Pandora's Box Part 11

KADIDIA. O mama, how glad that makes me feel! (_A plain-clothes detective enters, upper left._)

DETECTIVE. In the name of the law--I arrest you!

CASTI-PIANI. (_Following him, bored._) What sort of nonsense is that?

*That* isn't the right one!

CURTAIN.

ACT III

_An attic room, without windows, but with two sky-lights, under one of which stands a bowl filled with rain-water. Down right, a door thru a board part.i.tion into a sort of cubicle under the slanting roof. Near it, a wobbly flower-table with a bottle and a smoking oil-lamp on it. Upper right, a worn-out couch. Door centre; near it, a chair without a seat. Down left, below the entrance door, a torn gray mattress. None of the doors can shut tight._

_The rain beats on the roof. Schigolch in a long gray overcoat lies on the mattress; Alva on the couch, wrapped in a plaid whose straps still hang on the wall above him._

SCHIGOLCH. The rain's drumming for the parade.

ALVA. Cheerful weather for her first appearance! I dreamt just now we were dining together at Olympia. Bianetta was still with us. The table-cloth was dripping on all four sides with champagne.

SCHIGOLCH. Ya, ya. And I was dreaming of a Christmas pudding. (_Lulu appears, back, barefoot, in a torn black dress, but with her hair falling to her shoulders._) Where have you been? Curling your hair first?

ALVA. She only does that to revive old memories.

LULU. If one could only get warmed, just a little, from one of you!

ALVA. Will you enter barefoot on your pilgrimage?

SCHIGOLCH. The first step always costs all kinds of moaning and groaning. Twenty years ago it was no whit better, and what she has learned since then! The coals only have to be blown. When she's been at it a week, not ten locomotives will hold her in our miserable attic.

ALVA. The bowl is running over.

LULU. What shall I do with the water?

ALVA. Pour it out the window. (_Lulu gets up on the chair and empties the bowl thru the sky-light._)

LULU. It looks as if the rain would let up at last.

SCHIGOLCH. Your wasting the time when the clerks go home after supper.

LULU. Would to G.o.d I were lying somewhere where no step would wake me any more!

ALVA. Would I were, too! Why prolong this life? Let's rather starve to death together this very evening in peace and concord! Is it not the last stage now?

LULU. Why don't *you* go out and get us something to eat? You've never earned a penny in your whole life!

ALVA. In this weather, when no one would kick a dog from his door?

LULU. But me! I, with the little blood I have left in my limbs, I am to stop your mouths!

ALVA. I don't touch a farthing of the money!

SCHIGOLCH. Let her go, just! I long for one more Christmas pudding; then I've had enough.

ALVA. And I long for one more beefsteak and a cigarette; then die! I was just dreaming of a cigarette, such as has never yet been smoked!

SCHIGOLCH. She'll see us put an end to before her eyes, before doing herself a little pleasure.

LULU. The people on the street will sooner leave cloak and coat in my hands than go with me for nothing! If you hadn't sold my clothes, I at least wouldn't need to be afraid of the lamp-light. I'd like to see the woman who could earn anything in the rags I'm wearing on my body!

ALVA. I have left nothing human untried. As long as I had money I spent whole nights making up tables with which one couldn't help winning against the cleverest card-sharps. And yet evening after evening I lost more than if I had shaken out gold by the pailful.

Then I offered my services to the courtesans; but they don't take anyone without the stamps of the courts, and they see at the first glance if one's related to the guillotine or not.

SCHIGOLCH. Ya, ya.

ALVA. I spared myself no disillusionments; but when I made jokes, they laughed at *me*, and when I behaved as respectable as I am, they boxed my ears, and when I tried being s.m.u.tty, they got so chaste and maidenly that my hair stood up on my head for horror. He who has not prevailed over society, they have no confidence in.

SCHIGOLCH. Won't you kindly put on your boots now, child? I don't think I shall grow much older in this lodging. It's months since I had any feeling in the ends of my toes. Toward midnight, I'll drink a bit more down in the pub. The lady that keeps it told me yesterday I seemed to really want to be her lover.

LULU. In the name of the three devils, I'll go down! (_She puts to her mouth the bottle on the flower-table._)

SCHIGOLCH. So they can smell your stink a half-hour off!

LULU. I shan't drink it all.

ALVA. You won't go down. You're my woman. You shan't go down. I forbid it!

LULU. What would you forbid your woman when you can't support yourself?

ALVA. Whose fault is that? Who but my woman has laid me on the sick-bed?

LULU. Am I sick?

ALVA. Who has trailed me thru the dung? Who has made me my father's murderer?

LULU. Did *you* shoot him? He didn't lose much, but when I see you lying there I could hack off both my hands for having sinned so against my judgment! (_She goes out, into her room._)

ALVA. She infected me from her Casti-Piani. It's a long time since she was susceptible to it herself!

SCHIGOLCH. Little devils like her can't begin putting up with it too soon, if angels are ever going to come out of them.

ALVA. She ought to have been born Empress of Russia. Then she'd have been in the right place. A second Catherine the Second! (_Lulu re-enters with a worn-out pair of boots, and sits on the floor to put them on._)

LULU. If only I don't go headfirst down the stairs! Ugh, how cold! Is there anything in the world more dismal than a daughter of joy?

SCHIGOLCH. Patience, patience! She's only got to take the right road into the business at the start.