Collaborators:
Randy Taraborrelli, Elisabeth Veit, Roland Barthes u.a.
JACKIE
should appear in a Chanel suit, I think (you would have to have very
good reasons to do it differently!) One could also take as a model that
last photograph in Central Park (with Maurice Tempelsman), the one on
the bench, trench coat, wig (hair lost because of chemo), sun glasses
and Hermès scarf.
In
any case, she should work hard. I imagine all her dead loved ones, her
children, well, the embryo and the two dead babies aren’t that heavy,
but those dead men, Jack, Bobby, Telis (“Ari”), they’ll be quite a load,
so, how shall I put it, she should drag those dead ones behind her like
in a tug-of-war. Or like a Wolga boatman with his boat. Sorry, I can’t
make it easier for you. At least the blood on her suit doesn’t weigh
that much, and there is a chunk missing from Jack’s skull. The actress
should drag the bodies (which are tied to each other) behind her with
great effort, which makes her speech increasingly breathless, panting
for breath she will have to stop her monologue at some point, because
she can’t go on. According to her condition and the way she feels on
a given day, this will happen sometimes sooner, sometimes later. And
then the monologue is done and over. But I am sure you’ll come up with
something completely different.
JACKIE
Well,
I suggest myself like my waist, which I don’t stress. I wear understated
clothes. My waist would be wasted if stressed and instantly cast off,
I mean cast in. Oh no, well, I am about to make a crucial decision and
I decide differently: my waste shall not be cast in anything, it should
just be suggested. It’s not something I would stress about myself. I
stick to my shifts or whatever they are called, those little loose dresses
little girls wear. I am the little girl inside the woman. I politely
take off my self when I am talking to somebody, and yet I also stay,
if far above. I prefer to be suspended in all those pictures of myself
and dragged along, that way I don’t have to do anything. On the other
hand there are those furious activities in matters of home furnishing
and decorating. Early American, crowned like a rotting tooth with Louis-Seize
drapes, that’s what they used to call good taste in those days, imagine!
No, better not imagine things. Because one never knows, which pot feeds
the imagination in the soup kitchen of the poor. I had to come and suggest
myself to the population, which put its faith in me and got nothing
in return. One has to add pomp and majesty to everything except oneself,
one should stay simple and that takes guts—especially for the sort of
total restraint, the barely breathed trivia—a boldness that turns into
complete stillness, as soon as one appears to the public as Our Lady
of Miracles. It’s a miracle that a picture like me can speak at all!
One must turn into the footsteps people hear in front of the door, which
make them instantly freeze in fear. That’s power. That’s not the gateway
to power, as they always show it in the magazines. That’s power itself,
it dispenses its limbs delicately like clothes, and invisible hands
take hold of them, hands, which drop to their knees in front of themselves,
so to speak. One sees and doesn’t see power. One has to present one’s
head in beautiful movements, bundle them in a photo, tie them up and
hold them hostage of oneself. As the lover of oneself. That’s why Jack’s
countless lovers didn’t get to me, because they didn’t get it. One has
to be captured by oneself in order to be able to captivate others. One
has to be still, but loudest in that stillness, so that one instills
sensations in others as if injecting medication into a patient. People
need those sensations, because they don’t have them, but they know them
nevertheless. They are described to them constantly, in the rustle of
those colorful rags, in the rush of coming by oneself, which is the
safest way, unless it’s already too late. Their parents can die, their
children can die, their dogs can die, but when one of us dies they throw
out all their opportunities to do so themselves like rocks onto a pile,
and lift up their mugs and howl. They are incapable of stepping
back, they are even less capable of stepping on us. They’d rather step
up to us and be like us. And whatever they are not, they want to have
described to them, but it should be something they already know, otherwise
they wouldn’t get it. For what? Should we live for them? It’s logical
somehow, that a shot put an end to all that. Well, no, it all began
only with that shot. Looking at us with great interest, as if they were
seeing themselves in the mirror that’s what people are doing all the
time. They see us, but actually they see themselves in us. But a treasure
like myself is most appreciated when absent. On the other hand, I can
be seen everywhere. With the little jacket during the day. I buy them
by the dozens, but they don’t come cheaper. I cast myself as a cast—plaster,
but not plastered, and not my waist. My waist isn’t cast in plaster,
and my hair isn’t plastered. It’s lacquered. I also have a wig, although
I always denied it. Joan, that boozer, gave me away; she was cast out,
that also was stressed. And how! Yet she is the only one who produced
responsible heirs. Ethel: almost only irresponsible heirs. Myself: so
so. They balance each other out. Only one is left anyway and she at
least is the declaimer of order. She lives to recite me and her father;
she won’t have to save us, we are saved; not because we had so much
to do in life, but because we were. At least she doesn’t recite other
people’s stories. Joan was the most beautiful of us all, but also the
least of all. But that Teddy really is an ass. When we still existed
as human beings, they called us personalities, but Teddy isn’t even
that. But he is still alive. Not bad. Drowning in the act—really now!
Well, at least only her, the little secretary, not he. He must have
come up pretty fast while the car was sinking; it seemed to have sunk
instantly. As if the car was a whale, which had to move quickly from
land into the sea because fishermen with flashing cameras were after
him. That poor little blond fish stayed behind, below, Mary Jo. Yes,
unfortunately Teddy was our last chance, the only survivor, but he didn’t
use it, he took another. Then it was over with the careers in the family.
I became a statue, as ordered, with a bleeding man falling on it and
no one forgetting his face during those last minutes. People can also
cast themselves—to use that term again—by getting cast out and out of
sight. Like Joan. My husband also disappeared and remained as the permanent
scar in a wound, lit forever by a sanctuary lamp, the eternal light,
so they won’t forget us; I am lying there too, with the dead children.
Johnjohn, unfortunately, didn’t get in, because he didn’t serve. The
soldiers’ cemetery: Only for those who served! He is ashes now, in the
ocean, and the boats of the America’s Cup are racing through him, that’s
nice too, isn’t it? I wouldn’t call it pleasant in the ER, things never
turned out well for us there. The public responds absolutely the same
way to both the disappearing and the reemerging. The public isn’t neutral,
it expresses itself specifically to become the determining factor, the
ruler that measures us, the rulers, who fall into their own image, falling
over it occasionally, because they overstepped themselves and that’s
a sight people can’t shake off. Somehow I can’t get myself to expose
the public, which has a right to every detail, to the sight of the smashed
head with the brain oozing into my lap. The doctors understand that;
the secret service men do too. They have to understand everything, even
though we don’t get it. Oh Jack, oh Jack, I love you, I sob. What else
should I say? I can’t very well pretend we had planned to meet in the
hospital. We hold each other and gently pat each other’s backs, while
we cry softly, because so many of us died and now us, too; well, I am
dead in any case. It's alright, we tell ourselves, it's alright, let
it come out, let it all come out, every last bit of it. I just got over
my crying spell, Ethel’s is starting just now, Joan appears, tearless,
but then she starts to cry as well , no, she doesn’t; yes, now her tears
finally arrive, if somewhat late, though no one was waiting, no, I see,
they were awaited nonetheless. Ready for the River. Get those tears
into the ocean of tears! And out of sight. With that look on your face
you won’t get anywhere, you better take this one! I’ve tried it already
some other place, but it wasn’t right for there. That one’s like a shoe
that takes you noiselessly up the stairs, where you slip and fall down
again screaming loudly. Oh, had we just put it on in time, that cute,
non-slip soft shoe routine, that always stops the show. And then filter
everything that’s coming through a black veil, you’ll find the taste
incomparable. I held up well, until Ethel came, then I got my self-portrait
from my portrait gallery and I stood there, a woman in black up to the
straps that tied me to the coffin. In front of me the two small children
with their well bred faces, the little red shoes, the powder blue coats,
didn’t I doll them up adorably, they’ll be remembered for centuries,
you’ll see. No, unfortunately you won’t see. But you can watch it on
film five thousand times and you still won't have enough of it and you
still won't have seen anything. I did that well, didn't I? All my doing,
convincing people of this enchanting death in red and powder blue, of
this death in the shape of two small children, cute, like a slim heaven,
something like that, this death that’s in store for them as well, but
it won’t be as awesome, I am afraid. They open their mouths to grasp
it. The horse without a rider, the empty boots turned upside down, their
legs in the stirrups. And Jack hated horses! He was allergic to their
gorgeous hair. Well, not I. Riding, tennis, skiing, water skiing, that’s
the way I embrace myself. As soon as I turned my back to him, Jack immediately
came on to one woman or another, but that was the Cortisone. Turns you
on, without having to let go of Mom’s hand. Every day the ladies’ man
advances, without having taken any lessons, but he is a sloppy learner.
He doesn’t have to work hard. It comes to him. No woman can escape his
personality. He jumps into every woman, but he won’t jump into an argument
with me. I finally cleared up that thing with Marilyn, he told me he
was finished with her before her death, therefore he couldn’t be held
responsible for her death. He said, she had big problems long before
they met. I finally came to the conclusion that they really couldn’t
blame him for what happened. His father always pays. He pays me too,
after all. If I have to marry and stay married, then his father should
pay. Mine couldn’t do that, paying. I had to marry, there was no other
way to disperse of my charms, they always needed a permanent address.
Not like Sylvia Plath, who was allowed to accept the fellowship at a
woman’s magazine and as a consequence was almost poisoned by the lobster
mayonnaise which was offered to the girls, well, that could have saved
her a lot of troubles. No one would have offered me that sort of stuff.
No one would have dared. You see, I don’t need a fellowship for dying.
I know how it goes. I already knew. I know how it goes. No matter what.
Someone like Plath never becomes an icon, except for stupid women, who
think they have gotten a brain of their own. Ridiculous! Where should
it come from?! Where would they use it, except for petty affairs? I
wasn’t allowed to accept my fellowship at Vogue. Mother was against
it. You have to marry rich, she said. Quite right. Don’t lose an entire
year. You can use that year for something better. And how long does
one have to wait during visiting hours on Judgment Day, when there’s
no one there to support your arm, because one has to wait forever on
the gangway for God to finally arrive and shake hands with you? Even
de Gaulle and Khrushchev didn’t take that long! Keep in mind that you
could-knock on wood-be wooed by any number of men. Time for a poem—absolutely—but
make sure your dress works like a poem! Got it! You must adapt! Only
when you have gotten everyone’s attention, have you truly adapted. Lean
against flesh, even if it’s rotted, as long as it is richly garnished,
so that the flesh disappears underneath. No one could have done a better
job educating a woman in power than Mom did with me. She doesn't grasp
me, but she's right. She was like that herself. I grasp myself, but
there is only air and deep pain, like water that turns into a highway
when you water ski, hard as a road that’s ahead of you, but you still
can drown in it. That never happens in a sea of tears. There you always
can get out. Why should the President learn anything, the women are
coming all by themselves. Those men. The first men who became sexy through
sports. The sisters too. No, that’s not true. It’s true only today,
since female athletes have to undress. They started it. Those Rah-Rah
girls. Always shouting, fighting, kicking, screaming, cheering and then
the fire, made of nothing but hot air and winds, fanning, blowing, tumbling
on top of each other, women soccer teams, women players, biting, stomping,
scratching. They always did that well, those women; their sinews zipping
like bows and arrows all over the place, in all directions, women pushing
each other around like vehicles on a bursting arterial road during rush
hour. As if they would be thrown into the air at any moment, if they
didn’t hold on tight to the earth. Or is it true after all that all
of us female figures, stringy as we were, without any meat on our bones,
became the showcases for our generation and all those coming after?
I most of all. Look at us and order something similar right away, because
you’ll never get the same! We looked as if we would never be subject
to decay, there didn’t seem to be an ounce of flesh anywhere. We were
somehow meatless, healthy, yes and yet it was our flesh that was always
hit the hardest. If it really had been flesh. Instead fate always encountered
a taut safety net and tossed us back up in the air, no matter what happened.
Yes, fate took note of us and then it wrote us up all the way to the
end of our best parts. Since then it only copied from us, Fate, down
to the third and fourth member. Can’t come up with anything new, Fate
that is. A sprawling novel, extracted from life, but no, we were life
itself. They extract from us! But not just a little! No one was ashamed.
No woman can keep her figure, only with us it lasts forever. We make
the most of our pounds, but there are only a few. We have no bodies.
Please, Fate, go ahead, help yourself! Just a moment, I have to cast
myself into the new shape that is prescribed to me by my clothes, and
I advised Mr. Cassini to make the clothes according to my measurements,
but in such a way that they never touch my body. Nothing and no one
must touch me, when I don't want it.
...
The complete
text is available in THEATER, Volume 36, Number 2, published by the Yale
School of Drama and Duke University Press. (Readers can order it at www.dukeupress.edu/theater
).
1.3.2006
Jackie
© 2006 Elfriede Jelinek /
Translation Gitta Honegger
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