Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

Fidelity, it seems — frighten you so much?

That you must tempt me with a fruit

That I can never touch? But always need?

Shall love then die as dreams that die

With the very sleep they feed?

Shall I please to love you then

Just enough that I don’t tell you so,

A mysterious veil concealing my face,

My hidden face concealing its thoughts,

With each of us destined so to live

As if the other, not won by love but caught,

Knew nothing whatsoever of its grace?

( pause )

This is this, then, and that is that.

It is as the unmanipulable moon to the fixed

Eye of my indivinable cat.

ISABEL

O this is—! I said nothing, I admit,

Because you’d seek what was no worth to know,

To rehearse each moment, to analyze all,

And inquire, inquire, and then inquire more!

DARCONVILLE

It was not that you didn’t say anything;

You may have said two different things, you see,

Of unsimilar worth but at a similar time,

As astrologers will to kings and zanies

Mutter forth one horoscope for both.

The tragic fault, perhaps, is — what?

( pause )

Doubtless. That indeed they both inquired,

And more inquired, and inquired so again:

Cast our nativities, Chaldean!

Is it pleasure that awaits? Or pain?

ISABEL

I cannot answer everything you ask:

Who learns all of everything that’s sought?

DARCONVILLE

But for me, sage, only this unmask:

Has anything happened, intentionally or not,

Whereby you should suspect I do not love you?

ISABEL

No.

DARCONVILLE

Considered, declared, exclaimed, indeed. But meant?

How so, if once again flits out at night

That sudden and unholy bat-eared pervert

Whose boisterous face out-blackens black itself

And caws at me repeatedly the curse of “Govert!”

ISABEL

You’re raving, just as if it so fell out

You lost yourself and lost, as claimed, not me.

DARCONVILLE

I’ve watched madness too long untransfigured in face

And to you here confess that evil, defined,

Is more than that which so cruelly distorts;

Whoso allows distortion is evil in kind.

So to the transition that must follow suit:

How in method illogic a cruel fact can disport,

Where’s found consolation in murdered grace

And fate is unshaped at the branch and the root.

For this I believe, that you wanted to find,

Or felt that finding was needful for you,

Some faithless transgression you feared in mind,

And, finding, confirmed what most you’d rue.

Thus knowledge is bought of a certain kind:

The suspension which kills is killed instead

And respite’s achieved in the midst of dread.

( pause )

Our first desire is what will last.

ISABEL

And the future’s only memory

If we don’t overcome the past.

DARCONVILLE

Perhaps. And yet I must pause in reflection to ask

Whether me you consider as future or past

And how just continuance must keep me so

If on me the former you now do bestow.

And yet there’s another who must feel the same:

A face I don’t know, but a name I can name.

ISABEL

Why, why must you raise an issue that’s dead,

Never really begun, and I’ve told you so!

Must you hate someone you don’t even know?

DARCONVILLE

The countercheck quarrelsome won’t save his head

( pause )

I could—

ISABEL

O say it! Whatever it is will please you, I think!

DARCONVILLE

If my delight be the cause of your wrath

Why is not, let me ask, this sorrow I feel

An equal occasion of your solace, pray?

( pause )

And counterpart Govert? I don’t hate him, no,

Though not because my soul wouldn’t try,

For seeing me here he surely would know

My own mirror-image at seeing him so;

And what here’s said he too could simply say:

“There but for the grace of you go I.”

And so this irony that irony compounds

As echoes will echo with the same resound.

ISABEL

It’s foolish this — and only sorrow brings.

You were a monk? Then let me say right now,

Better that monks should analyze such things.

DARCONVILLE ( soberly )

That’s a secret no one knows but us,

To the keeping of which you gave your solemn vow.

And no one else will hear of it, I trust.

ISABEL

O how can this suffering come to an end?

DARCONVILLE

When not me, but Govert, is only a friend.

ISABEL

This rival, know, has sanction none from me.

DARCONVILLE

So from all rivals am I then set free?

( pause )

No, fairness, we’ll see what waits in store,

To accept whatsoever fate will be ours.

If love, then love. There’s need of no more.

But if to our lot a passion brief does fall

Where as rubies rare brought side to side

We gleam to the bad and each other do stain,

You and I will win experience unique,

Finding gain is loss and loss the only gain

And then to lose again what’s found in pain

And for a lifetime merely seek to seek.

Passion’s a bondage where’s no planned release;

You will the pacific, until you’ve found peace.

A simulacrum of love, so from it estranged,

Passion’s the madness that is not deranged.

ISABEL

I don’t understand you so much of the time.

In all human actions are there reasons and rime?

Then why do my grandest hopes also impart

This fear in my soul which puts fear in my heart:

That vision is faulty when vision’s sublime.

DARCONVILLE

If words were threads those very ones could weave

A perfect shroud for the corpse you’ve made, now leave.

( pause )

I will neither tilt with reason nor defend to you

The use to which are put to solve or appease

Matters too complex you say for minds to see,

But if you leave tonight with any reason true,

Please God, search for a reason other than me,

And if it’s true you don’t love me, then please

Don’t hate me enough to tell me you do.

ISABEL ( with strange vagueness )

My departure tonight I think is best for all,

To dream away what dreams cannot be seen

And live in sleep, in sleep to find my ease:

There heights are scaled, but one can never fall.

And this will sound foolish to you, I know,

To pretend I’ve found some fairy forest green

Where as a solitary princess, through the trees

I’d wander—

( pause, embarrassed )

O, I only want to be safe!

DARCONVILLE

Say no more to it then, if more you can.

You put in six words the epitaph of man.

THE PARLOR DOOR suddenly flew open.

It was an errand of mercy, anybody could see that, as Mistresses Boyco and Bowdler, quillbristled in curlers, came pittypatting into the room and stood by Isabel, hovering over her like ministering angels. Homely, angular Loretta Boyco lapwinged down beside her and solicitously took her hand while Harriet Bowdler, smoothing the nap of her buffy white nightie, turned her trout’s eyes toward Darconville with a lot less tenderness: talking was one thing, but this child had been weeping! Confusion gave way to consensus. The fellowshippers smiled at each other knowingly, and then Loretta said to Isabel, “Why don’t you take up all your troubles, put them in a big oP tow sack and give them over to Jesus?”