Instructions for John Howell

For Peter Brook.

THINKING ABOUT IT afterwards—on the street, in a train, crossing fields—all that would have seemed absurd, but what is theater but a compromise with the absurd and its most efficient, lavish practice? Rice, who was bored on an autumnal London weekend and had entered the Aldwych without taking too close a look at the program, found the first act of the play, above all, mediocre; the absurd began at intermission, when the man in grey came over to his seat and politely invited him, with an almost inaudible voice, to accompany him backstage. Not too surprised, he thought the management of the theater must be doing a questionnaire, some vague investigation for publicity purposes. “If it’s about an opinion,” Rice said, “the first act seemed wishy-washy to me, and the lighting for example . . .” The man in grey agreed amiably, but his hand kept pointing to a side exit, and Rice realized that he should get up and accompany him without having to be begged. “I would have preferred a cup of tea,” he thought while he walked down some steps to a side aisle and let himself be led, half-absently, half-annoyed. Almost abruptly, he found himself before a wing with scenery representing the library of a middle-class house; two bored-looking men greeted him as if his visit had been expected or even taken for granted. “You’ll do marvelously,” said the taller of the two. The other man bowed his head, looking like a mute. “We don’t have much time,” the tall man said, “but I’ll try to explain your role in two words.” He talked mechanically, almost as if he ignored Rice’s real presence and limited himself to carrying out a monotonous assignment. “I don’t understand,” Rice said, taking a step back. “It’s almost better,” the tall man said. “In these cases, analyzing puts you rather at a disadvantage; you’ll see, as soon as you get used to the lights, you’ll start enjoying it. You already know the first act; I know, you didn’t like it. Nobody likes it. It’s from now on that the play can get better. It depends, of course.” “Let’s hope it gets better,” said Rice, who thought he had misunderstood, “but in any case it’s time for me to get back to my seat.” As he had taken another step back, the mild resistance of the man in grey, who murmured an “Excuse me” without moving aside, didn’t surprise him too much. “It seems we don’t understand each other,” the tall man said, “which is a pity, because there are only four minutes to go before the second act. Please listen carefully. You are Howell, Eva’s husband. You’ve already seen that Eva is unfaithful to Howell with Michael, and that Howell has probably realized, although he prefers to keep quiet for reasons that are still not clear. Don’t move, please, it’s simply a wig.” But the warning seemed almost useless, since the man in grey and the mute man had taken him by the arms, and a tall, thin girl, who had suddenly appeared, was fitting something warm on his head. “You won’t want me to start shouting and causing an uproar in the theater,” said Rice, trying to control the tremor in his voice. The tall man shrugged his shoulders. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said wearily. “It would be so gauche . . . No, I’m sure you wouldn’t do that. Besides, the wig looks good on you, you look like a redhead.” Knowing he shouldn’t say this, Rice said: “But I’m not an actor.” All of them, even the girl, smiled encouragement. “Precisely,” said the tall man. “You are well aware of the difference. You are not an actor; you are Howell. When you go out onto the stage, Eva will be in the drawing room writing a letter to Michael. You will pretend not to realize that she hides the paper and conceals her uneasiness. From that moment on, do what you like. The glasses, Ruth.” “What I like?” said Rice, trying soundlessly to free his arms, while Ruth adjusted a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on him. “Yes, that’s what it’s about,” the tall man said listlessly, and Rice vaguely suspected that he was fed up with repeating the same things every night. The bell started ringing for the audience, and Rice managed to make out the movements of the stagehands on the stage, some changing of lights; Ruth had suddenly disappeared. An indignation, more bitter than violent, that somehow seemed out of place, came over him. “This is a stupid farce,” he said trying to break loose, “and I’m warning you . . .” “I’m sorry,” the tall man murmured. “Frankly I would have thought differently of you. But since you’re taking it like this . . .” It wasn’t exactly a threat, although the three men surrounded him in a way that demanded obedience or an out-and-out struggle; it seemed to Rice that one thing would have been as absurd or as false as the other. “Howell enters now,” said the tall man, showing him the narrow passage between the wings. “Once you’re there, do what you like, but we would be sorry if . . .” He said it amiably, without disturbing the sudden silence of the hall; the curtain rose with a stroking of velvet, and they received a whiff of warm air. “If I were you, I’d think it over, however,” the tall man added wearily. “Go, now.” Pushing him without pushing him, the three accompanied him to the middle of the wings. A violet light blinded Rice; in front was a space that seemed infinite, and to the left he guessed the great cavern, something like a gigantic contained breath, which, after all, was the real world, where white shirt fronts and perhaps hats or upsweeps were gradually taking shape. He took a step or two, feeling that his legs weren’t responding, and was about to turn around and rush back when Eva, hurriedly rising, came forward and offered him her hand, which seemed to float in the violet light at the end of a very white and long arm. The hand was icy, and Rice had the impression that it twitched a little in his. Letting her lead him to the center of the set, he confusedly listened to Eva’s explanations about her headache, her preference for the soft light and peacefulness of the library, waiting for her silence to then step to the forestage and announce, in two words, that they were being swindled. But Eva seemed to be waiting for him to sit on a sofa of as dubious taste as the plot and the set, and Rice realized that it was impossible, almost grotesque, to keep standing while she, holding out her hand again, repeated the invitation with a weary smile. From the sofa, he could see the first rows of the stalls better, scarcely separated from the stage by the light, which had been turning from violet to a yellowish orange, but curiously it was easier for Rice to turn toward Eva and withstand her gaze which in some way still bound him to that foolishness, putting off for another second the only decision possible without accepting madness and yielding to sham. “These autumn afternoons are endless,” Eva had said, looking for a white metal box among the books and papers on the low table and offering him a cigarette. Mechanically, Rice took out his lighter, feeling more and more ridiculous with the wig and glasses; but the minor ritual of lighting the cigarettes and inhaling the first whiffs was like a truce. It permitted him to sit more comfortably, relaxing the unbearable tension of his body that knew it was being looked at by cold and invisible constellations. He heard his answers to Eva’s sentences; the words seemed to bring each other to life with little effort, without their having to talk about anything concrete—a house of cards dialogue, in which Eva was putting up the walls of the fragile building, and Rice effortlessly intercalated his own cards until, when finishing a long-winded explanation which included Michael’s name (“You’ve already seen that Eva is unfaithful to Howell with Michael”) and other names and places, a tea party which Michael’s mother had attended (or was it Eva’s mother?) and an anxious justification and almost on the verge of tears, with a gesture of anxious hope, Eva leaned toward Rice as if she wished to embrace him or wait for him to take her in his arms, and, exactly after the last word said in a very clear voice, she murmured near Rice’s ear: “Don’t let them kill me,” and without transition returned to her professional voice to complain about being lonely and abandoned. There was a knock on the door in the background, and Eva bit her lip as if she had wanted to add something more (but Rice thought of that, too confused to react in time), and stood up to welcome Michael, who came in with the false smile he had worn so unbearably during the first act. A lady dressed in red, an old man—suddenly the stage was populated with people exchanging greetings, flowers, and news. Rice shook the hands held out to him and sat down on the sofa again as soon as possible, shielding himself behind another cigarette; now the action seemed to go on without him, and the audience received with satisfied murmurs a series of brilliant word plays from Michael and the other character actors, while Eva attended to the tea and gave the servant instructions. Perhaps it was the moment to approach the front of the stage, drop the cigarette, and crush it with his foot, in time to announce: “Dear audience . . .” But maybe it would be more elegant (Don’t let them kill me) to wait for the curtain’s fall and then, quickly stepping forward, reveal the fraud. In all of this, there was a kind of ceremonial which wasn’t difficult to heed; awaiting his hour, Rice entered into the dialogue proposed by the old gentleman, accepted the cup of tea Eva offered him without looking her in the face, as if she knew Michael and the lady in red were watching her. The thing was to resist, to face up to a time endlessly tense, to be stronger than the awkward coalition that aspired to turn him into a puppet. Already he could tell how the words directed to him (sometimes by Michael, sometimes the lady in red, almost never Eva, now) implicitly carried the reply; if the puppet answered what was expected, the play could continue. Rice thought that if he had only had a little more time to master the situation, it would have been fun to answer against the grain and put the actors in tight spots, but they would not tolerate it; his false freedom of action would permit only wild rebellion, riot. Don’t let them kill me, Eva had said; somehow, as absurd as all the rest, Rice kept feeling that it was better to wait. The curtain fell upon a sententious and bitter repartee by the lady in red, and to Rice, the actors seemed like figures who suddenly stepped down an invisible step: Diminished, indifferent (Michael shrugged his shoulders, turning around and heading backstage), they all left the stage without looking at each other, but Rice noticed that Eva turned her head toward him while the lady in red and the old man led her amiably by the arm toward the right wings. He thought of following her, had the vague hope of a dressing room and private conversation. “Magnificent,” said the tall man, patting him on the shoulder. “Very good, a very good job indeed.” He pointed toward the curtain letting the last applause pass through. “They really liked it. Let’s have a drink.” The other two men were somewhat further away, smiling amiably, and Rice gave up the idea of following Eva. The tall man opened a door at the end of the first corridor, and they entered a small parlor where there were ramshackle chairs, a wardrobe, an already opened bottle of whisky, and beautiful crystal glasses. “You’ve done a good job,” the tall man insisted, while they sat around Rice. “A little ice, right? Of course, anybody’s throat would be dry.” Before he could say no, the man in grey handed Rice an almost full glass. “The third act is more difficult, but also more fun for Howell,” the tall man said. “You’ve already seen how they gradually reveal the games.” He began to explain the plot, nimbly, without hesitation. “You’ve complicated matters in a way,” he said, “I never imagined you would act so passively with your wife; I would have reacted otherwise.” “How?” Rice asked dryly. “Ah, dear friend, it’s not right to ask that. My opinion could alter your own decisions, since you must have a preconceived plan by now. Or don’t you?” As Rice was silent, he added: “I say this precisely because it’s not a matter of having preconceived plans. We are all too satisfied to risk failing with the rest.” Rice drank down a long gulp of whisky. “But you told me I could do what I wanted in the second act,” he remarked. The man in grey started to laugh, but the tall man gave him a look, and the other made a quick gesture of apology. “There’s a margin for adventure or chance—whichever you prefer,” said the tall man. “But from now on please pay attention to what I indicate, always given, of course, that you have absolute freedom as to detail.” His right hand opened with the palm upward; he looked steadily at it while the index finger of the other hand rested upon it again and again. Between two gulps (they had filled his glass again), Rice listened to the instructions for John Howell. Sustained by alcohol and by something that was like a slow turning inward which filled him with cold anger, he effortlessly discovered the meaning of the instructions, the preparation of the plot which would come to a crisis in the last act. “I hope it is clear,” the tall man said, making a circular movement with his finger in the palm of his hand. “It is very clear,” said Rice getting up, “but I’d also like to know if in the fourth act . . .” “Let us not confuse the issue, dear friend,” the tall man said. “In the next intermission, we’ll come back to this, but now I suggest that you concentrate exclusively on the third act. Ah, the street clothes, please.” Rice felt the mute man unbuttoning his jacket; the man in grey had taken a tweed suit and gloves out of the wardrobe; mechanically, Rice changed outfits under the approving eyes of the three. The tall man had opened the door and was waiting; far away you could hear the bell. “This damn wig makes me hot,” thought Rice, finishing the whisky in one gulp. Almost immediately, he found himself between new wings, without resisting the friendly pressure of a hand on his elbow. “Not yet,” said the tall man, behind him. “Remember that it’s cool in the park. Perhaps if you raised the collar of your jacket . . . Let’s go, it’s your cue.” From a bench on the edge of the path Michael came toward him, greeting him with a joke. He was supposed to respond passively and discuss the merits of autumn in Regent’s Park, until Eva and the lady in red, who must be feeding the swans, arrived. For the first time—it surprised him as much as the others—Rice accentuated his words in an allusion that the audience seemed to appreciate and which obliged Michael to put himself on the defensive, forcing him to use the most visible recourses of the profession to find a way out. Turning his back on him while he lit a cigarette, as if he wanted to protect himself from the wind, Rice looked over the top of his glasses and saw the three men backstage, the tall man’s arm making a threatening gesture. He laughed between his teeth (he must have been a little drunk, and besides he was having a good time, and the waving arm was extremely funny to him) before turning around and resting a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “You see funny things in parks,” said Rice. “Really I don’t understand how you can waste time with swans and lovers when you’re in a London park.” The audience laughed more than Michael, excessively concerned with the arrival of Eva and the lady in red. Unswervingly, Rice continued against the tide, little by little violating the instructions in a ferocious and absurd fencing match against very capable actors who were trying really hard to make him return to his role, and at times they succeeded, but he’d escape them again to somehow help Eva, not really knowing why but thinking (and this made him laugh, and it must have been the whisky) that all he had changed in that moment would inevitably alter the last act (Don’t let them kill me). And the others had realized his purpose, because it was enough to look over his glasses toward the wings on the left to see the tall man’s angry gestures. On stage and off, they were fighting against him and Eva; they’d get between them so that they couldn’t communicate, so that she couldn’t talk to him. And now the old gentleman arrived, followed by a gloomy chauffeur. There was a brief moment of calm (Rice remembered the instructions: a pause, then the conversation on buying shares, then the lady in red’s revealing words, and curtain), and in that interval, in which Michael and the lady in red had to move aside so that the gentleman could talk to Eva and Howell about stock market strategy (really, they didn’t leave anything out of this play), the pleasure of spoiling the action a little more filled Rice with something that seemed like happiness. With a gesture that made the profound scorn he felt for these risky speculations very clear, he took Eva by the arm, cleverly eluded the furious and smiling gentleman’s engaging maneuver, and walked with her, hearing behind him a wall of ingenious words which didn’t concern him, exclusively invented for the audience, and meanwhile Eva, meanwhile a warm breath hardly a second against his cheek, the light murmur of her real voice saying: “Stay with me until the end,” broken by an instinctive movement, the habit that made her respond to the lady in red, dragging Howell to receive to his face the revealing words. Deprived of the infinitesimal gap he would have needed to change the direction those words definitely gave to what would come, Rice saw the curtain fall. “Idiot,” said the lady in red. “Get out of here, Flora,” the tall man ordered, sticking to Rice, who smiled, satisfied. “Idiot,” the lady in red repeated, taking Eva by the arm (she had lowered her head and seemed almost absent). A push showed Rice the way; he felt perfectly happy. “Idiot,” the tall man said in turn. The tug at his head was almost brutal, but Rice took off the glasses himself and handed them to the tall man. “The whisky wasn’t bad,” he said. “If you want to give me the instructions for the last act . . .” Another shove almost threw him on the ground and when he managed to straighten up, slightly dizzy, they were already tripping along a poorly lit gallery; the tall man had disappeared, and the other two pressed against him, forcing him to keep moving with the mere pressure of their bodies. There was a door with an orange light above. “Change,” said the man in grey handing him his suit. Almost without giving him time to put on his jacket, they opened the door with a kick; the push sent him reeling out onto the sidewalk, the cold of an alley that smelled of garbage. “Sons of bitches, I’ll catch pneumonia,” Rice thought, putting his hands in his pockets. There were lights at the furthest end of the alley, from where the sound of traffic came. On the first corner (they hadn’t taken his money or his papers) Rice recognized the entrance to the theater. As nobody was preventing him from attending the last act from his seat, he entered the warmth of the foyer, the smoke and the talk of the people in the bar; he had time for another whisky, but felt unable to think about anything. A little before the curtain went up he managed to wonder who would do Howell’s role in the last act, and if another poor sucker would be going through affabilities and threats and eyeglasses; but the joke probably ended the same way each night, because immediately he recognized the actor of the first act, who read a letter in his study and silently handed it to a pale Eva dressed in grey. “It’s outrageous,” Rice commented, turning to the person on his left. “How can people stand for this changing of actors in the middle of a play?” The man sighed wearily. “You never can tell with these young authors today,” he said. “Everything’s a symbol, I suppose.” Rice settled comfortably in his seat, malignantly savoring the murmur of the spectators, who didn’t seem to accept Howell’s physical changes as passively as his neighbor. Nevertheless, the theatrical illusion took over almost immediately, the actor was excellent, and the action hurried along in such a way that it even surprised Rice, lost in a pleasant indifference. The letter was Michael’s, announcing his departure from England; Eva read it and silently returned it; you could hear that she was crying with restraint. Stay with me until the end, Eva had said. Don’t let them kill me, Eva had absurdly said. From the security of the stalls, it was inconceivable that anything could happen to her on that junk stage; the whole thing had been a continuous swindle, a long hour of wigs and painted trees. Of course, the predictable lady in red invaded the melancholic peace of the study, where Howell’s pardon and perhaps love could be perceived in his silences, in his almost absentminded way of tearing the letter and throwing it in the fire. It seemed inevitable for the lady in red to insinuate that Michael’s departure was a strategic move, and for Howell to make his scorn evident to her, which, however, would not preclude a polite invitation to tea. The servant’s arrival with the tray vaguely amused Rice; tea seemed to be one of the playwright’s principal recourses, especially now that the lady in red was fidgeting with a little bottle of romantic melodrama, while the lights faded in a completely unexplainable way in a London lawyer’s chambers. There was a telephone call, which Howell answered with perfect composure (a fall in the stocks or any other necessary crisis was to be expected for the conclusion); the cups passed from hand to hand with the appropriate smiles, the proper tone before catastrophes. Howell’s gesture the moment Eva brought the cup to her lips, his abrupt movement, and the tea spilling over her grey dress almost bothered Rice. Eva was motionless, almost ridiculous; in that instantaneous freeze of positions (Rice sat up straight without knowing why, and someone muttered impatiently behind him), the shocked exclamation of the lady in red drowned out the light cracking noise, Howell raised his hand to announce something, and Eva turned her head toward the audience, looking as if she refused to believe, and then slid sideways until almost lying on the sofa, in a slow renewal of movement which Howell seemed to receive and continue with his abrupt race toward the wings on the right, his flight which Rice didn’t see, because he, too, was running up the center aisle before any other member of the audience had moved. Leaping down the stairs, he had the sense to hand in his check at the cloakroom and retrieve his coat; when he reached the door, he heard the first sounds of the play’s end, applause, and voices in the hall; someone in the theater was running up stairs. He fled toward Kean Street and, as he passed the alley, seemed to see a bulk moving along the wall; the door they had thrown him out of was ajar, but Rice hadn’t finished registering those images when he was running along the main street; instead of leaving the theater district he went down Kingsway again, not expecting anybody to think of looking for him near the theater. He reached the Strand (he had raised his coat collar and walked rapidly, with his hands in his pockets) until disappearing, with a relief he himself couldn’t explain, into the vague region of small streets starting at Chancery Lane. Leaning against a wall (he panted a little and felt the sweat sticking his shirt to his skin), he lit a cigarette and for the first time explicitly asked himself, using all the necessary words, why he was fleeing. Approaching steps came between him and the answer he was looking for; while he ran, he thought that if he succeeded in crossing the river (he was already near Blackfriars Bridge), he would feel safe. He took refuge in a doorway, far from the street lamp that lighted the way toward Watergate. Something burned his mouth; he yanked out the forgotten butt, and felt it tearing his lips. In the silence surrounding him, he tried to repeat the unanswered questions, but was ironically interrupted by the idea that he would be safe only if he managed to cross the river. It was illogical; the footsteps, too, could follow him on the bridge, in any lane on the other bank; and still he chose the bridge, he ran with the wind in his favor, helping him to leave the river behind and disappear into a labyrinth he did not know until reaching a poorly lit area; the third pause of the night in a deep, narrow blind alley finally placed him before the only important question, and Rice realized that he couldn’t find the answer. Don’t let them kill me, Eva had said, and he had done all that was possible, awkwardly and miserably, but just the same they had killed her, at least in the play they had killed her, and he had to run away, because it couldn’t be that the play ended like that, that the cup of tea spilled harmlessly over Eva’s dress, and yet Eva slid until she was lying on the sofa; something else had happened without his being there to prevent it. Stay with me until the end, Eva had begged him, but they had thrown him out of the theater, they had separated him from what had to happen and what he, stupidly settled in his seat, had contemplated without understanding, or understanding it from another region of himself where there was fear and flight and now, sticky like the sweat running down his belly, disgust in himself. “But I have nothing to do with it,” he thought. “And nothing has happened; it isn’t possible for things like that to happen.” He repeated this to himself conscientiously: It couldn’t be that they had come to get him, to propose that foolishness to him, to threaten him amiably; the footsteps that were coming closer had to be some vagabond’s, footsteps without footprints. The redheaded man who stopped beside him almost without looking at him, and who took off his glasses with a convulsive gesture to put them on again after wiping them on the lapel of his jacket, was simply someone who looked like Howell, the actor who had played Howell’s role and had spilled the cup of tea on Eva’s dress. “Throw away that wig,” Rice said. “They’ll recognize you anywhere.” “It’s not a wig,” said Howell. (His name must be Smith or Rogers, he didn’t even remember the name on the program anymore) “What a fool I am!” said Rice. He could have guessed that they had prepared an exact copy of Howell’s hair, just as the eyeglasses had been a replica of Howell’s. “You did what you could,” Rice said. “I was in the stalls and I saw it; everybody will be able to speak in your favor.” Howell trembled, leaning against the wall. “It’s not that,” he said. “What does it matter, if they got their way anyhow?” Rice lowered his head; a great fatigue came over him. “I, too, tried to save her,” he said, “but they wouldn’t let me continue.” Howell looked at him resentfully. “The same thing always happens,” he said as if talking to himself. “That’s typical of amateurs. They think they can do it better than the others, and in the end it’s no use.” He raised his collar, put his hands in his pockets. Rice would have liked to ask him: “Why does the same thing always happen? And if that’s the case, why are we running away?” The sound of the whistle seemed engulfed in the lane, looking for them. They ran for a long time in a dead heat, until stopping on some corner smelling of oil, of stagnant river. Behind a pile of bales they rested a moment; Howell panted like a dog and Rice had a cramp in his calf. He rubbed it, leaning on the bales, standing with difficulty on one foot. “But perhaps it’s not that serious,” he murmured. “You said the same thing always happened.” Howell put a hand over his mouth; the two whistles were alternating now. “Each go his own way,” Howell said. “Maybe one of us can escape.” Rice realized he was right, but he would have wanted Howell to answer him first. He took him by the arm, drawing him close with all his strength. “Don’t let me go like this,” he begged. “I can’t keep running away forever, without knowing.” He smelled the tarred odor of the bales; his hand felt sort of vacant in the air. Some footsteps were running away; Rice crouched, gathering impulse, and took off in the opposite direction. In the light of a street lamp he saw some name: Rose Alley. Further on was the river, some bridge. There would be no lack of bridges or streets on which to run.