An Inspector Calls and Other Plays Page 16

  FARRANT [almost savagely]: Wait a minute. [Turning on DR GÖRTLER] How did you induce these dreams of yours?

  DR GÖRTLER: They weren’t dreams. They were actual memories.

  FARRANT: Memories of what?

  DR GÖRTLER: Of past cycles of my own life.

  FARRANT: You’re contradicting yourself – on your own ridiculous theory. You said you were then as you are now, an exile living in London.

  DR GÖRTLER: Why not? I have been an exile in London in past cycles of my life. We repeat our lives, with some differences, over and over again.

  FARRANT: You can’t expect us to believe that.

  DR GÖRTLER: My friend, I do not care whether you believe it or not. You asked me to explain and I am explaining.

  FARRANT: Yes, but you’re not merely airing a fantastic theory now, you’re interfering in our affairs. How did you induce these states of mind?

  DR GÖRTLER: By a certain method I have developed. We have to change the focus of attention, which we have trained ourselves to concentrate on the present. My problem was to drift away from the present – as we do in dreams – and yet be attentive, noticing everything –

  FARRANT [with savage intensity]: Yes, yes, but how did you do it? By going without food, I suppose?

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes, to some extent.

  FARRANT: I thought so. And did you use drugs?

  DR GÖRTLER: A German colleague found a certain narcotic for me –

  FARRANT [triumphantly to JANET]: I knew it. You see. I suspected that all along. He’s starved himself and drugged himself and let himself be hag-ridden by a completely illogical fantastic theory of life, and then comes here with a story of some ridiculous dream he had –

  ORMUND [cutting in, quietly but sharply]: Then what are we all doing, playing such convincing parts in it?

  [There is silence. ORMUND moves nearer the door.]

  DR GÖRTLER [quietly]: I expected this. But it was you who asked me to explain. I have given you my explanation.

  JANET [with a sort of quiet despair]: I believe it’s true.

  FARRANT [angry and resentful]: Janet, you can’t.

  JANET: Yes. It accounts for so many things. [To DR GÖRTLER] But afterwards – when you had made your notes –?

  DR GÖRTLER: That was three months ago. I soon found that these things had not yet happened in this cycle of your lives – because I discovered at once that Mr Oliver Farrant was still the headmaster of Lamberton School –

  JANET: You had our names?

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes, of course.

  FARRANT: What proof have we of that?

  DR GÖRTLER: I think you read German? My handwriting is not good, but you can read enough, I hope, to convince you. [He hands over the notebook, open, to FARRANT, who takes it and stares at it in amazement. ORMUND ; after watching FARRANT’s face a moment, slips out quietly by door to dining-room.] You will see I had not the actual name of the inn – only an idea of the sort of place it was and its situation among these hills.

  FARRANT [handing back the notebook]: I don’t understand this. Must be some sort of clairvoyance, clairaudience. I believe there are instances –

  [DR GÖRTLER shakes his head, with a little smile.]

  DR GÖRTLER: So I came here for this Whitsuntide holiday. At first, when two of you were not even expected here, I thought I had chosen the wrong year. But no. I was fortunate.

  JANET: That’s why – you asked those questions –?

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes. I also found that you were all closely interdependent. And I saw also that two of you were so instantly and fatally attracted that you were superficially resentful of one another. It was like watching a performance of a play that one has first read carefully.

  JANET [wildly]: You’re talking as if we were marionettes, with no minds and wills of our own.

  FARRANT [resentfully]: Going round and round. It’s a monstrous, hellish theory.

  DR GÖRTLER: Yet – what have you felt these last two days? Have you felt you had minds and wills of your own?

  JANET: No. [Then with a sort of despairing energy] But – Dr Görtler – we’re not really like that. I know – I know we’re not. We can make our own lives, can’t we?

  DR GÖRTLER: Once we know, yes. It is knowledge alone that gives us freedom. I believe that the very grooves in which our lives run are created by our feeling, imagination and will. If we know and then make the effort, we can change our lives. We are not going round and round in hell. And we can help each other.

  JANET: How?

  DR GÖRTLER: If I have more knowledge than you, then I can intervene, like a man who stops you on a journey to tell you that the road ahead is flooded. That was the further experiment I had hoped to make. To intervene.

  JANET [pointing to the notebook]: Recurrence and Intervention.

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes. That seemed possible, too. I discovered some things I did not know before. Two of you, troubled by memories, were instantly attracted to each other. That I expected. But the third –

  JANET: You mean Walter?

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes. The one I had not met before, I soon discovered that he was a man who felt he had a tragic destiny and was moving nearer and nearer to self-destruction –

  JANET [startled]: Suicide!

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes, that was why the great business collapsed, why so many were ruined, why everybody knew the story. You told me when you left him, ran away, your husband went into the garage here and shot himself –

  JANET [looking round]: Walter! [Sees he is not there.] Where did he go?

  FARRANT [pointing to main door]: Not that way.

  JANET [urgently]: Dr Görtler, he keeps a revolver in one of the pockets of his car. Will you go and get it for me, please?

  DR GÖRTLER [gravely]: Yes, that would be better. [Moves towards door, and then turns.] That is one thing to do, but there are others, more important.

  JANET [quietly]: Yes, I understand.

  [DR GÖRTLER goes out. FARRANT turns eagerly to JANET.]

  FARRANT [with passion]: Janet – you’re not going to let that fantastic stuff of his make any difference to us?

  JANET [urgently]: But – you see, Oliver, I believe it. It explains so many things I couldn’t understand before. It explains us – why it’s all happened so quickly between us. And it explains why I’ve never felt happy about it, why there’s been a great shadow over it all. [Pauses, then announces quietly] So you must go. But I must stay.

  FARRANT: Janet, if you’d told me to go last night, I’d have gone without a word. But after what we’ve said to one another today, I can’t go without you, I can’t.

  JANET: You must, Oliver.

  FARRANT [pleading]: But nothing’s been really changed. We’re exactly the same people that we were an hour ago. If it was impossible for you to stay here with Ormund then, it’s impossible now. We still feel the same about each other. Can’t you see, Janet, everything’s just the same?

  JANET [distressed]: No it isn’t, because now we know more.

  FARRANT: We know nothing. My God, Janet, you’re not going back on everything we’ve said, everything we’ve planned, because of this old German’s mystical rubbish?

  JANET: Oh – my dear – I must. I feel it’s true – here – [Putting a hand over her heart.] Just as I feel the truth of my love and yours.

  FARRANT: But now it means tearing our lives in two.

  JANET: But it’s better to do that than tear so many other people’s lives in two – only to find in the end we’d lost one another. And this can’t be for ever, you know.

  FARRANT [bitterly]: It can for me. I happen to know I’ve only one life, not dozens of ’em like the rest of you. Only one, and now it’s in bits – [Almost breaking down.] Oh – Janet – and you’ll do nothing to mend it –

  [This is almost inaudible, as she is now trying to comfort him, with great tenderness.]

  JANET [very quietly]: No, my dear, if this wasn’t the beginning, then this can’t be the end of it all. There must be some
where – our own place, our own time. [Taking his face between her hands.] Let me look at you.

  FARRANT [almost mumbling]: Why? What does it matter now?

  JANET: I’m trying to make myself remember every single line of your face. And I know I shan’t. Very soon I shall try to see it again, and there’ll be nothing but a blur while hundreds of faces that mean nothing will come between us. It’s a hard world for love, Oliver. Even the memory of its face won’t stay to comfort us.

  [Enter DR GÖRTLER. JANET and OLIVER are now apart again.]

  DR GÖRTLER: The revolver is not there now. And it was there yesterday.

  JANET [hurriedly]: Will you please find my husband – tell him I am saying good-bye to Oliver – and stay with him until I come in again? Oliver –

  [He watches OLIVER go with JANET through door. Before JANET has closed the door behind them, DR GÖRTLER moves towards door to the dining-room and calls.]

  DR GÖRTLER: Ormund. Ormund.

  [ORMUND enters looking rather wild.]

  ORMUND: Where are they?

  DR GÖRTLER: Out there – but they are saying good-bye.

  ORMUND: Good-bye?

  DR GÖRTLER: He is going. She will stay with you. [Pauses.] She sent me to find your revolver, but it was not there.

  ORMUND: No, because it’s here.

  [Pulls it out of his pocket.]

  DR GÖRTLER: It would be better to give that to me.

  ORMUND: If I’d any sense I’d use it. No more questions that can’t be answered, twisting like knives in your guts. Sleep, a good sleep, the only good sleep.

  DR GÖRTLER: I am afraid you will be disappointed. It will be a sleep full of dreams – like this. And the questions will be still there. You cannot blow them to bits with a pistol. But why should you want to try now? It is all different.

  ORMUND: I don’t see any difference.

  DR GÖRTLER: Your wife will not leave you now. And perhaps she will be changed a little – with a new kindness.

  ORMUND: I don’t want her kindness. Let her go.

  DR GÖRTLER: But now she does not want to go.

  ORMUND: Yes, she does. But she’s afraid to. And I’ve lost her, whether she goes or stays, so there’s no difference. She can’t keep me alive simply by staying by my side.

  DR GÖRTLER: No one can keep you alive but yourself.

  ORMUND: And I don’t want to go on living.

  DR GÖRTLER [dryly]: I am not going to cry over you, my friend.

  ORMUND [angrily]: Who the devil asked you to?

  DR GÖRTLER: But I must remind you – there’s no escape.

  ORMUND: No? I suppose because you believe that if I take the jump into the dark, I’ll find myself back again on the old treadmill. Well, I don’t believe it. I can find peace.

  DR GÖRTLER: You can’t. Peace is not somewhere just waiting for you.

  ORMUND: Where is it then?

  DR GÖRTLER: You have to create it.

  ORMUND: How could I? You’ve some idea of what’s gone on in my head these last twenty years. Where’s the peace coming from?

  DR GÖRTLER [sternly]: If you must talk and act like a child, then at least be as humble as a child. If you cannot create your own peace, then pray for it. Go down on your knees and ask for it. If you have no knowledge, then have faith.

  ORMUND: Faith in what? Fairy tales?

  DR GÖRTLER [with authority and passion]: Yes, my friend – if you will – in fairy tales.

  ORMUND: I’ve lived too long – and thought too much – to begin now –

  DR GÖRTLER: I have lived longer than you. I have thought more, and I have suffered more. And I tell you there is more truth to the fundamental nature of things in the most foolish fairy tales than there is in any of your complaints against life.

  ORMUND: Rubbish! Why?

  DR GÖRTLER: Because all events are shaped in the end by magic –

  ORMUND [scornfully]: Yes, I thought we’d come to that. Magic!

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes. The creative magic of our feeling, imagination and will. These are the realities – our feeling, imagination, and will – and all our histories are their dreams.

  ORMUND: All very easy!

  DR GÖRTLER [with passion]: It is not easy. Life is not easy. It provides no short cuts, no effortless escapes. Peace and ecstasy are not laid on like hot and cold water.

  ORMUND [with savage irony]: You needn’t tell me that. I know it.

  DR GÖRTLER: Yes, but you do not know – you will not understand – that life is penetrated through and through by our feeling, imagination and will. In the end the whole universe must respond to every real effort we make. We each live a fairy tale created by ourselves.

  ORMUND: What – by going round and round the same damned dreary circle of existence, as you believe?

  DR GÖRTLER: We do not go round a circle. That is an illusion, just as the circling of the planets and stars is an illusion. We move along a spiral track. It is not quite the same journey from the cradle to the grave each time. Sometimes the differences are small, sometimes they are very important. We must set out each time on the same road but along that road we have a choice of adventures.

  ORMUND: I wish I could believe that, Görtler.

  DR GÖRTLER: What has happened before – many times perhaps – will probably happen again. That is why some people can prophesy what is to happen. They do not see the future, as they think, but the past, what has happened before. But something new may happen. You may have brought your wife here for this holiday over and over again. She may have met Farrant here over and over again. But you and I have not talked here before. This is new. This may be one of those great moments of our lives.

  ORMUND: And which are they?

  DR GÖRTLER [impressively]: When a soul can make a fateful decision. I see this as such a moment for you, Ormund. You can return to the old dark circle of existence, dying endless deaths, or you can break the spell and swing out into new life.

  ORMUND [after a pause, staring at DR GÖRTLER, then with a certain breadth and nobility of manner]: New life! I wish I could believe that. They’ve never told me yet about a God so generous and noble and wise that he won’t allow a few decisions that we make in our ignorance, haste and bewilderment to settle our fate for ever. Why should this poor improvisation be our whole existence? Why should this great theatre of suns and moons and starlight have been created for the first pitiful charade we can contrive?

  DR GÖRTLER: It was not. We must play our parts until the drama is perfect.

  ORMUND [very slowly]: I think what I’ve resented most is that the only wisdom we have is wisdom after the event. We learn, but always too late. When I was no longer a boy, I knew at last what sort of boy I ought to have been. By the time we are forty, we know how to behave at twenty. Always too late. So that the little wisdom we get is useless to us.

  DR GÖRTLER [very quietly]: In your world. Not in mine.

  [ORMUND stands erect, but with his head bowed for a moment. DR GÖRTLER watches him in silence, without moving. Finally ORMUND slips the revolver into his pocket and looks up, obviously having arrived at a decision.]

  Well?

  ORMUND [very quietly]: At least we can improve on this Whitsuntide drama of yours. I’ll live. [Pauses.] But on nobody’s self-sacrifice. Ask my wife to come in here for a moment. I can’t talk to her out there with Farrant. And please tell Farrant to stop out there.

  [DR GÖRTLER nods and goes. ORMUND takes out the revolver and begins unloading it, then pockets it again as JANET slowly enters, and looks anxiously at him.]

  JANET [quietly]: I was just saying good-bye to Oliver.

  ORMUND: Yes.

  JANET: You understand – I’m not leaving you now.

  ORMUND: You love him. He loves you. You are certain of that.

  JANET: Yes, absolutely certain.

  [He looks at her gravely for a moment, turns away restlessly, then swings round almost savagely.]

  ORMUND: Go on then. Go with him.

  JA
NET [suddenly lighting up with great hope]: Walter! [Then she realizes it could not work, and the eagerness and light go.] I couldn’t – you see – not now when I know –

  ORMUND [harshly]: You don’t know. How could you?

  JANET: Dr Görtler said –

  ORMUND [cutting in sharply]: These are our lives, not his. Go, I tell you. There’ll be no suicide, no scandal, no disasters. Everything’ll go on. You can depend on me.

  JANET [with growing excitement and eagerness]: Oh – Walter – are you sure? If only I could –

  ORMUND [with a touch of impatience]: I tell you it’s all right. Farrant’s only got to take you away now for a little time, perhaps abroad, and then go quietly back to his work. And whatever happens, I’ll see he’s not howled out of his school.

  JANET [she is radiant now, and speaks confusedly]: Walter – I can’t – is it really true? – oh, I can’t talk – I’m too happy –

  ORMUND [with a touch of bitterness]: Yes, I never remember seeing you so happy before.

  JANET [eagerly]: It’s not just for myself – or even for Oliver – but for you too, Walter. You’ve changed everything now.

  ORMUND [with a slight effort]: All right, keep on being happy then, Janet. You were meant to be happy, to be radiant. I always wanted you to be – but somehow it didn’t work. Now – it seems – it’s working.

  JANET [looking at him, slowly, with great affection]: Walter – something tremendous has happened to you –

  ORMUND: I wonder. [Looks at her, then slowly smiles.]

  JANET: Yes. You’re suddenly quite different. And yet – as you always ought to have been. I know now – you’re bigger than I am – bigger than Oliver. I think – now – you’ll be a great man, Walter.

  ORMUND: Not a chance. I’ll never be a great man. There aren’t many of them, and you have to stand a long way off to see their true size. Perhaps I’m at last – a man – a real man – and not a mere bundle of fears and self-indulgences.

  JANET: That’s not how I shall think of you. What will you do now?

  ORMUND: Stay here tonight, probably tomorrow night, too. And try and think. I’ve never done much real thinking. I’ve always been afraid to.

  [SALLY enters, hesitantly and anxiously. ORMUND turns and sees her.]