Chapter Sixteen

Act V, and After

Isabella has made her accusations against Angelo, Mariana has confirmed them, and the Duke has revealed himself to have been the Friar who arranged the details of Mariana’s assignation.

Only the denouement remains.

“Sir,”he said to Angelo,“by your leave.” He paused to gather fresh thunderbolts, while the guilty deputy, revealed, disgraced, curled into a heap of abasement at his feet.

“Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence

That yet can do thee office? If thou hast,

Rely upon it till my tale be heard,

And hold no longer out.”

Angelo’s sternness, turning against itself, became the cringing of Claudio:

“O my dread lord!

I should be guiltier than my guiltiness

To think I can be undiscernible,

When I perceive your Grace, like power divine,

Hath looked upon my passes. Then, good Prince,

No longer session hold upon my shame,

But let my trial be my own confession.

Immediate sentence, then, and sequent death

Is all the grace I beg.”

He gestured sternly to Liora.“Come hither, Mariana.”

Reluctantly she released the Doctor’s hand to step forward a pace, two. She seemed acutely sensible of her own guilt in creating this scene, as though not justice but revenge had been her motive in helping to bring Angelo this low.

“Say,”the Duke demanded of Angelo,“wast thou erecontracted to this woman?”

Angelo, in the fury of his penitence, had knocked his eyeglasses to the stage. Squinting, he moved toward her on his knees.

Liora–Lorna–Number 41–Mariana took a third step forward.

“I was, my lord.”

“Go and take her hence, and marry her instantly.

Do you the office, Friar-which consumate,

Return him here again. Go with him, Provost.”

Exeunt Number 7 and Liora, flanked by a monk and the prison warden.

He stepped down from the rude wooden platform erected on this make-believe highway that looked remarkably like a brothel, a judgment chamber and a prison.

At the Duke’s first step toward Isabella these multi­valent walls were to begin their slow evaporation, while the lights would mount toward an afternoon brightness. He waited for the man at the light box to pick up his cue.

In the expectant silence he could hear, off-stage, the opening and closing of a door.

At his next step the light dimmed. The small crowd of Officers, Citizens and Attendants assembled on the stage shifted uneasily.

There was no help for it: he began the brief scene in which the Duke, not done dissembling, condoles with Isabella for the death of her brother (who isn’t dead). By his last line–“Make it your comfort, so happy is your brother.”–thick night had palled the stage in the dunnest smoke of hell. A single feeble spot picked out the faces of the Duke and Isabella.

Angelo and Mariana returned (bound in wedlock), a black shimmer of velveteen, a sheen of black rayon. Con­trary to his own blocking, he approached the pair of them as he pronounced the sentence (which he would, a moment later, revoke):“ ‘An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!’ ” Angelo collapsed, throwing his arms over his head (another departure from the acting script), while Mariana backed away from him along the edge of the apron until her long gown had snagged in the extinguished footlights.

He repeated her cue:“Away with him!”

“O, my most gracious lord!”the blond waitress cried, with genuine terror.“I hope you will not mock me . . . witha husband.”

The Duke’s pause exceeded Mariana’s in its unreason­ableness. Even the most tolerant members of the audience were beginning to think this an eccentric interpretation to judge by the sudden epidemic of coughing from the orchestra and balcony.

Recalling that the balloon would not be ready to ascend before the curtain fell, he decided to continue to be theDuke. The play was near its end, in any case. The few moments’ head-start she’d won by having Number 127 stand in for her would not, probably, prove to be decisive.

When the Duke began speaking again, his delivery was more eccentric than his sudden, unaccountable silence. It was almost as hard to distinguish the words rushing past as it was to make out the faces of the actors on the darkened stage, and even when the words could be sorted out their sense could not be, for he was omitting phrases, lines, entire speeches seemingly at random. When Isabella and Mariana tried to plead in Angelo’s behalf, he interrupted at their first pause for breath. He dispatched the Provost off-stage to resurrect Claudio, and a full minute before he had returned (barely in time for the end) he addressed the dark­ness as though it already contained Claudio (as, for all anyone in the audience could tell, it might have).

With a final admonition to Angelo to love his wife (omitting the final scene with Lucio, as he had skipped past Escalus already), he began the Duke’s concluding speech. It went by, like a racing car, in a single blur of blank verse, braking only as he reached the last six lines of the play. This much, a few seconds, he was willing to sacrifice for art’s sake:

“Dear Isabel,

I have a motion much imports your good,

Whereto if you’ll a willing ear incline,

What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.

So, bring us to your palace, where we’ll show

What’s yet behind, that’s meet you all should know.”


By sticking out the play to its end he had lost, at most, two and a half minutes. Now, as soon as the curtain dropped . . .

Instead, in floods of light, the audience rose, as though it had often rehearsed this moment, clapping and cheering, and the cast surrounded him. Hands wrapped about his arms and legs, lifted him into the air, placed him on the shoulders of the Provost and Lucio, who carried him forward in triumph to the foot of the stage. The applause swelled. Flowers arced upward, fell to the stage and into the pit. The last row of the balcony began stamping its communal feet, and soon the entire theater had taken up the steady, stupefying rhythm.

Not till Angelo had stepped forward for his second stand-call did he notice that it was not Number 7 in Angelo’s velveteen robes, but the doctor’s assistant, Num­ber 28, who had prepared the balloon for its ascent. Likewise (as 7’s double role had required), it was another actor who received the applause for Claudio.

This was a possibility he had never once imagined, and what he found so astonishing now was not their collusion but his own guilelessness: neveronce!

When he had stopped trying to squirm down off their shoulders, they lowered him of their own accord. Hand in hand with the leading lady, he took several calls. She was presented with an enormous bouquet of roses, white and red together as at a funeral. He was given a plaque, with his number etched on the gilt plate beneath two masks, one that smiled and one that frowned.

The ovation went on for fifteen minutes before the cur­tain was allowed to come down.

Number 14 regarded the bouquet in her arms with a look of aversion. She seemed about to fling it to the floor. Then, with a more considered contempt, she let it drop.

They had been left alone on the stage. The cast andstage hands had gone downstairs to their party, while on the other side of the curtains the audience squeezed itself out in a thick human paste through the exits into the lobby and the night streets.


“There’s no point, is there, going up there?”

He shook his head. “They’ve gone.”

“And I’m here, and you’re here, like two punchlines without their jokes.”

“Am I to believe, now, that you—”

“Believe whatever you care to, Number 6.” She laughed, almost lightheartedly. “You know, he must regret that he’s missingthis . It’s the sort of thing that would tickle him.” Wearily she zipped open her costume, pulled it over her head. She was wearing, beneath the novitiate’s habit, slacks and a heavy wool shirt.

“This?”

“Us, now, here. Oh, for pity’s sake, can’t you see-they foxed metoo . He’d made me think it would bemy escape, just the way he led you along the whole long way he wanted you to go. You haven’t really been doing all this onher account, have you? You wouldn’t look so chagrined, if that were so. The balloon was supposed to be foryou , wasn’t it?”

“I—” He could see the explanation stretching on to the horizon and decided that an answer would be simpler. “Yes.”

“Alone?”

“I don’t know. Up to the last minute I couldn’t decide. Earlier tonight when I saw her on the roof, I almost let myself believe—”

“No doubt she felt sorry for you then.”

“I wonder,” he began (an entire chorus of alluring Pos­sibilities waved scarves at him from that horizon). But a glance at the doctor’s eyes fixed on him, measuring him like calipers, made him break off.

“You wonder,” she continued for him, “whetherthey were escaping. Or if this was just another play-within-a-play. I don’t think we can ever be sure. If a play, I fail to get the point, but that happens to me at most plays.”

“But if it were genuine, areal escape, how did he arrange allthis on his own?” His gesture indicated only the painted prison walls, but she understood what else his words encompassed: the collusion of Number 28, of the waitress, of the cast, the stage hands, even the audience, whose enthusiasm had far exceeded anything the play might have merited on its own.

“That’s so,” she said. “He couldn’t have done all that.”

From the wings Number 98, the Stationer’s clerk, approached them, still in the costume of Elbow, the foolish constable. “Number 6?” he called out hesitantly. “There wasa . . .” He held it out at arm’s length to show that there actuallywas . “One of the guards brought this . . . this, uh . . . I told him you were probably still . . . And I was right!”

“It will be fromhim , I expect,” the doctor said. “A Parthian shot.”

Number 98 handed him the sealed envelope, then turned to the doctor. “And there’s this for you, Number 14.” A second envelope.”

Elbow waited between them, meekly curious. “A note of congratulations? I think everyone thinks that we’ve had a . . . tremendous . . . Although the ending . . . I can’t imag­ine how the man at the light box could have . . . But even so, it was . . . I mean, theaudience . . . Don’t you think so?”His eyes darted back and forth between Number 6 and Number 14, Number 14 and Number 6. His smile withered.

“I suppose,” he said, repeating the lesson life had taught him in so many forms, “that you’d like to be alone now.” Neither would contradict this, and he returned to the party below, shaking his head and marveling once again at the coolness of the truly great even in the very furnace of success.


She finished reading her letter first.

“It’s what I expected. He jeers sincere apologies. Pas­sion, he must confess, overwhelmed him. Is yours the same? Or didshe write to you?”

“I don’t know. Here, read it.” He handed her the first page, while he continued with the second. The letter read:

My dear Number 6,

There is very little I can offer in extenuation of my conduct. That I have systematically deceived you, all the while protesting my friendship and good intentions, I cannot deny. Yet I would still protest that that friendship is real, that my intentions remain good, and that my actions were dictated by an impersonal Necessity. Isn’t it true that I’ve taken from you no more than you would have taken from me? That is to say, the means of escape.

In my position, under a surveillance stricter than any you have known, there was no wayI could escape unless I seemed to be playing one of the standard variations on our theme of cat-and-mouse. Do you know de L’Isle-Adam’sThe Torture of Hope? Its premise is that nothing is so conducive to despairas to allow an escape to succeed up to the very moment the prisoner breathes his first mouthful of freedom-then to spring the trap-door under his feet. That was the principle behind your “escape” to London, and it was thestated principle, in my official reports, behind tonight’s affair, though of course inthis case I would hesitate to trace each sub-plot to its ultimate literary source. In any case, while it must be admitted that our lives imitate art, I like to think that sometimes we may invent some little twist all our own before the novelists think of it. If not this time, perhaps the next. (Mycredo .)

You may recall having debated with me, some time ago, concerning the relative advantages enjoyed by the prisoner and his jailer. I was obliged then to present the case for the prosecution. Now, though my opinions haven’t changed, myposition has, and I am forced to concede (in my own defense) that, yes indeed, the jaileris less free than the prisoner, that the warden’s office is also a cell of maximum secu­rity. The very fact that I mustescape proves that I have been, like you, a prisoner-without even your solace of being able to blame someone else. (Though I have always been able to findexcuses .) Ah, this is all philosophy, and I know how we both recoil fromthat!

Some facts, then, and a bit of explanation:

All that stuff above (the philosophy) would never have occurred to me–would never, at least, haveaffected me–without your adventure in the archives.I know you set that fire,you know you set that fire, but Number 1, whose imagination at rare moments canequal yours or mine, was not to be persuaded it was as simple as all that. There were films concerning myself destroyed then that had been used to secure my . . . (Would “allegiance” be the right word?) . . . to this Vil­lage (andthat is not the right word either). Though I pointed out to Number 1 that my “allegiance” had since been secured with links of guilt (which is, I’m afraid, exactly the right word) far stronger than the trifling scandals documented in those films, Number 1 remained suspicious. After all, when the mood hits him, whom does he have to be suspicious of, except for me? Lesser suspicious can be delegated.

I could measure day by day the growing pres­sure, the spread of insubordination, and the steady fraying of the cord that held the sword above my head. Had I not succeeded atthis escape, I would have had to take the advice you offered, as the Duke, and “be absolute for death.” That much of an absolutist I am not.

Goodbye then. Let me express the sincere hope that we may meet again. Perhaps by then the wheel of Fortune will have turned 180 degrees, and you may enjoy (would you?) the sensation of playing Warden to my Prisoner.


Best regards,
Number 2
P.S. Concerning the technology of deception (I hope you take an interest in these details, retrospectively): My per­sona as a cracker-barrel philosopher was all done with electrons and a 1901 anthology calledHeart Throbs .A character actor was hired and photographed through the entire gamut of what his face could do. This repertoire was coded into a computer. Whenever “Number 2” appeared on television, there was always a live camera on me. My expressions were translated, by the computer, into his, just as my voice was changed to his by the same method. One of my few regrets in leaving the Village is that I can’t take the old duffer along. I’d become quite fond of him. Hadn’t you?

P.P.S. A last word of good counsel fromHeart Throbs’ endless store:

Should you feel inclined to censure

Faults you may in others view,

Ask your own heart ere you venture,

If that has not failings, too.


Do not form opinions blindly;

Hastiness to trouble tends;

Those of whom we thought unkindly

Oft become our warmest friends.


“Then it was an escape, after all,” she said, handing the letter back to him. “My brother couldn’t have arranged a conspiracy on as large a scale as this evening’s, but Num­ber 2 could have accomplished it with three or four mem­oes. If irony is any comfort to you, there’s this: it was the two of us, together, who put him on the skids. The fireyou set; the betraying detail in your dream, whichI kept back.”

“You’re certain it was your brother who wrote thisletter?”

“Of course. You don’t think . . .”

“That it was from her? Is there any evidence, in the letter, to prove it couldn’t be? There isn’t.”

“Look more closely. There must a lapse, somewhere– some way of standing a sentence on its head, a pet word, something that’s characteristic of only one of them.”

“Give Number 2, whoever he is, credit for subtlety. Anything we might point to as ‘characteristic’ could have been planted in the letter just for us to point to. The only certain proof would be if one of us had carried on a dia­logue with Number 2 while either your brother or Liora was present in the same room. I haven’t. Have you?”

“No. But doesn’t that make my brother the likelier sus­pect, in view of all the times I’ve been with him and all the times that Number 2 has intruded on me, at my cottage, in the lab, on the street? The coincidence seems mountain­ous.

“On the other hand, isn’t this the best explanation of the paradoxes and impossibilities inher story?”

“Perhaps–but say what you will, until it’sproven one way or the other, I’ll be convinced it was him. It all seems, in hindsight, so in keeping with hischaracter .”

“And I’ll remain convinced it was her. I imagine all of this has been devised with some care just so each of us would reach the conclusions we have.”

She smiled wistfully, as though remembering a pleasant weekend spent, some years before, on a country estate sub­sequently destroyed in the blitz. “Hewould have enjoyed this so much.

“Or,” she added politely, “shewould have.”


The last performers entered on to the stage, a six-man squad of night patrolmen. After a flourish of jackboots, the leader of the chorus (or squad) stepped forward and saluted the couple at center stage. He seemed to be waiting fororders to carry off the dead bodies. Would he believe that this had only been a comedy?

“Yes?” the doctor said.

“You are Number 14?” the squad leader asked.

“Apparently. As of this moment.”

“We have orders to arrest Number 2.”

“I’m afraid you’ve arrived well past the nick of time. Number 2 escaped, with a friend, in a helium balloon, some minutes ago.”

The squad leader consulted with the members of his squad. After stomping them back to attention, he again addressed the doctor: “There appears to be a misunder­standing here, Number 14. We have orders to arrest the man standing beside you.” He pointed to Number 6, stand­ing beside her.

“You very well may have orders to arrest him, butthis man is Number 6.”

The squad leader smiled with tolerant amusement at Woman’s ability to misunderstand whatever she needs to. “As ofthis moment, ma’am, that man is Number 2.”

She turned to him, wavering between hilarity and bewilderment. “Haveyou been . . . All this time? No. No, not you.”

She turned back to the squad leader. “May I ask what your orders are, once Number . . . 2 has beenarrested?

“He’s to be locked up, pending further orders.”

“From Number 1?”

“Our instructions, Number 14, are that we’ll receive orders from you.”

They looked at each other and, with better timing than in any earlier scene in the play, began to laugh. They grewhelpless with laughter. Each time either of them tried to talk, nothing came out but a few sputtered syllables and then more, and more helpless, laughter.

“Pardon me, Number 14,” the squad leader interposed. “Pardon me! Please, if you will, ma’am,pardon me!”

“Yes?” Still stifling giggles.

“We’d like to be told what we’re to do with the prisoner. Where shall we take him?”

“Why–to prison, of course.”

“Yes, Number 14. But—” He hunched his shoulders, as though to say: But there are somany prisons.

“Is there any particular prison you’d prefer, Number 6? Number 2, rather.”

“One’s as bad as another, it seems to me.”

“Very well then—you will keep the prisoner confined to this prison until I’ve issued further orders.”

The guard looked about suspiciously. At last, despite the pain of having to show his naïveté before a superior, he had to ask outright: “Which prison is . . . this?”

She pointed to the painted canvas. “A prison in Vienna,” she explained. “See that he doesn’t escape.”