— XX —
The Fall
Fog spreads across Mina’s windows like an evicted child’s breath.
She is a pentagram drawn in blood.
An upside-down crucifix.
All’s well that ends well.
No.
Mina knows all languages, has inherited all dictionaries, has counted up to the number where infinity stops.
But these creatures she will never understand.
When first came the apes, they began their custom of naming everything they saw, like a conqueror putting a stamp on his colony: prompt table, fore-stage, paintcloth, cyclorama, greenroom, stalls, vomitorium. But why name the things that will all end in dust and leave nameless the things that shall live?
A salt-shake of stars across the blackcloth of the sky.
The kind of praise that makes the waves dance. Why have they no word for that?
She screams her name at him nineteen times, a black-magical number. He thinks it’s just the wind in the eaves.
Mina
Mina
Mina
Mina
Mina
Mina
Mina
Mina Mina Mina Mina Mina
Mina Mina Mina Mina Mina
Mina
Mina
A shadow among the purlins, the weary oaken skeleton, she watches the man with the word-machine, he is weeping.
‘Stoker’, his name. One who burns fires. Everything in him dried up and smouldered out by anger, an arid Arizona of the heart.
The greatest actor here is none of the players on the stage but the man come to haunt her attic every night. All these years he has played himself, he knows the role well, is often convincing as he plays it.
But then there are the othertimes. They all have their othertimes.
Times when he carries his lantern into the fog of himself. Through realms of flames and whispers, forests of shadowed memories, caves where the daubs on the walls are of monsters, made with a bloodstained palm.
He is not breathing air. He’s breathing Mina.
He inhales her with the dander. She roams his fevered bloodstream, the canyons of his heart, his jellyfish lungs, the vats and pumps and valves that keep him living, in the world he makebelieves is the real one.
He
believes
in his senses
when even a dog
hears more and the bat sees
more and a fox has keener smell
and the fishes talk by touch
and the hummingbirds
by taste and the lowliest
earthly vermin know
more of their rock
than this ape
who refuses
to know
it
Light in at the window, through a gap in the curtain of sacking. He listens to the plash of the rain.
An actor remembers every part ever played. There are times when he wonders why.
Mina knows.
What they call life is a ghost-ship. On the ship are many rooms. Small. Others grand. Some princely. Some poor. An uncountable number. There is always another. This is how they escape the prison of the self. To see the world through the windows of someone else’s room.
There is only one way. He tried to build a room. Poor scatter-heart. Now the ship has been burnt.
30th May, 1897
At dawn this morning, took the ferry down the river to work. Cold, blowy day. Felt feverish, a chill coming on. Wheezing, hard to breathe. Black phlegm when I coughed. Took a half grain of arsenic and a dose of chloral.
Unlocked the building – no one in – went directly up to my office. Of late find myself unable to look at the stage.
Commenced to empty the desk and shelves, tie my books into parcels. Much work in the task, shall take four or five days. From down in the auditorium and backstage I heard people coming in. But I did not go down.
Stepped out into the corridor for a smoke when I noticed E coming up the stairs. She looked bad. Asked me what I was doing there. I said lately I have preferred to smoke out the big bay window there, on the landing, don’t like the stench in the office. Could see there was something she wished to ask me. Felt I knew what it was, but, since might be wrong, did not prompt.
Would I see him?
I said no.
Nodded, said she understood. Followed me back to the office, shut the door behind.
As a favour to her, in honour of friendship, might I reconsider my stance? He had suffered such a bad shock, she feared for his sanity.
I said that his sanity, in my own view, had gone several leagues past the point of any normal person fearing for it, his behaviour to me at the staging had surely made that clear. As for what she termed my stance, it was nothing so worked-out. All I had remaining to me was an instinct for survival. No more would I grovel for my dignity.
I must surely know what he was like? Headstrong, mercurial. Saying things he didn’t mean and soon came to regret. It was hard for him, being stubborn, burden of genius. The usual claptrap and balderdash.
I said I had no interest in what was hard for him, would no longer give consideration to the agglomeration of self-regard and cruelty that too often calls itself genius.
How so?
Had hoped to come to the matter more gradually with her but suddenly it was there between us like an unwelcome acquaintance who comes in and sits down at the table. The bard is correct. If ’twere done, it were better done soon.
Told her I am leaving the Lyceum, have written and sent my letter of resignation. This morning put the house for sale or lease, whichever proves the quicker, shall be returning to Dublin with the boy and Flo as soon as is practicable.
You shall kill him if you do, she said. He would not last a year.
Good, I said.
You do not mean that, I know.
At this point, I don’t know why – tiredness and strain, I must suppose – my feelings began to spill over and overcome me. She listened as I spewed my litany. To have failed so long was painful enough, to have done it this publicly had left wounds from which no friendship could recover.
‘Love survives all,’ she said.
A remark I ignored and a demonstrable falsehood. If there is one thing I have had my fill of by now, it is actorly trash.
One endures them bleating away like spoilt ninnies at rehearsal, would my character do that, should she wear this. One wishes the misfortunate author would rise from the tomb and tell them do what you are bloodywell told.
God knows how fond of her I am and the high regard in which I hold her own artistry but these people who dress up for a living all have something amiss with them, some hollowness where sense or ordinary morality should be. This they seek to fill by spouting emotionally evocative but substantively meaningless gobbledegook, followed by a deft half-turn-away as the lights fade. I should rather listen to any raving idiot in the street than an actor. At least he doesn’t expect you to applaud.
Back again she flew to the subject of the Chief like a maternity-crazed bird to its nest among dragons. She wrung her hands and insisted. I stood my line.
Added to his personal slight was his professional arrogance. He had never listened, had met my every plea with gainsaying and mockery, had ignored my counsel with metronomic regularity. When I asked him to quit insisting on productions of such ludicrous flamboyance, every word I uttered he ignored.
Our backdrops were burnt. We were led by a madman. For this I had left my country? Ruined my marriage? My happiness? Missed the hours better spent with my child at home?
No, I said. No more.
You are saying to me what you would like to say to him, she said.
That much was true, one supposed.
Then she did something I wished she had not. Reaching into her cloak she pulled out a copy of that accursed book that I wish I had never seen or begun to contrive. When I bring to mind the thousands of wasted hours it represents, the mausoleum made of paper, the hundreds of miles I walked in its wretched company, I hate myself for ever having been born with the storytelling disease and having squandered, in its service, whatever life I was intended to live.
‘This work is your country,’ she said. ‘Is it no consolation?’
It took every famished fibre of the little manliness I have remaining not to seize the book from her hands and hurl it out the window. Followed by her. And me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It is not.’
‘Forgive him?’ she said. ‘For me, if no one else?’
‘Not even for you,’ I said.
A coughing fit beset me, and I shooed her away. Racked, eyes streaming, I coughed half an hour. Took more arsenic. Chest felt on fire.
5th June, 1897
This evening, boxes packed, after the performance had started and I knew that everyone would be occupied, I made my last journey up to the attics to fetch my notebooks and type writing machine. Ribs aching badly. Sore to move.
My lamp’s wick was damp and would not light but there was enough of the quarter-moon through the windows so that I could make a cautious way. As I moved through the murk, I could sometimes hear the applause from far below. It occurred to me, how little I have ever liked that sound. Always it makes me resentful.
I placed my machine into its jacket, made a great pile of my notes and drafts and spent a not entirely unhappy half hour cutting them up into little pieces, scattering them from the rooftop and watching them drift away on the wind. As must be so with any murderer, the work in itself was not pleasant, but it felt a liberation to be rid of the evidence.
The filthy air was at least cold, which gave some sort of respite. Took another grain of arsenic, determined not to cough. I tried to send my mind to my lungs.
Returned inside, I dismantled the little desk I had contrived from old packing crates for I wished to obliterate all signs that I had ever roosted in this accursed eyrie. If I were unfortunate enough to see it in my mind’s eye from time to time, as I hoped I never should again in my life, it would at least be as when I saw it first, which would mean that I had never been there.
It was at some point during this labour of moving the boxes and crates that I heard a clomp, which seemed to me a footfall. Below me, the performance was by now in full spate, Twelfth Night, but this sound had seemed to come from behind me, in the attic.
Reassuring myself that the mind can work mischief in a lonesome place, I went back to my task, but again came the footfall, heavier than before. When I turned, I saw – thirty yards from me in the shadows – a now unmoving but unmistakable shape.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
He came closer.
‘So this is where you lurk,’ he said. ‘Often wondered.’
His presence had startled me but I would not give him the satisfaction of my saying so. Ignoring him, I resumed my task.
‘I thought you should know,’ he said, ‘that I have sold on the lease. I am closing the Lyceum for ever at the end of the season.’
Now I had little true alternative but to speak, although my every wiser instinct begged me not to. Why is it so difficult to nod and turn away?
I asked how he dared to do such a thing without consulting me or anybody else. Was this to be an absolute monarchy?
‘What else would it be?’
Told him he had no right to trade the lease without at least a discussion of the matter but that his audacious selfishness would hardly surprise me any more.
‘Perhaps,’ he said with a shrug. ‘What is done is done.’
‘And the players? And the others who work here and need a livelihood? And Ellen?’
‘They will find other work.’
‘Have you had the decency or courtesy to tell them? It is quite clear from your demeanour that you haven’t.’
‘I have been a little preoccupied of late and worried about things.’
Anger, by now, was fuming in me like a lust. Did his arrogance and insensitivity know no bounds whatever? What was it in him that must always destroy?
But presently I was sorry I had uttered harsh words.
‘I have cancer of the throat,’ he said. ‘The surgeons are certain. My voice will go first. To a gasp, I am told. Then it will disappear. Before the inevitable.’
He glanced up towards the skylights. A blear of rain was falling.
We were quiet for a time together, in that dismal, dusty place. Then I asked when he had received the news.
‘Couple of months ago,’ he said. ‘They weren’t sure at first. Had me scuttling about to so-called specialists, nasty men most of them, but I’ve never minded a charlatan, long being one. Was certain myself of course, had been for a bit. Quite painful all the time, been worsening for a few years. Spitting up blood. Should have pootled along earlier.’
‘Surely something can be done?’
‘There’s this Harley Street panjandrum says he can make the pain tolerable. Thirty guineas a visit. It would be cheaper to die. But an actor without a voice, you know, is a year without winter. No point, I’m afraid. There it is.’
I was silent, not because I felt nothing, but because I did not know the words to say. His composure was striking and seemed to flow from some spirit of stoicism that I had never once seen in him or suspected him of having. Felt a reluctant admiration for him, for this trait at least. If only one had seen more of it down the years.
He was glancing about the attic now, with an expression of sad affability.
‘I should like to live my last up here,’ he said, ‘with the rats and the spiders. Ain’t it queer that spiders don’t have a voice either but that folks are so afraid of them? Well, perhaps that’s why. Their silence?’
I said I had never given the matter much consideration.
‘And you could find me a coffin to sleep in,’ he pressed.
It was his way of raising for discussion the most recent quarrel between us but I did not find his approach adept and did not want to reopen the scar. There are situations best brought quietly to a close.
‘So this is where you wrote it?’ he asked.
He took my silence as affirmative.
‘Normal chap wouldn’t find it conducive,’ he continued, ‘a rum haunt like this. But I can see where you would, being the queer oddity you are. And I would, myself, too. Something delicious about being above the world of shit and malice, nobody knowing one was here.’
Told him it was simply a matter of convenience, nothing more.
‘Ever see her, old thing?’
‘Who?’
‘Poor Mina.’
‘No.’
‘She feels close,’ he said. ‘Do you think she is watching us?’
‘Can you leave? I have work to do here.’
‘Saw her three times myself, at least I thought so, down the years. Twice during a show, she was standing at the back of the stalls. The third time on Exeter Street one midnight.’
The sound of the audience applauding came up through the floor.
‘I shall be with her soon,’ he said.
‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘It shall be a very great success, you know. Your vampire book. I have seen it.’ He tapped his temple. ‘In here. When you and I are long gone, your thirsty Count shall be famous all over the world. Like Judas.’
I said he must be taking leave of whatever was left of his senses.
‘Occasionally taking leave of one’s senses is medicinal,’ he said. ‘They always seem to be there when one returns.’
From the pocket of his dressing-robe he pulled a bottle of Hungarian Tokay whose loosened cork he pulled out with his teeth, then spat it away.
‘I shall not ask you to shake my hand,’ he said. ‘We should neither of us like that. But will you have a parting drink with me, man to man? For old times’ sake?’
From a second pocket, he produced two goblets, one inside the other, half filling each with the rich and heavy-scented liquor. To get matters over with, I accepted. He raised his glass and chinked mine.
‘King Lear, Act One, scene two,’ he said. ‘“Now gods, stand up for bastards.’”
Through the floorboards the orchestra gave the closing fanfare of trumpets and timpani. He smiled at the absurdity. I did not.
‘The play is over,’ I said.
‘Let’s hide here a while.’
‘There will be guests to be entertained. I imagine they shall want to see you.’
‘Can you picture it?’ He chuckled. ‘The symphony of Englishness they’ll all have to perform, the glib and oily art to speak and purpose not.’ He took a deep, final swig and crushed the glass beneath his boot. ‘Like a pack of rats giving you a bath before gnawing out your eyes.’
‘You should go,’ I said. ‘It is not fair on Ellen to have to entertain them alone. I shall see you as far as the stairladder.’
‘Ever the gent. Lead on, Macduff.’
‘Tread carefully, the floor between the joists is old and very frail.’
‘Like myself,’ he replied. Predictably.
The moon through the upper windows was yellow and vast, seeming closer than I had ever seen it, as though it was observing our progress along the lofts, indeed so close that I almost fancied I could make out the features many say it has, the cliffs, the great gorges, the dead riverbeds and canyons. Below us, the audience gave out its final cry of ‘huzzah’. Through the crevices in the floorboards, the house lights came slivering.
‘One thing I have learnt, old man,’ his voice croaked from behind me.
‘What is that?’
‘All things considered – one’s had time to think it over – there was no greater Shylock than I.’
I stopped, astounded. ‘That is all you have learnt?’
‘What else did you think?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
He took a small step forward. Suddenly he was gone. From below me I heard the fall and the screams.
From THE TIMES, June 6th, 1897, late edition
The immediate closure of the Lyceum Theatre, the Strand, London, has been announced, following an accident suffered last evening by Sir Henry Irving, proprietor.
Sir Henry, who holds the distinction of being the first member of his profession to be knighted, fell through the ceiling above the stage, a distance of some fifty feet, to the immense shock of the audience, players and orchestra. A performance of Twelfth Night was approaching conclusion.
A doctor and his brother, a guardsman, were present among the house and were able to attend him. Sir Henry sustained broken ribs and a fractured leg, and for a brief time lost consciousness. ‘A fall such as this would have killed a lesser man,’ the doctor remarked to our reporter. ‘Sir Henry would appear indestructible.’
Refunds will be furnished for cancelled performances.
— CLOSE OF ACT II —