The Play is the Thing

 I was cast as King Berenger in Ionesco's "Exit the King". When I first read this script through, I thought immediately that it was about the end of all things. The end of the world. My character was an everyman: the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity. And in a sense, I think, that is a correct assessment. But, even more, it is about our fear of death. And our unwillingness to accept its eventuality. Because we don’t come to terms with it, we often waste our lives. I think it was Mark Twain who wrote that “Youth is wasted on the young”. Sometimes I think life is wasted because we fail to recognize how short it will be.

As my character says when informed early on in the play about his impending death,

“But I know that. Of course I do. We all know it. Remind me when the time comes.”

Yes. We do all know it somewhere in the recesses of our mind. But it stays there as our life unfolds. However later on, Berenger exclaims:

“I fear that what is to end one day, is ended now.”

Was that acceptance of his fate? Not really, I think. His acceptance, if at all, isn’t linear. There is denial, bargaining, terror and finally resignation. But I don’t think there is ever full acceptance. When he is reminded of his impending fate a second time, he replies:

“I’ll die, yes. I’ll die alright. In forty, fifty, three hundred years! When I want to. When I’ve got the time. When I’ve made up my mind.”

It’s a wonderful script. Full of insights from the perspective of the different characters. My partner caught me laughing one morning as I sat learning one series of lines. When I recited them, we both laughed. It was our life. I suspect it is the life of most longtime couples. Berenger reminisces with his younger Queen:

“I used to share my colds with you, and the flu… In the morning, we opened our eyes at the very same moment. I shall close them alone, or without you beside me. We used to think the same things at the same time. And you would finish a sentence that I had just started in my head… You would choose my ties for me, though I didn’t always like them. We fought about that. No one knew. No one ever will. … You hated my hair to be untidy, so you would comb it for me…”

I have lived with death for a longtime now. We both have. I had cancer at the age of fifty. That was twenty-five years ago. My partner’s grandmother, two aunts and his father were dead by forty… a familial cancer. He expected to be dead by forty as well. We met just before that ominous birthday. We lived through the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and beyond. We saw our friends, acquaintances and colleaugues die one by one in their twenties and thirties. We kept thinking there was no good reason why we should escape their fate. So, death hung over us as we learned to live each day fully in expectation of an early death. We took risks we might not have taken otherwise. Carpe Diem became our motto. Forty-four years later, we are both alive and thriving.

The King in this play is a narcissist. He is the quintessential Nero fiddling while Rome burns. His kingdom, indeed his empire, is falling to pieces around him and he is oblivious. But there are moments when he reflects on his fate:

“When I’m gone. When I’m gone. They’ll laugh and stuff themselves silly and dance on my tomb, as if I never existed. Oh please, make them remember me. Make them weep, and despair and perpetuate my memory in all their history books…

If I am remembered, I wonder for how long. Let them remember me to ‘til the end of time. Beyond the end of time. In twenty thousand years. In two hundred and fifty-five thousand million years.  [He pauses. and thinks.] There’ll be no one left to think about others then. They’ll have forgotten before that. … If the whole earth is going to wear out, or melt away, it will. If every universe is going to explode, explode it will. It’s all the same whether it is tomorrow or in the countless centuries to come.”

Afraid of death, terrified of non-existence, of nothingness, he pleads; he bargains. Some would bargain with God, some with a naturopath or surgeon, some with the ethers:

“… No one can or will help me. And I can’t help myself. Oh, help me sun. Sun chase away the shadows and hold back the night. Sun, sun, illumine every tomb and shine in every hole and corner, in every nook and cranny. Creep deep inside me. Ahh, my feet are turning cold. Come and warm me. Pierce my body. Steal beneath my skin and blaze in my eyes. Restore the failing light in them and let me see, see, see.

Sun, sun, will you miss me? Good little sun protect me. And if you need some small sacrifice, then parch and wither up the world! Let every human creature die, provided I can go on living forever, even alone in a limitless desert. I can come to terms with solitude. And I shall keep alive the memory of others. And I shall miss them, quite sincerely. But I can live in the void, in the vast and airy wasteland. It is better to remember one’s friends, than to be remembered oneself. Besides, one never is…”

Oblivion. That’s what we fear. That’s what we can’t get our head around. That we will be forgotten as soon as we are dead. That our life has meant nothing.

There are times, for us all, I am sure, when we regret something we did or something we ought to have done, but did not do. Sounds like the Anglican prayer of confession, doesn’t it? Silly as it sounds, I regret to this day a game of baseball I had in a friend’s driveway. I was ten or eleven at the time. Too enthusiastically, I tossed my baseball bat after hitting the ball. The bat went through the basement window of my friend’s house. I panicked and ran away. I wish I could have faced up to it, said sorry or taken my punishment.

The King is chastised for not facing up to reality, for putting things off, and even for not saying sorry. He whines:

“But I was just about to start. If I could have a whole century before me, then perhaps I’d have the time.”

But in this play, he’s had four or five centuries before him. Time flies. Things move at a fast pace in life. Suddenly, we are sixty, seventy or eighty and we wonder why we didn’t do the things we had wanted to do. Why didn’t we write that book? Why didn’t we paint that picture? Why didn’t we learn that language or climb that mountain? Is it too late?

At seventy, I picked up the violin, or the fiddle as I think of it. It was something I had wanted to do all my life. I was denied the opportunity in public school. The few instruments the school had were given to girls, and boys should be outside playing football. Of course, then life takes over, and we forget about it because other things fill the void: work, family, other interests. Because of Covid, I am basically a self-taught fiddle player. And now I pride myself in playing sixty tunes badly. I’ll never be able to play with others, but I enjoy playing for myself. Is it ever “too late” to do something we wanted to do, but didn’t? I hope not.

When I first read one of my lines in this script, I said to myself, “I hope this isn’t a premonition.” Berenger says:

“I’m like a schoolboy who hasn’t done his homework… like an actor on the first night, who doesn’t know his lines and dries, dries, dries…”

That is every actor’s worst nightmare: standing behind the curtain and not remembering the first words we are to speak when the curtain goes up in a few minutes. Not having done the work that was assigned to us, not having done our best, is something so many of us come to regret in life. And as we age, and the curtain begins to close so to speak, those moments, however big or small, can haunt us.

When one gets to a certain age, the muscles start to whither and to ache. We start to forget things, or feel a little less stable on our feet. We lose our hair or watch it turn white. That hill we used to climb seems to be longer and steeper and we have to catch our breath. Our eyes refuse to see clearly what we used to see in sharp focus. So, we can either give in, or we can resist.

The King resists. There is a lovely scene with his servant. For the first time, he appears to be showing an interest in someone other than himself. But really, he is just trying to hang on to his life, to savour what he has been blind to.

“… Talk to me," he says. "What does your husband do?”

“I’m a widow” she replies. She tells him she works hard, she works tirelessly, without rest. That her life is hard.

“Life can never be hard,” he replies. “That is a contradiction of terms. … Life is life.”

Neither of them listens to the other. She tells him life is a bore, to which he replies:

“… It’s wonderful to be bored! And not to be bored too! To lose one’s temper and not to lose one’s temper. To be discontented and to be content. To practice resignation, and to insist on one’s rights. You get excited. You talk and people talk to you. You touch and they touch you. All this is magical. Like an endless celebration…”

For King Berenger, although too late, life is suddenly “magical”, “marvellous”, “like a miracle”. Don’t you wish people realized this all their lives? We’ve tried. And it took the early death of so many friends, to make us realize that it is wonderful to grow old. That each day is an opportunity to experience the miracle of life in the knowledge and eventuality of our death. Berenger cries out:

“Help me you countless thousands who died before me. Tell me how you managed to accept death, and die. Then, teach me. Let your example be a consolation to me. Let me lean on you like crutches, like a brother’s arms. Help me to cross that threshold you have crossed. Come back from the other side a while and help me. Assist me, you who were frightened and did not want to go. What was it like? Who held you up? Who dragged you there? Who pushed you? Were you frightened to the end? And you who were strong and courageous, who accepted death with indifference and serenity, teach me your indifference and serenity. Teach me resignation… You suicides, teach me to feel disgust for life. Teach me lassitude. What drug must I take for that? … You who died blissfully, who looked death in the face, and remained conscious to the end … You who died happy, what face did you see next to yours? What smile gave you ease and made you smile? What were the last rays of light that brushed your face? … Thousands and millions of the dead. They magnify my anguish. I am the dying agony of all. My death is manifold. So many worlds will flicker out in me. … When faced with death, even the little ant puts up a fight. Suddenly he’s all alone. Torn from his companions. In him too the universe will flicker out. It’s not natural to die, because no one ever wants to. I want to exist!”

And near the end of the play, there is a very touching speech where King Berenger, who has by then forgotten most things, remembers a little ginger cat. Perhaps this cat was the only thing that he loved, and that loved him. When our dog died after eleven years at our side, we both grieved his death more than the deaths of either of our mothers. So that speech touched me. The King in a state of delirium says:

“I remember a little ginger cat… I found him in a field, stolen from his mother, a real wild cat. He was two weeks old, or a little more. But he knew how to bite and scratch. He was quite fierce. I fed him and stroked him and brought him home. And he grew into the gentlest of cats… He was scared silly of the vacuum cleaner. A bit of a coward really that cat, defenseless, a poet cat… We tried to introduce him to the outside world. We put him down on the pavement near the window. He was terrified. Afraid of the pigeons that hopped about all around him. There he was pressing against the wall, meowing and calling to me in desperation. He thought that other animals and cats were strange creatures he mistrusted or enemies he feared… Yet, one fine day he must have had the urge to go out on his own. And the neighbour’s big dog killed him. There he was, like a toy cat, a twitching marionette with one eye gone and a paw torn off. Like a doll destroyed by a sadistic child… How I missed him. He was good, and beautiful, and wise. All the virtues. He loved me. He loved me. My poor little cat. My one and only cat…”

Hopefully as death approaches, we will cherish the memory of more than the love of a cat. Poor Berenger can’t undo the past, or put off the inevitable. He is resigned; he has no option; but I don’t think he ever accepts his death, Nevertheless, as the play ends, he is passively there at its doorstep.

(Photo by Tim Wilson)
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