Читать книгу Tête-d'Or - Paul Claudel - Страница 8
Act II
ОглавлениеA hall in the king's palace, with high windows at the hack.
Night. Cébès, sick, lying upon a bed. A little lamp is placed on the floor. Here and there men, stretched out asleep, snoring.
Pantomime—Enter, as if half-crazed, the king, barefoot, his clothes in disorder. He runs hither and thither about the hall in great agitation.
Cébès (not seeing the king): They are all asleep.
The lamp sputters and smokes.
(He painfully stretches himself on his back.
The King(groaning, in a low voice): Ah!
(Pause.
Cébès (lowering his voice): Two, four,
Six, eight, twelve,
Fourteen,
Sixteen, eighteen, thirty-six,
Seventy-two, a hundred and forty-four. I wish that I could sleep, too.
The King: Ah!
Cébès: I am thirsty. I would like a drink!
But I will not drink.
I am sick! The night is long. If only I could sleep a little!
(He closes his eyes.
The King: Ah!
Cébès: Who is sighing? Is anyone there?
(He turns his head and sees the king.
(Silence.
The King: Ah!
(He catches sight of cébès.
Can't you sleep, my child?
Cébès: I cannot sleep.
The King: Are you thirsty? Would you like me to get you a drink?
Cébès: Pardon me, Sire. I shall not drink till he returns.
The King: Sire! Is there still such a title? Do not call me Sire, my child!
They have left us all alone, my daughter and me, and everyone has fled, for the enemy is at hand.
They did not trouble themselves much about me.
The Prime Minister did it all. He explained to me how matters stood. He was always making me late to dinner. I have a bad digestion; I ought to have my meals at regular hours.
They held a meeting, some ten or twelve of them, and they brought a great pile of papers. One sees strange people nowadays.
Then they all went away. The Prime Minister went away also, taking with him the crown jewels to put them in safe keeping.
Even the servants have gone. Not a single one is left.
(The bells begin to chime midnight.
It is as it is in the city. Only the poor remain and those who have no choice.
(The last strokes sound.
What hour is that?
Cébès: Midnight.
The King: There is no one here any longer.
But I cannot sleep and I wander through the palace
From the kitchen to the immense garrets and I seem to hear behind the doors the quiet breathing of sleepers, and the fire upon the hearth sends out a little glow.
These poor folk who arrived yesterday, seeing the palace empty, asked if they might spend the night here. They are visionaries; they wish to watch and pray.
It seems that we have been beaten everywhere. It is a shameful thing!
Our blunders
Surpass our misfortunes, and all is submerged in dishonor. And at will the enemy crosses our frontiers.
—Terror is upon us!
(Silence.—The snores of the watchers are heard.
Hark to these watchers who watch!
They whistle, wheeze and snort, they are so fast asleep! It is a voice, a horn, a leather trumpet!
(Silence.
I tell you that a panic has seized the city
And each man cowers in his home and dares not stir from his door.
O people! O city! O my wretched country, destroyed, devastated, plundered like an unguarded sheep-fold!
Oh! oh!
Will this terrible night never end!
Sight was horrible to me; I went to bed. O Sleep,
Kill me with your leaden dart!
But I cannot sleep and I open my eyes again in the black Nothingness.
It has no knowledge nor any real existence
But the gloom takes weight and stiflingly presses upon us.
Oh! oh!
I shudder from head to foot and I cry aloud in my anguish!
And I leap out of bed and run hither and thither, striking my head against the walls.
And I see again these frightful places and I meet
Only Madness and Horror!
—Am I keeping you awake, my child?
Cébès: I cannot sleep.
The King: Well, I will wait here with you.
Cébès: How far away is the enemy?
The King: Not more than a day's march.
I think the battle must have already been fought.
—Still five hours till dawn! We shall see. Very soon we shall know.
Cébès: This very morning! It must be so.
The King: Where are your parents, Cébès?
Cébès: I do not know, Sire. The war has swept them away.
The King: I have only one daughter and I have no male child.
Cébès: Are you speaking to me, Sire?
The King: How pale you are, my poor boy! You are very ill. Tête-d'or
Was wise to leave you here. We will look after you, lad.
I look at you! I wish to contemplate
A thing still young, as I myself have been,
And the dawning of power in astonished eyes!
The young man sleeps very tranquilly. He dreams, and in his dream is the morning sun.
The evening has been glorious, a golden day awaits him.
I also have been young. I have been a young man also,
And I have been a little, little child. Now I have lived three score and fifteen years, and I am old and at the end of my life.
And this is what I am, and this is what I see!
Cébès: I shall be the first to die.
I have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
I have not strength enough to rise and walk.
Yes! What a thing it is to live!
What an astonishing thing it is
Only to live! What a mighty thing it is, only to live!
He who lives
And treads the earth under his feet, what does he envy the gods?
I die,
And only ask to once again behold him.
The King: Of what are you dreaming?
Cébès: I dream of the day.
The King: Go, die!
Cébès: What did you say?
The King (rising and running about distractedly): Go, die! We all must die!
O my country! My country! Behold your King wanders alone through his palace and can give you no aid.
I am weaker than a woman in childbirth.
(He is seized with a fit of coughing.
A-ha! A-hha! O my country!
You were weary of me. And everyone said that I built too much and did not know what I was doing and they took the money from me.
But what of that! I loved you, O my realm!
And must I see you thus destroyed and ravaged!
Ah! Ah! Ah! Tremble, you lofty chimneys that tower to the stars and midst the marguerites and glow-worms are mirrored in the brimming moat.
Uproot yourself,
Ancestral beech whose branches shade the courtyard!
Down to the dust with you, genealogy!
And let the walls be rent asunder from base to battlement!
—Hola! You there! Wake up!
(He jostles against a sleeper, who grunts.
What are you muttering down there?
(He kicks him.
The Watcher (asleep): Oh hum!
The King: Wake up there, sack of wool! Wake up, block!
(He kicks him.
The Watcher (talking indistinctly in his sleep): Ho! Ho!
Do not push me! I am falling! I am falling!
The King (catching him by the foot and dragging him across the hall): Will you wake up, or won't you?
The Watcher (waking and rubbing his eyes): Eh? Eh?
What's that? What? What? What?
What? What time is it?
Eh?
(He sees the king.
(The king goes to the middle of the hall and strikes furiously on a gong. All awake and look at him, dumbfounded, not moving from their places.
The King: Well, Watchers!
(Silence.
Behold you sleep, and the first part of the night is not yet spent!
They care for nothing but eating and drinking and talking to each other!
Like brutes, like dogs that wag their tails! And when they cease their chatter, they fall asleep.
Their souls are simple! They are not capable of thinking for themselves.
Do you know where we are? Do you know for what we are waiting?
We must watch and listen! We must listen and wait!
(The song of the nightingale is heard.
The nightingale is singing. All night he pours out his soul.
All night the tiny bird sings of the marvels of God.
And you, could you not watch? The worries of your wretched trades cannot trouble you now. That care has been taken from you. Could you not watch and wait?
But, like hulking lackeys you sleep!
And it may be that someone has entered and looked at you,
Like the bird that flies and does not alight.
But they sleep and leave me all alone!
And I David, The King, with my white hairs,
I wander through the palace in the pangs and agony of death,
And I tread my mitre under my feet and like an infant or an animal that one clutches to one's breast,
I hold back with my hands my escaping soul!
The First Watcher: Pardon us, O King.
The Second Watcher: O King, why do you waken us and keep us from sleeping?
Go! Put out the light and lie down with us. Pillow your head on my side. All too soon will come the day.
The light troubles my eyes. I am going to sleep.
(He drops his head on his chest. The king gazes at him and, opening his mouth little by little, begins to yawn.
The Third Watcher: O King, you yourself are yawning!
It is weariness. It is the wind, the exhalation of the void within us.
We talked and our words were only an empty sound; and from morning until evening we gave ourselves no rest.
In truth we are dead.
As tired
As a man who comes home drunk in the morning and goes to bed without undressing or taking off his boots.
At first the heart was silent,
And then, like a tom-cat that yowls very softly, it began to voice its lament.
The Second Watcher: Be still, heart! Be still, poor heart! What would you have?
The Fourth Watcher: And even now they come to extinguish us
As you quench a stinking lamp with a damp cloth.
The First Watcher: O night! O chasm of blackness!
O open door through which whistles the wind!
We had come hither and stretched ourselves on your threshold.
But the abyss gave back no words. Who can fathom its secret ways?
So we remained here and the thought has come to me that there is nothing that can be changed.
The night is black and there is no more hope.
The Third Watcher: They die together. All the people shall be found cold in death, men and women and children and babes at the breast.
Therefore let us lie here and sleep,
Or go, if you have a wife, and lie with her.
And let not the maid-servant make too much noise in the kitchen or the baby in the room below,
Or the mouse in the cupboard or the fly against the pane.
We have begged and it has been in vain. Our sin has found us out. Who can conquer our ignorance?
Why are we born, since now it seems better to die?
What should we do and why should we do it?
We cannot attain to ability and we sway and stagger like a man who stands in a hot bath,
Or one who yawns from the fumes of a reeking opium pipe.
This parish dreams and is like a people who, like a nation of hens
Ranged on the ramparts of the quay, watch how the red sun drops away into a night that knows no day. …
(Pause.
The First Watcher: Such is the report that we have to make to you.
The King: Wretched nonentities! He is a fool who puts his trust in you!
I knew you and your fathers before you, a broken reed to lean upon!
In my old age and bitter need there is little comfort in you!
My curse upon you, watchers that sleep! My curse upon you, sleepers, dreamers of dreams!
The Fifth Watcher: A curse upon you yourself, old man! Be accursed, crowned carrion, lapdog, clown!
Is it not you who have brought us to this pass?
Curse you, and curse all men who have power in their hands,
Who have power in their hands, O God, and do not know how to use it!
Why do you come to break our sleep and keep our eyes from slumber?
You curse me, do you, old phantom? And I throw back your curse in your teeth!
A curse on your royal race, temporal King, on the office that you hold, on the system that permits your impotent sway!
A curse on all my teachers, from the one who taught me to read to the one who turned me loose with a box on the ear, dazzled and full of words!
For they took me when I was only a child and they gave me dirt to eat.
A curse on my father and on my mother also!
A curse on the food they gave me, and on their ignorance, and on the example they set me!
