Pandora's Box Part 3

ALVA. (_At the table left._) Here is coffee, ready to pour.

SCHIGOLCH. I must look after the sleeping-car tickets.

LULU. (_Brightly._) Oh, freedom! Thank God for freedom!

SCHIGOLCH. I'll be back for you in half an hour. We'll celebrate our departure in the station-restaurant. I'll order a supper that'll keep us going till to-morrow.--Good morning, doctor.

ALVA. Good evening.

SCHIGOLCH. Pleasant rest!--Thanks, I know every door-handle here. So long! Have a good time! (_Exit._)

LULU. I haven't seen a room for a year and a half. Curtains, chairs, pictures....

ALVA. Won't you drink it?

LULU. I've swallowed enough black coffee these five days. Have you any brandy?

ALVA. I've got some elixir de Spaa.

LULU. That reminds one of old times. (_Looks round the hall while Alva fills two glasses._) Where's my picture gone?

ALVA. I've got it in my room, so no one shall see it here.

LULU. Bring it down here now.

ALVA. Didn't you even lose your vanity in prison?

LULU. How anxious at heart one gets when one hasn't seen herself for months! One day I got a brand-new dust-pan. When I swept up at seven in the morning I held the back of it up before my face. Tin doesn't flatter, but I took pleasure in it all the same.--Bring the picture down from your room. Shall I come too?

ALVA. No, Heaven's sake! You must spare yourself!

LULU. I've been sparing myself long enough now! (_Alva goes out, right, to get the picture._) He has heart-trouble; but to have to plague one's self with imagination fourteen months!... He kisses with the fear of death on him, and his two knees shake like a frozen vagabond's. In God's name.... In this room--if only I had not shot his father in the back!

ALVA. (_Returns with the picture of Lulu in the Pierrot-dress._) It's covered with dust. I had leant it against the fire-place, face to the wall.

LULU. You didn't look at it all the time I was away?

ALVA. I had so much business to attend to, with the sale of our paper and everything. Countess Geschwitz would have liked to have hung it up in her house, but she had to be prepared for search-warrants. (_He puts the picture on the easel._)

LULU. (_Merrily._) Now the poor monster is learning the joys of life in Hotel Ox-butter by her own experience.

ALVA. Even now I don't understand how events hang together.

LULU. Oh, Geschwitz arranged it all very cleverly. I must admire her inventiveness. But the cholera must have raged fearfully in Hamburg this summer; and on that she founded her plan for freeing me. She took a course in hospital nursing here, and when she had the necessary documents she journeyed to Hamburg with them and nursed the cholera patients. At the first opportunity that offered she put on the underclothes in which a sick woman had just died and which really ought to have been burnt. The same morning she traveled back here and came to see me in prison. In my cell, while the wardress was outside, we, as quick as we could, exchanged underclothes.

ALVA. So that was the reason why the Countess and you fell sick of the cholera the same day!

LULU. Exactly, that was it! Geschwitz of course was instantly brought from her house to the contagious ward in the hospital. But with me, too, they couldn't think of any other place to take me. So there we lay in one room in the contagious ward behind the hospital, and from the first day Geschwitz put forth all her art to make our two faces as like each other as possible. Day before yesterday she was let out as cured. Just now she came back and said she'd forgotten her watch.

I put on her clothes, she slipped into my prison frock, and then I came away. (_With pleasure._) Now she's lying over there as the murderess of Dr. Schon.

ALVA. So far as outward appearance goes you can still agree with the picture as much as ever.

LULU. I'm a little peaked in the face, but otherwise I've lost nothing. Only one gets incredibly nervous in prison.

ALVA. You looked horribly sick when you came in.

LULU. I had to, to get our necks out of the noose.--And you? What have you done in this year and a half?

ALVA. I've had a succes d'estime in literary circles with a play I wrote about you.

LULU. Who's your sweetheart now?

ALVA. An actress I've rented a house for in Karl Street.

LULU. Does she love you?

ALVA. How should I know that? I haven't seen the woman for six weeks.

LULU. Can you stand that?

ALVA. You will never understand that. With me there's the closest alternation between my sensuality and mental creativeness. So towards you, for example, I have only the choice of regarding you artistically or of loving you.

LULU. (_In a fairy-story tone._) I used to dream every other night that I'd fallen into the hands of a sadic.... Come, give me a kiss!

ALVA. It's shining in your eyes like the water in a deep well one has just thrown a stone into.

LULU. Come!

ALVA. (_Kisses her._) Your lips have got pretty thin, anyway.

LULU. Come! (_Pushes him into a chair and seats herself on his knee._) Do you shudder at me?--In Hotel Ox-butter we all got a luke-warm bath every four weeks. The wardresses took that opportunity to search our pockets as soon as we were in the water. (_She kisses him passionately._)

ALVA. Oh, oh!

LULU. You're afraid that when I'm away you couldn't write any more poems about me?

ALVA. On the contrary, I shall write a dithyramb upon thy glory.

LULU. I'm only sore about the hideous shoes I'm wearing.

ALVA. They do not encroach upon your charms. Let us be thankful for the favor of this moment.

LULU. I don't feel at all like that to-day.--Do you remember the costume ball where I was dressed like a knight's squire? How those wine-full women ran after me that time? Geschwitz crawled round, round my feet, and begged me to step on her face with my cloth shoes.

ALVA. Come, dear heart!

LULU. (_In the tone with which one quiets a restless child._) Quietly! I shot your father.

Chapter end