ANTIGONE ✎ — It's okay. A bit tired. 🔊✎ (She smiles) ✎ I got up early, that's all. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —I couldn't sleep either 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ still smiling. — You should sleep. You won't be as beautiful tomorrow. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I'm not teasing you. It makes me feel better this morning to see you looking beautiful. 🔊✎ Do you remember how unhappy I was about it when I was little? I smeared you with mud, I put worms down your neck. 🔊✎ Once, I tied you to a tree and cut your hair, your lovely hair... 🔊✎ (She strokes Ismene's hair) ✎ It must be so easy not to think bad thoughts when you have all that beautiful silky hair just lying there around your head. 🔊✎
ISMENE, ✎ suddenly. ✎ — Why are you talking about other things now? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ softly, still stroking her hair ✎ — I'm not talking about other things... 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —You know, I've thought about it a lot, Antigone. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —I've thought about it all night. You're crazy. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ After a silence, in her little girl voice. ✎ — Why not? 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —They'll put us to death. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Of course. Everyone has their part to play. He has to put us to death, and we have to bury our brother. 🔊✎ That's the way it works out. What are we supposed to do about it? 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —I don't want to die. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ softly. ✎ — I don't want to die either. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —Look, I've been thinking about it all night. I'm older than you. I think more than you do. 🔊✎ You just do whatever comes into your head, and too bad if it's stupid. I'm more careful. I think about it first. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Sometimes you shouldn't think about it first. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —You should, Antigone. It's horrible of course, and I feel so sorry for my brother too, but I sort of understand our uncle. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I don't want to sort of understand. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —He's the king. He needs to set an example. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Well, I'm not the king. I don't need to set an example... 🔊✎ Little Antigone just does whatever comes into her head. She's a silly girl, a stubborn girl, a bad girl, and then they put her in a corner or in a hole. 🔊✎ And it serves her right. She just had to do what she was told. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —Come on! Come on! ... You're frowning, you're staring straight ahead of you, and then off you go without listening to anyone. Listen to me. You know I'm right more often than you are. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I don't want to be right. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —Try to understand at least! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Understand... that's all anyone's ever said to me, since I was a little girl. 🔊✎ You have to understand that you can't touch the beautiful flowing cold water because it would get the floor wet, you can't touch the earth because your dress would get dirty. 🔊✎ You have to understand that you can't eat everything at once, or give all the money in your pocket to the beggar, or run, run like the wind until you fall down on the ground, and you have to drink when you're hot and take a bath when it's too early or too late but never when you actually want to. 🔊✎ Understand. You always have to understand. I don't want to understand. I'll understand when I'm old. 🔊✎ (She adds softly.) ✎ If I ever get to be old. Not now. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —He's stronger than us, Antigone. He's the king. 🔊✎ And they all think like him in the city. There's thousands and thousands of those people all round us, the streets of Thebes are crawling with them. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I'm not listening to you. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —They'll shout at us. They'll catch hold of us with their thousand arms and their thousand pairs of eyes like they belonged to one person. They'll spit us in the face. 🔊✎ And they'll wheel us on the cart through all their hate and their laughing and their disgusting smells until we reach the scaffold. 🔊✎ And there'll be the guards there with their idiotic expressions and their fat necks jammed into their stiff collars and their big ugly hands, looking at us like cows. And we'll feel we could scream, we could try to make them understand, but they'd just carry on like savages and do whatever they were told to do without knowing it it was good or bad... 🔊✎ And the pain? We'd have to feel it getting worse and worse until it gets to the point where you can't stand it anymore, it would have to stop, but it wouldn't, it would just get worse, like a voice going higher and higher... I can't do it! I can't! 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —You've really thought about this. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —All night. You didn't? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Of course I did. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —You know me, I'm not very brave. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ softly. ✎ — Me neither. But what difference does that make? 🔊✎
A silence, then Ismene suddenly asks: ✎
ISMENE ✎ —So you don't really want to live then? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ in a murmur. ✎ — Don't really want to live... 🔊✎ (And even more softly, if it's possible.) ✎ Who got up first in the morning, just so that she could feel the cool air on her bare skin? 🔊✎ Who went to bed last, only when she was so tired she couldn't stay awake any more, because she wanted to see a bit more of the night? 🔊✎ Who used to cry sometimes, when she was just a little girl, because she couldn't stop thinking there were so many animals in the fields, so many blades of grass that she would never have time to see all of them? 🔊✎
ISMENE, ✎ in a sudden burst of tenderness. ✎ — My little sister... 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ raises herself up and shouts. ✎ — No! Leave me alone! Don't you go cuddling me! Let's not start sniffling together now. 🔊✎ You've thought about it carefully, have you? You think that the whole town screaming at you, you think that pain and being scared of dying is enough? 🔊✎
ISMENE, ✎ lowers her head. ✎ — Yes. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —Well, if you figure those are good excuses. 🔊✎
ISMENE, ✎ casts herself on her. ✎ — Antigone! Please, I'm begging you! It's alright for men to believe in ideas and die for them. You're a girl. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ through gritted teeth. ✎ — A girl, that's right. The number of times I've cried because I was born a girl! 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —You've got a happy life in front of you, you just need to take it. You're engaged, you're young, you're beautiful... 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ dully. ✎ — No, I'm not beautiful. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —Not beautiful like us, but in another way. You know it's you that makes the little punks turn their heads when you walk by them; and the girls watch you and suddenly they don't have a thing to say, they just stare until you've gone round the corner. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ with an imperceptible smile. ✎ — The little punks, the girls... 🔊✎
ISMENE, ✎ after a while. ✎ — And Haemon, Antigone? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ impenetrable ✎ — I'll talk to Haemon soon: he's next on my list. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ smiles. ✎ — You've always said I'm crazy, about everything, since forever. 🔊✎ Go back to bed, Ismene... You can see it's day now, so anyway I can't do anything. 🔊✎ My dead brother is surrounded by an armed guard just as though he'd managed to make himself king. Go back to bed. You're absolutely pale. 🔊✎
ANTIGONE ✎ —I don't want to sleep... But I promise I won't move from here before you wake up. 🔊✎ Nurse will bring me something to eat. Get some sleep. The sun's only just risen. Your eyes are all scrunched up, you're so tired. Go now. 🔊✎
ISMENE ✎ —I'll convince you, won't I? I will convince you? You'll let me talk to you again? 🔊✎
ANTIGONE, ✎ A bit tired. ✎ — I'll let you talk to me, yes. I'll let you all talk to me. 🔊✎ Please go and sleep now. You'll be less beautiful tomorrow. 🔊✎ (She watches her leave with a sad little smile, then suddenly slumps exhausted on a chair.) ✎ Poor Ismene! 🔊✎