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 affiliated with Washington Independent Writers. However, the magazine is an independent entity and solicits and publishes material from the public. To subscribe or unsubscribe or for more information, please e-mail a brief request to ngwazi@clark.net To submit manuscripts for consideration, please e-mail to the same address, with the ms in ASCII format, if possible included as part of the message itself, rather than as an attachment. Back issues of the magazine may be obtained by e-mail from the editor or by anonymous ftp (or gopher) from ftp.etext.org where issues are filed in the directory /pub/Zines/ASCII/Fiction_Online. This same directory may also be located with your browser at the corresponding website http://www.etext.org The FICTION-ONLINE home page, courtesy of the Writer's Center, Bethesda, Maryland, may be accessed at the following URL: http://www.writer.org/folmag/topfollm.htm COPYRIGHT NOTICE: The copyright for each piece of material published is retained by its author. Each subscriber is licensed to possess one electronic copy and to make one hard copy for personal reading use only. All other rights, including rights to copy or publish in whole or in part in any form or medium, to give readings or to stage performances or filmings or video recording, or for any other use not explicitly licensed, are reserved. 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 success 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 ingenue. 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. ======================================================================================================================================== 18