第41章 ACT III(7)
DON JUAN. Patience, lady: you will be perfectly happy and at home here. As with the poet, "Hell is a city much like Seville."
THE OLD WOMAN. Happy! here! where I am nothing! where I am nobody!
DON JUAN. Not at all: you are a lady; and wherever ladies are is hell. Do not be surprised or terrified: you will find everything here that a lady can desire, including devils who will serve you from sheer love of servitude, and magnify your importance for the sake of dignifying their service--the best of servants.
THE OLD WOMAN. My servants will be devils.
DON JUAN. Have you ever had servants who were not devils?
THE OLD WOMAN. Never: they were devils, perfect devils, all of them. But that is only a manner of speaking. I thought you meant that my servants here would be real devils.
DON JUAN. No more real devils than you will be a real lady.
Nothing is real here. That is the horror of damnation.
THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, this is all madness. This is worse than fire and the worm.
DON JUAN. For you, perhaps, there are consolations. For instance: how old were you when you changed from time to eternity?
THE OLD WOMAN. Do not ask me how old I was as if I were a thing of the past. I am 77.
DON JUAN. A ripe age, Senora. But in hell old age is not tolerated. It is too real. Here we worship Love and Beauty. Our souls being entirely damned, we cultivate our hearts. As a lady of 77, you would not have a single acquaintance in hell.
THE OLD WOMAN. How can I help my age, man?
DON JUAN. You forget that you have left your age behind you in the realm of time. You are no more 77 than you are 7 or 17 or 27.
THE OLD WOMAN. Nonsense!
DON JUAN. Consider, Senora: was not this true even when you lived on earth? When you were 70, were you really older underneath your wrinkles and your grey hams than when you were 30?
THE OLD WOMAN. No, younger: at 30 I was a fool. But of what use is it to feel younger and look older?
DON JUAN. You see, Senora, the look was only an illusion. Your wrinkles lied, just as the plump smooth skin of many a stupid girl of 17, with heavy spirits and decrepit ideas, lies about her age? Well, here we have no bodies: we see each other as bodies only because we learnt to think about one another under that aspect when we were alive; and we still think in that way, knowing no other. But we can appear to one another at what age we choose. You have but to will any of your old looks back, and back they will come.
THE OLD WOMAN. It cannot be true.
DON JUAN. Try.
THE OLD WOMAN. Seventeen!
DON JUAN. Stop. Before you decide, I had better tell you that these things are a matter of fashion. Occasionally we have a rage for 17; but it does not last long. Just at present the fashionable age is 40--or say 37; but there are signs of a change. If you were at all good-looking at 27, I should suggest your trying that, and setting a new fashion.
THE OLD WOMAN. I do not believe a word you are saying. However, 27 be it. [Whisk! the old woman becomes a young one, and so handsome that in the radiance into which her dull yellow halo has suddenly lightened one might almost mistake her for Ann Whitefield].
DON JUAN. Dona Ana de Ulloa!
ANA. What? You know me!
DON JUAN. And you forget me!
ANA. I cannot see your face. [He raises his hat]. Don Juan Tenorio! Monster! You who slew my father! even here you pursue me.
DON JUAN. I protest I do not pursue you. Allow me to withdraw [going].
ANA. [reining his arm] You shall not leave me alone in this dreadful place.
DON JUAN. Provided my staying be not interpreted as pursuit.
ANA. [releasing him] You may well wonder how I can endure your presence. My dear, dear father!
DON JUAN. Would you like to see him?
ANA. My father HERE!!!
DON JUAN. No: he is in heaven.
ANA. I knew it. My noble father! He is looking down on us now.
What must he feel to see his daughter in this place, and in conversation with his murderer!
DON JUAN. By the way, if we should meet him--
ANA. How can we meet him? He is in heaven.
DON JUAN. He condescends to look in upon us here from time to time. Heaven bores him. So let me warn you that if you meet him he will be mortally offended if you speak of me as his murderer!
He maintains that he was a much better swordsman than I, and that if his foot had not slipped he would have killed me. No doubt he is right: I was not a good fencer. I never dispute the point; so we are excellent friends.
ANA. It is no dishonor to a soldier to be proud of his skill in arms.
DON JUAN. You would rather not meet him, probably.
ANA. How dare you say that?
DON JUAN. Oh, that is the usual feeling here. You may remember that on earth--though of course we never confessed it--the death of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.
ANA. Monster! Never, never.
DON JUAN. [placidly] I see you recognize the feeling. Yes: a funeral was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a relative. At all events, family ties are rarely kept up here. Your father is quite accustomed to this: he will not expect any devotion from you.
ANA. Wretch: I wore mourning for him all my life.
DON JUAN. Yes: it became you. But a life of mourning is one thing: an eternity of it quite another. Besides, here you are as dead as he. Can anything be more ridiculous than one dead person mourning for another? Do not look shocked, my dear Ana; and do not be alarmed: there is plenty of humbug in hell (indeed there is hardly anything else); but the humbug of death and age and change is dropped because here WE are all dead and all eternal.
You will pick up our ways soon.
ANA. And will all the men call me their dear Ana?
DON JUAN. No. That was a slip of the tongue. I beg your pardon.
ANA. [almost tenderly] Juan: did you really love me when you behaved so disgracefully to me?