Carr By the Bog of Cats

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-31872-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 96 Seiten

Set in the mysterious landscape of the bogs of rural Ireland, Carr's lyrical and timeless play tells the story of Hester Swane, an Irish traveller with a deep and unearthly connection to her land. Tormented by the memory of a mother who deserted her, Hester is once again betrayed, this time by the father of her child, the man she loves. On the brink of despair, she embarks on a terrible journey of vengeance as the secrets of her tangled history are revealed. 'A piece of poetic realism steeped in the past . . . Carr has an extraordinary ability to move between the mythic and the real.' Guardian 'A great play . . . a great work of poetry.' Independent By the Bog of Cats premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1998. It was revived at Wyndham's Theatre, London, in November 2004.

Marina Carr was brought up in County Offaly. A graduate of University College Dublin, she has written extensively for the theatre. She has taught at Villanova, Princeton, and is currently Associate Professor in the School of English, Dublin City University. Awards include the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Macaulay Fellowship, the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Windham Campbell Prize. She lives in Dublin with her husband and four children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Carr, Marina

Leseproben

SCENE THREE

Catwoman What’re ya doin’ there?

Hester None of your business now, Catwoman.

Catwoman You’re buryin’ auld Black Wing, aren’t ya?

Hester How d’ya know?

Catwoman I know everythin’ that happens on this bog. I’m the Keeper of the Bog of Cats in case ya forgotten. I own this bog.

Hester Ya own nothin’, Catwoman, except your little house of turf and your hundred-odd mousetraps and anythin’ ya can rob and I’m missin’ a garden chair so ya better bring it back.

Catwoman I only took it because ya won’t be needin’ it any more.

Hester Won’t I? If ya don’t bring it back I’ll have to go down meself and maybe knock your little turf house down.

Catwoman You just dare.

Hester I’ll bring down diesel, burn ya out.

Catwoman Alright! Alright! I’ll bring back your garden chair, fierce uncomfortable anyway, not wan of the cats’d sleep on it. Here, give her to me a minute, auld Black Wing.

She came to my door last night and tapped on it as she often did, only last night she wouldn’t come in. I bent down and she puts her wing on me cheek and I knew this was farewell. Then I heard her tired auld wingbeat, shaky and off kilter and then the thud of her fallin’ out of the sky onto the ice. She must’ve died on the wing or soon after. (.) Goodbye, auld thing, and safe journey. Here, put her in the ground.

A saucer of milk there, Hester Swane.

Hester I’ve no milk here today. You may go up to the house for your saucer of milk and, I told ya, I don’t want ya pawin’ mice around me, dirty auld yokes, full of diseases.

Catwoman And you aren’t, you clean as the snow, Hester Swane?

Hester Did I say I was?

Catwoman I knew your mother, I helped her bring ya into the world, knew ya when ya were chained like a rabid pup to this auld caravan, so don’t you look down on me for handlin’ a mouse or two.

Hester If ya could just see yourself and the mouse fur growin’ out of your teeth. Disgustin’.

Catwoman I need mice the way you need whiskey.

Hester Ah, go on and lave me alone, Catwoman, I’m in no mood for ya today.

Catwoman Bet ya aren’t. I had a dream about ya last night.

Hester Spare me your visions and dreams, enough of me own to deal with.

Catwoman Dreamt ya were a black train motorin’ through the Bog of Cats and, oh, the scorch off of this train and it blastin’ by and all the bog was dark in your wake, and I had to run from the burn. Hester Swane, you’ll bring this place down by evenin’.

Hester I know.

Catwoman Do ya now? Then why don’t ya lave? If ya lave this place you’ll be alright. That’s what I came by to tell ya.

Hester Ah, how can I lave the Bog of Cats, everythin’ I’m connected to is here. I’d rather die.

Catwoman Then die ya will.

Hester There’s sympathy for ya! That’s just what I need to hear.

Catwoman Ya want sugar-plum platitudes, go talk to Monica Murray or anyone else around here. You’re my match in witchery, Hester, same as your mother was, it may even be ya surpass us both and the way ya go on as if God only gave ya a little frog of a brain instead of the gift of seein’ things as they are, not as they should be, but exactly as they are. Ya know what I think?

Hester What?

Catwoman I been thinkin’ a while now that there’s some fierce wrong ya done that’s caught up with ya.

Hester What fierce wrong?

Catwoman Don’t you by-talk me, I’m the Catwoman. I know things. Now I can’t say I know the exact wrong ya done but I’d put a bet on it’s somethin’ serious judgin’ by the way ya go on.

Hester And what way do I go on?

Catwoman What was it ya done, Hester?

Hester I done nothin’ – Or if I did I never meant to.

Catwoman There’s a fine answer, half a lie and half a truth.

Hester Everywan has done wrong at wan time or another.

Catwoman Aye, but not everywan knows the price of wrong. You do and it’s the best thing about ya and there’s not much in ya I’d praise. No, most manage to stay a step or two ahead of the pig-sty truth of themselves, not you though.

Hester Ah, would ya give over. Ya lap up people’s fears, you’ve too much time on your own, concoctin’ stories about others. Go ’way and kill a few mice for your dinner, only lave me alone – Or tell me about me mother, for what I remember doesn’t add up.

Catwoman What ya want to know about big Josie Swane?

Hester Everythin’.

Catwoman Well, what ya remember?

Hester Only small things – Like her pausin’.

Catwoman She was a great wan for the pausin’.

Hester ‘G’wan to bed, you,’ she’d say, ‘I’ll just be here pausin’.’ And I’d watch her from the window. () Times she’d smoke a cigar which she had her own particular way of doin’. She’d hould it stretched away from her and, instead of takin’ the cigar to her mouth, she’d bring her mouth to the cigar. And her all the time pausin’. What was she waitin’ for, Catwoman?

Catwoman Ya’d often hear her voice comin’ over the bog at night. She was the greatest song stitcher ever to have passed through this place and we’ve had plenty pass through but none like Josie Swane. But somewhere along the way lost the weave of the song and in so doin’ became small and bitter and mean. By the time she ran off and left ya I couldn’t abide her.

Hester There’s a longin’ in me for her that won’t quell the whole time.

Catwoman I wouldn’t long for Josie Swane if I was you. Sure the night ya were born she took ya over to the black swan’s lair, auld Black Wing ya’ve just buried there, and laid ya in the nest alongside her. And when I axed her why she’d do a thing like that with snow and ice everywhere, ya know what she says, ‘Swane means swan.’ ‘That may be so,’ says I, ‘but the child’ll die of pneumonia.’ ‘That child,’ says Josie Swane, ‘will live as long as this black swan, not a day more, not a day less.’ And each night for three nights she left ya in the black swan’s lair and each night I snuck ya out of the lair and took ya home with me and brung ya back to the lair before she’d come lookin’ for ya in the mornin’. That’s when I started to turn again’ her.

Hester You’re makin’ it up to get rid of me like everywan else round here. Xavier Cassidy put ya up to this.

Catwoman Xavier Cassidy put me up to nothin’. I’m only tellin’ ya so ya know what sourt of a woman your mother was. Ya were lucky she left ya. Just forget about her and lave this place now or ya never will.

Hester Doesn’t seem to make much difference whether I stay or lave with a curse like that on me head.

Catwoman There’s ways round curses. Curses only have the power ya allow them. I’m tellin’ ya, Hester, ya have to go. When have I ever been proved wrong? Tould ya ya’d have just the wan daughter, tould ya the day and hour she’d be born, didn’t I now?

Hester Ya did alright.

Catwoman Tould ya Carthage Kilbride was no good for ya, never grew his backbone, would ya listen? Tould Monica Murray to stop her only son drivin’ to the city that night. Would she listen? Where’s her son? In his grave, that’s where he is. Begged her till she ran me off with a kittle of bilin’ water. Mayhap she wanted him dead. I’ll say nothin’. Gave auld Xavier Cassidy herbs to cure his wife. What did he do? Pegged them down the tilet and took Olive Cassidy to see some swanky medicine man in a private hospital. They cured her alright, cured her so well she came back cured as a side of ham in an oak coffin with golden handles. Maybe he wanted her dead too. There’s many gets into brown studies over buryin’ their loved wans. That a fact, Hester Swane. I’ll be off now and don’t say the Catwoman never tould ya. Lave this place now or ya never will.

Hester I’m stoppin’ here.

Catwoman Sure I know that too. Seen it writ in a bog hole.

Hester Is there anythin’ them blind eyes doesn’t see writ in a bog hole?

Catwoman Sneer away. Ya know what the Catwoman says is true, but sneer away and we’ll see will that sneer be on your puss at dusk. Remember the Catwoman then for I don’t think...