Six Characters in Search of an Author

epub:type="z3998:persona">The Step-Daughter Oh yes, that’s true enough. When I was a kiddie, so so high, you know, with plaits over my shoulders and knickers longer than my skirts, I used to see him waiting outside the school for me to come out. He came to see how I was growing up. The Father This is infamous, shameful! The Step-Daughter No, why? The Father Infamous! infamous! Then excitedly to The Manager explaining. After she Indicating The Mother. went away, my house seemed suddenly empty. She was my incubus, but she filled my house. I was like a dazed fly alone in the empty rooms. This boy here Indicating The Son. was educated away from home, and when he came back, he seemed to me to be no more mine. With no mother to stand between him and me, he grew up entirely for himself, on his own, apart, with no tie of intellect or affection binding him to me. And then⁠—strange but true⁠—I was driven, by curiosity at first and then by some tender sentiment, towards her family, which had come into being through my will. The thought of her began gradually to fill up the emptiness I felt all around me. I wanted to know if she were happy in living out the simple daily duties of life. I wanted to think of her as fortunate and happy because far away from the complicated torments of my spirit. And so, to have proof of this, I used to watch that child coming out of school. The Step-Daughter Yes, yes. True. He used to follow me in the street and smiled at me, waved his hand, like this. I would look at him with interest, wondering who he might be. I told my mother, who guessed at once. The Mother agrees with a nod. Then she didn’t want to send me to school for some days; and when I finally went back, there he was again⁠—looking so ridiculous⁠—with a paper parcel in his hands. He came close to me, caressed me, and drew out a fine straw hat from the parcel, with a bouquet of flowers⁠—all for me! The Manager A bit discursive this, you know! The Son Contemptuously. Literature! Literature! The Father Literature indeed! This is life, this is passion! The Manager It may be, but it won’t act. The Father I agree. This is only the part leading up. I don’t suggest this should be staged. She, Pointing to The Step-Daughter. as you see, is no longer the flapper with plaits down her back⁠—. The Step-Daughter —and the knickers showing below the skirt! The Father The drama is coming now, sir; something new, complex, most interesting. The Step-Daughter As soon as my father died⁠ ⁠… The Father —there was absolute misery for them. They came back here, unknown to me. Through her stupidity! Pointing to The Mother. It is true she can barely write her own name; but she could anyhow have got her daughter to write to me that they were in need.⁠ ⁠… The Mother And how was I to divine all this sentiment in him? The Father That is exactly your mistake, never to have guessed any of my sentiments. The Mother After so many years apart, and all that had happened.⁠ ⁠… The Father Was it my fault if that fellow carried you away? It happened quite suddenly; for after he had obtained some job or other, I could find no trace of them; and so, not unnaturally, my interest in them dwindled. But the drama culminated unforeseen and violent on their return, when I was impelled by my miserable flesh that still lives.⁠ ⁠… Ah! what misery, what wretchedness is that of the man who is alone and disdains debasing liaisons! Not old enough to do without women, and not young enough to go and look for one without shame. Misery? It’s worse than misery; it’s a horror; for no woman can any longer give him love; and when a man feels this.⁠ ⁠… One ought to do without, you say? Yes, yes, I know. Each of us when he appears before his fellows is clothed in a certain dignity. But every man knows what unconfessable things pass within the secrecy of his own heart. One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one’s dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one’s shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody’s in the same case. Some folks haven’t the courage to say certain things, that’s all! The Step-Daughter All appear to have the courage to do them though. The Father Yes, but in secret. Therefore, you want more courage to say these things. Let a man but speak these things out, and folks at once label him a cynic. But it isn’t true. He is like all the others, better indeed, because he isn’t afraid to reveal with the light of the intelligence the red shame of human bestiality on which most men close their eyes so as not to see it. Woman⁠—for example, look at her case! She turns tantalizing inviting glances on you. You seize her. No sooner does she feel herself in your grasp than she closes her eyes. It is the sign of her mission, the sign by which she says to man: “Blind yourself, for I am blind.” The Step-Daughter Sometimes she can close them no more: when she no longer feels the need of hiding her shame to herself, but dry-eyed and dispassionately, sees only that of the man who has blinded himself without love. Oh, all these intellectual complications make me sick, disgust me⁠—all this philosophy that uncovers the beast in man, and then seeks to save him, excuse him.⁠ ⁠… I can’t stand it, sir. When a man seeks to “simplify” life bestially, throwing aside every relic of humanity, every chaste aspiration, every pure feeling, all sense of ideality, duty, modesty, shame⁠ ⁠… then nothing is more revolting and nauseous