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Page 115
STRANGER. But sometimes you've even despised me?
WOMAN. Yes, when you were ridiculous. A man in love is always
ridiculous. Do you know what a cox-comb is? That's what a lover's
like.
STRANGER. But if any man who loves you is ridiculous, how can you
respond to his love?
WOMAN. We don't! We submit to it, and search for another man who
doesn't love us.
STRANGER. But if he, in turn, begins to love you, do you look for a
third?
WOMAN. Perhaps it's like that.
STRANGER. Very strange. (There is a silence.) I remember you were
always dreaming of someone you called your Toreador, which I
translated by 'horse butcher.' You eventually got him, but he gave
you no children, and no bread; only beatings! A toreador's always
fighting. (Silence.) Once I let myself be tempted into trying to
compete with the toreador. I started to bicycle and fence and do
other things of the kind. But you only began to detest me for it.
That means that the husband mayn't do what the lover may. Later you
had a passion for page boys. One of them used to sit on the
Brussels carpet and read you bad verses. ... My good ones were of
no use to you. Did you get your page boy?
WOMAN. Yes. But his verses weren't bad, really.
STRANGER. Oh yes, they were, my dear. I know him! He stole my
rhythms and set them for the barrel organ.
WOMAN (rising and going to the door.) You should be ashamed of
yourself.
(The TEMPTER conies in, holding a letter in his hand.)
TEMPTER. Here's a letter. It's for you. (The WOMAN takes it, reads
it and falls into a chair.) A farewell note! Oh, well! All
beginnings are hard--in love affairs. And those who lack the
patience to surmount initial difficulties--lose the golden fruit.
Pages are always impatient. Unknown youth, have you had enough?
STRANGER (rising and picking up his hat). My poor Anna!
WOMAN. Don't leave me.
STRANGER. I must.
WOMAN. Don't go. You were the best of them all.
TEMPTER. Do you want to begin again from the beginning? That would
be a sure way to make an end of this. For if lovers only find one
another, they lose one another! What is love? Say something witty,
each one of you, before we part.
WOMAN. I don't know what it is. The highest and the loveliest of
things, that has to sink to the lowest and the ugliest.
STRANGER. A caricature of godly love.
TEMPTER. An annual plant, that blossoms during the engagement, goes
to seed in marriage and then sinks to the earth to wither and die.
WOMAN. The loveliest flowers have no seed. The rose is the flower
of love.
STRANGER. And the lily that of innocence. That can form seeds, but
only opens her white cup to kisses.
TEMPTER. And propagates her kind with buds, out of which fresh
lilies spring, like chaste Minerva who sprang fully armed from the
head of Zeus, and not from his royal loins. Oh yes, children, I've
understood much, but never this: what the beloved of my soul has to
do with. ... (He hesitates.)
STRANGER. Well, go on!
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