Читать книгу Send out the Dove - Stanley Mason - Страница 5

A wide terrace with a balustrade opening at the rear on a

flight of steps not visible to the audience. On the left a

door into the house, with a shuttered window above. A

metal table and chairs in the foreground.

CYNTHIA [not yet in view]:

Well, fisherman, what do you see?

FISHER [hesitantly ascending the last steps]:

I see a dark future

littered with humanity. I see trouble.

CYNTHIA [just appearing]:

Let the future wait till we get into it.

FISHER:

It’s no use, Cynthia. I’m a fisherman.

My home’s in the warm lap of the backwater.

This mountain air takes my breath.

CYNTHIA [skipping past him]:

Oh, skip it, Fisher dear. Why don’t you

open your gills to the advent of adventure

and let the hill wind have you? We shall see

later on whether it drops its aitches.

FISHER:

It’s a mistake, I feel it in my bones.

They tell me life began in the water,

tiny and transparent as a dream, evolving

in and out of the involving currents,

and only after millennia did it flap

on floundering feet, climbing the land;

and then a long while after

marched up the mountains, as I’ve marched

today,

feeling all the time in all my wishbones

what a mistake it is. Why didn’t we all

stay burrowed in the mud?

CYNTHIA:

You can’t go back on yourself now, Fisher.

Here’s our objective for tonight, whatever

our objective really is. We shall soon see

whether there’s any man or god at home.

[Sits down at the table. FISHER hangs his

haversack over the back of a chair, then paces up and

down.]

Take it easy there. There’s nothing to be scared of.

I was scared too, when I was little.

But when I took on shape, fate cast me out

where the big fish swim. You’d be surprised

how they rise to the right kind of bait.

Just cast and hope. The worst that can happen

is that we catch a red herring and have to

throw the poor thing back. Anyway, you told me

when we met down the hill, remember,

that you had business here.

FISHER:

Business in a manner of speaking.

Business if visions are business. Cynthia:

so many people are talking about a coming,

a second coming, or some say a third,

and some say a first and only coming.

Do you think there’s anything in it all?

CYNTHIA:

Do you mean to say you think

there might be something, first, second or third,

coming, as it were, round this mountain?

FISHER:

No, no, Cynthia. But something very strange

happened to me, something I couldn’t help linking

with this new religion. That first made me think

I had business on this mountain, though now I’m up

I’m only too painfully aware I have

no business here.

CYNTHIA:

Don’t bother to be explicit.

Let me tell you. If, as you say,

this mountain air takes your breath,

believe me, Fisher, it’s very simply because

there’s something breathtaking in the air.

I’m not well up in religion, but I’ve had

some successes in politics. It was a prime minister

who whispered it to me at a moment when

even the mouths of prime prime ministers

tend to be unguarded. Listen, my mouse, he said,

and for three kisses I’ll sell you a tip-top secret

destined to rock the democracies and to cause

ferments in governments and fissions in commissions.

Up on Mount Miramar the future is afoot.

A thing is ripening there which, when it falls

from time’s old tree, will thunder on the world

like the explosion of a stampeding star,

drowning the shriek of sirens, the grunt of guns

and the dark tom-tom of the atom bomb.

A thing, he said, but before he could continue

he was called away to a World Council Conference

on the standardization of the size of chopsticks

and left me musing on the mystery

of things to come.

FISHER:

And so you came,

bent on adventure as the spray’s bent when

a bird brakes her flight and briefly poises,

making the blossoms bow before she swings

skyward and time moves on.

CYNTHIA:

How sweetly you put it! Life in government circles

has taken all the poetry out of my wings.

Anyway, that’s right: intuition told me

that Primy’s secret was very near the point

where the popcorn pops and suddenly turns

its inside information out. So I took

the future by the forelock, and here I am.

FISHER:

You want to be in at the kill.

CYNTHIA:

The kill, or the birth, or whatever natural phenomenon

history is about to yank out of its hat.

FISHER:

It wouldn’t surprise me, Cynthia,

if we were to witness the strangest happenings.

Why is the air full of wings? The valley

is humming like a bees’ nest. On all the roads

people are creeping like pilgrims toward

some immense zero hour of man’s hope.

CYNTHIA:

What do you deduce from all this?

FISHER:

I don’t deduce, Cynthia. I wait, and let

the waters ripen for fish, and the world for wonders.

CYNTHIA:

You’re really a most eloquent edition

of a fisherman.

FISHER:

When I was young, I studied

comparative psychotechnics, but they so frightened me

I ran away and hid behind man’s past.

I sank my ambition in the still lake waters

and became a throwback.

CYNTHIA:

Tell me more.

FISHER:

There’s nothing more to tell you. I’ve come to be

a simple man plying a simple trade.

I fish for trout, perch, sunfish in the lake

and live on the net profits. The dawn finds me

counting wet silver into a garrulous boat.

The noontide hills admiring sleepy shadows

see somebody rowing through them they remember

from before the flood. My mystery makes me

older than trees ringed deep in time,

older than landscapes etched by willful rivers,

older — but I’m boring you.

CYNTHIA:

You couldn’t if you tried.

After the perorations of politicians

you’re soothing music. Go on.

FISHER:

Well, what I was trying to say was this:

instead of hankering after a better future,

I’ve harked back to man’s beginnings in the hope

of finding a better past. Each night I row

home to a crust of bread, a jug of wine,

a span of solitude, a pennyworth of sleep.

The seasons measure my motions; my only clock

is the stealth of shadows between two infinities,

my only thermometer the sap that rises

and falls in tree-trunks graduated with boughs.

I have my myth in the pale-eyed water maid

who beckons me girlishly down to deep lake dells

when the warm sun rocks in the reeds. I have my maze,

the muddled meshes of nets where fish have flustered.

I have my Minotaur even, the pike aprowl

in the shimmering shadows of our unstable realm.

Why should the future hunt me, do you think?

What am I to a god? Why should time turn back

to startle me with miracles? — Oh, how I talk!

You’re too good a listener, you let my dreams

off the leash, and send them skipping

into all the perils of light-fingered speech.

Forgive me, I’ll sink back

into my seven-year silence.

CYNTHIA:

You got to your miracle. I was just

beginning to be interested.

ANDREA [appearing in the doorway]:

No, please don’t stop just there. You must excuse

my eavesdropping on your conversation.

I really came to ask you what you wanted,

but your words were so engrossing and entwining,

they wrapped me into silence like a chrysalis.

CYNTHIA:

To tell you what we want is going to be

anything but easy. I’m afraid we’ll seem

the most unmotivated of trespassers.

But if you’d be satisfied with knowing

what brought us here, we might as well both listen

to the Fisher King and his miracle, for I have

a hunch it will help explain away our presence.

ANDREA:

Yes, please go on, Mr. Fisher, before we lose

touch with the excitement of your story.

FISHER:

Well, since you ask me, and the words

have been piling up in my mind for seven years,

and the crown of the dam is gone, here goes.

I’ve lived, I said, as hermetically as a hermit.

If ever I saw wonders before, it was the vine

that blows us countrymen bubbles of dreams,

makes the lamp swing slightly awry

and sets the senses stumbling among stars.

Oh how dry my throat is!

ANDREA:

I’ll fetch a jug of wine, Mr. Fisher,

if you think it will help with your tale.

[Goes out]

CYNTHIA:

You should watch your step, Fisher,

or you’ll go walking with your words

into some poor woman’s inarticulate heart.

FISHER:

Say that, and you’ll tongue-tie me for good.

I never walked before on such deep waters.

CYNTHIA:

A drop of wine in the water will do the miracle

that’s always needed, I feel, to ensure

the lasting success of a wedding feast.

FISHER:

I don’t know what you mean, Cynthia,

but somehow I can’t help feeling

the hard glint of the cynic in your voice.

CYNTHIA:

Never mind it, Fisher, it’s not for you.

You bring out the kindest of my womanhood.

But in a way you’re right:

life made it hard for my untutored youth,

tricked and side-tracked me and on the side

starved me in several senses. And since my wits

saved me from a raw deal, I’m on my way

roughshod over the shams of a shoddy world

to my own private triumphs, and I suppose

to my own private fate. But mold your lips

to the warm mouth of the vine I see arriving.

[ANDREA brings in wine and glasses and sets them

down.]

ANDREA:

There. We left you stumbling

among the stars.

FISHER:

Your kindness takes my speech.

First let me get it back. [Drinks.]

The star I stumbled over, my own peculiar

star, is the root of my bewilderment.

Last night, already ankle-deep in sleep,

I looked out from my window to where the lamp

marking my nets had burned, just half an hour before,

so bright across the water. It was out.

There was not a breath of wind, and it had burned

steady as an old love. I shook off sleep,

went down and got my boat and rowed my way

over the dark water into a fairytale.

The lamp was there, gone out for no good reason.

The lake lay hushed,

wrapped in a windless world on the wrong side

of earthly thought, so luminous and deep

you could have dropped a dream and seen it drift

down into man’s past like a flake of time,

lighting old memories, glinting on Arthur’s sword,

catching the fire of Deirdre’s hair or poising

where Ariadne waited for her love

among the Cretan hills. I stood and waited,

and it seemed to me I was waiting for a word

out in the main of night, buoyed up by the shell

of my own small soul in the water’s hand. And look,

a star flamed out on the hill, barbarously bright,

on this hill, a fierce star, snatching my breath

and spearing me on a piercing point of prayer.

It was a star, the strangest of my days.

I saw it. It was a sign.

I bent my head for a minute, or perhaps five,

and when I looked again my lamp was burning.

ANDREA:

Your lamp burning? You mean it came alight

of its own accord?

FISHER:

Not of its own accord.

I mean a kindling presence

passed through the night and left a flame

balanced on the wick.

CYNTHIA:

Excuse me, Fisher,

but I hope you’ll not condemn a mundane mind

beset by honest doubt.

FISHER:

A miracle

is always private, Cynthia. The faith

doesn’t really come after, but before.

ANDREA:

Your tale was so beautiful, Mr. Fisher,

that I hardly dare tell you what I know.

CHRISTOPHER [appearing in the doorway]:

Don’t bother, Andy. I’ll take the job on.

If you’ll pardon my intrusion, my name

is Christopher, I’m Andrea’s brother,

and I hope you won’t hold it against me if

I have to reveal the flat-footed facts that tend

to accompany miracles. The day you see out there

beginning to pronounce a benediction on the hills

rose on my twenty-first birthday. Knowing well

that it would pass forgotten and unhonored

in the backward shadow of another birth

we shall soon be celebrating, I took my day

under my own wing and marked its advent

with a small display of fireworks concocted

in father’s laboratory. Being, I suppose,

of a romantic turn, I made me a six-foot star

and set a light to it as my birthday sun

swung past its nadir, never dreaming

that the light of my Roman candles was to be

a message in spiritual Morse to souls adrift

on the deep waters of faith.

CYNTHIA:

Oh Fisher,

your shell of soul has sprung a little leak.

ANDREA:

But there’s still the lamp, Mr. Fisher,

the lamp that came alight.

CHRISTOPHER:

If you ask me, there’s still a mystic star.

What moves us to do what we do? What put

fireworks into my head? A breath

blows through us all, and how are we to know

from what uncharted corner of the windrose

it carries its fragrant dust? If we awake

and find small footprints on the lawn,

why should we suppose it was the neighbor’s child

when the heart fancies fairies?

Who says the brain is wiser than the heart?

Mr. Fisher’s star bears all the marks of wonder

And personally I’m happy to think

I was found worthy to be the instrument.

CYNTHIA:

Fisher, you’re right about this air.

Why, only yesterday a fact was still a fact,

as plain as a bowler hat

on the bald head of a Cabinet Minister.

CHRISTOPHER:

There, you’ve put facts in their proper place:

inflexible things that only serve to cover

an absence of imagination. But we’re straying

from the point. There must be some sweet question

that turned your feet to the top

of this long-lost hill.

CYNTHIA:

What I’m now wondering

is what bright face will be framed next

in your mysterious doorway.

CHRISTOPHER:

No mystery about that. There’s only father,

and he’s been listening from the very first.

CYNTHIA:

Listening? You mean he’s heard

all that’s been going on?

CHRISTOPHER:

Heard, seen, digested. Probably made notes on.

Father’s not likely to miss the opportunity

to observe a little normal behavior

on his own doorstep. It has its rarity value,

you know, on this old hill.

[Shouts.] Father, come down and entertain your guests.

They’re dying to meet you in the flesh.

He has his own television up there, and an amplifier.

He’s charted the shallows of your souls by now

and has your reflexes in his card index.

CYNTHIA:

Fisher, I begin to wonder

what sort of star you hitched your boathook to.

ANDREA:

You mustn’t mind. Father’s not a human probe

with X-ray eyes. He’s just a pool of knowledge

afloat with scientific concepts

like lily leaves.

ANDERSON [coming in at the door, looking over his spectacles]: Welcome, young woman, young man.

What brings you both here at the psychological

moment? A miracle? A tip from a prime minister?

Hm. I’ve already invited

an official representative of the World Church.

As for politics, just leave it to them.

They’ll be sure to put their noses in soon enough.

However, I’ll be pleased to have you.

Have either of you any sort of inkling

of what you’re about to witness?

FISHER:

I saw a star. A new star is a portent

of things growing big in the womb of time.

It’s a god’s signature on the sky

put to a deed of reversal.

There’s to be a second coming, isn’t there?

ANDERSON:

Ah, a mystic. I should have thought

of a mystic as well as a mere representative

of the World Church.

CYNTHIA:

I saw no star. An influential friend

passed a remark. I have an inquiring mind.

I should like to be around

when this old world blossoms.

ANDERSON:

Women! You reach into their depths with reason

and draw a perpetual blank.

Reason is of man, the purposeful pattern

of creation. Woman relies on intuition,

the equally purposeful pattern of primal chaos.

My dear Cynthia, with my poor mathematics,

statics, dynamics, biometry, biology, embryology,

psychics and cybernetics I shall never

understand you. I’ll take a chance on you.

Stay to the blossoming. Tonight my son is born.

Three wise men are sent for and will scale

these steps any moment now: Wills, Jordan, Sankey,

incorporating literature, philosophy, religion,

or if you prefer, the feelings, the intellect, the soul.

A mystic and a woman can only be salubrious.

Stay to the blossoming!

[Goes out.]

CYNTHIA:

Tonight his son is born. Will somebody

let me out from behind the bars

of this lonely prison of incomprehension?

ANDREA:

To put into a nutshell

all the labor and heartache of twenty years,

my father lost his faith in woman’s calling

and invented the synthetic man.

CYNTHIA:

This begins to promise. I never dreamed

to have a nylon husband.

CHRISTOPHER:

You must know

that father is a scientist of no mean vintage.

He and a colleague had for years

studied the chemistry of living cells,

contriving models in vitro and playing on them

the rhythmic tunes that one hears beating

in the blues of the blood. And so by slow degrees

they finally approached the somber frontier

where bunches of atoms get up and begin unasked

to dance, and composite molecules gingerly

put on the antennae of sense.

ANDREA:

But till then he was only a scientist

like any other. Grief gave the push

that sent him toppling down fate’s hill.

CHRISTOPHER:

My mother died letting me in for life.

My father was so outraged

at nature’s callous carelessness, her inefficient

happy-go-lucky way of letting valued

life slip through her fingers, and at the same

moment so crazed with sorrow,

he made that very day a solemn pact

with his colleague. He undertook

to create, nurture and bring to maturity

by all the shifts of science, a man: a man

not cast adrift on the chancy sea

of undependable chromosomes, exposed

to this and that inadequacy of the flesh,

but a man made in the image

of the calculated machine, chemically perfect,

the synthetic superman qualified in every gene

to take over the hazardous heritage

of humankind.

ANDREA:

And on the mountain you see

at the other end of the valley, its crags

now tipped with the feathers of sunset,

his colleague set to work on the synthesis

of the female of the species.

FISHER:

God guide his feet beside

the bottomless abyss!

CHRISTOPHER:

And now that the two miracles

Mr. Fisher had sign of have been brought

to maturity, this night a king is born

that shall rule over the future

and take as his queen a woman not born of woman.

CYNTHIA:

This is competition of a sort

we hadn’t reckoned with. What color

are synthetic eyes? What charms have female robots?

CHRISTOPHER:

The whole is hulled in secret till

this midnight, when the first two super souls

are due to walk the earth.

Even Andrea and I have never seen him.

My father has kept him secret as a crime

stalking in the chambers of a lonely mind.

He was afraid of the evil breath

of human curiosity, spite and envy.

Tomorrow, however, the New Man will walk

from this hilltop into the valley, there to meet

his sole and unique love.

FISHER:

My star was a sign

smaller and less miraculous by far

than what it foretold.

CYNTHIA:

And my prime minister

was talking, as so often, above his own head,

somewhere out in the Van Allen belt.

ANDREA:

Mr. Fisher, won’t you take

another glass for the occasion? Won’t we all?

[They all take a glass of wine. As they raise their

glasses, JORDAN, WILLS and SANKEY appear

at the top of the steps and stand watching.]

CHRISTOPHER:

I give you the New Man, and may he prove

kinder and nobler and wiser, and make us

all ashamed.

CURTAIN