The Knight of the Blue Chin

A Dialogue which Shows Under What Strange Influences Love May Appear—and Disappear

FRANZ MOLNAR

Translated by

Benjamin Glazer

THE place is a summer resort. The time is noon of a beautiful April day. A young lady of forty-five is strolling with an old gentleman of forty-four.

SHE: It seems strange to be walking with you again.

HE: Why?

SHE: Well, it must be fifteen years since we were together like this—alone. You were in love with me then. Do you remember?

HE: I am flattered that you remember. It never seemed to make much impression on you —then.

SHE: If you only knew—

HE: YOU are speaking so low I can scarcely hear you.

SHE: A wise woman always speaks with quiet reverence of her bygone love affairs.

(He stops suddenly.) -

SHE: What did you stop for ?

HE: (Starts walking again) You loved

me too? You did really? Well!

(This time it is she who stops.)

SHE: And you never suspected it?

(Both are silent a while. He shakes his head rather ruefully and looks thoughtfully at the ground. She smiles at him, sympathetically.)

HE: Why did I never know?

SHE: It was your own fault. You used to come to our house day after day. My husband was away. He was always travelling then. That was the time he got that big railroad concession. And I was always glad to see you. So was my little daughter. Fortunately she was only twelve years old then.

HE: Why do you say that?

SHE: I'll explain. When I was out or occupied in some other part of the house you used to play with my little girl. I paid very little attention to you at first. You were given to telling comic stories, a practice which I have always regarded as an old man's pastime. Moreover, the anecdote is an epic form of art .... and I, with my husband away all the time, was in the frame of mind to appreciate the lyrical. . . .

HE: I must have been very stupid.

SHE: Oh, I don't mean to imply that you weren't welcome. You came and went. And I was glad when you came, but I was not sorry when you went.

HE: I should have gone earlier.

SHE: Or later.

(A brief pause.)

SHE: One day while rummaging in a linen closet I found a diary.

HE: Whose?

SHE: My twelve-year-old daughter's. It contained the usual silly things a young girl writes. I read it, smiling. Smiling until I came to the very last entry. It was nothing to smile about. It read: "I am in love with the Knight of the Blue Chin."

HE: This knight—

SHE: Was you. Like all dark complexioned men who shave frequently you had a chin that was quite blue. I was alarmed.

HE: Why?

SHE: My little daughter was in love with you. I had often heard her comment on the wonderful blueness of your chin, but never had I dreamed that she was so deeply enamoured of it. I restored the diary to its hiding place and went downstairs. Then you came.

HE: Yes?

SHE: And when you kissed my hand my fingers touched your chin, and somehow I seemed to feel its blueness oozing into me like a magnetic current. You were quite transformed in my eyes. I was even a bit afraid of you. My daughter was in love with you! That made me think about you as I had never thought before.

HE: What did you think?

SHE: For the first time I saw the potential lover in you. A nice woman rarely notices a man in that way until some other woman draws her attention to him.

HE: But this was only a child.

SHE: That made me all the more curious. The following evening, after I had put her to bed, I got out her diary. That day she had written in it: "My knight has two eyes and both are black, and when he looks at you with his two black eyes you want to cry."

HE: A curious observation.

SHE: And a most dismaying one. It had never occurred to me to count your eyes. With real impatience I awaited your next visit. And when you came I quickly looked at your eyes. They were actually two, and black. It was the first time I had ever looked at a man with rivalry in my heart. The feeling was so strange, so disquieting that I determined not to think about you any more. And a woman making up her mind not to think about a man is like a chronic gambler vowing never to touch cards again.

HE: What happened then?

SHE: More entries in the diary. "The knight's voice is beautiful, as beautiful as a rose." For a long time I did not understand that. One must be very young or very old to appreciate such a comparison perfectly. Yet I did notice how beautifully you spoke. Your voice rang like a bell. . . I was very uneasy those days. But not on my daughter's account.

HE: How utterly stupid I must have been!

SHE: She was only doing what every school girl does. But she was putting me into a position both dangerous and exasperating. In books and in plays it is always the child who saves the erring mother from sin. And here was my child fairly forcing me into the arms of a man.

HE: If I had only known!

SHE: One day a perfectly dreadful entry appeared. "This morning when Mademoiselle and I were walking we met the Blue Chin. The Blue Chin was strolling with a Blonde Lady and laughing. The Blonde Lady was laughing too. But I cried. And Mademoiselle laughed at me."

HE: What did you do?

SHE: I took the middle course. I neither laughed nor wept. I wonder if you know what it means when a woman does not laugh. It is far worse than when she weeps. The idea that tears are the opposite of laughter is purely of masculine invention. It may be true of men. With us the opposite of to laugh is not to laugh.

A woman s tears are a physical necessity, like sneezing or coughing .... but never mind that. As I said, I did not laugh. And when you came—you probably won't remember this —I asked you nervously, rather impertinently, who the blonde woman was.

HE: I don't remember that—

SHE: NO. Perhaps you never heard it at all. You may have understood me to say something else. Praise of my huusband perhaps. Would a conversation between a man and a woman be of any interest, I wonder, if words had precisely the same significance in the ears of both?

HE: I . . . . pardon me if I seem a bit confused .... but .... are you saying that you fell in love with me?

SHE: That too.

(Naturally there is a pause.)

SHE: And now comes the sensational part. For several days I left my daughter's diary unread. I was truly afraid of it. I went about in a state of perpetual agitation; wrote long, affectionate letters to my husband; kissed my daughter passionately; and when you came .... well .... There was a day, a certain day—

HE: Pardon me for interrupting you, but wasn't it a Thursday?

SHE: Why, no. It was a Monday.

(He strikes crossly at a bush with his cane.)

SHE: That was the day when .... if you had .... if you had—

(She looks at him expectantly.)

HE: If I had what?

SHE: That is the place where you should have interrupted me. There are sentences which a clever man never permits a woman to finish. But had you understood—

HE: What then?

SHE: Nothing. Here, again, was a place you should have interrupted me.

(He makes as if to strike the bush again, but refrains.)

SHE: It must have been four or five days later when curiosity impelled me to open the diary again. I found this entry: "The Knight has ugly teeth and on the top of his head there is a place where there is no hair and the Knight combs the hair he has over the hair he hasn't." HE: The young imp!

SHE: The very next day I bought her a French doll which was a whole head taller than she was. And when you came, I laughed. And after you had gone, I cried. Never since have I had such a genuine, full-hearted, thoroughly satisfactory cry.

HE: It was all over then?

SHE: Worse than that. It was beginning to come to an end. Which is far more hopeless for a man than when it is quite ended.

HE: And what that young imp wrote sufficed to spoil me for you completely.

SHE: Completely. Once she wrote: "Before the Knight comes into a room he blows his nose in the hall.". ... That's how it is with children. Their love passes quickly and pitilessly. And my daughter carried me along with her. In love and out of it in two weeks. To be sure, the swift pace left me a bit dizzy, but the fact remained that I arrived safely.

(Continued on page 100)

(Continued from page 50)

HE : A nasty story !

SHE: DO you think so? For me it has something sweet in it. . . .like old wine.

HE: For me it is sour. . . .like badly corked old wine. You might have corked it better. Why did you tell me all this ?

(She reflects a moment.)

SHE : Because—not a word of it is true.

HE: I beg your pardon.

SHE: I just made it 'up as I went along. You see, it was necessary for me to try it on someone.

HE: Necessary?

SHE: My daughter's husband is

away. There is a man who calls on her frequently. She came to me, weeping, for advice. She must be saved. Tonight I shall tell her the story you have just heard and—

HE: And what about the diary? Is that an invention too?

SHE: It may console you to know that the diary did exist. The rest is untrue. But it will serve as a pretext for saying to her, "My daughter, once you saved your mother from her own folly. Now the moment has come when your mother can save you." It will have its effect. I am certain of that.

HE: Tell me one thing.

(He regards her dubiously.)

SHE: Yes.

HE: This certain Thursday—Why did you say it was a Monday?

SHE: Did I say Monday?

HE: YOU most certainly insisted it was on a Monday.

SHE: It wasn't a Monday at all.

HE: Then it was Thursday.

SHE: NO.

HE: In saying that it didn't happen on a Monday you imply that it did happen. And just now you declared that none of it was true. What am I to believe? What are you trying to do to me anyway?

SHE: I am pouring the old wine

back into its bottle, and sealing it securely this time. I offered you some, but you—(Her glance travels from his head to his feet and remains there, glued to his shoetips, while she finishes) But you were not connoisseur enough to appreciate it.

HE: (in utter discomfiture) Now— SHE: NOW let us talk of other things.