_A theatrical dressing-room, hung with red. Door upper right. Across
upper left corner, a Spanish screen. Centre, a table set endwise, on
which dance costumes lie. Chair on each side of this table. Lower
right, a smaller table with a chair. Lower left, a high, very wide,
old-fashioned arm-chair. Above it, a tall mirror, with a make-up stand
before it holding puff, rouge, etc., etc._
_Alva is at lower right, filling two glasses with red wine and
champagne._
ALVA. Never since I began to work for the stage have I seen a public so
uncontrolled in enthusiasm.
LULU. (Voice from behind the screen.) Don't give me too much red wine.
Will he see me to-day?
ALVA. Father?
LULU. Yes.
ALVA. I don't know if he's in the theater.
LULU. Doesn't he want to see me at all?
ALVA. He has so little time.
LULU. His =bride= occupies him.
ALVA. Speculations. He gives himself no rest. (Schoen enters.) You?
We're just speaking of you.
LULU. Is he there?
SCHOEN. You're changing?
LULU. (Peeping over the Spanish screen, to Schoen.) You write in all the
papers that I'm the most gifted danseuse who ever trod the stage, a
second Taglioni and I don't know what else--and you haven't once found
me gifted enough to convince yourself of the fact.
SCHOEN. I have so much to write. You see, I was right: there were
hardly any seats left. You must keep rather more in the proscenium.
LULU. I must first accustom myself to the light.
ALVA. She has kept herself strictly to her part.
SCHOEN. (To Alva.) You must get more out of your performers! You don't
know enough yet about the technique. (To Lulu.) What do you come as
now?
LULU. As a flower-girl.
SCHOEN. (To Alva.) In tights?
ALVA. No. In a skirt to the ankles.
SCHOEN. It would have been better if you hadn't ventured on symbolism.
ALVA. I look at a dancer's feet.
SCHOEN. The point is, what the public looks at. An apparition like =her=
has no need, thank heaven, of your symbolic mummery.
ALVA. The public doesn't look as if it was bored!
SCHOEN. Of course not; because I have been working for her success in
the press for six months. Has the prince been here?
ALVA. Nobody's been here.
SCHOEN. Who lets a dancer come on thru two acts in raincoats?
ALVA. Who is the prince?
SCHOEN. Shall we see each other afterwards?
ALVA. Are you alone?
SCHOEN. With acquaintances. At Peter's?
ALVA. At twelve?
SCHOEN. At twelve. (Exit.)
LULU. I'd given up hoping he'd ever come.
ALVA. Don't let yourself be misled by his grumpy growls. If you'll only
be careful not to spend your strength before the last number
begins-- (Lulu steps out in a classical, sleeveless dress, white with a
red border, a bright wreath in her hair and a basket of flowers in her
hands.)
LULU. He doesn't seem to have noticed at all how cleverly you have used
your performers.
ALVA. I won't blow in sun, moon and stars in the first act!
LULU. (Sipping.) You disclose me by degrees.
ALVA. I knew, though, that you knew all about changing costumes.
LULU. If I'd wanted to sell my flowers this way before the Alhambra
cafe, they'd have had me behind lock and key right off the very first
night.
ALVA. Why? You were a child!
LULU. Do you remember me when I entered your room the first time?
ALVA. You wore a dark blue dress with black velvet.
LULU. They had to stick me somewhere and didn't know where.
ALVA. My mother had been lying sick two years then.
LULU. You were playing theater, and asked me if I wanted to play too.
ALVA. To be sure! We played theater!
LULU. I see you still--the way you shoved the figures back and forth.
ALVA. For a long time my most terrible memory was when all at once I
saw clearly into your relations--
LULU. You got icy curt towards me then.
ALVA. Oh, God--I saw in you something so infinitely far above me. I had
perhaps a higher devotion to you than to my mother. Think--when my
mother died--I was seventeen--I went and stood before my father and
demanded that he make you his wife on the spot or we'd have to fight a
duel.
LULU. He told me that at the time.
ALVA. Since I've grown older, I can only pity him. He will never
comprehend me. There he is making up a story for himself about a little
diplomatic game that puts me in the role of laboring against his
marriage with the Countess.
LULU. Does she still look as innocently as ever at the world?
ALVA. She loves him. I'm convinced of that. Her family has tried
everything to make her turn back. I don't think any sacrifice in the
world would be too great for her for his sake.
LULU. (Holds out her glass to him.) A little more, please.
ALVA. (Giving it to her.) You're drinking too much.
LULU. He shall learn to believe in my success! He doesn't believe in
any art. He believes only in papers.
ALVA. He believes in nothing.
LULU. He brought me into the theater in order that someone might
eventually be found rich enough to marry me.
ALVA. Well, alright. Why need that trouble us?
LULU. I am to be glad if I can dance myself into a millionaire's heart.
ALVA. God defend that anyone should take you from us!
LULU. You've composed the music for it, though.
ALVA. You know that it was always my wish to write a piece for you.
LULU. I am not at all made for the stage, however.
ALVA. You came into the world a dancer!
LULU. Why don't you write your things at least as interesting as life
is?
ALVA. Because if we did no man would believe us.
LULU. If I didn't know more about acting than the people on the stage
do, what might not have happened to me?
ALVA. I've provided your part with all the impossibilities imaginable,
though.
LULU. With hocus-pocus like that no dog is lured from the stove in the
real world.
ALVA. It's enough for me that the public finds itself most tremendously
stirred up.
LULU. But _I_'d like to find myself most tremendously stirred up.
(Drinks.)
ALVA. You don't seem to be in need of much more for that.
LULU. No one of them realizes anything about the others. Each thinks
that he alone is the unhappy victim.
ALVA. But how can you feel that?
LULU. There runs up one's body such an icy shudder.
ALVA. You are incredible. (An electric bell rings over the door.)
LULU. My cape.... I shall keep in the proscenium!
ALVA. (Putting a wide shawl round her shoulders.) Here is your cape.
LULU. He shall have nothing more to fear for his shameless boosting.
ALVA. Keep yourself under control!
LULU. God grant that I dance the last sparks of intelligence out of
their heads. (Exit.)
ALVA. Yes, a more interesting piece could be written about her. (Sits,
right, and takes out his note-book. Writes. Looks up.) First act:
Dr. Goll. Rotten already! I can call up Dr. Goll from purgatory or
wherever else he's doing penance for his orgies, but I'll be made
responsible for his sins. (Long-continued but much deadened applause
and bravos outside.) They rage there as in a menagery when the meat
appears at the cage. Second act: Walter Schwarz. Still more impossible!
How our souls do strip off their last coverings in the light of such
lightning-strokes! Third act? Is it really to go on this way? (The
attendant opens the door from outside and lets Escerny enter. He acts
as though he were at home, and without greeting Alva takes the chair
near the mirror. Alva continues, not heeding him.) It can not go on
this way in the third act!
ESCERNY. Up to the middle of the third act it didn't seem to go so well
to-day as usual.
ALVA. I was not on the stage.
ESCERNY. Now she's in full career again.
ALVA. She's lengthening each number.
ESCERNY. I once had the pleasure of meeting the artiste at Schoen's.
ALVA. My father has brought her before the public by some critiques in
his paper.
ESCERNY. (Bowing slightly.) I was conferring with Dr. Schoen about the
publication of my discoveries at Lake Tanganika.
ALVA. (Bowing slightly.) His remarks leave no doubt that he takes the
liveliest interest in your work.
ESCERNY. It's a very good thing in the artiste that the =public= does
not exist for her at all.
ALVA. As a child she learned the quick changing of clothes; but I was
surprised to discover such an expressive dancer in her.
ESCERNY. When she dances her solo she is intoxicated with her own
beauty, with which she herself seems to be mortally in love.
ALVA. Here she comes. (Gets up and opens the door. Enter Lulu.)
LULU. (Without wreath or basket, to Alva.) You're called for. I was
three times before the curtain. (To Escerny.) Dr. Schoen is not in your
box?
ESCERNY. Not in mine.
ALVA. (To Lulu.) Didn't you see him?
LULU. He is probably away again.
ESCERNY. He has the last parquet-box on the left.
LULU. It seems he is ashamed of me!
ALVA. There wasn't a good seat left for him.
LULU. (To Alva.) Ask him, though, if he likes me better now.
ALVA. I'll send him up.
ESCERNY. He applauded.
LULU. Did he really?
ALVA. Give yourself some rest. (Exit.)
LULU. I've got to change again now.
ESCERNY. But your maid isn't here?
LULU. I can do it quicker alone. Where did you say Dr. Schoen was
sitting?
ESCERNY. I saw him in the left parquet-box farthest back.
LULU. I've still five costumes before me now; dancing-girl, ballerina,
queen of the night, Ariel, and Lascaris.... (She goes behind the
Spanish screen.)
ESCERNY. Would you think it possible that at our first meeting I
expected nothing more than to make the acquaintance of a young lady of
the literary world?... (He sits at the left of the centre table, and
remains there to the end of the scene.) Have I perhaps erred in my
judgment of your nature, or did I rightly interpret the smile which the
thundering storms of applause called forth on your lips? That you are
secretly pained at the necessity of profaning your art before people of
doubtful disinterestedness? (Lulu makes no answer.) That you would
gladly exchange at any moment the shimmer of publicity for a quiet,
sunny happiness in distinguished seclusion? (Lulu makes no answer.)
That you feel in yourself enough dignity and high rank to fetter a man
to your feet--in order to enjoy his utter helplessness?... (Lulu makes
no answer.) That in a comfortable, richly furnished villa you would
feel in a more fitting place than here,--with unlimited means, to live
completely as your =own mistress=? (Lulu steps forth in a short,
bright, pleated petticoat and white satin bodice, black shoes and
stockings, and spurs with bells at her heels.)
LULU. (Busy with the lacing of her bodice.) If there's just one evening
I don't go on, I dream the whole night that I'm dancing and feel the
next day as if I'd been racked.
ESCERNY. But what difference could it make to you to see before you
instead of this mob =one= spectator, specially elect?
LULU. That would make no difference. I don't see anybody anyway.
ESCERNY. A lighted summer-house--the splashing of the water near at
hand.... I am forced in my exploring-trips to the practise of a quite
inhuman tyranny--
LULU. (Putting on a pearl necklace before the mirror.) A good school!
ESCERNY. And if I now long to deliver myself unreservedly into the
power of a woman, that is a natural need for relaxation.... Can you
imagine a greater life-happiness for a woman than to have a man
entirely in her power?
LULU. (Jingling her heels.) Oh yes!
ESCERNY. (Disconcerted.) Among cultured men you will find not one who
doesn't lose his head over you.
LULU. Your wishes, however, no one will fulfill without deceiving you.
ESCERNY. To be deceived by a girl like you must be ten times more
enrapturing than to be uprightly loved by anybody else.
LULU. You have never in your life been uprightly loved by a girl!
(Turning her back to him and pointing.) Would you undo this knot for
me? I've laced myself too tight. I am always so excited getting
dressed.
ESCERNY. (After repeated efforts.) I'm sorry; I can't.
LULU. Then leave it. Perhaps I can. (Goes left.)
ESCERNY. I confess that I am lacking in deftness. Maybe I was not
docile enough with women.
LULU. And probably you don't have much opportunity to be so in Africa,
either?
ESCERNY. (Seriously.) Let me openly admit to you that my loneliness in
the world embitters many hours.
LULU. The knot is almost done....
ESCERNY. What draws me to you is not your dancing. It's your physical
and mental refinement, as it is revealed in every one of your
movements. Anyone who is so much interested in art as I am could not be
deceived in that. For ten evenings I've been studying your spiritual
life in your dance, until to-day when you entered as the flower-girl I
became perfectly clear. Yours is a grand nature--unselfish; you can see
no one suffer; you embody the joy of life. As a wife you will make a
man happy above all things.... You are all open-heartedness. You would
be a poor actor. (The bell rings again.)
LULU. (Having somewhat loosened her laces, takes a deep breath and
jingles her spurs.) Now I can breathe again. The curtain is going up.
(She takes from the centre table a skirt-dance costume--of bright
yellow silk, without a waist, closed at the neck, reaching to the
ankles, with wide, loose sleeves--and throws it over her.) I must
dance.
ESCERNY. (Rises and kisses her hand.) Allow me to remain here a little
while longer.
LULU. Please, stay.
ESCERNY. I need some solitude. (Lulu goes out.) What is to be
aristocratic? To be eccentric, like me? Or to be perfect in body and
mind, like this girl? (Applause and bravos outside.) He who gives me
back my faith in men, gives me back my life. Should not the children of
this woman be more princely, body and soul, than the children whose
mother has no more vitality in her than I have felt in me until to-day?
(Sitting, right; ecstatically.) The dance has ennobled her body....
(Alva enters.)
ALVA. One is never sure a moment that some miserable chance may not
throw the whole performance out for good. (He throws himself into the
big chair, left, so that the two men are in exactly reversed positions
from their former ones. Both converse somewhat boredly and
apathetically.)
ESCERNY. But the public has never yet shown itself so grateful.
ALVA. She's finished the skirt-dance.
ESCERNY. I hear her coming....
ALVA. She isn't coming. She has no time. She changes her costume in the
wings.
ESCERNY. She has two ballet-costumes, if I'm not mistaken?
ALVA. I find the white one more becoming to her than the rose.
ESCERNY. Do you?
ALVA. Don't you?
ESCERNY. I find she looks too body-less in the white tulle.
ALVA. I find she looks too animal in the rose-tulle.
ESCERNY. I don't find that.
ALVA. The white tulle expresses more the child-like in her nature.
ESCERNY. The rose tulle expresses more the female in her nature. (The
electric bell rings over the door. Alva jumps up.)
ALVA. For heaven's sake, what is wrong?
ESCERNY. (Getting up too.) What's the matter? (The electric bell goes
on ringing to the close of the dialogue.)
ALVA. Something's gone wrong there--
ESCERNY. How can you get so suddenly frightened?
ALVA. That must be a hellish confusion! (He runs out. Escerny follows
him. The door remains open. Faint dance-music heard. Pause. Lulu enters
in a long cloak, and shuts the door to behind her. She wears a
rose-colored ballet costume with flower garlands. She walks across the
stage and sits down in the big arm-chair near the mirror. After a pause
Alva returns.)
ALVA. You had a faint?
LULU. Please lock the door.
ALVA. At least come down to the stage.
LULU. Did you see him?
ALVA. See whom?
LULU. With his bride?
ALVA. With his-- (To Schoen, who enters.) You might have spared yourself
that jest!
SCHOEN. What's the matter with her? (To Lulu.) How can you play the
scene straight at me!
LULU. I feel as if I'd been whipped.
SCHOEN. (After bolting the door.) You will dance--as sure as I've taken
the responsibility for you!
LULU. Before your bride?
SCHOEN. Have you a right to trouble yourself before whom? You've been
engaged here. You receive your salary ...
LULU. Is that your affair?
SCHOEN. You dance for anyone who buys a ticket. Whom I sit with in my
box has nothing to do with your business!
ALVA. I wish you'd stayed sitting in your box! (To Lulu.) Tell me,
please, what I am to do. (A knock at the door.) There is the manager.
(Calls.) Yes, in a moment! (To Lulu.) You won't compel us to break off
the performance?
SCHOEN. (To Lulu.) Onto the stage with you!
LULU. Let me have just a moment! I can't now. I'm utterly miserable.
ALVA. The devil take the whole theater crowd!
LULU. Put in the next number. No one will notice if I dance now or in
five minutes. There's no strength in my feet.
ALVA. But you will dance then?
LULU. As well as I can.
ALVA. As badly as you like. (A knock at the door again.) I'm coming.
LULU. (When Alva is gone.) You are right to show me where my place is.
You couldn't do it better than by letting me dance the skirt-dance
before your fiancee.... You do me the greatest service when you point
out where I belong.
SCHOEN. (Sardonically.) For you with your origin it's incomparable luck
to still have the chance of entering before respectable people!
LULU. Even when my shamelessness makes them not know where to look.
SCHOEN. Nonsense!--Shamelessness?--Don't make a necessity of virtue!
Your shamelessness is balanced with gold for you at every step. One
cries "bravo," another "fie"--it's all the same to you! Can you wish
for a more brilliant triumph than when a respectable girl can hardly be
kept in the box? Has your life any other aim? As long as you still have
a spark of self-respect, you are no perfect dancer. The more terribly
you make people shudder, the higher you stand in your profession!
LULU. But it is absolutely indifferent to me what they think of me. I
don't, in the least, want to be any better than I am. I'm content with
myself.
SCHOEN. (In moral indignation.) That is your true nature. I call that
straightforward! A corruption!!
LULU. I wouldn't have known that I had a spark of self-respect--
SCHOEN. (Suddenly distrustful.) No harlequinading--
LULU. O Lord--I know very well what I'd have become if you hadn't saved
me from it.
SCHOEN. Are you then, perhaps, something different to-day?
LULU. God be thanked, no!
SCHOEN. That is right!
LULU. (Laughs.) And how awfully glad I am about it.
SCHOEN. (Spits.) Will you dance now?
LULU. In anything, before anyone!
SCHOEN. Then down to the stage!
LULU. (Begging like a child.) Just a minute more! Please! I can't stand
up straight yet. They'll ring.
SCHOEN. You have become what you are in spite of everything I sacrificed
for your education and your welfare.
LULU. Had you overrated your ennobling influence?
SCHOEN. Spare me your witticisms.
LULU. The prince was here.
SCHOEN. Well?
LULU. He takes me with him to Africa.
SCHOEN. Africa?
LULU. Why not? Didn't you make me a dancer just so that someone might
come and take me away with him?
SCHOEN. But not to Africa, though!
LULU. Then why didn't you let me fall quietly in a faint, and silently
thank heaven for it?
SCHOEN. Because, more's the pity, I had no reason for believing in your
faint!
LULU. (Making fun of him.) You couldn't bear it any longer out there?
SCHOEN. Because I had to bring home to you what you are and to whom you
are not to look up.
LULU. You were afraid, though, that my legs might have been seriously
injured?
SCHOEN. I know too well you are indestructible.
LULU. So you know that?
SCHOEN. (Bursting out.) Don't look at me so impudently!
LULU. No one is keeping you here.
SCHOEN. I'm going as soon as the bell rings.
LULU. As soon as you have the energy! Where is your energy? You have
been engaged three years. Why don't you marry? You recognize no
obstacles. Why do you want to put the blame on me? You ordered me to
marry Dr. Goll: I forced Dr. Goll to marry me. You ordered me to marry
the painter: I made the best of a bad bargain. Artists are your
creatures, princes your proteges. Why don't you marry?
SCHOEN. (Raging.) Do you imagine =you= stand in the way?
LULU. (From here to the end of the act triumphant.) If you knew how
happy your rage is making me! How proud I am that you should humble me
by every means in your power! You debase me as deep--as deep as a woman
can be debased, for you hope you can then jump over me easier. But you
have suffered unspeakably yourself from everything you just said to me.
I see it in you. Already you are near the end of your self-command. Go!
For your innocent fiancee's sake, leave me alone! One minute more, your
mood will change around and you'll make a scene with me of another
kind, that you can't answer for now.
SCHOEN. I fear you no longer.
LULU. Me? Fear yourself! I do not need you. I beg you to go! Don't give
me the blame. You know I don't need to faint to destroy your future.
You have unlimited confidence in my honorableness. You believe not only
that I'm an ensnaring daughter of Eve; you believe, too, that I'm a
very good-natured creature. I am neither the one nor the other. Your
misfortune is only that you think I am.
SCHOEN. (Desperate.) Leave my thoughts alone! You have two men under the
sod. Take the prince, dance him into the earth! I am thru with you. I
know when the angel in you stops off and the devil begins. If I take
the world as it's made, the Creator must be responsible, not I! To me
life is not an amusement!
LULU. And, therefore, you make claims on life greater than anyone can
make. Tell me, who of us two is more full of claims and demands, you or
I?
SCHOEN. Be silent! I don't know how or what I think. When I hear you, I
don't think any more. In a week I'll be married. I conjure you, by the
angel that is in you, during that time come no more to my sight!
LULU. I will lock my doors.
SCHOEN. Go on and boast! God knows since I've been wrestling with the
world and with life I have cursed no one like you!
LULU. That comes from my lowly origin.
SCHOEN. From your depravity!
LULU. With a thousand pleasures I take the blame on myself! You must
feel clean now; you must think yourself a model of austerity now, a
paragon of unflinching principle! Otherwise you could never marry the
child in her boundless inexperience--
SCHOEN. Do you want me to grab you and--
LULU. Yes! What must I say to make you? Not for the world would I
change with the innocent kid now! Tho the girl loves you as no woman
has ever loved you yet!
SCHOEN. Silence, beast! Silence!
LULU. Marry her--and then she'll dance in her childish wretchedness
before =my= eyes, instead of I before hers!
SCHOEN. (Raising his fists.) God forgive me--
LULU. Strike me! Where is your riding-whip? Strike me on the legs--
SCHOEN. (Grasping his temples.) Away, away! (Rushes to the door,
recollects himself, turns around.) Can I go before the girl now, this
way? Home!
LULU. Be a man! Look yourself in the face once:--you have no trace of a
conscience; you are frightened at no wickedness; in the most
cold-blooded way you mean to make the girl that loves you unhappy; you
conquer half the world; you do what you please;--and you know as well
as I that--
SCHOEN. (Sunk in the chair, right centre, utterly exhausted.) Stop!
LULU. That you are too weak--to tear yourself away from me.
SCHOEN. (Groaning.) Oh! Oh! You make me weep.
LULU. This moment makes =me= I cannot tell you how glad.
SCHOEN. My age! My position!
LULU. He cries like a child--the terrible man of might! Now go so to
your bride and tell her what kind of a girl I am at heart--not a bit
jealous!
SCHOEN. (Sobbing.) The child! The innocent child!
LULU. How can the incarnate devil get so weak all of a sudden! But now
go, please. You are nothing more now to me.
SCHOEN. I cannot go to her.
LULU. Out with you. Come back to me when you have regained your
strength again.
SCHOEN. Tell me in God's name what I must do.
LULU. (Gets up; her cloak remains on the chair. Shoving aside the
costumes on the centre table.) Here is writing-paper--
SCHOEN. I can't write....
LULU. (Upright behind him, her arm on the back of his chair.) Write!
"My dear young lady...."
SCHOEN. (Hesitating.) I call her Adelheid ...
LULU. (With emphasis.) "My dear young lady ..."
SCHOEN. My sentence of death! (He writes.)
LULU. "Take back your promise. I cannot reconcile it with my
conscience--" (Schoen drops the pen and glances up at her entreatingly.)
Write conscience!--"to fasten you to my unhappy lot...."
SCHOEN. (Writing.) You are right. You are right.
LULU. "I give you my word that I am unworthy of your love--" (Schoen
turns round again.) Write love! "These lines are the proof of it. For
three years I have tried to tear myself loose; I have not the strength.
I am writing you by the side of the woman that commands me. Forget me.
Dr. Ludwig Schoen."
SCHOEN. (Groaning.) O God!
LULU. (Half startled.) No, no O God! (With emphasis.) "Dr. Ludwig
Schoen." Postscript: "Do not attempt to save me."
SCHOEN. (Having written to the end, quite collapses.) Now--comes
the--execution.
CURTAIN