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Page 110
LADY. But I can never be yours.
STRANGER. I've become yours.
LADY. What have you got from me?
STRANGER. How can you ask me that?
LADY. All the same--I'm not sure that you think it, though I feel
you feel it--you wish me far away.
STRANGER. I must be a certain distance from you, if I'm to see you.
Now you're within the focus, and your image is unclear.
LADY. The nearer, the farther off!
STRANGER. Yes. When we part, we long for one another; and when we
meet again, we long to part.
LADY. Do you really think we love each other?
STRANGER. Yes. Not like ordinary people, but unusual ones. We
resemble two drops of water, that fear to get close together, in
case they should cease to be two and become one.
LADY. This time we knew the dangers and wanted to avoid them. But
it seems that they can't be avoided.
STRANGER. Perhaps they weren't dangers, but rude necessities; laws
inscribed in the councils of the immortals. (Silence.) Your love
always seemed to have the effect of hate. When you made me happy,
you envied the happiness you'd given me. And when you saw I was
unhappy, you loved me.
LADY. Do you want me to leave you?
STRANGER. If you do, I shall die.
LADY. And, if I stay, it's I who'll die.
STRANGER. Then let's die together and live out our love in a higher
life; our love, that doesn't seem to be of this world. Let's live
it out in another planet, where there's no nearness and no
distance, where two are one; where number, time and space are no
longer what they are in this.
LADY. I'd like to die, yet I don't want to. I think I must be dead
already.
STRANGER. The air up here's too strong.
LADY. You can't love me if you speak like that.
STRANGER. To be frank, there are moments when you don't exist for
me. But in others I feel your hatred like suffocating smoke.
LADY. And I feel my heart creeping from my breast, when you are
angry with me.
STRANGER. Then we must hate one other.
LADY. And love one another too.
STRANGER. And hate because we love. We hate each other, because
we're bound together. We hate the bond, we hate our love; we hate
what is most loveable, what is the bitterest, the best this life
can offer. We've come to an end!
LADY. Yes.
STRANGER. What a joke life is, if you take it seriously. And how
serious, if you take it as a joke! You wanted to lead me by the
hand towards the light; your easier fate was to make mine easier
too. I wanted to raise you above the bogs and quicksands; but you
longed for the lower regions, and wanted to convince me they were
the upper ones. I ask myself if it's possible that you took what
was wicked from me, when I was freed from it; and that what was
good in you entered into me? If I've made you wicked I ask your
pardon, and I kiss your little hand, that caressed and scratched me ...
the little hand that led me into the darkness ... and on the long
journey to Damascus. ...
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