful—I want an official order—

COUNT

Why such a scruple on your part astonishes me, confounds me.

BRAVO

I have a bargain in blood with the Republic—it’s true Count Bellamonte—your father was a member of the Council when this bargain was imposed on me—as for him, he knew what motive had make me put this dagger in hand and this mask on my face; your father would not have come to me making the demand you are—I want an order.

COUNT

But if I obtain that order you won’t have committed one less murder.

BRAVO

For which I will answer to men—but which the Council of Ten will join me in answering before God.

COUNT

Well; since you absolutely must have an order you will get it. The old man is coming from Genoa, Genoa is at war with the Republic, and that man that no one knows here is without any doubt a spy of the Doria. I shall have the order and I will have it nailed to your door as is the custom of this tribunal.

Think now, that it will be no longer be to me, but to the Council, that you will render an account of your obedience.

BRAVO

That’s fine.

COUNT

Goodbye—don’t forget—behind the bridge of Paglia, facing the house of the gondolier Luigi.

BRAVO

Goodbye, Count.

(The Count leaves.)

BRAVO

(alone)

The day is not yet over it seems. The Republic is very hard to serve. No matter, let’s profit by the hour that is left to me.

(removing his mask which he hangs on a hook)

Infernal mask!

(removing his dagger which he places on a table)

Cursed dagger!

Which makes itself a part of me—as if the hand of God had imprinted the mask on my face and the other nailed to my belt.

Oh! Let my mouth breathe—now I am a man like all other men—ah!

(he stretches out, overcome, on the bed)

(Salfieri appears outside and jumps with agility into the room.)

BRAVO

Who goes there?

SALFIERI

Greetings to your Lordship.

BRAVO

(rushing to his dagger)

Who are you?

SALFIERI

A man against whom you have no need to draw this dagger—for you can kill me with a word—I’m proscribed.

BRAVO

And why come in like this, thorough the window?

SALFIERI

Because you probably would not have opened the door to me.

BRAVO

What do you want?

SALFIERI

An asylum for the night.

BRAVO

And if I refuse, what will happen?

SALFIERI

Only something very simple, six years ago, I left Venice under weight of a death warrant—a motive more powerful than my life has brought me back.

A ship let me off on the beach—and if I get back to it in an hour, it is my vessel. I no longer know a single friend in Venice.

Your protection is my life—your refusal is my death. If you refuse me, we are both young—you have a dagger—I have one. The chances are equal—if you kill me, I have no need of asylum tonight; if I kill you, my refuge is found. I no more fear sleeping near a dead enemy than beside a living friend.

BRAVO

And if, on the contrary, I protect you?

SALFIERI

You will have done an immense service to a man who will remember it eternally.

BRAVO

(extending his hand)

Put it there.

SALFIERI

Thanks.

BRAVO

Now, I am going to close this window for I am no longer alone.

(coming back)

Well?

SALFIERI

Well, my host—I am at your orders. Do you want to stay up, I’ll stay up. Do you want to sleep—toss yourself on this bed and I will toss myself on this cloak—are you disposed to do for me more than you have done so far? I will tell you what brings me to Venice—for what purpose I have come—what woman I am pursuing—what man I am seeking—then, if you cause me to speak to his man, or to meet this woman, you will be more to me than a protector, than a friend, you will be a god.

BRAVO

Speak and what I can do I will do.

SALFIERI

I’m exiled over a political affair, there’s only one thing that can make an exile forget his country—it’s love. Proscribed by the Republic of Venice, I found exile in the Republic of Genoa—by chance, I met a young girl, I loved her, she loved me, I forgot everything.

BRAVO

That’s really a youthful head and a youthful heart—that’s really love.

SALFIERI

Yes, yes—for six months I had only one thought—her—all my days were spent waiting for night, because, guarded as she was, only at night could I see her. Then I crossed over the garden wall. Confident and pure as a Madonna, she came to open up for me—and I, timid and childishly amorous, I lay at her feet seeking my life in her eyes—forgetting the past which was slipping away without her, happy in the present I felt was mine—confident in a future I believed was ours—

BRAVO

That’s really the way the mad hours of youth are spent, I remember myself—

SALFIERI

One night I came as usual—I found open the door that Violetta ordinarily opened to me—

BRAVO

(shivering)

Violetta.

SALFIERI

That was her name—it brings back some memory—?

BRAVO

I, too, I loved a woman named Violetta—

SALFIERI

You—!

BRAVO

For her I left Venice. Venice that I never expected to see again and that to my misfortune I have seen—Oh! But that was sixteen years ago—and that woman is dead—it’s the first time in sixteen years I’ve heard that name mentioned—and it seized my heart—continue—

SALFIERI

I went up the stairs—I entered her room. I called excitedly. I ran to the room of the old man at risk of meeting him—it was deserted like that of Violetta—fragments of torn letters half burned were on the ground—I put them together. I found an order—given by, I don’t know whom—to this man—to immediately escort the young girl who was confided to him—where? The name of the city wasn’t there—she was gone. The old man had taken her away. I came back to Violetta’s room—furious, desperate—asking loudly for indications, a trace—suddenly my eyes were fixed on a mirror—and Violetta’s hand had written with a diamond the sole word, “Venice”—then I forgot everything: proscriptions, arrest, death—the scaffold—I left and here I am.

BRAVO

And now what you are counting on doing with the weak information that you possess—in an immense city where you cannot show your face—in the midst of an incessantly active police—with all their eyes opened—some agent of whom perhaps already knows of your arrival—?

SALFIERI

Yes, yes, I know all that—thus my plan resembles my position—desperate—Listen, I have only told you I was coming to Venice to pursue a woman and to seek a man—the woman that I am pursing is—Violetta.

BRAVO

And the man you are seeking?

SALFIERI

It’s the Bravo.

BRAVO

Huh!

SALFIERI

Do you know him?

BRAVO

And who in Venice does not know this man? Only the Council of Ten can reply to that question.

SALFIERI

Where can one meet him?

BRAVO

On the Piazetta—everyday—at the foot of the Lion column—sad, black and motionless, a type of living scaffold—eternally executed on the public square of Venice.

SALFIERI

And what do they say about this man?

BRAVO

A thousand different things.

SALFIERI

But what is the truth on his account?

BRAVO

God alone and he could tell it—all others are mistaken.

SALFIERI

But in your opinion?

BRAVO

I don’t have one about him.

SALFIERI

That’s well enough. I will find him. I always have three ways of making a man do what I wish.

BRAVO

Which are?

SALFIERI

Prayer: an appeal to his humanity; money: an appeal to his avarice; threat: an appeal to his weakness.

BRAVO

Prayer—the Bravo has heard more prayers than Saint Ambrose who is the patron of the city—and I don’t know of a single one that has softened him—money—the Bravo has received enough from the Republic to purchase a palace if he was ambitious to sleep in a marble chamber—threats—the Bravo—by force of making them has lost the habit of hearing them—

SALFIERI

But does nothing human remain in the heart of that man?

BRAVO

Nothing.

SALFIERI

Doesn’t he even have a mother?

BRAVO

He had one, and God took her from him in an hour of wrath.

SALFIERI

No mistress?

BRAVO

He had one, and he killed her in a moment of jealousy.

SALFIERI

No father?

(Bravo lowers his head on his breast and his face takes on an expression of sorrow and somber reverie.)

SALFIERI

(continuing)

Well! I will adjure him in the name of his father—yes, tonight—this very night, I must see him.

BRAVO

And what will you ask on seeing him?

SALFIERI

That, my host—that’s my secret.

BRAVO

Nothing can dissuade you from searching for this man?

SALFIERI

Nothing—for I have no hope except in him.

BRAVO

You will see him then.

SALFIERI

Who will make me see him?

BRAVO

I will.

SALFIERI

And when will that be?

(Three raps on the door.)

BRAVO

Wait, I am going to tell you.

(He goes to the door and finds the order of the Council that’s just been nailed there. He comes forward holding it in his hand, examines it, then takes his cloak and hides his mask and dagger under it.)

BRAVO

(aside)

They signed it.

SALFIERI

Well—

BRAVO

In an hour—

SALFIERI

And where will I find him?

BRAVO

Behind the bridge of La Paglia—facing the house of the Gondolier Luigi.

SALFIERI

In an hour—?

BRAVO

In an hour.

SALFIERI

That’s fine—I will be there.

(The Bravo leaves and Salfieri follows him with his eyes.)

C U R T A I N