In America (48 page)

“I see that I am being made fun of.”

“Madame Marina, shall I escort the lady to the exit?”

“No, no, Eben. It's all right.”

Mrs. Wenton smiled in triumph, then approached the table and looked intently into Maryna's face. “Permit me to have a talk with you. A private talk. I am sent to you on a holy mission by the one dearest to my heart.”

“A private talk. Very well. But I shall invite the gentleman who has told you he is not an actor to join us.”

In the sunken parlor at the end of the car, Bogdan picked a magazine from the reading table, sat on one of the sofas, crossed his legs, and frowned. Maryna seated the intruder opposite herself in the armchair by the bookcase. Melville, whom Maryna decided not to reproach for having failed in his sentry duty, appeared with the coffee. Sternly waving it away, their unwanted guest stared open-mouthed as Maryna inserted something into a short gold tube which she set between her lips, leaned forward when Bogdan rose, striking a match, so he could anoint its tip with a flame, and leaned back, resting her wrist on the lace antimacassar of the arm of the easy chair.

“You have never seen a lady with a cigarette?”

“No!”

“So now you have,” said Maryna. “Do be so kind as to master your astonishment and tell me what you want from me, or let me return to my dinner.”

“I may begin now? You will listen to me?”

“You may begin, Mrs. Fenton.”

“Wenton. I don't know if I can, with that smoke coming out of your nostrils and mouth.”

“You can,” said Maryna. “Try.”

“Last night my son appeared to me from the upper world. My little son, only three when he drowned in the pond near our house, and he had stars in his eyes. ‘Mother,' he said, ‘go to Madame Zalenska. Tell her that the floor of the stage is but a grating beneath which lie the flames of hell. Warn her, Mother, that if she continues to spread bad examples, there will be no pity for her. One day she will take a step, just one step, and that floor will break beneath her with a crash and she will fall into the fiery abyss, and the other actors with her.'” Mrs. Wenton gazed moist-eyed, imploringly, at Maryna.

“I am sorry to hear about your son. When did the dreadful accident happen?”

“Many years ago. But he is always with me. ‘Mother,' he said last night, ‘go in the name of the welfare of humanity, and beg Madame Zalenska to save herself and the many other souls she is dragging into corruption.'”

“Maryna, don't—”

“Corrupting? I corrupting anyone?”

“Yes!” And the intruder launched into a tirade against the plays Maryna was appearing in, singling out
Adrienne,
a story that glorifies the stage;
Camille,
the story of a courtesan; and
Frou-Frou,
the story of a frivolous woman who abandons her husband and little son. “All three”—she concluded—“the hellish conceptions of French authors.”

“It does not appease you that these unhappy women, Adrienne and Marguerite and poor Gilberte, all die at the end of the play? Even if they are as bad as you say, are they not sufficiently punished?”

“But before they are punished, you, Madame Zalenska, with your art, have made them seem very attractive.”

“So I should be punished, too? Is that what you are saying?”

“Maryna, let me—”

“No, Bogdan, I want to hear Mrs. Wenton out. I want to understand her.”

“There is nothing to understand, Madame Zalenska. I come in the name of morality and religion.”

“What religion, if I may ask?”

“I am an evangelist. I am of all religions.”

“Really? In America there are so many kinds of churches and even—I'm told—families in which each member belongs to a different church. And you believe in
all
of them, Mrs. Wenton? Extraordinary. I belong to just one, the Roman Catholic, and follow its precepts of charity and love.”

“I thank heaven that I do not belong to Rome, but all of us, Roman or not, know the difference between good and evil. God has given you talent. Beautiful talent. Why not use it for good? Why do you present such immoral plays?”

“Surely you don't consider Shakespeare immoral.”

“Another beautiful talent fatally misused! Not all of it, but yes, Shakespeare is rife with indecency! Lust, calling itself love, is the theme of
Romeo and Juliet,
and of
Midnight's Summer Dream,
which has all those couples sleeping together on the ground, and both
As You Like It
and
Twelfth Night
have a woman cavorting about the stage in
tights!
And there's witchcraft in the one that shows a wife enticing her husband to murder the king, after the witches prophesy to—”

“Please don't say it,” said Maryna.

“Say what?”

“Mrs. Wenton, what plays would you like me to present?
The Passion Play,
perhaps.”

“Is that another low French play? From its title I—”

“No, no, it is a religious play, performed in Austria. Its subject is the sufferings of Christ.”

“Listen to me, Madame Zalenska. You have a great presence, a great voice. Something speaks through you. It is a woman's gift. Be a platform woman instead of a painted creature on a stage, pretending to be someone you are not. You could speak from your heart. You should be a preacher!”

“And what becomes of my art?”

“Art is a delusion! The greatest delusion in the world. Fame likewise.”

“And money?”

“Money is not a delusion but a snare.”

“A delicate distinction,” said Maryna. “But then I cannot imagine an American thinking money a delusion pure and simple.”

“Why are you criticizing this great country, which has been so kind to you?”

“Ah,” cried Maryna, stubbing out her cigarette and rising, “you are right. It
was
a criticism, glib and unoriginal even—who has not denounced the American romance with money?—but one I have the right, the very American right, to level against my adopted country. For as you may know, my husband and I have this year—it is seven years since we arrived—become American citizens. I am very grateful to this country. And, believe me, I do not think money a delusion, either.”

“Maryna, it's time…” said Bogdan.

“Yes. Yes. May I ask you, Mrs. Wenton, if you go often to the theatre?”

“I am obliged to go”—she was looking up at Maryna with her head cocked—“to chart the progress of infamy.”

“Then you will certainly want to see the play I am learning now and will present on Saturday in Louisville, at Macauley's. It has a scene where a young husband is terribly excited by his wife, who dances a fiery tarantella shaking her tambourine in front of him.”

Mrs. Wenton rose hastily.

“Perhaps you would like me to dance it for you now.”

“You persist in your hellish ways.”

“I persist.”

“My son will be very disappointed. ‘Mother,' he will say, ‘you failed to save Madame Zalenska.' I hope he will not be angry with me.” She had turned to go, then turned back. “Remember, the gates of hell are open.”

“‘Would that Mr. Lincoln had fallen elsewhere than at the very gates of hell!'” Maryna intoned. “I've been told that after he met his tragic end at Ford's Theatre, playhouses everywhere were closed for weeks, while Northern clergymen from their Sunday pulpits unleashed the judgment of God against my devilish profession.”

“Being Kentucky born and bred, I shed no tears over the passing of that atheist Mr. Lincoln. Still, a playhouse is a poor place to die in.”

“I should not mind dying in a theatre,” said Maryna. “Actually, I think I shall mind dying anywhere else.”

“I shall pray for you, you poor misguided soul.”

“Ah, Mrs. Wenton, what is one to do with people like you? You and your kind will ruin the chances of the theatre becoming anything other than shallow entertainment in this country. You will—you will ruin America!”

“In any case,” said Bogdan, hurling his magazine to the floor, “you have ruined our supper. Maryna, come! Come!”

*   *   *

DECEMBER
3. The play with the tarantella. Writhing with lust. Incursion of a religious fanatic. Pathetic threats, tirades. Hellfire. Damnation. M. argumentative, fascinated.

December 4. Why, I suppose, M. is excited by this play. It's
Frou-Frou
turned upside down. The spoiled child-wife has only been pretending to be childish and silly, because that's the way her husband likes her to be. Turns out to be quite intelligent. Isn't deserting her family to pursue an illicit relationship. The problem: she's been made to realize that she's married to an unworthy husband. It's the husband who is at fault, who is not forgiven. No hint to the audience that her striking out on her own—to find out who she is!—may prove a disaster. The play condones her abandoning home, children. Three children, like
East Lynne!

December 5. If desire is forbidden, it will swell and gush. The moon is smaller than the cloud covering it. This last sojourn in California. Reclining. Murmur of the stream. Fidgety smiles and downy, coppery, consenting … Things dreamed of became so well defined. I saddened. As if I had lost them. Smudged desire. Began to dream of M. Can't leave her. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever.

December 6. East and west. Safety and recklessness. Home and danger. Love and lust. Bring Juan María east to join the company as a porter or a waiter? Is this what I want?

December 7. Probably a mistake to do the try-out in Louisville of our already notorious, new play from the Old World. Wife can't leave her husband and three children in Kentucky, I said to M. Kentucky will never permit. She'll have to stay, and make the best of things. M.'s look. At the least, we should change the title. Americans being very literal-minded, the audience may think it's a play for children. Next Saturday, the sidewalk outside Macauley's lined with perambulators. And Maurice thinks giving the wife a Scandinavian name will help public understanding of the play. Suggests Thora. Thora and her husband, Torwald? A bit too Scandinavian, no?

December 8. The problem is, of course, the end. Will American audiences accept the idea of a woman who leaves her husband and children not because she is wicked but because she is serious. Not likely. Wouldn't it be better, I say to M., if the play ended with the wife being reconciled with her husband? He does seem repentant. She can give him one more chance. And if she insists on leaving, walking out into a freezing winter night seems most improbable. It must be almost midnight. Where would she go at that hour? To a hotel, if there
is
a hotel in that little village? Isn't it all rather melodramatic? Couldn't she wait until morning?

December 9. I thought you liked happy endings, I say. I think this
is
a happy ending, M. says. You can't see why she wants to leave? All too well, I say. Everyone dreams of bursting the chains of marriage and starting over. Yes, M. says, but I don't now. And you, Bogdan? Do you want me to answer that? I reply. I thought we were discussing how to end this play. Husband, husband, M. says, we're always talking about ourselves when we talk of anything else. Yes, answer. Then why
can't
the ending be changed, I asked. I'm not leaving, I said.

December 11. M. agrees, reluctantly. Nora—no, Thora!—will think of leaving. But won't. Will forgive her husband. Should it go well here, we can restore the real ending when we bring it to New York.

December 12.
Thora
opened last night. M. magnificent. Maurice quite decent as the obtuse husband. Audience deplorable. Reviewers irate, even with the happy ending. Just as I feared. Offense to Christian morals and the American family. And oh, the tarantella.

*   *   *

HENRIK IBSEN'S
Thora,
with Marina Zalenska in the title role, had its only performance in Louisville, Kentucky.

While Maryna went on looking for another new play, Maurice Barrymore said he had decided to write one for her that could not fail, on the theme about which she'd often spoken so movingly in his presence: the martyrdom of Poland under the Russian oppressors. The title was
Nadjezda,
after one of the two roles he was creating for Maryna: a beautiful Polish woman whose husband has been imprisoned by the Russians for his part in the 1863 Uprising. Prince Zabouroff, the chief of police, convinces Nadjezda to yield to his lust in exchange for a promise to release her husband; instead, Zabouroff sends him to the firing squad, and returns the bullet-ridden corpse to Nadjezda, whereupon she consecrates their little daughter to revenge, swallows poison, falls on her husband's body, and dies. And Maryna would also play the beautiful daughter, Nadine, when grown, who avenges her parents' deaths. Zabouroff, ever dissolute, ever predatory, has invited Nadine to his office late one night; as he lunges at her, she manages to stab him with a knife seized from a nearby table set for their intimate supper. The play ends with Nadine swallowing poison and dying in the arms of her lover (the role Barrymore wrote for himself) when she discovers he is the son of the man she has killed.

Maryna couldn't refuse to do the play: it was Maurice's gift to her, and Maurice was a splendid actor. She was very very fond of Maurice. If only his fondness for her hadn't inspired this maudlin caricature of Polish patriotism, Polish suffering, Polish chivalry. For instance, when, before fleeing, Nadine sets two candles by Zabouroff's head and says a brief prayer … Maurice, really!

“Maudlin? Oh. What I meant is that she repents of her violence, you see. I should say the pious gesture is touching, Madame Marina. Don't you think?”

“I don't, Maurice. This is sentimentality, not piety. Nadine may be appalled by her own violence but she should not repent. The Czarist police chief deserves to die.”