Permutations Among the Nightingales, Aldous Huxley

Permutations Among the Nightingales

A PLAY

It is night on the terrace outside the Hotel Cimarosa. Part of the garden façade of the hotel is seen at the back of the stage—a bare white wall, with three French windows giving on to balconies about ten feet from the ground, and below them, leading from the terrace to the lounge, a double door of glass, open now, through which a yellow radiance streams out into the night. On the paved terrace stand two or three green iron tables and chairs. To the left a mass of dark foliage, ilex and cypress, in the shadow of which more tables and chairs are set.

At the back to the left a strip of sky is visible between the corner of the hotel and the dark trees, blue and starry, for it is a marvellous June evening. Behind the trees the ground slopes steeply down and down to an old city in the valley below, of whose invisible presence you are made aware by the sound of many bells wafted up from a score of slender towers in a sweet and melancholy discord that seems to mourn the passing of each successive hour.

When the curtain rises the terrace is almost deserted; the hotel dinner is not yet over. A single guest, COUNT ALBERTO TIRETTA, is discovered, sitting in a position of histrionic despair at one of the little green tables. A waiter stands respectfully sympathetic at his side, ALBERTO is a little man with large lustrous eyes and a black moustache, about twenty-five years of age. He has the pathetic charm of an Italian street-boy with an organ—almost as pretty and sentimental as Murillo’s little beggars.

ALBERTO (making a florid gesture with his right hand and with his left covering his eyes). Whereupon, Waiter (he is reciting a tale of woes), she slammed the door in my face. (He brings down his gesticulating right hand with a crash on to the table.)
WAITER. In your face, Signore? Impossible!
ALBERTO. Impossible, but a fact. Some more brandy, please; I am a little weary. (The waiter uncorks the bottle he has been holding under his arm and fills Alberto’s glass.)
WAITER. That will be one lira twenty-five, Signore.
ALBERTO (throwing down a note). Keep the change.
WAITER (bowing). Thank you, Signore. But if I were the Signore I should beat her. (He holds up the Cognac bottle and by way of illustration slaps its black polished flanks.)
ALBERTO. Beat her? But I tell you I am in love with her.
WAITER. All the more reason, then, Signore. It will be not only a stern disciplinary duty, but a pleasure as well; oh, I assure you, Signore, a pleasure.
ALBERTO. Enough, enough. You sully the melancholy beauty of my thoughts. My feelings at this moment are of an unheard-of delicacy and purity. Respect them, I beg you. Some more brandy, please.

WAITER (pouring out the brandy). Delicacy, purity…. Ah, believe me, Signore … That will be one lira twenty-five.
ALBERTO (throwing down another note with the same superbly aristocratic gesture). Keep the change.
WAITER. Thank you, Signore. But as I was saying, Signore, delicacy, purity…. You think I do not understand such sentiments. Alas, Signore, beneath the humblest shirt-front there beats a heart. And if the Signore’s sentiments are too much for him, I have a niece. Eighteen years old, and what eyes, what forms!
ALBERTO. Stop, stop. Respect my feelings, Waiter, as well as the ears of the young lady (he points towards the glass doors). Remember she is an American. (The Waiter, bows and goes into the hotel.)

SIDNEY DOLPHIN and MISS AMY TOOMIS

come out together on to the terrace. MISS AMY supports a well-shaped head on one of the most graceful necks that ever issued from Minneapolis. The eyes are dark, limpid, ingenuous; the mouth expresses sensibility. She is twenty-two and the heiress of those ill-gotten Toomis millions. SIDNEY DOLPHIN has a romantic aristocratic appearance. The tailoring of 1830 would suit him. Balzac would have described his face as plein de poésie. In effect he does happen to be a poet. His two volumes of verse, «Zeotrope and ‘Trembling Ears,» have been recognised by intelligent critics as remarkable. How far they are poetry nobody, least of all Dolphin himself, is certain.

They may be merely the ingenious products of a very cultured and elaborate brain. Mere curiosities; who knows? His age is twenty-seven. They sit down at one of the little iron tables, ALBERTO they do not see; the shadow of the trees conceals him. For his part, he is too much absorbed in savouring his own despair to pay any attention to the newcomers. There is a long, uncomfortable silence. DOLPHIN assumes the Thinker’s mask—the bent brow, the frown, the finger to the forehead, AMY regards this romantic gargoyle with some astonishment. Pleased with her interest in him, DOLPHIN racks his brains to think of some way of exploiting this curiosity to his own advantage; but he is too shy to play any of the gambits which his ingenuity suggests. AMY makes a social effort and speaks, in chanting Middle Western tones. AMY. It’s been a wonderful day, hasn’t it?

DOLPHIN (starting, as though roused from profoundest thought). Yes, yes, it has.
AMY. You don’t often get it as fine as this in England, I guess.
DOLPHIN. Not often.
AMY. Nor do we over at home.
DOLPHIN. So I should suppose. (Silence. A spasm of anguish crosses DOLPHIN’S face; then he reassumes the old Thinker’s mask. AMY looks at him for a little longer, then, unable to suppress her growing curiosity, she says with a sudden burst of childish confidence:)
AMY. It must be wonderful to be able to think as hard as you do, Mr. Dolphin. Or are you sad about something?
DOLPHIN (looks up, smiles, and blushes; a spell has been broken). The finger at the temple, Miss Toomis, is not the barrel of a revolver.
AMY. That means you’re not specially sad about anything. Just thinking.
DOLPHIN. Just thinking.
AMY. What about?
DOLPHIN. Oh, just life, you know—life and letters.
AMY. Letters? Do you mean love letters.
DOLPHIN. No, no. Letters in the sense of literature; letters as opposed to life.
AMY. (disappointed). Oh, literature. They used to teach us literature at school. But I could never understand Emerson. What do you think about literature for?
DOLPHIN. It interests me, you know. I read it; I even try to write it.
AMY (very much excited). What, are you a writer, a poet, Mr. Dolphin?
DOLPHIN. Alas, it is only too true; I am.
AMY. But what do you write?
DOLPHIN. Verse and prose, Miss Toomis. Just verse and prose.
AMY (with enthusiasm). Isn’t that interesting. I’ve never met a poet before, you know.
DOLPHIN. Fortunate being. Why, before I left England I attended a luncheon of the Poetry Union at which no less than a hundred and eighty-nine poets were present. The sight of them made me decide to go to Italy.

AMY. Will you show me your books?
DOLPHIN. Certainly not, Miss Toomis. That would ruin our friendship. I am insufferable in my writings. In them I give vent to all the horrible thoughts and impulses which I am too timid to express or put into practice in real life. Take me as you find me here, a decent specimen of a man, shy but able to talk intelligently when the layers of ice are broken, aimless, ineffective, but on the whole quite a good sort.
AMY. But I know that man already, Mr. Dolphin. I want to know the poet. Tell me what the poet is like.
DOLPHIN. He is older, Miss Toomis, than the rocks on which he sits. He is villainous. He is … but there, I really must stop. It was you who set me going, though. Did you do it on purpose.

AMY. Do what on purpose?
DOLPHIN. Make me talk about myself. If you want to get people to like you, you must always lead the conversation on to the subject of their characters. Nothing pleases them so much. They’ll talk with enthusiasm for hours and go away saying that you’re the most charming, cleverest person they’ve ever met. But of course you knew that already. You re Machiavellian.
AMY. Machiavellian? You’re the first person that’s ever said that. I always thought I was very simple and straight-forward. People say about me that…. Ah, now I’m talking about myself. That was unscrupulous of you. But you shouldn’t have told me about the trick if you wanted it to succeed.
DOLPHIN. Yes. It was silly of me. If I hadn’t, you’d have gone on talking about yourself and thought me the nicest man in the world.
AMY. I want to hear about your poetry. Are you writing any now?
DOLPHIN. I have composed the first line of a magnificent epic. But I can’t get any further.
AMY. How does it go?
DOLPHIN. Like this (he clears his throat). «Casbeen has been, and Moghreb is no more.» Ah, the transience of all sublunary things! But inspiration has stopped short there.
AMY. What exactly does it mean?
DOLPHIN. Ah, there you re asking too much, Miss Toomis. Waiter, some coffee for two.
WAITER (who is standing in the door of the lounge). Si, Signore. Will the lady and gentleman take it here, or in the gardens, perhaps?
DOLPHIN. A good suggestion. Why shouldn’t the lady and gentleman take it in the garden?
AMY. Why not?
DOLPHIN. By the fountain, then, Waiter. We can talk about ourselves there to the tune of falling waters.
AMY. And you shall recite your poetry, Mr. Dolphin. I just love poetry. Do you know Mrs. Wilcox’s Poems of Passion? (They go out to the left. A nightingale utters two or three phrases of song and from far down the bells of the city