Swann (43 page)

JIMROY:
Dear God, I’ve had about enough for one day.

SARAH:
Rose, we’ve been talking, the two of us, and —

ROSE
(snatching the photograph out of the broken case and tucking it under her arm): I’ll just keep this in
my
room tonight.

SARAH:
Rose, will you listen?

JIMROY:
 … ranting and raving —

SARAH:
Rose, it was someone
else
who broke the case. M …

Mr. Jimroy and I just happened … to be here when —

ROSE:
I have to think about the museum. (She clutches the photograph.) I’m the one who’s responsible —

SARAH:
There was someone
else
here. Maybe you saw … on the stairs just now. Did you see someone? A man?

ROSE
(calming down): One of the maintenance men. But it was so dark that … I couldn’t see him real well. I thought —

SARAH:
We saw him in the act of breaking into the case. Another minute and —

ROSE:
A maintenance man at the Harbourview Hotel? What would he want with? … I still think—(She glares at Jimroy.)

JIMROY:
I am not in the habit of—

SARAH:
It’s someone
else
, Rose.
Everyone’s
losing things all of a sudden. I’ve been talking to Frederic Cruzzi, and it seems all sorts of people have lost —

JIMROY:
Including, if I may interrupt, myself. You will remember, I’m sure, that my own briefcase was stolen right here in the hotel. And there have been one or two other items as well.

ROSE:
I thought—(puzzled)—naturally I thought —

SARAH:
Frederic Cruzzi thinks—he and I had a long talk
about it—he thinks all these disappearing objects are somehow connected. It sounds farfetched, but —

JIMROY:
Too much for me, I’m afraid. I’m going to say good night. This day has been altogether too long. (He glares at Rose, then presses the button for the elevator.)

SARAH:
Maybe we should all talk more tomorrow. See if we can resolve —

ROSE:
I still don’t understand why —

SARAH:
None of us does, Rose.

JIMROY
(as the elevator arrives): Until tomorrow.

SARAH
(getting out of bed and moving, with some hesitation, to the door): Who is it?

ROSE:
Me. Rose. Rose Hindmarch.

SARAH:
Rose? (She immediately undoes the triple lock and takes the chain off.) Rose!

ROSE:
Can I come in? For just a minute? (She is wearing a robe belted over pyjamas, slippers, and is holding the photograph in her hands.)

SARAH:
Come in, Rose. Sit down.

ROSE
(entering and sitting gingerly on the unoccupied bed): I’m just … I don’t know where to start … I got back to my room and I just … I just started to feel … scared to death, just got a case of the shakes, you know. I don’t know what I’m scared of. (She holds the photograph of
Mary Swann at arm’s length.) I looked at this, at her, and all of a sudden I just got scared to death. Of her. (Tears come into Rose’s eyes.) And I’m so tired out I don’t know what to do.

SARAH
(reaching for photo): Would you like me to keep it here, Rose? For the night?

ROSE:
Would you?

SARAH:
I’ll take good care of it. (She carries the photograph to the dresser and sets it up. leaning it against the wall.) Now look, Rose, why don’t you stay here tonight, There’s an extra bed, plenty of room, and you’ll be asleep in two minutes. (She briskly turns down the bed for Rose.) Come on, now. You’ll sleep better here. Okay? Why not?

ROSE:
I couldn’t—(She touches the belt of her robe.) Are you sure? Sure you don’t mind? My nerves are so jangled up and —

SARAH:
In you go. (She pulls up the covers.) There. Warm enough?

ROSE
(relaxing): Fine. Better.

SARAH:
Everything’ll look better in the morning. (She gets into her own bed and reaches over to turn out the light.)

ROSE:
My mother used to say that. It’s one of the things mothers say, I guess.

SARAH
(yawning): And it’s usually true.

ROSE:
I guess it’s because —

SARAH
(almost asleep): Because why, Rose?

ROSE:
Well, at night we … (She yawns.) We feel the most … lonely. At least I do.

SARAH:
I was feeling lonely just now. Just before you knocked on the door. (She breathes deeply, almost asleep.)

ROSE:
I feel lonely … almost all the time. (Her voice blurs, and sleep comes.)

SARAH
(speaking through the door): Yes? Who is it? (Her voice is groggy with sleep.)

CRUZZI
(softly): Frederic Cruzzi.

SARAH
(undoing locks and chain): Hello. (She stares at him, puzzled.)

CRUZZI:
I hope you weren’t asleep. (He sees she
has
been sleeping, and glimpses the second bed, occupied.) I do apologize. I took a chance —

SARAH:
It’s all right. Come in. What time is it, anyway?

CRUZZI
(looking at his watch): One A.M. Hardly an hour to come calling, but—(He stops and glances uneasily at the second bed.)

SARAH:
It’s Rose. She’s … keeping me company.

ROSE
(hearing her name and opening her eyes): Why, it’s Mr. Cruzzi!

CRUZZI:
I wanted to let you know —

SARAH:
Here. (She offers him an easy chair.) Sit down. (She climbs back into bed and sits with the covers pulled up over her lap.)

CRUZZI:
I suppose this could have waited until morning, but … I’ve been down the hall, talking to a few of the others. Professor Croft and that Kramer chap, and what’s-his-name with the blue-spotted tie?

SARAH
(all attention now): Yes?

CRUZZI:
They got into a bit of a discussion—they were all pretty well into their cups by this time—over Block’s
interpretation of the Water Poems. I don’t know if you were there —

SARAH:
I heard about it —

ROSE
(propping herself up on one elbow and reaching for her glasses): He thinks —

CRUZZI:
I wasn’t entirely clear about his theory. Thinks the poems are purely reactive rather than symbolic, something like that—(expresses impatience)—and then someone, the gentleman with the hair (holds up hands to describe Afro), suggested we settle the discussion by consulting the text itself.

SARAH:
Yes?

CRUZZI:
The long and the short of it was that nobody
had
a text. There were ten, twelve of us in the room, and no one had a copy of
Swann’s Songs
. Professor Croft—from Tulane, you remember—went to her room to get her copy but came back a few minutes later to say she couldn’t find it. She was rather … rather frantic, as a matter of fact. Hysterical. Kramer and the gentleman in the blue-spotted tie and the other, with the hair, they all admitted they’d … that they’d recently
lost
their copies.

ROSE
(fully awake now): Why, that’s what happened to me. I had my copy, it was sort of falling apart, I had it in a magazine rack, in my suite, and when I looked for it —

SARAH
(to Cruzzi): Then what?

CRUZZI:
Well, the emotional temperature in the room began to rise. Of course, as I say, they were well down in the bottle, and at that point I thought I might see if you were still awake and what you made of all this.

SARAH:
It certainly does seem as if—(She stops, hearing a knock at the door.) Who can —?

ROSE
(cheery): Grand Central Station!

SARAH
(again undoing the locks, but leaving the chain on. She opens the door an inch and peers out): Mr. Jimroy! Morton.

JIMROY:
I was afraid you might have gone to bed. (He is wearing wrinkled pyjamas with a suit jacket over top.)

SARAH:
As a matter of fact —

JIMROY:
May I come in? For just two minutes.

SARAH
(signalling him to enter with a sweeping gesture): Won’t you join our late-night party?

CRUZZI
(with coolness): Good evening, Jimroy.

ROSE
(with gawky shrug): Hello again.

JIMROY
(pained): I seem to be interrupting —

SARAH:
Not at all. Do sit down. (She removes Rose’s dressing gown from the desk chair to make a place.)

JIMROY:
I’ve had a thought, something I thought might interest you. It was after we said good night. By the way (he looks around), this is entirely confidential.

CRUZZI:
Of course.

ROSE:
Naturally.

SARAH:
After we said good night? (prompting).

JIMROY:
I returned to my room and got, as you see, ready for bed. But for some reason I was unable to sleep.
ROSE:
Exactly the way I felt! Full of the jitters.

CRUZZI:
We’ve all had a long day.

JIMROY
(annoyed at the interruptions):
At any rate
, I started to turn over the events of the day, and quite a few things began to fall into place.

CRUZZI:
A “pattern” more or less.

JIMROY:
More or less. And I began to wonder if—now this may surprise you, Sarah (he says her name with a break in his voice, as though testing it for substance), but I began to wonder (pauses) if the notebook, Mary Swann’s notebook that is, the one you
say
you lost —

SARAH:
Yes?

JIMROY:
Well, at the risk of sounding … ludicrous … I wonder if it ever occurred to you that the notebook might have been —

ROSE
(pouncing): Stolen!

JIMROY:
That was my thought.

SARAH
(smiling toward Cruzzi): What a coincidence! Mr. Cruzzi had the same idea.

JIMROY
(deflated): Oh.

CRUZZI:
It does seem to fit the —

ROSE:
The pattern!

JIMROY:
Mary Swann is in a most peculiar position. As a literary figure, I mean. She has only been recently discovered, and her star … as they say, has risen very quickly. Too soon, for example, for her book to have been reprinted. Too soon for those who admire her work to be sufficiently protective about those artifacts that attach —

CRUZZI:
What you’re saying is, the situation may have attracted an unscrupulous —

ROSE:
You know what I think? (She is terribly excited.) I think it’s an inside job. (She looks eagerly at the others.)

CRUZZI:
I agree.

SARAH:
Someone here? Attending the symposium?

JIMROY:
Yes. Most certainly possible.

SARAH:
But why would anyone —?

JIMROY:
Someone who wants to corner the available material. Cut us out, all of us, as Swann scholars.

CRUZZI
(musing): I’m not sure scholarly acquisitiveness ever goes to quite such extremes. I think it’s more likely to be —

ROSE
(waving an arm in the air): Money!

JIMROY:
Money?

CRUZZI:
Yes, I would agree, money.

JIMROY:
I still don’t see how —

SARAH:
I don’t either. Whoever is cornering the market won’t have any market to sell to. I mean, there’s no Swann industry if there are no Swann texts.

JIMROY:
I couldn’t have said it better.

ROSE:
Blackmail! (She speaks with wonderful deliberation.)

CRUZZI:
I beg your pardon.

ROSE:
Not really blackmail. What’s the word! (She attempts, and fails, to snap her fingers.) Like when someone has something you want—like hostage taking!

SARAH:
You mean ransom? Extortion?

JIMROY:
We don’t want to get
too
fanciful about this.

CRUZZI
(mulling): And do you think that —

ROSE:
It happens all the time. In books. I read quite a lot of books—mysteries, espionage, that sort of thing. You see, Nadeau isn’t a big place and there’s not a lot going on —

SARAH:
So what do you think will happen, Rose?

ROSE:
I think whoever it is, well, will try to contact us. Sell us back what … used to belong to
us
.

CRUZZI:
For an inflated price, of course.

SARAH:
Of course.

JIMROY
(addressing Rose, now, with respect): And you think it’s someone here? One of us? In this hotel?

SARAH:
What we could do is go through the symposium list —

JIMROY:
Precisely my idea. As a matter of fact, I’ve brought
along the registration list, and, well, if it’s not too late —

SARAH:
We’re all awake now anyway.
ROSE:
I’m wide awake.

CRUZZI:
What are there—sixty names?

SARAH:
Sixty-seven. Take away the four of
us, and I think we might safely do that
, that’s sixty-three.

JIMROY:
Shall we begin? (He waves the sheets.)

ROSE
(thrilled): Yes. Begin.
CRUZZI:
Might as well.

JIMROY
(reading in alphabetical order): Aldington, Michael J.

CRUZZI:
Afraid I can’t quite place —

ROSE
(without a moment’s hesitation): The one with the pink shirt. Lovely silver cufflinks and the —

SARAH:
From Alberta. Michael’s straight as an arrow, can’t be Michael.

JIMROY:
Cross off Aldington. (He gropes for a pencil, then remembers he is in pyjamas.)

SARAH:
Here. (She holds out a pencil.)

JIMROY:
Thank you.