The Brass Butterfly by William Golding

Author:William Golding [William Golding]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571301676
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2014-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

ACT III

Scene: The same.

PHANOCLES, detached and brooding. MAMILLIUS, at the wall, looking towards the quay.

MAMILLIUS: He has lifted the weapon towards us like a malicious finger. I can see his ships in dozens crawling down from the horizon. When the wind shifts you can hear them. Can your ideas turn them back? (No answer from PHANOCLES.) At least Euphrosyne is safe. If I were noble and brave, that ought to be a comfort to me. Help me to die! Instead, it makes me sick. She is my happiness, and if I were sure of immortality I’d want to take her with me—to die also. D’you hear that, Phanocles? I tell myself I love your sister, yet here I am wanting her to die. (Pause) Ah, but suppose she insisted on dying with me! How beautiful! Then of course I couldn’t possibly allow it…. Could I, Phanocles? I must say, for a Greek you are astonishingly taciturn.

PHANOCLES: What did I do to get myself here?

MAMILLIUS: You wrote a petition. Try it on Postumus.

PHANOCLES: A petition. A reasonable statement from one man to another. I have asked from men nothing but good will and commonsense. Yet the Emperor of the world is preoccupied in there, eating from a toy I would never have thought worth making. And down there a fool’s finger is on my own trigger. We build on the expectation of man’s goodness and the foundations collapse under us. We reveal to him the movement of the stars, the reasonable miracles of creation—and he buries his nose in filth like a dog!

MAMILLIUS: You are so great and so clever, Phanocles—

PHANOCLES: I am a fool!

MAMILLIUS: All this cosmic intelligence…. Can you keep back those ships?

PHANOCLES: (kindly). No.

MAMILLIUS: No! Because there is a truly great man facing us on the quay—a great ruler—a great general…. Presently he will prove that greatness for all time and in the established manner by cutting our throats!

PHANOCLES: Yes.

MAMILLIUS: And you can do nothing?

PHANOCLES: No. The island is his. I can reveal miracles, Lord; I cannot perform them.

MAMILLIUS: The sword is mightier than the pen?

PHANOCLES: Yes, Lord.

MAMILLIUS: Think, man! What hope have we but you?

PHANOCLES: The Emperor, perhaps?

MAMILLIUS: You know he thinks of nothing but the pressure cooker! “While there is still time,” he said. He said, “This may be the fine flower of a life’s experience.” Phanocles, I am devoted to the arts, but that is gastronomy to excess!

PHANOCLES: Help yourself, Lord. I cannot help you.

MAMILLIUS: We’re going to change the universe!

PHANOCLES: I am incapable.

MAMILLIUS: How? Come here. Suppose you were the Heir Designate—put yourself in his place. He suspects me unjustly … well, perhaps I have had foolish thoughts of what it would be like to be Emperor, but not, not—

PHANOCLES: Not to excess?

MAMILLIUS: Exactly. (Pause) If we can understand him perhaps we can defeat him. Think, man. You are he. You look up at the villa. You think: “The old man is getting senile. The Greek is a magician. The boy is completely helpless by himself.

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