Читать книгу Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes - Tony Kushner - Страница 13
ОглавлениеACT ONE:
Bad News
October–November 1985
Scene 1
The end of October. Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz alone onstage with a small coffin. It is a rough pine box with two wooden pegs, one at the foot and one at the head, holding the lid in place. A prayer shawl embroidered with a Star of David is draped over the lid, and at the head of the coffin, a yahrzeit candle is burning.
The Rabbi speaks sonorously, with a heavy Eastern European accent, unapologetically consulting a sheet of notes for the family names.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: Hello and good morning. I am Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz of the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews. We are here this morning to pay respects at the passing of Sarah Ironson, devoted wife of Benjamin Ironson, also deceased, loving and caring mother of her sons Morris, Abraham, and Samuel, and her daughters Esther and Rachel; beloved grandmother of Max, Mark, Louis, Lisa, Maria . . . uh . . . Lesley, Angela, Doris, Luke and Eric. (Looks closer at paper) Eric? This is a Jewish name? (Shrugs) Eric. A large and loving family. We assemble that we may mourn collectively this good and righteous woman.
(He looks at the coffin)
This woman. I did not know this woman. I cannot accurately describe her attributes, nor do justice to her dimensions. She was . . . Well, in the Bronx Home for Aged Hebrews are many like this, the old, and to many I speak but not to be frank with this one. She preferred silence. So I do not know her and yet I know her. She was . . . (He touches the coffin) . . . not a person but a whole kind of person, the ones who crossed the ocean, who brought with us to America the villages of Russia and Lithuania—and how we struggled, and how we fought, for the family, for the Jewish home, so that you would not grow up here, in this strange place, in the melting pot where nothing melted. Descendants of this immigrant woman, you do not grow up in America, you and your children and their children with the goyische names, you do not live in America, no such place exists. Your clay is the clay of some Litvak shtetl, your air the air of the steppes. Because she carried the old world on her back across the ocean, in a boat, and she put it down on Grand Concourse Avenue, or in Flatbush, and she worked that earth into your bones, and you pass it to your children, this ancient, ancient culture and home.
(Little pause)
You can never make that crossing that she made, for such Great Voyages in this world do not any more exist. But every day of your lives the miles that voyage between that place and this one you cross. Every day. You understand me? In you that journey is.
So . . .
She was the last of the Mohicans, this one was. Pretty soon . . . all the old will be dead.
Scene 2
Same day. Roy and Joe in Roy’s office. Roy at an impressive desk, bare except for a very elaborate phone system, rows and rows of flashing buttons that bleep and beep and whistle incessantly, making chaotic music underneath Roy’s conversations. Joe is sitting, waiting. Roy conducts business with great energy, impatience and sensual abandon: gesticulating, shouting, cajoling, crooning, playing the phone’s receiver, its hold button and the buttons for its numerous lines with virtuosity and love.
ROY (Hitting the hold button): Hold. (To Joe) I wish I was an octopus, a fucking octopus. Eight loving arms and all those suckers. Know what I mean?
JOE: No, I—
ROY (Gesturing to a deli platter of little sandwiches on his desk): You want lunch?
JOE: No, that’s OK really I just—
ROY (Hitting a button): Ailene? Roy Cohn. Now what kind of a greeting is—I thought we were friends, Ai— Look Mrs. Soffer you don’t have to get— You’re upset. You’re yelling. You’ll aggravate your condition, you shouldn’t yell, you’ll pop little blood vessels in your face if you yell— No that was a joke, Mrs. Soffer, I was joking—I already apologized sixteen times for that, Mrs. Soffer, you . . . (While she’s fulminating, Roy covers the mouthpiece with his hand and talks to Joe) This’ll take a minute, eat already, what is this tasty sandwich here it’s— (He takes a bite of a sandwich) Mmmmm, liver or some— Here. (He pitches the sandwich to Joe, who catches it and returns it to the platter. Back to Mrs. Soffer) Uh-huh, uh-huh . . . No, I already told you it wasn’t a vacation it was business, Mrs. Soffer, I have clients in Haiti, Mrs. Soffer, I—Listen, Ailene, YOU THINK I’M THE ONLY GODDAMN LAWYER IN HISTORY EVER MISSED A COURT DATE?! Don’t make such a big fucking— Hold. (He hits the hold button) You HAG!
JOE: If this is a bad time—
ROY: Bad time? This is a good time! (Button) Baby doll, get me— Oh fuck, wait. (Button) Hello? Yah. Sorry to keep you holding, Judge Hollins, I— Oh Mrs. Hollins, sorry dear, deep voice you got. Enjoying your visit? (Hand over mouthpiece again; to Joe) She sounds like a truck driver and he sounds like Kate Smith, very confusing. Nixon appointed him, all the geeks are Nixon appointees. (To Mrs. Hollins) Yeah, yeah right good so how many tickets dear? Seven? For what, Cats, 42nd Street, what? No you wouldn’t like La Cage, trust me, I know. Oh for godsake. Hold. (Hold button, button) Baby doll, seven for Cats or something, anything hard to get, I don’t give a fuck what and neither will they. (Button; to Joe) You see La Cage?
JOE: No, I—
ROY: Fabulous. Best thing on Broadway. Maybe ever. (Button) Who? Aw, Jesus H. Christ, Harry, no, Harry, Judge John Francis Grimes, Manhattan Family Court. Do I have to do every goddamn thing myself? Touch the bastard, Harry, and don’t call me on this line again, I told you not to.
JOE (Starting to get up): Roy, uh, should I wait outside or—
ROY (To Joe): Oh sit. (To Harry) You hold. I pay you to hold fuck you Harry you jerk. Half-wit dick-brain. (Hold button, then he looks at Joe. A beat, then:)
I see the universe, Joe, as a kind of sandstorm in outer space with winds of mega-hurricane velocity, but instead of grains of sand it’s shards and splinters of glass. You ever feel that way? Ever have one of those days?
JOE: I’m not sure I—
ROY: So how’s life in Appeals? How’s the judge?
JOE: He sends his best.
ROY: He’s a good man. Loyal. Not the brightest man on the bench, but he has manners. And a nice head of silver hair.
JOE: He gives me a lot of responsibility.
ROY: Yeah, like writing his decisions and signing his name.
JOE: Well . . .
ROY: He’s a nice guy. And you cover admirably.
JOE: Well, thanks, Roy, I—
ROY (Button): Yah? Who is this? Well who the fuck are you Hold. (Hold button) Harry? Eighty-seven grand, something like that. Fuck him. Eat me. New Jersey, chain of porno film stores in, uh, Weehawken. That’s—Harry, that’s the beauty of the law. (Hold button, button) So, baby doll, what? Cats? Ugh. (Button) Cats! It’s about cats. Singing cats, you’ll love it. Eight o’clock, the theater’s always at eight. (Button) Fucking tourists. (He puts his finger on the button for the line on which Harry is holding; before pushing it, to Joe) Oh live a little, Joe, eat something for Christ sake.
JOE: Um, Roy, could you—
ROY: What? (Pushing the button; to Harry) Hold a minute. (Hold button, button) Mrs. Soffer? Mrs.— (Button, to Baby Doll) God-fucking-damnit to hell, where is— (Continue below:)
JOE: Roy, I’d really appreciate it if—
ROY (Continuous from above): Well she was here a minute ago, baby doll, see if—
(The phone starts making three different beeping sounds, all at once.)
ROY (Smashing buttons): Jesus fuck this goddamn thing! (Continue below:)
JOE: I really wish you wouldn’t—
ROY (Continuous from above): Baby doll? Ring the Post get me Suzy see if—
(The phone starts whistling loudly.)
ROY: CHRIST!
JOE: Roy.
ROY (Into receiver): Hold. (Hold button; to Joe) What?
JOE: Could you please not take the Lord’s name in vain?
(Pause.)
JOE: I’m sorry. But please. At least while I’m . . .
ROY (Laughs, then): Right. Sorry. Fuck.
Only in America. (Punches a button) Baby doll, tell ’em all to fuck off. Tell ’em I died. You handle Mrs. Soffer. Tell her it’s on the way. Tell her I’m schtupping the judge. I’ll call her back. I will call her. I know how much I borrowed. She’s got four hundred times that stuffed up her— Yeah, tell her I said that.
(Button. The phone is silent)
So Joe.
JOE: I’m sorry Roy, I just—
ROY: No no no no, principles count, I respect principles, I’m not religious but I like God and God likes me. Baptist, Catholic?
JOE: Mormon.
ROY: Mormon. Delectable. Absolutely. Only in America. So, Joe. Whattya think?
JOE: It’s . . . well . . .
ROY: Crazy life.
JOE: Chaotic.
ROY: Well but God bless chaos. Right?
JOE: Ummm . . .
ROY: Huh. Mormons. I knew Mormons, in, um, Nevada.
JOE: Utah, mostly.
ROY: No, these Mormons were in Vegas.
So. So, how’d you like to go to Washington and work for the Justice Department?
JOE: Sorry?
ROY: How’d you like to go to Washington and work for the Justice Department? All I gotta do is pick up the phone, talk to Ed, and you’re in.
JOE: In . . . what, exactly?
ROY: Associate Assistant Something Big. Internal Affairs, heart of the woods, something nice with clout.
JOE: Ed . . .?
ROY: Meese. The Attorney General.
JOE: Oh.
ROY: I just have to pick up the phone . . .
JOE: I have to think.
ROY: Of course.
(Pause)
It’s a great time to be in Washington, Joe.
JOE: Roy, it’s incredibly exciting.
ROY: And it would mean something to me. You understand?
(Little pause.)
JOE: I . . . can’t say how much I appreciate this Roy, I’m sort of . . . well, stunned, I mean . . . Thanks, Roy. But I have to give it some thought. I have to ask my wife.
ROY: Your wife. Of course.
JOE: But I really appreciate—
ROY: Of course. Talk to your wife.
Scene 3
Same day. Harper at home, alone, as she often is, listening to the radio. She speaks to the audience:
HARPER: People who are lonely, people left alone, sit talking nonsense to the air, imagining . . . beautiful systems dying, old fixed orders spiraling apart.
When you look at the ozone layer, from outside, from a spaceship, it looks like a pale blue halo, a gentle, shimmering aureole encircling the atmosphere encircling the earth. Thirty miles above our heads, a thin layer of three-atom oxygen molecules, product of photosynthesis, which explains the fussy vegetable preference for visible light, its rejection of darker rays and emanations. Danger from without. It’s a kind of gift, from God, the crowning touch to the creation of the world: guardian angels, hands linked, make a spherical net, a blue-green nesting orb, a shell of safety for life itself. But everywhere, things are collapsing, lies surfacing, systems of defense giving way.
This is why, Joe, this is why I shouldn’t be left alone.
(Little pause)
I’d like to go traveling. Leave you behind to worry. I’ll send postcards with strange stamps and tantalizing messages on the back: “Later maybe.” “Nevermore . . .”
(Mr. Lies, a travel agent, appears, carrying a briefcase.)
HARPER: Oh! You startled me!
MR. LIES: Cash, check or credit card?
HARPER: I remember you. You’re from Salt Lake. You sold us the plane tickets when we flew here. What are you doing in Brooklyn?
MR. LIES: You said you wanted to travel . . .
HARPER: And here you are. How thoughtful.
MR. LIES: Mr. Lies. Of the International Order of Travel Agents. We mobilize the globe, we set people adrift, we stir the populace and send nomads eddying across the planet. We are adepts of motion, acolytes of the flux. Cash, check or credit card. Name your destination.
HARPER: Antarctica, maybe. I want to see the hole in the ozone. I heard on the radio—
(He opens his briefcase. Inside it, there is a computer terminal.)
MR. LIES (His hands poised over the keyboard): I can arrange a guided tour. Now?
HARPER: Soon. Maybe soon. I’m not safe here you see. Things aren’t right with me. Weird stuff happens.
MR. LIES: Like?
HARPER: Well, like you, for instance. Just appearing. Or last week . . . well never mind.
People are like planets, you need a thick skin. Things get to me, Joe stays away and now . . . Well look. My dreams are talking back to me.
MR. LIES: It’s the price of rootlessness. Motion sickness. The only cure: to keep moving.
HARPER: I’m undecided. I feel . . . that something’s going to give. It’s 1985. Fifteen years till the third millennium. Maybe Christ will come again. Maybe seeds will be planted, maybe there’ll be harvests then, maybe early figs to eat, maybe new life, maybe fresh blood, maybe companionship and love and protection, safety from what’s outside, maybe the door will hold, or maybe . . . Maybe the troubles will come, and the end will come, and the sky will collapse and there will be terrible rains and showers of poison light, or maybe my life is really fine, maybe Joe loves me and I’m only crazy thinking otherwise, or maybe not, maybe it’s even worse than I know, maybe . . . I want to know, maybe I don’t. The suspense, Mr. Lies, it’s killing me.
MR. LIES: I suggest a vacation.
HARPER (Hearing something): That was the elevator. Oh God, I should fix myself up, I— You have to go, you shouldn’t be here, you aren’t even real.
MR. LIES: Call me when you decide.
HARPER: Go!
(Mr. Lies vanishes as Joe enters.)
JOE: Buddy?
Buddy? Sorry I’m late. I was just . . . out. Walking.
Are you mad?
HARPER: I got a little anxious.
JOE: Buddy kiss.
(They kiss.)
JOE: Nothing to get anxious about.
So. So how’d you like to move to Washington?
Scene 4
Same day. Louis and Prior sitting outside on a bench near an Upper West Side funeral home, both dressed in funereal finery; Prior is elegant, Louis is rumpled/negligent. The funeral service for Sarah Ironson has just concluded and Louis is about to leave for the cemetery.
LOUIS: My grandmother actually saw Emma Goldman speak. In Yiddish. But all Grandma could remember was that she spoke well and wore a hat.
What a weird service. That rabbi.
PRIOR: A definite find. Get his number when you go to the graveyard. I want him to bury me.
LOUIS: Better head out there. Everyone gets to put dirt on the coffin once it’s lowered in.
PRIOR: Oooh. Cemetery fun. Don’t want to miss that.
LOUIS: It’s an old Jewish custom to express love. Here, Grandma, have a shovelful. Latecomers run the risk of finding the grave completely filled.
She was pretty crazy. She was up there in that home for ten years, talking to herself. I never visited. She looked too much like my mother.
PRIOR (Hugs him): Poor Louis. I’m sorry your grandma is dead.
LOUIS: Tiny little coffin, huh?
Sorry I didn’t introduce you to— I always get so closety at these family things.
PRIOR: Butch. You get butch. (Imitating) “Hi, Cousin Doris, you don’t remember me I’m Lou, Rachel’s boy.” Lou, not Louis, because if you say Louis they’ll hear the sibilant S.
LOUIS: I don’t have a—
PRIOR: I don’t blame you, hiding. Bloodlines. Jewish curses are the worst. I personally would dissolve if anyone ever looked me in the eye and said “Feh.” Fortunately WASPs don’t say “Feh.” Oh and by the way, darling, Cousin Doris is a dyke.
LOUIS: No.
Really?
PRIOR: You don’t notice anything. If I hadn’t spent the last four years fellating you I’d swear you were straight.
LOUIS: You’re in a pissy mood. Cat still missing?
(Little pause.)
PRIOR: Not a furball in sight. It’s your fault.
LOUIS: It is?
PRIOR: I warned you, Louis. Names are important. Call an animal Little Sheba and you can’t expect it to stick around. Besides, it’s a dog’s name.
LOUIS: I wanted a dog in the first place, not a cat. He sprayed my books.
PRIOR: He was a female cat.
LOUIS: Cats are stupid, high-strung predators. Babylonians sealed them up in bricks. Dogs have brains.
PRIOR: Cats have intuition.
LOUIS: A sharp dog is as smart as a really dull two-year-old child.
PRIOR: Cats know when something’s wrong.
LOUIS: Only if you stop feeding them.
PRIOR: They know. That’s why Sheba left, because she knew.
LOUIS: Knew what?
(Pause.)
PRIOR: I did my best Shirley Booth this morning, floppy slippers, housecoat, curlers, can of Little Friskies: “Come back, Little Sheba, come back . . .” To no avail. Le chat, elle ne reviendra jamais, jamais . . .
(He removes his jacket, rolls up his sleeve, shows Louis a dark purple spot on the underside of his arm near the shoulder.)
PRIOR: See.
LOUIS: That’s just a burst blood vessel.
PRIOR: Not according to the best medical authorities.
LOUIS: What?
(Pause)
Tell me.
PRIOR: K.S., baby. Lesion number one. Lookit. The wine-dark kiss of the angel of death.
LOUIS (Very softly, holding Prior’s arm): Oh please . . .
PRIOR: I’m a lesionnaire. The Foreign Lesion. The American Lesion. Lesionnaire’s disease.
LOUIS: Stop.
PRIOR: My troubles are lesion.
LOUIS: Will you stop.
PRIOR: Don’t you think I’m handling this well?
I’m going to die.
LOUIS: Bullshit.
PRIOR: Let go of my arm.
LOUIS: No.
PRIOR: Let go.
LOUIS (Grabbing Prior, embracing him ferociously): No.
PRIOR: I can’t find a way to spare you, baby. No wall like the wall of hard scientific fact. K.S. Wham. Bang your head on that.
LOUIS: Fuck you. (Letting go) Fuck you fuck you fuck you.
PRIOR: Now that’s what I like to hear. A mature reaction.
Let’s go see if the cat’s come home.
Louis?
LOUIS: When did you find this?
PRIOR: I couldn’t tell you.
LOUIS: Why?
PRIOR: I was scared, Lou.
LOUIS: Of what?
PRIOR: That you’ll leave me.
LOUIS: Oh.
(Little pause.)
PRIOR: Bad timing, funeral and all, but I figured as long as we’re on the subject of death.
LOUIS: I have to go bury my grandma.
PRIOR: Lou?
(Pause)
Then you’ll come home?
LOUIS: Then I’ll come home.
Scene 5
Same day. Split scene: Joe and Harper at home, as before; Louis at the cemetery after his family has gone, lingering behind, staring down at Sarah Ironson’s coffin in her open grave.
HARPER: Washington?
JOE: It’s an incredible honor, buddy, and—
HARPER: I have to think.
JOE: Of course.
HARPER: Say no.
JOE: You said you were going to think about it.
HARPER: I don’t want to move to Washington.
JOE: Well I do.
HARPER: It’s a giant cemetery, huge white graves and mausoleums everywhere.
JOE: We could live in Maryland. Or Georgetown.
HARPER: We’re happy here.
JOE: That’s not really true, buddy, we—
HARPER: Well happy enough! Pretend-happy. That’s better than nothing.
JOE: It’s time to make some changes, Harper.
HARPER: No changes. Why?
JOE: I’ve been chief clerk for four years. I make twenty-nine-thousand dollars a year. That’s ridiculous. I graduated fourth in my class and I make less than anyone I know. And I’m . . . I’m tired of being a clerk, I want to go where something good is happening.
HARPER: Nothing good happens in Washington. We’ll forget church teachings and buy furniture at, at, Conran’s and become yuppies. I have too much to do here.
JOE: Like what?
HARPER: I do have things.
JOE: What things?
HARPER: I have to finish painting the bedroom.
JOE: You’ve been painting in there for over a year.
HARPER: I know, I— It just isn’t done because I never get time to finish it.
JOE: Oh that’s . . . That doesn’t make sense. You have all the time in the world. You could finish it when I’m at work.
HARPER: I’m afraid to go in there alone.
JOE: Afraid of what?
HARPER: I heard someone in there. Metal scraping on the wall. A man with a knife, maybe.
JOE: There’s no one in the bedroom, Harper.
HARPER: Not now.
JOE: Not this morning either.
HARPER: How do you know? You were at work this morning.
There’s something creepy about this place. Remember Rosemary’s Baby?
JOE: Rosemary’s Baby?
HARPER: Our apartment looks like that one. Wasn’t that apartment in Brooklyn?
JOE: No, it was—
HARPER: Well, it looked like this. It did.
JOE: Then let’s move.
HARPER: Georgetown’s worse. The Exorcist was in Georgetown.
JOE: The devil, everywhere you turn, huh, buddy.
HARPER: Yeah. Everywhere.
JOE: How many pills today, buddy?
HARPER: None. One. Three. Only three.
(At the cemetery: Rabbi Isidor Chemelwitz, heading home, walks past Louis, who is still staring into the grave. Louis stops the Rabbi with a question.)
LOUIS: Why are there just two little wooden pegs holding the lid down?
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: So she can get out easier if she wants to.
LOUIS: I hope she stays put.
I pretended for years that she was already dead. When they called to say she had died it was a surprise. I abandoned her.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: “Sharfer vi di tson fun a shlang iz an umdankbar kind!”
LOUIS: I don’t speak Yiddish.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: “Sharper than the serpent’s tooth is the ingratitude of children.” Shakespeare. Kenig Lear.
LOUIS: Rabbi, what does the Holy Writ say about someone who abandons someone he loves at a time of great need?
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: Why would a person do such a thing?
LOUIS: Because he has to.
Maybe because this person’s sense of the world, that it will change for the better with struggle, maybe a person who has this neo-Hegelian positivist sense of constant historical progress towards happiness or perfection or something, who feels very powerful because he feels connected to these forces, moving uphill all the time . . . Maybe that person can’t, um, incorporate sickness into his sense of how things are supposed to go. Maybe vomit . . . and sores and disease . . . really frighten him, maybe . . . he isn’t so good with death.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: The Holy Scriptures have nothing to say about such a person.
LOUIS: Rabbi, I’m afraid of the crimes I may commit.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: Please, mister. I’m a sick old rabbi facing a long drive home to the Bronx. You want to confess, better you should find a priest.
LOUIS: But I’m not a Catholic, I’m a Jew.
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: Worse luck for you, bubbulah. Catholics believe in Forgiveness. Jews believe in Guilt.
(The Rabbi turns to leave.)
LOUIS: You just make sure those pegs are in good and tight.
(The Rabbi stops, looks down into the grave, then at Louis:)
RABBI ISIDOR CHEMELWITZ: Don’t worry, mister. The life she had, she’ll stay put. She’s better off.
(The Rabbi exits. Louis looks into the grave, one last, quick glance, then follows.)
JOE: Look, I know this is scary for you. But try to understand what it means to me. Will you try?
HARPER: Yes.
JOE: Good. Really try.
I think things are starting to change in the world.
HARPER: But I don’t want—
JOE: Wait. For the good. Change for the good. America has rediscovered itself. Its sacred position among nations. And people aren’t ashamed of that like they used to be. This is a great thing. The truth restored. Law restored. That’s what President Reagan’s done, Harper. He says: “Truth exists and can be spoken proudly.” And the country responds to him. We become better. More good. I need to be a part of that, I need something big to lift me up. I mean, six years ago the world seemed in decline, horrible, hopeless, full of unsolvable problems and crime and confusion and hunger and—
HARPER: But it still seems that way. More now than before. They say the ozone layer is—
JOE: Harper . . .
HARPER: And today out the window on Atlantic Avenue there was a schizophrenic traffic cop who was making these—
JOE: Stop it! I’m trying to make a point.
HARPER: So am I.
JOE: You aren’t even making sense, you—
HARPER: My point is the world seems just as—
JOE: It only seems that way to you because you never go out in the world, Harper, and you have emotional problems.
HARPER: I do so get out in the world.
JOE: You don’t. You stay in all day, fretting about imaginary—
HARPER: I get out. I do. You don’t know what I do.
JOE: You don’t stay in all day.
HARPER: No.
JOE: Well . . . Yes you do.
HARPER: That’s what you think.
JOE: Where do you go?
HARPER: Where do you go? When you walk.
(Pause, then very angry) And I DO NOT have emotional problems.
JOE: I’m sorry.
HARPER: And if I do have emotional problems it’s from living with you. Or—
JOE: I’m sorry, buddy, I didn’t mean to—
HARPER: Or if you do think I do then you should never have married me. You have all these secrets and lies.
JOE: I want to be married to you, Harper.
HARPER: You shouldn’t. You never should.
(Pause)
Hey, buddy. Hey, buddy.
JOE: Buddy kiss.
(They kiss.)
HARPER: I heard on the radio how to give a blowjob.
JOE: What?
HARPER: You want to try?
JOE: You really shouldn’t listen to stuff like that.
HARPER: Mormons can give blowjobs.
JOE: Harper.
HARPER (Imitating his tone): Joe.
It was a little Jewish lady with a German accent. This is a good time. For me to make a baby.
(Little pause. Joe turns away from her, then leaves the living room.)
HARPER: Then they went on to a program about holes in the ozone layer. Over Antarctica. Skin burns, birds go blind, icebergs melt. The world’s coming to an end.
Scene 6
First week of November. In the men’s room of the offices of the Brooklyn Federal Court of Appeals. Louis is crying over the sink; Joe enters.
JOE: Oh, um . . . Morning.
LOUIS: Good morning, Counselor.
JOE (He watches Louis cry): Sorry, I . . . I don’t know your name.
LOUIS: Don’t bother. Word processor. The lowest of the low.
JOE (Holding out his hand): Joe Pitt. I’m with Justice Wilson.
LOUIS: Oh, I know that. Counselor Pitt. Chief Clerk.
JOE: Were you . . . Are you OK?
LOUIS: Oh, yeah. Thanks. What a nice man.
JOE: Not so nice.
LOUIS: What?
JOE: Not so nice. Nothing. You sure you’re—
LOUIS: Life sucks shit. Life . . . just sucks shit.
JOE: What’s wrong?
LOUIS: Run in my nylons.
JOE: Sorry . . .?
LOUIS: Forget it. Look, thanks for asking.
JOE: Well . . .
LOUIS: I mean it really is nice of you.
(He starts crying again)
Sorry, sorry. Sick friend . . .
JOE: Oh, I’m sorry.
LOUIS: Yeah, yeah, well, that’s sweet.
Three of your colleagues have preceded you to this baleful sight and you’re the first one to ask. The others just opened the door, saw me, and fled. I hope they had to pee real bad.
JOE (Handing him a wad of toilet paper): They just didn’t want to intrude.
LOUIS: Hah. Reaganite heartless macho asshole lawyers.
JOE: Oh, that’s unfair.
LOUIS: What is? Heartless? Macho? Reaganite? Lawyer?
JOE: I voted for Reagan.
LOUIS: You did?
JOE: Twice.
LOUIS: Twice? Well, oh boy. A Gay Republican.
JOE: Excuse me?
LOUIS: Nothing.
JOE: I’m not—
Forget it.
LOUIS: Republican? Not Republican? Or . . .
JOE: What?
LOUIS: What?
JOE: Not gay. I’m not gay.
LOUIS: Oh. Sorry.
(Blows his nose loudly) It’s just—
JOE: Yes?
LOUIS: Well, sometimes you can tell from the way a person sounds, that—I mean you sound like a—
JOE: No I don’t.
Like what?
LOUIS: Like a Republican.
(Little pause. Joe knows he’s being teased; Louis knows he knows. Joe decides to be a little brave.)
JOE: Do I? Sound like a . . .?
LOUIS: What? Like a . . .? Republican, or . . .?
Do I?
JOE: Do you what?
LOUIS: Sound like a . . .?
JOE: Like a . . .?
I’m . . . confused.
LOUIS: Yes.
My name is Louis. But all my friends call me Louise. I work in Word Processing. Thanks for the toilet paper.
(Louis offers Joe his hand. Joe reaches, Louis feints and pecks Joe on the cheek, then exits.)
Scene 7
A week later. Mutual dream scene. Prior is dreaming that he’s at a fantastic makeup table, applying his face. Harper is having a pill-induced hallucination. She has these from time to time. For some reason, Prior has appeared in this one. Or Harper has appeared in Prior’s dream. It is bewildering.
PRIOR (His makeup complete, he examines its perfection in the mirror; then he turns to the audience): I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.
One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid . . . One wants . . .
But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?
No. One does not. (Sorrow and anger well up, overwhelming the grand manner) One gets fucked. Over. One . . . dies at thirty, robbed of . . . decades of majesty . . .
(Angry) Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit.
(He consults the mirror, attempting to resume the pose)
I look like a corpse. A . . . corpsette!
(It doesn’t work. Commiserating with his reflection)
Oh my queen; you know you’ve hit rock-bottom when even drag is a drag.
(Harper appears. Prior is surprised!)
HARPER: Are you . . . Who are you?
PRIOR: Who are you?
HARPER: What are you doing in my hallucination?
PRIOR: I’m not in your hallucination. You’re in my dream.
HARPER: You’re wearing makeup.
PRIOR: So are you.
HARPER: But you’re a man.
PRIOR (He looks in his mirror, SCREAMS!, mimes slashing his throat with his lipstick and dies, fabulously tragic. Then): The hands and feet give it away.
HARPER: There must be some mistake here. I don’t recognize you. You’re not—Are you my . . . some sort of imaginary friend?
PRIOR: No. Aren’t you too old to have imaginary friends?
HARPER: I have emotional problems. I took too many pills. Why are you wearing makeup?
PRIOR: I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better—I swiped the new fall colors at the Clinique counter at Macy’s.
(He shows her.)
HARPER: You stole these?
PRIOR: I was out of cash; it was an emotional emergency!
HARPER: Joe will be so angry. I promised him. No more pills.
PRIOR: These pills you keep alluding to?
HARPER: Valium. I take Valium. Lots of Valium.
PRIOR: And you’re dancing as fast as you can.
HARPER: I’m not addicted. I don’t believe in addiction, and I never— Well, I never drink. And I never take drugs.
PRIOR: Well, smell you, Nancy Drew.
HARPER: Except Valium.
PRIOR: Except Valium; in wee fistfuls.
HARPER: It’s terrible. Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I’m a Mormon.
PRIOR: I’m a homosexual.
HARPER: Oh! In my church we don’t believe in homosexuals.
PRIOR: In my church we don’t believe in Mormons.
HARPER: What church do . . . Oh! (She laughs) I get it.
I don’t understand this. If I didn’t ever see you before and I don’t think I did, then I don’t think you should be here, in this hallucination, because in my experience the mind, which is where hallucinations come from, shouldn’t be able to make up anything that wasn’t there to start with, that didn’t enter it from experience, from the real world. Imagination can’t create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions . . . Am I making sense right now?
PRIOR: Given the circumstances, yes.
HARPER: So when we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it’s really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don’t you think it’s depressing?
PRIOR: The limitations of the imagination?
HARPER: Yes.
PRIOR: It’s something you learn after your second theme party: It’s All Been Done Before.
HARPER: The world. Finite. Terribly, terribly . . . Well . . . This is the most depressing hallucination I’ve ever had.
PRIOR: Apologies. I do try to be amusing.
HARPER: Oh, well, don’t apologize, you . . . I can’t expect someone who’s really sick to entertain me.
PRIOR: How on earth did you know . . .?
HARPER: Oh that happens. This is the very threshold of revelation sometimes. You can see things . . . how sick you are. Do you see anything about me?
PRIOR: Yes.
HARPER: What?
PRIOR: You are amazingly unhappy.
HARPER: Oh big deal. You meet a Valium addict and you figure out she’s unhappy. That doesn’t count. Of course I . . . Something else. Something surprising.
PRIOR: Something surprising.
HARPER: Yes.
PRIOR: Your husband’s a homo.
(Pause.)
HARPER: Oh, ridiculous.
(Pause, then very quietly:)
Really?
PRIOR (Shrugs): Threshold of revelation.
HARPER: Well I don’t like your revelations. I don’t think you intuit well at all. Joe’s a very normal man, he . . .
Oh God. Oh God. He . . . Do homos take, like, lots of long walks?
PRIOR (A beat, then): Yes. We do. In stretch pants with lavender coifs. I just looked at you, and there was . . .
HARPER: A sort of blue streak of recognition.
PRIOR: Yes.
HARPER: Like you knew me incredibly well.
PRIOR: Yes.
HARPER: Yes.
I have to go now, get back, something just . . . fell apart.
Oh God, I feel so sad . . .
PRIOR: I . . . I’m sorry. I usually say, “Fuck the truth,” but mostly, the truth fucks you.
HARPER: I see something else about you.
PRIOR: Oh?
HARPER: Deep inside you, there’s a part of you, the most inner part, entirely free of disease. I can see that.
PRIOR: Is that— That isn’t true.
HARPER: Threshold of revelation.
Home . . .
(She vanishes. Prior’s startled. Then he feels very alone.)
PRIOR: People come and go so quickly here . . .
I don’t think there’s any uninfected part of me. My heart is pumping polluted blood. I feel dirty.
(He starts to wipe off his makeup; suddenly, he smears it furiously around.
A large gray feather falls from above. Prior stops smearing the makeup and looks at the feather. He goes to it and picks it up.)
A VOICE (It is an incredibly beautiful voice): Look up!
PRIOR (Looking up, not seeing anyone): Hello?
A VOICE: Look up!
PRIOR: Who is that?
A VOICE: Prepare the way!
PRIOR: I don’t see any—
(There is a dramatic change in lighting, from above.)
A VOICE: Look up, look up,
prepare the way
the infinite descent
A breath in air
floating down
Glory to . . .
(Silence.)
PRIOR: Hello? Is that it? Helloooo!
(Very frightened) What the fuck? . . . (He holds himself)
Poor me. Poor poor me. Why me? Why poor poor me?
Oh I don’t feel good right now. I really don’t.
Scene 8
That night. Split scene: Prior and Louis in their bed. Louis reading, Prior cuddled next to him. Harper in Brooklyn, alone. Joe enters.
HARPER: Where were you?
JOE: Out.
HARPER: Where?
JOE: Just out. Thinking.
HARPER: It’s late.
JOE: I had a lot to think about.
HARPER: I burned dinner.
JOE: Sorry.
HARPER: Not my dinner. My dinner was fine. Your dinner. I put it back in the oven and turned everything up as high as it could go and I watched till it burned black. It’s still hot. Very hot. Want it?
JOE: You didn’t have to do that.
HARPER: I know. It just seemed like the kind of thing a mentally deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would do.
JOE: Uh-huh.
HARPER: So I did it. Who knows anymore what I have to do?
JOE: How many pills?
HARPER: A bunch. Don’t change the subject.
JOE: I won’t talk to you when you—
HARPER: No. No. Don’t do that! I’m . . . I’m fine, pills are not the problem, not our problem. I WANT TO KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN! I WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON!
JOE: Going on with what? The job?
HARPER: Not the job.
JOE: I said I need more time.
HARPER: Not the job!
JOE: Mr. Cohn, I talked to him on the phone, he said I had to hurry—
HARPER: Not the—
JOE: But I can’t get you to talk sensibly about anything so—
HARPER: SHUT UP!
JOE: Then what?
HARPER: Stick to the subject.
JOE: I don’t know what that is. You have something you want to ask me? Ask me. Go.
HARPER: I . . . can’t. I’m scared of you.
JOE: I’m tired, I’m going to bed.
HARPER: Tell me without making me ask. Please.
JOE: This is crazy, I’m not—
HARPER: When you come through the door at night your face is never exactly the way I remembered it. I get surprised by something . . . mean and hard about the way you look. Even the weight of you in the bed at night, the way you breathe in your sleep seems unfamiliar.
You terrify me.
JOE: I know who you are.
HARPER: Yes. I’m the enemy. That’s easy. That doesn’t change.
You think you’re the only one who hates sex; I do; I hate it with you; I do. I dream that you batter away at me till all my joints come apart, like wax, and I fall into pieces. It’s like a punishment. It was wrong of me to marry you. I knew you—
(She stops herself)
It’s a sin, and it’s killing us both.
JOE: I can always tell when you’ve taken pills because it makes you red-faced and sweaty and frankly that’s very often why I don’t want to . . .
HARPER: Because . . .
JOE: Well you aren’t pretty. Not like this.
HARPER: I have something to ask you.
JOE: Then ASK! ASK! What in hell are you—
HARPER: Are you a homo?
(Pause)
Are you?
If you try to walk out right now I’ll put your dinner back in the oven and turn it up so high the whole building will fill with smoke and everyone in it will asphyxiate. So help me God I will.
Now answer the question.
JOE: What if I . . .
(Small pause.)
HARPER: Then tell me, please. And we’ll see.
JOE: No. I’m not.
I don’t see what difference it makes.
(Louis and Prior are lying on the bed, Prior’s head resting on Louis’s chest.)
LOUIS: Jews don’t have any clear textual guide to the afterlife; even that it exists. I don’t think much about it. I see it as a perpetual rainy Thursday afternoon in March. Dead leaves.
PRIOR: Eeeugh. Very Greco-Roman.
LOUIS: Well for us it’s not the verdict that counts, it’s the act of judgment. That’s why I could never be a lawyer. In court all that matters is the verdict.
PRIOR: You could never be a lawyer because you are oversexed. You’re too distracted.
LOUIS: Not distracted; abstracted. I’m trying to make a point:
PRIOR: Namely:
LOUIS: It’s the judge in his or her chambers, weighing, books open, pondering the evidence, ranging freely over categories: good, evil, innocent, guilty; the judge in the chamber of circumspection, not the judge on the bench with the gavel. The shaping of the law, not its execution.
PRIOR: The point, dear, the point . . .
LOUIS: That it should be the questions and shape of a life, its total complexity gathered, arranged and considered, which matters in the end, not some stamp of salvation or damnation which disperses all the complexity in some unsatisfying little decision—the balancing of the scales . . .
PRIOR: I like this; very zen; it’s . . . reassuringly incomprehensible and useless. We who are about to die thank you.
LOUIS: You are not about to die.
PRIOR: It’s not going well, really . . . Two new lesions. My leg hurts. There’s protein in my urine, the doctor says, but who knows what the fuck that portends. Anyway it shouldn’t be there, the protein. My butt is chapped from diarrhea and yesterday I shat blood.
LOUIS: I really hate this. You don’t tell me—
PRIOR: You get too upset, I wind up comforting you. It’s easier—
LOUIS: Oh thanks.
PRIOR: If it’s bad I’ll tell you.
LOUIS: Shitting blood sounds bad to me.
PRIOR: And I’m telling you.
LOUIS: And I’m handling it.
PRIOR: Tell me some more about justice.
LOUIS: I am handling it.
PRIOR: Well Louis you win Trooper of the Month.
(Louis starts to cry.)
PRIOR: I take it back. You aren’t Trooper of the Month.
This isn’t working.
Tell me some more about justice.
LOUIS: You are not about to die.
PRIOR: Justice . . .
LOUIS: . . . is an immensity, a . . . confusing vastness.
Justice is God.
(Little pause)
Prior?
PRIOR: Hmmm?
LOUIS: You love me.
PRIOR: Yes.
LOUIS: What if I walked out on this?
Would you hate me forever?
(Prior kisses Louis on the forehead.)
PRIOR: Yes.
(Prior sits at the foot of the bed, facing out, away from Louis.)
JOE: I think we ought to pray. Ask God for help. Ask him together.
HARPER: God won’t talk to me. I have to make up people to talk to me.
JOE: You have to keep asking.
HARPER: I forgot the question.
Oh yeah. God, is my husband a—
JOE (Scary): Stop it. Stop it. I’m warning you.
Does it make any difference? That I might be one thing deep within, no matter how wrong or ugly that thing is, so long as I have fought, with everything I have, to kill it. What do you want from me? What do you want from me, Harper? More than that? For God’s sake, there’s nothing left, I’m a shell. There’s nothing left to kill.
As long as my behavior is what I know it has to be. Decent. Correct. That alone in the eyes of God.
HARPER: No, no, not that, that’s Utah talk, Mormon talk, I hate it, Joe, tell me, say it.
JOE: All I will say is that I am a very good man who has worked very hard to become good and you want to destroy that. You want to destroy me, but I am not going to let you do that.
(Little pause.)
HARPER: I’m going to have a baby.
JOE: Liar.
HARPER: You liar.
A baby born addicted to pills. A baby who does not dream but who hallucinates, who stares up at us with big mirror eyes and who does not know who we are.
(Pause.)
JOE: Are you really . . .?
HARPER: No.
(He turns to go.)
HARPER: Yes.
(He stops. He believes her.)
HARPER: No.
Yes.
(He tries to approach her.)
HARPER: Get away from me.
Now we both have a secret.
(Joe leaves the room.)
PRIOR (Speaking to Louis but not looking at him): One of my ancestors was a ship’s captain who made money bringing whale oil to Europe and returning with immigrants—Irish mostly, packed in tight, so many dollars per head. The last ship he captained foundered off the coast of Nova Scotia in a winter tempest and sank to the bottom. He went down with the ship—La Grande Geste—but his crew took seventy women and kids in the ship’s only longboat, this big, open rowboat, and when the weather got too rough, and they thought the boat was overcrowded, the crew started lifting people up and hurling them into the sea. Until they got the ballast right. They walked up and down the longboat, eyes to the waterline, and when the boat rode low in the water they’d grab the nearest passenger and throw them into the sea. The boat was leaky, see; seventy people; they arrived in Halifax with nine people on board.
LOUIS: Jesus.
PRIOR: I think about that story a lot now. People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable, unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize . . . maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.
I like your cosmology, baby. While time is running out I find myself drawn to anything that’s suspended, that lacks an ending. But it seems to me that it lets you off scot-free.
LOUIS: What do you mean?
PRIOR: No judgment, no guilt or responsibility.
LOUIS: For me.
PRIOR: For anyone. It was an editorial “you.”
LOUIS: Please get better. Please.
Please don’t get any sicker.
Scene 9
A week later. Roy and Henry, his doctor, in Henry’s office.
HENRY: Nobody knows what causes it. And nobody knows how to cure it. The best theory is that we blame a retrovirus, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Its presence is made known to us by the useless antibodies which appear in reaction to its entrance into the bloodstream through a cut, or an orifice. The antibodies are powerless to protect the body against it. Why, we don’t know. The body’s immune system ceases to function. Sometimes the body even attacks itself. At any rate it’s left open to a whole horror house of infections from microbes which it usually defends against.
Like Kaposi’s sarcomas. These lesions. Or your throat problem. Or the glands.
We think it may also be able to slip past the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Which is of course very bad news.
And it’s fatal in we don’t know what percent of people with suppressed immune responses.
(Pause. Roy sits, brooding. Henry waits. Then:)
ROY: This is very interesting, Mr. Wizard, but why the fuck are you telling me this?
HENRY (Hesitating, confused, then): Well, I have just removed one of three lesions which biopsy results will probably tell us is a Kaposi’s sarcoma lesion. And you have a pronounced swelling of glands in your neck, groin, and armpits—lymphadenopathy is another sign. And you have oral candidiasis and maybe a little more fungus under the fingernails of two digits on your right hand. So that’s why—
ROY: This disease.
HENRY: Syndrome.
ROY: Whatever. It afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts.
HENRY: Mostly. Hemophiliacs are also at risk.
ROY: Homosexuals and drug addicts. So why are you implying that I . . .
(Roy stares hard at Henry, who begins to feel nervous.)
ROY: What are you implying, Henry?
HENRY: I don’t . . .
ROY: I’m not a drug addict.
HENRY: Oh come on Roy.
ROY: What, what, come on Roy what? Do you think I’m a junkie, Henry, do you see tracks?
HENRY: This is absurd.
ROY: Say it.
HENRY: Say what?
ROY: Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a . . .”
HENRY: Roy? I don’t—
ROY: “You are a . . .” Go on. Not “Roy Cohn you are a drug fiend.” “Roy Marcus Cohn, you are a . . .”
Go on, Henry. It starts with an “H.”
HENRY: Oh I’m not going to—
ROY: With an “H,” Henry, and it isn’t “hemophiliac.” Come on . . .
HENRY: What are you doing, Roy?
ROY: No, say it. I mean it. Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.”
(With deadly seriousness)
And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do.
(Pause. Henry summons his courage.)
HENRY: Roy, you have been seeing me since 1958. Apart from the facelifts I have treated you for everything from syphilis—
ROY: From a whore in Dallas.
HENRY: From syphilis to venereal warts. In your rectum. Which you may have gotten from a whore in Dallas, but it wasn’t a female whore.
(A standoff. Then:)
ROY: So say it.
HENRY: Roy Cohn, you are . . .
(Roy’s too scary. He tries a different approach)
You have had sex with men, many many times, Roy, and one of them, or any number of them, has made you very sick. You have AIDS.
ROY (A beat, then): AIDS.
Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that.
HENRY: No?
ROY: No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot pass a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry?
HENRY: No.
ROY: No. I have clout. A lot. I can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers, and you know who will be on the other end in under five minutes, Henry?
HENRY: The president.
ROY: Even better, Henry. His wife.
HENRY: I’m impressed.
ROY: I don’t want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand. Because what I am is defined entirely by who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys.
HENRY: OK, Roy.
ROY: And what is my diagnosis, Henry?
HENRY: You have AIDS, Roy.
ROY: No, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer.
(Little pause.)
HENRY: Well, whatever the fuck you have, Roy, it’s very serious, and I haven’t got a damn thing for you. The NIH in Bethesda has a new drug called AZT with a two-year waiting list that not even I can get you onto. So get on the phone, Roy, and dial the fifteen numbers, and tell the First Lady you need in on an experimental treatment for liver cancer, because you can call it any damn thing you want, Roy, but what it boils down to is very bad news.
