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Page 9
LADY. You've had everything and yet are not content?
STRANGER. That is the curse. ...
LADY. Don't say that! But why haven't you desired things that
transcend this life, that can never be sullied?
STRANGER. Because I doubt if there is a beyond.
LADY. But the elves?
STRANGER. Are merely a fairy story. (Pointing to a seat.) Shall we
sit down?
LADY. Yes. Who are you waiting for?
STRANGER. Really, for the post office to open. There's a letter for
me--it's been forwarded on but hasn't reached me. (They sit down.)
But tell me something of yourself now. (The Lady takes up her
crochet work.)
LADY. There's nothing to tell.
STRANGER. Strangely enough, I should prefer to think of you like
that. Impersonal, nameless--I only do know one of your names. I'd
like to christen you myself--let me see, what ought you to be
called? I've got it. Eve! (With a gesture towards the wings.)
Trumpets! (The funeral march is heard again.) There it is again!
Now I must invent your age, for I don't know how old you are. From
now on you are thirty-four--so you were born in sixty-four.
(Pause.) Now your character, for I don't know that either. I shall
give you a good character, your voice reminds me of my mother--I
mean the idea of a mother, for my mother never caressed me, though
I can remember her striking me. You see, I was brought up in hate!
An eye for an eye--a tooth for a tooth. You see this scar on my
forehead? That comes from a blow my brother gave me with an axe,
after I'd struck him with a stone. I never went to my father's
funeral, because he turned me out of the house when my sister
married. I was born out of wedlock, when my family were bankrupt
and in mourning for an uncle who had taken his life. Now you know
my family! That's the stock I come from. Once I narrowly escaped
fourteen years' hard labour--so I've every reason to thank the
elves, though I can't be altogether pleased with what they've done.
LADY. I like to hear you talk. But don't speak of the elves: it
makes me sad.
STRANGER. Frankly, I don't believe in them; yet they're always
making themselves felt. Are these elves the souls of the unhappy,
who still await redemption? If so, I am the child of an evil
spirit. Once I believed I was near redemption--through a woman.
But no mistake could have been greater: I was plunged into the
seventh hell.
LADY. You must be unhappy. But this won't go on always.
STRANGER. Do you think church bells and Holy Water could comfort
me? I've tried them; they only made things worse. I felt like the
Devil when he sees the sign of the cross. (Pause.) Let's talk about
you now.
LADY. There's no need. (Pause.) Have you been blamed for misusing
your gifts?
STRANGER. I've been blamed for everything. In the town I lived in
no one was so hated as I. Lonely I came in and lonely I went out.
If I entered a public place people avoided me. If I wanted to rent
a room, it would be let. The priests laid a ban on me from the
pulpit, teachers from their desks and parents in their homes. The
church committee wanted to take my children from me. Then I
blasphemously shook my fist ... at heaven!
LADY. Why did they hate you so?
STRANGER. How should I know! Yet I do! I couldn't endure to see men
suffer. So I kept on saying, and writing, too: free yourselves, I
will help you. And to the poor I said: do not let the rich exploit
you. And to the women: do not allow yourselves to be enslaved by
the men. And--worst of all--to the children: do not obey your
parents, if they are unjust. What followed was impossible to
foresee. I found that everyone was against me: rich and poor, men
and women, parents and children. And then came sickness and
poverty, beggary and shame, divorce, law-suits, exile, solitude,
and now. ... Tell me, do you think me mad?
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