Barren, mountainous landscape, covered in snow and ice. A dull, red sphere is seen beyond banks of freezing fog. Dim light. In the foreground there is a primitive hut surrounded by frozen twigs of birches and junipers. Adam, now as a broken, old man, supporting himself with a stick, is coming down a hill with Lucifer.
ADAM
I’m tired of these grim wastes of snow and ice
where hollow-eyed death stares us in the face:
no sound except the odd splash in the sea -
a diving seal alarmed at our approach.
Nothing but stunted twigs and frosty lichen.
where plants have given up the pointless struggle!
Even the moon’s red face beyond the fog-banks
looks like a dismal lantern in a crypt.
Why don’t you take me to the land of sunshine
where palm-trees flourish in the spicey wind,
where man, fully aware of his potential,
has truly come of age?
LUCIFER
That’s where we are.
We stand within the Equatorial zone.
That ruddy sphere there - it’s the dying sun.
Science could not avert Earth’s destiny.
ADAM
O, wretched world! Fit only for the dead.
Nothing I shall regret to leave behind.
O, Lucifer! That is should come to pass!
As I stood over mankind’s cradle once,
I thought I saw the promise of the future:
now, having striven long for its survival,
I watch bewildered this gigantic grave
with nature’s pallid shroud spread out upon it,
the very first and last man in the world.
How was it? Did my race meet destiny
in noble strife and fall in a blaze of glory,
or flinch from fight and perish by degrees,
degenerate, unworthy of lament?
LUCIFER
Ho! Ho! Adam! Proud as you want to be
of your great soul, as you prefer to call it,
meaning the force which pulses through the blood
and swells the youthful heart with high endeavour,
don’t wish to be a witness standing over
your own death-bed. It’s time for revelations,
the hour to scrutinize the reckoning
the steward made up in the master’s absence.
The fever of that final hour dispels
the specious glitter of your frenzied life,
and then who knows what’s real - and what is not?
Pathetic whimpers in the throes of death
are poor reflections on your life’s achievements.
ADAM
I wish that I had perished out in space
in full possession of my soul, my powers.
I would have died before my epitaph
was spelt out thus by you, unfeeling spirit,
who neither have a stake in my endeavours,
nor any share in my mortality.
LUCIFER
How like your human kind! How typical!
You’re sorry for yourself to have discarded
your fantasies to face reality.
Take heart, Adam! Your race is yet alive!
I see some signs of human habitation
right there: the owner’s just about to leave.
A small man clad in furs comes out of the hut carrying gear for hunting seal.
ADAM
Is this creature, is this misshapen gnome
usurper of my noble heritage?
Why did you let me see him, Lucifer?
The remedy’s more painful than the ailment.
MAN
O, there are gods watching us, after all,
and they’ve appeared before me. But who knows:
then may be good gods, or they may be bad gods.
I’d better keep away. It may be safer.
[He makes for the hut.]
LUCIFER
There! Wait a moment!
MAN
[prostrating himself]
Mercy, Lord! Have mercy!
I’ll make an offering, I will, but spare me!
I’ll give you the first seal that I can catch.
LUCIFER
What right have you to sacrifice a seal
and offer me its life to buy your own?
MAN
That’s how it seems to work, you see. I’m stronger.
The fish can eat the grub; the seal the fish,
so I can eat the seal - if I can catch him.
LUCIFER
And the Great Spirit feeds on you in turn.
MAN
I know. I know. But while he lets me live,
I offer him a sacrifice of blood.
That will appease him, so - he lets me live.
ADAM
A beggar’s outlook.
LUCIFER
Not unlike your own.
At least he offers seals for sacrifice,
whereas you offered human lives to your god,
a god which you created in your likeness,
as he believes his god resembles him.
MAN
I see you’re angry with me. I know why.
I was so hungry that I made a prayer,
I sighed a little prayer, to a kindly sun-god,
who always gives, but never takes from people.
He used to rule these parts, our stories say.
Forgive me! I will curse him.
ADAM
God Almighty!
Look down and blush to see the masterpiece
of your creation so degenerate.
MAN
Your friend looks angry. Is he hungry too?
LUCIFER
He isn’t hungry: that’s what makes him angry.
ADAM
Your witticism is out of place again.
LUCIFER
No witticism: the truth. Your way of thinking
will suit a well-fed man, whereas he makes
philosophy out of an empty stomach.
You two will never speak on equal terms,
but you’ll see eye to eye once he has eaten
his bellyful, or you yourself go hungry.
The truth, indeed. For all your flights of fancy,
the animal within you claims the first place,
and it is only when the beast is sated
that you begin to think and arrogantly
you claim the intellect your element.
ADAM
How you delight in dragging everything
into the dust with an unholy sneer!
Do all ideas, all our great achievements
come from the steams kitchen? Or, indeed,
are they the outcome of coincidence
without exception, as contained, determined
within the self-same laws which govern matter?
LUCIFER
What else? You tell me. Would Leonidas
have died a hero at Thermopylae
if he had tasted those honeyed delights
and luxuries of Eastern pleasure gardens,
instead of feeding on some barley broth
to satisfy a Spartan appetite
in a small city state? Would Brutus, too,
have hastened his demise, had he occasion
after the heat of battle to unwind
at home, at supper, in his Portia’s arms?
What makes for crime or nobleness of mind?
Is this not born of staleness, destitution,
and that of healthy living, free from cares?
Don’t these show up in late descendants even,
in their appearance and their way of thinking?
When people reckon they have had enough
and in despair they try to hang themselves,
don’t they forget about that reckoning
if chance has it that someone cuts the rope?
A single touch of life can bring them round.
If Hunyadi had not been born to fight for
a worthier nation, but his cradle rocked
among the Saracen, who might have been
the foremost champion of the cross instead?
Had Luther been a Pope and Leo lectured
at some remote college in Germany,
who knows who might have been reforming what,
and who might have been excommunicated?
What of Napoleon? Without a chance,
a nation’s agony to blaze his path,
he might have lingered in the stinking barracks…
ADAM
[stopping Lucifer’s mouth]
Enough! Enough! I’ve heard your arguments:
the more straightforward and the more convincing,
the greater harm they do. I’d be a fool
to harbour blind delusions, unaware of
the spirit that evolves in everything;
a better man at least might meet a brother,
if he survives your devastating logic.
LUCIFER
Well, meet your brother! Let it be a lesson,
another chance to get to know yourself.
ADAM
How many of you are surviving here?
MAN
Too many. More than I have fingers on me.
What can I do? I’ve done my best to kill them.
I’ve clubbed my neighbours as I love myself,
but it’s no use, you see. Too many people.
And seals are very few. If you’re a god,
I beg of you: more seals and fewer people!
ADAM
O, Lucifer! Let’s go! I’ve heard enough.
LUCIFER
No need to hurry. Come and meet his wife.
ADAM
I do not want to see her. Bad enough
to see the male debased, an ugly sight,
but one can only say - that one detests him.
But woman is the embodiment of beauty:
when that ideal form degenerates,
it’s monstrous, odious. Don’t let me see her!
Meanwhile Lucifer has manoeuvred Adam to the hut. He kicks the door open, and Eve, as the Man’s wife, is discovered inside. Adam stops at the threshold, dumbfounded.
LUCIFER
You’ll surely recognise an old acquaintance?
Embrace her, Adam! Look, this honest fellow
is mortally offended if you don’t.
Show courtesy to him and hug his wife!
ADAM
Shall I who fondled an Aspasia,
embrace this one in whom I faintly see
remote resemblance of another woman,
but only as if she, amidst my kisses,
had turned into a beast.
MAN
[entering the hut]
Wife! Visitors!
Now, see to it, and make them comfortable.
Eve throws her arms round Adam’s neck and tries to drag him into the hut. Adam is struggling to shake her off.
EVE
Welcome, stranger! Come, make yourself at home!
ADAM
Help! Help! Lucifer! Get me out of here!
Back to the present time. Confound the future!
I’ve had enough of sights, this pointless struggle
with destiny. It’s time to think again:
dare I wage war against the will of God!?
LUCIFER
Wake up, Adam! Wake up! Your dream has ended.