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Fiction-Online Volume 4 Number 5
FICTION-ONLINE
An Internet Literary Magazine
Volume 4, Number 5
September-October, 1997
EDITOR'S NOTE:
FICTION-ONLINE is a literary magazine publishing
electronically through e-mail and the Internet on a bimonthly basis. The
contents include short stories, play scripts or excerpts, excerpts of novels
or serialized novels, and poems. Some contributors to the magazine are
members of the Northwest Fiction Group of Washington, DC, a group
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where issues are filed in the directory /pub/Zines/ASCII/Fiction_Online.
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William Ramsay, Editor
=================================================
CONTENTS
Editor's Note
Contributors
"November Wind Brings Little News," a poem
Will Hastings
"Boy on the Water," a short-short
Alan Vanneman
"Pepita," an excerpt (chapter 4) from
the novel "Ay, Chucho!"
William Ramsay
"This Life," part 2 of the play, "Duet"
Otho Eskin
=================================================
CONTRIBUTORS
WILL HASTINGS is an attorney and a former government official. He
now lives in the Berkshires , where he gardens, investigates aerodynamics,
and writes poetry. His works have been published in leading journals.
OTHO ESKIN, former diplomat and consultant on international affairs,
has published short stories and has had numerous plays read and produced
in Washington, notably "Act of God." His play "Duet" has been
produced at the Elizabethan Theater at the Folger Library in Washington,
and is being performed with some regularity in theaters in the United
States, Europe, and Australia.
WILLIAM RAMSAY is a physicist and consultant on Third World
energy problems. He is also a writer and the coordinator of the Northwest
Fiction Group. His play, "Perry's Roots." recently received a reading at
the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
ALAN VANNEMAN is a writer living in Washington. He is a
professional editor, currently working in educational research. His short
story, "Living in the Year of Our Lord 1959 A.D.," will shortly appear in
"Willow Springs."
=================================================
NOVEMBER WIND BRINGS LITTLE NEWS
by Will Hastings
One beach leaf, translucent,
flew across the field alone while others
leapt from ragged clumps of faded goldenrod,
scattering like little fish consumed by fear.
Tall grasses bowed south and west,
waved their tattered seed heads nervously,
mimicking each other's bobbing dance as
pines crowding the horizon moved
in constant worried conversation and
clouds tumbled across the sky.
Nylon shrouds slapped the metal masts of
boats waiting to be pulled from moorings,
hard, hollow sounds drumming up
water rising in twisted sheets and
sending spray fleeing over stumbling waves.
I went out to drink this November wind and
leaned into it, listening and thirsty all day.
====================================
BOY ON THE WATER
by Alan Vanneman
I can see that boy. When I wake up, sometimes, I can't see
anything. I don't know if it's day or night. I don't know if I'm awake or
asleep, if I'm alive or dead, even. I'll lie there sometimes, wondering if I
can even move, wondering if, well, maybe this is it, this is what it's
like to be dead, because there's nothing. I can't hear nothing and I can't
see nothing. It's quiet, and it's dark, and it's just me there, and I can't
even move. And so I'll think, if this is what it is, this is what it is,
and I'll just drift off, and go back where I came from. But then by and by
I'll wake up again and I can see light coming out of the window and maybe
I'll hear somebody moving and I'll think, yeah, I'm still alive. And so I
can see that boy.
I hate sleeping so much, but there's not much else I can do. I can
hardly eat, and hardly drink. It's work for me just to take a drink of
water. I'll drink when I'm dry, but that's it. I drink a beer, maybe, just
to drink a beer, but that's it. I can't taste it, can't enjoy it. I just go
to sleep quicker, but I go to sleep pretty quick anyway, most times, except
when I'm too tired. I just have to lie there. I'm not awake, and I'm not
asleep. I'm just in the dark there.
Food's worse. I never thought I'd live to see the day when I didn't
want to eat, but I have. Food's just work to me. There's no flavor. You
practically choke yourself, and for what? So you can get up and shit. A
pipe is what I am. I eat and drink so I have to get up to shit and piss.
That's it. That's my life. That's what I do. I don't want to get up, ever. I
can't have that, and if I could, what would I have? I could just lie here,
not knowing anything, not knowing if it were dark or light, not knowing if
I were alive or dead. But when I'm not fussing over getting up or getting
down, I can still see that boy sometimes, when it's peaceful.
I can see him whether it's light or dark, just so it's peaceful. I
used to be that boy. I used to be that boy when the birds were singing,
when I couldn't get wait to get outside to see that it was spring again, or
summer, or fall, or winter. I used to be that boy swimming across that
river. I'd swim it every day in the summer, across and back, a mile each
way.
I shiver when I think about it now. I couldn't stand to watch it.
It's hard enough just to think about it, but to watch it, to watch that
little head just getting smaller and smaller, I couldn't stand it. You'd see
it disappearing sometimes just because of the waves, because a river that
big is going to have waves, and finally it's just gone altogether, a little
spot on the river that just disappeared, and you have to wait all that time,
while that boy is on the other side, laughing because he's just so happy for
swimming that river, and you don't even know if he's alive or dead, and
you have to wait all that time, until you can see a little spot, and you
don't even know if it's him or not, you have to wait all that time for that
spot to come back, until you know it's that boy again, and he's safe and
sound. I couldn't stand it.
I can see that boy. I wish I could hold him just once. If I could, I
would hold him safe, and never let him go. Old and weak as I am, I would
hold him safe, not to go across that river ever again. Not to go anywhere
ever again, but always to stay safe right here with me. And I would hold
him safe from all the meanness of the world, and all the coldness, and all
the hurtfulness. I would.
==================================================
PEPITA
by William Ramsay
(Note: This is an excerpt, Chapter 4, from the novel "Ay, Chucho!")
At this time, in the early part of '90, the Salvadoran government,
under U.S. pressure, was trying to come to some kind of accommodation
with the FMLN rebels. So making contact with FMLN cadres wasn't as
tricky as it had been in the mid-'80' s during the heyday of the FMLN
kidnaping and the government death squad murders. Still, getting
together with Doctor Sanchez-Schulz wasn't like setting up an ordinary
business meeting in an ordinary country. So I had to sit there waiting in
my hotel room for word on the meeting. I drank beer, I did crossword
puzzles. I read out the local newspapers out loud to myself, practicing
pronouncing my final "s"'s so as to sound more Salvadoran than Cuban. I
did some thinking about what I was going to tell this FMLN sympathizer
about Cuba and what I was going to do once I got there. I decided it
would be best to keep close to the truth -- why not tell her that I was
trying to get my father out?
Of course with me as "Felipe Elizalde," he wouldn't be _my_ father.
He would just be Dr. Federico Revueltos, a Marxist intellectual of some
stature in the socialist world. The question of my father's falling out with
Fidel would require careful handling. If the good doctor resisted
challenging the "Comandante's" judgment about my old man, I'd have to
improvise.
The second night I got a telephone call from the Major. The next
day I rented a car and went to meet Dr. Sanchez-Schulz, in the very
unrevolutionary setting of a beach cabin on the shores of Lake
Coatepeque about 50 kilometers west on the road to Guatemala. Doctor
Sanchez-Schulz was all cooperation and efficiency, with large but steely
Germanic eyes, and full of enthusiasm for my "project." She was also
quite a woman. About 30, big, presumably like the Schulzes, with
glowing white skin, red hair, a classic nose -- the kind of girl my small
mother perhaps enviously calls "Junoesque." I described my situation and
the background on Dr. Revueltos. She listened, took some notes on a
yellow tablet she held propped up on her khaki trousers, and dropped a
few comments in a cool, high-pitched voice. I made a few attempts at
humor -- and when I did, she would look carefully at me as if I were
speaking Chinese, frown, and smile mechanically.
"So that's the story," I said.
"Yes, an interesting case. Deviationism. Hmmm." She gazed out
across the lake. The large blue eyes glittered.
Finally she put the tablet down, stretched her shapely but massive
arms above her head, and yawned.
"Enough for today, comrade. Time to unwind, I think." She got up,
and poured sparingly from a coke bottle into two glasses and then slopped
in a hefty slug of dark rum. We stood at the window, the lake outside
flashing in the sun. The rum-and-some-coke took on a strong orange cast
in the glare. "You must have suffered, comrade," she said, turning and
looking down kindly into my eyes, swirling her drink, the ice cubes
clinking. For a minute I thought she was referring to the plane ride, then
I remembered who I was -- a long-term ex-prisoner -- and tried to put on a
suitably martyred-but-stoic expression, wishing I had a mirror to check up
on my performance. She chugged her drink, tut-tutted, poured more rum
into my drink, and made herself another one. As she moved around the
room in her tee shirt and shorts, her thighs looked to be about the size of
my torso -- but everything was in the right proportions -- the two massive
bulges below the neckline of her tee shirt gave a sketch of a body a person
might develop a taste for.
Through the picture window I could make out the twin volcanic peaks
of Santa Ana and Cerro Verde, with Izalco peeping like a large nipple
over the rim connecting them.
"Dr. Sanchez-Schulz...." I said.
"Call me Pepita, Comrade Pepita, everybody does."
I gathered that Pepita -- what a name for a goddess -- like many of the
Salvadoran leftists led two lives and was still technically "legal" -- though
she told me later she always worried about knocks on the door in the
middle of the night.
"OB-GYN," she said at one point.
"What?" I said.
"Your specialty."
I remembered the resume. "Oh, yes, yes," I said.
"A tricky field, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Have another drink." She smiled crookedly. "It's not often I get to
meet a colleague."
"Ummm," I said. I realized I didn't know if OB/GYN was her field
too -- if so my goose was cooked. In hot grease -- splat.
She got up and walked to the window. Across the lake the lights of
the Hotel del Lago came on. "Crazies," she said.
"What?"
"Psychiatry, that's me. Hard field, and very specialized. But I still
know how to put on a bandage and set a break -- I help out with the
wounded when I'm out in the field." She waved a hand, gesturing
symbolically toward the boondocks of El Salvador and the invisible
bivouacs of the FMLN guerrillas - - and knocking over her drink with the
recoil swing. She looked down at the lonesome ice cubes on the floor,
sighed, made herself another drink and took a big swallow. "Impossible
field." She had trouble pronouncing "impossible."
"Right."
"But politics takes up too much of my time. The Party comes first."
"Right on, yes, I know what you mean." I took another drink, but only
because I had a feeling I was going to need it.
She looked at her drink, took the bottle and poured some more rum
into it. She eyed the rum bottle, where the meniscus of the liquid inside
was nearing the bottom, and started in to talk about politics. She talked
well, considering the C2H5OH level of her blood -- all I had to do was
grunt and nod my head. Finally she asked me if I would stay to dinner,
we could go over to the hotel, she said, great fish and a special crab soup.
I said yes, wondering if she was going to get through dinner without
ending up under the table. I pictured myself struggling to help her
transport her lovely Wagnerian body back to the cabin.
I'm not much for drinking, you must understand, I do it, but I usually
don't get much charge out of it. I go along to be polite -- especially if it
involves being polite to a beautiful woman who seems hot to party. The
hotel dining veranda was all stained wood and bougainvilleas twining
around the lamp posts, it was a clear night with blue-white stars and
yellow lights from the cabins across the lake. Atmosphere. So maybe I
let myself go a little bit and drank more than I was used to. Rum, Chilean
wine. Pepita had eased off -- but she was working at holding her chin
high, suppressing a ladylike burp or two, trying to recover herself. By
now I was talking a mile a minute about life in the States.
"Yes, I really love Miami."
She frowned. "When were you in Miami, Felipe?"
"Oh," I said. "Well. You know Patty Elizalde, my cousin?"
"No, I don't."
"Good. I mean, too bad. Well, I was visiting her."
Pepita still looked as if she had questions. "She's a poet," I added.
"Ah, a poet,' Pepita said. "I love poetry." She quoted some powerful
verses against the "Colossus of the North," and I cheered her on.
Everything was going gangbusters -- until she got up to go to the powder
room, leaving me alone toying with my cognac glass. At the next table, I
saw a man and his wife, both gray-haired and conservatively dressed. I
stared at them a moment, then the alcohol inside me seemed to take over.
"Hi," I said. "First time here?"
The man looked at me carefully, then smiled. "No, we come here
quite often, for the eels."
"Eels, eh?"
So we started talking about gourmet treats. I introduced myself. The
lady raised her eyebrows.
"Elizalde? From where?" the man said.
I thought back to the resume and told him I was from Santa Ana, a
nearby town.
"An uncommon name. Why, are you related to Cesar Elizalde?"
God, that was the name of Felipe's father.
"Well," I said, "no, not exactly, that is..."
"His son Felipe and our son Pedro went to the _colegio_ together.
They both went into medicine. Are you related?"
Just then Pepita returned.
The woman turned to her. "We've just been talking to your friend, he
appears to be a close relative of a dear friend of mine."
Jesus Christ. "We have to go," I said. "Good night."
Pepita moaned loudly. "I haven't finished my cognac."
"What precisely is the relationship, _senor_?" said the man.
"Well, it's complicated..." I started to say, when this guy at the table on
the other side let out a muffled gasp and stood up, rigid. Suddenly he was
sitting on the floor, his hands to his throat, his legs kicking wildly, his
mouth open wide, only a faint rustle coming out.
Pepita opened her mouth wide, then pulled hard on my arm. "Do
something, Felipe!"
"Go ahead, you take it," I said.
"Help him!" She seemed suddenly sober, but she was wringing one
hand as if she would snap it off.
Anything to get away from those people from Santa Ana. Fortunately
the booze came to my rescue, as I went over and knelt down beside him.
"I'm a doctor," I said in my best Lew Ayres voice to the gray-haired
woman kneeling next to him -- who looked terrified. The man's face had
turned pink with purple splotches. I reached for his wrist as if I were
taking his pulse, but I had no idea what to do. Now I could see his mouth.
"Choking," I said, looking at the woman and nodding sagely. I could feel
Pepita's breath on my neck -- "Heimlich, heimlich," she said. I hadn't ever
done the maneuver, but I'd read about it. I yanked my arm tight around
his middle. "Pull upwards," she said. I tightened my grip, his rigid
abdomen suddenly gave, and out from his throat popped a large chunk of
meat which landed in a nearby tub of geraniums. The man drew several
big, gasping breaths. The woman said, "Thank you, thank you, _doctor_,
and you too, _senora_."
I smiled as Pepita sat the man down. "Oh, it's nothing," I said,
gazing at the faces of the people that had gathered around. The manager came
over, shook my hand, and wanted to know my name. The man from the
next table said "Elizalde."
Pepita looked at him, her gaze somewhat confused by alcohol but
interested. "Let's get out of here," I said. I left money for the bill, I
grabbed Pepita by the hand, and I shook the manager's hand warmly,
seeing his eyes mist with sentiment. Then I turned and pushed Pepita out
of the hotel and back to my little rented Chevrolet.
"Humanity -- always first," she said, her tongue twisting slightly on
the last word.
"Umm."
"I hope you don't mind my butting in." She burped. "I know you
would have handled it better -- but I couldn't help myself."
"Oh no, that's O.K."
"We did right. But!" She frowned. "Mustn't compromise the
Revolution, no public displays. How did they know your name?"
I didn't know, I told her.
"Forceful."
"Me?"
"Yes, you." I was about to say "How about you?" when she kissed
me. I could feel specks of saliva on her mouth as it engulfed mine. It was
like wading in a warm stream -- my face was being swallowed up. I
could feel the car swerving, and I pushed her away, struggling to keep the
car's wheels from going off the road. She lay back in the seat, smiling like
Amelia when she has had a successful day in court -- or shopping. I felt
her hand creep into my lap. She managed to get an awkward but
distracting grip on my groin, but by the time we got back to her place, the
hand had fallen away and she was fast asleep.
Getting her to bed wasn't half as difficult as I had thought, her legs
functioned even though the rest of her was pretty much out to lunch. But
I didn't feel right about leaving her alone, and getting to sleep myself on
the couch wasn't so easy. What a life, "Dr. Elizalde," I said to myself as
the moon crept slyly into the field of vision of the window, pasting its
reflection over the lake and the volcanoes in the distance. I remember
appreciating the fact that I had never seen Amelia drunk, and I pictured
her smooth, cool, plump little legs flopped over mine in the way she had
of lolling around in bed.
When I woke up, it was dark, the blinds had been drawn, and my leg
was being crushed by someone's body. But not by somebody little like
Amelia -- when this body shifted suddenly, it made me grunt and try to
wriggle from under. 'Pepita' -- the name was about twenty-two degrees
too small for her. She squirmed, shifting herself so that my abdomen now
felt the crush. Perspiration standing out on her forehead and between her
wide-spreading breasts, she pulled her legs apart, one on either side of
mine. She moaned and pulled the hair out of her eyes without opening
them. Her breasts _were_ nice, roly-poly, smooth, fuzzless. My prick
sprang to attention.
"No, wait," she said groggily, as I tried to insert myself.
"What, what?'
"Hit me."
"What?"
She picked up my hand and placed it on her arm and then on her face.
"Here, and here."
"Hey, no."
"Yes."
"No."
She slapped my face lightly but sharply. It stung. "Like that."
"Hey!"
She smacked me again, this time harder, on the arm. I seized her right
hand. She struggled to hit me with the left, but didn't connect.
Meanwhile I forced myself into her.
"Oh yes!" she said. "Hit me again!"
Jesus! I thought. I gave her a slap on the cheek. She moaned. Jesus,
I thought again. Then I got too busy to think much anymore.
***
I woke up with the pale morning sunlight reflecting off the lake. I
was alone on the couch, the bed was made, there was a note from Pepita that
she had gone for a walk and would meet me at the hotel for breakfast at
8:30. I looked at myself in the mirror. There was a red mark on my
cheek, and my arm was sore around the elbow.
At breakfast she was dressed in a plain white high-necked blouse and
a navy-blue skirt. Her cheek looked pale and pasty, as if it were covered
with makeup. She smiled thinly at me, looked back at the menu, and
asked if I had slept well.
Me: "Yes."
Her: "Fine. We have a lot of work to do. Waiter, eggs, scrambled
easy, with black bean puree."
Me: "But...."
Her: "But what?" -- looking at me as though I were on the wrong side
of the plate glass in an exhibit in the Museum of Natural History.
Me: "Never mind." I guess if she was going to ignore last night, so
could I.
She told me that she would have to try to call Havana and make
contact with some sympathetic comrades there. Meanwhile, she would
have some materials on Cuba sent over to my hotel, including a detailed
analysis of the political views of the Cuban _maximo_ _lider_. A young
woman walked in wearing a skimpy tight halter. Pepita's face tightened.
"How bourgeois! Really in bad taste!" she whispered to me loudly.
As I walked away, back to my car, I couldn't help wondering if I hadn't
been dreaming the whole thing about the previous night. Except when I
touched my sore arm.
But by the end of the next week I was carrying around plenty of proof
that it hadn't been a dream -- my forearm hurt when I leaned on it and had
developed several black-and-blue spots, my cheekbone felt sore and
looked reddened when I examined it closely in the broken mirror at the
San Jorge. But as long as I could put up with the bruises, hanging around
with Dr. Josefa (Pepita) Sanchez-Schulz was a sure way of forgetting for
a few moments about the Errol Flynn part I was planning to play, to break
into the castle of Zenda and rescue the imprisoned prince -- not forgetting
the varlet Pillo, the friend of the friends of good old Uncle Paco.
The pattern of that day and night at Lake Coatepeque repeated itself.
Cold-eyed interviews with "Dr. Sanchez," interspersed with
sadomasochistic-alcoholic orgies with "Pepita." Once I got used to the
routine, I strove to restrain her enthusiasm and keep myself from getting
beaten to a pulp.
"No, Pepita, not there, no, please!"
"Relax, Felipe dear."
"No, no, no, please!"
But I couldn't guard myself from the hangovers, which appeared to
bother her not at all, but which left me feeling as if my throat were lined
with fuzzballs and that some elf were tying knots in the nerve fibers in my
cerebral cortex.
Let me set the record straight. It wasn't all my doing, situations
like the one with Pepita. Amelia always says I'm such a Don Juan -- but I
wasn't the one who more or less raped and battered someone in the
darkness that night at the lake. I always get bad-mouthed on that. Hell,
I'm short, I'm no beauty, I have kind of a pugnosed, Irish-looking face. I
can't help it if women like me anyway. Can I?
Amelia says it's in my background. She can't possibly mean by that
my father -- to imagine him with a mistress is like picturing the Pope with
Michelle Pfeiffer. She just must mean Latin men. Trite, trite, trite, I
say.
Anyway, over the next two weeks, in between my encounters with Dr.
Josefa "Pepita" Sanchez-Schulz:
I went to lots of movies, new Mexican and American films, and some
of the classics -- even the old murder mystery "Las Manos de Orlac," with
Peter Lorre. And "Gunga Din," with you-know-who.
I didn't drink while I was by myself -- not even a beer.
Whenever the air conditioner in my window of the room at the San
Jorge gave up, as it did continually on the hottest days, I went out to sit
over a _cafecito_ under the blue-and-white awning at the cafe on the
corner, or on a cast-iron bench under a giant fig tree in Cuscatlan Park. It
was April and like everyone else I gazed longingly at the puffy gobs of
clouds that came every afternoon from the east, almost but not quite
bringing the first cooling rains of "winter" -- as the Salvadorans called the
rainy season.
It was in the park that I met Pierre.
==================================================\
THIS LIFE
by Otho Eskin
(Note: This is part 2 of the play "Duet")
CHARACTERS
SARAH BERNHARDT
ELEONORA DUSE
MAN
SETTING
Backstage of the Syria Theatre, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
TIME
April 5, 1924 Evening.
SCENE (ONTINUED)
SARAH
Eleonora, how did we ever come to such a pass? Two women, old enough
to know better, pretending to be people we're not. How did we ever end
up this way?
(ELEONORA pauses and
reflects. After a long
moment.)
ELEONORA
I had no choice. I was born to this life. Theater was the family trade.
SARAH
I suppose theater was my destiny too. All my life I loved to play let's
pretend.
ELEONORA
It was never play for me. Acting has always been a struggle. But I was
brought up in a theater family and acting was all I knew.
SARAH
I think I almost envy you.
ELEONORA
How can you say that? You had everything. I had nothing. You were
brought up in wealth and comfort. I was a member of a poor, itinerant
theater company. My earliest memory as a child was being hungry and
cold -- walking from one village to another, holding my mother's skirt in
my hand.
SARAH
I spent my childhood in a convent school. You can't imagine how
tiresome that was.
ELEONORA
I never went to any school. My father taught me to read.
SARAH
I never knew my father. He seems to have vanished about the time I was
born. I expect my arrival was something of an inconvenience. Some say
he was a count. Or a statesman. He might just as well have been a sailor
from Le Havre. My mother never said. I doubt she knew. Or cared. I don't
think she knew the names of the fathers of any of her children. She was
careless that way.
ELEONORA
How terrible not to know your own father.
SARAH
I never missed him. I had my sisters and my aunts and my dear, dear
mother.
ELEONORA
At least you had a mother. My mother died when I was young.
SARAH
I want to know what happened to your mother, Eleonora.
ELEONORA
Sarah, I don't want to talk to you -- about my mother -- or about
anything else. Don't you have anything better to do?
SARAH
As a matter of fact, I don't. Tell me about your mother. It's important.
ELEONORA
We were on tour and my mother became ill. It was in Ancona and she
could no longer travel. My father put her into the paupers ward but we
couldn't remain with her. We had no money and we had to act to eat.
MAN
We'll come back for you in a few days.
ELEONORA
He told my mother.
MAN
When you're well. You'll be much better soon.
ELEONORA
Then we went on to the next place. We left her to die among strangers.
SARAH
You never saw your mother again?
ELEONORA
A few weeks later, as I was about to go on for a performance -- just like
tonight -- the stage manager brought me a telegram.
(The MAN reads from a
telegram.)
MAN
Fifteen, September, 1875. We regret to inform you that your mother,
Angelica Duse, died at four thirty this morning. She will be given a
Christian burial in the Communal Grave.
SARAH
Did you go on with the performance?
MAN
You will perform tonight. I must insist.
ELEONORA
Was I wrong to do that?
SARAH
You tell me.
ELEONORA
She was hardly more than a girl. Dying alone.
SARAH
No one should die alone. Is that why I am here?
ELEONORA
I don't want your pity.
SARAH
I don't have pity to offer.
ELEONORA
She was just a peasant girl with no education. She could barely read
or write. But I learned much from her. Everything that counts.
SARAH
I too learned much from my mother. Everything that counts. When I was
very young I didn't see her often. She traveled for months at a time. Then
she would suddenly appear, an explosion of silks and parasols and sweet
perfumes. She'd give me a kiss and be off again. I adored her. We had a
wonderful life my mother and I. A lovely home with fine food and
beautiful clothes -- and visitors -- almost every night.
ELEONORA
Somehow I cannot imagine you as a child.
SARAH
I suppose I was a strange girl anxious and morbid frail and sickly.
The doctors said I would die young.
MAN
Madame, your daughter Sarah is seriously ill. You must face the truth
she will not live to see twenty.
ELEONORA
They said this in front of you?
SARAH
It was a frequent subject of family discussion. Like the weather and the
latest fashions
in hats.
ELEONORA
I have always been afraid of death.
SARAH
At least my illness made my mother pay attention to me. She was a
wonderful woman but her instincts were not maternal. Besides, she
always preferred my younger sister. My mother could never abide things
which were imperfect. Jeanne was the pretty one. But when I coughed
blood she had to attend to me. As time passed I became obsessed by death
particularly my own. When I was quite young I used to visit the Paris
morgue. There they kept the bodies that had been dragged from the river.
Murder victims. A man stabbed in a brawl. A woman who had committed
suicide by eating arsenic. I took comfort being among the dead. At least I
think I did. Perhaps that's a story I made up. I can no longer tell the
difference between what happened and what I invented.
ELEONORA
Perhaps there is no difference.
SARAH
But the story about the coffin that was true. I'm almost certain. I
begged my mother to buy me a coffin. She found one made of rosewood
lined with white satin. I slept in it often -- so that I would be accustomed
to my final resting place. And later I would sometimes receive my friends
while lying in my coffin. A nice effect, don't you think, Eleonora?
ELEONORA
It seems too much.
SARAH
There is no such thing as too much. There is never enough.
ELEONORA
You had great practice dying, Sarah. You did it better than anyone I ever
saw.
SARAH
It's true. I was the master of the death scene. (Assuming the persona of
Marguerite Gautier in La Dame aux camelias, SARAH collapses on a
couch.) I am dying, and my joy conceals my death. You will speak of me
sometimes, won't you? Armand, give me your hand. (The MAN kneels at
her feet and takes her hand.) I assure you it's not difficult to die. I'm not
suffering any more. It seems as though life were pouring in on me. I feel
so well. I never felt so well before. I am going to live! Oh, how well I feel.
(SARAH collapses and
lies still for a long
moment. Then SARAH
leaps to her feet,
enormously pleased with
herself. ELEONORA
makes no attempt to hide
her disdain for the
performance.)
SARAH
Now there! Wasn't that marvelous!? Nobody does it better. People don't
die with style any more, have you noticed? If you can't die in style, how
can you expect to live in style? And style is everything, n'est-ce pas?
ELEONORA
Every opportunity I had I came to the theater to see you die. It was one of
my greatest pleasures.
(SARAH regards
ELEONORA coldly)
ELEONORA
I never liked to do death scenes myself. Death should be concealed. It is a
profanation to show death on stage. Every time I played Marguerite in La
Dame aux camelias or those other dying ladies, I thought: some day I will
really die and on that day I will remember that I once acted a parody of
my death. When the soul remembers, what shall it say?
SARAH
When it became apparent that, despite the miracles of medical science, I
would not die young, my mother became seriously concerned. (As
Maman) Sarah, your face is plain. You're too thin. Your hair is
unmanageable. What is to become of you? (As SARAH) My mother was
in despair. (As Maman) We must be realistic. You are without prospects.
(As SARAH) Maman decided her only hope was to marry me off. (To
Maman) Who would marry me!? Who could love me? (As Maman) If
you can't be desirable, you must learn to pretend to be desirable. (As
SARAH) I suppose that is the way it began for me pretending
pretending to die, pretending to love. My first lessons in acting began in
my mother's drawing room. There I learned to stage my entrances so that I
was most entrancing, to produce laughter and tears at will. To make
people love me. My dear mother taught me everything I know
everything that is worth knowing.
(The MAN, champagne
glass in hand, regards
SARAH appreciatively.)
SARAH
(As Maman)
You must make our guest comfortable. Sit with him. (As SARAH) Cher
monsieur, cher bon ami. I owe everything to my mother.
ELEONORA
She made you what you are. Just as my father made me what I am. He
was a journeyman actor who taught me the trade. I've been acting since I
was a child. I can't remember anything else. I had my theater debut when I
was four -- as Cosette in Les Miserables. I remember that just before I
was to make my entrance one of the actors in our company beat my legs
with a strap to make me cry. Then I was shoved onto the stage, tears
flowing from my eyes.
SARAH
You learned the most important thing there is to know about the theater
how to make a dramatic entrance.
ELEONORA
I learned that to act is to suffer. We were a wretched little company
moving from one small town to another, performing melodramas at
country fairs and run-down provincial theater houses. We were probably
pretty awful.
(Shift in light. ELEONORA as a young
girl performing in a play, SARAH and the
MAN are company members. All perform
in a stilted and mechanical style, with no
genuine feeling -- "bad operatic" in
character.)
MAN
(As FATHER)
My darling daughter, there is terrible news!
(ELEONORA, as
DAUGHTER, staggers
back, stricken)
SARAH
(As MOTHER)
The bank has failed!
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
The bank?!
MOTHER/SARAH
Your father has lost everything!
FATHER/MAN
We are ruined!
(FATHER and MOTHER
clasp one another in their
arms and look mournful.)
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
Ruined!?
FATHER and MOTHER
Ruined!
FATHER/MAN
We will have to sell the house to pay my debts.
MOTHER/SARAH
The vineyard. The peach orchard where you were wont to play as a child.
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
Not the orchard! Is there nothing we can do?
FATHER/MAN
There is only one hope.
MOTHER/SARAH
You know Marcello, the baker?
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
The odious old man, fat and bald?
MOTHER/SARAH
That's the one.
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
What about him?
MOTHER/SARAH
He has sought your hand in marriage.
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
But it is handsome, young Rudolfo, the son of the farmer, that I love.
FATHER/MAN
Marcello is rich. If you marry him your mother and I will live out our
lives in comfort.
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
Of course, dear Papa. Send for Marcello and arrange the wedding day.
FATHER/MAN
You are a good daughter.
MOTHER/SARAH
Forget handsome, young Rudolfo.
DAUGHTER/ELEONORA
(Clasping her hands to her heart)
I can never forget my handsome, young Rudolfo. My true -- my only
love.
(Change in lighting, once
again backstage)
SARAH
That was truly dreadful, Eleonora. I don't think I was ever that bad. Even
before I began at the Conservatory. Of course, when I was that age it
never occurred to me become a professional actress. I'd never even been
inside a theater. At that point all I was concerned with was avoiding my
mother's plans for me. I hated the idea of marriage. I could not accept life
as someone's wife. I was in despair. For a while I thought of becoming a
nun to be the bride of Christ. I felt trapped -- without choice
without hope. Then something happened.
ELEONORA
Something happened.
SARAH
My mother took me one night to the Comedie Francaise. When the
curtain rose, I thought I would faint. I knew immediately that the theater
would be my life. Those columns on the stage would be my palace. That
freeze of painted clouds would be my sky. Large tears rolled down my
cheeks, tears without sobs, tears I felt would never cease. I must have
made a spectacle of myself. Maman was exasperated. The audience stared
at our loge. One of my mother's gentlemen friends was beside himself.
MAN
God! What an idiot that child is. They'd better stick her into a convent
and leave her there.
SARAH
I knew then that I would be an actress.
MAN
An actress! How absurd. She'll make a fool of herself. Why can't she be
like her sister?
SARAH
My destiny was clear. I was determined to be the greatest actress of my
time. Of all time. And I did it!
ELEONORA
What you did was not much better than vaudeville.
SARAH
It was better than that dreary mopping around the stage you did in the
name of high art. I learned the acting techniques of the day -- the style of
rhetorical declamation all actors used -- the rigid movements and
gestures.
(The MAN assumes the affected, highly-mannered style of a theater
teacher from the ancien regime, holding a long baton in
one hand with which he beats time.)
MAN
Now girls, straight backs, heads high, toes pointed.
SARAH
We were taught the walk of nonchalance.
(SARAH follows the
instructions, moving in a
highly artificial style.)
MAN
That's lovely. One. Two. Three. Walk.
SARAH
We were taught the walk of fury, of terror. How to walk like a saint -- or
a sinner.
MAN
Today we learn the art of sitting.
SARAH
I learned to sit with dignity, with lassitude, with irony.
MAN
Body back. Scornful half smile. Lovely! The glint of laughter. An
imperceptible shrug. Lovely! Lovely!
ELEONORA
The Conservatory probably ruined you, Sarah. What they taught you was
nonsense.
SARAH
It was my road to success.
ELEONORA
Success came easy to you.
SARAH
Like breathing.
ELEONORA
Too easy. Nothing worthwhile should be easy.
SARAH
I became a member of the company of the Comedie Francaise and those
columns became my palace those painted clouds and skies became my
clouds my sky. I was ecstatic.
MAN
(As A Newspaper Critic)
Sarah Bernhardt has become the leading actress of Paris. A succs fou.
She has won the hearts of the people of Paris and sweeps all before her. I
predict that before long she will be the sensation of all Europe
consecrated the great tragedienne of our time. She is passion. And
reflection. Innocence and perversity. The feminine enigma. Every man
who see her falls in love at once. D. H. Lawrence saw her and was
enchanted.
MAN
(As D. H. Lawrence)
Sarah is the incarnation of wild emotion which we share with all live
things, but which is gathered in us in all complexity and inscrutable fury.
She represents the primeval passions of woman. I could love such a
woman myself, love her to madness; all for the pure wild passion of it.
SARAH
No one played love scenes better than I.
ELEONORA
Sarah, what you did was a picture of love, not love experienced by real
men and women. Your acting lacked sincerity.
MAN
What has sincerity to do with Sarah? One might as well demand sincerity
of a volcano or a hurricane. They are what they are. So was Sarah.
ELEONORA
You knew no limits.
MAN
Her personal life, her fortunes, her bankruptcies, her lovers, her appetites
became the stuff of popular gossip. And she never denied anything.
SARAH
I have nothing to hide.
MAN
She was the greatest showman of her time. Without rival. Without peer.
SARAH
There is only one Sarah.
MAN
A life force.
SARAH
All tears and laughter...
MAN
A comet hurtling through the sky burning with personal ambition -- a
thirst for glory that would be extinguished only by death the
demanding perfectionist and the terror of producers and directors.
(SARAH stands a script in
one hand. She assumes a
pose of irresistible
poignancy. She looks
about the stage with
growing anxiety.)
SARAH
Am I not supposed to be standing in a shaft of moonlight at this point?
MAN
(As The Director)
We must have the shaft of moonlight on (DIRECTOR gestures toward
ELEONORA who assumes the role of a young woman in the play) our
ingnue. The shaft of moonlight must be on her.
SARAH
But it will be infinitely more effective if the moonlight is on me.
MAN
(Firmly)
There can be only one shaft of moonlight, Madame Sarah, and it must be
on her.
SARAH
(With growing impatience)
I must have moonlight. I insist.
MAN
Impossible!
(SARAH rushes
downstage toward The
DIRECTOR and speaks
in a growing state of
indignation and anger.)
SARAH
You have no right to take my moon!
MAN
I am the Director and I will put the moon where I please.
SARAH
If you take my moon, I will leave the production. You are warned.
MAN
I will not be intimidated by you. I will not compromise my artistic vision
in order to satisfy your childish ego, Madame Sarah. And my vision says
one shaft of moonlight (pointing dramatically) on HER!
(SARAH strikes the script
violently with her finger.)
SARAH
The stage directions read: "Bernhardt advances, pale in the moonlight,
convulsed with emotion." I am pale. I am convulsed. I want my moon!
MAN
And she got her moon -- just as she got everything she wanted in life.
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