SECOND POET: In their dim cave, the Fatal Sisters Three …
[Whistle.]
THIRD POET: Come to me death, beloved …
[A shrill blast of the whistle. The FOURTH POET steps forward and strikes a dramatic posture. The whistle goes before he has opened his mouth.]
FIFTH POET: When I was in my happy infancy …
CALIGULA [yelling]: Stop that! What earthly connection has a blockhead’s happy infancy with the theme I set? The connection! Tell me the connection!
FIFTH POET: But, Caius, I’ve only just begun, and … [Shrill blast.]
SIXTH POET [in a high-pitched voice]: Ruthless, he goes his hidden ways …
[Whistle]
SEVENTH POET [mysteriously]: Oh, long, abstruse orison …
[Whistle, broken off as SCIPIO comes forward without a tablet.]
CALIGULA: You haven’t a tablet?
SCIPIO: I do not need one.
CALIGULA: Well, let’s hear you. [He chews at his whistle.]
SCIPIO [standing very near CALIGULA, he recites listlessly, without looking at him]:
Pursuit of happiness that purifies the heart,
Skies rippling with light,
O wild, sweet, festal joys, frenzy without hope!
CALIGULA [gently]: Stop, please. The others needn’t compete. [To SCIPIO] You’re very young to understand so well the lessons we can learn from death.
SCIPIO [gazing straight at CALIGULA]: I was very young to lose my father.
CALIGULA [turning hastily]: Fall in, the rest of you. No, really a sham poet is too dreadful an infliction. Until now I’d thought of enrolling you as my allies; I sometimes pictured a gallant band of poets defending me in the last ditch. Another illusion gone! I shall have to relegate you to my enemies. So now the poets are against me—and that looks much like the end of all. March out in good order. As you go past you are to lick your tablets so as to efface the atrocities you scrawled on them. Attention! Forward! [He blows his whistle in short rhythmic jerks. Keeping step, the poets file out by the right, tonguing their immortal tablets. CALIGULA adds in a lower tone] Now leave me, everyone.
[In the doorway, as they are going out, CHEREA touches the FIRST PATRICIAN’S shoulder, and speaks in his ear.]
CHEREA: Now’s our opportunity.
[SCIPIO, who has overheard, halts on the threshold and walks back to CALIGULA.]
CALIGULA [acidly]: Can’t you leave me in peace—as your father’s doing?
SCIPIO: No, Caius, all that serves no purpose now. For now I know, I know that you have made your choice.
CALIGULA: Won’t you leave me in peace!
SCIPIO: Yes, you shall have your wish; I am going to leave you, for I think I’ve come to understand you. There’s no way out left to us, neither to you nor to me—who am like you in so many ways. I shall go away, far away, and try to discover the meaning of it all. [He gazes at CALIGULA for some moments. Then, with a rush of emotion] Good-by, dear Caius. When all is ended, remember that I loved you. [He goes out. CALIGULA makes a vague gesture. Then, almost savagely, he pulls himself together and takes some steps toward CÆSONIA.]
CÆSONIA: What did he say?
CALIGULA: Nothing you’d understand.
CÆSONIA: What are thinking about?
CALIGULA: About him. And about you, too. But it amounts to the same thing.
CÆSONIA: What is the matter?
CALIGULA [staring at her]: Scipio has gone. I am through with his friendship. But you, I wonder why you are still here.…
CÆSONIA: Why, because you’re fond of me.
CALIGULA: No. But I think I’d understand—if I had you killed.
CÆSONIA: Yes, that would be a solution. Do so, then.… But why, oh, why can’t you relax, if only for a moment, and live freely, without constraint?
CALIGULA: I have been doing that for several years; in fact I’ve made a practice of it.
CÆSONIA: I don’t mean that sort of freedom. I mean—Oh, don’t you realize what it can be to live and love quite simply, naturally, in … in purity of heart?
CALIGULA: This purity of heart you talk of—every man acquires it, in his own way. Mine has been to follow the essential to the end.… Still all that needn’t prevent me from putting you to death. [Laughs.] It would round off my career so well, the perfect climax. [He rises and swings the mirror round toward himself. Then he walks in a circle, letting his arms hang limp, almost without gestures; there is something feral in his gait as he continues speaking.] How strange! When I don’t kill, I feel alone. The living don’t suffice to people my world and dispel my boredom. I have an impression of an enormous void when you and the others are here, and my eyes see nothing but empty air. No, I’m at ease only in the company of my dead. [He takes his stand facing the audience, leaning a little forward. He has forgotten CÆSONIA’S presence.] Only the dead are real. They are of my kind. I see them waiting for me, straining toward me. And I have long talks with this man or that, who screamed to me for mercy and whose tongue I had cut out.
CÆSONIA: Come. Lie down beside me. Put your head on my knees. [CALIGULA does so.] That’s better, isn’t it? Now rest. How quiet it is here!
CALIGULA: Quiet? You exaggerate, my dear. Listen! [Distant metallic tinklings, as of swords or armor.] Do you hear those thousands of small sounds all around us, hatred stalking its prey? [Murmuring voices, footsteps.]
CÆSONIA: Nobody would dare.…
CALIGULA: Yes, stupidity.
CÆSONIA: Stupidity doesn’t kill. It makes men slow to act.
CALIGULA: It can be murderous, Cæsonia. A fool stops at nothing when he thinks his dignity offended. No, it’s not the men whose sons or fathers I have killed who’ll murder me. They, anyhow, have understood. They’re with me, they have the same taste in their mouths. But the others—those I made a laughingstock of—I’ve no defense against their wounded vanity.
CÆSONIA [passionately]: We will defend you. There are many of us left who love you.
CALIGULA: Fewer every day. It’s not surprising. I’ve done all that was needed to that end. And then—let’s be fair—it’s not only stupidity that’s against me. There’s the courage and the simple faith of men who ask to be happy.
CÆSONIA [in the same tone]: No, they will not kill you. Or, if they tried, fire would come down from heaven and blast them, before they laid a hand on you.
CALIGULA: From heaven! There is no heaven, my poor dear woman! [He sits down.] But why this sudden access of devotion? It wasn’t provided for in our agreement, if I remember rightly.
CÆSONIA [who has risen from the couch and is pacing the room]: Don’t you understand? Hasn’t it been enough to see you killing others, without my also knowing you’ll be killed as well? Isn’t it enough to feel you hard and cruel, seething with bitterness, when I hold you in my arms; to breathe a reek of murder when you lie on me? Day after day I see all that’s human in you dying out, little by little. [She turns toward him.] Oh, I know. I know I’m getting old, my beauty’s on the wane. But it’s you only I’m concerned for now; so much so that I’ve ceased troubling whether you love me. I only want you to get well, quite well again. You’re still a boy, really; you’ve a whole life ahead of you. And, tell me, what greater thing can you want than a whole life?
CALIGULA [rising, looks at her fixedly]: You’ve been with me a long time now, a very long time.
CÆSONIA: Yes.… But you’ll keep me, won’t you?
CALIGULA: I don’t know. I only know that, if you’re with me still, it’s because of all those nights we’ve had together, nights of fierce, joyless pleasure; it’s because you alone know me as I am. [He takes her in his arms, bending her head back a little with his right hand.] I’m twenty-nine. Not a great age really. But today when none the less my life seems so long, so crowded with scraps and shreds of my past selves, so complete in fact, you remain the last witness. And I can’t avoid a sort of shameful tenderness for the old woman that you soon will be.
CÆSONIA: Tell me that you mean to keep me with you.
CALIGULA: I don’t know. All I know—and it’s the most terrible thing of all—is that this shameful tenderness is the one sincere emotion that my life has given up to now. [CÆSONIA frees herself from his arms. CALIGULA follows her. She presses her back to his chest and he puts his arms round her.] Wouldn’t it be better that the last witness should disappear?
CÆSONIA: That has no importance. All I know is: I’m happy. What you’ve just said has made me very happy. But why can’t I share my happiness with you?
CALIGULA: Who says I’m unhappy?
CÆSONIA: Happiness is kind. It doesn’t thrive on bloodshed.
CALIGULA: Then there must be two kinds of happiness, and I’ve chosen the murderous kind. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I’d reached the extremity of pain. But, no, one can go farther yet. Beyond the frontier of pain lies a splendid, sterile happiness. Look at me. [She turns toward him.] It makes me laugh, Cæsonia, when I think how for years and years all Rome carefully avoided uttering Drusilla’s name. Well, all Rome was mistaken. Love isn’t enough for me; I realized it then. And I realize it again today, when I look at you. To love someone means that one’s willing to grow old beside that person. That sort of love is right outside my range. Drusilla old would have been far worse than Drusilla dead. Most
