Without Feathers Read Online Free PDF Page A

other hand, was the new—the vibrant, cruel Darwinian force of nature, which was to blow through Europe for the next fifty years and find its deepest expression in the songs of Maurice Chevalier. The relationship between Netta and Moltvick mirrored Lovborg's marriage to Siri Brackman, an actress who served as a constant inspiration to him throughout the eight hours their marriage lasted. Lovborg remarried several times after that, but always to department-store mannequins.
    Clearly, the most fully realized woman in all of Lovborg's plays was Mrs. Sanstad in Mellow Pears, Lovborg's last naturalistic drama. (After Pears, he experimented with an Expressionist play in which all the characters were named Lovborg, but it failed to win approval, and for the remaining three years of his life he could not be coaxed out of the hamper.) Mellow Pears ranks with his greatest works, and the final exchange between Mrs. Sanstad and her son's wife, Berte, is perhaps more pertinent today than ever:
    berte: D o say you like the way we furnished
    the house! It was so hard, on a ventriloquist's
    salary.
    mrs. sanstad : The house is—serviceable. berte : What! Only serviceable? mrs. sanstad : Whose idea was the red satin elk? berte : Why, your son's. Henrick is a born decorator.
    mrs. sanstad (suddenly): Henrick is a fool! berte: N o!
    mrs. sanstad : Did you know that he did not know what snow was until last week? berte : You're lying!
    mrs. sanstad : My precious son. Yes, Henrick—the same man who went to prison for mispronouncing the word "diphthong."
    berte: N o!
    mrs. sanstad : Yes. And with an Eskimo in the room at the time!
    berte : I don't want to hear about it!
    mrs. sanstad : But you will, my little nightingale! Isn't that what Henrick calls you?
    berte (crying): He calls me nightingale! Yes, and sometimes thrush! And hippo!
    (Both women weep unashamedly.)
    mrs. sanstad : Berte, dear Berte! . . . Henrick's earmuffs are not his own! They are owned by a corporation.
    berte : We must help him. He must be told he can never fly by flapping his arms.
    mrs. sanstad (suddenly laughing): Henrick knows everything. I told him your feelings about his arch supports.
    berte: So! You tricked me!
    mrs. sanstad : Call it what you will. He's in Oslo now.
    berte : Oslo!
    mrs. sanstad : With his geranium . . .
    berte : I see. I . . . see. (She wanders through the French doors upstage.)
    mrs. sanstad : Yes, my little nightingale, he is out of your clutches at last. By this time next month, he will realize his lifelong dream—to fill his hat with cinders. And you thought you'd keep him cooped up here! No! Henrick is a wild creature, a thing of nature! Like some wonderful mouse—or a tick. (A shot is heard. Mrs. Sanstad runs into the next room. We hear a scream. She returns, pale and shaken.) Dead . . . She's lucky. I . . . must go on. Yes, night is falling . . . falling rapidly. So rapidly, and I still have all those chickpeas to rearrange.
    Mrs. Sanstad was Lovborg's revenge on his mother. Also a critical woman, she began life as a trapeze artist with the circus; his father, Nils Lovborg, was the human cannonball. The two met in midair and were married before touching ground. Bitterness slowly crept into the marriage, and by the time Lovborg was six years old his parents exchanged gunfire daily. This atmosphere took its toll on a sensitive youngster like Jorgen, and soon he began to suffer the first of his famous
    "moods" and "anxieties," rendering him for some years unable to pass a roast chicken without tipping his hat. In later years, he told friends that he was tense all during the writing of Mellow Pears and on several occasions believed he heard his mother's voice asking him directions to Staten Island.
The Whore of Mensa
    One thing about being a private investigator, you've got to learn to go with your hunches. That's why when a quivering pat of butter named Word Bab-cock walked into my office and laid his cards on the table, I should have trusted