Equus Page #8

Worship?

Yes, that word again.

Isn't that a little extreme?

Extremity...

ls the point.

Worship isn't destructive, Martin.

I know that.

I don't.

I only know it's the core of his life.

What else has he got?

I mean, think about it. He can hardly read.

He knows no physics or engineering

to make the world real to him,

no paintings to show him

how others have enjoyed it,

no music except television jingles,

no history except tales

from a desperate mother.

No friends, not one kid to give him a joke,

or make him know

himself more moderately.

He's a modern citizen

for whom society doesn't exist.

He lives one hour every three weeks,

howling in a mist.

"With my body, I thee worship."

Many men are less vital with their wives.

All the same, they don't usually blind

their wives, do they?

- Oh, come on.

- Well, do they?

You mean he's a madman?

A violent, dangerous madman,

who'll go round the country,

doing it again and again?

I mean he's in pain, Martin.

He's been in pain for most of his life.

Yes.

And you can take it away.

Yes.

Then that's all you need

to know, in the end.

No.

Why not?

Because it is his.

His?

His pain.

His own.

He made it.

I don't understand.

Well, I don't!

I mean, there's nothing meritorious

about being in pain,

that's just pure old masochism.

I'm talking about passion, Hesther.

Do you know what that word

meant originally? Suffering.

The way you get your own spirit

through your own suffering.

Self-chosen. Self-made.

This boy's done that.

He's created his own desperate ceremony

just, just to...

Just to ignite one flame

of original ecstasy

in... in the spiritless waste around him.

All right,

he's destroyed for it, horribly.

He's virtually been destroyed by it.

But one thing I know for sure,

that boy has known a passion

more ferocious than I have known

in any second of my life.

Well, let me tell you something. I envy it.

- You can't.

- Don't you see?

That's what his stare

has been saying to me all this time.

"At least I galloped. When did you?"

I'm jealous, Hesther.

Jealous...

Of Alan Strang.

That's absurd.

IS it?

Yes, utterly.

Utterly!

I go on about my wife.

Have you thought about the husband?

The finicky, critical husband,

with his art books on mythical Greece?

What worship has he ever known?

Real worship?

Without worship, you... you shrink!

It's as brutal as that. I shrank my own life.

No one can do it for you.

I settled for being pallid and provincial

out of my own eternal timidity.

The old... the old story of bluster,

and do bugger-all.

I didn't even dare to have children...

Didn't dare to bring children into a house

and marriage as cold as mine.

I tell everyone Margaret's the Puritan,

I'm the pagan.

Some pagan. Such wild returns

I make to the womb of civilization.

Three weeks a year in the Mediterranean.

Every bed booked in advance,

every meal paid for with vouchers,

cautious jaunts in hired cars,

suitcase crammed with kaopectate.

What a fantastic surrender

to the primitive.

And the "primitive."

I use that word endlessly.

"Ah, the primitive world," I say,

"What instinctual truths

were lost with it."

And while I sit there baiting that poor,

unimaginative woman with the word,

that freaky boy is trying

to conjure the reality.

I look at pages of centaurs

trampling the soil of Argos.

And outside my window,

that boy is trying to become one

in a Hampshire field.

I sit there, night after night

watching that woman knitting,

a woman I haven't kissed in six years.

And he stands for an hour in the dark,

sucking the sweat off

his god's hairy cheek.

Then in the morning,

I put away my books on the cultural shelf,

close up my Kodachrome snaps

of Mount Olympus,

touch my reproduction statue

of Dionysus for luck,

and then go off to

the hospital to treat him...

For insanity.

Now do you see?

The boy's in pain, Martin.

That's all I see.

I understand, you know.

I'm not just being Mrs. Macbrisk.

You haven't made that kind of pain.

So few of us have.

But you've still made other things.

Your own thoughts. Your own skill.

Skill absolutely, what you said,

unique to you.

I've watched you do it, year after year,

and it's marvellous!

I mean, you can't just sit there now,

and say it's all provincial,

you're just a butcher.

All that stuff is stupid, hateful.

All right, you never galloped. Too bad.

Let me tell you, if I have to choose between

his galloping and your sheer training,

I'll take the training every time.

And what's more, so will the boy,

at this moment.

That stare of his isn't accusing you,

my dear, it's simply demanding.

- What?

- Just that.

Your power to pull him out of the nightmare

he's galloped himself into.

Do you see?

Do you see?

It is all true,

what I said after you tapped the pencil.

Postscriptum, I know why I'm in here.

I got your note. Thank you.

Also for the postscriptum.

Well, that's the right word.

Me mum told me.

It's Latin. It means "after writing."

Sorry I didn't see you today.

You're fed up with me?

Yes.

Can I make it up to you now?

What do you mean?

I thought we'd have a session.

Now?

Yes, at dead of night.

Better than going to sleep, isn't it?

Listen, Alan.

Everything I say has a trick or a catch.

Everything I do has a trick or a catch.

It's the only thing I know to do.

But they...

They work. And you know that, don't you?

Now trust me.

You got another trick, then?

Yes.

- Truth drug?

- If you like.

What's it do?

Make it easier for you to talk.

What, like you can't help yourself?

Yes, like you have to speak the truth

at all costs, and all of it.

Where is it?

Here.

Let's see.

Ls that really it?

Yes.

You want to try it?

No.

I think you do.

I don't, not at all.

Afterwards, you'd sleep.

You'd have no more bad dreams all night.

Probably for many nights from then on.

How long does it take to work?

- It's instant, like coffee.

- It isn't.

Promise.

Well?

Can I have a cigarette?

Pill first.

What'll I feel first?

Nothing much.

After a minute, about 100 green snakes

will come out of that cabinet,

singing the hallelujah chorus.

No, I'm serious.

You'll feel nothing.

Nothing is going to happen,

but what you want to happen.

You're not going to say anything to me,

but what you want to say.

Sit back. Relax.

Finish your cigarette.

Bet this room's heard some funny things.

It certainly has.

I like it.

- This room?

- Don't you?

Well, there's...

Nothing much to like, is there?

Actually, I'd like to leave this room,

and never...

Never set foot in it again in my life.

Why'?

Been in it too long.

Where would you go?

Somewhere.

Secret?

Yes.

There's a sea...

A great sea that I love.

It's where the Gods used to bathe.

What Gods?

The old ones, before they died.

Gods don't die.

Oh, yes, they do.

Come with me.

It's a village I spent a night in once,

where I'd like to live.

All White.

How would you nosy parker, though?

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