Belle Moral: A Natural History by Ann-marie MacDonald

doctor; I, of all men, ought to have been unsurprised by your reaction that fearful night. It is I who am at fault for having allowed these several months to pass in silence, but I have been much in demand abroad – nay, ‘tisn’t only that; I confess my pride was wounded. Still, when I received your invitation to call today, any trace of rancour melted away, so let us speak no more of it.
    A beat
.
    P EARL . I’m pregnant.
    A beat
. V ICTOR
enters carrying
P EARL’S
camera with its hood and tripod. He wears a velvet cape and vest, a ruffled shirt and tight pants. He deposits the equipment, exits
. D R R EID
notices the family portrait
. V ICTOR
returns with
C LAIRE
by the hand. She is dressed as a cowgirl, with holsters and six-guns. Her hair is up, displaying her ear to advantage
. V ICTOR
positions her on the couch and sets up the camera
. D R R EID
stares
. P EARL
is pleasant and business-like
.
    [
to
D R R EID ] So you see, it throws a bit of a wrench into the inheritance.
    D R R EID . I beg your pardon?
    P EARL . Father’s will. Bars me from bearing children.
    D R R EID . Pearl, dearest. Do you not recall, you yourself had the presence of mind to diagnose your condition. I sought, mistakenly I now see, to shield you from the truth, but the fact is, the power of repressed emotions has exacted a psychosomatic toll –
    P EARL. – my womb is in revolt against the proviso of my father’s will –
    D R R EID . – such that your pregnancy is, in reality–
    P EARL . Hysterical.
    D R R EID . Yes.
    P EARL . No. At least not any more. Whatever was ailing me – hysterical, fantastical, or perfectly logical – it was certainly a conception of my mind, but I can assure you such is no longer the case.
    A beat
.
    D R R EID . You mean to say …? Victor, at this juncture it would behoove a gentleman to leave a lady alone with her physician.
    V ICTOR . Ay, it would.
    He plunks down on the couch next to
C LAIRE .
They eat shortbread and watch
.
    D R R EID . My dear, who has done this to you? I’ll have him clapped in irons.
    P EARL . I really can’t say, Doctor.
    A beat
.
    D R R EID . How many men have there been?
    P EARL . Need there have been any?
    D R R EID . Well how, otherwise, do you explain your pregnancy?
    V ICTOR . A lady needn’t explain.
    P EARL . No, but I shall. Perhaps it is parthenogenic.
    D R R EID . Human asexual reproduction? Impossible.
    P EARL . “Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.”
    V ICTOR . Who said that? The pope?
    P EARL . Oscar Wilde.
    D R R EID . Apart from a rare species of lizard, parthenogenic reproduction in multi-celled creatures is confined to the class of worms and religious myth.
    P EARL . Perhaps I have diversified successfully.
    V ICTOR . She was down winkling on the shore when she met a fellow with great tall ears and a long snout. Loaded with baked goods, he was.
    P EARL . Victor dreamt I was impregnated by a psychopomp.
    D R R EID . You claim to have had congress with the Egyptian God of the underworld?
    V ICTOR . Not only that, she cured my phobia.
    P EARL . I merely ventured that Victor, via his fits, may have subconsciously registered a warning: to wit, if we refuse to acknowledge kinship, not only with the mythic dog, but with all matter; if we resist the central truth of evolution –
    D R R EID . I am a child of the Enlightenment, I resist nothing that is rational, I believe in evolution, along with the rest of the civilized world.
    P EARL . The civilized world behaves least as if it did believe. For all our scientific pieties, we still organize our societies as though we alone had been created in the image of a god in whom we profess no longer to believe. We have slain our brother, Abel, and who was he? Did he walk on two legs, or four? Did he creep, or swim, or fly? If we fail to recognize our true nature, we shall conduct our lives according to criteria that are divorced from matter – from our mother – Earth. If we behave