The Black Forest, near Stuttgart; 28th February, 1875.
The curtain goes up on an empty stage. The scene suggests a clearing in a wood by a river. Sounds of laughter offstage. Presently Rimbaud enters, a little better dressed than in previous scenes. It is evening. Moonlight.
Rimbaud This way.
He laughs. Verlaine enters.
When was this, anyway?
Verlaine Earlier this month.
Rimbaud laughs again.
Rimbaud And they threw you out?
Verlaine Certainly not. After a week the Father Superior and I agreed that it wasn’t really the life for me.
Rimbaud This’ll do. (He squats down on the ground and lights his clay pipe.) And what led you to believe that you were cut out to be a Trappist monk?
Verlaine I don’t know. Perhaps it was nostalgia for prison. It was terrible coming out, you know, I’d got used to the quiet and the routine, they treated me very well, and I was sober and able to do a lot of good work. Then, when I came out and couldn’t even get to see Mathilde’s lawyer, let alone Mathilde, I thought the best thing to do might be to … withdraw. To a monastery, to live a quiet, simple life with God.
Rimbaud But it turned out to be a teetotal order.
Verlaine I told you I got used to being sober in prison.
Rimbaud I’m pleased to see the situation is not wholly irreversible.
Verlaine Well, tonight is different. Tonight is a celebration. It’s really … wonderful to see you again. (Pause.) After all this time. (Pause.) I hope you never thought … that I was angry with you.
Rimbaud No.
Verlaine I mean, I know you had no idea that I might get put away for so long, I certainly … forgave you for it.
Rimbaud Did you?
Verlaine Oh, yes.
Rimbaud I didn’t forgive you.
Verlaine What for?
Rimbaud For missing.
Verlaine laughs uneasily. Silence.
Verlaine It’s very pleasant here.
Rimbaud Im Schwarzwald.
Verlaine How is your German?
Rimbaud Flourishing.
Silence.
Verlaine Not very warm, is it?
Rimbaud Why did you come here?
Verlaine What?
Rimbaud I want to know your reason for coming here.
Verlaine Well … to see you, of course. I wanted to talk to you, to discuss certain things with you.
Rimbaud You want us to love each other in Jesus, am I right?
Verlaine Well …
Rimbaud All right, I’m listening, tell me about it.
Verlaine It’s very difficult to talk seriously if you’re going to be so aggressive. I’ve changed, you know.
Rimbaud Go on, talk seriously, never mind what I say. A missionary should be prepared to meet aggression from the unenlightened. Tell me about your conversion. Was it a bit of an occasion? Was there a celestial voice?
Verlaine Recently it occurred to me that your anger and disgust prove how ready you are for conversion. And anyway I often think you do believe in God. Even in the old days, when you used to paint up ‘Sod God’ in the urinals in Paris, you must have had some faith. You can’t blaspheme if you don’t believe.
Rimbaud No, you’re wrong. You couldn’t blaspheme if nobody believed. Your own feelings have nothing to do with it.
Verlaine I just want you to follow my example. The day of my conversion was one of the happiest of my life. It was the day the governor came and told me Mathilde had been granted a legal separation. I lay down and looked at my life, and there was nothing, nothing. It seemed to me the only thing I could do was submit myself to God, and ask Him to forgive me, and help me to face my situation. And He did. I promise you He did.
Rimbaud (kindly) Don’t let’s talk about it any more.
Verlaine Why not?
Rimbaud It’s dangerous.
Verlaine But I want you to find some direction to your life. I want God to help you to achieve your aims.
Rimbaud Aims? I have no aims.
Verlaine Well, I mean your writing.
Rimbaud I’ve stopped writing.
Verlaine What?
Rimbaud I have stopped writing.
Verlaine I don’t understand …
Rimbaud Well, let me put it another way: I no longer write.
Verlaine Yes, but why not?
Rimbaud Because I have nothing more to say. If I ever had anything to say in the first place.
Verlaine How can you say that?
Rimbaud laughs at Verlaine’s unhappy choice of words.
How can you?
Rimbaud Well, as you know, I started life as a self-appointed visionary, and creator of a new literature. But as time wore on, and it took me longer and longer to write less and less, and I looked back at some of the absurdities of my earlier work, at some of the things I thought were so good when I wrote them, I saw it was pointless to go on. The world is too old, there’s nothing new, it’s all been said. Anything that can be put into words is not worth putting into words.
Verlaine The truth is always worth putting into words.
Rimbaud The truth is too limited to be interesting.
Verlaine What do you mean? – Truth is infinite.
Rimbaud If you’re referring to the truth that was revealed to you in prison by an angel of the Lord, you may be wrong. After all, what makes you think it’s any truer than the rather different views you asserted with equal confidence three years ago?
Verlaine Well, obviously one develops.
Rimbaud And have you developed?
Verlaine Yes.
Long silence.
Rimbaud Then, here in the wilderness, I offer you an archetypal choice – the choice between my body and my soul.
Verlaine What?
Long silence.
Rimbaud Choose.
Verlaine Your body.
Silence.
Rimbaud See, the ninety-eight wounds of Our Saviour burst and bleed.
Verlaine Please.
Rimbaud So you didn’t come here to convert me.
Verlaine No.
Rimbaud And the iron glove conceals a velvet hand.
Verlaine moves towards Rimbaud, touches his shoulder.
Don’t.
Silence.
So God turned out to be a poor substitute for Mathilde and me, suffering, as he does, from certain tangible disadvantages.
Verlaine Surely my sins are a matter for my own conscience.
Rimbaud They would be if you had one.
Verlaine Anyway, why should it worry you?
Rimbaud Because I hate your miserable weakness.
Verlaine Is overcoming my conscience weakness? Or strength?
Rimbaud Don’t be absurd.
Silence.
Verlaine But I see no clash between loving God and loving you.
Rimbaud Come on, let’s go back.
Verlaine No, listen, I sat in my cell and thought how much love I had in me, and how happy we could be, it should be easy, it should be the easiest thing in the world, why isn’t it?
Rimbaud It never worked with us. And it will never work for either of us.
Verlaine Of course it will. Why should you think that? Why are you so destructive?
Rimbaud Probably because I no longer have any sympathy for you.
Verlaine Don’t you feel anything for me?
Rimbaud Only a kind of mild contempt.
Verlaine But how can you change like that? How is it possible?
Verlaine I wanted us to go away together.
Rimbaud Yes.
Verlaine What are you going to do?
Rimbaud I’m going to finish learning German. And then I’m going to leave Europe. Alone.
Verlaine What about me?
Rimbaud You’ll have to go away and find somebody else.
Verlaine I can’t. Please.
He puts his arms round Rimbaud.
Please.
Rimbaud Let me go.
Verlaine clings on to him. Rimbaud speaks, as he has done throughout this last exchange, with great weariness.
Let go.
Verlaine Please.
Rimbaud hits Verlaine hard, stunning him. He hits him again, carefully and methodically, until he collapses in an untidy heap. Rimbaud straightens him out almost tenderly, then stands looking down at him for a moment.
Rimbaud (quietly) Good-bye. (He exits.)