The Master Builder and Other Plays

by Henrik Ibsen

  RUBEK [jumps up]: Irene, what is it!

  IRENE [warding him off]: Gently, gently, gently, now! [Breathes heavily then says as though relieved of a burden] Look! They’ve let me go. Just this once. – Now we can sit down and talk the way we used to – in life.

  RUBEK: Oh, if only we could talk as we used to.

  IRENE: Sit down, there, where you were. And I’ll sit next to you.

  He sits down again. She sits on another stone close by.

  IRENE [after a short pause]: I’ve come back to you now, Arnold, from the most distant lands.

  RUBEK: From an endlessly long journey, for sure.

  IRENE: Come home to my lord and master –

  RUBEK: To our home – to what is our own, Irene.

  IRENE: Have you waited for me every single day?

  RUBEK: How could I dare to wait?

  IRENE [with a sideways glance]: No, you probably didn’t. Because you understood nothing.

  RUBEK: So, honestly, it wasn’t because of someone else that you suddenly disappeared?

  IRENE: Couldn’t it just as easily have been because of you, Arnold?

  RUBEK [looks uncertainly at her]: I don’t understand –?

  IRENE: After I’d served you with my soul and with my body – and the sculpture was finished – our child, as you called it – I laid the most precious sacrifice at your feet – eradicating myself for ever.

  RUBEK [bows his head]: And making my life a wasteland.

  IRENE [flares up suddenly]: That’s exactly what I wanted! You were never, never, to create anything again – not after you’d created our only child.

  RUBEK: Was there jealousy in your thoughts at the time?

  IRENE [cold]: I think hatred would be more accurate.

  RUBEK: Hatred? Hatred for me?

  IRENE [again vehement]: Yes, for you – for the artist who so casually and thoughtlessly took a warm-blooded body, a young human life, and ripped the soul from it – because you needed it to create a work of art.

  RUBEK: How can you say that – you who with such radiant delight and exalted passion gave yourself to my work? This work for which we would come together every morning as if it were an act of devotion.

  IRENE [cold, as before]: I’ll tell you one thing, Arnold.

  RUBEK: Yes?

  IRENE: I never loved your art before I met you. – Nor since.

  RUBEK: But the artist, Irene?

  IRENE: I hate the artist.

  RUBEK: The artist in me too?

  IRENE: Above all in you. When I took off all my clothes and stood there before you, at that moment I hated you, Arnold –

  RUBEK [vehemently]: You did not, Irene! That’s not true!

  IRENE: I hated you because you were able to stand there, so unmoved –

  RUBEK [laughs]: Unmoved? You think so?

  IRENE:– or so infuriatingly controlled, then. And because you were an artist, just an artist – not a man! [Switches to a warm, intimate tone.] But that statue of wet, living clay, that I did love – because slowly emerging from those raw, formless masses was a human child, with a soul – because that was our creation, our child. Mine and yours.

  RUBEK [heavily]: In spirit and in truth, it was.

  IRENE: You see, Arnold – it was because of our child that I decided to come on this long pilgrimage.

  RUBEK [attentive suddenly]: Because of the marble image –?

  IRENE: Call it what you like. I call it our child.

  RUBEK [unsettled]: And now you want to see it? Finished? In marble, which you always found so cold? [Eagerly] Perhaps you don’t know – it’s exhibited in a great museum somewhere – a long way out in the world?

  IRENE: It’s as if I’ve heard tell of it.

  RUBEK: You always had an aversion for museums. You called them burial vaults –

  IRENE: I want to make a pilgrimage to the place where my soul and my soul’s child lie buried.

  RUBEK [anxious and unsettled]: You must never see that sculpture again! Do you hear, Irene! I beg you –! Never, never see it again!

  IRENE: Do you think it would kill me a second time?

  RUBEK [wringing his hands]: I don’t know what I think. – How could I have imagined that you would bind yourself so absolutely to that sculpture? You, who left me – before it was fully formed!

  IRENE: It was fully formed. That was why I was able to leave you. And leave you alone.

  RUBEK [sits with his elbows on his knees and holds his head, his hands covering his eyes]: It was not what it later became.

  IRENE [quick as lightning, silently draws a section of a thin, sharp knife from her breast and whispers hoarsely]: Arnold – have you harmed our child?

  RUBEK [evasive]: Harmed? – I’m not sure what you would call it.

  IRENE [breathless]: Tell me this minute what you’ve done to the child.

  RUBEK: If you sit down and listen to me calmly, I will tell you.

  IRENE [puts the knife away]: I’ll listen as calmly as any mother can when she –

  RUBEK [interrupts]: And don’t look at me while I’m talking.

  IRENE [moves across to a stone behind his back]: I’ll sit here behind you. – Go on, speak.

  RUBEK [takes his hands from his eyes and looks away]: When I found you I knew right away how I would use you for my life’s work.

  IRENE: Resurrection Day, you called it, your life’s work. – I call it ‘our child’.

  RUBEK: I was young then. Completely inexperienced in life. I thought that the resurrection should be depicted in its most beautiful and lovely form, as a young, untouched woman – without any experiences of life on this earth – one who awakens into light and glory without anything ugly or impure to rid herself of.

  IRENE [hurriedly]: Yes – and that is how I now stand there in our work?

  RUBEK [hesitantly]: Not quite like that, actually, Irene.

  IRENE [in mounting tension]: Not quite –? Aren’t I just the way I was when I posed for you?

  RUBEK [without answering]: I became more worldly in the years that followed, Irene. I began to conceive of Resurrection Day as something more, something – something more complex. The small circular plinth where your image stood, solitary and erect – was too limited for everything I wanted to compose –

  IRENE [fumbles for the knife but leaves it be]: So what did you add?5 Say it!

  RUBEK: I added what I saw with my own eyes in the world around me. I had to include it all. Couldn’t do otherwise, Irene. I enlarged the plinth – made it big and spacious. And on it I laid a section of the bulging, heaving earth. And now, swarming up out of the cracks in the earth there are people, people with animal faces concealed beneath the skin. Women and men – just as I knew them in life.

  IRENE [in breathless anticipation]: But at the centre of this throng stands the young woman with the joy of light6 across her face – isn’t that right, Arnold – I do?

  RUBEK: Not quite at the centre. Unfortunately, I had to move the statue back a little. For the sake of the overall effect, you see. Otherwise it would have been far too dominant.

  IRENE: But the transfiguring joy of light is still shining across my face?

  RUBEK: I suppose so, Irene. In a way, it does. Slightly muted, perhaps. To the extent that my altered conception required it.

  IRENE [gets up noiselessly]: That sculpture expresses life as you now see it, Arnold.

  RUBEK: Yes, I suppose it does.

  IRENE: And in this composition, you’ve moved me back, slightly paler – as a kind of background figure – in a group.

  She pulls out the knife.

  RUBEK: Not a background figure, no. At worst let’s call it a mid-ground figure – or something of the sort.

  IRENE [whispers hoarsely]: Now you have passed judgement on yourself. [She is about to strike him.]

  RUBEK [turns and looks up at her]: Judgement?

  IRENE [hides the knife quickly and says in a choked voice as though in agony]: My entire soul – you and I – we, we, we and our child we
re in that lonely figure.

  RUBEK [eagerly, pulling his hat off and drying the sweat off his forehead]: Yes, but listen to how I positioned myself in the group. In the front beside a stream, just like here, sits a guilt-marked man who cannot quite free himself from the earth’s crust. I call him regret over a wasted life. He sits there, dipping his fingers into the running water – to rinse them clean – and he is tortured and plagued by the thought that he will never, never succeed. He will never, in all eternity, be freed into the life of the resurrection. He’ll remain forever sitting there in his hell.

  IRENE [hard and cold]: Poet!

  RUBEK: Poet? How so?

  IRENE: Because you are apathetic and spineless and full of self-indulgent forgiveness for everything that you have done or thought in your life. You killed my soul – and then you go modelling yourself as a figure of regret, remorse and penance – [smiles] – and by doing this you settle your account, or so you think.

  RUBEK [defiant]: I am an artist, Irene. And I’m not ashamed of the weakness which perhaps clings to me. Because I was born to be an artist, you see. – And I’ll never be anything another than an artist.

  IRENE [with a smile of suppressed malevolence looks at him and says gently and mildly]: You are a poet, Arnold. [Strokes his hair lightly] You great big dear old child – that you can’t see that!

  RUBEK [disgruntled]: Why do you insist on calling me a poet?

  IRENE [with watchful eyes]: Because, my friend, there is something exonerating in the word. Something absolving – spreading a veil over all moral weakness. [Suddenly changes tone] But I was a human being – back then! And I also had a life to live – and a destiny to fulfil. See, I let all that go – gave it away to subordinate myself. – Oh, it was suicide. A mortal sin against myself. [Half whispering] And that sin I can never expiate. [She sits down beside the stream close to him. Watches him unnoticed. Absentmindedly picks a few flowers from the bushes surrounding them. Then, apparently in control.] I should have brought children into the world. Lots of children. Real children. Not the kind hidden away in tombs. That should have been my calling. Should never have served you – poet.

  RUBEK [lost in memories]: Yet they were wonderful times, Irene – marvellous, wonderful times – when I now think back –

  IRENE [looks at him with a gentle expression]: Do you remember a little word you used – when you’d finished – finished with me and with our child? [Nods to him.] Do you remember that little word, Arnold?

  RUBEK [looks questioningly at her]: Did I use a little word back then that you still remember?

  IRENE: Yes, you did. Can’t you remember it any longer?

  RUBEK [shakes his head]: No, I really can’t say I do. At least not just now.

  IRENE: You took both my hands and pressed them warmly. And I stood there in breathless anticipation. And then you said: My most heartfelt thanks, Irene. This, you said, has been a blessed episode for me.

  RUBEK [seems doubtful]: I said ‘episode’? That’s not a word I tend to use.

  IRENE: You said ‘episode’.

  RUBEK [with affected confidence]: Yes, well – but in fact it was an episode.

  IRENE: At that word I left you.

  RUBEK: Irene, you take everything so painfully to heart.

  IRENE [strokes her forehead]: You might be right. Let us banish all things dark and difficult from us. [Plucks the petals off a mountain rose7 and scatters them in the stream.] Look, Arnold. Our birds are swimming.

  RUBEK: What kind of birds?

  IRENE: Can’t you see? They’re flamingoes. Pink as roses.

  RUBEK: Flamingoes can’t swim. They’re waders.

  IRENE: Then they’re not flamingoes. They’re seagulls.

  RUBEK: Seagulls with red beaks; could be, yes. [Picks some broad green leaves and throws them out into the stream.] Now I’m sending my ships out after them.

  IRENE: But there mustn’t be any hunters8 on board.

  RUBEK: No, there won’t be any hunters. [Smiles at her] Do you remember that summer we sat like this outside that little cottage by Taunitzer See?

  IRENE [nods]: On Saturday evenings, yes – when we’d finished with our work for the week –

  RUBEK: – and took off on the train. And stayed away for the whole of Sunday –

  IRENE [with a malevolent, hateful glint in her eye]: That was an episode, Arnold.

  RUBEK [pretending not to hear]: You made birds swim in the stream then too. They were water-lilies9 that you –

  IRENE: White swans.

  RUBEK: I meant swans, yes. And I remember that I fastened a great big hairy leaf on to one of the swans. A dock leaf to be precise –

  IRENE: Which became Lohengrin’s boat10 – with a swan in front.

  RUBEK: How you loved that game, Irene!

  IRENE: We’d play it over and over again.

  RUBEK: Every single Saturday, I think. The whole summer long.

  IRENE: You said that I was the swan pulling your boat.

  RUBEK: Did I? I may well have done. [Absorbed in the game] Hey! Look how the seagulls are swimming down the river.

  IRENE [laughs]: And all your ships have run aground.

  RUBEK [places more leaves into the stream]: I have plenty of ships in reserve. [Follows the leaves with his gaze, then throws in several more and says after a short pause.] Irene – I bought that little cottage on Taunitzer See.

  IRENE: You bought it? You always said you’d buy it if you could afford it.

  RUBEK: I did quite well later on. So I bought it.

  IRENE [looks at him out of the corner of her eye]: Do you live out there now – in our old house?

  RUBEK: No, I had that pulled down long ago. I built myself a fine, big, comfortable villa on the plot – with a park around it. That is where we usually – [stops and corrects himself] that is where I usually spend the summers –

  IRENE [controlling herself]: So you and – and the other one live there now?

  RUBEK [a little defiantly]: Yes. When my wife and I are not travelling – as we are this year.

  IRENE [stares into space]: Lovely, life at Taunitzer See was lovely.

  RUBEK [as though looking back into himself]: And yet, Irene –

  IRENE [finishing his thoughts]: – and yet we two let it go, all of that wonderful life.

  RUBEK [quietly, urgently]: Has the regret come too late now?

  IRENE [doesn’t answer him. Sits quietly for a while, then points across the plateau]: Look there, Arnold. The sun’s going down behind the mountain peaks. Just look – how the red catches all the patches of the heather over there.

  RUBEK [also looking across]: I haven’t seen sunset on the mountains for a long time.

  IRENE: A sunrise, then?

  RUBEK: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sunrise.

  IRENE [smiles as though lost in memory]: I once saw a wonderfully beautiful sunrise.

  RUBEK: Did you? Where was that?

  IRENE: High, high up on a dizzying mountain peak. – You lured me up there and promised that I would see all the glory of the world, as long as I just – [Suddenly breaks off.]

  RUBEK: As long as you just –? What?

  IRENE: I did as you said. Followed you up to the heights. And there I fell to my knees – and worshipped you. And served you. [Is silent for a short time; then she says quietly] That’s when I saw the sunrise.

  RUBEK [changing the subject]: Wouldn’t you like to travel with us and live in our villa down there?

  IRENE [looks at him with a contemptuous smile]: With you – and the other lady?

  RUBEK [urgently]: With me – just as in our creative days. Unlock everything that’s locked up inside me. Couldn’t you, Irene?

  IRENE [shakes her head]: I no longer have the key to you, Arnold.

  RUBEK: You do have the key! Only you do! [Begs and pleads] Help me – so that I can begin to live my life over again.

  IRENE [unmoved as before]: Empty dreams. Pointless – dead dreams. There’s no resurrection for our life toget
her.

  RUBEK [curt, abrupt]: Well let’s just go on playing then!

  IRENE: Yes, play, play – just play!

  They sit and throw leaves and petals out into the stream and let them swim and sail away.

  Up the slope in the background to the left come ULFHEIM and MAJA dressed for hunting. They are followed by the SERVANT with the pack of hounds he is leading out to the right.

  RUBEK [catches sight of them]: Look, there’s little Maja out with the bear shooter.

  IRENE: Your lady, yes.

  RUBEK: Or his.

  MAJA [looks up on her way over the plateau and sees the two of them by the stream and shouts over to them]: Goodnight, professor! Dream of me. I’m off on an adventure!

  RUBEK [shouts back]: What’s that adventure about?

  MAJA [comes closer]: I want to put life in place of everything else.

  RUBEK [teasingly]: Really, little Maja, is that what you want too?

  MAJA: Yes. And I’ve made up a song that goes like this [sings and exults]:

  I am free! I am free! I am free!

  Prison life’s over for me!

  I’m as free as a bird! I am free!

  Yes, because I believe I’ve woken up now – finally!

  RUBEK: It almost seems you have.

  MAJA [breathes deeply]: Oh – how divinely light it feels to be awake!

  RUBEK: Goodnight, Maja – and good luck –

  ULFHEIM [shouts in warning]: Shh, shh! – To hell with you and your mumbo jumbo11 good wishes. Can’t you see we’re off shooting –?

  RUBEK: What will you bring me back from the hunt, Maja?

  MAJA: A bird of prey you can model. I’ll wing one for you.

  RUBEK [laughs mockingly and bitterly]: Yes, wing one – inadvertently – that’s been you all along, hasn’t it?

  MAJA [tossing her head]: Just let me take care of myself from now on –! [Nods and laughs archly.] Goodbye – and have a good, quiet summer night out on the plateau!

  RUBEK [happily]: Thanks! All the very worst of luck12 to you and your hunt.

  ULFHEIM [roars with laughter]: Now there’s a wish. That’s more like it!

  MAJA [laughing]: Thanks, thanks, thanks, professor!

  They have both come over the visible part of the plateau and go out through the birch thicket to the right.

  RUBEK [after a short pause]: A summer’s night on the plateau. Now that would have been a life.