do his bidding.
Wagner: Eleven? How can I wait that long, thinking of you?
Helen: Troilus recommended strenuous exercise and cold baths. Until eleven, my love!
She propels him out the door.
Scene Five
In the Boar’s Bollocks Inn. Albergus sits at a table with Bateman plotting Faustus’s destruction. A buxom barmaid serves their beers. Albergus is indifferent, but Bateman inspects her avidly.
Albergus: A half-witted student merely looks into that book and is able to conjure up an imp! Can you imagine the power that volume must contain?
Bateman: A guy could have a hot time with that book.
Albergus: It is all a matter of knowing the right words. Faustus’s book must contain the language of UrCreation.
Bateman (watching waitress): Or even the language of procreation?
Albergus: You see, Bateman, most language is just empty words. You’ve sat outside on a splendid fall afternoon, and the sun warmed your limbs, the sweet breeze caressed your cheek, you lay back and watched the skies, the bullocks, the squirrels?
Bateman:—the thighs, the buttocks, the girls—
Albergus:—it’s a total sensory experience—
Bateman: I’ll say.
Albergus:—and there is no way that ordinary language can capture even one thousandth of it.
Bateman: Preach it, brother!
Albergus:—But that’s ordinary language. What about extraordinary language? What about the language of God, Bateman? In what language did God originally say, “Let There Be Light!”
Bateman: French?
Albergus: He said it, Bateman, in that mystic, UrCreative language, the language of ultimate truth. The language that came before reality. If a man could grasp that grammar of creation, he could control all that exists! And that language, Bateman, I am convinced, is written in Faustus’s book. Can you imagine it? Faustus has his hand upon the axis of the universe! Yet to what use does he put this power?
Bateman: Well he turned that guy into a clock. And there’s those cigar things?
Albergus: Precisely. A total waste. The man has no more business owning that book than a rabbit.
Bateman: I don’t think he owns a rabbit.
Albergus: That book belongs to he who can make use of it.
Bateman: Uh, speaking of grammar, I think that’s supposed to be “to him,” boss?
Albergus: To me, Bateman. And I aim to get it. Think of the things I might accomplish—strictly for the good of mankind, Bateman, the good of mankind!
ALBERGUS’S SONG:
Power!
I want power!
Enough power to allow
My unique know how to flower.
The world around is aching
For a wise hand to administer a braking
To this runaway cart
The ungovernable heart.
And I can do it.
Why cast my pearls before swine
Why waste my life drinking cheap wine
When I might have champagne
Which, given my intellect,
I deserve
Most royally.
Truth!
Is all I pursue, forsooth!
Not like Faustus, that uncouth pretender.
I must water the tender
Bud of my curiosity
So that my incipient virtuosity
Might grow into a prowess so vital
That it will delight all
And a vision acute
To boot.
Knowledge!
I need knowledge
Not for my own aggrandizement,
But for the advisement, see,
Of those rulers who so ignorantly
Mistake the proper course
Of action. I’ll be the source
Of expedient counsel
A man like me, responsible,
Will make them realize
That to do otherwise than I suggest
Would not be best
For the health of the common folk
Or their own.
Bateman: Love!
Liebschaft!
Amour!
Is what I suggest you initially explore.
I’ll help you out, select moral subjects
For your experiments
In passion philters
Affection smelters
And aphrodisiac science.
Don’t risk your priceless mind:
I’ll selflessly bind myself through rigorous paces
Endure numerous embraces
Test my tender body against feminine wiles
Quaff wild potions out of wilder vials
In Aphrodite’s clinical trials.
This barmaid, here, for instance
Could no doubt benefit
From our ministrations
Don’t you think?
Boss?
Albergus: No greed
Or seed
Of self-concern will tarnish my discerning need
To do what must be done
I’ll take no bad advice
Or advice at all, indeed.
For it would not be nice
To be swayed
By the paltry parade
Of unenlightended folk who’ll seek for my largess
My relief from their distress
The gratitude’s store
Which I shall dispense
Selflessly, more
Or less.
You see, Bateman? That man is an imposter; I shall be the true Faustus! But now, how to break in to his study? Who knows what risks that would entail?
Wagner enters, looks around, goes to him.
Wagner: Pardon me, sir. I am looking for my fellow students, Robin and Dicolini. Have you seen them?
Albergus: Not since they fled your master’s lecture.
Wagner: I’ve exhausted myself searching. I thought they were my friends, but it seems they are more interested in other matters now.
Albergus: A sad breach of faith. Is there anything a fellow scholar can do?
Wagner: Nothing. Unless you can retrieve the imp that Robin called up.
Albergus: I am not without some magical prowess. Perhaps I can locate it. Not only that, but if you’ll tell me when Faustus is away, I can deposit the creature—caged—in his rooms. It would make a