ROOM IN AN HOTEL
[The STRANGER enters followed by the LADY. A WAITER.]
STRANGER (who is carrying a suitcase). Is no other room free?
WAITER. No.
STRANGER. I don't want this one.
LADY. But it's the only one: the other hotels are all full.
STRANGER (to the WAITER). You can go. (The LADY sinks on to a chair
without taking off her hat and coat.) What is it you want?
LADY. I wish you'd kill me.
STRANGER. I don't wonder! Thrown out of hotels, because we're not
married, and pestered by the police, we're forced to come to this place,
the last I'd have wished. To this very room, number eight.... Someone
must be against me!
LADY. Is this eight?
STRANGER. What? Have you been here before?
LADY. Have you?
STRANGER. Yes.
LADY. Then let's get away. Onto the road, into the woods. It doesn't
matter where.
STRANGER. I should like to. But after this terrible time I'm as tired as
you are. I felt this was to be our journey's end. I resisted, I tried to
go in the opposite direction, but trains were late, or we missed them,
and we had to come here. To this room! The devil's in it--at least what
I call the devil. But I'll be even with him yet.
LADY. It seems we'll never find peace on earth again.
STRANGER. Nothing's been changed. The dying Christmas roses. (Looking
at two pictures.) There he is again. And that's the Hotel Breuer in
Montreux. I've stayed there, too.
LADY. Did you go to the post office?
STRANGER. I thought you'd ask me that. I did. And as an answer to five
letters and three telegrams I found a telegram saying that my publisher
had gone away for a fortnight.
LADY. Then we're lost.
STRANGER. Very nearly.
LADY. The waiter will be back in five minutes and ask for our passports.
Then the landlord will come up and tell us to go.
STRANGER. Then only one course remains.
LADY. Two.
STRANGER. The second's impossible.
LADY. What is the second?
STRANGER. To go to your parents in the country.
LADY. You're beginning to read my thoughts.
STRANGER. We no longer have any secrets from one another.
LADY. Then the whole dream's at an end.
STRANGER. It maybe.
LADY. You must telegraph again.
STRANGER. I ought to, I know. But I can't stir from here. I no longer
believe that what I do can succeed. Someone's paralysed me.
LADY. And me! We decided never to speak of the past and yet we drag it
with us. Look at this carpet. Those flowers seem to form....
STRANGER. Him! It's him. He's everywhere. How many hundred times has
he.... Yet I see someone else in the pattern of the table cloth. No,
it's an illusion! Any moment now I'll hear my funeral march--then
everything will be complete. (Listening.) There!
LADY. I hear nothing.
STRANGER. Am I... am I....
LADY. Shall we go home?
STRANGER. The last place. The worst of all! To arrive like an
adventurer, a beggar. Impossible!
LADY. Yes, I know, but.... No, it would be too much. To bring shame,
disgrace and sorrow to the old people, and to see you humiliated, and
you me! We could never respect one another again.
STRANGER. It would be worse than death. Yet I feel it's inevitable, and
I begin to long for it, to get it over quickly, if it must be.
LADY (taking out her work). But I don't want to be reviled in your
presence. We must find another way. If only we were married--and divorce
would be easy, because my former marriage isn't recognised by the laws
of the country in which it was contracted.... All we need do is to go
away and be married by the same priest... but that would be wounding for
you!
STRANGER. It would match the rest! For this honeymoon's becoming a
pilgrimage!
LADY. You're right! The landlord will be here in five minutes to turn us
out. There's only one way to end such humiliations. Of our own free will
we must accept the worst.... I can hear footsteps!
STRANGER. I've foreseen this and am ready. Ready for everything. If I
can't overcome the unseen, I can show you how much I can endure.... You
must pawn your jewellery. I can buy it back when my publisher gets home,
if he's not drowned bathing or killed in a railway accident. A man as
ambitious as I must be ready to sacrifice his honour first of all.
LADY. As we're agreed, wouldn't it be better to give up this room? Oh,
God! He's coming now.
STRANGER. Let's go. We'll run the gauntlet of waiters, maids and
servants. Red with shame and pale with indignation. Animals have their
lairs to hide in, but we are forced to flaunt our shame. (Pause.) Let
down your veil.
LADY. So this is freedom!
STRANGER. And I... am the liberator. (Exeunt.)