Alfred Noyes

“ Nanko.
Something red again? Trickling under the door?
Blood, I suppose....
[Pg 72]
(A look of horror comes into his face as he stands listening to the music. Then, as if slowly waking from a dream and almost as if sanity had returned for a moment, he cries:)
It’s true! It’s true! Rada, I am awake!
I am awake! And, in the name of Christ,
I accuse, I accuse ... O God, forgive us all!
(He falls on his knees by the bedroom door and calls, as if to the dead within:)
Awake, and after nineteen hundred years.... ”

“ Brander makes a sign to Tarrasch. They try to pull the men back. There is a scuffle and Brander is knocked over. He rises with the blood running down his face, while Tarrasch still struggles. The door begins to give. A shot is heard within. The men pause and there is another shot. ”

“ Rada, a dark handsome woman, sits on a couch to the left of the fire, with her head bowed in her hands, weeping.
Nanko sits cross-legged on a rug before the fire, rubbing his hands, snapping his fingers, and chuckling to himself.
Tarrasch (throwing down the cards) .
Pish! You have all the luck. (He turns to Rada) Look here, my girl, where is the use of snivelling? We’ve been killing pigs all day and now we want to unbuckle a bit. You ought [Pg 11] to think yourself infernally lucky to be alive at all, and I’m not sure that you will be so fortunate when the other boys come back. ”

“ Rada (rising to her feet slowly, steadying herself with one hand on the couch and fixing her eyes on his face) .
My bedroom. No. I’ve nothing here [Pg 27] to hide. This is war, isn’t it? If I choose to revenge myself on those that have used me badly, people that I hate, by telling you where you can find what everybody wants, money, money—I suppose you want that—isn’t that good enough?
Brander.
Better come with us, then, and show us this treasure-trove.
Rada (shrinking back) .
No, no, I dare not. All those dead out there would terrify me, terrify me!
Tarrasch. ”

“ Nanko.
Be careful, or you’ll smash
The Christmas-tree! You’ll smash the gramophone!
(A soldier tries the bedroom door. It is opened from within, and Rada appears on the threshold with the revolver in her hand.)
First Soldier.
Liars! Liars!
Rada.
There is one woman here,
One woman and a child....
[Pg 58] And war, they tell me, is a noble thing.
It is the mother of heroic deeds,
The nurse of honour, manhood.
Second Soldier.
God, a speech!
Nanko (who is hugging his Christmas-tree near the fire again) .
Certainly, Rada! You will not deny
That life’s a battle.
Rada. ”

“ Then why are you in Belgium, gentlemen?
Is it the husks and chaff that the swine eat,
Or is it simply butchery?
[Pg 23]
(They stare at her in silence, over-mastered for a moment by her passion. Then, her grief welling up again, she casts herself down on the couch, and buries her face in her hands, sobbing.)
God! God! God!
THE OLD DANCE OF CHARLATANS AND BEASTS
Brander.
Don’t you trouble about God. What can He do when both sides go down on their marrow-bones? He can’t make both sides win, can He?
Nanko.
That’s how the intellectuals prove He doesn’t exist. ”

“ That’s what the Germans call the male intellect.
Tarrasch.
Is this man attempting to be insolent?
(He rises as if to strike Nanko.)
Brander (tapping his forehead) .
Take no notice of him. He’s only a resident patient. He was not calling you a beetle. He has delusions. He thinks it is always Christmas Eve. That’s his little tree in the corner. As Goethe should have said—
There was a little Christian. ”

“ Rada (sinking on her knees by the couch and sobbing) .
God! God!
[Pg 19]
Tarrasch.
They were beginning to find out the provincialism of their creeds in England. The pessimism of Schopenhauer had taught them much; and if it had not been for this last treachery, this last ridiculous outburst of the middle-class mind on behalf of what they call honour, we should have continued to tolerate (if not to enjoy) , in Berlin, those plays by Irishmen which expose so wittily the inferior Kultur, the shrinking from reality, of their (for the most part) not intellectual people. ”

“ Nanko.
That would be selfish, Rada. You know it’s Christmas Eve. Nobody ought to think of unpleasant things on Christmas Eve. What have you done with the Christmas-tree, Rada?
Brander.
And who’s to blame? That’s what I want to know. You don’t blame us, do you? We didn’t know where we were marching a month ago; and [Pg 29] possibly we shall be fighting on your side against somebody else, a year hence.
Nanko.
Of course they didn’t know! Poor soldiers don’t.
Tarrasch (who has been trying the bedroom door) . ”

“ A Christmas carol
Upon the gramophone!
So all the future ages will be sure
To know exactly what religion was.
[Pg 70] To think we must not hear it! Rada, they say
The Angel Gabriel composed that tune
On the first Christmas Eve. So don’t you think
That we might hear it?
Everybody is gone, except the dead.
It will not wake them....
Come, Rada, you’re pretending! Do not make
The war more dreadful than it really is.
(He accidentally sets the gramophone working and jumps back, a little alarmed. He runs to the bedroom door.)
Rada! I’ve started it! Bettine, d’ you hear? ”

“ You couldn’t have thought you were going to escape through our lines to-night.
(There is a sudden uproar outside, and a woman’s scream, followed by the terrified cry of a child.)
Ah! Ah! Father!
[Pg 26]
Brander.
Hear that. The men are mad with brandy and blood and—other things. There’s no holding them in, even from the children. You needn’t wince. Even from the children, I say. What chance would there be for a fine-looking wench like yourself? ”

“ Come on!
(They make a rush. Rada steps back into the bedroom and shuts the door in their faces.)
Second Soldier.
Locked out in the cold. Come, break the damned thing down!
Bettine (crying within) .
O British! British! Come! Come quickly, British!
Brander (trying to interpose) .
She’ll keep her word. You’ll never get ’em alive.
Tarrasch.
Never. I know that kind. You’d better clear out. ”

“ Thou whose deep ways are in the sea,
Whose footsteps are not known,
To-night a world that turned from Thee
Is waiting—at Thy Throne. ”

“ And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
“For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
“And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” ”

“ He won’t be angry, will he, mumsy dear?
(Brander opens the package. Nanko rubs his hands in delight. They get the gramophone ready.)
Nanko.
Oh, this will be a merry Christmas Eve.
There now—just see how this kind gentleman
Has opened the package for us. Now you see
The good of war. It benefits the health.
Sets a man up. Look at old Peter’s legs,
He’s a disgrace to the village, a disgrace!
Nobody shoots him either, so he spoils
Everything; for you know, you must admit,
[Pg 47] Bettine, that war means natural selection—
Survival of the fittest, don’t you see? ”

“ That man’s a fighting animal?
Tarrasch (again fumbling at the bedroom door) .
Give me the key.
Rada (thrusting herself between him and the door) .
That is my bedroom. You must not go in.
Tarrasch.
Are they so modest, then, in Belgium, madam?
You’re fooling us. What is it? Loot? More loot?
The family stocking, eh?
(Brander enters. He goes to the table and begins eating.)
[Pg 35]
Nanko.
The stocking? No!
The stocking is in the chimney-corner, see.
(He shakes an empty stocking that hangs in the fire-place.)
Bettine and I, we always hang it up
Ready for Santa Claus. ”

“ Brander.
Bundle the child
Into that room, woman, at once!
(Rada snatches the revolver from the Christmas-tree and hurries Bettine into the bedroom just as the other door is burst open and a troop of soldiers appear on the threshold, shouting and furious with drink. They sing, with drunken gestures, in the doorway:)
“Zum Rhein, zum Rhein, zum deutscher Rhein....” ”

“ You would then be able to laugh at these feelings which seem to you now so important. It is the mark of Kultur to be able to laugh at all sentiments. Isn’t it?
Nanko.
The priests, I suppose, are still balancing themselves on the tight-rope, over the [Pg 16] jaws of the crowd. The poor old Pope did his best for his Master, when the Emperor asked him for a blessing on the war. “I bless Peace,” said the Pope; but nobody listened. I composed a little poem about that. I called it St. Peter’s Christmas. It went like this:—
And does the Cross of Christ still stand? ”

“ No, no, my dear; it’s only in war that one sees how small is one’s personal happiness in comparison with greater things. Isn’t it?
(He fills a glass and drinks. Brander lights a cigar.)
Nanko.
Exactly. In times of peace we forget those eternal silences. We value [Pg 13] life too highly. We become domesticated. Why, I suppose in this magnificent war there have been so many women and children killed that they would fill the great Cloth Hall at Ypres; and, as for the young men, there have been so many slaughtered that their dead bodies would fill St. ”

“ Red, aren’t they? And there’s red on your coat, too.
(He fingers it curiously.)
I suppose that’s blood, eh? People are such cowards.
[Pg 32] Many of them never seem to understand
That man’s a fighting animal. They’re afraid,
Dreadfully afraid, of the sight of blood.
I think it’s a beautiful colour, beautiful!
You know, in the Old Testament, they used
To splash it on the door-posts.
Brander (pushing him away) .
Go and sit down,
You crazy old devil!
(Rada enters with a bowl of water, sets it on a chair, and returns to the couch. Brander washes his hands.)
Tarrasch. ”

“ Nanko, an old, half-witted schoolmaster, living in the care of the doctor. He has a delusion that it is always Christmas Eve.
German soldiers.
[Pg 8]
[Pg 9]
RADA
A BELGIAN CHRISTMAS EVE The action takes place in a Belgian village, during the War of 1914. The scene is a room in the doctor’s house. On the right there is a door opening to the street, a window with red curtains, and a desk under the window. On the left there is a large cupboard with a door on either side of it, one leading to a bedroom and the other to the kitchen. At the back an open fire is burning brightly. ”