Chris-1a

THE BRIDGE OF DREAMS--CHRISTINE

ACT I: LOLITA

[Jack, with Henry and Shoko, at the Lake Arrowhead cabin.]

JACK
I don't see the boat.

HENRY
They'll be back. It's a sunny day, so enjoy it. [Just making conversation.] Remember how we got that boat, Jack? Christine and I "paddled" it over after "Old Man Benson" gave it to her, and she insisted on bringing it home. [To Shoko.] He lived over there. [Pointing, he moves his hand back and forth through a six inch arc, then stops.] But you can't see his boat dock from here. He was standing there by the mailbox, with that big cement truck backed up into the drive next to his cabin. We were coming back from San Bernardino and there he was, standing in the road waving his arms. Said he needed help before the cement started to set up. Laura and Christine shoveled while Jack and I hauled cement down the hill in two old wheelbarrows. Benson did most of the trowel work--for the foundation for a bigger dock for his new boat. Then he insisted on giving us the old boat, finally saying, "For the little girl . . . for working so hard." It might have been his "old" boat, but was an improvement over the boat we'd been fishing from.

JACK
We got a bigger engine, and could even try to water ski. But it's always been Christine's boat, as she'd remind us. Jim Benson had been coming to the lake summers for years, and planned to retire here. He became Christine's buddy--she'd go fishing with him. Until he had that accident. I guess he'd been climbing in the rocks, tripped, caught a foot as he fell, and broke a leg--then

went into shock. We'd wondered why we hadn't seen him, and assumed he must be visiting his daughter in LA. Then she called Brown, at the General Store, wondering why he wasn't answering his phone. Brown drove out to the cabin, which he found empty, but open, with Benson's pick-up truck still there in the drive, and called in some of the neighbors to form a search party. I was the one who found him . . . but animals had been working on the body by then. A shocking sight.

HENRY
I didn't know Benson well, but that boat still reminds me of him solid, dependable, suited to this place.

JACK
Even for water skiing, if you’re good at it. If I could once get my rear end out of the water and get up on my feet I was all right--until I fell and had to start over.

HENRY
You should try again, Jack. But Shoko and I don't plan on much water skiing this summer. We'll use the boat to fish, to doze in the sun, to let the water rock us into a state of serenity.

JACK
Like Laura, with her Edna St. Vincent Millay.

HENRY
No, I'm not trying to become one with infinity, any more than Grendel is. [The dog looks up.] Or Betty was! I never saw the final version of your movie, Jack, but did see most of the pieces. Betty portraying the countess's sexual adventures in little vignettes--from Babe Ruth to John Barrymore to Admiral Yamamoto--was priceless, a lust for life combined with an amused tolerance for male foibles. Betty used to joke about

how most of that came from a fantasy life the countess had come to embrace as the greater reality. The best scenes were those where the countess was Desdemona, patterned on her own early film, and Cleopatra, which was Betty's New York performance as if performed in Tokyo in 1923. I particularly remember the close-ups of Betty as the countess as Cleopatra.

SHOKO
The countess would have been very pleased by the film you made for her, Jack. Betty liked to say, "We made it for her."

JACK
I know--and every time she did it reminded me of that last meeting with the countess. She'd cast the right spell over us, all right--her death worked exactly as she said it would. I had a workable script for Betty within weeks. Then you moved out here, Henry, to negotiate a contract, and Betty took possession of "her" house--settled at Shangri-La. We didn't shoot many scenes there, only a few at the end, mostly as a frame, but she did live there for most of the two years we were in production.

HENRY
I was doing most of the shuttling back and forth. Betty made just one extended trip East--to do Othello, since you were featuring it in the film, and she wanted to "feel it on stage."

SHOKO
I admit I had resented Betty--at first. And when she left to go back to New York that first time, I felt the countess had been abandoned. I saw the countess felt as if she'd lost a daughter who'd run off with some rascal, and felt like the daughter who'd stayed home while the favorite had eloped. But by the time we went back to see Betty as Cleopatra, it was obvious she'd become very special for the countess. Then when, after the

countess's death, Betty came back to what was now her house, I almost did go back to Japan. But she convinced both Thomas and me to stay, telling us she needed our help in her search for the spirit of the countess. She asked us to treat her just as we had the countess, imposed it as a special discipline on herself at first, in the way she talked to us, in what she expected. But, as she became accustomed to the role, she did assume the countess's authoritative manner. Thomas found it natural to treat her the same, saying, "That's what the madam wished." He always addressed Betty as, "Madam," too, but she asked me to call her "Betty," as most people she worked with did, and I finally accepted that. Still, I always did what she directed me to do, so I'm not sure what difference that made.

JACK
Thomas accepted her as taking the countess's place as much from Betty accommodating herself to his ways as he to hers. And the countess's legacy worked powerfully on Betty. It was a mystical experience to sense that merging identity, as she gradually became what that grand old woman had been in her prime--at least in my imagination--as if the countess was willing it from the grave, so that she couldn't have escaped it.

SHOKO
Betty was fluent in French. She and the countess and I used to speak French together, she wrote to the countess in French, and read French novels. Then she began to study Japanese. It had less to do with the film than with the countess she'd known, but also let her take advantage of the available teacher . . . meaning me. We’d planned to go to Japan while you were still there. And bring Christine! Betty would have loved it. [Pause.] And I'd come to love her, too--as I had the countess--particularly after we were speaking Japanese at home. At first I told her I didn't want to go back to New York with her . . . but I did.

HENRY
When the film was finished, she went back on different terms. It became more and more obvious that she intended to be in charge, and Jordan wasn't ready to accept that.

JACK
Betty didn't mind taking possession of what Laura had here, either. I know Laura went to New York to help you, Henry . . . but it had begun long before that. Christine going to live with Betty at Shangri-La as she began fourth grade was fundamental for Laura. She strongly opposed it, saying Betty would neglect her, but finally agreed--because the school was better in Encino, because Shoko was there, because Betty was, after all, Christine's mother--and, finally, because Christine wanted to go. That was surprising, because Christine loved it here at the lake, too, and was doing fine at school. She'd catch the bus down by the mailbox. Laura or I usually walked down with her, and would get the morning paper. Then I'd walk down for the mail when we heard the bus coming in the afternoon.

SHOKO
I thought Betty should be looking after her daughter's education, so I suppose I suggested it.

JACK
I think Betty wanted her there because the countess had--so you could turn her into a lady, working with her on the language, on flower arranging, on the tea ceremony, on all the graces of a young woman. But it bothered Laura. I didn’t appreciate how much, because her main reason for leaving was so obviously the accident that left you blind, Henry. I think she felt some responsibility because you'd been trying to teach Christine to water ski on too windy a day. I noticed she'd also spend an occasional evening with you when you were in Los Angeles.

HENRY
Yes, Laura always seemed pleased to see me, but it bothered her when Betty started coming up here, first for an occasional script conference, then for a day of swimming or fishing, and, later, to water ski. Laura felt she was gradually intruding into her world on purpose, challenging possession.

SHOKO
I was living with Betty, and she obviously took a perverse pleasure in complicating things for you two. She'd say, "I need Jack now! Laura can have him back when I'm done with him." She was concerned about Henry's accident, but delighted when Laura decided to go back to New York with him. She asked me if I thought something might be going on between them, saying, "Laura's such a seductive woman, you know!"

HENRY
[Laughs.] I knew Laura well enough to know how she felt about Betty. To be candid, Jack, we both agreed that, even if you wanted to keep Betty here, she'd never stay--and wouldn't bring you with her when she came back to New York. When she went with me, I told Laura I'd have her back out here by that time. Then, later, when we started talking about filming some of the plays, I suggested she move back as our agent. She seemed the logical one . . . so it surprised me when she refused.

JACK
Well, by then she had Christine back there. And I know that they've both come to love New York--for the theatre, and the museums--just the action. They go everywhere together.

HENRY
As you remarked, I sometimes spent an evening with Laura while you were working on the film, but, more than I ever did

with Betty, I always thought of Laura as your woman--as she did. Then, Laura and Betty were both water skiing well by summer, and so, of course, Christine wanted to learn. The day of the accident it was Laura, Christine, and me out in the boat. I'd been "at the controls" while Laura was skiing, but when she started instructing Christine she took over. Christine suddenly tumbled and, caught in the tow rope, was pulled under. Sitting there in my trunks, I jumped up and was diving from the side of the boat when Laura abruptly cut power. Thrown off balance, I dived too deep and must have hit my head on a submerged rock, which knocked me unconscious. It was up to the women to rescue me. Christine swam well for a ten-year-old, and had her life preserver on. Once the boat stopped, she got untangled, then helped Laura, who'd jumped in, too, to get preservers she'd thrown from the boat around me. Laura then maneuvered the boat slowly back to shore while Christine kept my head out of water. They towed me to the beach here and called an ambulance. I woke up in the ambulance--but couldn't see.

JACK
I've tried to imagine what that must be like.

HENRY
A month later, as I got out of the hospital here, I asked Laura to go back to New York with me, to be my eyes at the theatre, and in the office. I thought she'd be back out here in a month or so, but had soon turned almost everything over to her I couldn't do on the telephones. I tried to get Laura to make some business trips out here, but she preferred not to, and let me call--to you and Randall and Betty--which I did pretty regularly.

JACK
Betty did begin to spend more time up here after Laura went East with you. Then, after school was out, Christine joined us,

while Shoko went back to Japan for a short visit. I thought, "I need to talk to Laura . . . but when she comes back out." I was surprised when she didn't come back after Betty left.

HENRY
She probably didn't want to see her every move as being determined by Betty. But Betty brought Shoko with her, and, since Shoko began to take me places when I needed that kind of help, Laura soon moved out into the larger sphere of the New York theatre business . . . her world now.

JACK
Ironically, Laura found her place there more quickly than Betty had. Then, as we finished the picture, Betty just moved up here--and I didn't object. By then, Betty liked to theorize about the theatre--and I did, too. For a while, we were as close as we'd ever been. When Christine moved up here for the summer, we were like a family on vacation, took long hikes, swam, fished--and water skied. Betty was good, and Christine was getting better--better than I was. I usually drove the boat. Betty had Grendel by then [Pats the dog.], and we'd take him along. Christine--and even Midnight--soon made friends with him. Betty began painting, and would often wear that thousand crane scarf I'd bought her for the film--as a gift from Captain Yamamoto--sitting there painting, with Grendel at her side.

HENRY
The scarf that she wore in the film?

JACK
Yes. Betty became fond of that scarf, as she embraced the Japanese mystique--but I didn't expect to see it on the seat in the station wagon as I pulled in today. [He pauses, but there is no comment from Henry or Shoko.] Whenever I asked about

her future, Betty affirmed live theatre. She said the imaginative dialectic of live theatre was far superior to the rational dialectic of philosophical discourse, involved all the capacities of the human spirit, not just intellect. She felt Plato's first impulse had been to theatre, for he'd grown up exposed to one of the most intense theatrical traditions ever, and myth and metaphor were central teaching devices for him. The greatness in his dialogues was in the characters, of Socrates first, but in half a dozen in The Symposium--which had become her favorite dialogue, too.

HENRY
As I think it is mine, Jack.

JACK
I had sketched out a dramatic adaptation by then, and, two years later, Betty did a staged reading. And I accepted this pastoral interlude with my sometime wife as a gift, even knowing it couldn't last long. She'd talk to you on the phone, about various offers, but seemed happy here, spending a little time each day working on Japanese with Christine or me, or, surrounded by dictionaries, reading for hours--again saying it was in memory of the countess, that finishing the film hadn't finished that. She wanted to be able to read Mishima and Kawabata in the original--as the countess could--said she wanted to go to Japan to meet them, as the countess had Tanizaki and Admiral Yamamoto--then laughed at that idea.

SHOKO
But she meant it. I don't know how fluent she was by the time of her death--long after both of those authors were dead. When Mishima committed suicide, it was a shock, for she'd really wanted to meet him. She said, "I should have gone with you, Shoko." After I returned from Japan, I remember, we'd all read together--here or at Shangri-La. I had three good students.

JACK
But, not long after, Jordan called, asking Betty to come back to do a revival of Antony and Cleopatra--and, again, the temptation was too great. I knew when she left that the idyll was over--particularly since she took you with her.

HENRY
She came back as Cleopatra, in fact, ready to take on her Antony--in Rome!

SHOKO
But part of her spirit was always here in California, which she liked to call her "Egypt." Sitting in the countess's chair in the library, she'd say, "This is more my home than any other place I've ever lived. I will retire here. Preserve it for me, Thomas."

JACK
So the countess had finessed us all, by making the most of her death . . . like Mishima did. She knew Betty would come to possess the spirit of Shangri-La in the process of making the film. I got some of the books we'd talked about most--Yeats and the Japanese authors--and the memories. And I think she anticipated that Betty would become closer to you, Shoko, than to any of the rest of us, as if she depended on seeing herself reflected as the countess in your eyes for the magic to work. She had become dependent on you, so took you, but left me--with Christine, my memories, and this lazy dog--but without either you or Laura to console me. Betty joked about going out to find me another girl, but, all in all, we parted on good terms.

HENRY
By then, Betty had sufficiently assimilated the spirit of the countess to take it with her. In subtle ways at first, but very firmly, she insisted on making decisions. Within six months

she had reconstituted our theatre company--as the New Age Players--which became increasingly frustrating to Jordan. Ironically, the less she needed him, the more he wanted her, but as the actress he'd known in college, or the one who came to New York looking for him, the rare young talent he could shape to his own purposes. She was that no more.

JACK
Part of what made Christine so appealing to him, just as Betty's relationship to her was becoming more complicated. When Betty went East, and left Christine here with me, she'd lost all three of her female role models--to New York--and I was left with a sensitive eleven-year-old girl. I've always been able to live alone pretty well, and this is a good place for it, so I wasn't concerned about myself. I was more concerned about Betty, going back into the cave--wondering how those who took those shadows for truth would receive her. But I was most concerned about Christine. It was as if she were fated to lose the women closest to her--and be left with me. Laura was the hardest to lose, for she's been closest to her emotionally--but, when Laura left, Christine was going to school in Encino, and still had you.

SHOKO
And Betty and you, Jack.

JACK
She'd never been sure what to make of Betty, and I wasn't sure how much she'd miss her. And living here at the lake would pose problems for us by winter. I'd have to be away at times, and couldn't leave a, by then, twelve-year-old girl here alone. I took her with me if I went to town to get groceries or a haircut.

SHOKO
Then how about her schooling?

JACK
Her schooling had been irregular, but she was bright enough to compensate. Just getting to school from here would have been a problem, however. I finally decided to enroll her in that private boarding school in Santa Barbara. She didn't like the idea, but accepted it. She'd become a very pretty girl. I'd cared for her since she was a baby, so had a strong physical attachment, but now she was taking care of herself. And, as she approached twelve, I began to think I was seeing her anew. I'd watch her from across the room, playing the piano there at Shangri-La, reading a book, or just looking out of the window here at the lake, and my heart would melt. Pristine, innocent beauty. I'd willingly have faced death to keep anyone from putting a rough hand on her. This Lolita thing for my own daughter was harmless enough, no doubt, but I preferred not to spend the winter alone in the woods with her. We'd been disillusioned by her mother, but I had yet to be disillusioned by Christine . . . and didn't want her to be disillusioned by me.

SHOKO
[Changing the topic.] You've added so many Japanese books to the countess's collection here in the bedroom, Jack. Some I'd never read before. Henry and I want to thank you for that.

HENRY
That's what Shoko's been reading me most lately, translating as she reads, which she enjoys. Last night I had trouble sleeping, so she read Kawabata's The House of the Sleeping Beauties. I was surprised by how useful it is to explore your mortality by having conscious age reflect upon unconscious youth.

JACK
The House of the Sleeping Beauties. I'm very fond of that book, too. When we were doing Who's Afraid of Virginia

Woolf, I liked to contemplate Betty while she was asleep. She seemed a different woman in repose--if even more beautiful. And when Christine was staying here with me, she might fall asleep on the couch watching television, and I'd sit and just watch her breathe. My Lolita! You know Joyce's story, The Dead? Reflections upon mortality provoked by a sleeping beauty. Yes, Kawabata knew what he was doing.

HENRY
Your Lolita. No more. A young woman now. But the sense of growing old is sharpened by that contrast with the obliviousness of youth to mortality. It wouldn't work to reverse the roles, would it? Have Christine watching one of us sleep? [Laughs.] I'm getting old enough to identify, if not with King Lear--raging against the elements--with Kawabata's Eguchi.

JACK
I used to say I was saving Yeats and yoga for my old age, to sail to Byzantium, under a physical discipline that would keep the house in order while I was away. The countess believed that, too, that old people must be Platonic--from ideas, through ideas, to ideas--or Romantic, dwell in realms of their own imagining. To preserve their sanity. Learn to drink tea from an empty cup . . . cultivate those best memories from their youth. The countess did that, could enjoy the things she was still able to enjoy--a good glass of wine--but also learned to enjoy the memories of a rich life. And how to let her imagination work on those memories--until who knew what was real.

HENRY
The way it is in dreams. "The bridge of dreams" . . . I like that concept. From The Tale of Genji, isn't it? That's what these books offer us. We've talked about that. Who's the author of the short story by that title you read to me a while back?

SHOKO
Tanizaki. But Kawabata may do it best in The Sound of the Mountain, where dream mingles with memory and imaginative fantasy, each as real as the other.

JACK
Betty seemed to want to institutionalize that impulse, in transforming your theatre company. I'd been working on an adaptation of the Dido episode from Virgil's Aeneid while she was here, even had her read some of Dido's speeches, and she told me she might be willing to do it, "since it's got such a nice part for me, Jack, and Jordan should enjoy being 'pious' Aeneas, leaving me on the beach to kill myself over him."

HENRY
And they both did enjoy doing it. For Jordan it was a classic.

JACK
I'd been thinking of it as a screenplay, seeing Betty as Dido, but she wanted to do everything first in New York, "Whole, and live, Jack. Then, if a film can be made . . ." I'd enrolled Christine in that school in Santa Barbara, known for its strength in languages, but decided to take her to New York at Thanksgiving. We could see Betty and Jordan in Antony and Cleopatra, and Betty and you, Henry, in Milton's Samson Agonistes--and both see New York City's sights for the first time--me at forty, with Christine, who'd just turned twelve.

SHOKO
But quite the young lady.

JACK
Yes. Thomas had prepared a special dinner for her birthday, treating her as the lady of the house. It was just the two of us,

but when I showed her the tickets to New York, and the luggage I'd bought her for the trip, she was delighted. Samson Agonistes was the first play Betty was directing under the aegis of your newly re-organized company. She'd never directed before, and had proposed the Milton to test her own capacities. She'd told Jordan that, since she already had Cleopatra's lines, she needed something to keep her occupied. He'd accepted that, but still considered the Milton unstageable, and didn't want to play Samson. So Betty said she'd do it with you--said she liked the idea of a blind man playing a blind man. Christine and I saw that play first.

HENRY
Betty's first step to out-maneuver Jordan. She told me, "Of course you can do it, Henry. Milton was blind when he wrote it, wasn't he? What else can you do now? If you're going to be a full partner, you'll have to do it." That's when I began to work closely with Shoko, learning lines from Milton.

JACK
I began to think Milton had been a dramatist after all. Playing against her you seemed the tragic vision incarnate--as I told you then. You'd have been pleased to see Christine's reactions.

HENRY
Since I was working so closely with Betty, I knew what she was doing, but, if it was devious, at that point, I never knew it. She was providing exciting opportunities for others--and, now that I was blind, was making me much more of a full participant than I'd ever been before . . . which I appreciated.

JACK
That's when I think Christine really began to fall under her spell. She'd watched us film many of the scenes in The

Countess Rostovna, and had then seen the film, so knew Betty was pretending to be the countess--but Betty had gone to see the movie with her, so that was different. The night we saw Samson Agonistes was the first time she'd seen Betty on stage, and, afterward, I heard her say to Laura, "When I was watching that play, I really believed she was Dalila!" That whole trip was a revelation, in fact. Christine wanted to see everything. We took the city bus tours and learned how to use the subway to go to museums, Central Park, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty. My own experiences were reflected in her delight. Caught up in that fresh young appetite, I wondered if, once satisfied, it could ever have that special quality--the essence of innocence, with just the suggestion of full and infinite female potential--again. My Lolita. "Decay will begin to set in, in subtle and insidious ways, as soon as she begins to blossom," I thought. "This magic is so ephemeral."

HENRY
I know that Laura was going many of those places with you, Jack. Was that her "decay" you were reflecting upon?

JACK
That's good, Henry. So much for my sweeping generalizations. Yes, Laura met us at the airport, and insisted we stay with her. It was obvious Christine and she had missed each other, as they laughed and gossiped together. She went most places with both of us, but sometimes took Christine to museums, or shopping, while I might be sitting in the apartment exhausted, watching television. Evenings we went to see Betty, in whichever play she was in--and, after that first time, Laura let us go alone.

HENRY
She was busy by then, Jack. She'd learned the business well. Jordan always trusted her--as we all did. When she said she

wanted to develop a consulting business of her own, I helped her, with advice--and a few clients--but everyone she worked for recommended her. We've all changed since those Nebraska days, but Laura has grown most, Jack--in capacity of spirit.

JACK
Laura said, "but the biggest irony of all, Jack, is that I've fallen in love with New York." She asked me to move back there with her. I told her that my commitments were here with Randall, and asked her to come back "home" with us, but she said she had her commitments, too. "Besides," she said, "you may still be too strongly attuned to Betty--since you're going to see her on stage every night. Those vibes might be hard to live with." She was right. Since I'd been working on the script for Dido, Betty's voice had been in my head constantly--though she was 3000 miles away. Still, I was there in the same city, and she'd agreed to do the Dido, but, since she wouldn't be working on it for months, Betty had no immediate use for me. So I called Randall and told him I'd take the assignment in Japan.

SHOKO
You'd been to Japan before, hadn't you, Jack?

JACK
Briefly, during the Korean War. But now, I'd be working on a World War II film script. Then Laura asked about my plans for Christine. I said I'd thought of taking her along, but had decided she'd be better off in that school in Santa Barbara. That's when Laura got to what was really on the top of her mind, saying, "No, Jack! She shouldn't be bumming around the world neglected by a busy father, but, more than an education, she needs somebody at home who loves her. Let her stay here with me. She'll be going to school--every day--and I'll have company going to the theatre, and the museums, and the parks.

HENRY
And that's what they've done.

JACK
When I hesitated, she finally said, "As a favor to me, Jack. I've missed her so much. Isn't it my turn? Don't you owe me that?" I laughed at that. I owed her more than I did anyone else. Christine, who had nothing to go back to Santa Barbara for anyway, got so excited when we told her that I really had no choice. We got along fine the two weeks I was still there. I was relieved to have her there with Laura--as I went off to Japan--for, much as I loved Christine, I didn't want to be living alone with her up here in the hills . . . or anywhere, I guess.

SHOKO
And Christine thought of Laura as if she were her mother.

JACK
Christine already managed me as easily as Betty did, and, however perversely, I'd sometimes imagine I saw touches of Jordan, or Tom, in her moods and emotions. Laura made fun of that. She said she'd asked Tom if he thought he could be Christine's father, and he'd said, "I know for sure I couldn't, because I never made it with Betty--ever--though I'd have been willing to. Still would be. I don't think anybody but Jack slept with her at that time. She just wanted Jack to think someone else had. I was surprised he had--but she did get pregnant." He didn't think Jordan could have been her father, either, because he was sure that "Jordan only likes guys"--that he was gay. "You know he's never even lived with a girl," he said, "while look at me!" He smiled, as Laura said she did. He liked girls.

HENRY
So Christine stayed with Laura.

JACK
They came out here for a couple of weeks each summer for the next three or four years--so I saw Christine growing up as a sharp young lady, open with Laura, but shy with everyone else. We'd speak a little Japanese, and she'd tell me about what she was doing in school, all the places she was going with Laura, and how she was spending time around your theatre company.

HENRY
We were all happy to have her, of course.

JACK
By the summer before last I was spending half my time in Japan, so the cabin had become a second home for me, too--and Grendel had become Thomas's dog. Laura said she might be able to come out for a while, but Christine would be going to Europe with the two of you, and Betty--so I rented the cabin to a friend for the summer, and, after the two weeks I spent back there with Jordan doing my Mishima, I went back to Japan to work on the project I've just finished, filming Mishima's Forbidden Colors. But, as you know, I was back in New York the spring after I left Christine with Laura to direct Betty and Jordan in my Dido--at least to watch Betty run a range of passions as Dido I hardly knew existed. By then Betty and Jordan were a weird kind of Lunt and Fontaine, each with his or her own projects--just happening to meet in my Dido. Jordan said, "like back in college doing Pygmalion and The Scarlet Letter, Jack, except that Betty is now the professor."

HENRY
It was largely the same company that had performed the Samson Agonistes, with the same choreographer and costumer, so, however avant-garde, was becoming a traditional repertory company, with primary loyalties to Betty.

JACK
I could see that she was thriving on the action. For that short time, I was part of that mix--and it was exciting. Then, after the show the night Dido opened, I spent most of the rest of the night talking to Betty and you two, then Jordan--in that small apartment Betty and you shared, Shoko. You women had gone completely Japanese in New York--low tables and cushions. I wanted to talk about doing a film together in Japan, but got a "Maybe next year, Jack," as Betty was excited about things she'd done, was doing, and was planning to do there, working more with you, Henry, than with Jordan.

HENRY
Jordan still controlled the top half of what we were doing, directed the major productions, including the Shakespeare, but Betty was directing a lot of the incidental things herself, or with the author as director--as she had with you on Dido--doing what she called "searching for the truth of the text." She tried things like closed audience nude performances, extempore theatre with audience participation--drawing small audiences interested in such exploration. She built a company of players, mostly young and anti-establishment, and some interesting young playwrights, white, black, and yellow, helping them find their way. But always on her terms--she was very dictatorial.

SHOKO
She also did your version of The Scarlet Letter, Jack, with Jordan, as they had in college. Laura, Christine, and I saw that together. Christine worked on costumes and publicity, and was proud to say, "My dad wrote that. Before I was born."

JACK
And you and Laura handled the business well enough for the company to survive in New York. Betty no doubt used both of

you as shamelessly as ever, but Laura said you didn't mind, as you found that you could still work effectively in that world as a blind man. And Laura would do anything for you.

HENRY
I even acted some, Jack. Jordan cast me as Tiresias in Oedipus the King--probably the high point of my career--and Betty used me frequently, often in a scene where I'd be on stage from lights up to lights out, someone then helping me on and off.

JACK
Betty talked about plans to work on film versions of some of the plays. But it wasn't until I began talking about the Chikamatsu plays that I really got her attention that night. They planned to do their signature play, the Antony and Cleopatra, on a regular repertory basis, and, when I told her it was traditional, in Japan, to compare Shakespeare's early and late love-suicide plays with Chikamatsu's, she became quite interested. That was about when Jordan arrived, and joined in.

JORDAN
Talking about things Japanese, I saw a fascinating movie, Mishima's Rites of Love and Death, which received some award in Europe. This lieutenant comes home determined that his honor requires him to take his life. He takes a bath, has sex with his loyal wife for the last time, then spends about ten minutes cutting open his stomach. What do you call that, Jack?

JACK
Seppuku . . . yes, I've heard about that film.

JORDAN
Mishima did everything: adapted his short story to the film script; directed the film; and acted the lead role--may have done

the English sub-titles. Now that's "all in all sufficient." I read his modern Noh plays--that collection your countess gave me--years ago. Well he stages this as a Noh play--then, in the last scene, has the dead wife fallen over the dead husband posed as the large rock in that famous rock garden scene, the sand raked all around it--presenting sex and suicide as poetry. You should see that film before you go back to California, Jack.

JACK
[To Henry and Shoko.] I told him I had a flight within hours, but was sure I could see it here in Los Angeles--which I did. Then Jordan and I rented it--from Grove Press, I think--while we were doing my Mishima, to borrow what we could. I was in Japan when Mishima killed himself, and few Japanese approved. But I think that short film is important in understanding him--and from then on Jordan was a Mishima addict.

SHOKO
And very interested in what you were doing in Japan.

JACK
But then he commented on that night's play, "Dido's another version of Hester, isn't she, Jack? Or Cleopatra. Or Delilah. The eternal Eve. Woman as temptress. You seem fascinated by the type--and for Betty it's type casting. She just gets better. Even I can't resist her now, as I did back in our youth, when you thought I was enticing her to run away to New York. Now she's corrupting me--and New York theatre, too." The discussion turned back to the Chikamatsu plays, but, if Betty was interested, Jordan wasn't. Even later, when he was reading Mishima, and looking at translations of Chikamatsu as well, he said, "I did Dimmesdale and Aeneas for you, Jack--will do Socrates if you get your version of the Symposium ready--but a Japanese shop keeper?" That night he said:

JORDAN
Betty's found her world now, Jack--doing experimental things here in New York. And you seem to have found yours. She often talks about how wonderful it is to live there at the lake. But I know she needs live theatre. And I'm worse than she is. I don't feel alive if I'm not in a play. You're probably uncomfortable here. So, ironically, I got Betty--perhaps too much of her--by default. But she likes to talk of you two as the Countess Rostovna's disciples. She says the countess was your Diotima--did I pronounce that right? And that spatial proximity has nothing to do with it. She has a Donne poem she likes to quote . . . about a pair of compasses. [Betty is listening quietly, and smiles.] She says you're the hermit, and she's the evangelist--like Thoreau and Emerson--embracing the doctrine you learned from that dear old Russian countess. [He looks at Jack.] Not that I mean to make light of it. [Looks at Henry.] But, Jack, what about Henry. I don't think he's into Russian mysticism, but he's definitely Betty's disciple. Neither will tell me what they're planning to do next.

BETTY
You usually say we talk to you too much about these things.

JORDAN
[Still looking at Henry.] He's a psychologist, right? Knows what I'm thinking without asking, doesn’t he? Then became a PR man, a theatrical promoter. Became pretty good at that, too. But still Betty's man. Now that he's blind, he does everything for her, including acting. Still, though he lives across the hall, I don't think he's ever been in bed with her. [To Shoko.] Has he? I try to figure out what's going on here. But you can't help liking him, right? How about that, Jack? How do you really feel about this guy who ran off with your wife--twice? Don't you hate his guts?

JACK
Not at all, Jordan. I almost invited Henry to run away with Betty at Wellington. But I knew it was her idea . . . and it turned out she was right. What she's doing now proves it.

JORDAN
But they left you Laura that first time. Not a bad consolation prize. And now they've taken her, too. Don't you need her? [Pauses to look at Jack, then Henry.] And his commitment to Betty is stronger than his commitment to me. I can see that.

BETTY
But it's your company just as much as his or mine, Jordan, and it wouldn't last a month without Henry. I'd be happy to give Laura back to Jack, if she'd go. And now, of course, everyone thinks that Christine must be her daughter.

JORDAN
Not if they look at both of you together.

JACK
[To Henry and Shoko.] That gave me something else to think about. All four of my women had moved to New York. So I'd just as well go to Japan. I missed all four of them, but, strangely enough, I think I missed Christine most. Then, after she went to France two summers ago, suddenly there she was--Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. She'd grown up on me. Lolita no longer . . . she'd become the Fairy Queen.

SHOKO
Tell us about your other women, Jack, those geisha in Japan.

JACK
[Smiling.] Perhaps in my autobiography.