Attendest thou, cruel queen? Dost thou not hear me?
This youth must be admitted. You’ll see to it.
And she, melting with adoration under his gaze and falling unwittingly into the flow of the rhythm, replied in the same metre:
Yes, sir, at once, of course, I’ll do it now!
At this S. also seemed to relax and lose some of his starchiness. He spread his arms in a rapturous gesture, a blissful smile on his face. And with grotesque sweetness he cooed his favourite phrase: ‘Ah, how lovely!’ Embracing her in a fatherly hug, he began to stroke her hair. At which she flushed and bared her teeth in a nervous smile, full of shame and sweet longing.
Going home, I walked on air. Within less than half an hour I had been subjected to a hail of experiences so remarkable that each one of them would take days to digest. I had met S., actually met him, in person! What’s more, we had clowned about together, and played our parts as equals, for all the world as if we were on stage; and I had charmed him – I had enchanted him! Most important of all, I had succeeded in getting my group entered in the festival – and with what aplomb! I was bursting with exhilaration and pride. And I felt sure, felt deep in my bones, that here at last was the hour of my triumph; my time had finally come. After such a beginning, such a radical reversal of fate, things could only get better.
I hastened to round up the cast to tell them the good news and explain what it would mean for us. I felt as if I were addressing troops on the eve of battle.
‘I know we’ll win this competition; I can feel it,’ I said as I concluded my morale-building speech. ‘Just imagine how the Tapeworm will look when he finds out! You’ll be covered in glory!’
For the first time they seemed genuinely convinced. Our performance, since it had been entered at the so-called last minute, was slotted in at the end of the festival, so we had a chance to assess the competition before our turn came. But in the end I decided that this was not an advantage. If the other performances were good, especially if they were very good, they might sow seeds of doubt and clip our wings; if, on the other hand, they were bad, and especially if they were hopeless, they would detract from the value and sweetness of a deserved triumph. I assessed my strategies like a general before a decisive confrontation with the enemy.
We arrived at the theatre where the festival was taking place a short time before we were due on stage. It was the interval, and one of the first people we bumped into was S. himself, surrounded by a garland of juvenile admirers, presumably festival participants, and basking in their reverent gaze. It was as if he had been waiting for our – or rather, my – arrival. He raised his hands in a gesture of greeting and (having manifestly prepared his lines) exclaimed:
Here’s Ariel! Spirit, farest thou well? What magic,
My quaint bird, hast thou prepared for us?
A wave of heat flooded over me and my heart began to race. It was clear that much depended on what, and how, I replied. Without much reflection, therefore, and heedless of the dreadful risk involved – that of falling flat on my face in front of an unknown audience – I blurted out, making sure only to keep the metre:
’Twill be enough, good master, if I say
That you’ll see all the world on stage anon!
Then, to avoid further complications, I gestured pointedly at my watch and turned energetically to the dressing-rooms. The remaining cast members, beaming with pride, followed joyfully on my heels. Just before the door closed I heard S. still casting his charms over his admirers. ‘That’s how we always talk,’ he was saying.
Our performance went very well, as I’d been sure that it would. There was no question of anyone’s forgetting his lines – not a single slip, not even so much as a stutter. Our acting was inspired, and we enjoyed it. One by one, the most sublime scenes from the greatest works of drama unrolled before the audience, each culminating in a monologue that fulfilled the function of a Greek chorus. But the force did not flow from our technique, our mastery of the texts or our confidence on stage. It flowed mainly from the fact that every line we uttered was imbued with truth – the truth of our own feelings and experience. In speaking the lines it was as if we were talking about ourselves. Just as the crowd of students had taken up that ‘No more’ and endowed it with a meaning of their own, so now we were singing our own song, with the words of the classics as our text.
It was a song of anger and rebellion, bitterness and resentment. Not this, it said – youth should not be like this! School should not be like this, the world should not be like this! Prometheus chained to his rock was a young teacher we had adored, fired for ‘excessive liberality’ in the classroom. The unyielding, uncompromising Creon personified the narrow-minded Tapeworm. Every silly and pathetic Shakespearean creature represented the Eunuch or his like. But the Misanthrope I reserved for myself: Alceste was me. It was with special relish that I spoke the lines of his final speech:
May you always be true to each other, and know
All the joys and contentments that love can bestow.
As for me, foully wronged, maligned and betrayed,
I’ll abandon this world where injustice holds sway
And retire to some tranquil and far-away place
Where honour’s a virtue and not a disgrace.
But I put even more intensity into Hamm’s monologue from Endgame – perhaps because these were the closing lines of our performance. I took a few steps forward, stared piercingly at the audience, in particular at the jury, seated at a long table with S., their chairman, in the middle, and began with tremendous calm:
Me to play.
You weep, and weep, for nothing, so as not to laugh,
and little by little . . . you begin to grieve.
I cast a long, lingering look around the room and went on:
All those I might have helped. Helped!
Saved. Saved!
The place was crawling with them.
Then I turned on the assembled company with a thunderous glare and launched with fury into the attack:
Use your head, can’t you, use your head, you’re on
earth, there’s no cure for that. Get out of here and
love one another! Lick your neighbour as yourself!
Out of my sight and back to your petting parties!
Having spat this out, I sank into a kind of gloomy apathy and spoke the final two sentences softly, as if more to myself than to the audience:
All that, all that!
The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.
I let my head sink slowly down, and then came the blackout, during which we all hurried offstage.
The storm of applause that broke out left no room for doubt as to the results of the competition. And, indeed, we were not left long in suspense. The good news, at that stage still unofficial, was brought to us about an hour later, in the foyer, where we ran into the members of the jury as they emerged from their deliberations. It was S., of course, who announced it – predictably, in the following form:
Most excellent, my spirit! Thou didst well
And worthily perform. The prize is yours.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I replied, finally putting an end to this Shakespearean back-and-forth.