VICTORIA: What’s there to prevent your respecting yourself?
DIEGO: You, Victoria—when I see how brave you are.
VICTORIA: For heaven’s sake, for our love’s sake, Diego, don’t talk like that or I’ll let you see the ugly truth—the coward that I really am! For you’re mistaken. I’m not so brave as you think. All my courage wilts when I think of the time when I could feel I was yours, body and soul. How far away it seems, that time—when I felt love welling up in my heart, like a tempestuous flood, whenever anybody spoke your name! And when I had a thrill of happy triumph, like a sailor who has made his landfall, whenever I saw you coming toward me! Yes, I’m losing grip, I feel like sinking to the ground, all my courage is dying of a cowardly regret. If somehow I still keep on my feet, it’s the momentum of my love carrying me blindly on. But if you were to go out of my life, I’d stop dead, I’d fall and never rise again.
DIEGO: Ah, if only I could tie myself to you and we two, bound limb to limb, could drown together in a sleep that has no end!
VICTORIA: Come!
[Slowly they move toward each other, each gazing into the other’s eyes. But before they can embrace, the SECRETARY suddenly comes forward and thrusts herself between them.]
THE SECRETARY: What are you up to, you two?
VICTORIA [shrilly]: Can’t you see? We’re making love!
[A terrific crash in the air overhead.]
THE SECRETARY: Ssh! Some words must not be spoken. You should have known that that one was forbidden. Look! [Strikes DIEGO on the armpit, branding him for the second time.] So far you were only under suspicion. Now you are infected. [Gazes at him.] A pity! Such a good-looking lad. [To VICTORIA] Sorry, but frankly I prefer men to women, I get on with them so much better. Good evening.
[DIEGO stares with horror at the new mark under his arm; then, after gazing wildly round him, rushes toward VICTORIA and clasps her in his arms.]
DIEGO: Oh, how I hate your beauty—now that I know it will survive me! No, I cannot bear to think that others will enjoy it after I am dead. [Crushing her to his breast] Good! Anyhow this way I shall not be alone. What do I care for your love if it doesn’t rot along with me?
VICTORIA [struggling]: Stop! You’re hurting me.
DIEGO: Ah! So you’re afraid? [Shakes her, laughing wildly.] Those black horses of love, where are they now? So long as the weather’s fair a woman’s love continues, but let the storm break, and the black horses gallop away in panic.… At least you can die with me!
VICTORIA: With you, yes; but never against you! I loathe the look of fear and hatred you have now. Let me go. Leave me free to discover in you the love that once was yours—and then, and then my heart will speak again.
DIEGO [half releasing her]: I can’t bear the thought of dying. And now all that is dearest to me in the world is forsaking me, refusing to follow me to the grave.
VICTORIA [flinging herself against him]: But, Diego, I will follow you—to hell, if need be. Ah, my old Diego has come back. I feel my limbs quivering against yours. Kiss me, kiss me and crush back the cry that rises from the depths of my body, forcing its way up through my lips!… Ah!
[He presses his lips to her mouth’s kiss, then breaks free and leaves her trembling with emotion in the center of the stage.]
DIEGO: Wait!… No, you are unscathed. There is no sign on you. This foolish act will have no consequences.
VICTORIA: Take me in your arms again. It’s with cold that I am trembling now. A moment ago your breast was burning my hands and the blood ran like wildfire through my veins. But now …
DIEGO: No. Let me go my own way. I cannot stand aloof with all this suffering around me.
VICTORIA: Come back, Diego. All I want is to be consumed by the same fever, to die of the same wound, and to join my last cry with yours.
DIEGO: No. From now on I am with the others, all those wretched people who are marked as I am marked. Their agonies appall me; they fill me with the disgust that used to make me shrink from every contact. But now their calamity is mine, and they need me.
VICTORIA: If you must die, I’ll envy even the earth that wraps your body.
DIEGO: You are on the other side of the barricade, the side of the living.
VICTORIA: I can still be with you, Diego, if only you keep your love for me.
DIEGO: Love? They have ruled love out. But, ah, how I hate the thought of losing you!
VICTORIA: No, Diego; do not talk of losing me. Oh, I’ve seen quite well what they are after; they do all they can to make love impossible. But I’ll defeat them, for I am stronger than they.
DIEGO: Perhaps, but I am not. I know my weakness and I have no wish to share my defeat with you.
VICTORIA: There’s no flaw in my armor; my love is all my life. I fear nothing now; even were the skies to fall, I should go down to death crying out my happiness, if only I still had your hand in mine.
[Cries in the distance.]
DIEGO: Others are crying, too.
VICTORIA: I’m deaf to their cries, my ears are sealed against them!
DIEGO: Look!
[The death-cart rumbles past.]
VICTORIA: My eyes see nothing. Love has dazzled them.
DIEGO: Don’t you feel the very sky weighing down on us with its load of sorrows?
VICTORIA: When it’s the utmost I can do to bear the weight of my love, how can you ask me to take on my shoulders the burden of the sorrows of the world as well? No, that’s a man’s idea of duty—one of those futile, preposterous crusades you men engage in as a pretext for evading the one struggle that is truly arduous, the one victory of which you could be rightly proud.
DIEGO: What else should I struggle against in this world of ours if not the injustice that is done us?
VICTORIA: The anguish that you have within yourself. Master that, and all the rest will follow.
DIEGO: I am alone. And that anguish is too great for me to master.
VICTORIA: You are not alone. I stand beside you and I am armed for the fight.
DIEGO: How beautiful you are, Victoria, and how I’d love you—if only I were not afraid!
VICTORIA: How little you would fear, if only you’d consent to love me!
DIEGO: I do love you.… But I don’t know which of us is in the right.
VICTORIA: The one who has no fear. And my heart is fearless. It burns with a single, steady flame, a pillar of fire, like those beacon fires with which our mountaineers hail each other on midsummer’s night. And it, too, conveys a message, it is calling you. This is our midsummer’s night.
DIEGO: In a charnel house!
VICTORIA: Charnel house or mountaintop—how can that affect my love? And my love, anyhow, is benign, it does no harm to anyone. But who is benefited by your crazy self-devotion? Not I, in any case; each word you utter is a dagger in my heart.
DIEGO: Don’t cry, foolish one!… But, oh, the cruelty of my predicament! Why should I be singled out for this ordeal? I could have drunk those tears and, with my lips seared by their bitterness, have strewn as many kisses on your face as an olive tree has leaves!
VICTORIA: At last! At last you have come back to me and that’s our language you are speaking once again. [Stretches out her arms toward him.] Let me make sure that it is you, really you, come back.
[But DIEGO steps quickly back, showing the plague marks on him. She moves her hands forward, then hesitates.]
DIEGO: So you, too, are afraid?
[She places the palms of her hands firmly on the plague marks. Startled, he recoils from her, but she stretches out her arms again.]
VICTORIA: Come! Let me take you in my arms. You have nothing to fear now. [The groans and imprecations in the background grow louder. DIEGO gazes blankly around him like a madman, then abruptly hurries away.] Diego! No, he has forsaken me. I am alone, alone!
CHORUS OF WOMEN: We are the guardians of the race. This ordeal is more than we can cope with, we can but wait for it to end. So let us hold our peace until winter comes, bringing the hour of liberation when these groans and curses cease and our men come back to us, clamoring for what they treasure in their memories and cannot do without: the freedom of the great sea spaces, empty skies of summer, love’s undying fragrance. But meanwhile we are like, autumn leaves drenched by the September gales, which hover for a while in air and then are dragged down by the weight of water on them. We, too, are drooping earthward with bent backs, and until the day when these battle cries have spent their force, we listen only to the slow tides of happiness murmuring deep down within us. When the bare boughs of the almond trees grow bright with frost flowers we shall straighten up a little, fanned by a rising wind of hope, and soon in that second springtime we shall hold our heads high once more. Then those we love will turn again to us and as they draw near, step by
