AUDITION PIECES

ELSA BARLOW

ELSA p. 33

It still hurts. I’m getting impatient for the day when I’ll be able to laugh at it all. I mustn’t make him sound like a complete bastard. He wasn’t without a conscience. Far from it. If anything it was too big. The end would have been a lot less messy if he’d known how to just walk away and close the door behind him. When finally the time for that arrived, he sat around in pain and torment…crying!…God that was awful!…waiting for me to tell him to go back to his wife and child. Should have seen him, Helen. He came up with postures of despair that would have made Michelangelo jealous. I know it’s all wrong to find another person’s pain disgusting but that is eventually what happened. The last time he crucified himself on the sofa in my flat I felt like vomiting. He told me just once too often how much he hated himself for hurting me…..No, I’m all right! (Pause) Do you know what the really big word is Helen? I had it all wrong. Like most people I suppose I used to think it was “Love.” That’s a big one alright, and it’s quite an event when it comes along. But there’s an even bigger one. “Trust”” And more dangerous! Because that’s when you drop your defenses, lay yourself wide-open, and if you’ve made a mistake you’re in big, big trouble. And it hurts like hell.

ELSA p. 42

Mustn’t take your letter seriously? Too late Helen. I already have. I’ve driven eight hundred miles without break because of this. And don’t lie to me. You meant every word of it. (Pause. In a gentler tone) I’m not trying to punish you for having written it. I’ve come because I want to try and help. (Struggles a bit to decipher words, the handwriting is obviously bad.) “My very own and dearest little Elsie, Have you finally also deserted me? This is my fourth letter to you and still no reply. Have I done something wrong? This must surely be the darkest night of my soul. I thought I had lived through that fifteen years ago, but I was wrong. This is worse. Infinitely worse. I had nothing to lose that night. Now there is so much and I am losing it all…you, the house, my work, my Mecca. I can’t fight them alone, little Elsie. I need you. Don’t you care about me anymore? It is only through your eyes that I now see my Mecca. I need you, Elsie. My eyesight is so bad that I can barely see the words I am writing. And my hands can hardly hold the pen. Help me, little Elsie. Everything is ending and I am alone in the dark. There is no light left. I would rather do away with myself than carry on like this. Your ever loving and anguished, Helen.” What’s all that about losing your house? Who’s trying to get you out?

MARIUS BYLEVELD

MARIUS p. 68

(Helen: They treat me as if I’m a stranger to them…)

You’re being very unfair, Helen. They behave towards you in the way apparently want them to which is to be left completely alone. Really Helen! Strangers? Old Gertruida, Sterling, Jerry, Boet, Mrs. van Heerden…? You grew up in this village with all of them. To be very frank, Helen, it’s your manner which now keeps people at a distance. I don’t think you realize how much you’ve changed over the years. You’re not easily recognizable to others anymore as the person they knew fifteen years ago. And then your hobby, if I can call it that, hasn’t really helped matters. This is not exactly the sort of room the village ladies are used to, or would feel comfortable in having afternoon tea. As for all that out there…the less said about it the better.

(H: Everybody is trying to force me to leave my home!)

Nobody is trying to force you, Helen! In Heaven’s name where do you get that idea from? If you sign this form it must be of your own free will. You’re very agitated tonight Helen. Has something happened to upset you? You were so reasonable about everything the last time we talked. You seemed to understand that the only motive on our side was to try and do what is best for you.

MARIUS p. 72

(Trying hard to control himself.) Miss Barlow, for the last time, what you do or don’t believe is not of the remotest concern to me. Helen is, and my concern is that she gets a chance to live out what is left of her life as safely and as happily as is humanly possible. I don’t think that should include the danger of her being trapped in here when this house goes up in flames. I’m talking about her accident. The night she knocked over those candles…You don’t know about that? When was it Helen? Four weeks ago? Helen? I see. You didn’t tell your friend about your narrow escape. I think I owe you an apology, Miss Barlow. I assumed you knew all about it. …It was about four weeks ago. Helen knocked over those candles and set fire to the curtains. I try not to think about what would have happened if Sterling hadn’t been looking out of his window at that moment and seen the flames. He rushed over, and just in time. She had stopped trying to put out the flames herself and was just standing staring at them.

HELEN MARTINS

HELEN p. 50

(E: Then what were you writing about?)

Darkness Elsa! Yes. Darkness! (She speaks with an emotional intensity and authority which forces Elsa to listen in silence.) The Darkness that nearly smothered my life in here one night fifteen years ago. The same Darkness that used to come pouring down the chimney and into the room at night when I was a little girl and frighten me. If you still don’t know what I’m talking about, blow out the candle! But those were easy Darknesses to deal with. The one I’m talking about is much worse. It’s inside me Elsa…it’s got inside me at last and I can’t light candles there. I never knew that could happen. I thought I was safe. I had grown up and I had all the candles I wanted. That is all that little girl could think about when she lay there in bed, trying to make her prayers last as long as she could because she was terrified of the moment when her mother would bend down and kiss her and take away the candle. One day she would have her very own!

HELEN p. 80

What life, Marius? What faith? The one that brought me to Church every Sunday? (Shaking her head.) No. You were much too late if you only started worrying about that…on that first Sunday I wasn’t there in my place. The worst had happened long, long before that. All those years when, as Elsa said, I sat there so obediently next to Stefanus, it was a terrible, terrible lie. I tried hard Marius, but your sermons, the prayers, the hymns, they had all become just words. Do you know what the word “God” looks like when you’ve lost your faith? It looks like a little stone, a cold round little stone. “Heaven” is another one, but it’s got an awkward, useless shape, while “Hell” is flat and smooth. All of them…damnation, grace, salvation…a handful of stones. …I’d accepted it. Nothing more was going to happen to me except time and the emptiness inside and I had got used to that…until the night in here after Stefanus’ funeral….Do you remember it Marius?