A Part in Search of a Play

"Again, in the ultimate fantasy of war, wondering: What's that on my shoulder? Pips? A crown? Hands raised to their caps to salute me, mine raised to salute others. Why? Or yet again, in the even more ultimate fantasy of sex - Whose is this body lying beside mine? To what end? How did it get here? How, for that matter, did I? Watching my own body making bizarre movements, emitting strange groans, in relation to this other body, as though I were in no way concerned. Like seeing oneself on television - a figure on a screen, a stranger, a speaking shadow whose words seem to come out of some immense cave; dry and remove and dead. In this sense, it is possible to look back on a life as so much footage. Or, better - a scene that has often come into my mind, both sleeping and waking - I am standing in the wings of a theatre waiting for my cue to go on stage. As I stand there I can hear the play proceeding, and suddenly it dawns on me that the lines I have learnt are not in this play at all, but belong to a quite different one. Panic seizes me; I wonder frenziedly what I should do. Then I get my cue. Stumbling, falling over the unfamiliar scenery, I make my way on to the stage, and there look for guidance to the prompter, whose head I can just see rising out of the floor-boards. Alas, he only signals helplessly to me, and I realize that of course his script is different from mine. I begin to speak my lines, but they are incomprehensible to the other actors and abhorrent to the audience, who begin to hiss and shout: 'Get off the stage!' 'Let the play go on!' 'You're interrupting!' I am paralysed and can think of nothing to do but to go on standing there and speaking my lines that don't fit. The only lines I know.

There are so many plays to have a part in. As it might be a great love scene; flesh to flesh, and eternity in your eyes. Nonsense! That comes from Antony and Cleopatra. Or a great drama of action; firing off-stage, alarums and excursions, a dashing salute. 'Sir, I caught the spy!' Nonsense, again! Leave that to Fleming. Or a political satire, Trollopian, Disraelian, with the part of an eminence grise for me. Or rather, declivete. No, that will never do either; render unto Snow the things that are Snow's Or a majestic voice on the telly - a voice, though, that is for ever Dimbleby. Or a typewriter mightier than the sword; meaning Don Quixote's, of course. So many and so varied plays, but never a one with my lines in it. Yet I remain ever more convinced that at last I shall find the play my lines belong to, and speak them. Like choristers waiting to sing; hearing unfamiliar music rumbling from the organ; poised ready, and then - the notes they are waiting for, the tune they know. Uplifted, their faces shining and glorious, they pour out their song, filling the air with confident, full-throated notes."

- Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge