ASH LEAVES
a play by Roger Maybank
CHARACTERS: ENOCH, a man in late middle age.
CROW, a crow.
SNIPE, a snipe.
GROUSE, a grouse.
CHORUS of two stagehands.
(The stage floor appears to be scattered with ‘autumnal yellow ash leaves’; which are leaf-shapes in yellow chalk. Many of them are smeared by ENOCH’s feet as he walks restlessly about. Painted on the backdrop is a large open gate, with nothing visible beyond it. The upright posts are painted as if they are pollarded trees in yellow leaf. Leaves ‘yellowing and falling from the trees’ are chalked on the backdrop.)
(ENOCH looks around him, as if to see that everything is as it should be, nods in satisfaction, and makes a ‘come’ gesture with his hands towards the wings. )
(CROW, GROUSE and SNIPE enter, each an actor dressed in an amateurish manner suggesting the bird he is playing, and each carrying a standing ‘mirror’, an empty frame. They set up the ‘mirrors’ in different places, so that they face towards ENOCH, and they themselves, behind the mirrors, assume the behaviour of the birds they are representing, their attention on ENOCH whenever his attention is on them. When it is not, they half-revert to being actors, ‘living their own lives’—which sometimes includes loud stage whispers to each other—while maintaining the manner of the bird each is playing.)
VOICE offstage: Where’s the house?
2nd VOICE off: I’m bringin’ it. It’s heavy.
1st VOICE off: Little bit o’ painted canvas?
2nd VOICE off: It’s what he said he wanted: really big, so it’ll look near.
1st VOICE off: Must ha’ changed his mind. Always used to be in the distance, long way. Long drive. It’s goin’ to look way out o’ proportion.
2nd VOICE off: Yeah, it does. Grab that end of it.
(1st Stagehand backs onto the stage, pulling after him an enormous ‘grand house’ across the stage, just in front the backdrop. It is as big as the gate. Its ‘front door’ is open, revealing a ‘hallway’ in trompe l’oeil perspective. On a ‘bench’ beside the doorway is a seated figure. Sounds of low laughter from bird actors. ENOCH looks at the house uneasily.)
1st Stagehand: It’s as big as the fuckin’ gate, probably goin’ to hide it. It’s supposed to be in the distance!
2nd Stagehand: (appearing from stage left at the other end of the ‘house’) Gate’s a bit bigger, I think. Just a bit.
(The ‘house’ comes to rest midstage, fitting just within the gate.)
2nd Stagehand: It’s goin’ to be all right. Can still see the gate.
1st Stagehand: Yeah, on the wrong side o’ the house. And he’s not lookin’ too easy with it.
2nd Stagehand: Probably a bit of a shock, findin’ it right at his nose.
CROW: (in rough male voice): He’ll have to be makin’ his way through the house to get to the gate. (chuckling) Good thinkin’. Maybe get a meal on the way.
GROUSE: (in soft female voice) He won’t be ready when he reaches the door, poor man, with no nice long drive to get himself in order before.
SNIPE: I’m feeling in some disorder myself, very far from my best. And the way he’s looking at that house is not reassuring.
CROW: (chuckling) Maybe thinkin’ it’s some o’ our work; like evrythin’ is he’s not likin’.
ENOCH: (glancing from ‘mirror’ to ‘mirror’) ‘Their work’. If it were, I wouldn’t be seeing the house at all, but a long empty road leading nowhere.
GROUSE: What road’s he meanin’?
CROW: Road he’s thinkin’ he’s on, I’m supposin’..
SNIPE: Well, if he’s brought the house as close as that, he must be thinking it’s at a end. Which is making me more nervous than ever.
ENOCH: (looking at the gate) The gate, I suppose, can be said to be open, despite the great size of the house in front of it. Which might be thought encouraging; a promise that it opens onto something further, luring me to enter. But I’ve been in houses of that kind all my life, opening and opening inside themselves. And if they had a gate on the far side of them, it was of no moment, since I never found a door leading out to it. (turning away) Better off staying here a while longer, in the outside I know with years of knowing..
CROW: That’s th’idea, old guy. Stay where you are as long as you can.
ENOCH: At least until the leaves have all fallen. Early fallers, ash leaves, for which their origin in some more northern country may be the explanation. However that may be I have always liked their clear yellow colour, when they were falling and fallen. (absently ‘scuffling’ through them, smearing the chalk) The wind will soon be carrying them away. (little smile) Not myself, though; no danger, or hope, of that. (looking at the birds) It might, I suppose, carry them, if they spread their poor wings. That would be a..kindness.
SNIPE: Who might be receiving that ‘kindness’?
CROW: And whose ‘poor wings’ is he talkin’ about? Nobody got the skill o’ us crows in flyin’. Just ’cause we’re playin’ games, makin’ it look like we’re stumblin’ in our runnin’.
ENOCH: (looking steadily at the house) It is odd that the front door of the house is open. As though someone were expected. And someone, or something like someone, is sitting on the rough bench beside it.
1st Stagehand: Is that what he asked for?
2nd Stagehand: That’s what they said. Someone who looked like himself, they said he said.
1st Stagehand: (looking at the painted man) Well, I guess he does. Somewhat. Enough to make you think he could be. Though he’s not seemin’ to see that himself.
2nd Stagehand: Playin’ the character now, so he’s not lettin’ out all he’s maybe thinkin’.
1st Stagehand: Character bein’ pretty well himself, he could easy say if he didn’t like the look o’ the guy.
2nd Stagehand: He’s sure lookin’ more like himself than those birds are. Which was prob’ly what was makin’ him push ’em all out o’ hisself.
1st Stagehand: While he was at it, he should ha’ been stuffin’ somethin’ into the beak o’ that crow. The others is harmless enough; though the both o’ them, grouse in particular, ‘d be a lot better eatin’ than listenin’ to.
(ENOCH turns back to stage front, shrugging.)
ENOCH: Looks a bit like me, that man. Fair bit younger, of course.
2nd Stagehand: Ah, he’s seein’ it now. They done a good job.
ENOCH: And he shares my liking for staying outside the house. Or come outside, as perhaps he has; with painted figures it’s hard to know which way they came from. Painting him just about to sit down, if you could—I suppose somebody could—might give some idea, if not a clear one. (shrugs) Well, what are you to do? The backdrop’s a backdrop, it can only give some small sense, if any at all, of time passing, and him sitting in the middle of its passing. Which in any event, it’s not; he’s the one that’s passing through it. Only more slowly, being painted, than I am here; even without the wind blowing. (little smile) Space moving as slowly as time. Even should it move faster, were the wind to rise from its bed, it would still not be troubling to him, since the stagehands will be securing the backdrop well into place.
1st Stagehand: (growling) We will, will we? Takin’ us for granted like usual.
ENOCH: (turning away) Even praising them, all I get is snarling.
CROW: Maybe it’s a smoke they’ll be likin’ to cheer ’em. I got a cigar or two here..
ENOCH: Leave them to themselves. They’re only here to set the stage for us.
CROW: Haven’t done much o’ that, beyond wheelin’ that house across, that you’re not wantin’ to go into.
ENOCH: (gazing steadily at the house) I don’t remember saying that. Or even thinking it; which I suppose your sharp beak might have pulled like a maggot from my brain.
SNIPE: (under her breath) It wouldn’t be as near as it is if he didn’t want..
ENOCH: (to SNIPE) That’s right, my dear. Nor would you yourself.
SNIPE: Oh, well that’s pleasant to hear.
ENOCH: (under his breath) And discouraging to have to say.
(He turns away from the birds, gazes steadily at the painted man.)
1st Stagehand: Keepin’ ’em there so he can complain about them.
2nd Stagehand: And remember why it was he pushed them out.
1st Stagehand: So they’re all o’ them scared he’ll be leavin’ ’em by themselves.
2nd Stagehand: (chuckling) And more scared of his takin’ ’em with him.
1st Stagehand: Either way, it’s lookin’ like their chances ‘re dyin’; the house bein’ so big ‘ll be meanin’—like we weren’t at first seein’—he’s ready, or near it, to be facin’ all those rooms he’s built into it.
2nd Stagehand: Lucky for us, he wasn’t askin’ us to be makin’ them for him; he havin’ plenty o’ them already in his own head. (leaning against one of the gateposts and pulling out a cigarette) So we’ve got a chance for a bit o’ a rest.
1st stagehand: Yeah. (looking at the gatepost he’s leaning against) Until he’s maybe noticin’ the tree we rigged up for ‘im has lost the best part o’ the leaves o’ it he’s so likin’.
2nd Stagehand: What was we to do, since he wanted a ash tree, which is always the first to be losin’ their leaves?
1st stagehand: (looking up) Yeah And the rate they’re fallin’ at, there’ll be nothin’ but bare branches soon, with winter on just th’other side o’ them.
2nd Stagehand: (dry smile) And no sign o’ him makin’ ready for it; extra sweaters, mitts.
1st Stagehand: Way he’s thought it, they’ll all be out o’ here before then.
2nd Stagehand: It’s us I was thinkin’ of. For when we’re cleanin’ up after ’em. But, like you say, nobody ever thinks of the stagehands.
1st Stagehand: Job’s a job. And there’ll be perks. Things they’ll be leavin’ behind; those mirrors, for example: put a bit o’ glass in ’em and they’ll fetch a fair penny. Everybody likes mirrors.
(ENOCH, with evident reluctance, turns away from the painted man.)
ENOCH: (looking from one ‘bird’ to another) None of you will be remembering, it being well before your time, that he (indicating the painted man)—and I, I must suppose, though that is more difficult to remember—used to run through these leaves, or leaves very like them, when he was a boy. With other boys. And jump into piles of them, roll about in them.
CROW: (‘Lighting a cigar’) Some guys ideas o’ fun..
SNIPE: I’m blessed I was not with you then. Legs like mine would have been broken very badly.
ENOCH: There was no danger to any legs, any body, but..his. As none of you was then born.
CROW: (blowing out smoke) A likely story. When crows is known to live longer’n anythin’ practically, except your foot-draggin’ tortoise, or maybe th’odd squawkin’ parrot. And if I’d ha’ known I was bein’ born into a life with practic’ly no end to it, I’d ha’ backed right out o’ there. Like you could yourself be doin’, if you’d a mind to it, stead o’ half a dozen.
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath) Only idea he’s got is to feed himself on whatever’s goin’. Best be keepin’ a good eye on our sandwiches.
GROUSE: I imagine there’ll be quite a few delicacies laid out in there for visitors; a house as grand as that.
ENOCH: Its grandeur is a matter of taste; but it is large, certainly, being much nearer than I can remember it being before. Nearer to my eyes, that is. But to my body it is as far as ever it was, as the moat makes the way to it impassable.
1st Stagehand: Moat? What moat? What’s he wantin’ a moat for?
2nd Stagehand: Keep himself out o’ the house, I guess. Gettin’ them to make it so big
so he could say it was near, so he could easily go into it, he’s had to think o’ somethin’ to hold hisself back.
CROW: I’m not seein’ any moat.
SNIPE: I cannot see one either.
GROUSE: What is a ‘moat’, dear?
CROW: Ditch full o’ water they dig round a house—big houses, rich people— for keepin’ other people out. Wouldn’t keep me out. Or anybody with a proper set o’ wings.
ENOCH: Those wings of which you are so pleased you may then spread out in manly manner, and fly over the moat and into the house through one of its open windows. Or through the door itself for that matter, and bring us back one or two of the ‘delicacies’ the lady assures us are waiting there. Emulating, in little, the brave act of your cousin— somewhat distant cousin—who flew on a like mission from the ark of time past.
CROW: What ark ‘re you talkin’ about?
ENOCH: Ark alone on the waters, nothing but itself. Till—your cousin not coming back—suspicions, and hopes, grew that it wasn’t.
CROW: Ark’s needin’ water to float on; ain’t none around here. “Cept that moat you’re talkin’ about, which we ain’t seein.
ENOCH: (looking at the painted man by the door of the house) Nor him, I suppose, on its further shore, and still glistening from its waters. Through which, I suppose, he will have swum; a few breast-strokes, which I fear have died away in my much older body, would have sufficed to accomplish the task. (little smile) I was once able to swim quite well. Even at that age. And how else might he cross the moat, though it appears to little purpose? There being no discernible bridge.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) You want bridges, you gotta ask for ’em. They’re not buildin’ theirselves.
2nd Stagehand: (ironic smile) He’s not wantin’ a bridge.
CROW: (half as actor) We’re all waitin’ here for you to be solvin’ that, an’ then makin’ the first move in that direction. Or some direction.
ENOCH: That will, I fear, be a long wait. My arms, as I said, perhaps too indirectly, being no longer equal to swimming it. And my wings, unlike yours, ungrown.
CROW: Well, I can tell you there ain’t no chance o’ none o’ us goin’ there ahead o’ you.
SNIPE: I would feel quite frightened, going into that house on my own. There could be many dangers lurking behind that open door; and the many dry leaves would be painful to my sensitive feet.
CROW: (to ENOCH) It’s your house, you’re the one that made it. So it’s about time, in my opinion, you were growin’ some wings yourself, if you’re wantin’ to go into it.
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath) That’d be a sight worth the seein’.
GROUSE: You’re havin’ wings already, dear; must be. Everybody’s havin’ wings.
ENOCH: Not I. Something resembling vestigial wings might, I suppose be buried in my back; but they have never grown.
SNIPE: A body having wings, sir, they’ll be growing. ‘Til they’re grown full.
ENOCH: Then I must have had none to grow.
CROW: Everybody’s got wings, no question about it. Way o’ nature.
ENOCH: What then can I say, but that I don’t feel them? And even had I some poor example of wings, able to lift me a little way into the air..
GROUSE: That’s all mine ‘re doin’, dear.
ENOCH: ..I would not attempt to fly across that moat, only to enter that house which is always there and I know only too well is nothing but room after room without end. To what purpose, even though there may be a door which I have not found, leading out of its further side? Leading where? Outside? I am outside already. If there is such another beyond that door which I have not yet come upon, it will not, I feel sure, be alight, as it is here, with the gently reflected yellow light of the ash leaves.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) ‘Til the north wind’s blowin’ ’em all away. (looking up the the gateposts) Which’ll be a time not too long off from the way the leaves’re fallin’ now. And snow fallin’ soon after. (grinning) Givin’ him the light he’s thinkin’ he’s needin’. Different colour o’ light.
2nd Stagehand: (chuckling) And the ‘moat’ he’s got in his head ‘ll be covered all over in thick ice, so he’ll be able to cross right over it easy, wings or no wings. Then what’ll he do? Open door standin’ right in front o’ him.
1st Stagehand: (laughing, indicating painted figure on the backdrop) This other guy goin’ to stand up then, and they recognizin’ each other?
2nd Stagehand: When he’s that near, he’ll see th’ other’s only paint.
1st Stagehand: I guess. But with him you never know.
ENOCH: The only wings I do feel—sometimes—are inside me.
CROW: (chuckling) Somebody flyin’ in there? Poor place to be doin’ it, no room for decent-size wings to stretch ’emselves out in.
GROUSE: Don’t you be listenin’ to him, dear. You’ve got wings on the outside o’ you too; same as we all have. Not showin’ the same, is all. We just not havin’ pictures o’ them, and him what’s flyin’ on them, the way you’re havin’.
ENOCH: Many pictures of him there are indeed. Which have done little but lead me astray.
CROW: Of your own makin’ them pictures were. Man blamin’ his tools, like they say, ain’t the maker he should be.
ENOCH: I wanted to see who was flying there; limited though he was, as you say, by the breadth of my chest..
SNIPE: There’d be no gaining in that, sir. It ‘d be like pushing your face in water and opening your eyes there. Which would be seeing little but a bit o’ colour.
GROUSE: It was that wantin’ o’ yours to see ‘im, and his big wings, that was the causin’, I’m thnkin’, of the shrivellin’ o’ your own.
ENOCH: How might I cause to shrivel what had never grown? I was born, came out into this world without wings. As I’ve told you.
SNIPE: Telling is one thing..
CROW: (pointing at the ground) Them flowers there ain’t got no wings, and they ain’t complainin’.
ENOCH: Those yellow daisy-like flowers there, whose name I don’t even know?
CROW: They ain’t got no name then, if you’re not knowin’ it. Nor needin’ one. Anymore ‘n they’re needin’ to fly.
ENOCH: (stooping down) They have a smell, rather harsh.
CROW: Harshness is in the breather. I’m not smellin’ it. And whatever smell it has got is for the bees, not needin’ your nose pushin’ in, callin’ it names, like you’re always doin’.
GROUSE: My own breath could be on the harsh side, like he’s callin’ it; though it’s havin’ no smell I’m noticin’ myself.
SNIPE: My breath, if the day is a good one, is smelling of the fish slipping down my throat.
1st Stagehand: All that talkin’ about breathin’ is what’s happenin’ when you’ve got nothin’ else to do to pass the time; so you’re not seein’, the way we are, how every minute there’re more leaves lyin’ on the ground (looking up), and less o’ them hangin’ onto them trees’ branches.
2nd Stagehand: (chalking ‘leaves’ on the ‘floor’ of the hallway, grinning) Even driftin’ in through the doorway o’ the house they are. (dry smile) Maybe drawin’ him that way, to jump in them piles he’s likin’, or rememberin’ he was once likin’, makin’ ‘im feel no time at all’s past or passin’. Leave those birds o’ his to make their own way.
1st Stagehand: Which they ain’t got. Nor life neither: he’s turnin’ his head from them, they’re gone. Which they’re knowin’ better than he does, why they’re watchin’ ‘im so close through their mirrors.
ENOCH: (looking up) Nothing, of course, is forbidding me from waiting until the water of the moat has frozen, when all the leaves which have fallen onto it and are now floating there, anticipating no further alteration in their lives, will be frozen into the ice, patterning it pleasantly. And I might then walk—with care—upon the ice, and hear and feel it crackling, like the leaves themselves, under my feet. Threatening to break; but not breaking, not yet breaking; and the open door of the house nearer with my every footstep. As it has been for so many years, though never before now so large.
CROW: You bein’ nearer to it’s the better way o’ sayin’; since you’re the one that’s movin’. In your head anyway.
ENOCH: (as if not hearing) And the three of you flying in rough circles over my head.
SNIPE: I wouldn’t up to that, dear. Not at all.
GROUSE: Oh, me neither. A flutterin’ rush at sudden need is my idea o’ flyin’. Earth’s all I’m needin’ for my daily life.
SNIPE: And water, for the fish to swim near me.
CROW: I’ll be the only one flyin’ over you while you’re crossin’ that moat you got in your head; and be struttin’ before you through that door at the end o’ the hall, if they’d painted it to look open; could maybe tear a hole in it with me beak, big enough to fly through—if it’s the canvas it’s lookin’ like—into all those rooms you’re sayin’ are beyond it, though I’m fair doubtful meself.
ENOCH: Doubt as to what we don’t know is reasonable. But I know. I have seen them, and walked through them. Endlessly. Night after night.
CROW: Meanin’ they was dream rooms, I suppose. That you’re scarin’ yourself with—and us, if you can—in the day.
ENOCH: (ironic smile) Ah, I am not dreaming now? Then why is the house there? So big and so near; with only the moat, all yellow with disguising leaves, between it and myself. Leaves which would give way under my feet, if I dared to walk on them. And I would drown. Being but a poor swimmer, and the water cold as ice.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) Got it all worked out. Makin’ me ask why he bothered to hire us.
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath, grinning) Nobody’s drownin’ in moats o’ his own makin’.
GROUSE: Nobody drowns in dreams, dear. They only think they do, and then they wake up.
ENOCH: Into another dream. Where I have woken again and again. To live in while I think it is day, and that the house is a real house, living in its own world.
1st Stagehand: We done our work pretty well then; him not seein’ the results o’ his own instructions.
2nd Stagehand: Seein’ ’em now, from what I can make out of what he’s sayin’.
ENOCH: But it isn’t, of course. Though quite well painted. And why would I think it to be? As it looks as it always looks, in dream after dream. But bigger, so I will think it nearer. But still it will be as it has always been, room after room of it; which are sometimes empty, though more often not. And the people who are there—strangers, but friendly—tell me the way. To where? As to that they are never clear; but I go where they say. Which leads nowhere.
GROUSE: That’s the way it goes in dreams, dear.
SNIPE: And you can’t touch anything in dreams, more’s the pity. Many a lovely fish has melted to nothing in my beak.
CROW: ‘Til you’re wakin’ up for real, eh? Mornin’ right in the room with you, sun shinin’ right in your eyes,.
ENOCH: Waking of a kind. (dry smile) Were I to close the shutters at night, draw the curtains and cover my head with blankets, I suppose I might even now be wandering in that house.
CROW: Instead o’ seein’ it on the wall in front o’ you. Big difference.
ENOCH: Sitting and looking is less tiring than endless walking. And I have not only the house, but the leaves lying on the ground to look at.
CROW: That’s what you’ll be doin’ now, eh? Sittin’ an’ lookin’?
ENOCH: What else might I do?
CROW: Don’t ask me. But if you’re goin’ to just be sittin’ here, then all of us can. An’ be lettin’ the day go by at its own speed. ‘Til the sun’s settin’.
ENOCH: The sun’s actual setting is an occurrence, failing to occur, which has been troubling my mind. (gazing upwards) I cannot see the sun.
CROW: (not looking up) You seein’ it or not, it’ll be there. That bein’ its job.
SNIPE: (not looking up) The sky will be overcast, as it often is these days.
ENOCH: (looking up and around) The sky is quite clear. There are no clouds obscuring any part of it.
GROUSE: (not looking up) It’s takin’ only a small one to be hidin’ the sun. It bein’ itself so small an’ faraway.
ENOCH: We are small and faraway. (smiling) Which is why we have dreams. And they so fragile, that I begin to wonder if even the leaves on the threshold of the house would hold me if I walked on them.
GROUSE: Leaves wouldn’t, dear. But the threshold under ’em would. It bein’ the same one as you were kickin’ ’em on when you was small.
ENOCH: It may be the same; but the leaves were not the same; but many, many more.
1st Stagehand: (painting ‘leaves’ on the ‘hallway’ of the house) An’ if he’s wantin’ us be paintin’ those, he’s goin’ to be needin’ more’n his one old tree to be makin’ em.
ENOCH: (to himself, looking steadily at the house) And yet they are even now sufficient to cover the floor of the hallway of the house. (looking closer) And they appear, a little, to be rippling; as if they too, or the floor on which they are resting, were floating on the moat. Well, floating it may be; and the whole house indeed. But it is not likely that the planks of the floor would be too time-and-weather-worn to bear me. (turning away from the house) If I were to venture onto them.
(He gazes into space, slowly turning his head from stage left to stage right. The eyes of the three ‘birds’ drift shut, and they stand as if asleep. The Stagehands continue to paint ‘leaves’ on the ‘floor of the hallway’.)
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) Good thing he’s left the ripplin’ o’ the leaves to hisself. We’d be havin’ our work cut out to be doin’ that for ‘im.
1st Stagehand: Well, he didn’t get us paintin’ him this house just to look at across that moat he’s made for hisself; an’ the leaves he’s seein’ flickerin’ on top of it. He’ll soon enough be tryin’ to walk over it; seein’ himself there, who’s already done it by swimmin’. When he was up to it, and the water then maybe warmer.
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) Got a long walk ahead of him, if he’s startin’ to see the house too now floatin’ on water. Floatin’ away from him while he’s walkin’; and, gettin’ into it, findin’ the floors o’ it rotten, though he’s thinkin’ now they’re not..
1st Stagehand: It’s his own lookout if he’s fallin’ right through ’em. If he’s seein’ all that water, he should’ve got us to make ‘im a boat. Small boat. We’d be up to that. But him flounderin’ about in that water, shoutin’ for help, is way beyond what we was hired for. I ain’t goin’ to jump in to save ‘im. Let his birds do it, they can fly down on those wings they’ve got he’s so jealous of, grab hold o’ him, pull him out.
2nd Stagehand: (chuckling) Two o’ them are hardly up to liftin’ their own bodies into the air, much less his. And I wouldn’t trust that crow even to let on he knows he’s drownin’. He’ll be a lot better off thinkin’ that’s earth there under the leaves.
1st Stagehand: Yeah, and bury himself in it. Put a end to the dreams he never stops complainin’ about.
(ENOCH shudders, looks around. The birds open their eyes.)
ENOCH: (looking up) No leaves are falling.
GROUSE: They will be, dear. Plenty o’ them left for that. All they’re needin’s a bit o’ wind.
SNIPE: Rain is what we’re needing. To soften the edges of those that are fallen, and are painful to my feet.
CROW: Rain’d be good, bring lots o’ things out o’ th’earth for eatin’. But it don’t look, from that steady sky, like we’re goin’ to be gettin’ any. Wind neither. Leaves we’ll be gettin’ though, the ones those guys (indicating the stagehands) are makin’; they seemin’ not to be knowin’ how else to be passin’ their time.
ENOCH: (to himself) Why are they not falling? As so many of them, still on the branches, will now be holding to them only precariously.
GROUSE: No tellin’ about leaves, dear. They got their own ways.
1st Stagehand: Who’s he askin’?
2nd Stagehand: Whoever don’t know the answer. ‘Cause he’s not wantin’ to know it.
1st Stagehand; He’s askin’ the right guy then; he’s never goin’ to be tellin’ hisself that.
(ENOCH looks steadily at the doorway.)
2nd Stagehand: I don’ know. Seems to me he’s movin’ that way, wantin’ to or not. And we’re in the way o’ him goin’ there.
1st Stagehand: Yeah, Okay.
(The stagehands move away from the doorway, both glancing at the figure painted beside it.)
1st Stagehand: But if you ask me, he’s the one (indicating the painted figure) really keepin’ him away. Maybe if we chalked him over a bit..
2nd Stagehand: (low laugh) With leaves? Cover ‘im all up?
1st Stagehand: Make ‘im into a branch by the door. Leafy branch. So he wouldn’t be seein’ ‘im no more.
2nd Stagehand: Leaves’d probably be fallin’ off ‘im as fast as we’re chalkin’ ’em on. Him needin’ that guy to keep the house as near to him as he can, givin’ ‘im the chance to move whatever way he’s wantin’. (ironic smile) When he’s makin’ up his mind to it.
1st Stagehand: That’ll be the day.
(They chalk leaves on the stage near the door. ENOCH gazes at the doorway, and the figure beside it.)
ENOCH: None of the leaves at present in the doorway looks broken; being generations removed from those my feet once shuffled through; (little smile) but I can still remember, even hear, the sound they made as my feet broke them.
SNIPE: Oh dear, I remember that sound; and the very unpleasant feeling of their sharp edges against the tender soles of my feet.
ENOCH: (looking at the painted man) It is possible, I suppose, that he has not swum the moat; but has merely been sitting there for..however long. But why then are there no leaves resting on the horizontal parts of his body?
1st Stagehand: See? If we’d sketched a few on ‘im, he’d be seein’ ‘im clearer.
2nd Stagehand: If that’s what he’s wantin’.
ENOCH: And where, if not from the moat, may he have come from? Unless, which is possible, given his somewhat near resemblance to myself— younger self, as well as I can remember it—he may be only another aspect of myself, which I left behind me when I came out the doorway; finding, as I remember I did, my balance poor on the unsteady leaves floating on the moat.
2nd Stagehand: (chuckling) His idea of a moat, an’ leaves floatin’ on it. Head givin’ him a reason for his body havin’ no balance. For which ther was other reasons enough.
1st Stagehand: Lucky for us th’idea of a moat was enough for ‘im. Moat o’ that kind ‘d be a hell o a lot bigger job than one he’s only got to look at the surface of. And even that’s covered in leaves.
ENOCH: (peering at the painted figure) If he is painted properly in accord with his age, as I must assume that he is, the craftsmen in charge of that being experienced..
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) Givin’ us a bit o’ credit anyway.
ENOCH: ..He is considerably older than..I..was when I stepped out of the house. And I would surely not have sat there—as I remember the occasion—or indeed anywhere at all; but have walked—even run— out and about in the outside air; perhaps, although that is now difficult to imagine, even laughing.
2nd Stagehand: Yeah, even yer barrel o’ monkeys wouldn’t be gettin’ ‘im laughin’ now.
ENOCH: When, then, may he have sat there? If, that is, the brightness of his body is only the effect of plain sunlight, without water. When the house was smaller? No, not smaller, further off. Then he will have had to walk some considerable distance to reach it, and would naturally be tired, and want to rest; while my own eyes carried him towards me again in bringing the house up to its actual size. And the leaves on the trees—or the tree, there was perhaps always only one— being still very many, and not falling, I was not, until now, aware of him.
2ndStagehand: He’s gettin’ it now.
(He picks up a long stick, fits a piece of chalk to one end of it, and begins sketching ‘leaves’ on the ‘sky’.)
ENOCH: (looking about him uneasily) Still, the question remains, and cannot be avoided: when he stands up, will he be coming or going? He being apparently of an age where either is possible. Unlike myself.
1st Stagehand: Yeah, he’s the one hisself should be sittin’ here, gazin’ so ‘peacefully’ at what he’s callin’ the ‘outside’ that all the leaves is fallin’ into.
SNIPE: They’ve not always been falling. I can remember when none were.
GROUSE: Yes dear. That’s when it was summer.
CROW: (chuckling) None fallin’ in winter neither. Want to see leaves fallin’, now’s th’only good time.
ENOCH: Certainly I did not see him sitting there when I came out of the house, engaged wholly as I was in looking about me at everything within my sight; it all being so new and fresh to me after the many rooms, all of them empty, inside it. And yet, I suppose, he may have been there, sitting as quietly as he is now; his mind slowly emptying of the house behind him, as it filled with the landscape in front. And watching me running through it? As I have been watching him, ever since the leaves began falling. Leaves and seeds. Both falling to the ground. But only the leaves inside the doorway. Which will be why, though I didn’t then know it, all the rooms were empty.
1st Stagehand: Him wantin’ furniture—simple furniture—we could ha’ made it. But we’re goin’ to waste our time paintin’ furniture in rooms that aren’t existin’ except in his head? Paintin’ the rooms theirselves all around him was crazy enough.
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) Makin’ it the harder for ‘im to go back inside it now; empty rooms not bein’ so much of a draw. A chair or two for ‘im to rest on might’ve been worth it. (chuckling) Even a simple table for those ‘delicacies’ to be set on that that grouse’s thinkin’ they’d maybe be findin’ inside it.
1st Stagehand Like we’d nothin’ more to do than paint tables, and food settin’ on ’em, where—the way things is lookin’ to be goin’—nobody’s ever goin’ to see ’em. Them rooms is empty, the way he wanted ’em. Doors ‘an’ doors ‘re all he’s goin’ to find in there, they bein’ what he is wantin’.
2nd Stagehand And pretty fine work they are too, I don’t mind sayin; they all lookin’ like they’re open just enough for ‘im to slide round ’em.
ENOCH: The difficulty about the doors, many though they were—and I imagine still are; why would they not be—lay in their opening only from one room to another. But never outside. Nor was there any kind of window to allow me to look outside. So that I naturally came to think, being but young, and knowing but little about how the world was made, that there was no ‘outside’, none at least near the house. Until, by chance—as it seemed, though how is one to know?—I came to that door, and it was open; and I was here, outside; and the leaves even then were falling. (looking round) Not these leaves, of course; but those of many years past.
CROW: I ain’t got a clear sight in my head of comin’ out that door.
ENOCH: You were young, very young, and riding with difficulty on my shoulder.
CROW: Light was bright. Hard on me eyes.
SNIPE: The dry leaves were hard on my feet; but I could smell the fish in the water of the moat, which was enlivening.
1st Stagehand: Her smellin’ them fish was one o’ the things makin’ him the moat.
2nd Stagehand: (smiling) But the leaves on it was still up to holdin’ ‘im, while he was walkin’, like they all were, right across it. He not thinkin’—like the way boys don’t—that he might fall right through ’em.
1st Stagehand: He’s sure thinkin’ that now.
2nd Stagehand: Got to think o’ ways now to be keepin’ hisself ‘outside’.
1st Stagehand: Which anyway he ain’t.
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) Yeah. But it’ll be takin’ ‘im a while yet to be findin’ that out.
ENOCH: It was, of course, very pleasant, when I had crossed the moat, to find myself on open ground in the open air. It was natural that I should run and laugh, if I did. Particularly as there were many songbirds when I first stepped out through that door. (his face clouding) Birdsong is a common characteristic of the open air, which is lacking here now, I don’t know why..
CROW: Ain’t no birds around here. Exceptin’ ourselves.
SNIPE: I am not a foolish singing bird.
GROUSE: Me neither, dear. I’m hardly knowin’ how to.
ENOCH: Then there were..blackbirds and..larks..and.. The singing of meadowlarks I can still almost hear. They are not, I believe, true larks, but nonetheless would perch here and there, and sing. In the evening. I don’t know why.
CROW: Callin’ for their mates they were; what else’re birds singin’ for, them that do? Not to make your day brighter, that’s for sure.
ENOCH: (half to himself) They did, however, make it so. While I could hear them.
(Pause. ENOCH looks steadily at the doorstep. The stagehands, winking at each other, begin to wipe chalk ‘leaves’ from the door-post ‘trees’.)
ENOCH: The leaves which broke and crumbled under my feet are, of course, many years gone, and their fragments passed through many other lives; so that what I can now see in the doorway are unrelated to them, resemble them though they do.
1st Stagehand: Is that some kind o’ praisin’?
2nd Stagehand: Soundin’ somethin’ like. (grinning) Which he won’t be so keen to be sayin’ when he’s seein’ they’re only streaks o’ chalk.
1st Stagehand: Which that smart crow’ll maybe soon be tellin’ ‘im.
2nd Stagehand; More likely he’ll be tellin’ himself.
1st Stagehand: What’s the difference?
2nd Stagehand: (laughing) Yeah.
ENOCH: I can still feel the house withdrawing from behind me. The inside of it carried by the outside. Further and further withdrawing, as I was walking over the ground that was lightly scattered with the clear yellow of the first fallen leaves, that were soft and cool against the soles of my feet, soft and wet; from dew, I suppose, or a light rain. Others of them, many others, were still falling through the air and past my body; one or two coming to rest upon it. (looking at the painted figure) As they are not now resting upon him, not those of this nor any earlier year, of those through which he has been sitting there, for all his stillness. (pause, looking about him) Where was I walking toward, so making the house withdraw so far from me that it was long, very long, before I saw it again; and the distance between us was so great, that it was some while before I knew I was seeing it at all? As if I were dreaming.
GROUSE: That’s the way it is with dreams, dearie. You’re never knowing if you’re awake or asleep.
CROW: I’m rememberin’ well enough seein’ the house again. Full summer it was, days hot. But it was sure far off.
ENOCH: It has come nearer with the dying of the year; and the falling of the leaves. As it was also then, when I left it, shuffling through the leaves to the open door, As they are again now—and more, many more. (looking up) And the branches of the trees are nearly bare. The coming night may be cold.
1st Stagehand: Glad to hear he’s got that in his head.
2nd Stagehand: (painting leaves on the post of the gate) Got it in our hands to hold it off a good while yet.
GROUSE: I’m not too troubled meself about the night bein’ cold. Me feathers’ll be shelterin’ me nicely.
1st Stagehand: Crow ‘n that other bird’ll be feelin’ it comin’ though, and lettin’ him know.
2nd Stagehand: M’idea is he’ll be wantin’ ’em tell ‘im it’s cold; so he can be cold himself. (little smile) And where’s he goin’ to find some shelter?
1st Stagehand: The house, eh?
2nd Stagehand: Where else?
1st Stagehand: Lucky they made it big, so he’s fittin’ inside it. Other little ones he had, for the distance from it he was wanting, he hardly be gettin’ his foot inside.
2nd Stagehand: They were makin’ it big because they knew he wanted it big, that we weren’t seein’. Him knowin’ he’d be wantin’ to go inside it, however much he’s complainin’ of its bein’ empty, and havin’ no outside door.
1st Stagehand: (chuckling) Yeah. So he’s got us coverin’ the floor with the leaves first, to make it look like he’s still rememberin’ it, so he’ll be feelin’ more easy about goin’ into it, from what he’s callin’ ‘outside’.
2nd Stagehand: (laughing) Until he thought o’ the water lyin’ all round it under the leaves.
ENOCH: (looking at the house) The leaves are so covering the moat that it is quite concealed, appearing as solid underfoot as the hallway does. If its appearance were its reality, I could walk over it to the doorway, and shuffle through the leaves on the bare floor of the hall. Though not barefoot, as I did, when..
1st Stagehand: Yeah, he’s leadin’ himself in, all right. Maybe we ought to be gettin’ out o’ his way.
2nd Stagehand: I guess we aren’t in it, since he’s not seein’ we’re here. Bein’ in his own world, where there’s nothin’ but him and the house. And those birds he still can’t let go of.
SNIPE: If that house goes on filling up with leaves, you needn’t think I’m going into it. My feet are very sensitive.
ENOCH: It may be pleasant for the floor of the house to feel our feet. And for your feet to feel the water lapping against the underside of every plank.
SNIPE: (uncertainly) That, I suppose, might be pleasant.
CROW: Floors aren’t feelin’ nothin’.
GROUSE: That’s as well for them, dear. I’d not like feet walking all over me.
ENOCH: (smiling) And the earth feels nothing either?
CROW: Earth’s feelin’ everything; bein’ alive, like the floor there ain’t. But it asked for it, right from the start. Like you were askin’ for no wings.
ENOCH: I did not ask for..
CROW: Yeah? Maybe not straight askin’, that not bein’ your way; but some kind o’ askin’. Or you wouldn’t not be havin’ ’em.
ENOCH: Flowers, you would say, have asked not to have them? And pigs? And horses?
CROW: Flowers don’t need ’em, they’re not goin’ anywhere. Pigs an’ horses’ve got ’em, just not usin’ ’em. And not thinkin’ about ’em, this way and that, like some; and makin’ pictures of ’em to fill their empty heads.
ENOCH: (looking steadily at the doorway of the house) Well, they would certainly be useful for passing over the water.
1st Stagehand: Wings is way overrated. I’m havin’ none meself, and never missed ’em.
2nd Stagehand: Nobody misses what he never had.
1st Stagehand: (indicating ENOCH) Except him.
2nd Stagehand: Might ha’ had ’em. Before he was pushin’ those birds out o’ hisself. Saw what he’d done too late. But the way he’s wantin’ now to go into the house, he’ll soon be findin’ a way o’ doin’ it, and with no more wings’n we’ve got.
1st Stagehand: (laughing) ‘Til the mornin’ sun’s hittin’ his eyes, like he says, and he’s openin’ ’em, and he’s right back here again.
GROUSE: (watching ENOCH) I don’t at all like the way he’s looking at that house. Which he surely wouldn’t be doing if those men hadn’t brought it so close. He was never much interested when they set it down at the far end of a long drive.
CROW: How’s he goin’ to be interested in what he could hardly see?
SNIPE: It’s what happens when you leave the making of life to stagehands; who concern themselves only with the furniture, and some quantity of light, so we can see it. What’s happening on that stage of theirs they care nothing about whatever.
GROUSE: The trouble, dear, is their makin’ the house so big he can’t help looking at it, and right into it, as far as he can.
CROW: (chuckling) And they pretendin’ it was a mistake, to pull the wool over his eyes; him not havin’ us to guide him proper like we did before he pushed us out here. I did, anyway; bein’ the quickest to see dangers in his dreamy way o’ goin’ on.
ENOCH: (to CROW) And what dangers, might those be, bird old and wise? That I might go through that doorway, stepping carefully over the leaves lying there, so as not to damage the memory I have of them? And go along the hallway to the further door and..open it?
CROW: I’m not seein’ no dangers there. It’s just a house, empty house. Dangers is farther off.
ENOCH: And the ladies?
GROUSE: It’s not up to us to say, dear. So long as you’re not insistin’ we’re comin’ with you.
SNIPE: That hallway looks very dark. And the rooms beyond will be darker, as the only light there is is here. And I don’t see well in the dark, and it frightens me.
GROUSE: I’m far too poor a flier to be makin’ my way between all those half- open doors you’re tellin’ of. My wings would soon be in a sorry state. Not that I’m mindin’ yourself wanderin’ about in there if you’re wantin’ to.
ENOCH: I quite understand that as this (looking round) is the only space ‘outside’ that you know, you will all be happier staying here than..
CROW: Sure better here’n flyin’ about in them big rooms o’ yours—which we’re only havin’ your word for—where our wings’ll be no use to us, battin’ against closed windows and walls, the way they will be.
(ENOCH, seeming not to hear him, walks back and forth in front of the doorway, looking at the ground thoughtfully.)
CROW: (under his breath) Lookin’ at all them ‘leaves’, are ye? To cheer yourself up with thinkin’ they’re the same leaves, or anyway same family, as you were once kickin’ your way through. When you could, if you wanted, be knowin’ as well as I am they’re nothin’ but what those guys (indicating Stagehands) are makin’ to be keepin’ you happy while you’re makin’ up your mind. Yeah, an’ maybe to keep you from makin’ it.
1st Stagehand: Sharp eyes, like all crows, he’s got; missin’ nothin’.
2nd Stagehand: So long as he’s not passin’ on what he’s seein’ to (indicating ENOCH) him.
1st Stagehand: Him? Push his nose right against those streaks o’ chalk, he’d still think they was leaves. Leaves bein’ what he’s wantin’.
2nd Stagehand: I guess. (grinning) If there wasn’t no leaves, he wouldn’t be ‘outside’. They naturally not fallin’ inside the house; ‘cept the ‘hallway’ while the door’s open.
1st Stagehand: He’s made that ‘outside’ so real lookin’—with our help, o’ course, which he’s not rememberin’—he’s not up to seein’ it any other way.
2nd Stagehand: (looking up and around) Made too good a job of it, you ask me. If I was comin’ here out o’ that house, I’d be thinkin’ myself I was outside, leaves fallin’ all round me, way they are.
1st Stagehand: Yeah, but I’m thinkin’ now he’s maybe not thinkin’ that; not anyway so clear as he was. Or why’s he lookin’ at the house all the time?
2nd Stagehand: Which is sure enough scarin’ them birds. (grinning) That he’ll be findin’ some way o’ walkin’ on the leaves on that ‘moat’.
1st Stagehand: He’ll find it sure enough if he’s wantin’ to.
2nd Stagehand: He’s wantin’ to. What other reason’s he got to be turnin’ his head again an’ again to look into the hallway?
ENOCH: (walking slowly downstage, looking about him) The stillness of the light has the curious effect—or apparent effect—of stilling the horizon, so that as I approach where it appears to be, it approaches me. Which is not the mode of a true horizon, ever fleeing the gaze of anyone approaching it. (gazing ahead of him, turning slowly around) The situation then is—at least in that respect—quite clear: nowhere around me is there anything which I may call a true horizon.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) He’s expectin’ a horizon in here? Like we’re up to makin’ the whole fuckin’ world? Pictures o’ parts o’ it—small parts— we can be makin’ for ‘im, but..
ENOCH: (dry smile) Or, I suppose, it could be said to be everywhere around me: a horizon of limitation. Expressing itself as..walls? Deceiving my eyes in appearing to be fields, carpeted with leaves? That can hardly be; leaves would fall from walls, be carried away by any light wind. Which there is not; but even so the leaves would, at last, still fall. But they are not falling. It is a long while since I saw one fall. (looking up) And yet on the branches of the tree they are still many. There being no wind will partly explain that, a leaf needs some external impetus to leave its perch, as we all do.
SNIPE: (under her breath) He needn’t think he can push me off mine.
GROUSE: No, no, dear. He’s speakin’ o’ himself.
CROW: Like normal. When was he ever speakin’ o’ anybody else?
ENOCH: That being so, I might well ask why there is no wind? Why is the air so still?
1st Stagehand: Wantin’ us to make wind now, is he? Guess we can.
2nd Stagehand: Not sure that’s the way he’s goin’.
1st Stagehand: It’ll be dark before we’re knowin’, if we’re waitin’ ’til he’s clear askin’.
ENOCH: A butterfly’s wings, they say, can cause a thunderstorm. Out of doors, that is. Not in any place enclosed from the elements; a warm winter kitchen, for example, though outside it the wind may howl. (looking troubled, as he looks around him) Or wherever the sun doesn’t rise, or set. (looking up) Or even show itself gliding through the sky. Where it is long since the light has changed its quality in any way.
(He stands still, looks about him, thoughtful and troubled.)
CROW: Days’re long here, no question. Really long.
GROUSE: A fine day can never be too long.
1st Stagehand: (sketching ‘leaves’ on the ‘sky’) We can easy be changin’ the light, if he’s wantin’ it.
2nd Stagehand: (sketching ‘leaves’ on the ‘sky’) He’s not wantin’ it.
1st Stagehand: What is he wantin’?
2nd Stagehand: I don’ know.
ENOCH: The matter would be explained, not perhaps satisfactorily, if..those (looking stage left, stage front and stage right) are..walls—of some kind—and (looking up) what is over my head is not the sky, but a roof… A roof of fine canvas, perhaps, or silk—though that would be costly, and doubtless difficult to obtain—allowing the light and heat of the sun to pass through it; neither of them ever changing. That would be unusual, I believe unknown. Night must fall, as they say. But, insofar as my memory guides me, it has not, nor for some very long while. (looking at the birds) Which will, in turn, explain why none of the birds is an owl; it being so long since I have seen one.
GROUSE: And very glad I am that he hasn’t. I was never able to sleep o’ nights for the sound o’ their wings flyin’ over.
CROW: Owls aren’t makin’ a sound in their flyin’, in my experience.
GROUSE: Those who needs to can hear ’em well enough.
ENOCH: (continuing to turn slowly around) But if the night has not fallen, how can the day have risen? How, indeed, would I recognize, cognize, such a state? Having nothing with which to contrast it.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) If he’s expectin’ us now to be makin’ ‘im both day an’ night, so he can be seein’ the difference..
(2nd Stagehand chuckles. ENOCH moves cautiously to stage left; reaching out to the side curtain, where he touches a ‘leaf’. He brings his fingers to his face, peers at them, frowning.)
ENOCH: So. Chalk.
CROW: Took ‘im long enough to find that out; that we were all knowin’ well enough.
ENOCH: (blowing the chalk from his fingers) And are they..all..chalk?
GROUSE: So they are, dear. Every last one o’ them.
(ENOCH touches other ‘leaves’ on the curtain, wipes his fingers through them.)
ENOCH: So it appears. (turning to look towards the curtain at stage right) And I may assume, I think, that those at that (dry smile) ‘horizon’, (turning downstage) and even those, further off though they are for some reason, are but chalk. (looking at the two gateposts) As will those be, of course, which appear to be clinging to the gateposts, which could never—at least in their present condition—have produced them.
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath) He bein’ always ready to be givin’ hisself the benefit o’ any doubt.
ENOCH: (slowly turning round, looking up) Which however does not satisfactorily explain why those leaves above me, on branches of the tree which for some reason I cannot see, are still so abundant.
SNIPE: I don’t know what branches he is speaking of. There aren’t any anywhere. Like there aren’t any real leaves.
GROUSE: Leaves there is. They’ve made lots o’ those an’ real enough o’ their kind. It’s only branches there’s none of. They not bein’ necessary, since the roof’s holdin’ the leaves.
CROW: You think he’s not knowin’ that? He’s just tryin’ to make some sense o’ the leaves not fallin’.
SNIPE: An’ how is he expecting them to, when they’re only painted on the the roof that he’s not seeing?
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath, grinning) Don’t have to see, since he’s knowin’, since he made it hisself.
ENOCH: (looking at the house) Only there, where the house is clearly closing off any sight of the horizon, is there a—perhaps illusive—appearance of opening. (moving upstage towards the backdrop) At least the door is open; which has allowed leaves to fall into the hallway. Though they too, of course, may be but chalk. (dry smile) And the door itself? Once one begins to doubt..
2nd Stagehand: He’s gettin’ there.
1st Stagehand: If he can keep at it, not sneak off on some side track, we’ll maybe be gettin’ home by nightfall.
SNIPE: I don’t like him looking at that doorway. There’re so many other ways, nicer ways, to look.
CROW: Makin’ me uneasy, too.
GROUSE: It’s the leaves not fallin’ which is upsettin’ him; though he’s knowin’ well enough now why that is.
ENOCH: Had the leaves been made to appear somewhat more like leaves than they are, I would not, I think, have stumbled so soon—if soon it is— on their unreality.
CROW: ‘Soon’? When the rest o’ us been knowin’ it for days ‘n years. And findin’ no fault there neither.
1st Stagehand: (to ENOCH, under his breath) We made ’em as you wanted us to make ’em. Cloth ones, with a bit o’ starch in ’em to make ’em crackly, we could ha’ done easy enough instead.
ENOCH: But would I then ever have seen they weren’t leaves? (chuckling) Knew myself better than I knew. (glancing at the stagehands) Or they did.
1st Stagehand: He’s seein’ us. Some kind o’ glimpse anyway.
2nd Stagehand: If he’s startin’ to see, there’s no tellin’ where he’ll stop. An’ it looks like he’s beginnin’ to see now how the only way he’s goin’ to be gettin’ out o’ here where there ain’t no ‘horizon’ like he’s wantin’ is by goin’ right through the big house, back the way he came, whenever it was.
1st Stagehand: (grinning) Them birds then ‘d better be lookin’ out.
2nd Stagehand: Yeah, he sure won’t be takin’ ’em with him in there; soft spot though he’s still havin’ for ’em.
1st Stagehand: The worse for him they’ll not be goin’. They could be givin’ ‘im a bit o’ company; better’n wanderin’ about in there all alone.
CROW: No danger o’ him goin’ nowhere without us. Never has, never will.
GROUSE: We’d soon be dyin’ with his leavin’ us; and he wouldn’t want that, kind-hearted man that he is.
SNIPE: He’ll soon enough be forgetting we’re still here, if we’re in the way of what he’s wanting.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) She’s got the hang of it: there’s no place for them in what he’s wantin’. (chalking ‘leaves’ on the ‘floor’ of the ‘hallway’) And wantin’ more an’ more, from the way he’s stoppin’ in front o’ the door, and lookin’ at what he’s seein’ as a hallway on th’other side o’ it.
2nd Stagehand: (chalking ‘leaves’ on the ‘floor’ of the ‘hallway’) These leaves inside the door ‘re what’s attractin’ him. (chuckling) He thinkin’ he can—if he’s so wantin’—go in there and scuffle ’em the way he did when..ever. Only in shoes now ‘stead o’ bare feet.
1st Stagehand: (chuckling) Maybe he’s thinkin’ he’ll take off them shoes.
2nd Stagehand: (derisive grin) Oh yeah.
ENOCH: (looking steadily at the ‘house’) It is the closeness to myself of the house, more than it’s size—although I suppose the one informs the other—which, in appearing to enclose the outdoors too closely, has provoked my seeing the leaves as they actually are. I was not so clearly aware of their nature—indeed, not at all—when the house, and the tree enclosing the house—of which I was not then so aware— were both at the far end of the avenue. And yet I have no memory of wanting, of thinking of wanting, them nearer.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) You were wantin’ it. Why else were we doin’ it?
2nd Stagehand: (little grin, under his breath) Yeah, we’re feelin’ clear enough what he’s wantin’; it’s leakin’ right out o’ him. If we was waitin’ for him to tell us straight, nothin’ would ever be happenin’. Those birds o’ his ‘d just be wanderin’ round like their heads was chopped off, if we weren’t makin’ those mirrors for ’em that he wanted ’em to be standin’ behind; so he could keep seein’ ’em even while he was tellin’ hisself they weren’t there.
ENOCH: (looking at the doorway) The leaves on the threshold, and in the hallway—despite the lack of wind, which otherwise I would think had carried them there—look, I must say, so like real leaves—as they were..then—that I can almost feel them rustling against my..bare..feet.
(He walks back and forth in front of the door, peering at it as if to see inside the house.)
1st Stagehand: Better maybe if their heads was chopped off. (grinning) Then we could be scoffin’ the grouse.
2nd Stagehand: Snipe too, the little meat that’s on ‘er, to be whettin’ our appetites.
GROUSE: It’s my fate, dear, to be eaten by somebody, I’m knowin’ that well enough. But I hope not by those vulgar stagehands.
SNIPE: They’ll have their work cut out, tryin’ that on me. My sharp beak’ll soon discourage them.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) Fancyin’ herself, she is. Flesh on her ain’t worth the fight for it. Crow neither, nobody’s eatin’ crows. Grouse ,on th’other hand, ‘d be worth a bit of a struggle.
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath) Crow, though, without his head ‘d not be tellin’ us his wise opinions; which would make workin’ here a whole lot pleasanter. While we’re havin’ to do it.
1st Stagehand: We could be makin’ that while maybe shorter if we was to paint some
more leaves in the hall—as he’s seein’ it—and right up to that door he’s seein’ like at th’other end o’ it..
2nd Stagehand: Good idea.
(They chalk leaf-shapes high on the backdrop, as if on the sill of the ‘closed far door’ of the hallway.)
2nd Stagehand: Problem with that door is it’s not openin’, to go into the house or anywhere else, like he’s thinkin’ it could be. Bein’ right up against the backdrop.
1st Stagehand: Space he gave us to work with, what’s he expectin’?
(ENOCH stops at stage centre. He looks around him, absently scuffling his feet as if through leaves, smearing the chalk ‘leaves’.)
2nd Stagehand: Yeah, but he’s still probably not goin’ to be too pleased when he finds the two doors he asked for is more like only one.
1st Stagehand: Serve ‘im right for not tellin’ us what the second door was supposed to be openin’ onto, so we could be makin’ some kind o’ picture on the backdrop.
2nd Stagehand: From the looks o’ things, he wasn’t havin’ a clear idea himself.
ENOCH: (standing still, looking at the floor) Those…yellow-chalked shapes, where my feet have not smeared them against the ground, look more like mere patches of sunlight than like leaves. (smiling) Except that they don’t rest on my shoes as I rest my shoes on them. (turning to look at the ‘house’) The house itself is convincing enough. And quite well proportioned. And its open hallway is unquestionably inviting.
2nd Stagehand: He’s findin’ the way.
1st Stagehand: Lookin’ like it.
ENOCH: I might, I think, without offence, shuffle my feet in those leaves just inside the doorway, as I did when I was a boy. Though it will not be the same as then, my feet now being shod, and then bare, able to feel the leaves crackling under them.
SNIPE: The edges of those leaves will be sharp, and will be cutting his feet. Many are the times they have cut mine.
GROUSE: They won’t be cuttin’ his, dear; those shoes he’s wearin’.
CROW: Won’t be no rustlin’ nor cracklin’ under ’em neither, streaks o’ chalk that them ‘leaves’ are. Which will maybe, if we’re lucky—or unlucky, hard to say which o’ the two— be settin’ ‘im thinkin’ a bit more.
ENOCH: On my way out of the house, as I then was. Was I? I can’t clearly..remember, but it..must have been so, else how could I have arrived here? (looking round) Here. Out of doors. (rueful smile) Where I have thought myself, all my life, to be. (turning back to the doorway) And the door at the far end of it may open to my hand turning the knob, the existence of which suggests that possibility..
1st Stagehand: He’ll be havin’ his work cut out there, if he thinks he’s goin’ to open it; or even get to it through ‘the house’ he’s imaginin’, an’ not seein’ is as flat as the door itself he thinks he’ll be goin’ through.
2nd Stagehand: He won’t be feelin’ the knob as flat, I’m guessin’. When he’s ready for his hand to turn it; which he nearly is.
ENOCH: And beyond it, when it is open, will there be night? Brushing my lips, blinding my eyes? (little smile) Darkness invisible. (pause) Or will the light behind me pour in streams around my body, and into the dark, melting into it, until it is no longer dark, but.. What? What my eyes can see? See what? Whatever I imagine. (turning away) Then I may as well not bother, since what I can imagine is nothing but a replica of where I am now.
CROW: Well that’s a relief anyway.
(ENOCH looks about uncertainly.)
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) Tied himself in a knot.
(His eye caught by a gatepost, he looks from one of them to the other.)
ENOCH: It is curious that there are branches on the gateposts. Small branches, but why any? Why were they not cut off? Why, indeed, did they grow? (looking closer) Ah, I see—odd that I didn’t before—that they are not posts at all. Nor free-standing, as would be natural to posts; but are living wood, suckers growing from the roots of the tree. Which is not a good sign for the main body of the tree itself. Indicative, as they will be, of its decay. Which I might perhaps have assumed merely from its great size, enabling it to enclose the whole house in its hollow centre.
1st Stagehand: Tree’s got a hollow centre?
2nd Stagehand: Must have, since he’s seein’ the whole house inside it.
ENOCH: Why was I not aware, before now, of the house being built into the middle of the tree? The drive being so long, I suppose, the falling leaves of the trees lining it foreclosed my sight.
CROW: Little he does see, you ask me. I was seein’ it comin’ our way a long time back. Driveway he was seein’ it at the end of gettin’ shorter an’ shorter.
GROUSE: The tree, you’re meanin’, darlin’? We’ve all been knowin’ it’s there. As it always has been, summer and winter.
SNIPE: I don’t like it in winter; all those bare branches like dead bones.
CROW: It’s the house I’m talkin’ about, not th’everlastin’ tree. If his eyes was open like mine, he’d ha’ seen them stagehands pullin’ it forward ’til it was half outside the tree; so he could be seein’ it proper. Which was makin’ the tree grow too, o’ course, to the big size it is now.
SNIPE: Pushing aside the lovely smaller trees lining the drive it was so pleasant to look along. Stagehands are so careless.
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath) Just doin’ our job, ma’am. Wasn’t us wantin’ the tree nearer and bigger.
1st Stagehand: It was more’n enough big when it was right at the horizon, to my way o’ seein’
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) Maybe if we could ha’ found a telescope in the prop box, and give it ‘im, he’d ha’ been content lookin’ at it there; not got us bringin’ it so near it’s practically shuttin’ out the whole sky, so he’s complainin’ about there not bein’ no horizon, like he thinks we could make that for ‘im too.
CROW: Nobody can be puttin’ his foot inside a house he’s only seein’ through a telescope. Even somebody who’s seein’ leaf-shapes chalked all over the floor and thinkin’ they’re the real thing.
ENOCH: Hollow at its centre though the tree undeniably is, it is giving no other suggestion of its dying. Its leaves are yellowing, certainly, but that is a natural effect of the season, not of any unmistakable foreshadowing of i ts death. (looking up) But it is very very large. (turning on the spot) As far as I can see, in any direction, its branches spread and stretch across the..sky, or canopy, or.. What I can see of them, for the multitude of leaves they are bearing, and the yellow flickering of those which are falling.
2nd Stagehand: It’ll not be long, I’m thinking—way things go—before he’s gettin’ us to make them branches.
1st Stagehand: An’ how’s he thinkin’ we’re goin’ to be gettin’ up there?
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) Make us some wings maybe. Hummin’bird kind, so we can be holdin’ our places in th’air while we’re workin’.
1st Stagehand: Threadin’ branches through all them leaves he’s seein’ ‘ll be takin’ us hours an’ hours. And then he’ll be needin’ us to wipe ’em away as well, so he can be seein’ them fallin’; or anyway fallen. Makin’ chalk marks o’ any kind in the middle o’ space is more’n anybody’d be up to.
2nd Stagehand: If he’d had the sense to give us some warnin’, and wanted to see ’em in mid-air, so he could be knowin’ for sure he was outside, we could ha’ dumped him some real-style leaves out o’ the flies.
ENOCH: (gazing at the doorway of the house) There being no wind to have blown them there, it is curious that there are so many leaves in the hallway. They were, of course, there also when I was a boy; but then there was a wind, I can recall it even now, blowing into the house through the open door. (peering inside the house) Several of them have somehow even drifted against the far inner door of the hallway.
1st Stagehand: Good idea our paintin’ those on the backdrop, so he can be gettin’ himself there too. So long as he’s not reachin’ out to touch ’em.
2nd Stagehand: (chuckling) He can’t do that, since he’s seein’ ’em at th’end of a long hall.
ENOCH: (looking at the doorway) As the door is open, and although the house is not my own—not now my own, though its having come so near to me suggests that it was, may have been, once mine—there would be, surely, no harm in my going a little way into the hallway.
(He moves cautiously towards the ‘doorway’ on the backdrop, his hands held up ahead of him. CROW, GROUSE and SNIPE watch him closely through their ‘mirrors’.)
SNIPE: (in alarm) He’s going inside. I told you he would.
GROUSE: Now, now, dear, he’s just lookin’.
CROW: He’ll be goin’ in when he goes. Nothin’ gained in jumpin’ the gun.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) What’s he doin’? Wantin’ to feel the air in the house? (chuckling) So different from his ‘outside’ air.
2nd Stagehand: (chuckling) Maybe seein’ now how the house is flat, and goin’ to try shufflin’ his hands in the leaves. They bein’ bare like his feet was back then.
1st Stagehand: Won’t be gettin’ much shufflin’ out o’ them leaves. An’ if he’s seein’ the house flat, he’s seein’ the knob on the door flat. So what’s he goin’ to do?
2nd Stagehand: He’ll find some way. (chuckling) Maybe just won’t see the door when he gets to it. Just walk right through it and outside.
CROW: House that size ain’t goin’ to be showin’ th’outside just on th’other side o’ that one door.
SNIPE: ‘Outside’ indeed! How might that be, when it’s sitting in the middle of the tree itself?
(ENOCH stands still, gazes towards the backdrop.)
ENOCH: That door will, of course, be only the first door..
CROW: At least he’s seein’ that.
ENOCH: Leading into a room of some kind, an anteroom perhaps, leading to a much larger, and well-appointed, reception hall.. (little smile) With anyone there to receive me? It seems unlikely. But I imagine that it will be free of dust and any sort of detritis; cared for, that is, by someone. In some manner. But would I see them? Her? Him? That I can’t quite imagine. (turning from the door) It is easier, though not therefore necessarily correct, to conceive of the room, the whole house indeed, as empty. Which would also account for its cleanliness, as there would be no one to soil it. (pause) Mice, perhaps, will have left droppings.
SNIPE: Oh, I don’t like mice.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) You won’t be goin’ in there, darlin’. He’ll be goin’ alone.
ENOCH: Collecting on the soles of my shoes through room after room, many as the mice will be in so grand a house. (looking at his feet) And my old shoes unworthy of its floors. Like my clothing generally of its fine furnishing.
1st Stagehand: What’s he talkin’ about ‘furnishin’ for, when he’s knowin’ well enough the rooms is empty? If he’s givin’ us a bit o’ time, I guess we’d be up to sketchin’ the likes o’ a tapestry or two.
2nd Stagehand: (grinning) And he can blame on the mice an’ rats eatin’ any parts o’ them we’re not finishin’.
ENOCH: In any event, I shall pass through them all quickly to the further door, leading outside. (pause) There may—it would be natural in such a large house—be more than one such further door; indeed several more. But that’s of no moment, as I shall go to, and through, but the of them to which chance will guide my steps. (pause) And if, on its opening, I see nothing before me but a doorway’s measure of the trunk of the tree ? Allowing me no egress or entry? (pause) I would look then for one of those—posited—other doors; of which not all, surely, will give onto the tree’s trunk; but to some sort of opening to the land beyond it. Outside. (thin smile) A place unfortunately more difficult to envision than this space here that appeared to me so long to be ‘outside’. But..conceivable, from whatever little evidence I have gathered through my life.
CROW: Which you weren’t alone in the gatherin’ of.
SNIPE: All the help we gave him, and his leaving us in the lurch is the thank you we are given.
ENOCH: (moving closer the doorway) And in any event, so far as I may see, there is no other way, little though my expectations, even my hopes, may be for this one. And there will at least, while on the way, be the pleasant reminiscent sound of the rustling and crumbling of the leaves under my feet.
CROW: Still thinkin’ they’re live leaves, poor fool, when anyone with eyes no better’n his can see they’re nothin’ but streaks o’ chalk.
2nd Stagehand: (under his breath, grinning) An’ he’s not seein’ either—it maybe bein’ somethin’ crows can’t see, sharp as their eyes are—that it’s not a floor they’re streaked on.
ENOCH: Ah, I am forgetting that they are but a gesture in the direction of leaves. They will not rustle, nor crackle..nor break..under my feet; but only smear against the hallway floor, like the mice droppings in the rooms beyond it, all the way to the last door.. If there is one, and if it will open.
1st Stagehand: You’re sure he’s comin’? Soundin’ pretty doubtful.
2nd Stagehand: He’s comin’. What else is he gonna’ do? He’s painted himself into a corner. (grinning) With our helpin’.
1st Stagehand: Then we better be gettin’ ourselves ready.
(Holding their chalk-sticks like rifles, they stand like guards on either side of the ‘doorway’, facing ENOCH, who is looking about uncertainly.)
ENOCH: There remains the concern, although I thought I had overcome it, that the house is not, after all, my own house; though carrying, or appearing to carry, in facsimile, some of my past life. Have I then the right to enter it?
2nd Stagehand: That’s a nice hurdle. Bit late to be thinkin’ of it.
1st Stagehand: He’ll soon be findin’ his way round it.
ENOCH: (gazing steadily at the doorway) The outer door, being open, surely implies tacit admittance; allowing me, without offence, to venture a short way into the hall—at least to the further door; which, not being open, does not offer the same welcome.
CROW: Wantin’ a butler, is he, to be openin’ it for ‘im?
SNIPE: I hope there is no such person. Then the door will not be opened and he will not leave us.
1st Stagehand: (under his breath) There isn’t, darlin’; we didn’t hire one. But don’t you be trustin’ in that; his foot’s all ready to step on the threshold.
2nd Stagehand: (chuckling) Except he can’t; as he’s about to be findin’ out.
(ENOCH touches his foot to the painted ‘threshold’. Evidently feeling it against the backdrop, he looks down. The others all watch him, the birds uneasy, the stagehands grinning.)
ENOCH: That is peculiar. To my foot it feels as if the door is not open; and yet my eyes.. (lifting his hands, and moving them towards the ‘open doorway’) Perhaps my hands will clarify..
(His fingers touch the backdrop. He feels it it in two or three places.)
ENOCH: Ah, my hands agree with my feet in telling me that the length of the hallway is so little that I may reach the far, closed, door from where I am. And open it? (moving his hand slowly toward the painted knob, hesitating) If it is locked, it will be an indication of my not being welcome; although I might then knock. But if it is unlocked..
(He touches the ‘knob’ with his fingers. The stagehands stand stiff and expressionless.)
SNIPE: Please let it be locked.
GROUSE: Them inside ‘ll never be lettin’ him open it.
CROW: That’s the thing we’re not knowin’.
(As ENOCH tentatively ‘turns the knob’, the stagehands each reach out a hand and draw apart the cloth of the backdrop. ENOCH hesitates in front of the gap; then, as the birds make inarticulate cries to dissuade him, he passes through it. As the stagehands let the backdrop close behind ENOCH, the birds’ outcries end abruptly, and they slump against their ‘mirrors’. The Stagehands look at them derisively.)
1st Stagehand: That’s done for that lot.
2nd Stagehand: He’s well rid o’ them.
Stagehands: (shouting) Take ‘er away.
(The house flat is drawn away to stage left, revealing a curtain with a scene on it of a flat and barren landscape, with no sign of ENOCH. The stagehands gaze at the landscape.)
1st Stagehand: (pointing to a small leaf-shape at the centre of the ‘landscape’) Is that him?
2nd Stagehand: (peering) Looks like it could.. (suddenly grinning) Naw, it’s just one o’ the leaves. Must’ve blown through with ‘im.
(He touches the chalk leaf, letting a dry yellow leaf—which he has palmed—flutter to his feet. He picks it up, looks at it in mild surprise .)
2nd Stagehand: Hm, real one.
1st Stagehand: (looking at the chalk ‘leaf’ on the backdrop) Leaf’s still there.
2nd Stagehand: (indifferently, looking steadily at the leaf in the palm of his hand) It is, eh? Then it’ll be him, all right. (looking at the three birds) Maybe that lot ‘d like this one. Memento.
1st Stagehand: (low laugh) That lot’s not rememberin’ nothin’. Dead to the world they are.
2nd Stagehand: (looking at the painted young man by the doorway) I’ll leave it to him then. He bein’ th’only one o’ the three o’ them left.
(He drops the leaf into the ‘lap’ of the painted young man. It falls near to his own feet. Frowning, he scuffs it to the ‘feet’ of the painted man.)
2nd Stagehand: Somethings you’re never gettin’ rid of.
1st Stagehand: (indicating the birds) We can be gettin’ rid o’ them three anyway. Before they’re startin’ to rot.
2nd Stagehand: (his face clearing) Nothin’ in that lot to rot.
1st Stagehand: (chuckling) Yeah.
(Together, in good humour, they wheel the birds, slumped against their mirror frames, offstage, as the forestage lights dim out, leaving only the ‘landscape’ on the backdrop alight. When the stage is clear, the light on the backdrop slowly brightens.)
(Blackout.)
Mt. Tuam, 3rd November, 2017.
(edited Tiruvannamalai, December, 2017.)
(light further editing Tiruvannamalai, 9th-14th January, 2018.)
Roger Maybank 