Jacques and his master, p.7
Jacques and his Master, page 7
The MASTER turns towards JACQUES and during the rest of the dialogue comes down from the rostrum.
MASTER: If only he were just a halfwit, little Jacques. He’s an unhappy halfwit, and that’s worse. I came out of prison, but not before paying considerable damages for the outrage committed against the young lady’s honour…
JACQUES: (Consolingly) Could’ve ended up even worse, Master. What if she’d got pregnant!
MASTER: You guessed.
JACQUES: What?
MASTER: Yes.
JACQUES: Not – large with child? (The MASTER nods:JACQUES takes him in his arms.) Master – my poor little master. I do see now that is the worst possible ending a story could have.
(During this whole scene, the dialogue between JACQUES and his MASTER is imbued with genuine sadness and is quite without comedy.)
MASTER: Not only did I have to pay for that little trollop’s honour, but I was condemned to undertake the costs of her delivery and make provision for the upbringing and education of a brat who bore a quite disgusting resemblance to my friend Saint-Ouen.
JACQUES: Now I see: the worst possible ending a human story can have, is a brat. The sinister full stop to an adventure. The blot at the end of love. And how old would Monsieur your son be now?
MASTER: Ten, any day now. He’s been in the country all this time. I’m taking the opportunity on this journey of ours to stop at the house of the people who’ve been looking after him to pay them off and fix the snotty-nosed little pipsqueak an apprenticeship somewhere.
JACQUES: You remember that at the beginning that lot (Gesturing to the audience) asked where we were going, and I replied: who knows where he’s going? – Well, you knew all too well where we were going, my sad little master.
MASTER: I want to make a watchmaker out of him. Or a carpenter. A carpenter for preference. He’ll turn out endless chair rungs, and he’ll produce children who will turn out more chair-rungs, and more children, and those children will in turn turn out innumerable more chairs and innumerable more children…
JACQUES: So the world will be crammed with chairs and children. That’ll be your revenge.
MASTER: (With bitter disgust) Grass will no longer grow. Flowers will stop flowering, and everywhere there will be only chairs and children.
JACQUES: Chairs and children, nothing but chairs and children. What a frightening vision of the future. We’re lucky, Master. We’re dying in time.
MASTER: (Thoughtfully) I do hope so, Jacques, because sometimes I fill with anguish at the idea of this unending repetition of children, of chairs, and of everything… You know, yesterday evening, listening to the story of Mme de La Pommeraye, I said to myself: isn’t it always the same story which never changes? Because in the end, Mme de La Pommeraye is just a replica of Saint-Ouen. And I’m only another version of your poor friend Bigre and Bigre is nothing but the image of that dupe of a Marquis. And I see no difference between Justine and Agathe and Agathe is a double of that little tramp the Marquis finally felt himself forced to marry.
JACQUES: (Thoughtfully) Yes sir, it’s like a merry-go-round. You know, my grandpa, the one who put a gag round my mouth, used to read the Bible every night, but it didn’t always please him, he used to say that even the Bible endlessly repeated itself, and repetition takes its listeners for imbeciles. And you know what I’ve been wondering, sir, Whether the one who does all the writing up there hasn’t repeated himself an incredible amount and whether he, too, doesn’t take us for imbeciles… (JACQUES falls silent and the MASTER, sad, makes no reply; a silence, then JACQUES makes himself comfort his MASTER again.) Lord above, Master! Don’t be sad, I’ll do anything to cheer you up: tell you what, Master: I’ll tell you how I fell in love.
MASTER: (Melancholy) Tell me, Jacques.
JACQUES: When I lost my cherry, I got arseholed.
MASTER: Yes, I know that already.
JACQUES: Oh, don’t be cross. I’m going straight on to the surgeon’s wife.
MASTER: Is she the one you fell in love with?
JACQUES: No.
MASTER: (Looking round him with sudden suspicion) Spare me then and get to the point.
JACQUES: What’s the hurry, Master?
MASTER: Something tells me, Jacques, that we haven’t got much time left.
JACQUES: You’re frightening me, Master.
MASTER: Something tells me you should get on with finishing your story.
JACQUES: Right. I’d been at the surgeon’s for a week when I finally was able to get up for the first time.
(JACQUES is involved in his speech and looks at the audience rather than at his MASTER who is becoming more and more interested in the scenery.)
JACQUES: It was a lovely day, and I drank even more…
MASTER: I think we’re just coming to the village where my bastard lives, Jacques.
JACQUES: Sir! You’re interrupting at the most beautiful moment. I was still limping badly, I was getting even weaker at the knees, but – it was a lovely day, I can see it as if it was now.
(Downstage, SAINT-OUEN suddenly appears. He doesn’t see the MASTER. But the MASTER sees and watches him. JACQUES is facing the audience and is totally absorbed in his speech.) It was autumn, sir, the trees were multi-coloured, the sky was blue, and I went down a forest lane, when I saw this girl who was coming towards me to meet me, and I know you’re not going to interrupt me, so, it was a lovely day, and this girl came towards me, please don’t interrupt me, sir, she was just about to meet me, slowly, you know, and she was looking at me, and I was looking at her, and she had this beautiful, sad face, sir, her face was sad, and so beautiful…
SAINT-OUEN: (Finally spots the MASTER, and jumps in the air) You! My friend…
(The MASTER draws his sword: SAINT-OUEN does the same.)
MASTER: Yes, me. Your friend, the best friend you ever had.
(Throws himself at him; the two men fight) What are you doing here? Come to see your son, have you? See if he’s fat enough? Find out if I’ve plumped him up properly?
JACQUES: (Watches the fight with dread) Watch out, sir, take care!
(The duel doesn’t last long and SAINT-OUEN lurches back, wounded. JACQUES bends over him.)
I think he’s had it. Sir: I think this should never have happened.
(JACQUES bends over SAINT-OUEN’s corpse while peasants rush on stage.)
MASTER: Jacques, quick, run!
(He leaves the stage running.)
SCENE FIVE
JACQUES has not succeeded in fleeing. Several peasants have laid hands on him and are holding him with his hands behind his back. JACQUES, his hands bound, is at the back of the stage. The CONSTABLE looks him up and down with contempt.
CONSTABLE: Well, chum, whatchew got to say about all this, eh? You’re going to be thrown into prison, tried and hanged.
JACQUES: (Standing up, at the back of the stage, with his hands tied behind his back) I can only tell you what my old captain always used to say: everything that happens down here is written up there.
CONSTABLE: A great truth, that.
(He leaves slowly with the other peasants and JACQUES remains alone on stage throughout the ensuing speech.)
JACQUES: One can obviously ask the price of what is written up there. Ah master! You think there’s any wisdom in my ending my days hanged because you were in love with Agathe? And you’ll never find out how I fell in love. That sad beautiful girl was a maid at the château, and I’d been hired at the château as a servant, but you’ll never know the end of the story, because they’re going to hang me, she was called Denise and I loved her a lot, I never loved anyone again after her, but we only knew each other for a fortnight, will you just think of that, sir, only a fortnight, a fortnight because my then master, who was also Denise’s master, gave me to the Comte de Boulay, who then gave me to his elder brother the Captain, who gave me to his nephew, the advocate general of Toulouse, who then gave me to the Comte de Trouville, then the Comte de Trouville gave me to the Marquise de Bellow, who escaped from London with an Englishman, and a nice little scandal that was too, but before fleeing she took the time to recommend me to Captain de Marty, yes, sir, the very one who used to say that everything was written up there, and Captain de Marty gave me to M. Herissant who got me into Mlle Isselin’s that you were keeping but who drove you mad because she was thin and hysterical and while she was driving you mad I used to take your mind off it with my old chat and you got fond of me and you would have fed me in my old age, because you promised you would and I know you would have kept your word, we would never have left each other, we were made for each other. Jacques for his Master, his Master for Jacques. And now look at us, apart because of a stupid thing like this. Good God, what’s it got to do with me that you let yourself be made an arse of by that rat? Why do I have to be hanged because you’ve got a good heart and rotten taste? The rubbish that’s written up there! Oh, sir, the guy who wrote our story up there must be a really bad poet, the worst bad poet ever, the king, the emperor of bad poets!
YOUNG BIGRE: (Has appeared at the back of the stage during JACQUES’s last words: he looks at him questioningly, then calls him) Jacques!
JACQUES: (Not looking at him) Fuck off.
YOUNG BIGRE: That you, Jacques?
JACQUES: Fuck off, the lot of you. I’m talking to my master.
YOUNG BIGRE: Jesus, Jacques, don’t you recognize me, then?
(He grabs JACQUES and turns him round.)
JACQUES: Bigre…
YOUNG BIGRE: What they tied your hands up for?
JACQUES: They’re going to hang me.
YOUNG BIGRE: Hang you? No … my friend. I’m glad to say there are still a few friends around who remember their friends. (He unties the strings binding JACQUES’s hands, then turns him round and takes him in his arms. JACQUES, in BIGRE’s arms, laughs deeply.) What are you laughing for?
JACQUES: I’ve just been badmouthing a bad poet for being such a bad poet, and now he rushes you along to put his bad poem right and, Bigre, I tell you: even the worst poet in the world couldn’t have made up a happier ending to his bad poem.
YOUNG BIGRE: I dunno what you’re going on about, but it don’t matter. I’ve never forgotten you, you know. Remember that granary? (Now he laughs and slaps JACQUES’s back; JACQUES laughs too.) See it? (Points to the steps, at the back of the stage) That’s not a granary, my old mate. It’s a bloody chapel. It’s a temple to faithful friendship. Jacques, you can’t begin to guess the happiness you brought us. You signed up for the army, I remember, and one month later, I learned that Justine…
(He pauses meaningfully.)
JACQUES: Justine. Justine what?
YOUNG BIGRE: Justine (Another meaningful pause) was going to have (Silence) Go on! Guess! … a kid!
JACQUES: You realized one month after I signed up?
YOUNG BIGRE: My dad couldn’t say another word after that. He had to agree to my marrying Justine and eight months later … (Eloquent pause.)
JACQUES: What was it?
YOUNG BIGRE: A boy.
JACQUES: He all right, is he?
YOUNG BIGRE: (Proudly) What! We called him Jacques in your honour. You’ll never believe it, but he even looks a bit like you. You’ve gotta come and see him. Justine’ll be delirious.
JACQUES: (Turning back) Dear little master: our stories are comically similar …
(YOUNG BIGRE leads JACQUES gaily off; they leave.)
SCENE SIX
MASTER: (Comes on to the empty stage. He looks unhappy.) Jacques! Little Jacquot! (Looks around him) Since I lost you, the stage is deserted, like the world, and the world is deserted like an empty stage … what wouldn’t I give to have you tell me the story of the Sheath and the Cutlass again. It’s a disgusting story. That’s why I used to deny it, reject it, declare it null and void: so that you could tell it again, and tell each time as if it were the first time… Ah, little Jacques! if only I could also repudiate the story of Saint-Ouen… But only your lovely stories can be repudiated and there’s no going back on my stupid escapade and I’m well and truly in it up to the neck and I’m in it without you and without those wonderful bums that you could summon up with a single light movement of those eloquent lips of yours… (He starts reciting in a dreamy voice as if he were speaking blank verse.) Those buttocks round and curvéd like the moon!… (Normal voice) But you were right. We don’t know where we’re going. I thought I was going to visit my little bastard and I went and lost my dear little Jacques for ever and ever.
JACQUES: (Coming towards him from the other side of the stage) Little master!
MASTER: (Turning round, astonished) Jacques!
JACQUES: Well, you know what the Innkeeper said, that splendid woman with her imposing rear: we can’t live without each other. (MASTER is gripped with powerful emotion: JACQUES comforts him in his arms.) There, there, come on, tell me where we’re going.
MASTER: Does anyone know where they’re going?
JACQUES: Not a person in the world.
MASTER: Not one.
JACQUES: Well then, lead me.
MASTER: How can I lead you when we don’t know where we’re going?
JACQUES: As written up there. You’re my master and it’s your mission in life to lead me.
MASTER: Ah yes, but you’ve forgotten what’s written a little further on. It is indeed the master who gives the orders, but it’s Jacques who chooses which ones. I’m waiting.
JACQUES: Right. I want you to lead me … forwards.
MASTER: (Looking around, rather embarrassed)I’d love to, but – where is forward?
JACQUES: I’ll tell you a great secret. One of mankind’s oldest insights. Forward is anywhere.
MASTER: (Looking around him in a wide arc) Anywhere?
JACQUES: (Describing a circle with a broad gesture of his arm) No matter where you look, anywhere is forward.
MASTER: (Without enthusiasm) Oh that’s magnificent, Jacques! Magnificent!
(He slowly turns round.)
JACQUES: (With melancholy) Yes sir, I find it rather marvellous, too.
MASTER: (After a brief bit of business, sadly) Well then, Jacques: forward!
(They slant themselves towards the back of the stage.)
HOMAGE TO TRANSLATOR
One day I saw my old Prague friend Milos Forman’s film Amadeus, and greatly admired one of the actors, Simon Callow. Next day I heard that he wanted to play Jacques in my Jacques and his Master. Moreover, he wanted to translate the play himself.
It’s not so very common for an actor to be prepared, in order to play a part, to turn translator. Didn’t Callow like the existing translations?
Ah, translations! All my writing life I have been traumatized by unfaithful translation. My first novel, The Joke, was published in England in 1969, abridged and recomposed. I was obliged to publish a letter in the Times Literary Supplement begging my (eventual) readers not to buy my book.
Recently, one of my publishers sent me a manuscript of the translation for revision. Why so many errors? Then I understood. These were no errors. The unfaithfulness was systematic. The translator wanted to produce a good text in his language, and in order to do so, he was at pains to forget that the text was not his own. He strove to think, to feel, to imagine himself into my place. To loosen himself up, to give himself courage, he always added at least one little word of his own. He systematically reversed my syntax … Ah, translations! Ah, demon of rewriting!
By chance, just around that time, a young woman came to see me. She had written a theatrical version (‘very free’, she proudly announced) of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. She wanted to direct the piece and play Gregory Samsa. Seeing my astonishment, she became suddenly aggressive: ‘It surprises you that Gregory Samsa should become a woman? His sex is absolutely unimportant! What I consider important is his desire to love! As a human being he feels alienated. Metamorphosed into a beetle, he rediscovers love. You understand?’ I understood. The young woman had been possessed by the demon of rewriting.
But isn’t Jacques and his Master a rewriting, too? And Stravinsky’s Pulcinella? Is that a rewriting? No. Because in it, Stravinsky assumes his full authorial authority. He doesn’t hide behind Pergolesi, he plays with him. His music is a ludic dialogue between the two centuries.
In the case of my play, my hommage to Diderot, the game is, I hope, just as clear: for example, the master’s speech about bad poets is in its first section faithful to Diderot, in the second not only entirely my invention, but an invention barely thinkable in the century of the lumières. Real Diderot is thus constantly succeeded by false Diderot, the eighteenth century’s smile at a provocative paradox inspired by our century. One of the modern themes of which Diderot had no idea but which obsesses my two heroes is precisely the horror of rewriting: the master sums up a discussion with Jacques: ‘Death to people who rewrite what’s already been written! I’d like to see them skewered and barbecued. They should have their balls and ears cut off!’
The doubt seized me: won’t this English actor want to rewrite what’s already been written, too? Then Robert McCrum, my English publisher, telephoned me. He had read the translation. He was delighted. He was enchanted. Next day, I received the text. I was delighted too. The vocabulary was rich, the tone was natural, everything was beautiful – and absolutely faithful! Improbably faithful!
All my life I’ve had this imbecilic saw quoted at me: translations are like women: when they’re beautiful they aren’t faithful, when they’re faithful they aren’t beautiful. At last, irrefutable proof: translations are only truly beautiful when they’re faithful. But how is it possible that my most beautiful, most faithful translation should be the work of an actor who’d never translated anything before? What is the meaning of this?
Simon Callow sent me his book Being an Actor. I read it, I was swept away with excitement. And suddenly everything came clear. God! My famous actor, my best translator, knew the same sufferings I did, the same rages. We had the same enemies. In his last chapter, ‘Manifesto’, he speaks of the situation of actors faced with the tyranny of directors: ‘These directors have realized that their greatest power is over the text; through that they can control other aspects of the theatre.’ (Which is why the young woman found it more attractive to rewrite Kafka’s novella than to direct a play. Rewriting eliminates the author and secures for the director an area of unlimited freedom in which Gregory Samsa can be man, woman, child, angel or dog.) ‘The idea of a director’s style or indeed a company’s style seems inherently to threaten the individuality of the work itself.’ (Indeed, that’s why I long ago gave up going to the theatre in Paris. I like my authors too much.) ‘The style of the eighties is a playing style, not the style of the plays.’ And in conclusion: ‘The important thing is to restore the writer and the actor to each other… We don’t need an interpreter – we speak the same language.’
