Travesties (2 page)

The play is set in Zurich, in two locations: the drawing room of Henry Carr's apartment
(‘
THE ROOM
'),
and a section of the Zurich Public Library
(
‘THE LIBRARY')
.
Most of the action takes place within Carr's memory, which goes back to the period of the First World War, and this period is reflected appropriately in the design and the costumes, etc. It is to be supposed that Old Can has lived in the same apartment since that time
.

The
ROOM
must
have the main door Centre Upstage: most of the entrances would be weakened seriously if they occuned from the side. Double doors would be best. However, there is also at least one side door. There is a centre table with a good chair on each side, and a side table, apart from other furniture
.

The
LIBRARY
suggests a larger scale
–
tall bookcases, etc. In Act Two Cecily (the librarian) requires a counter or desk, which need not necessarily be in view at the beginning of the play. Some of the entrances, e.g. Nadya's, are probably through a door rather than from the wings
.

The
LIBRARY
in the Prologue and the Second Act does not necessarily have to be presented from the same angle
.

We begin in the
LIBRARY

There are places for
JOYCE, LENIN
and
TZARA
.

GWEN
sits with
JOYCE
.
They are occupied with books, papers, pencils
…

LENIN
is also writing quietly, among books and papers
,
TZARA
is writing as the play begins. On his table are a hat and a large pair of scissors
,
TZARA
finishes writing, then takes up the scissors and cuts the paper, word by word, into his hat. When all the words are in the hat he shakes the hat and empties it on the table. He rapidly separates the bits of paper into random lines, turning a few over, etc., and then reads the result in a loud voice
.

TZARA
: Eel ate enormous appletzara
key dairy chef's hat he'll learn oomparah!
Ill raced alas whispers kill later nut east,
noon avuncular ill day Clara!

CECILY
(
Entering
): Sssssssh!

(
Her admonition is to the Library in general. She enters from one wing, not through the door, and crosses the stage, leaving by the opposite wing, moving quite quickly, like someone who is busy. No one takes any notice.)

JOYCE
(
Dictating to
GWEN
): Deshill holles eamus …

GWEN
(
Writing
): Deshill holles eamus …

JOYCE
: Thrice.

GWEN
: Uh-hum.

JOYCE
: Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.

GWEN
: Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.

JOYCE
: Thrice.

GWEN
: Uh-hum.

JOYCE
: Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa!

GWEN
: Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa!

JOYCE
: Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa!

GWEN
: Likewise thrice?

JOYCE
: Uh-hum.

(
By this time
TZARA
has replaced the bits of paper into the hat. He takes out a handful, and reads the words one at a time, placing them into the hat as he reads each one.)

TZARA
: Clara avuncular!
Whispers ill oomparah!
Eel nut dairy day
Appletzara …
… Hat!

CECILY
(
Re-entering
): Ssssssh!

(
CECILY
has come in with a few books which she places by
LENIN
.)
(
TZARA
leaves the Library through the door.)
(
It is now necessary that the audience should observe the following
:
GWEN
has received from
JOYCE
a folder
.
CECILY
receives an identical folder from
LENIN
.
These folders, assumed to contain manuscripts, are eye-catching objects in some striking colour. Each girl has cause to place her folder down on a table or chair, and each girl then picks up the wrong folder. In the original production
,
GWEN
dropped a glove, etc., etc., but it is not important how this transference is achieved, only that it is
seen
to occur.)
(
GWEN
is now ready to leave the Library, and does so, taking Lenin's folder with her.)
(
CECILY
also leaves, not through the door but into the wings.)
(
NADYA
enters as
GWEN
leaves; they bump into each other, and each apologizes
,
GWEN
in English
,
NADYA
in Russian.)
(
NADYA
enters in an agitated state. She looks round for her husband and goes straight to him. Their conversation is in Russian.)

NADYA
: Vylodya!

LENIN
: Shto takoya? (
What is it?)

NADYA
: Bronsky prishol. On s'kazal shto v'Peterburge revolutsia!

(
Bronsky came to the house. He says there's a revolution in St Petersburg.)

LENIN
: Revolutsia!

(
At this point
JOYCE
stands up and begins to walk up and down searching his pockets for tiny scraps of paper on which he has previously written down things he may wish to use. While the Lenins continue their conversation
,
JOYCE
fishes out, one by one, these scraps of paper and reads out what he finds on them.)

JOYCE
(
Regarding his first find
): ‘Morose delectation … Aquinas tunbelly … Frate porcospino …'
(
He decides he doesn't need this one. He screws it up and throws it away, and finds a second
…)
‘Und alle Schiffe brucken …'
(
He decides to keep this one, so re-pockets it. He takes out another.)
‘Entweder transubstantiality, oder consubstantiality, but in no way substantiality…'
(
He decides to keep this one as well. Meanwhile, the
LENINS
have been continuing in the following manner
):

LENIN
: Otkuda on znayet? (
How does he know?)

NADYA
: Napisano v'Gazetakh. On govorit shto Tsar sobiraet'sia otretchsya ot prestola! (
It's all in the papers. He says the Tsar is going to abdicate!)

LENIN
: Shtoty! (
No
!)

NADYA
: Da! (
Yes!
)

LENIN
: Eto v'gazetakh? (
Is that in the newspapers?)

NADYA
: Da – da. Idiom damoi. On zhdyot. (
Yes
–
yes. Come on home. He's waiting.)

LENIN
: On tam? (
Is he there?
)

NADYA
: Da! (
Yes!
)

LENIN
: Gazetakh u nievo? (
He brought the paper?
)

NADYA
: Da! (
Yes!
)

LENIN
: Ty sama vidyela? (
You saw it yourself
)

NADYA
: Da, da, da! (
Yes, yes, yes!
)

(
JOYCE
's
voice, however, has dominated this passage. He now encounters a further scrap of paper which is lying on the floor
:
LENIN
has inadvertently dropped it
.
JOYCE
picks this paper up
.
NADYA
is leaving the Library, through the door
,
LENIN
saying in Russian
…)

LENIN
: Idyi nazad y skazhee y'moo shto ya prichazhoo. Tolka sobieru svayi b'magi. (
Go home ahead of me. I will collect my papers and follow
.)
(
LENIN
is gathering his papers
.
JOYCE
is examining the dropped paper
.)

JOYCE
: ‘Lickspittle – capitalist – lackeys – of imperialism.'
(
LENIN
recognizes these words. He pauses, and approaches
JOYCE
.)

LENIN
: Pardon! … Entschuldigung! … Scusi! … Excuse me!

JOYCE
(
Handing him the paper
): Je vous en prie! Bitte! Prego! It's perfectly all right!
(
LENIN
leaves
.
JOYCE
is alone now
.)
(
Declaims
) A librarianness of Zurisssh
only emerged from her niche
when a lack of response
to
Nicht Reden! Silence!
obliged her to utter the plea –

CECILY
(
Entering as before): –
ssssssh!

(
JOYCE
accedes to her request, puts on his hat, picks up his stick
,
and while she regards him with disapproval he leaves at a strolling pace, singing
…)

JOYCE
: If you ever go across the sea to Ireland …
It may be at the closing of the day …
You can sit and watch the moon rise over Claddagh
and watch the sun go down on Galway Bay …

(
The stage now belongs to
OLD CARR
.
The
LIBRARY
must now be replaced by the
ROOM
.
Needless to say, the change should occur with as little disruption as possible, and the use of music as a bridge is probably desirable
.)
(
NOTE: In the original production, the Room contained a piano which was at different times used by Old Carr, and in this instance Old Carr played (very badly) the tune of Galway Bay while the set was changed; the piano being right downstage in a permanent position. It is possible that
CARR
has been immobile on stage from the beginning, an old man remembering
…)

CARR
: He was Irish, of course. Though not actually from Limerick – he was a Dublin man, Joyce, everybody knows that, couldn't have written the book without. There was a young man from Dublin, tum-ti-ti-tum-ti-ti troublin' … I used to have quite a knack for it, but there's little encouragement for that sort of thing in the Consular Service. Not a great patron of poetry, the Service, didn't push it, never made a feature of it. I mean you'd never say that a facility for rhyme and metre was the sine qua non of advancement in the Consular Service … Didn't
dis
courage it, I'm not saying that, on the contrary, a most enlightened and cultivated body of men, fully sympathetic to all the arts (look no further than the occasion that brought us together, me and Joyce, brought him to this room, full support, a theatrical event of the first water, great success, personal triumph in the demanding role of Ernest, not Ernest, the other one, in at the top, have we got the cucumber sandwiches for Lady Bracknell, notwithstanding the unfortunate consequences. Irish lout. Not one to bear a grudge, however, not after all these years, and him dead in the cemetery up the hill, no hard feelings either side, unpleasant as it is to be dragged through the courts for a few
francs (though it wasn't the money, or the trousers for that matter),
but
, be that as it may, all in all, truth be told, the encouragement of poetry writing was not the primary concern of the British Consulate in Zurich in 1917, and now I've lost my knack for it. Too late to go back for it. Alas and alack for it. But I digress. No apologies required, constant digression being the saving grace of senile reminiscence.
    My memoirs, is it, then? Life and times, friend of the famous. Memories of James Joyce. James Joyce As I Knew Him. The James Joyce I Knew. Through the Courts With James Joyce … What was he like, James Joyce, I am often asked. It is true that I knew him well at the height of his powers, his genius in full flood in the making of
Ulysses
, before publication and fame turned him into a public monument for pilgrim cameras more often than not in a velvet smoking jacket of an unknown colour, photography being in those days a black and white affair, but probably real blue if not empirical purple and sniffing a bunch of sultry violets that positively defy development, don't go on, do it on my head, caviar for the general public, now then –
Memories of James Joyce
… It's coming.
    To those of us who knew him, Joyce's genius was never in doubt. To be in his presence was to be aware of an amazing intellect bent on shaping itself into the permanent form of its own monument – the book the world now knows as
Ulysses
! Though at that time we were still calling it (I hope memory serves) by its original title, Elasticated Bloomers.
    A prudish, prudent man, Joyce, in no way profligate or vulgar, and yet convivial, without being spend-thrift, and yet still without primness towards hard currency in all its transmutable and transferable forms and denominations, of which, however, he demanded only a sufficiency from the world at large, exhibiting a monkish unconcern for worldly and bodily comforts, without at the same time shutting himself off from the richness of human society, whose temptations, on the other hand, he met with an ascetic disregard tempered only by sudden and catastrophic aberrations – in short, a complex personality, an enigma, a
contradictory spokesman for the truth, an obsessive litigant and yet an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized – in short a liar and a hypocrite, a tight-fisted, sponging, fornicating drunk not worth the paper, that's that bit done.
   Further recollections of a Consular Official in Whitest Switzerland. The Ups and Downs of Consular Life in Zurich During the Great War: A Sketch.
   'Twas in the bustling metropolis of swiftly gliding trams and greystone banking houses, of cosmopolitan restaurants on the great stone banks of the swiftly-gliding snot-green (mucus mutandis) Limmat River, of jewelled escapements and refugees of all kinds, e.g. Lenin, there's a point… Lenin As I Knew Him. The Lenin I Knew. Halfway to the Finland Station with V. I. Lenin: A Sketch. I well remember the first time I met Lenin, or as he was known on his library ticket, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. To be in his presence was to be aware of a complex personality, enigmatic, magnetic, but not, I think, astigmatic, his piercing brown (if memory serves) eyes giving no hint of it. An essentially simple man, and yet an intellectual theoretician, bent, as I was already aware, on the seemingly impossible task of reshaping the civilized world into a federation of standing committees of workers' deputies. As I shook the hand of this dynamic, gnomic and yet not, I think, anaemic stranger, who with his fine head of blond hair falling over his forehead had the clean-shaven look of a Scandinavian seafaring – hello, hello, got the wrong chap, has he? – take no notice, all come out in the wash, that's the art of it. Fact of the matter,
who
(without benefit of historical perspective and the photograph album, Red Square packed to the corner stickers with comraderaderie, and now for our main speaker, balding bearded in the three-piece suit, good God if it isn't Ulyanov!, knew him well, always sat between the window and Economics A–K etceterarera) well, take away all
that
, and who was he to Radek or Radek to him, or Martov or Martinov, Plekhanov, or he to Ulyanov for that matter? – in Zurich in 1917? Café conspirators, so what? Snowballs in hell. Snowballs at all, Lenin he only had one chance in a million,
remember the time they had the meeting? – Social Democrats for Civil War in Europe. Total attendance: four.
Ulyanov, Mrs Ulyanov, Zinoviev and a police spy. And now they want to know what was he like? What was he like,
Lenin, I am often asked.
(
He makes an effort
).
To those of us who knew him Lenin's greatness was never in doubt.
(
He gives up again
.)
So why didn't you put a pound on him, you'd be a millionaire, like that chap who bet sixpence against the Titanic. No. Truth of the matter, who'd have thought big oaks from a corner room at number 14 Spiegelgasse? – now here's a thing: two revolutions formed
in the same street
. Face to face in Spiegelgasse!
Street of Revolution! A sketch
. Meet by the sadly-sliding chagrinned Limmat River, strike west and immediately we find ourselves soaking wet, strike east and immediately we find ourselves in the Old Town, having left behind the banking bouncing metropolis of trampolines and chronometry of all kinds for here time has stopped in the riddled maze of alleyways and by the way you'd never believe a Swiss redlight district, pornographic fretwork shops, vice dens, get a grip on yourself, sorry, sorry, second right, third left – Spiegelgasse! – narrow, cobbled, high old houses in a solid rank, number 14 the house of the narrow cobbler himself, Kammerer his name, Lenin his tenant – and across the way at Number One, the Meierei Bar, crucible of anti-art, cradle of Dada!!! Who? What? Whatsisay Dada?? You remember Dada! – historical halfway house between Futurism and Surrealism, twixt Marinetti and André Breton, ‘tween the before-the-war-to-end-all-wars years and the between-the-wars years –
Dada
! – down with reason, logic, causality, coherence, tradition, proportion, sense and consequence, my art belongs to Dada ‘cos Dada ‘e treats me so – well then,
Memories of Dada by a Consular Friend of the Famous in Old Zurich: A Sketch
.
    What did it do in the Great War, Dada, I am often asked. How did it begin? where did it? when? what was it, who
named it and why Dada? These are just some of the questions that continue to baffle Dadaists the world over. To those of us who lived through it Dada was, topographically speaking, the high point of Western European culture – I well remember as though it were yesteryear (oh where are they now?) how Hugo Ball – or was it Hans Arp? yes! – no – Picabia, was it? – no, Tzara – yes! – wrote his name in the snow with a walking stick and said: There! I think I'll call it The Alps. Oh the yes-no's of yesteryear. Whose only age done gone. Over the hills and far away the sixpounders pounding in howitzerland, no louder than the soft thud of snow falling off the roof –
oh heavenl
to be picked out – plucked out – blessed by the blood of a negligible wound and released into the folds of snow-covered hills – Oh, Switzerland! – unfurled like a white flag, pacific civilian Switzerland – the miraculous neutrality of it, the noncombatant impartiality of it, the non-aggression pacts of it, the international red cross of it – entente to the left, détente to the right, into the valley of the invalided blundered and wandered myself when young –
    Carr of the Consulate! – first name Henry, that much is beyond dispute, I'm mentioned in the books.
    For the rest I'd be willing to enter into discussion but not if you don't mind correspondence, into matters of detail and chronology – I stand open to correction on all points, except for my height which can't be far off, and the success of my performance, which I remember clearly, in the demanding role of Ernest (not Ernest, the other one) –
that
, and the sense of sheer relief at arriving in a state of rest, namely Switzerland, the still centre of the wheel of war. That's really the thing – (
CARR
is now a young man in his drawing room in 1917. Ideally the actor should simply take off e.g. a hat and dressing gown
–
no wig or beard, no make-up
–
Carr's age has been in his voice
.) – the first thing to grasp about Switzerland is that there is no war here. Even when there is war
everywhere else
, there is no war in Switzerland.