FICTION-ONLINE An Internet Literary Magazine Volume 4, Number 6 November-December, 1997 EDITOR'S NOTE: FICTION-ONLINE is a literary magazine publishing electronically through e-mail and the Internet on a bimonthly basis. The contents include short stories, play scripts or excerpts, excerpts of novels or serialized novels, and poems. Some contributors to the magazine are members of the Northwest Fiction Group of Washington, DC, a group affiliated with Washington Independent Writers. However, the magazine is an independent entity and solicits and publishes material from the public. To subscribe or unsubscribe or for more information, please e-mail a brief request to ngwazi@clark.net To submit manuscripts for consideration, please e-mail to the same address, with the ms in ASCII format, if possible included as part of the message itself, rather than as an attachment. 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William Ramsay, Editor ===================================================================== CONTENTS Editor's Note Contributors "Hovering in Winter," a poem Will Hastings "Vera's Kiss," a short-short E. James Scott "Pierre," an excerpt (chapter 5) from the novel "Ay, Chucho!" William Ramsay "The Girl from Verona," part 3 of the play, "Duet" Otho Eskin ==================================================================== CONTRIBUTORS OTHO ESKIN, former diplomat and consultant on international affairs, has published short stories and has had numerous plays read and produced in Washington, notably "Act of God." His play "Duet" has been produced at the Elizabethan Theater at the Folger Library in Washington, and is being performed with some regularity in theaters in the United States, Europe, and Australia. WILL HASTINGS is an attorney and a former government official. He now lives in the Berkshires , where he gardens, investigates aerodynamics, and writes poetry. His works have been published in leading journals. WILLIAM RAMSAY is a physicist and consultant on Third World energy problems. He is also a writer and the coordinator of the Northwest Fiction Group. His play, "Strength," recently received a reading at the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. E. JAMES SCOTT is an airline pilot and plays the viola da gamba. He lives in La Jolla, California and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he practices his hobby of photographing and charting the migrations of cetaceans. =================================================================== HOVERING IN WINTER by Will Hastings "There are angels hovering round," she sang, slowly unbuttoning her voice as the eyes in the pews lifted, faces tilted up, hoping to hear sounds made by wings hovering, noises of feathers sweeping dust from air, maybe expecting a soft insistence, a resonance in their waiting chests, some whirring and churning inside. Those in the pews stood, still listening, and together they found the song, following along the path made by music cascading in simple harmonies out of their white ice-canyon onto an open field of lemon-yellow lilies where for minutes they also hovered perfect in their bodies' laughter. ================================================ VERA'S KISS by E. James Scott I'm trying to remember what the lips felt like. I was only my eyes, peering through the bare winter branches of the spirea. The faces of the other second-grade kids, teeth, guffaws, giggling -- framed, chopped by the network of spindly twigs. Vera's beautiful face blank with determination, the large round puffs of her brown hair. In my ears, the hollow shrieking from Pete, Ralph, that bully Hank, all of them. Vera's hand held my arm, twisting the skin, pulling me up to the lips. No, no! I brandished my small cold-reddened fist. No, you can't hit a girl! But she grabbed onto the other wrist, not any surer than I was what we human cubs were or weren't allowed to do. It was play, it was punishment, it was torture. She pulled me powerfully, humiliatingly to her breast, her ribs clubbing mine. Her face -- yes, I can remember the lips, cold, excited with spittle, hard and soft. She let my feet sink to the ground, then pulled me out from behind the bush. Robby kissed Vera behind the bush! No I didn't! Robby kissed Vera, Robby kissed Vera! You liars! They were liars, I kissed not, my kiss was raped from me. I should have been masculine, powerful -- instead I was small and weak, desperate, my body hot and cold. Thank God I did not cry. Walking, trotting, running home, shoe soles slapping where the concrete quaked with maple roots, I cursed, proudly grown-up: lousy, crappy, stinky girl. Lousy. I hate, I hate, I hate her. In my room, hidden among the quilted covers, I feel alone in the shrouded half-light from the globe fixture in the upstairs hall. I'll always be by myself. I can't go to school tomorrow. Everyone will know. ================================================= PIERRE by William Ramsay (Note: This is an excerpt, Chapter 5, from the novel "­Ay, Chucho!") Parque Cuscatlan is a cool swatch of green fronting on the Alameda Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and across from it on the other side of the boulevard stand the ominously white stucco buildings of the Hospital Rosales. From my bench near the Alameda, I could see two men running sprinklers -- the cool scent of the water was a nice change from the dusty atmosphere of the season. I found myself, on this sultry, buzzing day, doing a little heavy analysis of what was going on in my sex life. I'd been faithful to Amelia for the whole past six months -- except for that kind of accidental weekend in New Orleans where I'd just bumped into Sandy. And that one night with Maria Delia -- but that was only for old times' sake. Hell, I decided that I did miss Amelia. But Amelia and I were both single, free to live our own lives -- we had agreed on that, though Amelia used to put on a funny distracted look when the subject came up. I thought about giving Amelia a call -- but how about security? Suddenly I remembered that I wasn't even me, I wasn't Jesus Revueltos for the time being, but some different person entirely. Why not enjoy being that different person? Why not try -- the best I could under the circumstances -- to have some fun? Be careless, do crazy things. Why not? I speculated on whether "Dr. Felipe Elizalde" would dare to cross the street, pinch a lab coat, and see what mischief he could get up to inside the Hospital Rosales -- nurses galore, I fantasized. -- when I heard somebody speak from close by. "Dr. Elizalde!" came the voice. Oddly, I remember wondering who else was passing as Dr. Elizalde. "Dr. Elizalde!" the voice came again. I jerked my head up quickly and said "Yes?" with what I hoped was a confident intonation. A large man in his forties, a yellow head of hair punctuated by a small bald spot in the center, eyes shadowed by tinted wire-rimmed glasses, smiled benignly down at me. "I'm not mistaken, am I? Dr. Elizalde?" My stomach quivered. "Who are you?" I said, trying to get the ball back in his court. "Pierre Diaz-Ginsburg, at your orders," he said. I heard a meowing behind him, and he reached down and picked up a large snow-white cat and, cradling it in his arms, began to stroke its back as if it had been a naked odalisque. I decided to grasp the bull by its balls. "Do I know you? I don't think so." He peered at me very carefully and said, "Oh, my!" He sounded so disappointed. "Oh my, I did think you would remember." "I'm sorry." God knows I _was_ feeling sorrier and more nervous by the second. He stroked the cat very delicately, as if it were made of straw. An old man with a malacca cane hobbled over and sat down a few feet from me on the bench. Diaz-Ginsburg stared at him and made a wry face. "Let's go for a stroll. Do you mind, Doctor? There's a small but interesting matter I'd like to take up with you." So I got up, knees a little unsteady, and followed along with him down the lightly graveled path toward the high walls of the Gimnasio Nacional. A svelte young boy in shorts jogged past us, and Diaz-Ginsburg slapped at his own cheek with one hand, repeatedly, balancing the cat in the other, then tapped his fly with one finger, very delicately, and snickered. He looked at my face. God knows what he read there, I felt as if my face had gone numb. He licked his lips, stared off at the top of the palm trees across the path and said that he had gotten my name from Dr. Sanchez-Schulz. "Oh," I said, "are you..." "Just a casual contact, Doctor, you know. Not..." A policeman appeared from a side path a few yards ahead of us, and Diaz-Ginsburg made coughing noises, at the same time whispering: "Not a you-know-what." I wondered: if he wasn't an FMLN cadre, then who the hell was he? Baffled, I asked him straight out. The answer I got was that he was a journalist, looking for an entree into Cuba to see his family. For reasons of politics -- he said -- it was difficult for him to enter by the usual routes. I didn't ask him how he knew I was going to Cuba. The thought of all San Salvador getting to know what I was up to made things wobble in my belly. It was getting to the hot part of the day, and as we walked under the striped shade of the palms along the walk, I worked at wiping a giant trickle of sweat off the back of my neck. I told myself that it wasn't anything, he was undoubtedly just another _gusano_, a right-wing expatriate on Castro's black list who had somehow gotten hold of my _nom_ _de_ _guerre_. I tell myself now I should have been more curious, though I don't think better information would have done me any good at all. Ah, those good old days, when I only knew about leftists and rightists -- and not the other side of those extremes, where left meets right in a wildassed ideological swamp. "I'm sorry," I said. "My plans weren't made yet, but I don't see how I could help you in any case." He smiled and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, large and blue. "We'll talk again, Doctor. Undoubtedly we will. I'm _sure_ of it." He snuggled the cat against his neck and then kissed it. I'm not much for animals -- especially cats. "Look, there's no point in your seeing me again because I still won't be able to help you.". "_Au_ _revoir_, Doctor, _au_ _revoir_." As he left, I hoped that _au_ _revoir_ in this case really meant "Good-bye." I stopped at a cafe and broke my rule of abstinence and ordered a beer. I suddenly wondered why Diaz-Ginsburg had happened upon me in the park. Then I realized that he must have been tailing me, and I wondered how many other people were on Felipe Elizalde's -- or Jesus Revueltos' -- trail. By now I was completely in the shade of the striped awning, and the lady with the straw hat eating a chocolate sundae at the next table looked cool enough, but I was beginning to feel even warmer. The chillness of the rainy season couldn't begin soon enough for me. I hadn't become any calmer a few days later when I met Dr. Josefa Sanchez- Schulz at the lake. So I was relieved when Pepita told me that arrangements for my trip to Cuba were taking shape, that I would be off within the week. Not that Havana seemed any safer as a destination than it had ever been. But waiting in San Salvador was beginning to feel like death row -- I thought of Wallace Beery in his cell at "The Big House." Miami now seemed like the Earthly Paradise -- but only if I could return with the key to my father's safety deposit box in hand. Otherwise, forget it! "I'll miss you, Comrade Elizalde," said Pepita that night, t widdling my earlobe as we lay in her bed. The sloshing of wavelets from power boats onto the gravelly shore outside cut distinctly through the hum of the air conditioner. The movements of skin and cartilage inside my ear added a bass- note noise to the water music. The "s" in Pepita's "miss" -- the word "_menos_" in the Spanish idiom -- was slurred from half a bottle of rum. I twiddled back, brushing strands of red hair up from her neck. She drew a deep breath and let it out with a hiss. The dim orange light from the bedside lamp seemed to enclose us in a shining tent, cut off from the lake and the world outside. Pepita was my love slave, I was thinking, an amazon in invisible chains. The suddenly: Whop! My head reeled from her open-handed smack. Who was the slave? Here we go again, I thought. And then the following morning. There she was, blue shirt and blue jeans, pouring orange juice as if she were titrating sulfuric acid, coolly discussing my possible arrest and imprisonment on landing in Cuba -- in case the Cuban party cadres weren't satisfied with her guarantees of my revolutionary bona fides. "But don't worry," she said, "there's no problem we can't deal with." I did worry. I could think of lots of problems I couldn't deal with. For example: Pierre Diaz-Ginsburg. He materialized the next day at the Cafe Ayuleche -- I liked the Ayuleche because it was on the shady side of the street in the afternoons and the service was good in the old-fashioned stuffy manner. I was sitting at my favorite table on the far edge of the sidewalk, staring at the sugar bowl, thinking -- or rather wishing for some constructive thoughts to pop into my head. Suddenly a white cat appeared, abruptly plunking itself down on the table, rattling my coffee cup. Then Pierre himself sat down, or rather berthed himself, his fat arms sliding onto the table and his behind swamping the chair next to me. He signaled to the waiter with a loud tongue-clucking. "Rum!" he yelled. The rum came and he knocked it down in a couple of swallows, blinking. He clucked again and ordered another one. "Rum, rum, come, rum. Rum, for God's sake, come," he intoned in heavily accented English. The second rum went the way of the first. He pulled his lips together tightly and winced. "Good!" He stared at me and nodded. "Good." He raised his eyebrows at me, asking a casual kind of permission as he pulled out the saucer from under my cup, poured some of the cream from the little china pitcher into it, and set in down in front of the cat. "Kropotkin," he said. "Crazy cat." I asked him how he had been, looking at the empty rum glasses and wondering whether I was going to have another drunk on my hands. He put his finger to his cheekbone, tapping it as if trying to show me I had a smudge on mine. I automatically felt my face. "Ready for Cuba," he said, clapping me on the shoulder just like an American would have. I told him hey wait a minute, I hadn't promised anything. I was sorry he had problems and so on, but really.... He laughed. I raised my hand to order another coffee. "Do you want another rum?" "More rum? Oh no -- temperance in everything, that's me, good old Pierre Diaz-Ginsburg is known for that. Two, one to wake up the left brain, and then one to wake up the right" -- he frowned -- "or maybe vice versa. But that's my limit, that's as far as I go." "Mr. Diaz-Ginsburg," I said. "Call me Pierre," he said. He smiled. "What a nice glow the rum gives." "Pierre." I sighed. "Really, I can't help you." "Don't get too used to the name, though. For various reasons" -- he winked -- "I prefer to enter Cuba on a passport bearing a new name, a new set of syllables, a new outlook on life, perhaps, who knows? About ready to have one made up now. What do you think of Waldemar Perez G., citizen of Mexico?" "What's the G. for?" "Don't know yet." He grinned at me. "There's part of the fun." He giggled. "But 'Waldemar,' it's delicious, what rational person would make up an alias like that!" Oh Christ, I thought, how do I get to meet these people, and what was I going to do with this particular one? Then he asked me whether I myself had ever traveled under an alias. My skin coloring is a bit olive, but if it hadn't been, I'm sure he would have seen the blush. No, I mean yes, I started to say. He laughed again. "A very jolly fellow, you are, _Felipe_." I didn't like the emphasis that he put on the name. "I try, Pierre." "Waldemar." Giggle, giggle, giggle. His giggle had a Peter Lorre quality, not funny so much as menacing. He got up, gave me another wink and an _au_ _revoir_, and padded off down the street, his butt wagging, Kropotkin's yellow-slitted eyes staring back at me from under one of his bulging arms. *** "Pierre Diaz-Ginsburg?" said Pepita. Her small thin lips pressed together primly. "He's insane." "But what kind of insane?" I said. I had decided that I had to find out who this joker was. "Why do you want to know?" She took off her reading glasses. We were in her small apartment in San Salvador, on 10th Avenida Sur, and she was explaining, organization charts in hand, the way she thought I should try to handle the Cuban bureaucracy. "Have you talked to him about me?" I asked. "No. Did he say I did?" "He apparently knows you. Or about you." "He seems to know everybody. I've barely met him. A degenerate." She made a face. "An anarchist, a fanatic, so far left, he's right." "Is he Cuban?" "They say so, but if so he's no friend of the Comandante." She filled me in. I gathered Pierre wasn't a friend of the types running El Salvador either, even though he had anti-Castro credentials from being involved as a boy in the abortive counterrevolutionary movements of 1961-3 in the Sierra Escambray. The anti-Castro rebels had raided some police stations, power plants and banks in Camaguey and Sancti Spiritus, but then Castro had come in hard and showed them who was boss. Ever since then, Pierre's name had been popping up in police reports in connection with confidence games, larceny, and smuggling in Mexico, Central America, and the Antilles. Police in several countries had taken an interest in him, but he had always seemed to move on in time to avoid getting caught at whatever he was doing. To me it was becoming obvious that Pierre must have friends on one side or the other who knew something substantial about me and my plans -- and specifically, about "Felipe Elizalde." I wondered whether it was good I was leaving El Salvador, where too many people seemed to know all about me -- or whether it would be worse in Cuba, where God knows who would know what and how long I could figure on remaining alive once the authorities got the picture. "Well," said Pepita, putting her books away and fluffing out her hair, "enough about him. Let's celebrate getting your trip arranged." I was now set to take off for Havana the following Monday. Pepita had set me up as a recruiter traveling to Cuba to seek out physicians to volunteer to serve in the FMLN. I was to be searching for candidates among prisoners and other "antisocial but redeemable" elements. She had made appointments for me in Cuba with someone in the central Party Office, with the Prosecutor's office in the Ministry of the Interior, and had contacted someone on Fidel's staff asking for an interview with the _Comandante_. She rummaged in the refrigerator freezer compartment for ice cubes. She picked up a bottle of rum. I loosened my tie and rolled up my shirt sleeves and got ready for more drinking. The much-feared trip to Havana would at least be a chance for me to start on a much-needed round of detox. I took off my shoes. I might as well, I figured: if things went like usual, in a few minutes Comrade Dr. Sanchez-Schulz would be taking off the rest of my clothes. I was right. "Dear Comrade Elizalde," she said as she sat on my lap. My legs felt like they would collapse. Then she leaned into me, squashing her breasts against my chest. Oh my. I realized I was going to miss at least one or two things about El Salvador. She sighed deeply, then took a deep breath. "Hit me!" she cried. "Hit me, Felipe, darling!" *** Errol Flynn kissed Olivia de Havilland, getting ready to leave India for the Crimea. You knew it was for the last time, that the end of their story would be found in the bloody, magnificent, insane charge of the light cavalry against the Russian guns on the heights of Balaklava. Leading his comrades to their death, gritting his teeth, then turning to smile to encourage one of the fainthearted, seeking glory in the clouds of dark smoke that billowed like the fires of hell. Stupid orders -- but theirs not to reason why. As the lights went up in the Cine Colon in San Salvador, Errol Flynn's perils faded -- and my own dangers swelled into my consciousness again. I wasn't even doing all this for glory -- I was in this fix because of my own mistakes -- and through some bad luck with those murderous creeps in the Association -- and no one would ever write epic poems about my last charge against the Cuban Big Guns. I was feeling so down that I almost didn't care when Pierre fell into step with me as I made my way back along Calle Arce toward the Hotel San Jorge. "What do you want to go to Cuba so much for?" I said. And what shit are you planning to get into when and if you do get there? I thought. "Ah, Doctor, who can say? Nietzsche -- a philosopher, Doctor, the greatest German of them all -- said it best: 'The path we tread is not the path we chose, but the path that has chosen us.'" "I know who Nietzsche was." I did, sort of. "Ah, more than he himself knew. He never found himself, I think. Few of us do." He turned his bright blue eyes, temporarily saddened, onto my face, examining my eyes, then my jaw, then the part in my hair. "Felipe." "What?" "Felipe, I hear we are off to Havana early next week." "Where did you hear that? And what do you mean 'we'?" He cocked his head and smiled. I wondered where Kropotkin was. "You know, we have met before. You didn't remember." "Oh?" Oh indeed. "Curious. Before...." "Yes?" "My friend Felipe Elizalde had such short, stubby fingers, ugly clubbed fingertips. Now..." He smiled. I looked down at my long graceful fingers. "I really appreciate your help, Felipe. It's so awkward for us journalists in a country like Cuba, and to be able to travel in the company of someone with such impeccable socialist credentials, well..." I nodded, looking down again at the fingers that didn't belong to Felipe Elizalde. I got it. I nodded again. "O.K., O.K." A Revueltos knows when he's licked. Maybe my father doesn't. Let's just say _this_ Revueltos does. "The Mexicana flight Monday, right?" he said. "_Au_ _revoir_, _Felipe_." I consoled myself with the thought that he evidently just wanted my help to insure getting past passport control in Havana -- after that I should be rid of him, cat and all. *** Pepita shook hands with me as I got ready to board the Mexicana flight to Mexico City, with a connection to Havana. I rose on tiptoes to kiss her, but she pulled back and shook her finger slowly, warning me. "Not safe," she whispered. "All right," I whispered back. "Good-bye, Pepita." "Comrade. A good journey," she said aloud. She looked away for a moment. "Who could that be?" she said. She pointed at a pudgy, mustached middle-aged man in what was obviously a wig. It was not so obvious that the mustache was a fake, but I was in a position to know. Waldemar G. Perez had made the flight. I wondered if Kropotkin, in the animal carrier in Pierre's hand, had been renamed and disguised too. "Lenin"? "Rockefeller"? "I don't know," I said. "He looks like someone out of a bad movie." she said. "Sort of dazed-looking but sinister too." "I know," I said, "Peter Lorre." Suddenly we were surrounded by a large family group. We moved behind a pillar to get out of the way. "Who's Peter Lorre?" said Pepita, easing her hand down inside my trousers and rubbing gently. "Who's who?" I said, pulling her close to me, looking up into her blue eyes, and wanting in that moment never to leave El Salvador again. But, as Amelia had always told me, I'm a big one for escaping reality. Or at least for trying to escape. As the call for the Mexicana flight came over the loudspeaker, I tried not to think of Amelia at all. I had to gear myself up for the big plunge -- I said to myself: here I come, Fidel, ready or not! Pepita squeezed hard. "Ouch!" "_Salud_, _companero_!" she said. '_Salud_' indeed! As I flashed my passport and boarding pass at the security check, I hoped that my cheeks, arms, and prick might get _healthier_ treatment in Havana than in El Salvador. ==================================================================== THE GIRL FROM VERONA by Otho Eskin (Note: This is part 3 of the play "Duet") CHARACTERS (In order of appearance) ELEONORA DUSE SARAH BERNHARDT MAN SETTING Backstage of the Syria Theatre, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. TIME April 5, 1924 Evening. SCENE ELEONORA Unrivaled in your glamour in your personality. Something I never had. SARAH You had something else. I saw it one night in Paris. You had the gift. Did you always know? ELEONORA Not at the beginning. For me, acting was no different from making shoes or selling flowers just a way to earn enough to eat. SARAH When did you first know? ELEONORA When I was fourteen our company came to Verona. SARAH Tell me, Eleonora. Tell me about Verona. ELEONORA We were scheduled to perform Romeo and Juliet. The morning of the performance the actress who was to play Juliet had an argument with one of my uncles and left the company. My father told me I would go on as Juliet instead. They put me in long skirts. MAN (As ELEONORA's FATHER) Go! Go now. Go out there and act! ELEONORA We were performing in the old Roman arena. It is a holiday afternoon hot and the arena steps are filled with men in shirt sleeves and women with red kerchiefs on their heads. As I wait to make my entrance, I think of Juliet here in this very town of Verona also fourteen my own age. Then when I go on something happens to me. Something even now after all these years I can't explain or describe. Come, gentle night; come, loving black-browed night, Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun. That afternoon I do not just go through the motions of a fourteen year old girl who falls in love do not repeat words written hundreds of years ago. I understand who Juliet is. I am Juliet. Her spirit fills me. The words before leaving my lips seem to pass through the warmth of my blood. Shall I not then be stifled in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in, And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? Or, if I live, is it not very like The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place As in a vault, an ancient receptacle Where for this many hundred years the bones Of all my buried ancestors are packed; Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies fest'ring in his shroud; where, as they say, At some hours in the night spirits resort Alack, alack, is it not like that I, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad O, if I wake shall I not be distraught, EnvironŠd with all these hideous fears, And madly play with my forefathers' joints, And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud, And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone, As with a club, dash out my despr'ate brains? After the performance I am applauded wildly or so I was told. I remember nothing nothing except a feeling of unspeakable rapture. I experience a kind of Grace. It is as if God is touching my soul. I am for the first time truly alive filled with a torrent of love. And my life is changed forever. I understand that acting is more than reciting words more than going through rehearsed motions more than an imitation of life. The theater can transform me. I know absolutely that I will devote the rest of my life to trying to experience that Grace again. SARAH And have you found it? ELEONORA Sometimes. It does not come to me easily or often. But when I have it complete a suffering of love, dark and deep, consumes me. Sometimes when everything is right when the play is right when my soul is composed I am consumed by a holy madness. No one understands when I speak of it. Sometimes my heart is tired of never finding understanding. SARAH I know. ELEONORA And have you felt it too? SARAH I have felt it but I don't seek it. I distrust ecstasy, Eleonora. What I searched for was something different. Not the sublime you have known. I had my own kind of Grace. ELEONORA I was transported by acting. SARAH I was transported by the love the audience gave me. ELEONORA I remember the first time I saw you. SARAH Of course you can, my dear. Everyone can. It was the great event in their lives. ELEONORA I was twenty-four and was performing in Turin when you arrived on one of your European tours. For weeks in advance no one talked of anything but you. When you arrived at the railway station there was a great crowd to meet you. SARAH Is that when you first saw me, Eleonora? ELEONORA No, I did not go to the station. I hate crowds. They frighten me. But I heard about your arrival from my friends. I insisted they tell me everything how you looked and dressed, what you said. You emerged from your railway carriage with your entourage, your admirers, lovers and pets. Bands played. City officials presented you with mountains of flowers and made speeches. SARAH How I hated the speeches. ELEONORA You became faint half way through the mayor's welcoming address and had to be helped to your carriage. You held a bouquet of roses in one arm and a lion cub in the other. SARAH I called the lion cub Scarpia. ELEONORA The students unhitched the horses and drew your carriage through the streets, singing songs of love. SARAH I remember that tour. That was the time King Umberto invited me to his palace for an intimate, after-theater supper. We had Veuve Cliquot and oysters. I think he gave me a diamond brooch. ELEONORA Your troupe took over the theater where I was performing. You used my dressing room... SARAH Perhaps it was Alfonso XII of Spain who gave me the brooch. I had to sell it a few years later when I lost all my money. ELEONORA The newspapers said you had a python with you. SARAH I think that might have been an exaggeration. I had an alligator once. Had to shoot it, though. When it ate my poodle. ELEONORA You opened with La Dame aux camelias. I saw every performance. My pulse beat feverishly each night before the curtain rose. There was sense of peril in the air. Watching you was like watching a wild animal in a cage. I wept when you spoke to Armand at the end of Act I. SARAH (As Marguerite Gautier acting in an extravagant, highly theatrical manner, but not a parody) "There are days when I am weary of the life I lead and imagine another, because in the midst of my turbulent existence, though my reason, my pride, my senses are alive, my heart is so tired of never finding understanding. We appear happy and are envied. We have lovers. Little do they care what we do, so long as they can be seen in our boxes at the theater or in our carriages. " ELEONORA I remember during the first act one of the stage hands tore a hole in the door used for entrances and exits. SARAH The people I had to work with were imbeciles. ELEONORA When you made your exit you thrust your hand into the hole and tore the door apart with a savage gesture. SARAH The only thing more important than a grand entrance is a grand exit. ELEONORA The theater went wild. You were a tigress. The public loved you. SARAH And you, Eleonora? Did you love me? (Pause) ELEONORA I was set free. SARAH That is what theater is for -- setting people free if only for an hour. ELEONORA It was then that I first understood -- one woman could do this. One woman could electrify a city -- a nation. If you could do that then I could, too. I would do what you did. But I would do it in my own way. (Assuming the role of Marguerite Gautier.) "There are days when I am weary of the life I lead and imagine another, because in the midst of my turbulent existence, though my reason, my pride, my senses are alive, my heart is so tired of never finding understanding. We appear happy and are envied. We have lovers. Little do they care what we do, so long as they can be seen in our boxes at the theater or in our carriages. And so it is that everything which surrounds us is ruin, shame, lies -- that is why I dreamed of meeting a man who would accept me unquestioningly. Then I met you young, ardent, happy. In one instant, like a mad woman, I built a whole future upon your love, I dreamed of the country, of peace; I even thought of my childhood -- I was dreaming of the impossible; you have proved that to me." MAN The theater of Europe is changing. A new name is heard. ELEONORA One name. MAN One name. One name mentioned. ELEONORA Spoken of in the same breath as the Divine Sarah. MAN A young Italian actress. SARAH There is only one Sarah. ELEONORA Of course. And yet. MAN And yet. SARAH An Italian actress with no conservatory training is being mentioned. MAN Eleonora Duse. SARAH Never heard of her. MAN Eleonora Duse. SARAH An uneducated girl from the country. A peasant. ELEONORA People begin to compare me with you. SARAH There can be only one moon -- and it shines on me. ELEONORA I would not dream of challenging Madame Sarah. SARAH This woman appears in my plays. She seems to invite comparison. Nay she demands it. MAN The rivalry between Sarah Bernhardt and Eleonora Duse dominated the European theatrical scene. SARAH We crisscrossed the theatrical world. ELEONORA I performed in Vienna SARAH St. Petersburg ELEONORA Berlin. SARAH The United States. ELEONORA Rome. SARAH Madrid. ELEONORA Stockholm. SARAH Rio. ELEONORA Prague. SARAH Budapest. ELEONORA Until at last we appeared at the same time in the same place. SARAH and ELEONORA London. ============================================================= =============================================================