ABSTRACT
It is light again. Man and Rosemary are alone. She is attractively and expensively dressed. MAN
I have come to let you know that I have decided, after long and careful consideration, to make you my wife.
ROSEMARYI am amazed,
MANI thought you might be, but I have gone into the matter most carefully; I have not only had good reports of you but from my own personal observation I have concluded that you are satisfactory and will therefore be married to me at the beginning of next month.
ROSEMARY(furious but not speechless) If you kneel at my feet and bring your face conveniently near to me I shall condescend to give you the hardest smack on the jaw you or anyone else has had.
MANRosemary, don't, I beg of you, do anything so foolish. You know I don't waste words—by the way, did you see to it that Tom disposed of that silly English fellow?
ROSEMARYAre you daring to threaten me? Who do you think—
MANOh come; don't waste words. So far from threatening you 392I have told you we are to marry and the details are being arranged. Threats and love and all those sorts of things are all right amongst the vulgar. Surely you can see it is out of place here?
ROSEMARYIndeed? And is sex also only for the vulgar?
MANThat is nothing to do with us. Of course I shall use you for sexual purposes—I have gone into that and you will do, but don't imagine that I am talking the silly juvenile nonsense of animals like P. A. I got over that many years ago.
ROSEMARYLove too?
MANDon't be silly. I have arranged and that is enough.
ROSEMARYBlast your damned impudence!
MANI have some other matters to arrange. You will be sent for in half an hour. All your possessions will be packed. I take it you want to keep your maid; she will be sent for likewise. Now, goodbye.
(He goes out)
ROSEMARYAlice!
ALICEWhat's he going to do?
ROSEMARYIt is what I am going to do, believe me. If I cannot deal with him I am much mistaken. Bring me the automatic—fully loaded.
ALICEYes, Ma'am.
(Rosemary sits brooding in silence. Alice returns)
ALICEIt's gone! Everything has been taken away!
(Fade out. Man and Priest are alone together when it becomes light)
MANI have sent for you to let you know my arrangements. As you are doubtless aware these meetings have served their purpose—
PRIESTThey were indeed becoming unruly. I thought that rosemary no longer had the disciplinary hold she used to have.
MANNo, no—she never had. Just a sexual grasp on her maid and that is of no consequence. A little re-organization will sort it out. I shall confer authority on Rosemary to enable her to keep order when I have married her.
PRIESTCongratulations.
MANCongratulations? I don't think I understand—oh yes, of course. She was a fairly obvious choice from what I have seen of her ability to make the best of such facilities as were available to her. 393She might not be able to live up to increased power and prestige— that does sometimes happen. I am not unhopeful. However, I shall not waste time on the past. I want you to be a religious overseer. You must not be obsessed with the past; it is your weakness. You must adjust to the present and future. I give you the chance; if you don't succeed it will be sad—you will be dispensed with.
PRIESTLike Roland you mean. Are you threatening me?
MANThat is an example of your obsession with the past. I don't threaten; I state a fact. Y ou wear the Past as if it were a decoration. It has no importance, though its debris can still be seen and felt impinging on the present. I'll arrange for that kind of rubbish to be looked after so that it can be swept up and discarded.
PRIESTHow will you dispense with the debris of 1054?
MANIt would take too long to explain. It's an example of the way visual trash hangs around; there is nothing to see, but that trivial little explosion continues and some people devote time and generations of lives to sweeping up detritus. Now it is being collected into books which soon no one will read—and that, for the time, will be that.
PRIESTFor the time?—so you do think it has a future.
MANThat is what I am saying; the past is past; it is of no consequence except as debris for collection and disposal. I shall appoint you—
PRIESTI see; as an authority like a—
MANNo, no, no. Not like an anything. There you go again— obsessed with the past and with being 'just like' the past, or a man, or a bishop. You are like a child saying, 'Look—aren't I exactly like a grown up!' The result—no chance of 'becoming' anything, the mind so stuffed full with 'memories' there is room for nothing more. You must clear your mind of cant.
PRIESTThat has been said before.
MANStill harping on the past—'before'. You see what I mean? I can't waste time. Meet here in half an hour.
PRIESTThe same half hour? Half an hour from Now? That means that we shall not meet together.
MANYes, it will be the same. Every half hour will be different from every other half hour—your half hour, Rosemary's half hour—but 'the Time' will be the same.
394PRIESTRoland too? He's dead you know.
MANI know—I shot him. Now he's dead I have an important job for him.
PRIESTHow can he do a job if he is dead? He can't do anything.
MANThat is his qualification. You would be able to do almost anything if only you'd shut up thinking you are important and trying to look like' an important person.
PRIESTYet you tell me to take an important post.
MANYou may not be as incorrigible as you sound. Here! In half an hour. (disappears)
PRIESTWhere's my watch? Gone. Of all the impossible orders from the most impossible of men! As it is Rosemary's half hour and Roland's half hour, it will have to be my half hour. What a meeting it will be! If I ran my diocese like that. . .
(It slowly blacks out and grows light again, revealing Man alone with P.A.)
MANYou will have to do a different job. This arrangement of your mistress's has become redundant.
P.AI thought you would find that. You should not have shot Roland.
MAN(opening his eyes wide) It was essential that he should be shot to become available for my purposes.
P.AHe is dead.
MANThat is the first essential. I require him—
P.AYou'd better be quick—Tom has buried him and he must be discomposed.
MANYou are a prisoner to reality, buried in 'facts'. It is inevitable that you should have a prejudiced view.
P.AMy view is scientific.
MANThat's what I mean. Scientific outlook; limited outlook, obscured by facts. You are scientific; your religion also. But enough of this—I want you as the leader of a department of Truth.
P.AThat is what I have always meant by Science.
MANNot as far as my observation goes. You are devoted to the idea that you are devoted to Truth—
P.AWhat truth can I be devoted to if it is not truth as I see it?
MANYour dilemma is indeed painful; your pain, not mine.
P.AYou sound as if you don't care.
395MANI don't. In half an hour—here! (disappears)
P.A(soliloquizing) 'In half an hour. Here.' Where is here and what clock do I use? The law of the excluded middle.... I thought there could be some alternative to an extreme course; physically I know of no alternative to presenting myself—being or not being. That is, if I am right in assuming that the vertex is topographical. Suppose it is typographical—I could be one type or another ... so many occasions in my life where I have found out what 'it' meant. Which 'it'? Do I choose to be or not to be? That fellow Shakespeare put words to the emotional problem that is still not solved. Has Priest the right idea that this life is a time of testing for a future? Suppose there is no future—I think it unlikely that there is an existence which I shall have to lead, and therefore be prepared for, after the next half hour. I shall have to consider a law of the excluded beginning. Logically this means that from the physiological vertex any object would be a figment of imagination. Not even that; if it excluded a beginning it would also exclude imagination which is necessary for its 'figment' to exist. The law of an 'excluded end' would seem to be tacitly believed by artists and, in fact, human beings in general. I am supposing that 'classical' logic is the only kind of logic. But suppose reality does not obey any of the laws laid down by the human animal—not even the 'logic' to which not only human thought, but also the universe not included in human thought, is supposed to conform. Is there an ultra or infra logic which does not fall within the spectrum of human logic, the logical spectrum analogous to the visual portion of the spectrum of electro-magnetic waves? 'Geocentral time' is up—'half an hour' is over. Is it geotemporal or sidero-temporal? Galactic-temporal or ultra-temporal? I shall call it Quasi-scientific time, measured in quasi hours. When I want to indicate something of which I know nothing but of which I want to talk or even think, it clothes itself with a meaning and I lose my nothing, my alpha or beta element. My variable becomes a constant.
Wake up? Go to hell! Oh, all right—time to get up? Quasi hell? It is the lark that sings so out of tune? Hear it not, Duncan. The wild ass can stamp o'er his head but Bahram's sleep cannot be broken; that great hunter shall sleep no more and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Aeneas shall sleep no more . . . Palinurus! . . . I'm 396not a damned Dormouse . . . then don't twinkle like a bright and steadfast Star! The war was over last July—it says so in John Bull. We won! Officially! Oh, come in Equivocator, . . that's good news. Gos-spel! Oh, it's Man. Why did you act it out? Why did I only dream it? Which is worse—that you cannot wake me up, or that you only act it? Is it the sleeper only who poisons his dreams with his mental excrement? Or he who cannot dream of destroying the world but has to transform his dream into a bomb that poisons us with his atomic debris? 'In half an hour' this thug says he expects my answer, and I fool with pretty intellectual Quasar time. I am honest; I think; I am concerned with quasi morals. There is no special science but science. Yes, but I do not know which science, which truth. 'Couvre-toi de flannelle' is less impressive than 'Couvre-toi de gloire', but that kind of glory is comfortable after its kind; so is 'flannelle'. 'Oh my, I don't want to die, I want to go home', we used to sing. That was true; we hoped that the ugly reality would not penetrate the joke armour-plate. The armour-plate of a tank was penetrable; we were bewitched, bemused, 'probability'-dazzled cowards. 'Probably' we would not be killed; 'probably' we would survive to inhabit a new heaven and a new earth—'après la guerre'. I did not know I loved life so much. I survived to foot the bill; fight a war and spend the rest of life paying the bill for all those shells and tanks and bullets and the state of mind used to provide an armour more impenetrable than "gloire' or 'flannelle'. 'Ante Agamemnona multi'... I remember, am still penetrated by the memory of brave men whose name did not 'live for evermore'. 'With whatsoever emphasis of passionate love repeated' the echo of their name is faint at last, 'soft as old sorrow, bright as old renown'; it fades and dies. Why do I mind this grizzly, victorious lout? It is not death I fear, but the shame of knowing a few, only a few, of the multitudinous shabby failures. There goes the bell again! Telephone? Alarm? Come in Equivocator—the anarchs of the world of Apres la Guerre Fini. From that warfare there is no release—apres la guerre fini. Come Phorbas! Come, come. As torrents in summer suddenly rise, though the sky is still cloudless. . . Mene huic confidere monstro? Not bloody likely! Ecce deus . . . ecce homo . . . take your choice. Sleep or wake—'you pays your money and you takes your choice'. Oh! It's you is it?
397MANNo, Go away—and send Alice.
(PA. fades out)
(Alice appears)
ALICEYou want me—sir?
MANYes. Pack your mistress's things and meet me here in half an hour.
ALICEIs she going away? Where to?
MANMind your business. Be here in half an hour—I can give you your orders then. You have nothing to pack. Go! alice But . . .
(Fade out. Alice alone in the darkness begins to cry out, her calls becoming more terrified, wilder, angrier and more animal-like)
ALICERosamund . . . Roseamund . . . Rosie! Rose . . . Herose! Here-rhose! Heeee . . . rose from the dead!
VOICEStop it! (silence; then the savage, wilder howls begin again—now unmistakably animal)
ROSEMARYHush! Oh hush! What's the matter?
ROBINIt's Roland—that is his howl. I would know it anywhere. He's calling his mate—there it is again! That's Alice— tigerish, but that's her, I know. (The bloodcurdling duet becomes distant, blends with a storm and stops with a sudden decrescendo)
