Eternal Feminine, Act One, Scene Three

Noon the next day. A happy yellow field behind the mill. The green-brown millpond swirls lazily. Insects buzz and birds chirp occasionally. It is the summer of summer. Lucien bolts out of the mill, slamming the door shut and sighing dramatically.

Lucien. Oh, how I longed for noon! At last, my time is free!
I wish my father’d come back soon, but I know that he’ll be proud of me.
He’s proud of me, and that is why I tend the house and mill alone.
With self-control, I will not sigh to any ears but my own.
But now that I’m alone, I’ll say aloud how much I hate that grown-up crowd!
I hate to tell them that I don’t and that they can’t and that he won’t!
I’m not cut out for business, for I truly long to gratify!
It breaks my heart to tell them that the rules won’t let me satisfy!
The benevolent sun is at its zenith
For today is the summeriest of summers
And now is the noonest of noons
Let me reach out my limbs to the Midsummer sun
Bless me, oh, guardian of warmth; let me receive the sunlight

He trips and falls with a hard smack on his back, beginning to laugh as soon as he recovers his breath.

Lucien. Let me be silent for a moment and listen to the earth.
Listen to the echoes of the creatures she gave birth.
The world is never truly silent; constant motion makes life.
The earth eternal recreates the birthing pangs of living strife.
Just imagine complete silence! It overwhelms me with fear.

Lucien stands up, looking about warily, and touches his cheeks.

Lucien. Already my cheeks are burnt bright red!
While not the smooth, translucent porcelain of a tormented artist,
Nor the freckled milk of the countries to the north,
My skin still hides behind rosy cheeks the hue of the tenderest apricot.
My blue-grey eyes squint against the sun on all but the cloudiest of days,
The benevolent sun that heals and warms by body burns my eyes
It burns my will to live as independent me!
Perhaps I shall go swimming to escape the sun, yet still be near it.
I am so uneasy around the millpond…
When I was young
I nearly lived in the water
Especially in the summery summers
Unsupervised by a mother who had grown so accustomed to water
That she no longer thought of it as perilous.
But as I grew to be eleven, twelve, thirteen
I began to hear the singing
I began to hear the keening moaning wail
The anguished cries of something deathly
Coming from the reeds of the pond
I know it will pull me in
I know that’s why Father never comes here
It’s like the reedy wailing of a sad, wild shawm
It’s like the painful howling of a dead child’s mother
It’s like the hungry yearning of a big bad wolf…
I do not know what it is that lurks in the water,
But I am sure that it is something,
Something that would pull me down!

Lucien pauses at the edge of the pond, looking into the green-brown water.

Lucien. The stream that feeds the pond
Keeps the water moving,
So I am not afraid of foul, unclean things
That might brush my feet or crawl into my hair.
Pure superstition, the thought of a nightmare
That has haunted me since childhood—
This holds me back!
My suspicious are unfounded;
I despise myself.
I name myself Coward!

Lucien throws himself recklessly into the water.

Lucien. The bottom of the pond is sandy;
There is nothing here to pull me down.
Let me wade around a bit;
Let my plunge my body beneath the surface.
I ought not to have kept my clothes on;
It’s difficult to move.
However, I have healthy arms and legs enough.
Moving about in the water leaves me,
As always,
Exhausted and hungry!
It is a good kind of exhausted,
The kind that comes after a long hike in a beautiful forest,
Or a day spent chasing small children up and down stairs.
Oh, victory!
I have conquered my cowardice!
Now I ought to go and get a novel
And spend the rest of the beneficent sunlight
Getting sunburned by the pond.
Perhaps I will have the pond to myself today;
It’s Midsummer’s Day, and those city folk who come here to
Commune with nature
Will perhaps stay home to
Commune with their families.

Lucien makes the effort up the hill and back to the house, dripping with water, grinning with all the triumph of victory. Cato enters, trudging thoughtfully through the leaves.

Cato. I understand most people think
It’s very difficult to be insane
But I’ve discovered that it’s more difficult
To avoid it
It takes will power to be always holding oneself back,
Constantly gritting one’s teeth
Have you ever thought about the strength of mind it takes
To steel your foot against the constant compulsive itching
And simply force your legs to keep moving?
Step after step, all of the same size, as if naturally…
Never minding the cracks stepped upon
And the sticks brushed against
And the toes stubbed…
We must cling to sanity, using all of our strength
The Sublime was everywhere today,
Especially in the brown, crunchy leaves
That linger even into summer in the darkest corners of the wood.
The contrast of the brown leaves and the green grass was
Overwhelming.
I had to willfully stop noticing,
Because it was beginning to hurt my soul.
I sat for a while in the garden,
But the Sublime crept into my stomach
And made me feel heavy and sad.
I thought to myself that it would be easier in an empty room,
Perhaps a pale yellow room.
But even pale yellow walls and floors and ceiling
Would be so, so beautiful
That I would never be able to stand it.
It is such a swelteringly lovely day
The beauty creeps over me like heat
And oppresses my body
I can hardly breathe
Looking up at the green, sparkling branches makes me dizzy
If I breathe too much air,
I know that I will begin to laugh
The green sparkles will come in on the air
And flood through my blood,
Thrusting me forward and hurtling me up into the sky
This is the theme of my life,
This epic battle between the Sublime and Existentialism
And I am caught like Electra
And I would very much like
To reveal it to the world
In its full glory.
Of course, it does not want its secret tyranny
Exposed so cruelly.
And I fear I shall never possess the skill
To recreate the divinity of the mundana.
The Sublime is so cruel,
Always blowing aside the veil,
Allowing me to see past the barrier off physicality
Into the spiritual world,
But never allowing me the ability
To share my visions.
It would be better,
The Existentialism tells me,
If I had never seen the visions.
I know I can stop them—
I am strong—
But I am not sure I want to give up that beauty.
And perhaps, perhaps…
I am not strong enough.
I pretend to the Existentialism
That he is a powerful state of mind,
But I know secretly in the sinking of my heart,
That should it come to a battle,
The Sublime will wield its power in my heart
And the Existentialism will explode
In my hands.
Oh, musica mundana!
Oh, voice of the spheres!
I remember the wild Phrygian tunes
That are sung in the ancient hallways of Byzantium
And I want you.
All around me are piled
The relics that cannot be properly described—
I turn squeamish at the thought of such blatantly ordinary language—
But I cannot come by the microtonal Dorian notes,
The map crafted by God to show
The dances of the planets.

Cato leaves the stage for a walk around the pond. After a moment, Marta enters.

Marta. Alone at last!
How much time do I have before they find me gone?
I must have a moment
To steel myself for the plunge.
Cato has told me about this pond—
He finds it serene somehow, yet dangerous.
I find it a fitting coffin,
For in it, I may be crushed to pieces under the millwheel.
Only, I fear I will not drown—
Childhood swimming lessons
And my body’s will to live
Are enemies to my purpose.
It is a cliché—
How disaster can spiral from one slip of the toe
Yet my mistake was not a slip.
It was a nosedive.
I see now the dichotomy
Between what I knew and what I believed
I am that fool
Who is aware of consequences
Yet disregards them
Now I have a beginning awareness of how my actions affect others.
At first I believed that nothing could be worse
Than the agony of waiting—
Now I know that I was wrong
The agony of waiting, the agony of wondering
Are nothing compared to the agony of
Degradation
I laugh at my former inability to imagine
The revulsion that awaited me
It is incomprehensible—
The shame, the fear
The surreal experience of incomprehension
The knowledge that I chose my own humiliation
How is it that I can smile or laugh
How is it that I can think about other things
How do I carry on conversations
If I ignore it, perhaps it will go away
If I tell no one, perhaps it will stop
How long
How long will it be before I betray myself
How long do I have before the gentle swell of life
Curves over my belly
The shame of it
Lies in its shattered beauty
It was to have been wonderful and wanted
Now it is a hideous mockery.

Cato reenters.

Cato. Marta! Hello!
Whatever are you doing here alone?

Marta. I’ve come to kill myself in the pool.

Cato. You know you’re not serious.

Marta. Well, I don’t know what else to do.

Cato. It would be unwise.

Marta. You don’t understand—

Cato. You’re just tired.

Marta. The world is overwhelming—

Cato. It is for me, too, but I remain alive.

Marta. I’m going to have a baby. Very soon.

Cato. Really? Hmm,
You do look pregnant.
I can’t believe I didn’t notice.

Marta. You’re not the most observant of men.
But it appears to me that no one has noticed,
Though I have nightmares about being found out.
Empire-waisted dresses and denial have been my shield.

Cato. Well, congratulations!

Marta. Nonsense, it’s a curse--

Cato. Well, you certainly can’t kill yourself.
And risk the life of a baby, too?
Don’t be silly.

Marta. What else can I do?
I’ll be lost in hellfire either way!

Cato. I don’t see that you’ve done anything
So awfully wrong.
No one cares about such things any more.
You just explain to me what’s wrong about it.

Marta. That’s not the point!
Right and wrong are nothing!
Only guilt matters, guilt and responsibility
And I have guilt! Guilt!

Cato. Here, I’ll take you home.
You can think about this more
When you’ve had some rest.

Marta. Why is it that no one takes me seriously?

Cato. Shhh, shhh, you’d better get some rest.
Have you told Samir about it?

Marta. I’d rather die!

Cato. I thought we decided that was not an option.

Marta. You decided it was not an option.

Cato. Home—sleep—think about it later…

Marta. I suppose you’re right.
Thank you for saving my life.
Or rather, our lives.

Cato. Not at all, it was nothing…
Tell me, has Samir brought you the new harpsichord
That he promised?

Marta. Yes, it came this morning.
Come home with me and I’ll show you…

Cato and Marta leave the stage in the direction of the palace. Nixie emerges from the foliage.

Nixie. Home to my pond!
I learn so much at your banks!

Lucien exits the house, bringing a book out to read in the sunshine. Nixie, preoccupied, does not see him until it is too late; desperately, she flings herself into the shadow of a large rock.

Lucien. Who are you?

Nixie. You’re the miller’s eldest son.

Lucien. Why are you here?

Nixie. Here you are to worship the sun.

Lucien. What are you?

Nixie. You are a human soul.

Lucien. A human soul?
What does it mean?

Nixie. It means you have a shadow.
You have a name.
It means that you can die.
It means that you have a meaning
A linear, goal-focused meaning
A chance to discharge a command
To live well, and to die complete.

Lucien. My name is Lucien.
What is yours?

Nixie. I am a nixie.

Lucien. But what is your name?

Nixie. You have a name as an individual,
Because your soul is unique among souls—
There is no one quite exactly like Lucien.
But I—
I have only a name as animal object.
Thos of us without souls go undifferentiated—
Robin, cottonmouth, dragonfly, nixie.

Lucien. But we give names to dogs and horses,
When we make them our own,
And know them and love them.
Then for us they are individuals.
Why does no one tame you and name you?
Oh, please let me try.

Nixie. I don’t believe that you,
Or anyone,
May make me his own,
And know me, and love me.
I am untamable, because
I am unfathomable.
Such is my curse.

Lucien. Haven’t you a shadow?

Nixie. No. I haven’t a soul. I can’t die.

Lucien. May I see?

Nixie. No. As it is, you don’t believe me.
If you believed me, you would burn me
Or you would tell others,
And they would burn me.

Lucien. That isn’t so.

Nixie. It is so. I have seen
Many other fairy sprites
Burned at the stake
Pieces of their flesh cut out
Their noses chopped off
Frozen half to death.
They never stop coughing
They never stop freezing
Their noses never grow back
And they never die.
Can you imagine an eternity
Of deformity?
Immortality does not,
In our case,
Mean eternal health.
I have no wish to collect the burn-scars
That would render me a hideous monster
To every race.
Then men would not only be ashamed
Of their digressions and discretions,
But also of their inexplicable lust
For burned, scarred flesh.

Lucien. Why do you speak of lust,
O Princess Fairy?
How many people have hurt you?

Nixie. You know why you never come here,
At least in your subconscious mind.
I catch the feet of men who swim by
And seduce them to their deaths
In the millpond.
I know you were swimming today.

Lucien. Why didn’t I see you?

Nixie. I was at the Midsummer Fair.
I’ve only returned this morning.

Lucien. My father’s there today.
…I’m happy I’ve met you.

Nixie. It’s the way of the world.
You can’t help being in love with me.
It’s unfortunate, because I’ve given up men today.

Lucien. But why do you continue to seduce them?

Nixie. It’s not a conscious thing.
I don’t try to do it.
It simply happens on its own.
I believe I was placed here
By the Creator
In some kind of divine ordinance
To fill the world with danger.
I hate that I hurt people,
But it’s just what I do.

Lucien. You shouldn’t, you know.
Hurt people, I mean.
Don’t you feel guilty?

Nixie. Of course I feel guilty!
But still I can’t stop.

Lucien. It doesn’t make much sense
To feel guilty for something that isn’t your fault.
If it’s not your fault, stop feeling guilty.
Or, accept your guilt and know that you have the power to change!

Nixie. Ah, but child,
It takes so much energy
To accept my power!
Why, that would mean
That I would have to be responsible
For all of my actions!
I would have to be responsible
For all of my choices!
All of my mistakes would be
My own fault!

Lucien. Well, then, it seems
That you ought to stop feeling guilty.

Nixie. Impossible. I’m a bad person.
You believe so yourself!

Lucien. True…
It’s just that you’re so beautiful…
It can’t really be your fault.
Please let me stay here with you.
I love hearing you speak.
Are you the one who plays the shawm?
It’s so wild and bestially primitive!

Nixie. You’re adorable.
It’s too bad I’ve given you up.
Or rather, it’s a good thing
Because I would hate to deprive the world
Of those pretty golden curls.
You may follow me along, then.
But what will you tell your family?

Lucien. My family? Oh.
I shall leave them a note
Saying I’m going with you to learn…
To learn everything in the world.

Nixie. Well, perhaps you’ll be amusing.
Tell me, do you know a man named Pascal?

Lucien. No, I guess I don’t.

Nixie. He’s the most perfect man in the world.
I’ve decided to become just like him.
He’s perfectly celibate.
Oh, don’t blush.
Are you such a baby?

Lucien. Well, it’s a little bit…
I didn’t know that immortals
Were so uninhibited.

Nixie. Yes, well,
It’s the talk of the trade.
At any rate,
I’ve decided to stop seducing men
And letting them die
In an effort to model myself
After a mortal, and a male.
Is it not strange?

Lucien. Very. I agree.
Will you not come out of the shadows
And let me kiss you?

Nixie. Silly boy!
Have you listened to nothing I said?
I told you, I’ve given it up.

Lucien. But kisses are innocent!
I only meant
I’d like to kiss your forehead
Because you’re so beautiful.
You’re the sort of beautiful
I’d like to capture in a statue
And keep in a museum of art.

Nixie. Nonsense.
I know the truth.
You appear too young to lie,
And although you may be silly,
My guess is that you’re just naïve.
Have you never kissed before?

Lucien. Well, not exactly.
Only in my imagination.

Nixie. Ha! Just as I suspected.
Silly and naïve.
Romantics have no place here.
Are you sure you’d like to live with me
And learn the cynicism of the world?

Lucien. Of course!
I love you
And I love to learn!

Nixie. Darkly you will find
That kisses are precious currency;
They must be given rarely
And hoarded like gold.
A kiss is never innocent.