Triptych and Iphigenia

by Edna O'Brien

  WIFE They were anemones … tall, white Japanese anemones …

  MISTRESS … and in the starlight they seemed to … blanch … (suddenly howling) HELP … HELP.

  SCENE TWENTY

  WIFE My new therapist was tough … we did things called visualization and interaction. She started by making me roll bits of paper into snowballs and pelt them at her. Soon we got on to Henry, what I would like to do to him. For one instant I thought, This is absurd, this is dumb, and then she told me to take his clothes off and stand him in the dock, the bastard. She asked me what I wanted to do with his penis … what was the first thing I would do to his penis? “Cut it off,” I said. And having cut it off she asked me what I wanted to do next. I hesitated. I thought we’d gone far enough. But no, she goaded me. She said, “Do you want to eat it, suck it, cut it up, or wear it.” So we imagined me wearing it and she made me walk around the room, swagger. She said, “Have you ever had a woman? … being with a woman would get rid of some of your jealousy.” And I said, “I’m getting rather fond of my jealousy …” and she made a note of that.

  She moves downstage.

  WIFE (cont.) I came out of there and wrote him a letter. I said I would share him with her … Mailed it on the corner of Fifty-eighth Street … opposite a luggage shop. Two mornings later, it arrived, he read it, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. He just shook his head and I realized that we were each in a trap, and I thought, How will it end, how will it end—one of us will indoubtedly be squeezed to death in that trap. “Did Brandy get fitted with a coil,” he asked. “How do I know. She’s a liar, and moreover, she shoplifts.” Shoplifts!

  SCENE TWENTY-ONE

  Wife and Mistress are reading an identical book.

  MISTRESS I love this story … it was about a woman who sleepwalked …

  WIFE … Mrs. Rheinhardt.

  MISTRESS At first she was rather timid and only ventured into her own rose garden but then she got bolder, more adventurous. One night she walked with a little son whom she did not have and they went a long way into the countryside and all of a sudden …

  WIFE (taking up the story) They knelt down and began to scrape the rich red earth for treasure that they knew was there and they found …

  MISTRESS (joyous) A latchkey. A talisman.

  WIFE (storytelling voice) That night Mrs. Rheinhardt dreamt that she was not in the country but back in London … prowling about … and on her sleepwalk she came to a mews house, number ten, with a big tub of flowers outside, and she rummaged in the clay and found the key …

  MISTRESS … the same key as in her dream and she let herself in and there in the bedroom was her husband … waiting …

  WIFE (loud whisper) To be unfaithful with her. To ravish her. Those clandestine orgies went on and on in her sleep … then one day …

  MISTRESS … Mrs. Rheinhardt went to her husband’s gallery on Bond Street … he’d gone out but his diary was on his desk, open, and there was the address of the mews house, number ten, penciled in, three, four times a week.

  WIFE She took a taxi and found the key and let herself in. The kitchen was minute … there was a pan in which an omelette had been cooked.

  MISTRESS Three eggshells …

  WIFE … two brown and one white … the fat was still warm in the pan.

  MISTRESS She stood at the bottom of the stairs and then (triumphant) she crept away, because it was clear to her that Mr. Rheinhardt went by day just as …

  WIFE … she went by night because they were on different tangents … but one day or one night they would come together …

  MISTRESS … arrive at the same time to the house of their dreams and up the stairs to the four-poster bed.

  She gets up and goes to her own area.

  SCENE TWENTY-TWO

  MISTRESS (happy) The phone rang very early. My replacement had fallen and broken her shoulder and they asked me if I would consider coming back! Would I consider coming back! Friends said there was something different about my acting—scarier. (softer voice) Henry thought so too, and he knew why. I didn’t have his child, I didn’t have him in the fullest sense of the word, but we’d grown closer … we’d come through our black season.

  WIFE (overcheerful) Clarissa, let’s bury the hatchet. Come to dinner.

  MISTRESS He would shout in his sleep and sit up … a nightmare. We were all on holiday, on someone’s yacht and we, the women, were drowning and he couldn’t save us, couldn’t save all three of us and I said “Darling, we won’t all be together on someone’s yacht” and we’d hold each other and he’d say “Promise that you will always come to me in moonlight” and I promised, because that was how it had to be.

  WIFE Monday, seven thirty, informal.

  SCENE TWENTY-THREE

  Mistress picks up her fringed shawl and allows it to trail across the floor as she goes.

  Wife’s area a sea of lighted candles. Wife has her hair pinned up and is wearing an apron; a picture of domesticity.

  MISTRESS How … lovely; you’ve gone to such trouble.

  WIFE I love going to trouble … a homebody … and guess what we’re having?

  MISTRESS Poulet roti.

  Wife shakes her head.

  MISTRESS Poisson an vin blanc.

  Wife shakes her head even more, teasingly.

  MISTRESS (less sure of herself) Caneton à l’orange.

  WIFE Go on.

  MISTRESS Tripe.

  WIFE Truffles.

  MISTRESS Truffles! How extravagant.

  WIFE You look well … rested.

  MISTRESS I don’t feel rested.

  WIFE Do you sleep on your face or on your back?

  MISTRESS It depends.

  WIFE I sleep on my face and I waken all swollen and pudgy.

  Over her last speech, Wife has brought a tiny plate of truffles and toothpicks.

  They both sit. Wife takes one. Mistress hesitates.

  WIFE (cont.) Come on … dig in … no need to stand on ceremony here.

  Wife picks up a cookbook.

  WIFE (cont.) The truffle appears to be one of the original secrets of the universe. How does it get into the ground? Why should such diverse creatures as pregnant pigs and psychic dogs be the exclusive hounds for finding them? (more seductive) The fragrance of truffles is impossible to explain—a truffle smells like … a truffle. But beyond its perfume the truffle has a visual quality which adds to its mystique. Black … flat … deep. The black punctuation of the truffle making a statement. (consults cookbook) The pig has a most keen sense of smell, without which it would never be able to find the treasure deep within the ground under the snows. Der Teufel—which means devil, Clarissa. (pause) Did Henry insist that you not have his child?

  MISTRESS (terse) Yes.

  WIFE You should have cheated … it would be a little person now … in its crib, gurgling away.

  Mistress flinches—Wife holds a truffle to the Mistress’s lips.

  Mistress reluctantly takes it.

  Mistress chews truffle, nervously.

  WIFE You’d think they were poison.

  MISTRESS Whereas, in fact, they are only little devils. (looking around) Have you sent Henry out, for this fest?

  WIFE Didn’t have to … he’s gone.

  MISTRESS (thrown) Gone?

  WIFE To Ireland …

  MISTRESS (shocked) No.

  WIFE Across the ocean … (half singing) Oh little was my notion as I sailed across the ocean … (speaking) We went there, to Connemara, as you know, at Christmas, which was also our anniversary. We walked all day across flat, stone, misted country …

  MISTRESS (cutting in) Yes, he described it in his letters, the rain, the mist, the light, the people.

  WIFE (cutting in) At night we went to the local pub. There was a beautiful young girl, long auburn hair, shy, mysterious. On the last night she struck. Outside the window we could hear singing … quite ethereal … haunting … gave us goose pimples. Henry opened the window, it was the auburn girl, her hai
r all wet, like a fairy queen, and he just took her arm and brought her in. I knew that she had gone out there and sang for that very purpose, for Henry to open the window and bring her in. Quite a coup … They have corresponded. She sent him the words of songs … those fucking heartbreaking songs that got to him; she beckoned … and he went.

  MISTRESS You mean, you let him go … you didn’t try to stop him? (sharp) Didn’t slit your wrists?

  WIFE On the contrary, I helped him pack … put his warm sweaters in and his shoe trees—he’s very fussy about his shoe trees …

  MISTRESS Why so considerate?

  WIFE She provides a new name, a new face, a new bed, sad songs … breaking the spell of you.

  MISTRESS Monster.

  WIFE Yes, you have made me so … but, as things stand …

  MISTRESS (cutting in sharp) As things stand …

  Over the next speeches is the sound of the sea starting low then rising, louder louder, intercut with the singing of the AUBURN GIRL.

  AUBURN GIRL (offstage) My young love said to me

  My father won’t mind

  And my mother won’t slight you

  For your lack of kind.

  WIFE (exalting) It couldn’t be better … Back to his roots … The old stories that his father taught him as a child, the legends, there, in some cottage, a big fire, the smell of peat, his sea nymph outside the window, or just come inside, into the warmth … all the thrill of courtship.

  Mistress rises and wraps herself inside her shawl, as protection.

  Wife holds up a candle to usher her away.

  A noise offstage of slamming door.

  Daughter enters, disheveled, wearing a fur coat.

  DAUGHTER Dear, darling, Mummy.

  WIFE (fending her off) These overnight rave parties have to stop … finito.

  DAUGHTER Get your widows’ weeds out, to look good for a funeral.

  WIFE She’s crazy.

  DAUGHTER Crazy yes … crazy, crazy, crazy. My father’s missing at sea.

  MISTRESS (aghast) No. No.

  DAUGHTER He went out in a blizzard in a little row boat. He’s missing five hours.

  WIFE How you love to scare me … Daddy’s gone a-hunting. Daddy’s gone a-missing.

  DAUGHTER They rang you but you were too busy clawing at her.

  MISTRESS Are they thinking missing … or is he washed ashore in some inlet.

  WIFE (abrupt) Whose talking missing … nobody. Moreover he’s a brilliant sailor.

  DAUGHTER The fishermen warned them.

  WIFE (cutting in) Them?

  DAUGHTER There’s a girl with him.

  MISTRESS Five hours. Five hours.

  A scene of confusion follows, each doing something to defer the dreaded news.

  Mistress relights the candle, holds it, murmuring to it, a prayer.

  Daughter speaks to her cell phone … imploring it to ring.

  WIFE He’s not dead Brandy … I would know … feel my pulse (impatient). Feel it.

  DAUGHTER You drove him to this.

  WIFE He wanted to go … a little dalliance.

  DAUGHTER (to phone) Don’t die Daddy … don’t, don’t die.

  WIFE Cut it out Brandy.

  DAUGHTER I heard you the night before he left … shouting, screaming. What did you threaten him with—a bloodbath … you me and him or her? You would have done anything to split them up.

  WIFE Hold your tongue … these people have made you morbid.

  DAUGHTER These people live there and they know … they know the worst.

  MISTRESS (to daughter) Who called you … a doctor?

  DAUGHTER A priest. A brother of the girl … he said he would have stopped but he was saying mass … she was in love with the sea … the sea was calling to her and Daddy … she heard voices.

  MISTRESS She’s snared him.

  WIFE She’s sick. I must talk to this priest.

  DAUGHTER You can’t … he’s gone down to the sea shore … they’re saying rosaries.

  WIFE Why aren’t they out in lifeboats finding him?

  DAUGHTER They were … they gave up.

  Auburn Girl singing offstage, her voice clear, enchanted and ghostly.

  Wife speaks over the song to shut it out.

  AUBURN GIRL (offstage)

  My dead love came in

  He came in so sweetly

  His feet made no din

  And this he did say

  O it will not be long love

  Till our wedding day

  WIFE (tenderly to Henry) My darling I will hold you in my arms, I will cradle you and hold you the way you hold me when I’ve been silly. I will never let you out of my sight again.

  Wife exits to inner room.

  MISTRESS Why did he go?

  Daughter ignores the question.

  MISTRESS Why?

  DAUGHTER You know my father … anyone ask him a favor and he says yes. She pestered him. It was to launch some poetry magazine … a flying visit.

  MISTRESS He will be back. We need him. We all need him so much.

  Wife reenters carrying a black hat with veiling.

  WIFE (to Daughter) Get ready … he’ll want us there … to celebrate … to bring him home.

  Wife looks in mirror as she puts on the hat.

  Telephone rings offstage from inner room.

  All three stand frozen, paralyzed.

  Auburn Girl offstage in rasping urgent whisper, over the ringing phone.

  AUBURN GIRL (offstage)

  And the people they do be saying

  No two were ’ere wed

  But one had a sorrow

  That never was said

  Wife opens her mouth to speak but can’t, no words come. She staggers.

  Daughter goes and holds her.

  Mistress looks on, the perpetual outsider.

  The phone still ringing offstage.

  Lights slowly go down.

  A silence.

  SCENE TWENTY-FOUR

  Lights.

  Spotlight on each.

  WIFE My husband was a wonderful man and a great writer … we were inseparable … so much so, that, he left a novel unfinished and I have decided to carry on the torch … it will be my hand but Henry’s immortal words.

  DAUGHTER (showing a tattoo on her collar bone) What do you think Daddy … do you like it? I’m seeing Zachary now … big time … we’ve been dating for quite a while … he’s so wise, so different from all the other slobs … being a scientist he knows about the origins of life and stuff and I feel I can talk to him, tell him things, things about us, about you and me, the fun we had.

  MISTRESS I know it seems crazy … but … there’s this pigeon that comes on my balcony at all hours … whitish with tan spots … without a mate … potters, potters about and I know, it’s Henry … I know it’s Henry making sure things are okay … keeping watch over me. (quieter) It folds its wings and settles down at night … Henry loved the night … the silence.

  Mistress stops suddenly, turns and whistles softly.

  The THREE stand very still.

  CURTAIN

  IPHIGENIA

  Euripides was born near Athens between 485 and 480 BC and grew up during the years of Athenian recovery after the Persian Wars. His first play was presented in 455 BC and he wrote some hundred altogether. Nineteen survive—a greater number than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles combined—including Electra, Hippolytos, Andromache, Ion, Alkestis and The Women of Troy. A year or two before his death he left Athens to lie at the court of the King of Macedon, dying there in 406 BC.

  INTRODUCTION

  Euripides was the scourge of his native Athens, his plays regarded as seditious and corrupting. Born in exile, on the island of Salamis, in 480 BC, he died in exile in Macedonia in his mid-seventies. Accounts differ as to the nature of his death, but chief among them is the hearsay that he was set upon and torn to death by mad dogs or mad women who could not tolerate his depiction of them as passionate, avenging, and murderous. His plays
shocked public opinion, offended the critics, and ensured that he was overlooked year after year in the state competitions, with Sophocles and Aeschylus sharing the laurels. Sophocles was a distinguished figure who enjoyed public prestige, and Aeschylus could boast of his prowess in the war against the invading Persians. Euripides, however, was marginalized even though, as an able-bodied young man, he would have had to serve in army and fleet since Athens was vulnerable to marauders from east and west.

  His crimes were legion. He had questioned the prestige of the state, of pious honor and ancient injunctions, had portrayed the gods as vicious, merciless, sparring creatures who gave rein to violent, even insane passions. Medea, who sent a robe of burning poison to her rival and subsequently butchered her children, was a heroine whose deeds were a blight on enlightened Athens, and the official judges of the annual prize put it at the bottom of the list. Three and a half centuries later, the historian Aelian said the judges “were either ignorant, imbecilic philistines, or else bribed.” Euripides’ depiction of women led to scatological rumors such as that he had learned their abnormal tendencies and sexual misconduct from everyday experience, that his mother Clito was an illiterate quack dabbling in herbs, potions, and fortune-telling, moreover he was a cuckold, a bigamist, and a misogynist who lived in rancorous isolation in a cave. It says much for his inward spirit and dedication to his calling that he wrote over a hundred plays—nineteen of which are in existense—and that when he died in Macedonia, Sophocles, out of a mark of delayed homage for his great rival, made his chorus wear mourning for the evening performance.

  Euripides is the dramatist, along with Shakespeare, who delved most deeply into the doings and passions of men and women. His dramas, while being political, religious, and philosophic, are also lasting myths in which the beauty and lamentation of his choruses are in direct contrast with the barbarity of his subjects. As with Shakespeare he found the existing stories and legends too good, too primal, to be abandoned and so he appropriated tales from Homeric times, rewrote them, transformed them, and made them a foil for his prodigious imagination so that they serve as staple and forerunner for all drama that came after him. Sophocles’ characters can seem stiff, their language elaborate, but Euripides’—vacillating, egotistical, unbridled, and warring—are as timely now as when they were conceived in the fifth century before Christ.