MARTHA: Well, you see that dawn has come and we’ve gotten through the night without mishap.
THE MOTHER: Yes. And tomorrow I’ll be thinking it’s a good thing to have done with it. But, just now, all I feel is that I’m dead tired and my heart’s dried up within me. Ah, it was a hard night indeed!
MARTHA: But this morning is the first for years when I breathe freely. Never did a killing cost me less. I almost seem to hear the waves already, and I feel like crying out for joy.
THE MOTHER: So much the better, Martha. So much the better. As for me, I feel so old this morning that I can’t share anything with you. But perhaps tomorrow I’ll be in a better way.
MARTHA: Yes, and everything will, I hope, be better. But do please stop complaining and give me a chance of relishing my new-found happiness. I’m like a young girl again this morning; I feel my blood flowing warm, and I want to run about and sing!… Oh, mother, may I ask you something?… [Pauses.]
THE MOTHER: What’s come over you, Martha? You’re like a different person.
MARTHA: Mother.… [Hesitates; then in a rush.] Tell me, am I still pretty?
THE MOTHER: Yes, I think you’re looking really pretty this morning. Some acts seem to have a good effect on you.
MARTHA: Oh, no! Those acts you mean lie on me so lightly. But this morning I feel as if I’d been born again, to a new life; at last I’m going to a country where I shall be happy.
THE MOTHER: No doubt, no doubt. And, once I’ve got over my tiredness, I, too, shall breathe freely. Even now, it makes up for all those sleepless nights of ours, to know they’ll have brought you happiness. But this morning I must rest; all I’m conscious of is that the night has been a hard one.
MARTHA: What does last night matter? Today is a great day. [To the servant.] Keep your eyes open when you’re sweeping; we dropped some of his papers on the way out and I couldn’t stop to pick them up. They’re on the floor somewhere. [The MOTHER leaves the room. Sweeping under a table, the old man comes on JAN’S passport, opens it, runs his eyes over it, and hands it, open, to MARTHA.] I don’t need to see it. Put it with the other things; we’ll burn them all together. [The old man goes on holding the passport to MARTHA. She takes it.] What is it? [The old man goes out. MARTHA reads the passport slowly, without showing any emotion; then calls in a voice that sounds completely calm.] Mother!
THE MOTHER [from the next room]: What do you want now?
MARTHA: Come here. [The MOTHER returns. MARTHA gives her the passport.] Read!
THE MOTHER: You know quite well my eyes are tired.
MARTHA: Read!
[The MOTHER takes the passport, sits at the table, spreads it open, and reads. For a long while she stares at the page in front of her.]
THE MOTHER [in a toneless voice]: Yes, I always knew it would turn out like this one day—and that would be the end. The end of all!
MARTHA [coming from behind the bar and standing in front of it]: Mother!
THE MOTHER: No, Martha, let me have my way; I’ve lived quite long enough. I have lived many years more than my son. That isn’t as it should be. Now I can go and join him at the bottom of the river, where the weeds already have covered up his face.
MARTHA: Mother! Surely you won’t leave me alone?
THE MOTHER: You have been a great help to me, Martha, and I am sorry to leave you. If such words have any meaning left for us, I can honestly say you were a good daughter, in your fashion. You have always shown me the respect you owed me. But now I am very weary; my old heart, which seemed indifferent to everything, has learned again today what grief means, and I’m not young enough to come to terms with it. In any case, when a mother is no longer capable of recognizing her own son, it’s clear her role on earth is ended.
MARTHA: No. Not if her daughter’s happiness remains to be ensured. And, no less than my heart, my hopes are shattered when I hear you speaking in this new, amazing way—you who had taught me to respect nothing.
THE MOTHER [in the same listless tone]: It only proves that in a world where everything can be denied, there are forces undeniable; and on this earth where nothing’s sure we have our certainties. [Bitterly] And a mother’s love for her son is now my certainty.
MARTHA: So you are not sure that a mother can love her daughter?
THE MOTHER: It’s not now I’d want to wound you, Martha, but love for a daughter can never be the same thing. It strikes less deep. And how could I now live without my son’s love?
MARTHA: A wonderful love—that forgot you utterly for twenty years!
THE MOTHER: Yes, it was a wonderful love that outlasted twenty years of silence. Say what you will, that love is wonderful enough for me—since I can’t live without it. [She rises from her chair.]
MARTHA: It’s not possible you can talk like that, without any thought for your daughter, without the least stirring of revolt!
THE MOTHER: Hard as it is on you, it is possible. I have no thought for anything; still less any feeling of revolt. No doubt this is my punishment, and for all murderers a time comes when, like me, they are dried up within, sterile, with nothing left to live for. That’s why society gets rid of them; they’re good for nothing.
MARTHA: I can’t bear to hear you talking like that, about crime and punishment; it’s … despicable!
THE MOTHER: I’m not troubling to pick my words; I’ve ceased to have any preference. But it’s true that by one act I have ruined everything. I have lost my freedom and my hell has begun.
MARTHA [going up to her mother; fiercely]: You never spoke like that before. During all these years you’ve stood beside me, and your hands never flinched from gripping the legs of those who were to die. A lot you thought of hell or freedom in those days! It never occurred to you that you had no right to live, and you went on—doing as you did. What change can your son have brought to that?
THE MOTHER: I went on with it; that’s true. But what I lived through then, I lived through by dint of habit, which is not so very different from death. An experience of grief was enough to change all that, and my son’s coming has brought that change. [MARTHA makes a gesture and seems about to speak.] Oh, I know, Martha, that doesn’t make sense. What has a criminal to do with grief? But I’d have you notice that my grief is not the wild grief that mothers feel; I haven’t raised my voice as yet. It’s no more than the pain of feeling love rekindle in my heart; and yet it’s too much for me. I know that this pain, too, doesn’t make sense. [In a changed tone.] But then this world we live in doesn’t make sense, and I have a right to judge it, since I’ve tested all it has to offer, from creation to destruction.
[She walks resolutely toward the door. MARTHA slips in front of her and bars the way.]
MARTHA: No, mother, you shall not leave me. Don’t forget that it was I who stayed beside you, and he went away. For a whole lifetime I have been with you, and he left you in silence. That must come into the reckoning. That must be paid for. And it’s your duty to come back to me.
THE MOTHER [gently]: That’s true enough, Martha. But he, my son, was killed by me.
[MARTHA has half turned away and seems to be gazing at the door.]
MARTHA [after a short silence, with rising emotion]: All that life can give a man was given him. He left this country. He came to know far horizons, the sea, free beings. But I stayed here, eating my heart out in the shadows, small and insignificant, buried alive in a gloomy valley in the heart of Europe. Buried alive! No one has ever kissed my mouth and no one, not even you, has seen me naked. Mother, I swear to you, that must be paid for. And now, when at last I am to get what’s due to me, you cannot, must not desert me on the vain pretext that a man is dead. Do try to understand that for a man who has lived his life death is a little thing. We can forget my brother and your son. What has happened to him has no importance; he had nothing more to get from life. But for me it’s different, and you are defrauding me of everything, cheating me of the pleasures he enjoyed. Why must that man deprive me of my mother’s love as well and drag you down with him into the icy darkness of the river? [They gaze silently at each other; MARTHA lowers her eyes. She speaks now in a very low voice.] I ask so little, so very little of life. Mother, there are words I never could bring myself to use, but—don’t you think it would be soothing if we started our life again just as it used to be, you and I together?
THE MOTHER: Did you recognize him?
MARTHA: No,
