534
PARTISAN REVIEW
MARION:
(coldly, harshly, his voice filled with hatred of himself as he
lets his hand fall away from the phone)
It seems I have a drop of
mercy after all.
ELENA:
(into the phone-in a listless, even voice)
Charley ... I hate
to bother you ... I took some pills . .. Please call the hospital. ...
Have them send an ambulance over here .. . to Marion's.
(She hangs
up.)
I'm sorry, Marion, I'm so sorry, but I don't want to stop.
(She
begins to weep.)
It is at this moment that the bomb goes off a hundred miles
away-far across the desert. But the light through the win–
dow is intense, a white shuddering light.
ELENA
screams, and
MARION
.does not move. He merely looks at his hands. When
the light has gone, a red glow is left in the sky. Then he
begins to speak in a little private voice, a murmur away
from the delicate voice of the sensitive gone mad.
MARION:
Dorothea, my mother, she made money from men when she
was young, and I was her bastard, a passing gift from a passing prince,
no more-because the salmon of his seed
did
not have to feel such a
vast desire to gain the rapids of a janitor's daughter. Yes, I was her
bastard, and I grew up while she was doing her gossip column. The
cruellest gossip columnist in the country.
An
assassin. She used to
print the American flag next to her face. So I knew what it was all
aJbout. I mean I knew too early. She wanted me to be a priest. I was
to be her sacrifice-do I have to spell it out? I have this idea so
deep in my
head-(striking his foreh ead)
that the center of Hell must
be in here, yes, I have this idea that I am a saint, and I feel what
God feels, and He
is
in an extremity beyond mine because there is
an extraordinary destiny He has to achieve and He does not know
if
He will succeed or not because He is a part of us. He
is
failing
because we are failing, because we are too cowardly, because we want
to move too slowly, and hold to what we have, when the world, the
tangible substance of God, is ready to be blown beyond existence in
those radiations of hate which none of us can contain any longer.
There is a torment coming when the being of all of us will depend
on whether there is a man brave enough, bold enough, to go further
in his mind than anyone has ever gone and yet communicate his
vi–
sion. And I am not that man. I am too weak. I have failed God again.
As the curtain comes down, there is the wail of an ambulance
siren coming closer and closer.
CURTAIN
