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• The Invaders : Act One, Scene One

The Invaders, translated by Camilla Van Erkelens

Act One, Scene One

Context:

This is the opening of the play

Sample text

Staging: an upper middle class bourgeois sitting room.  It could be anywhere; they are all the same.  What’s important is that nothing should look cheap.  To the left a raised porch, with the front door out onto the street.  In the background, the staircase up to the second floor.  To the right, a door which leads to the kitchen and a window which looks out on to the park.

When the curtain comes up, it’s after dark.  Night.  After a moment, the sound of voices outside, keys in the door, and then a hand switches on the light.

Lucas Meyer and his wife Pietá enter.  They are dressed in formal attire, with restrained elegance.  As soon as the lights are on, Pietá throws herself into the middle of the room.  She spreads her arms and spins around.

PIETA: (Radiant.)

Oh Lucas, it’s wonderful ... wonderful! (Spins around.) Life is a dream! … a dream! (She lifts her hands to her temples and looks to the heavens.) Come here! (Meyer draws near to her. And embraces her from behind; without looking at him, keeping her eyes upwards.) Has there ever been any kind of a ‘quarrel’ between us? ... One of these terrible quarrels, muffled ... like other people have between each other? (Meyer says nothing and shakes his head.) Only little quarrels? (Meyer nods. Pietá turns and kisses him passionately.) Why? ... Because we’re rich? ...

MEYER:

I can ...

PIETA:

Rich ... rich ... rich ... rich ... rich ... What does it mean? ... Rich! (Both laugh.) What does it mean?

MEYER:

Happiness ...

PIETA:

Yes, free as birds ... Twelve hours soaking up the sun ... And, at night, fragrances ... But, is all of this solid?

MEYER:

Solid? Why wouldn’t it be?

PIETA:

I don’t know ... It scares me ... When everything goes well, I get scared.

MEYER:

I have enjoyed the night, looking at you ... You’re glowing. (He kisses her.)

PIETA:

Yes, I’m beautiful ... I feel beautiful ... It’s you, Lucas ... Everything you surround me with, makes me all the more beautiful.

MEYER: (Squeezing her waist.)

Such a tiny waist ... (Touches her hips, kisses her neck.) You’re a fine woman, Pietá ... Woman with a capital ‘W’ ... my woman ... You make me forget that I’m getting old. That isn’t good; it’s unnatural.

PIETA: (With sensual flirtation.)

Do you blame me?

MEYER:

You know I don’t, but ... I’m fifty years old, woman.

PIETA: (Touches the tip of his nose with her gloved finger.)

During the day at the factory, when you dictate to your secretary and you put on that serious look, perhaps, but at night, you’re eternal ... I’ll be the first to assure you of that ... (Gently ruffles his hair.) Twenty-two years married to you, Lucas, and I’ve never got bored ... Thank you!

MEYER:

I’d buy you the world, if that would keep you entertained ...

PIETA:

I know ... and it scares me a little.

MEYER:

Scares you?

PIETA: (Pulling away from him slightly.)

It scares me or I fear it, I don’t know which. In all this air of refined objects which I surround myself with, that shadow of your ... invulnerability ...

MEYER:

Invulnerable ... me?

PIETA:

Never a doubt, never a failure ... You set your sights on something and you go and you get it. You simply go and get it for yourself. You’ve never stopped doing that ... Perhaps you even went after me like that.

MEYER: (Embracing her.)

Oh! Come on ...

PIETA:

It’s true ... I fear you ... Why deny it; or I fear for you, I don’t know ... When we married I had to busy myself with the future like any other woman; we set out with so little ... But very soon, little by little, each investment, was the right one, each situation, precise and in the end, this mansion. ‘The Meyer’s Mansion’, and your position now, inviolable ...

MEYER:

Not everything has been as easy as you make it sound.

PIETA:

So why do I have that feeling of ... vertigo, eh? Of a dangerous lack of equilibrium? ... I believe in Divine Justice ... Yes, yes perhaps I’m superstitious, primitive, but not everything can turn out well for the same people.

MEYER: (Laughing.)

It’s other people’s turn now, is it?

PIETA:

Don’t laugh.

MEYER:

Isn’t this the panic of the day? That idiotic rumour’s got to you now too?

PIETA:

It’s not that ...

MEYER:

Why did you mention all that then? We never talk about these things.

PIETA:

I don’t know ... Perhaps, the people tonight. Seeing them all so ... brazen. Insolent, yes! ... (As if remembering.) Suddenly, I thought that it was the end. Laughing which signifies the end. A corrupt perfection. (Turns towards him.) I’m frightened, Lucas.

MEYER:

Frightened? ... But, of what?

PIETA:

I don’t know ... Just frightened. An animal fear. Tonight at the Andreanis’s house, surrounded as I was by all these people, I suddenly felt shivers go down my spine. An empty feeling, as if I had been buried in a frozen lake ... in a landscape of snow and the screeching of birds.

MEYER:

That’s absurd!

PIETA:

Absurd, yes. But what’s the fear about? It exists. It’s like a premonition.

MEYER: (Cutting, suddenly.)

I don’t know what you’re talking about ... Must be your insomnia.

PIETA: (Alarmed.)

I don’t suffer from insomnia, Lucas.

MEYER:

Snow and screeching birds! How am I supposed to interpret such nonsense? ...

PIETA:

You know. You’ve felt the same ... What is it?

MEYER:

Like I said I don’t know what you’re talking about.

PIETA:

Yes, yes you know ... Tonight you were insolent, the same as them ... the same coarseness ... the same painful laugh ... What’s going to happen, Lucas?

Copyright

The above sample taken from the translation The Invaders by Camilla Van Erkelens is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Entry written by Gwendolen Mackeith. Last updated on 18 April 2012.

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