In another part of the stage (the pool) an ARTIST paints JOYCE's portrait. His eyes are unbandaged but have the uninquisitive quality of a blind person's.
LUCIA
When I was small I only had 2 toys: a golf ball and a gray rubber dolly called Glas. I was very fond of Glas but she fell out of the window and her head all broke open. My parents promised to find me another but they never did. I was a dancer, you see.
NURSE
Yes I've seen you.
LUCIA
I always chose my father's tie. He had a lot, it was very hard. We always lived in 2 rooms that was why I'm not very clever. I always slept with my parents.
NURSE
Did you!
LUCIA
Yes in Trieste it was with uncle Stani and his family. We had such fun; it was hard to get to sleep when it was hot, with so many people. I went to school there, I can still say Il Senato.
Then we lived in Zurich. I don't know why, I think it was the war. We were very very poor. I had to keep changing schools because we moved all the time. One week it'd be a german school and the next italian. Giorgio got into trouble for not keeping up.
NURSE conventionally
And where's Giorgio now?
LUCIA becomes very confused and nervous
O? O? I don't know. I think he went to America. Yes, they wouldn't let me hold the baby. She grows distressed.
NURSE
That's alright Lucia, that's alright. Calm down. You were telling me about your life in Zurich.
LUCIA
O, well. They used to go out in the evening a lot and leave us lonely, locked in like pigs in a sty. Giorgio would yell out of the window as they left. But it made me very unhappy. They seemed to be abandoning us. I used to help Nanno churn the butter. We had no money to buy it until we came to Paris. I had to use tessera to get sugar and things to eat.
There is a light shower
NURSE
O isn't that pretty. I wonder if there's a rainbow?
LUCIA threatened by hope
A rainbow. What use would that be now?
The ARTIST occasionally addresses JOYCE to turn his head.
JOYCE
It's queer what different people remember. If things'd been different ...
but we'd no choice. It was an Odyssey - I had to plow on, chartless across unnavigable seas
-how else?- the gunwale never more than a flickering inch away from the green engulfing depths.
In every surge there were infinite turnings /none at all. A shabby language teacher?
A jostled nobody on the clanking tram, getting off 2 stops early to save fares.
If only could've spouted words without reflection, like a journalist's!
To've uttered the profoundest commonplaces, been understood, applauded, and forgotten:
floating momentarily on the swirling effluent of public thought.
And after a lifetime of good lunches the ultimate accolade:
a Collected Writings ... remaindered in paperback. Posterity be buggered!
Get your snouts in trough boys. What they won't shell out for today ain't worth a blue fart tomorrow.
NURSE
Look, maybe that bit goes there?
LUCIA
All those purple bits, what do they mean?
NURSE
Mean?
LUCIA
Yes, they must mean something?
NURSE
O they look like part of a parasol to me.
LUCIA
No, that's what they are. I want to know what they mean ...
NURSE
But they don't mean anything, they're just part of the picture.
LUCIA
No no. Everything makes a pattern: there are no accidents. It's all part of a whole. That's why I ... That's why I ... It's just I can't see what it is.
NURSE
O we can never really know everything.
LUCIA
Why not? Someone must. Everything must fit together, it must, cause otherwise ... There are no edges, no borders, to make a frame. Somebody's lost the box. I haven't a picture to work from.
NURSE
O it's an old puzzle.
LUCIA
Stupid to have a puzzle without a box lid.
NURSE
Why don't you collect up all the sky?
LUCIA
So that it can mock me thru the bars?
NURSE
Well, it would ... sort things out.
LUCIA
How? It's old.
NURSE
It's still a good puzzle.
LUCIA
If I solved yesterday's puzzle, how'd it help today?
NURSE
You learn from it.
LUCIA
No, no; the past is a ferocious dog, tied up, waiting to bite you; I went there to see who I was and now I can't get back out.
JOYCE
To lose your sight is like losing a limb - nothing's crueler. Your brain still thinks it's there -in your mind you feel it- but you can no longer be touched. I could reach thru time to touch others, and know I have done it, yet who will now comfort me?
O the more you understand, the more is taken away from you. See nothing: die content as an unhearing monkey. In this hour of fame I have a heart of weeds. Praise is nauseous to me, and all the stupid questions like burning rags.
JOYCE turns towards where LUCIA is. The lights dims on the ARTIST. Eventually JOYCE stands, addressing her but having noone to lead him thither.
O Lucia, Lucia. You are the only one who required no explanations, gone under the hill, all of them, all of them, like layer upon layer of felt, burying the past in a blanket of uniformity; yet felt feeling can penetrate it, cutting thru sharply age after age after age: grief the knife that severs and binds.
To be known is perhaps the one wish of god. If s/he could've said it, why bother to create a world, and people it? If it could be said. What are the words? What are the words, Lucia? You know because you would not use them.
One bed after another, and only the graceless fulmblking, the grunted intimacies of strangers. And after, no search for meaning, only the desperate thrust for another fix, another sliming fast of shutters, of punting to be submerged in the strong mask of a rhythmic male buddy. O I saw it all, but what could a father do? The opened door one can never enter?
NURSE
Look that's a whole section done now. What is it?
LUCIA having lost interest
Gray rats crawling on a rotting pile of rubbish.
NURSE
No it isn't silly. Those aren't rats, they're ...
LUCIA
Dirty washing.
NURSE
No, they're victorian ladies and gentlemen.
LUCIA
Same thing. Someone's talking to me, I know but I can't hear ... they've given me those pills to make sure I can't hear what I think.
NURSE
Now don't go upsetting yourself. You're seeing Dr Jung after lunch. You don't want to be in a state, do you?
LUCIA
A state of grace.
Thinking back to Sc105 LUCIA walks out into the rain and stands looking down into the 'pool' where JOYCE & the ARTIST are stationary.
NURSE
O come in now, y'might catch cold.
LUCIA
So what. Come and look.
NURSE
What at?
LUCIA
The world. The real world.
NURSE comes over reluctantly
NURSE
I see nothing but wind-whipt trees and the shredded clouds.
The pool fills with dry ice.
LUCIA
That's right. That's all you see.
NURSE
Come in, there'll be a storm!
The octopus film is projected onto the swirling vapour.
LUCIA
But in that mirrored world is my reality. There I don't fail everyone's expectation of me. I go straight to the very heart of existence - and I know. I am at one.
She suddenly flings herself into billows. LUCIA is borne on the surface for a little while by JOYCE and the ARTIST before sinking. JOYCE and the ARTIST disappear. The NURSE shrieks and rushes toward her, struggling vainly on the upper steps of the pool. A MALE NURSE rushes in.
M NURSE
Don't think this is going to do much for my modeling career.
The substance evaporates and LUCIA is discovered lying at the bottom. They make no attempt to raise her.
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