by Dan Laurence
HYERING. By the way, Pra, have you taken any steps? I havnt.
PRA. Yes I have. Dont worry. I have sent a message.
SIR CHARLES. What message?
PRA. The Mayor of the Port earnestly begs the commanders of the imperial fleet to suspend action for another day, as his attention is urgently occupied by a serious outbreak of smallpox in the harbor district.
SIR CHARLES. Good. [The boom of a cannon interrupts him] There goes the noonday cannon!
HYERING. I hope they got the message in time.
The garden and its occupants vanish. When they reappear, the harbor is empty: not a ship is visible. The writing table, with its chairs and papers, has been removed and replaced by a small tea-table. Tea is ready. The wireless telephone is still there.
Vashti and Maya are in their shrines. Lady Farwaters is sitting on the western stone seat, with Mrs Hyering beside her on her right. Prola is sitting on the eastern seat. All five ladies are taking tea.
Pra comes from the house with Sir Charles and Hyering. They help themselves to tea. Pra abstains.
SIR CHARLES. Not a blessed ship left in the harbor! Your message certainly did the trick, Pra. [He sits down beside Prola, on her left].
PRA [sitting down between the two British ladies] They may come back.
HYERING [sitting beside Prola, on her right] Not a bit of it. By the time the fleet realizes that it has been humbugged the Empire will be tired of Iddy.
VASHTI. The world is tired of Iddy.
MAYA. I am tired of Iddy.
VASHTI. Iddy is a pestilence.
MAYA. Iddy is a bore.
VASHTI. Let us throw ourselves into the sea to escape from Iddy.
MAYA. Let us throw Iddy into the sea that he may escape from himself.
VASHTI. You are wise, Prola. Tell us how to get rid of Iddy.
MAYA. We cannot endure Iddy for ever, Prola.
PROLA. You two chose him, not I.
MAYA. We were, young: we did not know.
VASHTI. Help us, Pra. You have lost faith in us; but your wits are still keen.
MAYA. Pra: we beseech thee. Abolish the incubus.
VASHTI. Give him peace that we may have rest.
MAYA. Give him rest that we may have peace.
VASHTI. Let him be as he was before we knew him.
MAYA. When we were happy.
VASHTI. When he was innocent.
PRA. You raised this strange spirit. I cannot exorcise him.
VASHTI. Rather than endure him I will empty the heavens of their rain and dew.
MAYA. Silence him, O ye stars.
Iddy comes from the house in a condition of lazy self-complacence. He is received in dead silence. Nobody looks at him. He pours himself out a cup of tea. The silence becomes grim. He sits down on the grass at Prola’s feet, and sips his tea. The silence continues.
IDDY [at last] I am a futile creature.
They all turn as if stung and look at him. Then they resume their attitudes of deadly endurance.
IDDY. It is a terrible thing to be loved. I dont suppose any man has ever been loved as I have been loved, or loved as I have loved. But there’s not so much in it as people say. I am writing a sermon about it. It is a sermon on Eternity.
They look at him as before.
IDDY. The line I am going to take is this. We have never been able to imagine eternity properly. St John of Patmos started the notion of playing harps and singing praises for ever and ever. But the organist tells me that composers have to use the harp very sparingly because, though it makes a very pretty effect at first, you get tired of it so soon. You couldnt go on playing the harp for ever; and if you sang ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ for ever you would drive the Lamb mad. The notion is that you cant have too much of a good thing; but you can: you can bear hardship much longer than you could bear heaven. Love is like music. Music is very nice: the organist says that when the wickedness of mankind tempts him to despair he comforts himself by remembering that the human race produced Mozart; but a woman who plays the piano all day is a curse. A woman who makes love to you all day is much worse; and yet nothing is lovelier than love, up to a point. We all love one another here in a wonderful way: I love Vashti, I love Maya, I love Prola; and they all love me so wonderfully that their three loves are only one love. But it is my belief that some day we’ll have to try something else. If we dont we’ll come to hate one another.
VASHTI. If it is any consolation to you, Iddy, I can assure you that I already hate you so intensely that if it were in my nature to kill anything I should kill you.
IDDY. There now! I ought to be wounded and horrified; but I’m not: I feel as if youd given me a strawberry ice. Thank you, dear Vashti, thank you. You give me hope that even Maya will get tired of me someday.
MAYA. I have been on the point of beating you to a jelly for ever so long past; but just as my fists were clenched to do it you always managed to come out with some stroke of idiocy that was either so funny or so piteous that I have kissed you instead.
IDDY. You make me happier than I have been for months. But, you know, that does not settle my difficulties. I dont know whether other people are like me or not –
LADY FARWATERS. No, Iddy: you are unique.
IDDY. Anyhow, I have made a discovery as regards myself.
VASHTI. Enough is known already.
MAYA. Seek no further: there is nothing there.
VASHTI. There never has been anything.
IDDY. Shut up, you two. This is something really interesting. I am writing a second sermon.
ALL THE REST [gasp] !!!!!!!
PRA. Was eternity not long enough for one sermon?
IDDY. This one is on love.
VASHTI [springing up] I will cast myself down from a precipice.
MAYA [springing up] I will gas myself.
IDDY. Oh, not until you have heard my sermon, please.
PROLA. Listen to him, children. Respect the wisdom of the fool.
VASHTI [resuming her goddess-in-a-shrine attitude] The oracles of the wise are unheeded. Silence for the King of Idiots.
MAYA [also enshrining herself] Speak, Solomon.
IDDY. Well, the discovery I have made is that we were commanded to love our enemies because loving is good for us and dreadfully bad for them. I love you all here intensely; and I enjoy loving you. I love Vashti; I love Maya; and I adore Prola with a passion that grows and deepens from year to year.
PROLA. Dolt! I am too old.
IDDY. You were never young and you will never be old. You are the way and the light for me. But you have never loved me and never will love me. You have never loved anything human: why should you? Nothing human is good enough to be loved. But every decent human creature has some capacity for loving. Look at me! What a little worm I am! My sermons are wretched stuff, except these last two, which I think really have something in them. I cannot bear being loved, because I know that I am a worm, and that nobody could love me unless they were completely deluded as to my merits. But I can love, and delight in loving. I love Vashti for hating me, because she is quite right to hate me: her hatred is a proof of her beautiful clear judgment. I love Maya for being out of all patience with me, because I know that I am enough to drive anybody mad, and she is wise enough to know how worthless I am. I love Prola because she is far above loving or hating me; and there is something about her dark beauty that –
PROLA [kicking him] Silence, simpleton. Let the unspeakable remain unspoken.
IDDY. I dont mind your kicking me, Prola: you understand; and that is enough for me. And now you see what a jolly fine sermon it will be, and why I shall be so happy here with you from this day on. For I have the joy of loving you all without the burden of being loved in return, or the falsehood of being idolized.
MAYA. Solomon has spoken.
VASHTI. Stupendous.
LADY FARWATERS. Do not mock, darlings. There is something in what he says.
MAYA [desperately] But how are we to get rid of him? He is set
tling down with us for life.
VASHTI. We have brought him on ourselves.
MAYA. We cannot make him hate us.
VASHTI. He will go with us to heaven.
MAYA. In the depths of hell he will find us.
Kanchin and Janga enter processionally, reading newspapers.
KANCHIN. News!
JANGA. News!
They sit enshrined, foursquare with their sisters.
KANCHIN. By wireless.
JANGA. Tomorrow’s three o’clock edition.
KANCHIN. The land that brought forth Iddy begins the Apocalypse.
HYERING. What do you mean? Has anything happened in England?
KANCHIN. England has broken loose.
SIR CHARLES. What do you mean? broken loose. Read the news, man. Out with it.
KANCHIN [reading the headlines] Dissolution of the British Empire.
JANGA [reading] Withdrawal of England from the Empire.
KANCHIN. England strikes for independence.
JANGA. Downing Street declares for a right little tight little island.
KANCHIN. The British Prime Minister cuts the cable and gives the new slogan.
JANGA. Back to Elizabeth’s England; and to hell with the empire!
KANCHIN. Ireland to the rescue!
JANGA. Free State President declares Ireland cannot permit England to break the unity of the Empire. Ireland will lead the attack on treason and disruption.
KANCHIN. The Prime Minister’s reply to the President suppressed as unprintable.
JANGA. Canada claims position of premier Dominion left vacant by the secession of England.
KANCHIN. Australia counterclaims as metropolitan dominion.
JANGA. New Zealand proclaims a butter blockade until its claim to precedence is recognized by Australia.
KANCHIN. South Africa renames Capetown Empire City, and gives notice to all Britishers to clear out of Africa within ten days.
JANGA. His Holiness the Pope calls on all Christendom to celebrate the passing away of the last vain dream of earthly empire, and the unity of all living souls in the Catholic Kingdom of God and his Church.
LADY FARWATERS. That sounds like the voice of a grown-up man through the whooping of a pack of schoolboys.
JANGA [prosaically] So far, there have been no disturbances and little popular interest.
KANCHIN. The various international Boards are carrying on as usual.
JANGA. Today’s football –
PROLA. No, Janga: certainly not.
SIR CHARLES. But what becomes of our jobs as Governor and political secretary, Hyering? Will this affect our salaries?
HYERING. They will stop: that is all. We had better proclaim the Unexpected Isles an independent republic and secure the new jobs for ourselves.
VASHTI. The world is tired of republics and their jobberies. Proclaim a kingdom.
MAYA. Or a queendom.
IDDY. Oh yes: let us make Prola queen. And I shall be her chaplain.
PRA. By all means, as far as I am concerned. Prola has always been the real ruler here.
VASHTI. Prola is she who decides.
MAYA. Prola is she who unites.
VASHTI. Prola is she who knows.
MAYA. No one can withstand Prola.
PROLA. Be quiet, you two. You shall not make an idol of me.
KANCHIN. We shall make you Empress of the Isles.
JANGA. Prola the First.
VASHTI. Homage, Prola.
MAYA. Love, Prola.
KANCHIN. Obedience, Prola.
JANGA. Absolute rule, Prola.
PROLA. All your burdens on me. Lazy idle children.
KANCHIN. Hurrah! All burdens on Prola.
JANGA. The burden of thought.
VASHTI. The burden of knowledge.
MAYA. The burden of righteousness.
VASHTI. The burden of justice.
MAYA. The burden of mercy.
PROLA. Cease, cease: these are not burdens to me: they are the air I breathe. I shall rule you as I have always done because you are too lazy to rule yourselves.
HYERING. You can rule us, Prola. But will the public ever understand you?
PRA. They will obey her. They would not do that if they understood.
IDDY. I have just been thinking –
MAYA. Solomon has been thinking.
VASHTI. Thoughts without brains.
IDDY. Will the Antiphonal Quartet, if it wants to give another concert, kindly remove itself out of hearing.
KANCHIN. Silence for the Prophet.
JANGA. Mum!
VASHTI. Dumb.
MAYA. Tiddy iddy um. Carry on, darling.
IDDY. Prola can rule this house because she knows what is happening in it. But how is she to be an Empress if she doesnt know what is happening everywhere?
MRS HYERING. She can read the newspapers, cant she, silly?
IDDY. Yes; but fifteen years later, when the statesmen write their memoirs and autobiographies and publish them, we shall find that it never happened at all and what really happened was quite different. We dont know the truth about any of our statesmen until they are dead and cant take libel actions. Nobody knows the sort of people we really are. The papers have been full of us for weeks past; and not a single word they say about us is true. They think I am a sort of Mahdi or Mad Mullah, and that Prola and Vashti and Maya are a troop of immoral dancing girls, and that Sir Charles is a voluptuous sultan and Hyering a corespondent. They dont live in a world of truth: they live in a world of their own ideas, which have nothing to do with our ideas. Consequently – Therefore – er – er – What was I going to say, Pra? My brain is not strong enough to keep the thread of my remarks. I ought to have written it down.
PRA. What you have arrived at is that we cannot live in a world of political facts, because we shall not know the political facts for years to come. We must therefore live in a world of original ideas, created by ourselves, out of our own nature.
IDDY. Yes. We mustnt pretend to be omniscient. Even God would not be omniscient if He read the newspapers. We must have an ideal of a beautiful and good world. We must believe that to establish that beautiful and good world on earth is the best thing we can do, and the only sort of religion and politics that is worth bothering about.
PROLA. What about the people who have no original ideas, Iddy?
PRA. The great majority of mankind?
IDDY. Theyll be only too glad to do what you tell them, Prola, if you can make them feel that it’s right.
PROLA. And if they are incapable of feeling it?
JANGA. Kill.
KANCHIN. Kill.
VASHTI. Kill.
MAYA. Kill.
PROLA. They can do that as easily as I. Any fool can. And there are more of them.
JANGA. Set them to kill one another; and rule.
KANCHIN. Divide and govern.
VASHTI. Feed them on splendid words.
MAYA. Dazzle them with our beauty.
MRS HYERING. Well I never!
IDDY [rising] Excuse me. I’m going into the house to get the field glass. [He goes up the steps].
MRS HYERING. Whatever do you want the field glass for?
IDDY [pointing to the sky] There’s a strange bird flying about there. I think it’s an albatross. [He goes into the house].
VASHTI, MAYA, KANCHIN, JANGA [hissing after him] Liar. Baby. Dastard. Hypocrite.
SIR CHARLES [laughing] An albatross! Now would anybody in the world, over the age of six, except Iddy, invent such a ridiculous excuse for going to his room to indulge in his poor little secret vice of cigaret smoking?
MAYA. Faugh! The unkissable.
VASHTI. The air poisoner.
KANCHIN. The albatrocity.
MAYA. VASHTI. JANGA [shocked by the pun] Oh!!
LADY FARWATERS. Cant you four darlings do something useful instead of sitting there deafening us with your slogans?
KANCHIN [springing erect] Yes, action. Action!
