MARIA: He came here yesterday evening and he promised to call for me this morning. I can’t understand why he didn’t come.
MARTHA: He said his wife was abroad.
MARIA: He had special reasons for that. But we’d arranged to meet this morning.
MARTHA [who has kept her eyes fixed on MARIA]: That may be difficult. Your husband’s gone.
MARIA: Gone? I don’t follow. Didn’t he take a room here?
MARTHA: Yes, but he left it during the night.
MARIA: Really, I can’t believe that. I know his reasons for wanting to stay in this house. But the way you speak alarms me. Please tell me frankly whatever you have to tell.
MARTHA: I have nothing to tell you, except that your husband is no longer here.
MARIA: I simply cannot understand; he would not have gone away without me. Did he say that he was going for good, or that he’d come back?
MARTHA: He has left us for good.
MARIA: Please listen. I can’t bear to be kept in suspense any longer. Since yesterday I’ve been waiting, waiting, in this strange land, and now my anxiety has brought me to this house. I will not go away before I have seen my husband or been told where I can find him.
MARTHA: Your husband’s whereabouts is your concern, not mine.
MARIA: You are wrong. You, too, are concerned in this, and closely. I don’t know if my husband will approve of my telling you this, but I’m sick and tired of this futile game of make-believe. The man who came here yesterday is the brother you’d heard nothing of for years and years.
MARTHA: That’s no news to me.
MARIA [violently]: Then—what can have happened? If everything has been cleared up, how is it Jan’s not here? Did you not welcome him home, you and your mother, and weren’t you full of joy at his return?
MARTHA: My brother is no longer here—because he is dead.
[MARIA gives a start and stares at MARTHA for some moments without speaking. Then she takes a step toward her, smiling.]
MARIA: Ah, you’re joking, of course. Jan’s often told me that when you were little you loved mystifying people. You and I are almost sisters and—
MARTHA: Don’t touch me. Stay where you are. There is nothing in common between us. [Pauses.] I can assure you I’m not joking; your husband died last night. So there’s no reason for you to stay here any longer.
MARIA: But you’re mad, stark staring mad! People don’t die like that—when one’s arranged to meet them, from one moment to the other, all of a sudden. I can’t believe you. Let me see him and then I may believe what I can’t even imagine.
MARTHA: That impossible. He’s at the bottom of the river. [MARIA stretches her hand toward her.] Don’t touch me! Stay there. I repeat; he is at the bottom of the river. My mother and I carried him to the river last night, after putting him to sleep. He didn’t suffer, but he is dead sure enough, and it was we, his mother and I, who killed him.
MARIA [shrinking away]: It must be I who am mad. I’m hearing words that have never before been said on this earth. I knew that no good would come to me here, but this is sheer craziness and I will not share in it. At the very moment when your words strike death into my heart, it seems to me that you are talking of some other man, not of the man who shared my nights, and all this is a tale of long ago, in which my love never had a part.
MARTHA: It’s not for me to convince you; only to tell you the truth. A truth which you will have to recognize before long.
MARIA [in a sort of reverie]: But why, why did you do it?
MARTHA: What right have you to question me?
MARIA [passionately]: What right?… My love for him.
MARTHA: What does that word mean?
MARIA: It means—it means all that at this moment is tearing, gnawing at my heart; it means this rush of frenzy that makes my fingers itch for murder. It means all my past joys, and this wild, sudden grief you have brought me. Yes, you crazy woman, if it wasn’t that I’ve steeled my heart against believing, you’d learn the meaning of that word, when you felt my nails scoring your cheeks.
MARTHA: Again, you are using language I cannot understand. Words like love and joy and grief are meaningless to me.
MARIA [making a great effort to speak calmly]: Listen, Martha—that’s your name, isn’t it? Let’s stop this game, if game it is, of cross purposes. Let’s have done with useless words. Tell me quite clearly what I want to know quite clearly, before I let myself break down.
MARTHA: Surely I made it clear enough. We did to your husband last night what we had done to other travelers before; we killed him and took his money.
MARIA: So his mother and sister were criminals?
MARTHA: Yes. But that’s their business, and no one else’s.
MARIA [still controlling herself with an effort]: Had you learned he was your brother when you did it?
MARTHA: If you must know, there was a misunderstanding. And if you have any experience at all of the world, that won’t surprise you.
MARIA [going toward the table, her hands clenched on her breast; in a low, sad voice]: Oh, my God, I knew it! I knew this play acting was bound to end in tragedy and we’d be punished, he and I, for having lent ourselves to it. I felt danger in the very air one breathes in this country. [She stops in front of the table and goes on speaking, without looking at MARTHA.] He wanted to make his home-coming a surprise, to get you to recognize him and to bring you happiness. Only at first he couldn’t find the words that were needed. And then, while he was groping for the words, he was killed. [Weeping.] And you, like two madwomen, blind to the marvelous son who had returned to you—for marvelous he was, and you will never know the greatheartedness, the noble soul, of the man you killed last night.… He might have been your pride, as he was mine. But, no, you were his enemy—oh, the pity of it!—for else how could you bring yourself to speak so calmly of what should make you rush into the street, screaming out your heart, like a wounded animal?
MARTHA: You have no right to sit in judgment without knowing all. By now my mother’s lying with her son, pressed to the sluice-gate, and the current is beginning to gnaw their faces, and buffeting them against the rotting piles. Soon their bodies will be drawn up and buried together in the same earth. But I cannot see what there is even in this to set me screaming with pain. I have a very different idea of the human heart, and, to be frank, your tears revolt me.
MARIA [swinging round on her fiercely]: My tears are for the joys I’ve lost for ever; for a life’s happiness stolen from me. And this is better for you than the tearless grief I shall have presently, which could kill you without the flutter of an eyelid.
MARTHA: Do not imagine talk like that affects me; really it would make little difference. For I, too, have seen and heard enough; I, too, have resolved to die. But I shall not join them; why, indeed, would I want their company? I shall leave them to their new-found love, to their dark embraces. Neither you nor I have any part in these; all that is ended and they are unfaithful to us—forever. Luckily I have my bedroom and its roof-beam is strong.
MARIA: What does it matter to me that you die or the whole world falls in ruins, if through you I have lost the man I love, and henceforth I am doomed to live in a dark night of loneliness, where every memory is a torture?
[MARTHA comes behind her and speaks over her head.]
MARTHA: Let’s not exaggerate. You have lost your husband and I have lost my mother. We are even. But you have only lost him once, after enjoying his love for years and without his having cast you off. My lot is worse. First my mother cast me off, and now she is dead. I have lost her twice.
MARIA: Yes, perhaps I might be tempted to pity you and share my grief with you, if I did not know what was awaiting him, alone in his room last night, when you were plotting his death.
MARTHA [her voice has a sudden accent of despair]: I’m even with your husband, too, for I have suffered as he suffered. Like him, I thought I had made my home sure for always; I thought that crime had forged a bond between me and my mother that nothing could ever break. And on whom in all the world should I rely, if not on the woman who had killed beside me? I was mistaken. Crime, too, means solitude, even if a thousand people join together to commit it. And it is fitting that I should die alone, after having lived and killed alone. [MARIA turns toward her, tears streaming down her cheeks. MARTHA moves back, her voice grows hard again.] Stop! I told you not to touch me. At the mere thought that a human hand could lay its warmth on me before I die; at the mere thought that anything at all resembling the foul love of men is dogging me still, I feel the blood pulsing
