Work Text:
[HEDDA stands before the piano. On the other side of the curtain, TESMAN, MRS. ELVSTED, and BRACK's movements slow to a stop.]
HEDDA: To be in Judge Brack's power for the rest of my life— to be his slave [until my last breath]— there cannot be a fate worse than this. Is there nothing left to myself? It is my life, is it not? Even this house, this child belongs to Tesman! And now I am eternally indebted to Judge Brack. Mother… in these times, I only wish I could sit by your side and hear you play once more.
---
And suddenly Hedda is seven years old again, sitting by her mother's side as she watches her fingers glide effortlessly across the piano's ivory keys. In that moment, she imagines her mother as a bird taking flight, soaring through the skies in a way that makes it seem effortless. There is a certain lightness in her mother's actions— her playing, her smile, her posture— and Hedda takes note of the fact that she has never seen her mother appear happier than when she is at the piano, which she does not know will later come to be her own.
Freedom. The one thing Mother could still have through music.
---
[HEDDA sits down at the piano and begins to play with fervor after a deep breath. TESMAN, MRS. ELVSTED, and BRACK, now unfrozen, jerk upright in shock and collectively turn to face the curtain.]
TESMAN: [Runs to the doorway.] Why, my dearest Hedda—don't play dance-music to-night! Just think of Aunt Rina! And of Eilert too!
[HEDDA pauses. TESMAN, MRS. ELVSTED, and BRACK freeze mid-movement once more.]
HEDDA: Is there no freedom to be found in the banquet of life? Is this existence doomed to be chained by the likes of Brack and Tesman, soldiers hunting their spoils of war? I cannot bear the idea of being their puppet for all my days— and yet, in the end I have not even the bravery to refuse. Even Eilert Lovborg had not the courage to choose death—no, even this choice was made for him. And by myself, no less. Had I not given him that cursed pistol, perhaps-
[HEDDA whips her head around and stares at the remaining pistol, lying in plain sight on the sofa.]
---
And when Hedda first held that cursed pistol, she couldn't do much but feel its searing cold steel imprint upon her palm. In the times previous, she'd refused to let the General drag her to the back-woods of their manor, ran into her mother's skirts with her hands balled up at the very offer.
"She can't always be like this," the General would say, muffled in the skirt and gruff from long weeks of ordering and pointing around.
So her mother would respond, in kind: "You can't expect her to, dear," smoothing down the stray hairs escaping from Hedda's bonnet. Always, she'd relish in the warm, salty tears dissolving into the frills of her frock, grateful for their expedient disappearance. She'd stay like that, her mother too, her legs surely weary under the heavy petticoat, until those splotches dried up and there was nothing left to cause a disturbance.
She'd been awake all evening, sitting up in the parlor with her nails digging into her nightdress, feet swinging back and forth, not quite reaching the soft surface of the Persian rug.
"Come along now, Hedda," the General had said coolly, a dark shadow cast from the end of the corridor, "You needn’t be so afraid."
It was the dead of night, and her mother was adrift in the sloping curves of the General's bed, blissfully unaware of the tonic he had slipped into her evening tea. But Hedda had seen; she always did.
He’d turned around without waiting for a response. As if it was entirely unfathomable that she would disobey, blanketed only by the curdling tenebrosity of the manor.
Just as he thought she would, Hedda hoisted herself down from the spindle-back seat, trundling after him. The General’s shadow receded around the corners. Hedda had never really been able to match his swift gait. By the time she reached the door, she’d only tripped over her lace once, lifting it up as she stepped down to the yard in which her father awaited her. The nightgown, which was already too long— “We’ll bring it to the tailor once your father returns, darling,”— would be soiled by the end of this, Hedda urgently thought. What would her mother think? What would the lady-maids who spun up her hair each morning think? Her garments were not yet covered in the mud of the late-night drizzle. There was still time.
The General arose from the armory, appearing with candlelight through the rain. In his sandpaper hands, he held a cold pistol engraved with their family crest.
She shivered a bit. “I’m sorry, Father,” Hedda began. “I don’t believe I—”
“Set your hand high on the instrument, rest your trigger finger perfectly flat.”
Forced into her palm, slick with balm from her maids’ nighttime ministrations, was the pistol. Before it could slide down into the grass, Hedda steadied her grip, the silver shine marking on her irises, reflecting the General's lamp.
There exists little time in-between his words and her shot. She takes the General's order and traverses beyond it, sloppily bearing down on the trigger without proper preparation against the recoil, sending a bullet up into the heavy trees.
He'd given her a loaded gun, after all.
"Hedda, be still."
So still she became, his looming presence casting an iron grip over her very being. No longer did she tremble, or worry about her damned gown, billowing and battered by the ever-increasingly oppressive storm.
"Be still and aim for the tree, impose your bullet with the gun."
Her bullet. It was hers, wasn't it? The General held no weapon, had nothing drawn and ready to shoot in his nighttime jacket. Turn to him, aim. Remember the recoil this time, she would. Think of her mother, jolting awake not at the sound of the shot, but at the smell of blood splattered across the armory, and her belov'd daughter dashing into the nothingness of the woods. Her emptiness, the gutted emptiness of the General's body, and Hedda's emptiness, a poor daughter-like replacement for a son.
The base of the tree exploded, discarded bark dragging deep into the mud.
"Too low, girl. That'd hit someone's knee at best," the General remarked, leaning up against the tin hermitage of the armory.
She'd over-compensated for the recoil, her arm tense and her fingers like spindles on a wheel. Hedda dropped back, staring at the shards of bark spread shamelessly around where her bullet had shattered the root. Control the pistol, her father's pistol. At that, a horrible fever engulfed her shivering frame. Such a chance, an opportunity for complete disarray, unlike anything the General's men had ever seen in the throes of battle had ever seen previously: stolen.
The etched crest of the base singed Hedda's virgin palm, as if it were a hot brand. Then, a droplet trickled down the base of the gun, embedding itself in the delicate wrinkles of her index finger.
---
HEDDA: Life lived in a cage, even a gilded one, is no life at all. Father, Tesman, Judge Brack, all of them be damned, let me have this one ultimate act of courage and embrace death's spontaneous beauty. If my life is to be a state of endless confinement, I no longer wish to have anything to do with it. If there is no deliverance here for me, then I must reach for it myself.
HEDDA: [Puts her head out between the curtains.] And of Aunt Julia. And of all the rest of them.—After this, I will be quiet. [Closes the curtains again.]
[HEDDA rises from the piano before moving to the sofa where her pistol lies. She reaches for the pistol, slowly raising it to her temple. Remaining perfectly still, her hand sits high on its handle, index finger laid flat over the cold metal. Outside, TESMAN, MRS. ELVSTED, and BRACK return to their actions.]
TESMAN.: [At the writing-table.] It's not good for her to see us at this distressing work. I'll tell you what, Mrs. Elvsted,—you shall take the empty room at Aunt Julia's, and then I will come over in the evenings, and we can sit and work there—eh?
HEDDA: [In the inner room.] I hear what you are saying, Tesman. But how am I to get through the evenings out here?
TESMAN: [Turning over the papers.] Oh, I daresay Judge Brack will be so kind as to look in now and then, even though I am out.
BRACK: [In the arm-chair, calls out gaily.] Every blessed evening, with all the pleasure in life, Mrs. Tesman! We shall get on capitally together, we two!
HEDDA: [Speaking loud and clear.] Yes, don't you flatter yourself we will, Judge Brack? Now that you are the one cock in the basket—
[HEDDA fires the pistol and immediately collapses on the sofa.]