New Page — Peter Oswald

TWO TOWERS

Columbina Theatre Company

Devised by Howard Gayton and Peter Oswald

Written by Peter Oswald

characters

FLAVIA

ARLECHINO

ERNESTO

COLUMBINA

THE MASTER

ANGEL

ONE. A DARK WOOD NEAR THE CITY. THE MASTER.

MASTER: There is a crack through which the light gets in,

so people say. The crack is death, or wounds,

accidents, acts of malice, droughts or storms,

wild epidemics! All these cracks let light

into the world – the killer with an axe,

splitting the heads of children, crick, crack-crack,

lets light into the world, a flood of light

bursting as if through a great hole ripped out

of a church roof, when lightning strikes at night,,

which lets the dark in, yes, while small hours last,

but in the morning floods the nave with light.

So good proceeds from evil, people think.

But they, oh they forget the kind of crack

through which the light shines black, the light shines black!

A ROOM AT THE TOP OF A TOWER. FLAVIA, DRESSED AS A MAN.

FLAVIA: I am in love. Ernesto is my name.

I am a poet – greatest of these times!

I’ve sent a poem to the one, the woman –

I mean I stabbed a pen into a vein

and scratched heart-blood onto a piece of paper,

and sent it with my servant Arlechino,

and I am waiting for the lady’s answer,

here, in my tower that looks out on hers –

though mine is slightly taller – or is hers?

ENTER ARLECHINO OUT OF BREATH.

ARLECHINO: Four hundred and twenty steps! That’s too many! There were four hundred and fifteen last time! Mind you, I can’t count past four hundred and twelve -

FLAVIA: What does she say, Arlechino?

ARLECHINO: Victory!

FLAVIA: She likes it???

ARLECHINO: Victory?

FLAVIA: What do you mean, victory?

ARLECHINO: (SALUTES.) Glory, sir!

FLAVIA: I have won her?

ARLECHINO: Hurrah!

FLAVIA: Tell me!!!!

ARLECHINO: Sir, a lady in Wales has baked a cake that is three feet wide!

FLAVIA: DID SHE LIKE IT????

ARLECHINO: (TO AUDIENCE) We need a distraction here. Last time this happened he got so depressed he forgot to feed me for six weeks. Don’t have a poet for a master. I nearly died. As it is I haven’t eaten for – God, I must say, some of you lot are looking really tasty -

FLAVIA: Arlechino!!!

ARLECHINO: (PANICKING AND RUNNING ABOUT) Help! Fire! Plague! Oh master, master!

FLAVIA: What? What?

ARLECHINO: I forgot to tell you! Aaaaghhhh! As I was – as I was –

FLAVIA: Breathe! Breathe!

ARLECHINO COLLAPSES, SPASMING AND FIGHTING FOR BREATH.

FLAVIA: Doctor! Doctor! Oh Christ, he’s dying, and I need someone to carry my messages –

ARLECHINO: (faintly) No, no, no, no -

FLAVIA: What? Tell me!

ARLECHINO: As I was – coming home – I – oh, sir, sir, a baboon –

FLAVIA: A baboon?

ARLECHINO: A baboon escaped from the zoo –

FLAVIA: Good!

ARLECHINO: It was diseased –

FLAVIA: Diseased????

ARLECHINO: It swelled up! Oh, sir! It just kept swelling and swelling with this horrible rushing sound and straining and squeaking! It got big as a house! And then – and then – it slowly started to rise from the ground! Oh my God! It floated up into the air, screaming and dribbling! Sir, do you know what I am saying?

FLAVIA: Yes. It was a hot air baboon.

ARLECHINO: Sir, when it was about sixty feet up it suddenly burst! It exploded! Scattering poisonous snakes all over the country! Everyone they bit went mad! All the people – little children – they have all gone, sir! They ate themselves!

FLAVIA: Oh, Arlechino!

ARLECHINO: I saw with my own eyes – your mother – tear off her own foot!

FLAVIA: And is she dead, too? The one?

ARLECHINO: No, sir.

FLAVIA: So what exactly is the problem?

ARLECHINO: There is no problem! I see no problems! Once we were all starving, yes, for thousands of years we were all wandering about, grinding up gravel, scattering it on the ground, watching, hoping, scattering a little salt and pepper to encourage the soil. Nothing! Then at last a woman said, let’s try planting seeds! They laughed – the experts pissed themselves laughing! But it worked! They sprouted! And grew! And the people gathered the grain, and ground it into flour –and made bread! And so we were saved, just in time for tea!

FLAVIA: What have I got to do with that? God help me,

there is no other food for me than her!

Look, you could stuff me with a ton of bread –

drain all the shining silos of the prairies

of the Ukraine and Suffolk and Saskatchewan,

into illimitable lines of lorries,

convoying seas of grain into a bakery

the size of Paris – to produce a loaf

big as Ben Nevis – calliper my cake-hole

open enough to python it in one gag

down! I would still be starving, I would still be

nothing, within! Do you not understand that?

I want to scoff her like a birthday cake,

with no one else invited to the party!

ARLECHINO: Look on the bright side, sir!

FLAVIA: No! Focus on me! There are good things going on in the world, yes! And great things have been done! True! But it makes no difference to me, here, now! No more distractions! All I want to know is, did she or did she not like my poem???

ARLECHINO: Your poem, sir? No!

FLAVIA: No? You mean yes.

ARLECHINO: I mean no.

FLAVIA: Yes!

ARLECHINO: Yes I mean no!

FLAVIA: No? Arlechino! I am the greatest living poet! Ernesto! Everyone agrees! The English are imitating me!

ARLECHINO: Gawd bless ‘em!

FLAVIA: But she does not like my poems! Not even this one! I have been writing to her for a year now! But nothing, nothing, nothing! I don’t understand! What did she actually say?

ARLECHINO: She wrote on it, sir – here – look –

FLAVIA: No, I can’t!!

ARLECHINO: B-A-D. That spells bad, doesn’t it? Bad.

FLAVIA GROANS/HOWLS AND SINKS INTO DESPAIR.

ARLECHINO: (TO AUDIENCE) I may have eaten my last pie. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for my girl, Columbina, she works for the lady in question – over there in the smaller – no, the taller tower. That’s how I’m able to deliver poems there. No one but Columbina can get in there!

FLAVIA IN THE MEANTIME HAS TAKEN OUT A SWORD AND STANDS STARING AT IT.

FLAVIA: Clearly I can’t write anymore. I am dead. Stab me right here, through the heart, to formalise it.

ARLECHINO: Must I, sir?

FLAVIA: If you will not kill me I will kill myself!

ARLECHINO: Sir, I would slightly prefer that.

FLAVIA: Arlechino! Kill me, or I will kill you! Then me!

ARLECHINO: Alright I’ll do it, sir, to save you from yourself! Let me bind your eyes, sir –

HE TIES A SCARF ROUND FLAVIA’S EYES WITH A COMPLICATED KNOT.

FLAVIA: Now!

ARLECHINO: Farewell, sir! Farewell, you great poet, so misunderstood –

FLAVIA: Get on with it!

ARLECHINO: Right! A-one, a-two, a-three - off! Get off me! Get off, big bird! Aaaghh! Help! Help!

ARLECHINO BATTLES WITH A BIG IMAGINARY BIRD, FLAVIA TRIES TO GET THE BLINDFOLD OFF. ARLECHINO DROPS THE SWORD OUT OF THE WINDOW, THEN HELPS FLAVIA OFF WITH THE BLINDFOLD.

ARLECHINO: Oh sir, sir! A huge black bird flew in through the window and grabbed the sword and flew off!

FLAVIA: A huge blackbird?

ARLECHINO: No – a huge black bird. I fought with all my might! I wounded it!

FLAVIA: Go and get it back. Or get another one.

ARLECHINO: Alright. But it’s four hundred and thirty-six steps down from this tower – usually -

FLAVIA: I’ll wait.

ARLECHINO: Alright, sir! Won’t be long!

EXIT ARLECHINO. FLAVIA COLLAPSES IN A CHAIR, TAKES OFF HAT, HAIR FALLS DOWN. TAKES OFF OUTER COAT TO REVEAL BRIGHT-COLOURED DRESS.

FLAVIA: Frustration is the age that I am in.

The birthday angels on their bridge dropped me

into the slow-as-treacle stream of time

at just this sticky point where poetry

is male. And for a laugh they christened me

a poet. And when poetry was heard

emerging from a girl, who was supposed

to hear it, not to speak it, to be praised

and not to praise – when beauty started pouring

out of her face, as if it was inspiring

itself, that was hell’s work! Our age of light

decided, speaking through a magistrate,

backed up by scholars, soldiers, priests, the Pope,

that I should vanish to a convent-rock,

where seagull-sisters, wingless, shriek at God,

in the speech-drowning middle of the ocean!

Thankyou! Goodbye! I had a lover though,

a poet like myself but free to speak,

not being female. Praised, respected, loved!

Not frowned at, spat on, prayed for, feared and hushed!

Ah how I loved him! How I hated him!

The one and only golden voice! He loved

me – loved my poetry as well, his ear

my only audience! Well, anyway,

there was a touch of envy, I admit –

but there was love too, sweet and rushing love!
He stowed away to save me, in the ship

freighting me to the convent on the rock.

Like a wild pirate he seized hold of it

and try to sail it - to some foreign place

where woman poets are allowed – like, where?

We couldn’t find one, and our ship was wrecked,

and every soul on board but me was lost.

I found him on the morgue-slab sand, pale shell,

and took his clothes and name and travelled home.

We looked alike, so people always said.

Now I am him. Ernesto, you are I!

And I am free to speak my poetry!

But now it seems that writing, as a man,

love poems to a woman constantly,

as in this role I must, is killing me.

My words no longer work – and this, for me,

is death. So let me step, regretlessly,

out of the world – it will be very easy.

The strange thing is – her name is Flavia,

and so is mine. So my own name rejects me.

And I can hear death puffing up the stairs!

Four hundred and eighteen – four hundred and nineteen –

four hundred and –

SHE QUICKLY CHANGES BACK INTO A MAN.

THREE. WOOD. MASTER, PERFORMING MAGIC.

MASTER: Let darkness fall between two hearts, between

the meaning and the word, so, as it flies

from heart to heart, the word is lost, and strays

into the widening night, or, wingless, falls

through fathomless expanses! So that I,

the only eyes, will be the only guide,

spirits find comfort only in my country,

where the black rainbow in the ebony sky

makes no incision into unity.

The green of Earth is envy! Otherwise

I could not do my blinding work, not I,

or any of the other striving shadows

I cast. Increase, oh you dividing powers,

the number of the stairs in both their towers!

FOUR. ERNESTO’S TOWER. COLUMBINA ENTERS, EXHAUSTED.

COLUMBINA: That staircase gets longer every day! Or am I getting fatter? If I am it doesn’t matter, as the stars increase so I will melt – at the bottom, reasonably plump, super-fit halfway up – and at the top – thin as a picture. Like Arlechino. If I wasn’t feeding him he wouldn’t make it up his tower. But I have got to give him a helping hand, or he won’t be able to keep it up. Luckily my mistress feeds me – though I have got my concerns. It’s not the pressure, she’s fine with that, ten poems a day doesn’t bother her, she reads them, face doesn’t change, hands them back to me, I’m back down the stairs, deliver them back to Arlechino, who gives me a starving look, says, Are you sure, nothing you can do, Columbina? I’m like, like what – tell my mistress to fall in love? Then he droops, and I whip out my buns, and he perks up, at least it keeps him alive, and then he’s back up his stairs with a message of doom. I tried making them into paper aeroplanes, the poems, and throwing them out the window to him, but he gets so sad without his baps, and also, at this altitude they get swept off by the winds – once, running after one of them, looking up, he ran straight into the river, climbed out and ran off again, crazy little man soaked to his Rumpelstiltskin! I do love him! Or do I? The hairy little madman? Not sure. Anyway, my mistress – my mystery-ess – I used to work for my Lord Ernesto over the way, that’s how I know Arlechino, but I left, I’m not going to be starved to death by poetry. Soon as my lady appears, and takes these rooms at the top of this tower, I was off like a hungry shot. I could smell regular meals, and normality. Or so I thought. Just lately I’ve begun to question. Because I have got suspicions. I think I think – my mistress is a poet also. I’ve heard what sounds like reciting. Late at night. Odd murmuring like she’s got a dove in her bedroom. But it’s her. And that might be anything but I’ve found – scraps of paper – with scribbling on them – which is either poetry or very un-self-confident prose, that can’t get to the edge of the page. Now I start to question – who is she, actually, where is she from? I only know her name, Donna Flavia. Nothing else whatsoever. She turns up in this tower, living very privately, not seeing anyone or going to parties. Spends alot of time in this front room, gazing over at Ernesto’s. Yet when he, spotting her sitting there staring, starts sending her love poems, she doesn’t like them. She gets this whole new concrete-face, sends them straight back without comment, and Arlechino starts starving and drooping, and this has been going on for a year now! And she starts her midnight cooing, starts shedding these little rejected scraps and I’m thinking – is she a secret poet herself? This happens to some women. That is why I intend, in a friendly fashion, to spy on my mistress. If she is a poet, she needs my help, she has got a problem.

ERNESTO: (OFF) Columbina! Columbina!

COLUMBINA: Hide!

SHE HIDES. ENTER ERNESTO, DRESSED AS A WOMAN.

ERNESTO: Good, she is not here, bustling Columbina,

and out of earshot, too, so I can echo.

One or two secrets can be leaked. Not all,

even in private! When pretence is total,

outright, you have to keep a skin of it,

maintain at least a wrinkle of it, even

to your own mirror, your own pillow,

fake even on the privy, eyes averted

from too much truth. This is the actual fact:

I must dissemble even to myself,

so as to stay in character, hide myself

where even I can’t find me! I am so

tired – I can’t sleep in case I talk – awake

I must let out one word, or I will break!

SHE PRODUCES A POEM.

This poem isn’t bad! I copied it,

so as to send the sender’s copy back,

as always.

READS.

Lady, the green intelligence of trees,

and the imaginative flash of grass,

under the hushing finger of a breeze,

circling them close, like an excited class

about to hear a story – things like this,

brightening around you when I see you smile

in my mind’s eye – what can they do but miss

the world of being with you, by a mile,

try though they might –

He wants to meet! No, you cannot meet me,

any more than the moon can meet the sea,

my strange usurping friend. Yet, who you are

I’d like to know, as day knows the Daystar.

And I would like to rhyme you a reply,

but as I am a woman, how can I?

Even the little I did write, in prose,

on your last sheet, was far too much, God knows!

And only bad can come of it – dive, dive

into the dark again, to stay alive -

EXIT.

COLUMBINA: A poet! I knew it! Now I know it! But that’s the least of her troubles! She is hiding something so – like she was having the Pope’s baby! Heavy, heavy lady! She doesn’t dare to sleep! That’s why she murmurs all night! Oh my lady!

SOUND OF HEAVY BREATHING OFFSTAGE, GETTING LOUDER.

COLUMBINA: Oh my God, what’s that? Something’s wheezing up the stairs! Like a steam train rushing with news from the future! Don’t go there! No, you’re not coming in!

SHE BARRICADES THE DOOR. ARLECHINO PUSHES FROM THE OTHER SIDE.

COLUMBINA: No, we don’t want it! You can keep your aeroplanes and your nuclear bombs and your traffic jams and your – actually –

SINGS

Last night I said these words to my girl,

You know that you don’t even try girl,

Come on come on, come on come on,

Please please please oh yeah –

Alright then –

SHE OPENS THE DOOR. ARLECHINO COLLAPSES INTO THE ROOM, SPASMING, AS IF STILL CLIMBING THE STAIRS.

ARLECHINO: Five hundred and sixty-nine – five hundred and seventy – five hundred and seventy-one –

COLUMBINA: You are here! Which you shouldn’t be! Stop climbing! You are here! Arlechino!

ARLECHINO: Five hundred and seventy-two – five hundred and seventy-

three –

SHE WHACKS HIM OVER THE HEAD WITH A BOOK.

COLUMBINA: Stop! You’ve hit the ceiling!

ARLECHINO: Am I in heaven? I hear music -

COLUMBINA: You’re outside. Let me see your wrist. No, you can’t come in. You shouldn’t be here! What are you doing in my lady’s tower?

ARLECHINO: Help me!

COLUMBINA: Help you find the way out? It’s easy – remember when you came in? Just do that in reverse.

ARLECHINO: It’s all a blank –

COLUMBINA: Well let gravity guide you, just pour yourself down the stairs –

ARLECHINO: Columbina –

COLUMBINA: What?

ARLECHINO: I have lost my master’s sword!

COLUMBINA: Look in the scabbard.

ARLECHINO: No – he took it out and – ah, no, no, no, no – out of the window it went and – I can’t find it! Without it he is not a man!

COLUMBINA: Have you tried looking on the ground, at the foot of the tower?

ARLECHINO: Yes!

COLUMBINA: What did you see?

ARLECHINO: Blood!

COLUMBINA: Blood?

ARLECHINO PERFORMS THE FOLLOWING STORY WITH HAND PUPPETS.

ARLECHINO: Unfortunately – there was a man from Austria, walking along, arguing with himself, right under the tower – the sword fell and cleft him in two – and the two halves carried on – and a crowd gathered – and the police came. By now the two halves were fighting, and a priest was called, but he didn’t speak Austrian. Yes he did! No he didn’t! So another priest was called, and he said, I suppose, I think he said, in Austrian – Lie down, lie down, both you fellows, you are dead! And they said – Oh no we’re not! Yes you are! And they both started hitting the priest. In the end the man’s wife was called, and she sewed together the two halves, and then he was able to die in peace, the Austrian, and a single coffin was called, and it carried him away. But the police took the sword, as evidence –

COLUMBINA: Evidence of what?

ARLECHINO: No one knows –

COLUMBINA: Then you’re alright!

ARLECHINO: No! I have lost my master’s sword!

COLUMBINA: Let it go – let it go –

ARLECHINO: Ah, help me, Columbina –

COLUMBINA: What did he draw his sword for?

ARLECHINO: So I could kill him.

COLUMBINA: Ah.

ARLECHINO: Because –she has destroyed him! Your Lady Flavia! With her rejection of his poetry!

COLUMBINA: But she loves his poetry!

ARLECHINO: What?

COLUMBINA: She loves it! Go straight back and tell him! I hid and listened – she was raving!

ARLECHINO: No, no, no, not at all –

COLUMBINA: Yes! Yes! I heard!

ARLECHINO: You didn’t!

COLUMBINA: I did!

ARLECHINO: She wrote BAD!

COLUMBINA: She did not!

ARLECHINO: She did!

COLUMBINA: You can’t read!

ARLECHINO: I can read that word!

COLUMBINA: It’s true, you’ve learned the first four letters. Why stop there?

ARLECHINO: Eeeee, I don’t know –

COLUMBINA: Well I heard it with my own ears.

ARLECHINO: Well we will just have to disagree –

COLUMBINA: No, no, it’s too important! My Lady’s desperate! Something terrible’s happened and she can’t say! She called your master ‘the strange usurper.’ Oh Arlechino, Arlechino, why does she rent these rooms at the top of the tower and sit staring at him, and then send all his poems back without a word?

ARLECHINO: No – with one word –

COLUMBINA: I don’t understand!

ARLECHINO: Well anyway, my dear Columbina, I have got a question –

COLUMBINA: ‘Strange usurper’ –

ARLECHINO: Do you by any chance have a boiled egg lying around?

COLUMBINA: Oh my Lady!

ARLECHINO: Or a piece of French toast?

COLUMBINA: My dear, lost Lady!

ARLECHINO: Or toast from anywhere really –

COLUMBINA: No, I don’t think so –

ARLECHINO: Ah, there is hope then!

COLUMBINA: There is hope for your master! Go and tell him!

ARLECHINO: I won’t lie to him!

COLUMBINA: It is the truth!

ARLECHINO: No it isn’t! I have got to get him his sword, so he can finish himself off, that’s my job!

COLUMBINA: Who will feed you then?

ARLECHINO: He doesn’t feed me now!

COLUMBINA: Help him and he will!

ARLECHINO: But it’s hopeless!

COLUMBINA: Don’t say that!

ARLECHINO: Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless!

COLUMBINA: No, no, no!

ARLECHINO: Yes, yes yes!

COLUMBINA: I hate you!

ARLECHINO: Why, why, why?

COLUMBINA: Do as I say!

ARLECHINO: Of course!

COLUMBINA: Go to him and tell him that she likes his poetry!

ARLECHINO: Ok, but only if you do as I say!

COLUMBINA: Eh?

ARLECHINO: Get her to say so, in a different way from writing BAD on his poem, get her to write GOOD straightaway because as things stand he is done!

COLUMBINA: So is she! She is a ghost!

ARLECHINO: Well then?

COLUMBINA: I will try! I will try!

ARLECHINO: A deal!

COLUMBINA: A deal!

ARLECHINO: A deal!

COLUMBINA: Go on then, quick! Go on then!

HE STANDS STILL, MOUTH OPEN.

COLUMBINA: Ah!

SHE POPS A BOILED EGG INTO HIS MOUTH. HE STILL STANDS STILL.

COLUMBINA: Go on then!!! Ah –

SHE KISSES HIM. HE LEAVES.

COLUMBINA: Oh my Lady – oh my Lady – open your heart, dear child, to Columbina! I will help you carry your concrete slab, that can’t be talked about. What is it? What is it? I swear I am not just curious, but anxious. Why I should care for you I don’t know, but I do – oh my Lady –

SINGS.

Lady in the afternoon,

how do you do, how do you do?

being swallowed by the moon,

how do you do today?

Your feet are in the jaguar’s lair,

how do you do, how do you do?

there is a tiger in your hair,
how do you do today?

The sea is sleeping in your bed,

how do you do, how do you do?
so hang a hammock in your head,

how do you do today?

Your house has turned into a bird,

how do you do, how do you do?

your legs are faint, your face is blurred,

how do you do today?

Oh Lady Lady how are you,

now that the nights grow cold,

and trees are bare and stars are few,

and the dead leaves are gold?

FIVE. A DARK WOOD. MASTER.

MASTER: Perfect Injustice, thou most golden goddess,

I praise you, and your gorgeous whoring daughters

Envy, Despair, sour Hatred and sweet Vengeance.

Your father was Oppression and your mother

Ignorance. And I love your little sister

Distrust, and Inequality your servant,

and all your swarming violent descendants.

Thanks to Injustice, I could slide a blade

between two poets who, unusually,

were lovers true. The woman, in despair,

gagged by injustice of the social kind,

invoked my help, involuntarily,

one summer Sunday, screaming inwardly.

She fell into my hands, which gave me power

over the man as well – whom I have drowned

in salty water. But I am bewildered –

I know the woman, as a man, is diving

deeper into despair than ever – but,

who is this woman in the other tower,

whom Columbina serves? I do not know her –

nothing knows who she is – oh tell me now,

exploring thoughts, that leave my mind and whizz

throughout the cosmos – find out who she is!

SIX. FLAVIA, IN HER TOWER, DRESSED AS A MAN.

FLAVIA: Hurry with that sword! Life that has already decided to end itself – what kind of life is that, no life at all, just dot dot dot, trailing off, dot dot dot.... should I just do it, fling myself out of the window? Fling what? I have ceased to exist! I in fact require someone else to do it, just as the mountain can’t move itself – though rain does fall, rivers do flow, without any help. Perhaps I could do it. Why not? Say like a feather that falls from the wing of a bird, and floats down, makes no conscious choice. I will do it. But here’s a question: should I die as a man or as a woman? The pretence makes no difference, since I am dead. It doesn’t matter who knows, let them point at the corpse spread out over several streets, and say – We can’t find all of it, some bits seem to be missing, and even more strangely, there are some added bits – could it be that in falling from such a height Ernesto turned female? Is this a new law of gravity we have discovered? Let’s try it out on condemned prisoners. – Some questions will arise, so I might as well die dressed as a female – though in doing so I know I am giving more significance, far more, to this death than it deserves! Tip a bucket of slops out of the window, it really doesn’t matter what flavour! I am in danger of making this jump such a personal thing I won’t do it! After all it’s wrong to kill a woman. But then again, do I really want to kill Ernesto? No, no, it is Flavia I want to kill. Ernesto is dead already, Flavia is pretending not to be dead, and that is unforgiveable – appalling – so – I change then –

SHE CHANGES INTO FEMALE CLOTHES.

Your fault, Arlechino, for being so slow! If you’d hurried with the sword I could have died like a man! As it is, you’ll have to work out my story, try to understand who I was.

SHE STANDS ON THE EDGE.

Raphael, Gabriel and Michael, it’s high! It never was this high! Woh! A little cloud – a little cloud passing below! And the people! Like a freckle’s freckles – no – like the hairs on a freckle’s freckle. Ah, dear old city! When I shoot myself like a bullet at your pavement, I can’t miss you! Will you miss me?

ARLECHINO: (FAR AWAY) Sir! Sir! Sir! Help me, sir!

FLAVIA: What’s that? Something’s floating up! Something hairy! Like a – hairy hot air balloon – what – what - ?

ARLECHINO: (CLOSER, HANGING ONTO A FLOATING BABOON) Sir, sir, sir! Help me!

FLAVIA: Arlechino, what are you doing? What’s happening?

ARLECHINO: Sir, sir! Throw me a rope! Quick! Please!

FLAVIA: A rope? You think I have a rope lying about?

ARLECHINO: The thing that ties the curtains – what’s it called –

FLAVIA: The pulmet?

ARLECHINO: Yes sir, the pulmet, the pulmet! Throw it to me, please! It might explode any moment!

FLAVIA: Have you got the sword?

ARLECHINO: Yes! Er – no – er – yes, I think so!

FLAVIA: Grab hold!

SHE THROWS THE PULMET.

ARLECHINO: Pull sir, quickly! Pull!

FLAVIA PULLS HIM IN THROUGH THE WINDOW.

ARLECHINO: Now push it away! Push it away!

FLAVIA: What?

ARLECHINO: Quick! Heave! Push! Go away! Explode somewhere else! Go on! Get down, sir, get down!

THROWS FLAVIA TO THE FLOOR. BABOON EXPLODES.

FLAVIA: What was – not a – I don’t –

ARLECHINO: Yes sir, another escaped baboon!

FLAVIA: Why did you –

ARLECHINO: Sir, when I looked up at the tower I saw it had grown again –

FLAVIA: No, no –

ARLECHINO: I couldn’t face all those stairs! Just then I heard the excited cries of zoo-keepers, and along the street it came, bounding. I stood right in front of it to catch it and it stopped dead, gave me a painful look, and then started to swell! As it rose, instinctively I grabbed onto its legs – and floated up to you, sir –

FLAVIA: Where is the sword?

ARLECHINO: The sword?

FLAVIA: Yes the sword! Where is it?

ARLECHINO: Ah, the sword, the sword! I must have dropped it –

FLAVIA: Never mind. I was about to jump anyway. Would you please leave. If you can’t help me, I can help myself, Arlechino! But I don’t want you getting in the way. Leave!

ARLECHINO: But sir, sir, wait! Sir – I have got good news!

FLAVIA: I can imagine. It will be something like – a woman in Argentina has remembered where she put her face-cream –

ARLECHINO: No, sir, she’s still searching everywhere –

FLAVIA: Get out, Arlechino!

ARLECHINO: I will, sir! Almost immediately! But if you must die, you must die knowing what I have got to tell you!

FLAVIA: I hate you, Arlechino! You actually want me to die happy! What a waste!

ARLECHINO: No, sir, not at all. I don’t want you to die!

FLAVIA: Then I hate you more than ever! You don’t want me to die! You don’t want me to die! Who the hell are you to want or not want me to die? Eh? Eh? You are the patron saint of idiots! How feeble and futile, Arlechino, to those who have decided to die, are the bleatings of those who whine, we don’t want you to die! Like an earwig pleading with a self-stranded whale! Insect, what do you know about the sea???

ARLECHINO: Sir, she likes your poetry!

FLAVIA: What? Who?

ARLECHINO: My Lady Flavia!

FLAVIA: Don’t say that name!

ARLECHINO: Sir, my friend Columbina who serves her assures me that my nameless Lady, over there in the tower – likes your poetry!

FLAVIA: Likes my poetry?

ARLECHINO: Yes sir!

FLAVIA: How –where –which – in what way?

ARLECHINO: Loves every word!

FLAVIA: And what is the evidence?

ARLECHINO: Hearsay, sir –

FLAVIA: Ah.

ARLECHINO: Overhearsay. My clever Columbina overheard that one over there, whose judgement in these questions is so fine, overheard her sighing and sweetly sobbing about your poems!

FLAVIA: Just before she wrote the word BAD on one of them!

ARLECHINO: That is the mystery.

FLAVIA: So much, Arlechino, you cannot explain! Why for a whole year she flung them back at me, hammering my confidence. Then, unable to contain her derision one second longer, grabs a great log of charcoal and smears the word BAD. Bad! Bad, Arlechino! If you knew down what labyrinth corridors the minotaur poetry has chased me, ever since I was born! What it has cost me! You would understand! All that for that!

ARLECHINO: No, sir, no!

FLAVIA: Now you tell me she sobs and sighs! Well why then BAD??? Is she insane? Is she two people? Which of them shall we believe?

SHOUTS OUT OF THE WINDOW

I hate you! Both of you!

ARLECHINO: Sir, why does she inspire you? Because she’s so strange! Don’t give up, sir! Or write for another woman –

FLAVIA: If it doesn’t work for this one it won’t work for anyone. You don’t understand, Arlechino. The reasons for this disaster lie deep in me. It is because I have reached the dead end of a very long road – a very long road indeed. I am in grief, in grief, Arlechino! Now please just get out of my way, get out of my way –

ARLECHINO: May I say one thing to you sir, however, before you die?

FLAVIA: What, Arlechino?

ARLECHINO: You look great in that dress, sir.

FLAVIA: Oh damn! Damn, Arlechino! I can’t even die with dignity!

ARLECHINO: Sir, you can! No, I mean – with more than dignity, with grace! No I mean – live sir, live! Dance, sing!

FLAVIA: My corpse would not have told you on the street,

sledge-hammered flat by its own impetus,

what I can tell you now before I dive

into that silence. I am not a man.

I do not love that Lady over there,

and that is why the words she wrings from me

are dead, and why today so will I be –

killed by the death of my own poetry.

She for some drunken reason shares my name –

you might remember not so recently

a Flavia was banished from this town

for writing female rhymes. Well that was me.

Ernesto I am not. Ernesto loved me.

He tried to save me, and he died at sea,

and I believed that his identity

would liberate at last my poetry,

but I was wrong, wrong, wrong. So can you see

why this whole world has got no place for me?

Without a voice, what is a poet? Stopped.

Her world stops turning, and it turns to lead,

and falls – falls – falls – falls – through the universe

forever till she hits the pavement splat!

So farewell, Arlechino!

ARLECHINO: Oh sir, sir, sir!

HE WEEPS, AND TAKES THE POEM OUT OF HIS POCKET TO DRY HIS EYES. FLAVIA BURSTS OUT LAUGHING.

FLAVIA: Arlechino that is not a handkerchief, is it!

ARLECHINO: What? Oh, no sir, no sir –

FLAVIA: What is it?

ARLECHINO: It is – er – oh, the poem sir, the one she sent back with her stupid comment, sir – such a good poem sir –

FLAVIA: Give it to me –

ARLECHINO GIVES HER THE POEM.

FLAVIA: Haha! All blotted! BAD – there it is. And there was a smudge in front of that, that your drizzling has cleaned. That’s her writing too, that was under it. What does it say? N – O – T. Not. Ha! Strange! Put that together with BAD and what do you get? Almost the opposite! Not quite – but almost! NOT BAD. NOT BAD, she wrote, Arlechino, NOT BAD.

ARLECHINO: Let me see that! Ah, goodness gracious, yes! Congratulations, sir!

FLAVIA: Are you going to carry on calling me sir, Arlechino?

ARLECHINO: Ah, non, madame! Excusez-moi!

FLAVIA: Do you know what this means?

ARLECHINO: Yes, sir! It means she likes your poetry!

FLAVIA: It means I was almost killed by your thumbprint.

ARLECHINO: I am sorry, sir!

FLAVIA: Being illiterate, Arlechino, that was the only way you could sign my death warrant!

ARLECHINO: Not on purpose!

FLAVIA: Arlechino! Arlechino!

ARLECHINO: Sir – madam – er –

FLAVIA: What must we learn from this? What lesson?

ARLECHINO: Never – never – never –

FLAVIA: Wash your hands, Arlechino!

ARLECHINO: Never wash your hands!

FLAVIA: No – wash them! Wash them! Wash your hands, Arlechino! Especially before handling my poems! Even more especially when handling my poems which have got messages on them which, wrongly interpreted, will bring my life to an end!

ARLECHINO: Wash my hands – before handling poems – that have got messages on them – that if wrongly –

FLAVIA: No, no, no, just wash them, wash them, wash them!

ARLECHINO: Madam I will! But not before I have fallen at the feet of the NOT BAD poet!

FLAVIA: She liked them all along. They are good, they are not bad. I was not wasting my time, strutting about, man-spreading, farting my opinions. It has worked, I am a free-speaking poet, I will publish this – and if anybody tries to stop me, I will stab them! She likes my poems, she loves them! For a whole year this has been building up in her! She is the most modest, undemonstrative, strange secretive creature!

ARLECHINO: She loves you, madam –

FLAVIA: I know. Where do we take it from here? Ah Arlechino, it will break her heart if she finds out! She must not! But now we must meet! Obviously! She has reached out, she has replied, at last! Now I have got to look into her eyes and then –write, write, write! Back on with my man’s clothes! Back to life! To life! As a woman I could only die! But as a woman in disguise I am twice alive! Both myself and something else! And a poet to boot! And free to speak! To love! Go to her, quick, Arlechino – first wash your hands – ask if we may meet – in the space between our two towers, under the plane trees in the piazza – in half an hour!

ARLECHINO: I will, sir!

EXIT.

FLAVIA: Who said that poetry is truth? He lied!

Poetry is pretence, it craves disguise,

it speaks in code and wears a mask of rhymes.

Poetry imitates the truth, a child

dressed as a soldier, or a false pretender

seizing the throne and wielding, for a while,

real power! I am glad that I was banned,

and forced to be a non-existent man!

The poetry I wrote before was strained,

furious, frank shrill blasts against injustice

and the oppression of my sex. God help me!

It was not carnival, it was not mad,

boiling outrageous as it pours out now,

and will pour out more, now I am NOT BAD!

SEVEN. ERNESTO IN HIS TOWER.

ERNESTO: Columbina! Columbina! Good, no answer. Thank God there is only her. I could almost dare to sleep. Almost. I do talk. So she always told me, Flavia – she teased me, she said, in my sleep I said my best poems. Far better than the ones I wrote down when awake. But she – being half-asleep herself, never wrote them down. Or did she? Sometimes I wondered, when she showed me this or that poem-wonder I wondered – is that one of mine, that she stole from me in sleep, does she sit up, pen in hand, waiting for my sleep-poetry, stealing my – stealing me? Rook of suspicion I chased off with a blast of love’s gun. Bang! the black field turns yellow again. What skeletal suspicions stalk love. Why? But love is flesh and blood, not just bones – when it comes to a fight, down goes the one held together with wire! And then sometimes I thought, Well I won’t sleep then. But love’s bed was warm. Now fear freezes me awake. God himself has said, Thou shalt not sleep! God – or someone. But I am – so – tired. Columbina! Columbina! Oh, she is nowhere near, nowhere near, nowhere –

HE FALLS ASLEEP. ENTER COLUMBINA.

COLUMBINA: Because I love you and I fear for you,

Lady, I do not hear you when you call.

I know it means you want to speak your mind

to the dust-motes and the dead butterflies!

ERNESTO: (IN HIS SLEEP) Columbina!

COLUMBINA: She is asleep. That is a reflex-cry,

such as dogs do, or wolf-cubs when they howl

at the dream-moon. She has to clear the room

completely, even in her sleep, poor thing!

ERNESTO: Flavia!

COLUMBINA: Good! You have left this house, this date, this day,

and gone a little deeper into time,

or out of it, as you feel safe to do,

now that the coast is clear of ears and eyes.

ERNESTO: Is that you, love? Speak to me!

COLUMBINA: Yes, it is me.

ERNESTO: No, no, it is not! Do not say you are her! You did not say that last time! I am sorry, I am sorry, forgive me, great Lady – whoever you are – I know that you are here to help me! Only tell me clearly – have I disobeyed, have I failed to do as you told me?

COLUMBINA: No, not at all! You have done well!

ERNESTO: Does anybody know?

COLUMBINA: No one knows.

ERNESTO: Does he know? The evil one?

COLUMBINA: He does not know.

ERNESTO: (CRYING WITH JOY) Oh! Oh! Oh! I was worried I had said too much –

COLUMBINA: Why?

ERNESTO: Why do you ask me why? You know!

COLUMBINA: I do not know all of your fears –

ERNESTO: I wanted to know who it is who has taken my name and my tower –

COLUMBINA: Do you know now?

ERNESTO: No! And I feared that the evil one, from whom I must hide – he would guess I am me – because I was so close to my old place. But you say he has not seen through my disguise?

COLUMBINA: He has not.

ERNESTO: Oh! And you are not angry with me for the risk I have taken?

COLUMBINA: No!

ERNESTO: You said I would be safe only if I did exactly as you told me to! Exactly!

COLUMBINA: Yes –

ERNESTO: He is so terrifying!

COLUMBINA: Yes! He is!

ERNESTO: I was dead. On the shore. I was his. He had taken me. But you came, and faced him, and brought me back, oh my Lady! You gave me back my life, oh my great Lady, and with strict instructions as to how to live in such a way that he would not be able to find me!

COLUMBINA: You have followed them!

ERNESTO: We have fooled him!

COLUMBINA: Haha!

ERNESTO: He is stupid!

COLUMBINA: He is!

ERNESTO: He does not know that I am not a woman!

COLUMBINA: Haha!

ERNESTO: Hush! I have said too much! But you are here, you are here! When you go away again, I will be secret again, I will not laugh, or think of him, I will be Lady Flavia, live on in grief here. It does not matter who that man is, who writes me poems, the one who has taken my name and my tower! It doesn’t matter! If he comes I will send him away! Oh my dear Lady, my safety – stand guard outside my door –

EXIT.

COLUMBINA: I will! She goes – to bed, though it is day,

to sleep in peace, which I have given her

by being someone else – or something.

Ah Columbina, what have you just been,

angel or ghost or fable-fantasy,

that saved her on the shore when she was he,

and lying dead and being led to hell

or somewhere worse, by something worse than me,

something far worse – though I, the saviour, made

such strange, severe conditions for survival,

that he is trapped in woman’s clothing, sworn,

super-masonic, to such secrecy

he hardly dares to sleep! Oh my dear Lady,

you are so lost! Oh you poor man, I mean –

ARLECHINO: (OFF) Columbina! Columbina! Help me!

COLUMBINA: Arlechino! Struggling up the stairs! Will I tell him? No, I will not tell him! The law of unforeseen consequences condemned Arlechino long ago not to be trusted. And I have been told a secret by a sleeping man. Who trusted me as his patron saint. I will not let myself down, or him, I will be that shining, strange secret being he thought he was speaking to!

ARLECHINO: (OFF) Help me! Help me!

COLUMBINA: Coming!

EXIT.

COLUMBINA: (OFF) Take my hand!

ARLECHINO: I can’t! I can’t make it! I’m falling! Falling!

COLUMBINA: Come on!

ARLECHINO: Two thousand and sixty-seven –

COLUMBINA: Three more!

ARLECHINO: Kiss me, Columbina, I am dying!

SILENCE. ARLECHINO BURSTS IN, ROARING AROUND.

ARLECHINO: She kissed me! Haha! When she kisses me I feel amazing! I could run up the whole lot again! Woh! Hey! Ho!

ENTER COLUMBINA

COLUMBINA: It was just a medical intervention.

ARLECHINO: (PRETENDING TO FAINT) Intervene again!

COLUMBINA: With the boot!

SHE KICKS HIM.

ARLECHINO: Ah, if you knew me, Columbina!

COLUMBINA: I do know you!

ARLECHINO: If you knew what I know!

COLUMBINA: I don’t want to know what you know!

ARLECHINO: You do!

COLUMBINA: You don’t!

ARLECHINO: How do you know?

COLUMBINA: Strange things, questionable things, odd things found under stones, things that you should keep to yourself, these are the things you know, Arlechino –

ARLECHINO: If you knew what I know your whole world would be changed!

COLUMBINA: For the worse! If you knew what I know –

ARLECHINO: What?

COLUMBINA: Nothing! If you’d been what I’ve been –

ARLECHINO: Who?

COLUMBINA: No one! But if you did and you had – you would be changed!

ARLECHINO: Would you love me then?

COLUMBINA: Who knows?

ARLECHINO: Take a chance! Tell me all! Transform me!

COLUMBINA: No. You must stay the same.

ARLECHINO: Because you love me as I am?

COLUMBINA: No –

ARLECHINO: Set me free from myself then! Make me the thing you can love!

COLUMBINA: I can’t tell you anything.

ARLECHINO: Well I can tell you one thing –

COLUMBINA: What?

ARLECHINO: I have a message from my m-m-m-master – inviting your mistress to meet him!

COLUMBINA: She won’t come.

ARLECHINO: Why not?

COLUMBINA: I can’t say.

ARLECHINO: Give me a clue!

COLUMBINA: Don’t push it! I have got alot on my mind!

ARLECHINO: So have I! And mine’s smaller!

COLUMBINA: You are the last person in the world I’d tell!

ARLECHINO: Tell the world! I’ll wait my turn.

COLUMBINA: I’m not telling you anything! There’s nothing to tell!

ARLECHINO: Whisper sweet nothing to me then –

COLUMBINA: Sweet FA is all you’ll get from me!

ARLECHINO: You are breaking my heart!

COLUMBINA: Why?

ARLECHINO: Because you don’t trust me!

COLUMBINA: I trust you to screw up everything if I tell you!

ARLECHINO: Oh lay your burden down on me!

COLUMBINA: (TO AUDIENCE) This is insane. I actually want to tell him. Does that mean I’m in love with him? My er, Lady’s secret is a difficult burden. Strange, mad, hard to understand – just like Arlechino. Therefore it seems like he is actually the only person on earth I could tell. If I had to tell someone. But do I? Perhaps I do. Look at my – Lady. He can’t sleep, he never sees anyone, he’s half out of his mind with a grief he can’t even name. Do I want to get like him?

ARLECHINO: Don’t speak to them! Speak to me!

COLUMBINA: What shall I say?

ARLECHINO: Anything! Everything!

COLUMBINA: (TO AUDIENCE) I’m tempted. (TO ARLECHINO) Do you swear not to tell?

ARLECHINO: I do!

COLUMBINA: Arlechino, you are most dear to me, I don’t know why –

ARLECHINO: Columbina! Columbina!

COLUMBINA: But if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, I swear you will never see my face again!

ARLECHINO: Columbina, for your sake I am mildly insane. There is something I too must never tell, but I will tell you if you will tell me, and I swear if I tell, I will never see my face again!

COLUMBINA: Alright, it’s a deal! We both tell! You go first!

ARLECHINO: No, you!

COLUMBINA: No, you!

ARLECHINO: Together then. One, two , three –

SPEAK TOGETHER:

ARLECHIO: My master is a woman!

COLUMBINA: My mistress is a man!

ARLECHINO: What?

COLUMBINA: What?

TOGETHER:

COLUMBINA: My mistress is a man!

ARLECHINO: My master is a woman!

ARLECHINO: Your mistress is a woman?

COLUMBINA: No!

ARLECHINO: What is she then?

COLUMBINA: What your master isn’t!

ARLECHINO: A man?

COLUMBINA: My mistress is a man.

ARLECHINO: My master is a woman.

COLUMBINA: Why?

ARLECHINO: I don’t know!

COLUMBINA: I love you!

ARLECHINO: I love you!

THEY EMBRACE AND KISS.

ARLECHINO: I will tell her the meeting is on!

COLUMBINA: But it isn’t!

ARLECHINO: It has to be! Persuade him!

COLUMBINA: He is so frightened!

ARLECHINO: Encourage him!

COLUMBINA: Bring her here! We will see. Oh, it might save him!

ARLECHINO: I will!

EXIT ARLECHINO.

COLUMBINA: Oh my Lady – sir, I mean – I know this isn’t what you think you want, but, ah nameless goddess, strange being who saved him from whoever it is that has so terrified him – you, I think, are hardly less ferocious, but whoever you are, who I pretended to be, forgive me, I pray, and help me now to get this man out of the mess he is in! Even if it means he hates me! I might have to run away but - he can’t stay disguised as a woman! He’s not enjoying it! Set him free from his vow of secrecy! Set him free, strange nameless one, I pray, I pray! Look, I will do you a dance, your Majesty! Are you watching??

SHE DOES A WILD DANCE AND EXITS.

EIGHT. THE MASTER, LISTENING.

MASTER: Is the clown king? Have the unserious,

not so much humans as the sound of wind,

got hold of knowledge that would give me power?

What is it? I cannot make out their faint

bleatings! And I would rip them inside out,

on the off-chance their guts had got the truth,

but all my strength is centred on one point,

as sunrays by a magnifying glass,

striving with my own will to pierce the question

who and from where this woman is, whose tower

mirrors the one it is my will to capture!

It drains my heart’s blood, but this only strengthens

my urge to know – since it is clear some power

blocks me, which has, from my illumination,

something to lose!

ENTER ANGEL.

ANGEL: Step back! You shall not have her!

MASTER: Ah, it is you! Well I at least know something,

finally!

ANGEL: Leave her! You have had your share!

MASTER: My share perhaps, but not my fill. Who is she?

ANGEL: It is a woman who was dead.

MASTER: What Orpheus

has strummed a tuneful bargain with necessity

to get her back?

ANGEL: It is my right. I earned it.

MASTER: How?

ANGEL: That is way beyond your comprehension –

MASTER: Easy to say!

ANGEL: The fact remains concrete.

She is alive, and she was dead!

MASTER: Indeed.

And is she happy? Bringing back the dead

is difficult –but raising happiness

out of a living tomb of tears requires

even sublimer miracles.

ANGEL: She will be.

MASTER: You know the other is a woman too.

Will this end well? You have an honest heart,

and your goodwill sees far into the future –

but far enough? There is a murky edge

that blurs it at a certain point –

ANGEL: My vision

shines from the future. And its only border

is you!

MASTER: Exactly! My perimeter

is you. So let us shatter one another,

share all our secrets and break through, together,

into the infinite!

ANGEL: Mix the rainbow’s colours

into a smudge!

MASTER: You have no choice, sweet sister!

The one I know, the woman, Flavia,

the poet born to silence, is a river

so sour, that carries on its back such anger,

reflective of a sky so green with thunder,

(despite her present sweet delusive triumph,)

that I was able to invade, through her,

the world in my entirety! Behind me,

all my dark armies! And her rage is wider

than ever, putrid wound and open sewer

through which we flood!

ANGEL: It is an ambush, brother!
Love will be waiting!

MASTER: If you say so, sister!

ANGEL SING-DANCES THE FOLLOWING:

ANGEL: King Ceyx drowned far out at sea. His Queen,

fearing the worst when he did not return,

thinking correctly that the boiling green

had ripped the royal boat from prow to stern,

sat crying in her tower on the pier,

till the whole view of drifting blue and grey

was one down-streaming window-pane, unclear.

But then she spied, out in the airy bay,

a bobbing thing – she watched it floating near,

till it was on the rocks, and then she ran,

and knelt beside it, nothing left to fear,

because it was the body of her man.

Kingfishers they became, which for some reason

nest on the broad sea – tranquil for that season.

MASTER: Halcyon summers and harmonious marriage!
That magic is not mighty! Not like mine!

THEY FIGHT. SHE RETIRES GRACEFULLY.

MASTER: I know you will outwit yourself, as ever,

loading the brittle human spine with strictures

and principles and vows and ordinances

so heavy it reverts to primal stooping,

and the crushed spirit, failing to be perfect,

ends up much worse, cramped in self-disappointment,

than it was in the first place! Yes, the price

in terms of goodness that you ask for raising

this woman from the dead will make her sorely

long for the undemanding ground! And meanwhile

the other in her bitterness is changeless –

injustice is a solid fact, no figment

to smile away! Ambitious to be lovely,

the oppressed spirit strains towards forgiveness,

fills up with love, wherever it can find it –

but the injustice is not moved by that

at all – it is a solid wall of fact,

love fails, forgiveness fails at all to shift it,

and, failing, dies. Love dies, so does forgiveness,

drowned in the blood of their own uselessness!

As if a prisoner should forgive and love

the steel door of his cell – it still stays tight shut!

This poet as a woman cannot speak.

No matter how she tries she will not find it,

her buried voice. And her despair will guide her

into my kingdom. I will take her tower!

NINE. ERNESTO’S TOWER. FLAVIA, DRESSED AS A MAN.

FLAVIA: Her place! This is where she was when I was imagining her! When

my eyes were straining for her across the piazza, or when at night with eyes shut

I carried this room brick by brick, chair by chair – each imaginary drape and picture, over the intervening space and put them back together, a room in my own mind, and she in it. What can the mind not do, that invented words? We might find it hard to travel to the moon – at least, time-consuming – like climbing the three thousand steps of this tower – but with one syllable we fetch the moon down, near enough to step onto it and wander around its parks and gardens. With thought I fetched her, furniture and all – and I don’t even love her – over the far-below oblivious piazza – into my mind, where like a painter I could gaze at her, till words rose in me, as fish to the light. Or if they did not, then I fed the moon to her. And if that did not work, the sun too, then the whole universe, star by star till the imagined woman was bursting, breaking, like a volcano erupting at night, every particle of light crammed into her, to drag words like black blades out of my heart –word after word –

ENTER ERNESTO, TERRIFIED.

FLAVIA: My Lady! Forgive me!

ERNESTO: Who are you? Columbina! Columbina!

FLAVIA: She will not come -

ERNESTO: What? What?

FLAVIA: Do not be afraid, I beg you, my Lady –

HE TRIES TO GIVE HER A LETTER.

ERNESTO: I do not want this! No, no!

FLAVIA: My Lady – my Lady – let me read it to you – it is from Columbina –

ERNESTO: Don’t speak to me! I can’t see you! Go! You were not here!

FLAVIA: (READS) My dear beloved Lady –

ERNESTO: Oh God save me, God save me –

FLAVIA: I have decided to fall in love with Arlechino. We are running away. I beg you, listen to Ernesto, from over the road, forgive him, listen to him, and you will be alright. You will be able to sleep in peace, my Lady. I love you, love from Columbina.

ERNESTO: Columbina!

FLAVIA: My Lady, I have come here for one reason only – to thank you for receiving my poetry – for almost praising it - NOT BAD –

ERNESTO: I should not have written that!

FLAVIA: But you did, and I needed to thank you, and I have.

ERNESTO: There can never be anything between us!

FLAVIA: Why not?

ERNESTO: Because I say so!

FLAVIA: Very well. I accept that. But may I still write to you? Now that I have seen you so close –

ERNESTO: No! You may not write! Enough is enough! I should not have come here! I will leave this place!

FLAVIA: Please –

ERNESTO: Please, you say!

FLAVIA: Yes I do say please –

ERNESTO: Don’t plead with me! Jesus! You are the reason I came here, thrusting my face into terrible danger!

FLAVIA: I am flattered –

ERNESTO: Don’t be! Alright you write alright poetry, but you are the worst kind of thief! And you have almost destroyed me!

FLAVIA: The very worst, my Lady?

ERNESTO: Probably!

FLAVIA: Tell me what I have done!

ERNESTO: Do you want me to?

FLAVIA: Yes! Yes!

ERNESTO: But you will want to know how I know. No – just go, go! Then I’ll go!

FLAVIA: My Lady, my Lady – clearly to you all doors are open. You see right into my heart, where all evils abide. And this is why, this is why – you inspire me! So I swear, as if to a goddess, right here on my knees, if you tell me about myself I will ask you no questions, never, never! Make me swear anything, I will swear, on my soul, on the light of this day! I, Ernesto!

ERNESTO: Dear God!

FLAVIA: Speak!

ERNESTO: Aaaaaghhhhh!

FLAVIA: Speak!

ERNESTO: ‘I, Ernesto’! You are not Ernesto!!!!

FLAVIA: How do you know that?

ERNESTO: Ha! You swore you would not ask!

FLAVIA: Oh!

ERNESTO: False, false, through and through! Well, before I disappear, I might as well get the truth! Who are you? Who are you?

FLAVIA: You are the wisest of –

ERNESTO: Shut up! Drop it!

FLAVIA: Yes – yes – sorry –

ERNESTO: What are you doing in Ernesto’s tower????

FLAVIA: My Lady –

ERNESTO: Swear to tell me the truth. ‘By the light of this day’!

FLAVIA: My Lady, if I tell you, it will all be over between us –

ERNESTO: Great!

FLAVIA: I will not be able to write a single line of poetry to you or anyone else ever again –

ERNESTO: That is a pity, but still, I think it is time for you to stop lying!

FLAVIA: You do?

ERNESTO: I do!

FLAVIA: Really?

ERNESTO: Yes!

FLAVIA: My dear Lady – I am not a man, my name is Flavia, I am a woman.

ERNESTO: Flavia!

HE SEIZES HER IN HIS ARMS AND KISSES HER.

FLAVIA: Get off me!

ERNESTO: No, Flavia, Flavia, it is me, Ernesto!

FLAVIA: Ernesto! No, he is dead!

ERNESTO: No, no –

FLAVIA: He was dead –

ERNESTO: Yes I was but –

FLAVIA: I took his clothes and name, left him dead on the sand –

ERNESTO: Flavia, I have broken my promise to the one who brought me back from the dead! We are in terrible danger!

FLAVIA: Ernesto?

ERNESTO: How else do I know you are not me?

FLAVIA: Ernesto!

SHE EMBRACES AND KISSES HIM.

FLAVIA: But Ernesto, what happened to you, you were never afraid of anything! You captured the ship, all by yourself, sailed it away, with me –

ERNESTO: I died, Flavia, I was dead – do you understand? I will be brave Ernesto again, but – give me time, give me time –

FLAVIA: Someone is shouting in the street!

ERNESTO: I dare not go to the window –

FLAVIA GOES TO THE WINDOW.

FLAVIA: Arlechino! Columbina! He has got her on his back! They are waving! Yes, Arlechino, Columbina, we have found each other! Off he goes, galloping down the street, she is laughing and waving, with her hair full of flowers! Oops, he’s dropped her! She’s punched him! Now they’re kissing again! Arlechino! Columbina!

ERNESTO: Be quiet, for God’s sake! Get back from the window!

FLAVIA: Ernesto? What are you so afraid of? Who can hurt you now that we’re together?

ERNESTO: He can!

FLAVIA: No!

ERNESTO: Haven’t you noticed the towers getting taller?

FLAVIA: Yes, of course –

ERNESTO: That is him! Look, now, down at the ground!

FLAVIA: The world is vanishing!

ERNESTO: You see!

FLAVIA: Who cares?

SHE WEEPS.

ERNESTO: Oh my love, why are you crying?

FLAVIA: To say farewell again to my poetry –

ERNESTO: No, my love, we will get down from here somehow and sail away again –

FLAVIA: There is nowhere to go!

ERNESTO: I know what to do!

FLAVIA: Do you?

ERNESTO: You were a good man, I was a good woman. We will leave this town and travel the world. For six months you are the man, speaking to the crowds, to Kings and Queens, my poetry and your own. Then for the next six months, in a different town, the man is me and I speak my poetry and yours as mine! So we two, a man and a woman, can be equal poets in this time when you are forbidden!

FLAVIA: Arlechino would like this plan!

ERNESTO: So would Columbina!

FLAVIA: I like it!

ERNESTO: Let’s do it then!

FLAVIA LOOKS OUT OF THE WINDOW.

FLAVIA: Oh look! Two figures in the clouds are fighting!

One of them is too bright to look at, rising

like a sky-wave through which the light is lightened.

The other seems to suck your eyes out, draining

out of the punctured sun its blood of colours,

so the whole world, and your own mind, is darkened.

They soar and plunge! One has the upper hand,

and now the other. Now they seem one thing,

swan-raven, raven-swan, day-night, sun-moon,

fighting itself. And now a broad arch opens

in the deep sky – there is a sky beyond –

and one beyond that – they are vanishing

through the first arch, and now I see them change,

far off beyond a second arch! Strange vision!

ERNESTO: Oh look, my love, I think the tower is down

to its old height!

FLAVIA: It is! Hello, old town!

ERNESTO: Two kingfishers!

FLAVIA: I see them!

ERNESTO: Happy things!

FLAVIA: Loving is easy when you both have wings!

ERNESTO: Flavia, shall we carry out our plan?

FLAVIA: Yes! It’s your turn, I think, to be the man!

EMBRACE AND KISS. END