PARTISAN REVIEW
SECOND VOICE: How do you know if you don't tell him?
(pause)
JOAN: Knock, Knock.
COHN:
(reloads shotgun)
Who's there?
JOAN: Joan.
COHN:
(getting ready)
Joan who?
229
JOAN: Joan of Arc. (COHN
whips open the door and blasts away. A
loud clang.
COHN
recoils in horror, drops the gun and backs off. In
walks a vision of loveliness wearing a suit of armor. The breast–
plate has a big black dent in it.
JOAN
glares at
COHN,
crosses her–
self, and starts talking to her body.)
Are you all right?
FIRST
VOICE: I'm all right - a little shaky.
SECOND VOICE: I'm upset but I'm all right.
COHN:
(gasping)
Who are you?
FIRST
VOICE: That's some greeting.
SECOND VOICE: You got any more surprises like that?
COHN: Who are they?
JOAN:
(taps the dent in her armor
)
My voices. (COHN
retreats to
the curtained doorway, turns quickly, and throws the shotgun into
the bedroom, then turns back to
JOAN.)
COHN: I'm not a violent man -
(a loud blast from the bedroom.
COHN
ducks his head behind the curtain and out again.)
No harm
done. Has this been a day!
FIRST
VOICE: He's a pacifist.
SECOND VOICE: I'd like to pacifist
him
right in the mouth.
COHN: Look -
(slowly regaining confidence through the sound of
his own voice)
a man knows himself by what he knows. You look
like a compassionate woman; I'll make myself clear. We're born,
we're educated, we live, suffer, gain experience, and certain things
we learn. We learn that maturity is the weaning out of synthetics
in one's life, wherein a man arrives at a sober, uncompromised
definition of himself, by himself and for himself so that where,
heretofore, one's life was a will-o'-the-wisp fantasy-laden, hodge–
podge, it now develops into a spare, clear-eyed, precise, concise,
essentially organic whole. Ask questions. I'm not a pedant.
JOAN: You think life is a hole.
COHN:
I
didn't say it was a hole. An organic whole.
(indicates with
motion of his hands)
JOAN: Life is holy. Not a hole. Small wonder you go around shooting
people. You don't know what's important.
