No More Learning

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?

DON JUAN. [impatiently] Oh, I beg you not to begin talking about love.
Here they talk of nothing else but love--its beauty, its holiness, its
spirituality, its devil knows what! --excuse me; but it does so bore me.
They don't know what they're talking about. I do. They think they have
achieved the perfection of love because they have no bodies. Sheer
imaginative debauchery! Faugh!

ANA. Has even death failed to refine your soul, Juan? Has the terrible
judgment of which my father's statue was the minister taught you no
reverence?

DON JUAN. How is that very flattering statue, by the way? Does it still
come to supper with naughty people and cast them into this bottomless
pit?

ANA. It has been a great expense to me. The boys in the monastery school
would not let it alone: the mischievous ones broke it; and the studious
ones wrote their names on it. Three new noses in two years, and fingers
without end. I had to leave it to its fate at last; and now I fear it is
shockingly mutilated. My poor father!

DON JUAN. Hush! Listen! [Two great chords rolling on syncopated waves of
sound break forth: D minor and its dominant: a round of dreadful joy to
all musicians]. Ha! Mozart's statue music. It is your father. You had
better disappear until I prepare him. [She vanishes].

From the void comes a living statue of white marble, designed to
represent a majestic old man. But he waives his majesty with infinite
grace; walks with a feather-like step; and makes every wrinkle in his
war worn visage brim over with holiday joyousness. To his sculptor he
owes a perfectly trained figure, which he carries erect and trim; and
the ends of his moustache curl up, elastic as watchsprings, giving him
an air which, but for its Spanish dignity, would be called jaunty. He is
on the pleasantest terms with Don Juan. His voice, save for a much more
distinguished intonation, is so like the voice of Roebuck Ramsden that
it calls attention to the fact that they are not unlike one another in
spite of their very different fashion of shaving.

DON JUAN. Ah, here you are, my friend. Why don't you learn to sing the
splendid music Mozart has written for you?

THE STATUE. Unluckily he has written it for a bass voice. Mine is a
counter tenor. Well: have you repented yet?

DON JUAN. I have too much consideration for you to repent, Don Gonzalo.
If I did, you would have no excuse for coming from Heaven to argue with
me.

THE STATUE. True. Remain obdurate, my boy. I wish I had killed you, as I
should have done but for an accident. Then I should have come here; and
you would have had a statue and a reputation for piety to live up to.
Any news?

DON JUAN. Yes: your daughter is dead.

THE STATUE. [puzzled] My daughter? [Recollecting] Oh! the one you were
taken with. Let me see: what was her name?

DON JUAN. Ana.

THE STATUE. To be sure: Ana. A goodlooking girl, if I recollect aright.
Have you warned Whatshisname--her husband?

DON JUAN. My friend Ottavio? No: I have not seen him since Ana arrived.

Ana comes indignantly to light.

ANA. What does this mean? Ottavio here and YOUR friend! And you, father,
have forgotten my name. You are indeed turned to stone.

THE STATUE. My dear: I am so much more admired in marble than I ever was
in my own person that I have retained the shape the sculptor gave me. He
was one of the first men of his day: you must acknowledge that.

ANA. Father! Vanity! personal vanity! from you!

THE STATUE. Ah, you outlived that weakness, my daughter: you must be
nearly 80 by this time. I was cut off (by an accident) in my 64th year,
and am considerably your junior in consequence.
Besides, my child,
in this place, what our libertine friend here would call the farce of
parental wisdom is dropped. Regard me, I beg, as a fellow creature, not
as a father.

ANA. You speak as this villain speaks.

THE STATUE. Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a sound
thinker.

ANA. [horror creeping upon her] I begin to understand. These are devils,
mocking me. I had better pray.

THE STATUE. [consoling her] No, no, no, my child: do not pray. If you
do, you will throw away the main advantage of this place. Written over
the gate here are the words "Leave every hope behind, ye who enter. "
Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral
responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no
work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what
you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but
amuse yourself. [Don Juan sighs deeply]. You sigh, friend Juan; but if
you dwelt in heaven, as I do, you would realize your advantages.

DON JUAN. You are in good spirits to-day, Commander. You are positively
brilliant. What is the matter?

THE STATUE. I have come to a momentous decision, my boy. But first,
where is our friend the Devil? I must consult him in the matter. And Ana
would like to make his acquaintance, no doubt.

ANA. You are preparing some torment for me.

DON JUAN. All that is superstition, Ana. Reassure yourself. Remember:
the devil is not so black as he is painted.

THE STATUE. Let us give him a call.

At the wave of the statue's hand the great chords roll out again but
this time Mozart's music gets grotesquely adulterated with Gounod's.
A scarlet halo begins to glow; and into it the Devil rises, very
Mephistophelean, and not at all unlike Mendoza, though not so
interesting. He looks older; is getting prematurely bald; and, in spite
of an effusion of goodnature and friendliness, is peevish and sensitive
when his advances are not reciprocated. He does not inspire much
confidence in his powers of hard work or endurance, and is, on the
whole, a disagreeably self-indulgent looking person; but he is clever
and plausible, though perceptibly less well bred than the two other men,
and enormously less vital than the woman.

THE DEVIL. [heartily] Have I the pleasure of again receiving a visit
from the illustrious Commander of Calatrava? [Coldly] Don Juan, your
servant. [Politely] And a strange lady? My respects, Senora.

ANA. Are you--

THE DEVIL. [bowing] Lucifer, at your service.

ANA. I shall go mad.

THE DEVIL. [gallantly] Ah, Senora, do not be anxious. You come to us
from earth, full of the prejudices and terrors of that priest-ridden
place. You have heard me ill spoken of; and yet, believe me, I have
hosts of friends there.

ANA. Yes: you reign in their hearts.

THE DEVIL. [shaking his head] You flatter me, Senora; but you are
mistaken. It is true that the world cannot get on without me; but it
never gives me credit for that: in its heart it mistrusts and hates me.
Its sympathies are all with misery, with poverty, with starvation of the
body and of the heart. I call on it to sympathize with joy, with love,
with happiness, with beauty.

DON JUAN. [nauseated] Excuse me: I am going. You know I cannot stand
this.

THE DEVIL. [angrily] Yes: I know that you are no friend of mine.

THE STATUE. What harm is he doing you, Juan? It seems to me that he was
talking excellent sense when you interrupted him.

THE DEVIL. [warmly shaking the statue's hand] Thank you, my friend:
thank you. You have always understood me: he has always disparaged and
avoided me.

DON JUAN. I have treated you with perfect courtesy.

THE DEVIL. Courtesy! What is courtesy? I care nothing for mere courtesy.
Give me warmth of heart, true sincerity, the bond of sympathy with love
and joy--

DON JUAN. You are making me ill.

THE DEVIL. There! [Appealing to the statue] You hear, sir! Oh, by what
irony of fate was this cold selfish egotist sent to my kingdom, and you
taken to the icy mansions of the sky!

THE STATUE. I can't complain. I was a hypocrite; and it served me right
to be sent to heaven.

THE DEVIL. Why, sir, do you not join us, and leave a sphere for which
your temperament is too sympathetic, your heart too warm, your capacity
for enjoyment too generous?

THE STATUE. I have this day resolved to do so. In future, excellent Son
of the Morning, I am yours. I have left Heaven for ever.

THE DEVIL. [again grasping his hand] Ah, what an honor for me! What a
triumph for our cause! Thank you, thank you. And now, my friend--I may
call you so at last--could you not persuade HIM to take the place you
have left vacant above?

THE STATUE. [shaking his head] I cannot conscientiously recommend
anybody with whom I am on friendly terms to deliberately make himself
dull and uncomfortable.

THE DEVIL. Of course not; but are you sure HE would be uncomfortable?
Of course you know best: you brought him here originally; and we had the
greatest hopes of him. His sentiments were in the best taste of our best
people. You remember how he sang? [He begins to sing in a nasal operatic
baritone, tremulous from an eternity of misuse in the French manner].

Vivan le femmine!
Viva il buon vino!

THE STATUE. [taking up the tune an octave higher in his counter tenor]

Sostegno a gloria
D'umanita.

THE DEVIL. Precisely. Well, he never sings for us now.

DON JUAN. Do you complain of that? Hell is full of musical amateurs:
music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be permitted to
abstain?

THE DEVIL. You dare blaspheme against the sublimest of the arts!

DON JUAN. [with cold disgust] You talk like a hysterical woman fawning
on a fiddler.

THE DEVIL. I am not angry. I merely pity you. You have no soul; and you
are unconscious of all that you lose. Now you, Senor Commander, are a
born musician. How well you sing! Mozart would be delighted if he were
still here; but he moped and went to heaven. Curious how these clever
men, whom you would have supposed born to be popular here, have turned
out social failures, like Don Juan!

DON JUAN. I am really very sorry to be a social failure.

THE DEVIL. Not that we don't admire your intellect, you know. We do. But
I look at the matter from your own point of view. You don't get on with
us. The place doesn't suit you. The truth is, you have--I won't say no
heart; for we know that beneath all your affected cynicism you have a
warm one.

DON JUAN. [shrinking] Don't, please don't.

THE DEVIL. [nettled] Well, you've no capacity for enjoyment. Will that
satisfy you?

DON JUAN. It is a somewhat less insufferable form of cant than the
other. But if you'll allow me, I'll take refuge, as usual, in solitude.

THE DEVIL. Why not take refuge in Heaven? That's the proper place for
you. [To Ana] Come, Senora! could you not persuade him for his own good
to try a change of air?

ANA. But can he go to Heaven if he wants to?

THE DEVIL. What's to prevent him?

ANA. Can anybody--can I go to Heaven if I want to?

THE DEVIL. [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies that
way.

ANA. But why doesn't everybody go to Heaven, then?

THE STATUE. [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It's because
heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: that's why.

THE DEVIL. His excellency the Commander puts it with military bluntness;
but the strain of living in Heaven is intolerable. There is a notion
that I was turned out of it; but as a matter of fact nothing could have
induced me to stay there. I simply left it and organized this place.

THE STATUE. I don't wonder at it. Nobody could stand an eternity of
heaven.

THE DEVIL. Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander: it is
a question of temperament. I don't admire the heavenly temperament: I
don't understand it: I don't know that I particularly want to understand
it; but it takes all sorts to make a universe. There is no accounting
for tastes: there are people who like it. I think Don Juan would like
it.

DON JUAN. But--pardon my frankness--could you really go back there if
you desired to; or are the grapes sour?

THE DEVIL. Back there! I often go back there. Have you never read the
book of Job? Have you any canonical authority for assuming that there is
any barrier between our circle and the other one?

ANA. But surely there is a great gulf fixed.

THE DEVIL. Dear lady: a parable must not be taken literally. The gulf
is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic temperament.
What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of what you have seen
on earth. There is no physical gulf between the philosopher's class room
and the bull ring; but the bull fighters do not come to the class room
for all that. Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest
following--England? There they have great racecourses, and also concert
rooms where they play the classical compositions of his Excellency's
friend Mozart. Those who go to the racecourses can stay away from them
and go to the classical concerts instead if they like: there is no law
against it; for Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do
whatever the Government and public opinion allows them to do. And the
classical concert is admitted to be a higher, more cultivated, poetic,
intellectual, ennobling place than the racecourse. But do the lovers of
racing desert their sport and flock to the concert room? Not they.