25. I Want to See Myself Inside Your Stars
LEOPOLD.
Porkeo?
PORKEO.
Doctor, my doctor.
LEOPOLD.
So pale, pierrot! What eyes, what tears!
You are a clown,
What is this frown?
[PORKEO lets his bag drop to the floor. All manner of clownish implements spill out onto the ground, including the toy rooster, that sadly skips about.]
PORKEO.
I am nothing any longer.
LEOPOLD.
Nothing? Say “nothing?”
PORKEO.
Nothing. O, let me stay with you, doctor!
I don’t have much. I cannot pay.
[thinks] Unless you will take this rubber chicken . . .
[PORKEO rummages through his bag, pulls out the rubber chicken, and offers it to LEOPOLD. It dangles flaccidly from his fingers.]
LEOPOLD, laughs, then.
You are nothing? Laughing is something. Make something of nothing?
PORKEO.
Nothing is something.
LEOPOLD.
You are the lord of clowns.
PORKEO.
A lord of clowns is hardly lord of anything.
[PORKEO sits, dejected. LEOPOLD sits beside him.]
LEOPOLD.
What does a doctor do, clown?
PORKEO.
What, doctor?
LEOPOLD.
Make a man whole, clown. Learn him, heal him, give him strong legs to stand on and a mind to know which way to walk.
PORKEO.
. . . I am not whole, doctor.
LEOPOLD.
Now, my specialty is stars, not men, but I have seen all kinds: pale stars, sick stars, stars that wept and cried from cold. Such stars as groaned in the eclipse, or burdened so with age, would slump and shrink and crawl toward burial. [thinks] Others there are, that, swallowing some secret ill, will grow to burst, and, smold’ring with a forlorn, martyrous intent, slowly roast from inside-out . . . Or they will find that sacred nerve that saints have found and, so, explode. [pause] Stars are not men. Yet everything that Nature makes will hold the mirror up to man, show him himself, or a piece of himself, but that piece clearly and completely. What a piece of man is lodged in these that should have lived forever, and yet will die of inward-secret, outward-kept!
PORKEO.
Your scope is made o’ mirrors, doctor.
LEOPOLD.
. . . Partly.
PORKEO.
Can you be sure that, when you look on stars, you look not on yourself?
LEOPOLD.
It doesn’t work that way.
PORKEO.
Doesn’t it?
[PORKEO casts a wondering gaze at the telescope that looks malefic, draped, disused, in black.]
Can I look in your telescope now, doctor?
LEOPOLD, anxiously.
Why?
PORKEO.
I want to see myself inside your stars.
LEOPOLD.
You will see that, not I.
[PORKEO moves toward the telescope.]
PORKEO.
I will leave some mark on them. I’ll do’t by will alone. I will find some moon and carve my face upon it, so you will find me there!
[LEOPOLD steps between him and the scope.]
LEOPOLD.
Don’t.
PORKEO, dumbstruck.
Why not?
LEOPOLD.
It will not work.
PORKEO, pleading, pointing to the stars.
Am I not yours as much as these?
[PORKEO touches the telescope; LEOPOLD wrenches him away
from it. PORKEO stumbles, falls.]
LEOPOLD, coldly.
The heavens alone are mine, clown! What that never was above could snare me?
[PORKEO says nothing, only collects his silly things and puts them back into his pack.]
[remorseful] Where are you going?
[PORKEO rises with his pack, moves toward LEOPOLD—the astronomer suddenly helpless before the clown. PORKEO kisses him gently on the forehead.]
PORKEO.
Look to your stars, doctor. I know that I am not among them.
[PORKEO exits. LEOPOLD watches him go, then sits for a long time, head sunk in hands.]