Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  But Paul was offended. “You tell it, my friend,” he said. “It’s nothing. A ficelle. ‘Marion pleure, Marion crie; Marion veut qu’on la marie,’ as Voltaire wittily said.” He broke off into a fit of coughing. “I don’t believe he knows it at all,” Jane whispered to Warren. “Not Voltaire—” began Martha. “Ssh,” said Warren. “Titus,” commenced Miles, “the new Emperor of Rome, loves Queen Bérénice of Judaea.” “What you would call today a puppet queen,” interjected the vicomte, smoothing his long bob. “Titus,” said Miles, “has conquered Jerusalem.” “The Arch of Titus,” whispered Dolly, to Harold Huber. “Quiet!” implored Warren. “Titus,” Miles resumed at a brisker pace, “has brought the vassal queen to Rome, where he conceives the notion of marrying her. His father—” “Vespasian,” announced Martha. “Damn it, Martha,” exclaimed Miles. “Stop helping me. Tell the story yourself.” He folded his arms and scowled. “Shall I?” Martha appealed to the company, as Miles remained stubbornly silent, his narrow lips set. “Go ahead, Martha,” said Jane. “All right, then,” said Martha. “When the play opens, it’s Titus’s wedding day. His father, Vespasian, has died, just a few days before, I think, and Titus is now Caesar. In her apartments, Bérénice is waiting to be married. She doesn’t realize (dramatic irony) that Titus has decided to renounce her, because Roman law and custom forbid Caesar to marry a queen and a foreigner.” “Why?” said Harriet Huber. “Prejudice,” said the vicomte, looking at them over a large pair of glasses, which he had produced from his pocket. “It is the same as with us in France. Ever since they threw their own kings out, the Romans détestaient les rois.” “The Senate,” resumed Martha, “has reminded Titus of his duty and he comes to tell Bérénice that he’s going to send her back to Judaea—unwillingly.” The vicomte looked up from the text. “But Bérénice is naughty,” he supplied. “She takes it in a bad spirit—not nobly—protests that he is tired of her and threatens to kill herself. Eh bien, Titus, who loves her still, becomes a bad boy too and threatens to kill himself. When the lovely Bérénice hears this, she knows that he loves her and rises to her full height.” The vicomte sat up in his chair, threw his chest out and held himself at attention. “She renounces Titus, of her own volition, and sets sail for Judaea, promising not to die. Titus stays in Rome and takes up his job as Emperor.”

  “And that’s all?” said Harriet Huber, curiously. “That’s all,” said the vicomte, settling back in his chair with a somewhat triumphant expression. “You forgot Antiochus,” prompted Martha. “Ah yes,” said the vicomte. “The king of Comagena. It is the part I will take. Another Oriental, like Bérénice. Another barbarian. He is Titus’s rival. He loves Bérénice and hopes to get her, what do you say, on the rebound. But in the end he too renounces. He gives up his crafty design and becomes like a Roman.” There was a silence. Dolly frowned. “It’s rather like an Austen novel, isn’t it?” she timidly observed. “All the characters become educated; they grow up and buckle down to their duties, like Emma marrying Mr. Knightley.” She screwed up her brows. “It sounds awfully uncomfortable,” she added, with a little shiver. “But naturally,” said the vicomte. “The characters have growing pains. That is what tragedy is.”

  “Let me ask you a question,” said Warren, who had been waiting dutifully for an opening in the conversation. “Why doesn’t Titus give up the job of Emperor and just marry Bérénice and live like a plain citizen?” “Like the Duke of Windsor,” exclaimed Harriet. “I knew it reminded me of something. ‘The woman I love.’ ” She laughed a little and looked at her husband. But Jane, who seemed out of sorts for some reason this evening, turned impatiently on Warren. “Oh, Warren,” she said, “you know the answer to that. It’s right there in the play.” “I forget,” confessed Warren.

  Miles opened the book. “Act V, Scene 6,” he noted, and began to declaim, addressing himself to Dolly:

  “Oui, madame, et je dois moins encore vous dire

  Que je suis prêt pour vous abandonner l’empire,

  De vous suivre, et d’aller, trop content de mes fers,

  Soupir avec vous au bout de l’univers.”

  “Isn’t that just like the Duke of Windsor?” cried Harriet. “ ‘To sigh with you at the ends of the earth’? Wasn’t there something like that in that record he made?” She hunted in her text. “Je suis prêt pour vous abandonner l’empire . . . ?” She turned a questioning glance on her husband. “Probably the Duke of Windsor copied it out of Racine,” declared Jane, rounding her eyes and dropping her jaw. “Hardly,” said Miles, with a curt, silencing nod in her direction. He continued, his green eyes fixed on Dolly:

  “Vous même rougiriez de ma lâche conduite

  Vous verriez à regret marcher à votre suite

  Un indigne empereur sans empire, sans cour,

  Vil spectacle aux humains de la faiblesse de l’amour.”

  Dolly colored, as if in character, under Miles’s stare. “There, you see, Warren,” said Jane. “Think of poor Titus giving up his empire, trailing around after her, and with all those trunks. . . .” “What trunks, darling?” Warren turned to her anxiously. “I don’t get your point.” “Why, the Duchess of Windsor’s, of course,” retorted Jane. “Everybody knows about her traveling with seventy trunks of dresses. In Titus’s day, probably, in Palestine, it would have been on camels.” Harold Huber guffawed. “But Jane is quite right,” interposed the vicomte, with an air of virtuous reproof. “That is what Titus would have become if he had married the queen for love—a flunkey.” “ ‘Un indigne empereur . . . vil spectacle aux humains de la faiblesse de l’amour,’ ” quoted Miles again in a sonorous voice; his French was extremely fluent, but he spoke with a rolling accent that made it sound like an Irish brogue. The vicomte and Martha smiled. “But is love a weakness?” cried Warren in alarm. “Does anybody here think love is a weakness?” “In a king, certainly,” said the vicomte, folding his hands. “Do you agree with that, Miles?” Warren turned to his friend. “Not only in a king,” he said finally, in his drawling voice. “In any man, I would say. Love is for boys and women.” Martha’s fair brows made two skeptical arcs, but she said nothing. Warren looked hopefully around the circle, but nobody rose to love’s defense. “What about Plato?” he said to Miles, in a tone of diffident reminder. “That isn’t what Plato says.” “Plato meant something different,” Miles replied brusquely. “The concept you’re thinking of—romantic love—was unknown to him.” “That’s not what I got out of him,” protested Warren. “If that isn’t romantic love in the Symposium, what is it?” he said. “Transcendence. Idealization,” said Martha. “Plato despairs of love, mortal love, as we understand it.” Miles tapped his foot in its fancy shoe. “Oh, excuse me,” she said, demurely. “I interrupted again.” “I agree with Miles,” Jane suddenly proclaimed. “In a man, love is a weakness.” Warren jumped up from the hassock. He was quivering all over. “You don’t mean that,” he said incredulously. “Oh yes,” said Jane. “Well, all I can say—” he began, and then words failed him. “I could eat that rug,” he finally announced, pointing to a cotton string rug of a tattletale gray shade that lay in front of the fireplace. Dolly’s humorous eyebrows lifted inquiringly as she examined the rug and then Warren. “Not really?” she murmured. “Really!” replied Warren fiercely, clenching and unclenching his jaws as if he were about to bite into it. “Calm down, dearie,” said Jane. “Why not get on with the play?” suggested Harold Huber. “Let’s postpone the arguments of counsel till after the case has been presented.”

  The play-reading proceeded. Warren, choking back his emotions, acted as monitor. He and Jane—he explained to the newcomers, with a bitter glance at his mate—had read aloud so many times, both to each other and in groups, that they had worked out a set of rules for it. Nobody was to interrupt the reading during an act; at the end of each act, questions of translation could be asked. Questions of interpretation were to be deferred until the whole play had been read, and no side remarks were tolerated. Laughing was strictly forbidde
n except in the case of a comedy. Drinks were served after the reading. As he enunciated these rules, hollow laughter echoed in the chambers of his heart. He felt like that French schoolmaster giving the Last Class in conquered Alsace-Lorraine. His marriage was over, probably, after tonight, now that Jane had let him know how she really felt about things. He loved her, and she considered it a weakness. To go on after that would be hypocrisy.

  Rules, he said to himself wanly. He and Jane made them together, and then she broke them. It was just like these play-readings, where he, poor simp, tried to keep order and everybody laughed at him. And the regulations they had made—except the one about drinking—were harder on him than anybody. When an interesting point came up, he could hardly hold himself in; waiting till the end for a discussion was agony, especially since by the time they had finished, nobody else ever seemed to remember the passage he had in mind. But it was not fair to the author, he and Jane had agreed, to pick a play to pieces before it had had a chance to say its whole say.

  Yet she was always one of the worst offenders, giggling and interrupting and popping her eyes or making trips to the kitchen during the most significant parts. Every time they read aloud, he constantly had to remind her that the play or the poem had the floor. But tonight, as he slowly became aware, she was more subdued than usual, as if she knew what she had done to him and the reckoning that lay ahead for both of them, after the others had gone. She did not poke him when Miles gave a funny reading or when Martha overacted her part. She sat listening, thoughtfully, her chin sunk in her hand. Her mind, he could suddenly tell, was a million miles away from him, though he could feel the comfortable warmth of her big vital body next to him, on the hassock. She had no idea how she had wounded him, evidently, and, soothed by her physical presence, he gradually let himself relent toward her, even though he knew that this was the worst crime one human could commit against another: not to take their words seriously. When she turned and smiled at him, vaguely, during the first intermission, he smiled back and wiggled his ears slightly, feeling like Judas Iscariot.

  He turned his attention to the play. He had hoped he would like it better in French than he had when the two of them had read it in English, but instead it let him down even more. Unlike Jane, he was not musical, and that, he guessed, was the trouble: the jingling alexandrines sounded monotonous to him, even when Paul was reading. He liked Dolly best; her accent was neat and pretty, though she did not put much expression into her lines. Martha and the vicomte were frowning over their text when Dolly came to the big scene of despair and jealousy in the fourth act, where she was supposed to be waiting for Titus in a state of extreme disorder. Martha, as her waiting woman, read her own lines with unnecessary urgency, as if she were trying to push Dolly into the proper mood:

  “Mais voulez-vous parâitre en ce désordre extrême?

  Remettez vous, madame, et rentrez en vous-même.

  Laissez-moi relever ces voiles dédachés,

  Et ces cheveux épars dont vos yeux sont cachés.

  Souffrez que de vos pleurs je répare l’outrage.”

  This sounded very comical, in Martha’s quick, passionate voice, while Dolly sat there, cool as a cucumber, not a silvery blond hair out of place. Even Miles looked up and chuckled when Dolly replied, in her circumspect tinkling bell-tones: “Laisse, laisse, Phénice; il verra son ouvrage.” Warren had to call twice for silence before Dolly could go on with her part. She was at her best, Warren thought, in the final passage, when she turned to the vicomte, with imperturbable dignity, like the senior prefect in her boarding school:

  “Sur Titus et sur moi, réglez votre conduite.

  Je l’aime, je le fuis; Titus m’aime; il me quitte.

  Portez loin de mes yeux vos soupirs et vos fers.

  Adieu. Servons tous trois d’exemple à l’univers.”

  It was a pretty poor example they were going to set the universe, in Warren’s opinion, but at least Dolly gave him the idea that a person could feel that way.

  Unfortunately, he missed the first part of the discussion, because he was busy fixing drinks for everybody. Even Jane wanted one, to his surprise; she asked for a bourbon and fizzy, and drank it straight down when he brought it. “I was thirsty,” she said. All the dinner guests were thirsty, it turned out; there had been a mite too much salt in the roast. Dolly took a glass of port, and the vicomte joined her. “I thought you didn’t drink,” exclaimed Martha, tactlessly, for the vicomte often drank, in moderation, since his reform. The Hubers and Martha had Scotch; Miles had a big drink of bourbon, to wet his whistle, as he called it. Warren himself had a glass of plain fizzy, when he finally joined the circle. Martha and Miles, on good terms again, were talking about the influence of Port Royal on Racine, and the Hubers seemed rather out of it. They had had the smallest parts—Titus’s and Antiochus’s confidants—and people always forgot that they were not intellectuals. Warren brought the subject back to the play, which they could all share.

  “How terribly Protestant it is,” said Dolly, making a little face. “But naturally,” said the vicomte. “Port Royal was Jansenist. That is a Protestant heresy. Racine had it in his bones.” “Why do you say ‘Protestant,’ Miss Lamb?” demanded Harriet Huber. “What’s the difference, Miss Lamb?” Martha answered for her, taking a long drink. “Setting a good example. Renunciation. Training the will. Scruples.” “But don’t the Catholics have those?” Harriet asked the vicomte. “We are not puritans,” said the vicomte, sipping his port. “Miles,” said Martha suddenly, “how would you distinguish between the Corneillean will and the Racinian will? There’re the same conflicts, in Corneille, between passion and duty, between the state and the family, between the family and the single person. Yet you couldn’t say that Corneille was Protestant. . . .” Warren’s head kept turning eagerly, back and forth, from face to face; it made him feel as if he were watching a tennis match. “Well,” said Miles, cautiously, “in Corneille, I would say there was more feeling for power. It’s an imperial will, in Corneille, swelling out to world-domination. He wrote a Bérénice too, you know.” “Maybe we ought to read that next,” proffered Warren conscientiously. “To get both sides—” “A Renaissance will,” broke in Martha. “The difference between setting an example, like Titus and Bérénice, and dominating through your will, like the people in Cinna or the Cid. ‘Je suis maître de moi comme de l’univers. Je suis, je veux l’être.’ Do you remember that, Dolly, from college?” “I hated it,” said Dolly, with feeling. “It’s more Faustian in Corneille, wouldn’t you say, Miles?” persisted Martha. “And isn’t there something else? In Racine the conflict of passions is more internalized, within the soul of the character—his famous ‘psychological realism.’ The soul, in Racine, is an arena, full of sinuous savage beasts leaping at the whip.” “Good Heavens,” said Harriet Huber. “ ‘Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée,’ ” quoted Miles. “If you remember your Phèdre. The beast within. A thoroughly Protestant vision, I agree, Miss Lamb.” Dolly colored. “Love, in Racine,” pursued Martha, with a significant glance at Dolly, as if reminding her of some earlier conversation, “love is seen as a sort of diabolical possession—witchcraft. Poor Phèdre. Racine made her a great heroine by giving her a bad conscience. It’s more sensual that way too. She hates herself and this passion that fastens itself on her, like a bird of prey.”

  “Let’s get back to Bérénice for a minute,” urged Warren. “I’d like to hear what the rest of you think about the philosophy in there.” “ ‘Philosophy’?” questioned the vicomte. “There is no philosophy in Bérénice.” “Warren means a philosophy of life,” said Martha. “Isn’t it the same thing?” protested Warren. “No,” said Miles. “Gee, I’d like to discuss that with you,” said Warren. “Later, my boy,” said Miles. “Let’s stick to the subject.” “Well, but . . .” said Warren, hesitantly. He wanted to point out that no discussion could be worth anything if you did not go back and define your principles, but he could see the impatience in both Miles’s an
d Martha’s faces. He conquered his disappointment. “What I want to know,” he began, “is whether this play makes you as mad as it does me. It makes me want to eat nails.” “Why, Warren?” said Martha gently. “The way I see it,” said Warren, “that Titus is a prig and a hypocrite. He was no gentleman, if you’ll pardon my French.” “Why?” said Dolly. “He was engaged to Bérénice, darn it,” cried Warren, “and then he broke his promise to her, just for reasons of state. I call that pretty cheap. He owed it to her to marry her, when he’d been engaged to her for five years.” “And she wasn’t getting any younger,” said Martha, with a laugh.

  “But his father died, dearie,” said Jane. “When he got to be Caesar, he couldn’t marry her, because of that old law.” “He should have thought of that before he got engaged to her,” Warren said hotly. “He knew the law and he knew his father was going to die some time. And it strikes me,” he continued, emboldened, when nobody answered, “it strikes me Racine was pretty much of a faker not to have made that point in the play. If Shakespeare wrote that play, he darn well would have showed what a son of a bitch Titus really was.” Miles looked at Martha, who looked at Dolly. Warren could tell from their expressions that they thought he had made a point. “You’re right in a way, of course,” said Martha finally. “Don’t you think so, Miles? In a play by Shakespeare, Titus might have been shown up a little, like Prince Hal. It’s the same plot, really, when you think about it. A playboy prince and his boon companions. The education of a king. When the prince’s father dies, the prince, rather priggishly, sends his companions away. The rejection of Falstaff isn’t too different from the rejection of Bérénice, only in Racine it’s called renunciation. Probably Shakespeare,” she went on, with an apologetic smile at the vicomte, “is truer to the way things happen. One never knows, in real life, exactly how much self-interest or surfeit there is in these great renunciations.”