Tłumaczenia

The story takes place in contemporary times in a private house. The elderly yet vital protagonists,  Husband – Charles,  Wife – Kinga, 15 years his junior as well as the Guest – Mark (who will join later). The Husband and Wife spend the evening sitting in their armchairs, occasionally rise and walk about the room. They both look like they are in good shape, the atmosphere is relaxed, the couple sip wine, talk.  At one point, the husband goes through a drawer and looks for a letter. The flat is modest but tastefully decorated. There are lots of fine contemporary paintings on the walls among others a portrait of Bruno Schulz and that of the Husband. An imposing library. And there are two walls with peculiar objects, knives and ropes. There is also a large display of family photographs, of two genealogical trees (one of the Husband and the other of his Wife), of the children and grandchildren.

                            SCENE I

MUSBAND       You know…..( pensive)

WIFE                  Yes, darling?

HUSBAND         I was wondering…..

WIFE                  Go on. 

HUSBAND         For some time I’ve been troubled  with the thought that there’s  something important in life that one has failed to… 

WIFE                  Failed to do what?

HUSBAND         … that we have failed to do….

WIFE                  We?

HUSBAND         Yes, we.

WIFE                  You and me?   

HUSBAND         Yes, you and me.  

WIFE                  What do you mean?

HUSBAND         I’ve been thinking about certain failings, imperfections….. the very things that we missed.

WIFE                  And what did we miss?

HUSBAND         You know, at our age…

WIFE                  You mean at your age!? You’re forgetting I’m fifteen years younger than you.  

HUSBAND         Well, all right. You are indeed much younger, nevertheless….

WIFE                  Nevertheless what?

HUSBAND         Nevertheless, the thing that could make it better is clear identification marks….

WIFE                  What?

HUSBAND         Identification marks.  

WIFE                  What do you mean identification marks?  Is our son  not enough? Isn’t he our most important identification mark?

HUSBAND         No, I mean, yes, you’re right, a son is a son, our most important mark…. identification mark. There’s nothing like it…

WIFE                  What is it then? What are you driving at?

HUSBAND         I mean in each man there is still something like a desire for confirmation…

WIFE                  For confirmation?

HUSBAND         Yes, for confirmation.

WIFE                  Pardon me? What sort of confirmation?   

HUSBAND         Well, the confirmation of what makes us realise that we existed,  lived, went through something, that we thought, experienced, acted…

WIFE                  So you still need confirmations of all this?

HUSBAND         I mean the thing we call memory…  I realised the other day that we wrote too few letters to each other….

WIFE                  What on earth has come over you?

HUSBAND         I just thought that we didn’t correspond with each other….

WIFE                  Now is the time for you to think about it!

HUSBAND         You know how it is. You sit for days on end thinking…

WIFE                  So, don’t think too much, dear. Too much thinking breeds demons ….. (laughing). Maybe they have nailed you already?!

HUSBAND         Please….

WIFE                  Well, all right, all right. Sorry.

HUSBAND         Don’t you sometimes feel like looking closely at how things were with us? What we talked about, what atmosphere there was at our place, what feelings consumed us, what was good, and what was bad…?!

WIFE                  And what should have been between us? We both know what was good and what was bad. At the end of the day, we clearly remember everything. We have been married…

HUSBAND         For fifty years.

WIFE                  (sourly) Do you have to rub it in? 

HUSBAND         I appreciate your sense of humour, sweetheart, but….

WIFE                  But what?

HUSBAND         But I’m light on tangible evidence….

WIFE                  Tangible evidence?! For life?!

HUSBAND         As confirmation of the fact that things were the way they were.

WIFE                  What things?

HUSBAND         Well, our things, our life, subsistence, existence, destiny…

WIFE                  I don’t get it. What are you driving at?

HUSBAND         Aren’t you interested to know how things really were?

WIFE                  Really? You must be mad! What do you mean by really? Are you questioning the fact that we have been married? That I have been your wife? And you have been my husband? Do you want to know if it really happened?!

HUSBAND         Sweetheart, do not reduce everything to the absurd, to the grotesque.

WIFE                  I’m not, but I can’t see what you are implying. You do know we have been married. You do, do you?

HUSBAND         Well, I do.

WIFE                  Well then, what else do you need? What are you looking for?

HUSBAND         Exactly. What. That is the question.

WIFE                  ( laughing) Don’t be a Hamlet. For if you do, you will arrive at the phrase  (acting out).. “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time?”

And this phrase sounds sinister.

HUSBAND         Well done, you remember the scenes from Shakespeare. This will make things easier for us.

WIFE                  Which things?

HUSBAND         That’s what I want to talk to you about.

WIFE                  Could you be more specific, please?

HUSBAND         About a letter.               

WIFE                  Which one?   

HUSBAND         The one you wrote me fifty years ago.

WIFE                  I wrote you a letter? Fifty years ago?

HUSBAND         Yes, that’s right. Fifty years ago.

WIFE                  Are you sure?

HUSBAND         Absolutely. 

WIFE                  Are you sure it was me?

HUSBAND         Who else could it have been? You. Only you. And you did it with your own fair hands.

WIFE                  I don’t remember. Haven’t you got it wrong?

HUSBAND         No, I haven’t.

WIFE                  And do you have this letter?

HUSBAND         I do.

WIFE                  Here at home?

HUSBAND         Yes, here at home. Somewhere in the drawer.

WIFE                  Will you show it to me?  

HUSBAND         Sure, I will. That’s what I want to talk to you about.   

WIFE                  Is it so important?

HUSBAND         Very important.

WIFE                  Why?

HUSBAND         Because there’s something absolutely essential in it.  

WIFE                  What is it??

HUSBAND         I can’t express, formulate, elucidate it….

WIFE                  You, of all people, can’t elucidate it? You, the writer?! A thinker, a master of words?!  

HUSBAND         Exactly, me, the writer ….. er…. a master of words. It’s something deep inside that cries out for being given voice,  calls for an  explanation, is intrusive , badgers you, but remains unidentifiable.  

WIFE                  Another hint at identification?

HUSBAND         Yes, identification.

WIFE                  What do you mean?  

HUSBAND         This state of our psyche…. consciousness….subconsciousness … memory…  perhaps imagination and will; all that makes us responsible people.

WIFE                  Well, well, you mounted a high horse. And I’d thought you merely had that stupid letter in mind.

HUSBAND         Anything but stupid!

WIFE                  All right then, don’t be cross. You mean a letter?

HUSBAND         Yes, I mean a letter. A letter and….

WIFE                  So not just a letter?  

HUSBAND         You know, to my mind, it seems like a more profound, more significant matter. Philosophical I would say.

WIFE                  Our life?

HUSBAND         Yes, our life. Oh, now I know, I’ve come up with the right word, I think…..

WIFE                  Which word?  

HUSBAND         Sense.

WIFE                  Sense? The sense of what?

HUSBAND         This is what occupies my mind.

WIFE                  Which is supposed to be my letter? My letter to you?

HUSBAND         Don’t you remember that letter?

WIFE                  ( firmly) No!

HUSBAND         You don’t remember writing a letter to me. The only one.

WIFE                  The only one? Didn’t I write you any other one? No, this is rubbish….

HUSBAND         If my memory serves me right, you wrote one more.

WIFE                  Just the two of them?  

HUSBAND         Yes, just the two of them.

WIFE                  During my entire life?

HUSBAND         Yes, during your entire life.

WIFE                  After half a century of marriage, I’m finding out that my husband is tortured by a letter which I apparently wrote one day.

HUSBAND         I keep coming back to it, I keep reading it again and again. I live and breathe it.

WIFE                  You are talking about the other letter?

HUSBAND         No, about the first one.

WIFE                  Do you keep reading it? Again and again?

HUSBAND         Yes, I keep reading it again and again, I keep thinking about it, I keep wondering what it means and I keep examining it. This one sentence in particular.   

WIFE                  Which sentence?

HUSBAND         It’s horrible! Sinister I should say.

WIFE                  Horrible? Sinister?

HUSBAND         Yes, precisely. Horrible, sinister!

WIFE                  Why? 

HUSBAND         Because I keep having nightmares, phantoms, hallucinations each time I read it.

WIFE                  Aren’t you blowing things up out of all proportion? Are they that bad? Does the other letter also make you anxious?  

HUSBAND         Maybe not so much as the first one, but it does distress me. I bear it in mind, I clearly remember all your said, especially this one sentence.

WIFE                  One sentence again? Like in the previous letter?

HUSBAND         Yes, the one sentence. Like in the previous letter.

WIFE                  But letters tend to contain lots of sentences.

HUSBAND         But there is always some sentence, the one that particularly sticks in one’s memory. And it sticks like a splinter.

WIFE                  Isn’t it a figment of your imagination? Or a product of a sick mind?  

HUSBAND         Don’t be surly, sweetheart. Do you want to insult or humiliate me?

WIFE                  No, by no means. But I do know that your fantasy conjures up unimaginable, astonishing visions. It just crossed my mind that perhaps….

HUSBAND         … that perhaps I got ideas?  

WIFE                  Not exactly  ideas. I’m simply looking for grounds, origins….

HUSBAND         You see, you have nailed it….

WIFE                  What have I nailed?  

HUSBAND         The fact that we are in search of origins. That we want to know as much as possible and go to great lengths to look into our world,  lives, surroundings, conflicts, tensions, dramas, self-knowledge. And finally, into the proofs we have. That something was such and such. Put in another way, we are constantly after something … confirming   facts, ideas, let alone delusions, illusions, ravings….

WIFE                  Now I have found out about something you have kept from me for half a century.

HUSBAND         Don’t talk out of the back of your head! I have never kept anything from you.

WIFE                  What do you mean you never have? You did say so a moment ago.

HUSBAND         I said what?

WIFE                  Well, that you had been tormented by one sentence.

HUSBAND         I have, but I have never concealed it. I just kept thinking about it. It disturbed me, but I didn’t conceal it.

WIFE                  What nightmarish sentence is that? Are you sure it was me who wrote it?

MĄŻ                   It was you for sure. But it won’t explain an episode from our life.

WIFE                  And what sort of episode do you mean?  

HUSBAND         A very important one. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you about it today.

WIFE                  Talk to me just about that particular sentence?  

HUSBAND         Sweetheart, I reiterate: it wasn’t just one sentence or any sentence. It was a very important sentence concerning a very important episode. And I would like to explain things once and for all.    

WIFE                  It never occurred to me that I could have written anything like that. And that something can be written only to be remembered for half a century.  Let me see that letter.

HUSBAND         ( rising) I think it’s somewhere here ( he opens one of the drawers)

SCENE II    

 The same arrangement.

HUSBAND         ( demonstrating a letter) There you go, this is the letter.  In red ink.

WIFE                  In red ink?

HUSBAND         Yes, in red ink.

WIFE                  ( indignant )  I have never written in red ink. The letter isn’t mine.

HUSBAND         It’s yours, darling, yours. It was you who wrote it.  

WIFE                  Are you sure it was me?

HUSBAND         Absolutely. These are your words. It was you who wrote them in red ink. ( showing her the letter ) Don’t you recognise it?

WIFE                  ( looking from a distance, firmly  ) No!

HUSBAND         But this is your handwriting, your style, language, means of expression….

WIFE                  ( angrily) But I have never written in red ink.

HUSBAND         ( handing  the letter to her) Take a close look….

WIFE                  ( taking the letter and looking at it) No, it wasn’t me who wrote it. It must have been another woman. Maybe one of your ….             

HUSBAND         Sweetheart, what do you mean by another one? What do you mean by “my”?  After all, you know….  

WIFE                  ( resentful ) What is it that I know?

HUSBAND         That I haven’t had any other woman.

WIFE                  And how about this letter?

HUSBAND         What do you mean?   

WIFE                  Well, the red ink?

HUSBAND         You might have forgotten….

WIFE                  Don’t press me. I said it wasn’t me and that’s it.

HUSBAND         The letter provides a description of a situation…..

WIFE                  What situation?

HUSBAND         The one that shows the existence of a conflict between us….

WIFE                  What do you mean?  

HUSBAND         Let’s read the letter. Do you want to read it?

WIFE                  (  sulking, gives the letter back) No, I don’t. Why don’t you read it for your own sake?

HUSBAND         Not for my sake, but for our sake.  

WIFE                  ( grumpy) Well, all right, for our sake.

HUSBAND         ( reading) “My dearest….”

WIFE                  ( resentful, repeating to herself scornfully)  “My dearest…?!” 

HUSBAND         ( repeats)  “My dearest…”

WIFE                  ( jealous) You don’t need to repeat it twice…. Is it that important for you?  

HUSBAND         No, sweetheart, not so important…. Even though this expression … may be important, it is not the most important one.…

WIFE                  So we’re in for something even more important?

HUSBAND         Yes, sweetheart, there will be something more important.

WIFE                  Well, I never.

HUSBAND         Can I read on?

WIFE                  If you have to?!

HUSBAND         I don’t have to. I want to.

WIFE                  Well, go on.

HUSBAND         “My dearest”….

WIFE                  Is that what it says?

HUSBAND         Yes, precisely. ”My dearest”…

WIFE                  Well, no, you have gone overboard with this….That’s what she used to call you?

HUSBAND         Sweetheart, I beg of you….

WIFE                  Read on, but no more “my dearest”. It’s unbearable.

HUSBAND         ( in a conciliatory spirit) All right, sweetheart, let me read on…  “Why is this existence in need of pain?”

WIFE                  What did you say?

HUSBAND         Pain.

WIFE                  What pain? That’s absolute rubbish.

HUSBAND         Well, this is what you are saying….

WIFE                  Me? But I’m driving it home to you like to a child…

HUSBAND         Well, all right, all right….

WIFE                  What do you mean “all right”?

HUSBAND         Let’s show some goodwill…. I read on….

WIFE                  ( grumbling) I’m full of goodwill.  Read on…

HUSBAND         “I was leaving slowly and felt the arms of pain embracing me…

WIFE                  ( grumbling ) A poetess or what?! Ugh, “The arms of pain”?! She sounds like a hack or something!