Nanko (calling aloud as he munches).
Come, Rada, you’re pretending. They’re all gone.
Rada, these marrons glacés are delicious.
It’s over now! Come, I don’t think it’s right
To spoil a person’s pleasure on Christmas Eve.
(He tiptoes to the door and peers into the night.)
Come quick, Bettine, rockets are going up!
They are breaking into clusters of green stars!
Oh, there’s a red one! You could see for miles
When that one broke. The willow-trees jumped out
Like witches; and, between them, the canal
Dwindled away to a little thread of blood.
And there were lines of men running and falling,
And guns and horses floundering in a ditch.
Oh, Rada! there’s a bonfire by the mill.
They’ve burned the little cottage.
There’s a man
Hanging above the bonfire by his hands,
And heaps of dead all round him.
Come and see!
It’s terrible, but it’s magnificent,
Like one of Goya’s pictures. That’s the way
He painted war. Well, everybody’s gone....
To think I was the fittest, after all!
(He returns to the gramophone.)
I wonder how this gramophone does work.
He said the tune that he was putting in
Was just the thing for Christmas Eve.
I wonder,
I wonder what it was. Listen to this!
(He reads the title.)
It’s a good omen, Rada—A Christmas carol
Sung by the Grand Imperial Choir—d’ you hear?—
At midnight in St. Petersburg—Adeste
Fideles! Fancy that! A Christmas carol
Upon the gramophone!
So all the future ages will be sure
To know exactly what religion was.
To think we must not hear it! Rada, they say
The Angel Gabriel composed that tune
On the first Christmas Eve. So don’t you think
That we might hear it?
Everybody is gone, except the dead.
It will not wake them....
Come, Rada, you’re pretending! Do not make
The war more dreadful than it really is.