CREON, ✎ enters with his page. ✎ — I have lain them down to sleep next to each other, finally! They are washed now and rested. They just look a little pale, but so calm. Two lovers on the morning after their first night. It is over for them. 🔊✎
THE CHORUS ✎ —Not for you, Creon. There is still another thing to come. Eurydice, the queen, your wife... 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —A good woman always talking about her garden, her preserves, her knitting, that knitting she's always doing for the poor. It's amazing how the poor always need knitting. You'd think they needed nothing else... 🔊✎
THE CHORUS ✎ —The poor of Thebes will be cold this winter, Creon. When she learned of her son's death, the queen put down her needles, calmly and sensibly, after she'd finished her row, just as she'd always done, perhaps a little more calmly than usual. 🔊✎ And then she went into her bedroom, her bedroom that smelled of lavender, with little embroidered doilies and plush frames, and there she cut her throat, Creon. She is stretched out now on one of the little old-fashioned twin beds, in the same place where you first saw her when she was still a girl, and with the same smile, just a little sadder. And if there weren't that large red stain on the sheets around her neck, you'd think she was asleep. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Her too. They're all asleep. It's good. This has been a terrible day. 🔊✎ (A pause. He says dully) ✎ It must be good to sleep. 🔊✎
THE CHORUS ✎ —And now you're all alone, Creon. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —All alone, yes. 🔊✎ (A silence. He put his hand on the page's shoulder.) ✎ Kid... 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —I'm going to tell you, just you. The others don't understand. You're there, the work's in front of you, you can't just fold your arms and do nothing. They say it's a dirty business, but if you didn't do it, who would? 🔊✎
THE PAGE ✎ —I don't know, sir. 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Of course you don't know. You're lucky. Try to make sure you never know. I suppose you're eager to grow up? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —You're out of your mind, kid. You should never grow up. 🔊✎
(The hour strikes in the distance, he murmurs.) ✎ Five o'clock. What's on the schedule today, for five o'clock? 🔊✎
CREON ✎ —Well kid, if it's council, then that's where we're going. 🔊✎
They leave, Creon supporting himself on the page. ✎
THE CHORUS, ✎ moves forward. ✎ — And there you are. Without little Antigone, it's true, they would all have been fine. 🔊✎ But now, it's over. And they are fine all the same. All the people who were going to die are dead. Those who believed one thing, and those who believed the opposite, and even the ones who didn't believe anything and just found themselves caught up in the story without any idea of what was happening. All equally dead, all of them, stiff and useless and starting to rot. 🔊✎ And those who are still alive will quietly start to forget them and mix up their names. It's over. 🔊✎ Antigone is calm now, and we will never know the name of her sickness. She has done what she had to do. A great sad peace falls over Thebes and over the empty palace where Creon is going to start waiting to die. 🔊✎
While he's been talking, the guards have come in. ✎ They've sat down on a bench, they've got a bottle of wine with them, they've pushed back their caps and they've started a card game. ✎
THE CHORUS ✎ —There's only the guards left. 🔊✎ They're not bothered by any of this: nothing to do with them. 🔊✎ They carry on playing cards... 🔊✎
The curtain falls quickly as the guards slap down their aces. ✎