A1. THE MANOR

Charles lowered to the level of the keyhole. A candle, carelessly hung sideways, cut across the profile of Edwin Forrest, without revealing his face. He was slowly sinking in a wide chair of leather and felt. All around, from empty rooms to empty halls, the manor was falling into silence. The room was littered with opened books.

Charles knocked.

- Come in.

The old actor’s voice got out of his lungs as the wind through two tight rocks at sea.

Charles kept to the threshold, not daring to enter fully. He always felt like he was disturbing a sick man’s sleep.

- Are you in pain ?

The master gave a faint smile to his librarian and valet. The face was about the only part of his body that was not half paralyzed or numb.

- Pain ? … half in pain … pain for half … It needs to stop now. Don’t you think so, Mister Iverson ? The play has run its course. Why, you … here … at this hour ?

Edwin took rests in the middle of his sentences, which grew shorter and sadder year after year.

- Sir. We have ran out of books.

- Ran out ?

- You have read them all. I checked my registry three times. All this list we established together. The four indexes. It's around 1600 volumes, all put together. Everything that we could in good faith add on the list. Of course, there's still this year's worthy publications, and maybe some minor works that ...

- No.

- Yes sir.

- All of them, really ?

- Yes sir. We had decided on Poetry, History, Thought and Science. You've read it all.

- It's time, then.

Edwin was looking, in the distance, towards a wall still dark.

- Do you see Him still ?, Charles asked.

- Yes … The other night, in the yard, he followed me. He was limp. As if ... mocking me. Like the shadow ... of a puppet ... missing a thread. He laughed. ... You think I'm mad ?

- No, sir.

- And you ? What are you ... reading ?

Charles was not used to answering questions about his life. He worked for the good of Edwin. The rest of the time, he would sleep, or catch a rare moment at his window. Sometimes he would read instead of sleep.

- Medecine. It's all I read. This year.

- You are still seeking, eh ? And what do you ... propose ? To end it all.

- I ... Sir I think those ghosts will put you down. I believe in a change of air. Sometimes it's the smallest thing that ...

- What do you want ?

Charles had never decided anything. He had never imagined he would want to. Suddenly something opened up in him. After years of waiting slowly, of attempting small gestures, he suddenly had, for a moment, an opportunity to reach the mountain top in one single miraculous stride.

- Let us go. Sir, let us go, and leave this cursed place.

- Where to ?

- West. As far West as possible. Where nobody knows you, or any of this.

- Where to ?

- I have read that California's filled with medicinal springs. And sunlight. So, San Francisco.

- San Francisco ? ... I have never been.

- What do you say ?

- Aha. Nothing. No. Nothing. My spirit is blank. My heart ... hates the idea, and all the rest. My soul ... let me see ... "here or there, the same anywhere". That's her vote. The college has spoken.

- Is it a yes ?

- We'll play your play ... Bard ... pick my role. I am Lear, yes ? Or the father's ghost ... already ?

Charles did his best to conceal his emotion - exactly that of a child excited to see his ill father stand up again - to play again.

- It's a yes ?

Edwin Forrest slowly sighed. Deep down, he was afraid to spend one year more in this manor, without a book to distract himself from the laughing shadow, from Him ...

- Yes, he said, simply.

Then he turned again towards the dark wall. The dying candle had just bent and revealed, tied to the wall, the armor of Macbeth, the one from his 1852 triumph. Its rubies were shining still. Red and deep like fire and blood.