He smiled with his old eyes. But his brow was frowning. He walked away to Tessie. * * * * * FANNY:---- You are there! The world is dark, there is no light in the world. The world is close, I feel you there about me. You stir, you crouch, you are still. You do not know that I am here, knowing you. You lift your voices, they give no sound: Shrieking they are still. --Only the dark world Holding you and me.... No word, no hand-touch, no signal of the eye Binds us: only A dark world. --Yet we are close! Could one be closer in the Sun, Loving in the lap of the Spring? Harry and I, were we so close? Edith and I ... you in the grip of my bowels, you in the suck of my blood and my heavy breasts. Were we so close? --A dark world holds us Strange from each other, groping with blank eyes, With blank mouths.... Closely. CLARA:---- You are not well yet, you are not ready to leave me. What is the matter with you? Why are you still here? O I am glad you are here! You are balm, you are pressing sharpness on my ache ... I do not understand. --You are good friends with Mark, and with Susan and Tessie. Also they already feel how right that you are here with us. And Mangel feels it. Statt feels nothing. Statt does not count. Is it because you are not well, not complete, that you stay? Is it because we must heal you, must complete you, that you stay? Then you will go?--when you have taken from us ... what? You give?... You give--to me how deeply, to us all how deeply! What can we give to you? How can we heal and complete you? --Is it our hurt that you would take from us? Is it our broken-ness that will complete you? MANGEL:---- Tessie should be my daughter. Then the Fear of God would keep her flesh away. You have shown me, Luve woman, that Tessie is my daughter. --I am made of filth. If I could stop hating myself! I am a dirty Jew ... I hate Statt. ... He makes me feel--this.... But who is he? His body is straighter because he has no soul. (There are times when I would love to kiss his body.)