Читать книгу Polonius - Victor Cilinca - Страница 8

ACT I

SCENE 1

KING, QUEEN and BOOGEYMAN face a background curtain. They start to act before an invisible audience heard only as a confused murmur.

BOOGEYMAN

We bow to Your Highnesses! (The three of them bow to the ground.) We’re here to show you a wonderful and terrible drama! We’re only telling you this from the very beginning so that you can get ready to cry properly. Our sad story is about three illustrious lives, dreadfully befallen by the same bleak misfortune. He (pointing to KING) is the King. A good king, for certain, like all leaders, as long as they are at the helm, sword in hand, with a sharp ear. Before death, any sovereign is good enough for his subjects to dedicate odes to. She (pointing to QUEEN) is the Queen—in our story! (Lewdly) A very good queen. Queens matter less, so long as kings are legitimate. I am Boogeyman. They needed an icon, a nemesis, an Evil one. Yet I, Boogeyman, am on very friendly terms with Their Highnesses. He is like a brother to me, and she is...well...close. These two are—everybody knows....

QUEEN

One soul!

KING

One life!

BOOGEYMAN

One bed....

KING

The King is brave, and the country civil. Have you seen, perchance, our latest oak gallows? The King and the Queen are sitting in the green garden.

BOOGEYMAN

They don’t give a damn!

QUEEN

She is hardworking, young, and faithful....

BOOGEYMAN

And the two of them have only one prince, who’s proud of everything. They are happy, sitting in the green garden.

KING

The subjects are content. Though taxes have increased, the first family in the kingdom has also increased in number and need. And they’re all sitting in the green garden.

BOOGEYMAN

Is that so! Does that mean that I, the Queen’s closest friend, like a brother to the King, should let the grass grow under my feet, watching them idle on the green lawn while their poor subjects toil? No, the demon of passion rules me! The Queen is still young, the country is rich, and the riches are waiting only to be collected. The country is wonderful—it has so many fine (looking at the Queen) shapes. The country would be more content to have me rule! Who would stop me?

KING

I...only I. I’m still alive, and my spouse loves me. My country glorifies me, the ballads that have been dedicated to me are witness to that. The people jeer... (coughs) cheer whenever they see me on the balcony. “To own the country, you must occupy the woman,” a Norwegian general once said, or perhaps it was the other way round. Nevertheless, I have both the country and the woman! I sometimes think while sitting in the green garden, what might they be doing? The country....

QUEEN

(frivolously) How big it is!

KING

Indeed. So far the Norwegians have taken about ten thousand square miles from us, but I haven’t had the time to take care of that. I will think....

QUEEN

He is very clever. He’s passed a number of clever laws. There was the Law of Nourishment, the Law of Censorship, the Law of Gravitation....

BOOGEYMAN

Man would rather die from the hammer of the idle than the whip of the pest! Look at them, sitting comfortably in the green garden while I, Boogeyman, am not! They wear crowns and ties while I don a hat and pullover!

KING

I hosted this man in my house, I treated him decently, I made him the way we are, I cheered him up....

QUEEN

I cheered him too, in his shyness, in his unrevealed manhood. He gained my entire.... (draws a circle in the air) confidence!

KING

Until one day when....

BOOGEYMAN

The King was sleeping in the green garden. I had with me, as if by chance, the hemlock can. (miming) I poured every drop of it into his ear. Indeed, the King looked more sensitive to what was going into his ear than to the delineations of his spies.

QUEEN

An hour later he was cold. Colder than usual. I can tell you now that he was a tyrant. We buried him. Well.

BOOGEYMAN

With pomp. Then we had the wedding meal. The best counsellor of the loathsome monarch and the mourning Queen. We had tiny partridges, suckling pigs in sharp sauce, caviar, champagne from the French....

KING

(dying on the ground, moaning): One thousand ducats a cup!

QUEEN

Very, very good cocktails and music. Oh, how I suffered and grieved!

BOOGEYMAN

Now everything is changed in Denmark. The country is happy. The Norwegians have taken another twenty thousand square miles, but who cares? We’ve got toasting and dancing to do.

QUEEN

He’s clever.

BOOGEYMAN

That’s right. I hate my predecessor’s diplomacy: even our life has completely changed.

QUEEN

We’re sitting in the green garden.

KING

(rising, shaking off the dust) That was our sad story. You know the end now, have heard it a dozen times before. Everybody, I mean every good body sooner or later dies, then the Norwegians come and “liberate” us.

BOOGEYMAN

This has, indeed, been everything—the official version. When the living evidence is lost, destroyed, stolen or locked fearfully away, historians will finally reconstitute an approximate, fictionalised account of these events. A little later, an Englishman will write a play about the customs of the ruling classes in today’s Denmark, and all will laud it.

The actors bow, the curtain falls and, after a pause in which the three of them look at one another uncertainly, they hear a clap. The curtain rises a little then falls again. Silence, broken in upon by the confused, discontented murmur of those who are leaving.