Travesties (12 page)

(
CARR
has entered. Pause
.)

GWEN
: (
Censoriously
)        That's my brother.

CECILY
: Your brother?

GWEN
: Yes. My brother, Henry Carr.

CECILY
: Do you mean that he is not Tristan Tzara the artist?

GWEN
: Quite the contrary. He is the British Consul.

(
CARR
has frozen like a hunting dog. He is holding the folder given to him by
CECILY
in the Library
.
BENNETT
opens the door
.)

BENNETT
: Mr Tzara…

(
TRISTAN
enters
.
BENNETT
retires
.
TZARA
carries his folder
.)

GWEN
: Tristan! My Tristan!

CECILY
: Comrade Jack!

GWEN
: Comrade Jack?

CECILY
: Yes. The gentleman who has his arm round your waist is a luminary of the Zimmerwald Left.

GWEN
: Are they Bolsheviks?

CECILY
: Well, they dine with us.

GWEN
: A gross deception has been practised upon us. My poor wounded Cecily!

CECILY
: My sweet wronged Gwendolen!
(
They are making for the door
.)

CECILY
(
Halting
): There is just one question I should like to ask Mr Carr.

GWEN
: An admirable idea. Mr Tzara, there is a question I should like to put to you.

CECILY
: What in truth
was
your opinion of the essay I gave you to read?

GWEN
: What indeed
did
you think of the chapter I showed you?

CARR
(
Timidly
): Very… well written… Interesting style…

TZARA
(
Timidly
): Very … well read… Rich material.

CECILY
: But as a social critique –?

GWEN
: But as art for art's sake –?

CARR
(
Giving up): Rubbish!
He's a madman!

TZARA
: Bilge! It's unreadable!

GWEN
&
CECILY
: Oh! Hypocrites!

CARR
: I'm sorry! 'Twas for love!

GWEN
&
CECILY
: For love?

GWEN
: That is true…

CECILY
: Yes, it is.

(
In unison they move towards the men, then in unison change their minds
.)

GWEN
&
CECILY
: But our intellectual differences are an insuperable barrier!
(
The door closes behind them
.)
(
CARR
and
TZARA
sink into the two main chairs
.)

CARR
: By the way, I hear that Bennett has been showing you my private correspondence.
(
BENNETT
enters with champagne for two on a tray. He begins to dispense it
.)

TZARA
: He has radical sympathies.

CARR
: There is no one so radical as a manservant whose freedom of the champagne bin has been interfered with.

TZARA
: So I believe.

CARR
: Well, I've put a stop to it.

TZARA
: Given him notice?

CARR
: Given him more champagne.

TZARA
: We Romanians have much to learn from the English.

CARR
: I expect you'll be missing Sofia.

TZARA
: You mean Gwendolen.

CARR
(
Frowns; clears
): Bucharest.

TZARA
: Oh, yes. Yes. The Paris of the Balkans …

CARR
: Silly place to put it, really… (
Sips
) Is this the Perrier-Jouet, Brut, ‘89????!!!

BENNETT
: No, sir.

CARR
(
He has read the writing on the wall): All gone …?

BENNETT
(
Implacably
): I'm afraid so, sir.

CARR
: Very well, Bennett.

BENNETT
: I have put the newspapers and telegrams on the sideboard, sir.

CARR
: Anything of interest?

BENNETT
: The
Neue Zuricher Zeitung
and the
Zuricher Post
announce respectively the cultural high and low point of the theatrical season at the Theater zur Kaufleuten yesterday evening. The
Zeitung
singles you out for a personal triumph in a demanding role. The Minister telegraphs his congratulations, and also thanks you for your telegram to him. He urges you to prevent Mr Ulyanov leaving Swizterland at all costs.
(
BENNETT
leaves
.
PAUSE
.)

CARR
: Irish Lout…

TZARA
: Russian…

CARR
: No – whatsisname – Deidre.

TZARA
: Bridget… (
pause
)

CARR
: Joyce!

TZARA
: Joyce!

CARR
: Lout. Quadri-oculate Irish git… Came round to the dressing room and handed me ten francs like a
tip
– bloody nerve – Sponger –
(
BENNETT
enters
.)

BENNETT
: Mr Joyce.
(
JOYCE
enters in an agitated state
.)

JOYCE
: Where is your sister?

CARR
: Her money is in trust.

JOYCE
: I have only one request to make
of you
–

CARR
: And I have only one request to make of
you
–
why for God's sake cannot you contrive just once to wear the jacket that is suggested by your trousers??

(
It is indeed the case that
JOYCE
is now wearing the other halves of the outfit he wore in Act One
.)

JOYCE
(
With dignity
): If I could do it once, I could do it every time. My wardrobe got out of step in Trieste, and its reciprocal members pass each other endlessly in the night. Now – could you let me have the twenty-five francs.

CARR
: What twenty-five francs?

JOYCE
: You were given eight tickets to sell at five francs per ticket. My books indicate that only fifteen francs has been received from you.

CARR
: I have spent three hundred and fifty francs of my own money so that your off-the-peg production should boast one character who looked as if he was acquainted with a tailor. If you hope to get a further twenty-five francs out of me you will have to drag me through the courts. (
Deliberately) You are a swindler and a cad!

TZARA
(
Handing
JOYCE
his folder
): Furthermore, your book has much in common with your dress. As an arrangement of words it is graceless without being random; as a narrative it lacks charm or even vulgarity; as an experience it is like sharing a cell with a fanatic in search of a mania.
(
GWEN
and
CECILY
enter
.
JOYCE
is scanning the manuscript
.)

JOYCE
: Who gave you this manuscript to read?

GWEN
: I did!

JOYCE
: Miss Carr, did I or did I not give you to type a chapter in which Mr Bloom's adventures correspond to the Homeric episode of the Oxen of the Sun?

GWEN
: Yes, you did! And it was wonderful!

JOYCE
: Then why do you return to me an ill-tempered thesis purporting to prove, amongst other things, that Ramsay MacDonald is a bourgeois lickspittle gentleman's gentleman?

GWEN
: (Aaaah)

TZARA
: (Ohhhh)

CECILY
: (Oops!)

CARR
: (Aaah!)

JOYCE
(
Thunders
): Miss Carr, where is the missing chapter???

CARR
: Excuse me – did you say Bloom?

JOYCE
: I did.

CARR
: And is it a chapter, inordinate in length and erratic in style, remotely connected with midwifery?

JOYCE
: It is a chapter which by a miracle of compression, uses the gamut of English literature from Chaucer to Carlyle to describe events taking place in a lying-in hospital in Dublin.

CARR
(
Holding out his folder
): It is obviously the same work.
(
GWEN
and
CECILY
swap folders with cries of recognition
.
CARR
and
TZARA
close in. A rapid but formal climax, with appropriate cries of
‘Cecily! Gwendolen! Henry! Tristan!'
and appropriate embraces
.)
(
Music, appropriate to the period. Light change. A formal, short dance sequence
.
TZARA
dances with
GWEN, CARR
with
CECILY. JOYCE
and
BENNETT
dance independently. The effect is of course a complete dislocation of the play
.
CARR
and
CECILY
dance out of view. The others continue, and then they, too, dance offstage just as
OLD CARR
dances back on stage with
OLD CECILY
.
(
OLD CECILY
is about 80 of course, like Old Carr. They dance a few decrepit steps
.)

OLD CECILY
: No, no, no, no it's pathetic though there was a court case I admit, and your trousers came into it, I don't deny, but you never got close to Vladimir Ilyich, and I don't remember the other one. I do remember Joyce, yes you are quite right and he was Irish with glasses but that was the year after – 1918 – and the train had long gone from the station! I waved a red hanky and cried long live the revolution as the carriage took him away in his bowler hat and yes, I said yes when you asked me, but he was the leader of millions by the time you did your Algernon …

CARR
: Algernon – that was him.

OLD CECILY
: I said that was the year after –

CARR
: After What?

OLD CECILY
: You never even saw Lenin.

CARR
: Yes I did. Saw him in the cafés. I knew them all. Part of the job.

OLD CECILY
: And you were never the Consul.

CARR
: Never said I was.

OLD CECILY
: Yes you did.

CARR
: Should we have a cup of tea?

OLD CECILY
: The Consul was Percy somebody.

CARR
: (Bennett.)

OLD CECILY
: What?

CARR
(
Testily
): I said the Consul's name was Bennett!

OLD CECILY
: Oh yes… Bennett… That's another thing–

CARR
:
Are we going to have a cup of tea or not?

OLD CECILY
: And I never helped him write
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
. That was the year before, too. 1916.

CARR
: Oh, Cecily. I wish I'd known then that you'd turn out to be a pedant! (
Getting angry
) Wasn't this – Didn't do that – 1916 – 1917 –
What of it?
I was here. They were here. They went on. I went on. We all went on.

OLD CECILY
: No, we didn't. We stayed. Sophia married that artist. I married you. You played Algernon. They all went on.
(
Most of the fading light is on
CARR
now
.)

CARR
: Great days … Zurich during the war. Refugees, spies, exiles, painters, poets, writers, radicals of all kinds. I knew them all. Used to argue far into the night… at the Odeon, the Terrasse … I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you're either a revolutionary or you're not, and if you're not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can't be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary …
   I forget the third thing.
(
BLACKOUT
.)