Reviews of plays by Louis Phillips (available from Broadway Play Publishers)

The Last of the Marx Brothers' Writers

"Here is a piece of theater you absolutely must not miss,,,. This fine, touching, inventive, and gorgeously zany play..." — Jonathan Saville, Weekly Reader (San Diego, Calif.)

The Envoi Messages

"If you have any feeling for true drama, “The Envoi Messages” will excite and entice you…” — Bob Dixon, The Daily Reporter (Greenfield, Indiana)

The Ballroom in St. Patrick's Cathedral

"It is a naturalistic play, whose setting and details of character and dialogue could not be more specific and lifelike. Yet the variety of moods and feelings working their wayout is such as to give it a glittering intensity that passes realism. It is astonishingly textured..." — Richard Eder, The New York Times

The Great American Quiz Show Scandal

"Louis Phillips' play makes for solid entertainment. The plot is sound, the pace swift, the mood authentic..."
— Drama-Logue

 

 

 

Mind-Readers

The Time: The Night of April 20, 1967 The Place: The basement of a theater in Athens. The stage should be completely bare, with the exception of two very elegant and expensive red velvet chairs. Seated in one chair is Henry Vaughan Vanderhorst who performs under the name Manzini. He is, in fact, one half of the world famous mind-reading act - The Great Manzinis. Manzini, as he is known, is dressed in a tuxedo and is in the process of taking off his black shoes, exchanging them for something more comfortable, his old slippers that have travelled the world with him and his wife. Manzini is a tall, solid man, with a goatee and a head of white hair. Over his left eye he wears a white patch. In fact, he is the epitome of the magician/mind-reader. Standing behind the second chair is a stylishly dressed, slender young woman in her late twenties. She is Ms Helena Michaelides, a reporter for one of several conservative daily newspapers. She is also the hostess of a morning talk show on radio. She has put on her eye-glasses to study some notes she had taken on a note-pad.

HELENA A very distinguished audience, don't you think?
MANZINI (Not without humor) Any audience that the Great Manzinis appear before become distinguished by the very presence of the Great Manzinis.
HELENA Ah, but King Constantine himself…How rare for him to take an evening in public these days…He was impressed.
MANZINI Was he?
HELENA Yes, I could tell…Your wife and yourself had us all amazed.
MANZINI But Kings are easily impressed, aren't they?
HELENA Not Greek kings.
MANZINI Any king. The ordinary world is a marvel when you are trained to live so far above it.
HELENA I don't believe that Constantine is far above the ordinary, do you?
MANZINI My wife's relatives say he is not very well educated.
HELENA When one is king in a time like this education comes in many forms.
MANZINI Not the least of which is reading the newspapers. Every day, Greece is in trouble. Greece is on the edge of anarchy. One never knows whether the papers report the news or create it. He crosses to a stand that holds a bucket of champagne. He removes a bottle, studies it.
MANZINI Of course, Thea says you are a remarkable writer. She really enjoyed your stories about the student uprisings in Thessaloniki…
HELENA I am fortunate. I am allowed to cover many different kinds of stories.
MANZINI Yes, from ASPIDA to mind-reading in a few easy lessons…
HELENA Do you read Greek? MANZINI My wife reads Greek. I do not. This is her country. All her family, friends, and relatives are here…Whereas mine…Well, mine are scattered to the four winds. You will share some of this champagne with me, no? It is a gift from Major Arnoutis…Everyone has been quite generous with their gifts. HELENA (laughing) Beware the Greeks bearing gifts…
MANZINI Well, I know that story.
HELENA Just a sip…I still have my work to do.
MANZINI I still have my work to do too. He hands her a full glass.
HELENA And what is that?
MANZINI To get you drunk and to seduce you. You certainly must have realized that.
HELENA Your reputation has preceded you.
MANZINI Has it?
HELENA I shall keep up my guard.
MANZINI That is always a good procedure. To keep up one' guard… (Raise his glass) To freedom.
HELENA To freedom.
MANZINI I always enjoy it when Thea brings me to her country. There are so many countries where there are so little freedoms.
HELENA Wherever we are, our thoughts are always free.
MANZINI As long as there are not too many people who can read minds.
HELENA Like Thea?
MANZINI Like Thea.
HELENA Since you admire Democracy so much, have you ever given thought to living here?
MANZINI I have given…or have been given thought about everything. Haven't you? Helena laughs.
HELENA I don't know. How can I possibly know what I have never thought about?
MANZINI We think therefore we are. Is that it?
HELENA That's what they say at the University.
MANZINI Well, I know another way.
HELENA åååAnother way of what?
MANZINI Of becoming aware of all the subjects that we have never thought about. Life tells us.
HELENA Are we back to journalism again? You mean Life magazine teålls us what we have never thought about? Or Epokhes?
MANZINI Not the life of the written word, but the other kind of life. It tells you what you have never thought about by presenting you with who you are. With what we become. He has used these lines before. He studies Ms. Michaelides to see if they have had any effect upon her.
MANZINI I remember when I was a young man at the University…
HELENA What University?
MANZINI It doesn't matter.
HELENA To me it does. To my readers.
MANZINI No.
HELENA There are great gaps in your biography.
MANZINI That's exactly what I am trying to say, Miss Michaelides. It is the gaps that make us interesting. The ignorance.
HELENA And what did you remember?
MANZINI I remembered that I had a friend who had thrown a few rocks, had broken some windows…It was a demonstration against the government…the fascists had come to power…and an old professor of mine…A man who had å itself is a truth. Wouldn't you agree?
HELENA Yes, I think I would.

♦

MANZINI It was like any remark one things of too late. And so I walked all over Berlin, trying to track the Professor for he had left the University…But he had disappeared. It was as if he had never existed except to chastise me. And then, later in my studies, I stumbled across a quote that I have always carried with me. "I hope I never have to choose, but if I have to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope God grants me strength to betray my country."
HELENA I think it is a perfectly horrible thing to say.
MANZINI Do you?
HELENA Yes, but may I quote you.
MANZINI No, I told it wasn't mine.
HELENA So much the better.
MANZINI Besides it makes me sound pretentious. (He makes his little joke). "Manzini, you are pretentious!"…"Pretentious, Moi?" Helena laughs.
MANZINI But how many thoughts in this world can we really call our own?...Have more Champagne…
HELENA You really are trying to get me drunk.
MANZINI I am not very often left alone with such an attractive woman. And if I have to work fast, it is because my wife and I are not staying in Athens very long…
HELENA Where do you go from here?
MANZINI My wife wants us to be in Thessaloniki on the 28th to help Papandreou launch his campaign…Give some moral support as it were, since he is an old friend of Thea's family…and from there, we do have some fairly substantial bookings.
HELENA I would imagine that mind-readers would be very valuable in government, don't you?
MANZINI As what? Court jesters?
HELENA No, as spies, I think it would be very handy for people to know what their enemies are thinking.
MANZINI Women do make good spies…Mata Hari and all that, but I doubt if spying would be a profession that Thea would be attracted to. Of course what is there to spy on in Greece? Merely communist plots hatching under every bush, uniforms stashed away into every locker. That is, if one can believe the right-wing papers. Though of course there is one great advantage to serving whoever is in power. The kind of prestige that one doesn't get from the wicked stage. Thea's gifts would be given their full due. We wouldn't have to change ourselves into Bozo the clown to make a living. Because that is what happens you know. You are given a great gift - whether it is painting or writing or dancing - and you have to turn yourself into a clown in order to survive. Why. I have seen the greatest actors of my generation engaged in selling toilet tissue and automobiles.
HELENA You don't enjoy being on the stage?
MANZINI I can't say that, can I? Not when Thea and I climbed out of the automobile wreck into show business history. Or a small portion of it, anyway. Though show business history seems much more perishable than any other kind.
HELENA Entertaining millions of people is no small feat.
MANZINI True, but mind-reading has very little to do with entertaining. It should be a statement, a witness to what we could become if…if we could harness these marvelous and untapped powers. After all, when people make love, the mind is the best sex organ in the world, isn't it?
HELENA (Smiles) Are you asking me?
MANZINI When it comes to theories about sex I always try to turn to a beautiful young woman for corroboration.
HELENA I am afraid I am not that young.
MANZINI It is all relative, isn't it?
HELENA But you can trust me. It's all a trick, isn't it?
MANZINI What? Sex?
HELENA No. Mind-reading.
MANZINI After what you saw tonight, before such a prestigious audience? Why even the poets turned out. But, of course, why shouldn't the poets be interested in the life of the mind. We have one of George Themeis' book around this dressing room somewhere. My wife won't go anywhere without a trunk filled with books. You think we were carrying the local library with us from town to town. But of course so many towns even have libraries anymore. As if great segments of the population have chosen to grow up ignorant.
HELENA Please, don't change the subject. I know what I saw out there tonight.
MANZINI That's right. You saw Bozo the Clown. The oldest act in existence. The Great Manzinis. A woman is seated upon a stage, on a bright red velvet chair, and she is blindfolded by a devilishly handsome man….namely me…who then wanders out into the audience, holds up objects, and the woman calls out the names correctly. Once of the Generals held up one of his good luck charms…Thea names it, and even King Constantine is astonished. A remarkable performance. And of course, I am ashamed of it, because the Great Manzinis are capable of so much more. But then who isn't? What isn't? Greece herself is capable of doing so much better.
HELENA Well, we applaud the presentation, the subtitles of the code…
MANZINI No code!
HELENA Whatever you want to call it. The wonderful display of memory.
MANZINI No memory.
HELENA But to call it mind-reading.
MANZINI (Finishing the sentence) Is it fraud.
HELENA Confess. You can trust me.
MANZINI Certainly I can trust you. Anything I tell you will be written up in one of the Vlachou's newspapers, or broadcast to the world on your morning radio show…What is it called?
HELENA All About Athens.
MANZINI A modest title. You need more of the spirit of exaggeration in you. All true Greeks love exaggeration. The simplest argument turns into a life and death struggle.
HELENA To a Greek there is no such thing as a simple statement.
MANZINI True. But even I love to enlarge the truth. Thea and I are The Great Manzinis. Not the Good Manzinis. Nor even the fair Manzinis. And why limit yourself to Athens? Is Athens the whole world?
HELENA To some people it is.
MANZINI Yes, to some people it is.
HELENA I inherited the title of the radio show from somebody who died.
MANZINI Isn't that the way. So many of our thoughts are taken from people who have died…Pretentious, Moi?... By the way, you can come closer. I am not going to make a pass at you.
HELENA What are you talking about?
MANZINI You are standing there thinking what you will do if I make a pass at you.
HELENA I am not!
MANZINI Oh but you are. The way you stand there allowing your forefinger to rub around and around the top of the champagne glass…It's a certain give-away among certain types of women.
HELENA Oh, it's just a nervous habit. I have seen men do it also.
MANZINI Of course, if you and I made love it would not be an unpleasant experience.
HELENA Please. May we talk about something else?
MANZINI Certainly, I have no desire to make Tom jealous.
HELENA Tom?
MANZINI Private pilot for Colonel Makarezos.
HELENA Who told you about Tom?
MANZINI You did.
HELENA I did not.
MANZINI Ten minutes ago you were thinking whether you should call Tom or not. So many thoughts are merely flying around waiting to be picked up by sensitive…or should we just say receptive minds.
HELENA Does your wife know that you carry on like this?
MANZINI Carrying on? This isn't carrying on, my dear. Carrying on comes later.
HELENA My husband wouldn't approve.
MANZINI You're not married.
HELENA Because I'm not wearing a ring?
MANZINI Rings don't mean anything.
HELENA Obviously not.
MANZINI My wife encourages my flirtations. They keep me young.
HELENA I don't believe that.
MANZINI I guess I don't look young enough.
HELENA I don't believe that your wife approves of your flirting with me.
MANZINI You can ask her yourself. Whenever she returns from being wined and dined by the rich and famous…
HELENA Why didn't you go with her?
MANZINI I thought that being alone with you would be rich with possibilities.
HELENA I'm afraid I won't be able to stay much longer. I want to type this interview up before I go to bed…
MANZINI I am at the mercy of the press then…Here, allow me to make amends for my bad behavior…(He removes a deck of cards from his jacket pocket)…Here, take a card….Manzini holds out the deck of cards. Helena selects one.
MANZINI You have my word of honor, whatever that's worth, that it's an ordinary deck.
HELENA The Three of Hearts.
MANZINI (Disappointed) You weren't suppose to tell me.
HELENA Please! I don't have to be entertained by card-tricks.
MANZINI Very well, then. Just think of a card. I'll do it the hard way.
HELENA The Nine of Clubs.
MANZINI Once again, you weren't suppose to tell me.
HELENA Sorry. But I thought that if you were going to read my mind, we could skip all the hocus-pocus and get right to it.
MANZINI I hope you don't feel the same way about sex.
HELENA You always return to the same subject.
MANZINI Perhaps when you reach my age. No, that is not fair. Age has nothing to do with it. It is only your beautiful presence that inspires me.
HELENA It is the champagne talking. Not you.
MANZINI Champagne never has any effect upon me. But making love. There is a subject of universal interest. Is it not? The sexual energies, wave-lengths if you like, when a man and a woman are alone together in a room…It is just another form of mind-reading, is it not?
HELENA Is it?
MANZINI Please, I am a very simple man. If you answer my questions with questions, I shall soon grow very confused.
HELENA I am sorry, but why do I get the feeling that every question you ask is a form of entrapment.
MANZINI A form of entrapment?
HELENA A trick?
MANZINI Fair enough. My life is a bag of tricks.
HELENA You say that love-making is a form of mind-reading, but it can't be true, for…I have heard it said…that when people make love they sometimes hold one person in their arms and fantasize about somebody else.
MANZINI Do you?
HELENA I am afraid that is for me to know and for you to find out.
MANZINI I hope to find out soon.
HELENA I don't think so.
MANZINI Definitely. In a while you will leave this room, you will drive home…in a white Volkswagen that is three years old, when you open your door, your little white cat named Zia will come forward to greet you…
HELENA How do you know about Zia?
MANZINI I am afraid that is for me to know and for your to find out.
HELENA You have had me investigated.
MANZINI Investigated? Why would I have you investigated? Did I know that you would come backstage to interrogate me?
HELENA The word is interview, not interrogate.
MANZINI I suppose that depends upon which side of the fence you are on.
HELENA Of course you knew I was coming backstage to see you. The paper called and arranged it. It was all arranged.
MANZINI Believe me, Ms. Michaelides, I am not wealthy enough to pay people to investigate everyone who comes to interview me…Just so I could impress them…
HELENA You have friends in high places…
MANZINI My wife has friends, yes…But friends are friends…
HELENA You world travelers are all alike. You think we Greeks are very gullible.
MANZINI Everybody in the world is gullible, my dear…
HELENA I am not your dear…
MANZINI We all want the impossible to happen so much that we are prepared to believe anything. We go a thousand psychic miles out of our way to make the impossible happen.
HELENA You had some friend provide you with information about my personal life…a few details about my car, where I live, my Cat, my friend Tom…and you pass all this off as second sight. You merely play Sherlock Holmes and call it mind-reading.
MANZINI (stung) Just as you like writing things down and calling it reporting.
HELENA I do not pretend that is something it is not.
MANZINI That's true. Yes, that's true. But you doubt me every step of the way. He holds out the bottle of champagne.
HELENA No more for me, thank you.
MANZINI Can I offer you anything?
HELENA Will you answer one more question for me before I go?
MANZINI Of course. We have no secrets from one another.
HELENA It seems that I have no secrets from you. Manzini fills her champagne glass.
HELENA You are trying to take advantage of me.
MANZINI Naturally. We take advantage of each other.
HELENA I would like to ask you about your eye.
MANZINI My good one, or my bad one?
HELENA The one covered by the white patch.
MANZINI Ah, my good one.
HELENA Do you mind if I ask how you lost it?
MANZINI I said I wouldn't mind. But why should I waste my breath if you won't believe me?
HELENA Just because I do not believe one thing, it does not mean I doubt all things.
MANZINI Yes, but you doubt the very fabric of my life…Believe me when I tell you that when you reach home, you will become more and more intrigued about our little conversation, and you will decide to invite my wife and I to supper tomorrow night, and of course we shall accept, but of course my wife will come down with a splitting head-ache. One of those terrible migraines that so frequently attack her, but I will arrive on your doorstep, delivering you a bouquet of daisies, and your cat Zia will greet me, and since animals trust me, you will take that for a good sign, and one thing will lead to another.
HELENA And now you claim to read the future…
MANZINI Not the future….My future…Or at least my short future with you…
HELENA And what about Tom…
MANZINI I guess that will depend whether he is the jealous type or not, won't it? Is he the jealous type?
HELENA I suppose that will depend whether I tell him or not, won't it?
MANZINI Some people know things without being told. That is my specialty.
HELENA And my specialty is being told. (She reaches for her coat).
MANZINI I have told you all I know. There are no secrets between us.
HELENA That would be a living hell, for two people to have no secrets from one another.
MANZINI It is….
HELENA (puts on her coat) And the eye?
MANZINI We were in Berlin, doing our act, and one afternoon I decided to take in a film. Thea was down with one of her excruciating head-aches, and I had to get away. It was the day of showing OLIVER TWIST, and since I have always been a fan of Dickens, I decided to go. Unfortunately, some of the radical groups decided that the film was anti-semitic, and decided to use the film as a politically rallying point…I guess it is '47, we're talking about, or '48…So feelings were running pretty high, as you can well imagine…and so there I was sitting in the theater, when people began throwing stones at the screen…I don't think they really cared about the Jews, but it was just some group that wanted to make the Jews look bad, get them into the newspapers as rabble-rousers, that sort of thing…and as I tried to make my exit, a stone got me squarely in the eye…So now I am the one-eyed lover…afraid of going blind…
HELENA Well, thank you, Mr. Manzini. I really do appreciate our talk…the information…I will make certain that you receive a copy of the story when it appears…
MANZINI Let me walk you out…
HELENA That won't be necessary…
MANZINI No, no…I really want to confirm the license plate numbers on your Volkswagen…Do you want me to tell you what it is…
HELENA The Nine of Clubs…
MANZINI Exactly what I was thinking…You wouldn't want to give me a ride to the airport tomorrow morning, would you? The two exit. The stage is left empty for a moment, and the lights go down.

Scene 2 Several hours later. The Great Manzini is sleeping in the stage left chair. The book of poems is opened in his lap. Thea Kapsakis, the second half of the Great Manzinis, enters. Because of injuries sustained many years before in an automobile accident, she uses two walking canes, she moves slowly but with great pride and confidence. She is dressed in a flowing gown, with a gleaming tiara upon her mane of red hair. She and her husband are approximately the same age, though it is altogether possible that Thea is a few years older. In any case, she is not a small woman, not in stature, nor in presence.
She walks downstage, stops. She uses one cane to tap her husband upon the leg.
THEA Wake up! I knew you would be here, waiting for me. Manzini is roused from his uncomfortable sleep.
THEA Andrea's driver took me to the hotel, but when I saw that you weren't in your room, I took a cab here. (She studies the empty champagne bottle). You drank too much and passed out.
MANZINI What time is it? Thea crosses to a window and looks out.
THEA You can see the clock in the square.
MANZINI I did not pass out.
THEA Almost six.
MANZINI Ah.
THEA (turning back to her husband) Ah!
MANZINI A.M. or P.M.?
THEA Where are your shoes? You have over-stayed your welcome…And the patch. You have been sleeping with the patch on your eye. He removes the patch from his eye. He has two good eyes.
THEA The doctor tells you it is bad for you. It cuts off circulation. What good is an eye with no blood reaching it?
MANZINI And yet you criticize me for having blood-shot eyes.
THEA Not I, my sweet. Not I. When do I ever criticize you?
MANZINI And you? Did you over-stay your welcome?
THEA Of course not. They begged me to stay.
MANZINI They?
THEA They. All of them.
MANZINI I love it when you go off with one man and he becomes plural.
THEA It describes my marriage to you in a nutshell, my dear…We went to Andrea's house. It was his first night back there in weeks.
MANZINI That is a good sign.
THEA It is, isn't it? That he is confident enough to go back home.
MANZINI With all the unrest in the army.
THEA It's the elections. He is very hopeful. We are set for Thessaloniki on the 28th. We are engaged to entertain some very wealthy people.
MANZINI There are no wealthy people in Thessaloniki.
THEA Andreas is quite excited about it.
MANZINI Yes, it is always a good idea to mix magic and politics. Especially in Greece. That is what makes Greek politics so unique…(Locates an opened bottle of champagne) There is some champagne left.
THEA I am not partial to warm champagne.
MANZINI (tasting it) It hasn't gone flat.
THEA I have a terrible feeling we are going to lose our freedom.
MANZINI We have been through all that. It just means that we're growing old, that's all. When you're young, you think freedom is one thing; when you've been through enough sorrow, you see freedom as something else. Whatever it is, freedom is never what the people in power tell you it is.
THEA Oh, you're so far above us all.
MANZINI No, I am not. I just want to change my clothes, so you might as well sit down.
THEA I don't think we should go back to the hotel. I don't have the same confidence in the future that Andreas has. But what could I tell them?
MANZINI I am still going to change my clothes.
THEA We should go straight to Thessaloniki.
MANZINI I hate falling asleep in my eye-patch. It leaves those elastic marks upon my skin. Can you see them?
THEA (studying his face) Consider them wrinkles.
MANZINI Of course. Why not. What good is talking politics all night if all people do is get wrinkles. Where is the legislation to ban growing old?
THEA There was a king who made it against the law to grow old.
MANZINI What happened to such a wise king?
THEA He ordered all his subjects put to death. Fortunately, the law was not easily enforced because the generals could never prove that anyone was really growing older. White hair was no proof.
Wrinkles were no proof. Trembling hands were no proof, especially whenever a general breathed, hands trembled.
MANZINI I am sorry I asked.
THEA Yes, dear Henry, I am sorry too.
MANZINI Politics here, politics there, and not a drop to drink.
THEA The only real proof that the people were growing old was that they were willing to tolerate such an unfair law.
MANZINI It does sound as if you had a most fascinating evening.
THEA Believe me, my love, Andreas and his friends were far more interested in me than they were in politics. At least for a few moments. Most of the conversation settled on devils and demons.
MANZINI It is good that you steered the topics around to some area you felt comfortable with.
THEA Yes, wasn't it.
MANZINI And what did you tell them about me.
THEA Nothing about you.
MANZINI Then I would have been bored.
THEA What could I say? I said there are demons all about us. They possess our thought, but they do not gain entry to our souls. Our spirit is air. Spiritus.
MANZINI And in my case, some hot spiritus.
THEA And then someone asked Andreas whether Papadopoulos could be such a demon, but no one laughed.
MANZINI I think he needed guests because he did not want to be alone.
THEA And then some idiot woman dared to ask me to read her palm, as if I indulged in such hocus-pocus.
MANZINI I should have been there to protect you.
THEA Yes, you should have.
MANZINI But if I had gone along, we would have been called upon to perform, and how could we have said no.
THEA And saying no is not the strongest element in our characters.
MANZINI We are not of the nay-saying variety.
THEA While we are on the subject, did you seduce that young reporter….Helena…What was her name?
MANZINI Michaelides. How willing you are to block out names.
THEA How willing you are to let them in. Well, did you?
MANZINI I did not. Otherwise you would not have found me here, would you?
THEA What went wrong? You had enough facts to impress her with your occult powers.
MANZINI Nothing went wrong. Why must everything have to happen overnight?
THEA Because everything in life does happen overnight. Your seductions must be losing some of their qualities around the edges. What story did you tell her about losing your eye. Did you lose it in a duel, this time? Or, fighting for the resistance?
MANZINI Oliver Twist.
THEA That's the problem. You should have chosen a more heroic tale.
MANZINI Modern women are not impressed by heroism, Thea.
THEA They should be. Everyone should be impressed by heroism.
MANZINI It has so completely vanished from the modern world, that no one would recognize true heroism anymore…It's just another brand of public-relations.
THEA Spare us. I know what you're thinking before you say it.
MANZINI You went by the hotel, yes?
THEA I said I did.
MANZINI Did you check for messages?
THEA I always do. You were expecting a billet-doux from your latest conquest?
MANZINI There was no conquest. There was hardly a climb up the mountain.
THEA How sad.
MANZINI Sad? What's sad about it?
THEA It distorts the focus of your life.
MANZINI And what should I focus upon? You?
THEA You could do worse.
MANZINI I have done worse.
THEA Besides it is me, no matter how many times you deny it.
MANZINI I deny it.
THEA Your black socks are on top of the dresser.
MANZINI Of course they are. I know where they are.
THEA You were standing there wondering what you had done with them.
MANZINI I was standing there wondering where I mislaid my whole goddamn life. Can you locate that, using all your marvelous powers?
THEA (Quoting Themelis) "Outside of us things die."
MANZINI Screw Themelis. Inside of us, things dies also. That's where all the cunning deaths appear. Inside us. Inside.
THEA "No matter where you walk at night you hear Something like a whisper coming outOf streets you have never walked upon."
MANZINI It's a new world now. Poetry does not stitch up the wounds anymore.
THEA Have I wounded you again. You don't go to parties with me…
MANZINI Because all your friends discuss is politics.
THEA You don't go because you want your own air to breathe. That's what you were really thinking.
MANZINI Yes, that's what I was really thinking. As you so well know, you who know my own thoughts better than I do.
THEA So breathe, my love, breathe. Thrust your head out the window and draw in great gulps, draughts of free air.
MANZINI I breathe by thinking. That's what you have taken from me.
THEA And when I came in here a moment ago, you were dreaming.
MANZINI Yes, I was dreaming. I breathe by dreaming. In that I am like your countrymen.
THEA You were in a small room with Helena.
MANZINI Helena?
THEA Your journalist.
MANZINI I had forgotten her name.
THEA I give her name back to you. Take it. It is free of charge.
MANZINI And what was I doing in this small room, of which I have no memory. My memory is going.
THEA You slipped on three code words.
MANZINI We shall rehearse. Tomorrow. First thing.
THEA You had made love to Helena, and you were starting out the door just as I was coming in, and we collided, and you knocked me backwards. I lost my balance and I went tumbling down a long flight of stairs. And I was lying there, my neck broken. And you stood at the top of the stairs, weeping.
MANZINI Weeping?
THEA Yes, you were sobbing your entire soul out, devastated that you had lost me, that you had pushed me out of your life.
MANZINI That is what it must mean, obviously.
THEA Obviously.
MANZINI Not even my dreams are my own.
THEA You forget them. I give you back to you.
MANZINI One doesn't enjoy to have one's dream passed through another mind.
THEA Just as I give you this. Thea hands her husband an envelope.
MANZINI What is this?
THEA You asked if I checked for messages at the hotel.
MANZINI You said there were none.
THEA None from Helena. Just this letter from our daughter.
MANZINI Popi?
THEA Unless we have a daughter I know nothing about.
MANZINI I would like one thing in life you know nothing about.
THEA She is fine.
MANZINI How is she?
THEA You remember that woman who lived with her in the hotel?
MANZINI Any news about the Count?
THEA That woman who was living with that imposter called the Count, who was no more a Count than the Pope is Jewish…
MANZINI That too is merely a matter of time.
THEA The Count walked out on her. Popi says that the woman climbed into her bath-tub, drowned her puppy…
MANZINI Not the little puppy….
THEA Drowned the two parrots…
MANZINI Even the parrots?
THEA And then she slashed her wrists.
MANZINI The one that spoke all the naughty words…
THEA The parrot, you mean. The one parrot that spoke the naughty words, thus shocking the other parrot into a kind of vocal paralysis.
MANZINI That parrot knew no bounds of decency.
THEA The Count betrayed her.
MANZINI But why would she kill herself?
THEA Took her jewelry, everything. Walked out the door. But, Harry, if you are going to slash your wrists, why drag down the poor innocent dogs and parrots? It's messy, don't you think?
MANZINI Do I think?
THEA Of course you, Harry. You try anyway.
MANZINI And what does our daughter want from us this time?
THEA She is arriving in just a little while. I have the driver waiting, and I am on the way to the airport to pick her up. You are merely delaying things.
MANZINI Go ahead without me.
THEA I am always going ahead without you. You are always lingering. Holding back.
MANZINI I want out.
THEA It's a free world. Popi will accompany me to Thessaloniki. But of course you want to go home.
MANZINI I want to go home.
THEA But where is home. Where is home? This used to be home. My family, relatives, friends. But you have upset all that.
MANZINI It is my fault. I take full blame.
THEA Of course you do, Harry. Of course you do. I married a martyr.
MANZINI I don't want to hear anymore.
THEA Show us your stigmata, Harry.
MANZINI Would you be quiet for a change? I would like quiet. I would like silence. You with your stories of parrots and counts and politics and spirits. I like sleeping in these chairs, taking refuge into dreams.
THEA Where over and over you push me out the door and down the steps and onto the landing where I lay with my neck broken. Paralyzed forever, except of course that God compensates the broken. I can wander in and out of your thoughts at will.
MANZINI The worse kind of thievery of all.
THEA Not thievery, Harry. Love.
MANZINI How can you call it love?
THEA It is what the human race has longed for. Each one of us wants another person we can be on perfect terms with, whose thoughts we know, whose thoughts we share. But no. Not you. Not you.
MANZINI We long for someone to share our most intimate thoughts with. How true.
THEA It's not two bodies locked - together in the dark. It's two minds locked together in absolute confidence. Trust. No secrets from one another.
MANZINI I have nothing to share with you, because it is all yours to trespass upon. I have no secrets from you. No, none. And the entire world thinks we are a fake.
THEA We do have our code, Harry.
MANZINI In case your mind should go blank. But it never has. It never will. You are afraid of your mind losing its powers, whereas I…I long for my mind to go blank. Completely blank. Then there will be no thoughts for you to read. God, I pray for it!
THEA I shall be like an explorer lost in a great white snowstorm.
MANZINI You shall be like an explorer in a great white snowstorm.
THEA We have our codes and our fiction, like any other marriage.
MANZINI Yes, yes. Our fiction.
THEA How we climbed out of a car crash into show-business history. What a laugh.
MANZINI No one is laughing, Thea.
THEA But it was me lying on the landing paralyzed. But I forgive you, Harry. I really do.
MANZINI Do you?
THEA Of course I do. Do you think I enjoy wandering about your thoughts. I try to blot them out, but they come to me. Just as when we are lying together in the dark, it is your dreams that I dream. I want my own. Don't you think I would want my own?
MANZINI No comment.
THEA Not necessary. Now you are thinking how you would like to walk away from me, walk through that door and never come back. But you always do come back. You go away and come back. What does it matter to me where you are? We have a true marriage. I read your thoughts from afar.
MANZINI I turn the corner and Big Brother is watching me.
THEA Not Big Brother, Harry. Never Big Brother. Not even Sister.
MANZINI It's like escaping from prison.
THEA Is it?
MANZINI One day I shall make it over the wall.
THEA One more conquest, and you think I shall be able to blot Thea from my mind, but when am I ever far from your thoughts?
MANZINI Now. Now. This very instant. I am not thinking of you at all.
THEA Of course not, Harry. Of course not. How paradoxical of you not to think of me and yet to refer to me. You are like the Alchemist….
THEA AND MANZINI (Together) Who must not think of the word Rhinoceros when trying to make gold.
THEA It is a wonderful feeling, Harry, to know that there is one other human being in the world whose mind I know, whose mind I know as well as my own.
MANZINI I suppose it is. But from this side…
THEA Yes, my beloved Harry, we know. It is….
MANZINI Hell.
THEA Well, Harry, I must not keep Popi waiting. The Athens airport is a worse hell than anything you can possibly imagine. You will join us in Thessaloniki on the 28th.
MANZINI We'll see.
THEA Yes, we shall see. With great difficulty, Thea exits. Manzini crosses to one of the chairs, picks up a newspaper and settles down to read.
MANZINI Yes, yes, yes. Tomorrow, we must practice the code my dear. Helena Michaelides appears at the door.
HELENA Harry?
MANZINI (glancing at his watch) Right on time.
HELENA Yes, Harry. I have come to fetch you.
Manzini stands up, holds out his hands toward her. Lights out.

End of play.

 

Oarsman

 

A moody, misty cove with vegetation unknown to man or beast. A light fog shimmers in the early morning light. Two university men (Robert Handley and Camden Morgan – one white, the other black, both of Irish descent) are in a light-weight scull, rowing, rowing, rowing. They wear sweat shirts and shorts. The University  sweat shirts bear the motto: IN VINO VERITAS.

 

ROBERT: Row one, pearl two...row one, pearl two....

 

CAMDEN: Pearl two, row one, Row two, pearl one...

 

Lights up. We see the two men in a small scull. The oars dip and raise in unison.

 

ROBERT: I walked into the men's room this morning and there scribbled upon the walls was spread your labia.…Oh, oh, I thought: Harvard is suffering from  sexual confusion once again...

 

CAMDEN:  Teresias should never have been named Dean of Man…or Women. It causes too many problems.

 

ROBERT:   And then someone had written underneath, in pencil, --wrong restroom, I think….Somewhere on our campus is a person very unsure of himself....herself.

 

CAMDEN: My father insisted I go to an Ivy League University because he believes one finds  a better class of graffiti in the bathrooms....correct spelling, at least.

 

  Cry of gulls overhead.

 

ROBERT: Yes, that's one way to choose a college... If students  can't spell your basic four-letter words correctly, then I say pack it in.

 

CAMDEN: As Socrates said to Phaedrus, the great wisdom of the world can be found scribbled upon bathroom walls….racism, sexual innuendo, phone numbers of the availaible…

 

ROBERT: They didn't have bathrooms in ancient Greece. That's what made them all so philosophical....Hold it! ..Stop rowing...stop!

 

    CAMDEN: What's the matter?

 

ROBERT: Where are we?

 

CAMDEN: On the Charles River at sunrise. Where we've been every morning for the past three weeks, while our fellow classmates wind themselves homeward from a night of fornication or from razoring pages out of reserve books, or just sleeping in their dorms, all snug in their dreams of annuities and golden parachutes, hostile take-overs, the true classic texts of investing in the Corporate good lining their shelves....While we shiver and sweat and break our backs to bring glory to the Dining Club of Crew.

 

ROBERT: So you say. But this  part of the Charles River I have never seen before...Listen...

 

 

  Eeerie fog-like music. Sound of a fog-bell in the distance. Fog.

 

 

CAMDEN: We go with the current or against the current, or with or against the flow of things, but we still go wherever the river goes. Ergo, we are still on the Charles River.  

 

 

ROBERT: How can I believe a  black man named Camden Morgan? What kind of a name is that?

 

CAMDEN: My father named me in honor of a race horse.

 

ROBERT: Your father gives you a horse's name?....Oh ye gods look on. What a man is this! What a paragon of virtue! A poor, naked forked creature ..(in despair)  Where are we?

 

 

In the distance, We hear the sound of men and women screaming out in pain.

 

 

CAMDEN: Perhaps on the fringes of  a bad neighborhood, where the Boston Globe dips daily into its reservoir of human interest...Another crack dealer working his way through his college....one more local family torn asunder by fusion cooking.

 

ROBERT: The fog is getting worse...

 

CAMDEN: Mental fog, yes...But that is what our professors create in us, trying to stomp our imaginations into oblivion with the hob-nailed boots of the advanced degree crying "Death to Albert Schweitzer."

 

ROBERT: Albert Schweitzer is dead... I believe. It's difficult to tell about people who don't appear on television.

 

CAMDEN: Well that just goes to show you.

 

ROBERT: Goes to show me what?

 

CAMDEN: Close your eyes and someone is missing...Where did everybody go?

 

ROBERT: Don't panic. We'll just turn back. Something has gone terribly wrong. I can't even see any other sculls on the river.

 

CAMDEN: Because we are rowing so well, we have left the others behind.

 

ROBERT: No.  We’re not that much better than the others

 

CAMDEN: There has to be an explanation.

 

    ROBERT:  There is...We must be the first crew  in the history of the college to get lost on the         Charles River...It's impossible!

 

CAMDEN: Another F in geography. My family cannot bear it...

 

ROBERT: It will break my mother’s heart…

 

CAMDEN: All those years of subscribing to National Geographic…And for what? So I can get l

     lost in my own backyard.

 

   We hear the Sound of pathetic devilish laughter.

 

ROBERT:

Listen to that pathetic devilish laughter…..

 

CAMDEN: Are you trying to scare me?.... Can we turn back? Let's go home. We've practised enough.

 

ROBERT (panicked): I don't know where home is! …It’s beginning to smell foul….rank..Perhaps we have entered a cove where Red Sox fans come each Fall to drown themselves…Can you smell it? The smell of decay?

 

CAMDEN: The Charles is only a little river. It doesn't rank with the Amazon or the Nile or even Kilimanjaro!

 

ROBERT: Kilimanjaro is not a river.

 

CAMDEN: Ah! Now you see the justice of my flunking geography. A mountain or a river-- it all comes out the same on the final exams!  Besides what is geography to a black man? The world is divided into two simple hemispheres, into those that have work and those that don't; into those that are given a chance, and those who aren't. That's the true geography of the human race and all the rest is propaganda.

 

WE HEAR MYSTERIOUS MUSIC. FOG HORN SOUNDS.. CARRYING A LONG WOODEN OAR AND LIT LANTERN, A SMALL, WHITE-HAIRED MAN (CHARON) MANIFESTS HIMSELF OUT OF THE MIST.  WITH EYES BURNING LIKE COALS, HE STANDS ON THE NEAR SHORE.

 

ROBERT: I am feeling terribly chilled all of a sudden, and it was suppose to be warm today.

 

CAMDEN: Who is that old man standing on the shore?

 

ROBERT: What old man?

 

CAMDEN: There on the shore.  The one with the long white beard and the foul-smelling rags.

 

CHARON: How refreshing to see people coming here in their own boat. It gets to be too much of a burden upon me to have to provide all the transportation.... Without government subsidies, even the Ferry Boat of the Dead will have to curtail its services.

 

CAMDEN: Yes. Who is he?

 

ROBERT: Who is he? From your misanthropic tales, I thought he was your father.

 

CAMDEN: He's not my father. My father's dead.

 

ROBERT: Dead?

 

CAMDEN: From a stroke. Not a rowing stroke, of course...And he would never go outside looking like that. Gotta comb your hair, he would say. Comb your hair. Look good. People always judge you on first impressions.

 

CHARON (CALLING TO THE OARSMEN):   Row toward the far shore.....It's getting late!

 

ROBERT: Late? We haven’t even had breakfast.

 

WE HEAR IN THE DISTANCE SOME FAINT MOANS.

 

CHARON: You can row across the Acheron and I shall join you on the other side.

 

ROBERT: Who are you?

 

CHARON: My name is Charon. Who are you?

 

ROBERT: My name is Robert Handley and my friend here is Camden Morgan. He's named after a race horse.

 

   CAMDEN: Robert,I told you that in strictest confidence! You don't have to tell everybody! Just because I'm a philosophy major, don't you think I have feeings?

 

CHARON: After you cross the river, we can break up your boat and burn it for firewood.

 

ROBERT: We can't do that!  The boat belongs to Harvard. The University has all sorts of rules about destroying school property.

 

CHARON: As you wish. You can set it adrift, if you prefer. Now let's see how fast you can row across the River of the Dead.

 

ROBERT: Right!...Row one, row two...

 

ROBERT AND CAMDEN START ROWING.

 

ROBERT: Wait a minute! What river did he say?

 

CAMDEN: I think he said the River of the Dead.

 

ROBERT:  Wait a minute, old man! Come back. What river did you say we were on?

 

CHARON: The river of the dead.

 

ROBERT AND CAMDEN ROW  TOWARD CHARON. CHARON WADES OUTTO GREET THEM.

 

ROBERT: No. No way....Cambridge has strict zoning laws. You can't put in rivers willy-nilly. What happened to the Charles?

 

CHARON: You left that river a long time ago.

 

ROBERT: But it's only eight o'clock in the morning. It can’t be that long ago.

 

CHARON: You keep speak as if Time matters.

 

 

 

ROBERT: Of course Time matters!..Three tardies equals one absence.,,, Look, sir, Somehow we've lost our way and we're going to be late for class....Now, please go away and leave us alone!

 

CHARON: Why are you so upset?

 

CAMDEN: He has a test in biology this morning.

 

CHARON: Yes, I think he does....But bear up. Where you're going, everybody gets a gentleman's C..

 

CAMDEN: And I have a quiz on the  Phaedrus by Plato. Have you ever read it?

 

CHARON: No, but I can take you to the author himself.... The horse's mouth, as it were.

 

CAMDEN: The author himself...That's very nice of you, but my professor might consider it cheating. I'm suppose to come to my own conclusions...Now stop teasing. Where are we?

 

CHARON: I keep telling you! Why don't you listen?...I'm sorry. I must sound like one of your college professors.

 

CAMDEN: That's all right, sir. We're used to it.

 

ROBERT: If I miss my biology test, I'll flunk.

 

CHARON: Don't tell me undergraduates are still dissecting frogs? They did that in my day. And in my day frogs were primitive...Barely evolved...They looked a lot like liberals.

 

ROBERT: Harvard's more advanced now. Today we were going to dissect one of the Kennedy's.

 

   CHARON: Enough! This is the River of Death. Just row straight across it and get what's coming to you.

 

CAMDEN: The river of death! ...Oh I get it. Is this part of some kind of fraternity initiation. A joke?

 

ROBERT: A form of hazing?

 

 

  SOUNDS OF MOANING AND GROANING, FROM OFFSTAGE, INCREASE.

 

 

CHARON: If you prefer, you can take my own boat, but I think you'll find it crowded and sweaty...Filled to the brink with victims of tornadoes and earthquakes from countries most of you who are privileged don't even think about.

 

ROBERT: My friend's flunking geography. Not me!...

 

CAMDEN: Can we see a map?..Where did we go wrong? I mean Robert and I were just rowing straight ahead....

 

CHARON: You didn't go wrong...It was just one of those things.

 

CAMDEN: How can you say that?  Falling in love is just one of those things... Dying isn't just one of those things. It's the end-all and be-all.... The Rap-sheet of heavy breathing.

 

ROBERT: The final exam to end all final exams....Oh God! My biology teacher is going to feed me to the piranha.

 

ACHERON: Don't make of this encounter more than it is....Look, I'm an old man. I'll just sit here on the bank and I'll wait for the shock to wear off.  I understand it's not easy.  Universities  prepare you for taking a job in the corporate world, but not for encounters with Eternity.....

 

CAMDEN: Unprepared? I'm not unprepared! I've got a copy of Phaedrus with me.

 

CHARON: Screw Plato.

 

ROBERT: That's one way to destroy the essence of a Platonic relationship.

 

CHARON: Don't mind me. I'll just sit here on the riverbank and have me lunch.

 

CAMDEN: Screw Plato? And you call yourself a man of wisdom?

 

CHARON: I don't call myself a man of wisdom. You called me a man of wisdom.

 

CAMDEN: But you have a white beard!

 

CHARON: Yes...well Mother Theresa has sex organs too..but that need not make her a nymphomaniac.... Like you, I am merely an oarsman.

 

ROBERT: sex organs?...I knew it was a prophetic message in the bathroom...It wasn't just writing on the wall....Admit it! You put it there. It was your way of saying:” Don't go rowing on the Charles this morning.”  A warning.  What irony for the publish and perish trade. Every scribbled illiteracy in out of the way places can turn out to be a warning from another world.

 

CHARON : The world is filled with other worlds, but I didn't do it. Write on a wall, that is. I have better things to do.

 

ROBERT (crying):  I'm too young to die....

 

CHARON: That's what they all say.

 

ROBERT (crying)  My tuition is all paid up and everything.

 

CAMDEN: What about me? I'm young too!

 

ROBERT: And I have a date for Saturday night...With a Radcliff girl...Can't you just let me  get laid, and then come back?

 

CHARON: Sex doesn't matter anymore.

 

ROBERT: Don't say that!.....Please don't say that. God!  Sex doesn’t matter anymore – that must be the most frightening phrase in the English language. Look at me. My hands are trembling so much, I can hardly hold the oars....

 

CHARON: It's not as if you are going against the tide.

 

ROBERT: Death is worse than I imagined.

 

CAMDEN: Wait a minute! If Robert and I are dead, how did we die?

 

CHARON: I don't know. They'll think of something...They always do.

 

ROBERT: They? Who's they?

 

CHARON: They? The administration, I guess.

 

ROBERT: I knew it! Every time something goes wrong it's because of administration.

 

CHARON: The best way to think of death is to think of it as exchanging one bureaucracy for another.

 

ROBERT: But I'm not thinking about death. I'm thinking about Friday night....

 

CHARON: Suit yourself.

 

ROBERT: I'm a Harvard man. Harvard men don't die!

 

CHARON: No?  What do they do?

 

ROBERT: We go on to better things!....

 

    CAMDEN: My father told me not to go out for rowing....But did I listen to him? Oh no.... And now I'm getting a varsity letter in Extinction?... 

 

ROBERT: Come on, Camden. Start rowing. We're going back, wherever back is....(To

   CHARON) It was nice talking to you, Sir.

 

CHARON: The name is Charon.

 

CAMDEN: I knew it.

 

 ROBERT: Yes...well, Mr. Charon,  rowing across the River of Death might be all right for people from Princeton or places like that, but my friend and I have other places to go... (To Camden)   Camden, head for that rock over there..

 

WE HEAR THE SOUND OF A HUGE AND A HEAVY GATE CRASHING SHUT.

 

ROBERT: What was that?

 

CHARON: Just a huge gate crashing shut, a golden gate, infinite in width, infinite in height, infinite in depth, to cut off any escape....

 

ROBERT: You have gates of infinite size?....That's not fair.

 

CHARON: Fair? You want the Universe to be fair? You’re talking  like a sophomore.

 

ROBERT: I am a sophomore.

 

CAMDEN: I bet you have more than a golden gate to intimidate the unshaved masses,

 

CHARON: Oh yes. They have all matter of devices to keep order.

 

ROBERT: Whips?

 

CHARON (MATTER OF FACTLY): Whips.

 

ROBERT: Boiling oil?

 

CHARON (MATTER OF FACTLY): Boiling oil.

 

ROBERT: Man-eating, giant scorpions?

 

CAMDEN (shouts) : Stop giving him ideas! Let them think of their own torture.

 

CHARON (MATTER OF FACTLY): We hadn't thought of  giant scorpions. Let me make a note of that for future reference.

 

ROBERT: I read it in a book somewhere. Science Fiction, I believe.

 

CAMDEN: See, I told you. You’re helping out the enemy.

 

CHARON: Oh, I'm like most college students, I don't need ideas to survive.   I was merely    explaining that you two can't row into my river and then turn around and row back . You can't wade out.. You can't swim out...

 

ROBERT: Swimming? Why didn't I think of that? (Stands up in the scull)  Come on, Camden, we're going to swim for it.

 

CAMDEN: Swim in the River of Death?...You make it sound like a summer at Cannes.

 

ROBERT: You have a better idea?

 

CAMDEN: Sit down You're rocking the boat.

 

ROBERT: Sit down, you're rocking the boat! Boy, wouldn't that make a great title for a musical comedy song. (He takes off his sweat shirt)

 

CHARON: I wouldn't dive into that water if I were you.

 

ROBERT: Why not?

 

CHARON: Because it is filled with  man-eating crocodiles, man-eating sharks, and an infinite number of piranha fish.

 

ROBERT: Hah!

 

CHARON: What do you mean Hah!

 

ROBERT: If there were an infinite number of piranha in there, they would eat all the sharks and crocodiles...That's only logical.

 

   CHARON:   Logic is for amateurs.

 

    ROBERT:  Right. But escaping from the jaws of death is for professionals.

 

    CHARON:  All right! Do what you want....I'll just throw some fresh blood in the water to make it more lively.

 

      ROBERT: Come on, Camden. Take your shirt off.

 

CAMDEN: I'm not swimming in the River of Death. It may be polluted and everything. You swim in water like that and you come down with inner ear infections  everytime....

 

ROBERT: How do you know?

 

CHARON PRODUCES A HOSPITAL BAG OF BLOOD AND EMPTIES IT INTO THE FOUL-SMELLING STYX.  WE HEAR A GREAT COMMOTION IN WATER. THRASHING OF FINS.

 

CAMDEN: Remember the movie Summertime? I read about Katharine Hepburn falling into one of the canals in Venice and she had a terrible time....Pink-eye, everything......Besides, the old man may be telling the truth about the piranha.

 

ROBERT: Nobody tells the truth about piranha!  Besides there's no such thing as an infinite number of piranha. Do you know how many an infinite number of piranha is?

 

CAMDEN: No.

 

ROBERT: It's a lot! It's more than a lot. We couldn't even  have rowed through them. You can’t have an infinite number of piranha in a finite river.

 

CAMDEN: Maybe math majors know something we don’t….Besides listen to that commotion under the water. Something’s down there..

 

    ROBERT: The old man is just making that up to scare us!

 

CAMDEN: Well, then! He's succeeded! I'm scared out of my mind....Look at that Golden Gate over there! If that exists to block our escape, then the other things might exist too.

 

ROBERT: You call yourself a philosopher? The existence of a gate infinite in height, infinite in width, and infinite in depth, does not prove the existence of piranha...or of man-eating sharks. If you don't believe me, look it up in your Socrates....

 

 

   CAMDEN: The dialogue doesn't have an index...And even if it had, I don't think there would be any listing for piranha. Socrates wasn't interested in such things.

 

ROBERT: Well, he should have been! A book thar doesn't consider the question of a river containing an infinite number of piranha has no right to be considered a classic.

 

IN THE DISTANCE, A GREAT BELL TOLLS. OH DO NOT BOTHER TOASK FOR WHOM IT TOLLS ETC.

 

ARCHON: Boys, boys, boys...I don't have all day.

 

ROBERT: This from an old man who insists time doesn’t matter.

 

ARCHON: Your time doesn’t matter: I’m on a hourly wage.

 

ROBERT: But Camden and I have our whole lives ahead of us!

 

CHARON CONSULTS HIS HOUR GLASS.

 

CHARON:  Thomas Aquinas is holding a beer party soon...Do you want to make it or not?

 

ROBERT: No!

 

CHARON: No?...How about the opening of a new film, starring Marilyn Monroe...Directed by Orson Welles....Edited by Eisenstein...

 

ROBERT: No!

 

CAMDEN: Wait a minute! Don't I have any say in this?

 

ROBERT: Just sit tight..

 

THE SKY OVER THE RIVER TURNS A BRIGHT RED.

 

CAMDEN: But A beer party is a beer party.

 

   ROBERT: Forget it! ..We're not going to cross the River of the Dead for a six pack. Not now...Not ever. I'm only 2l years old and I am not going to be pushed around by some old geezer with an oar and a lantern.

 

CHARON: Do as you please....Call me if you get bored.

 

CAMDEN: Bored? I don't get bored. Boredom is for people much more sophisticated than I am.

 

 SOUND OF A SHIP'S BELL.

 

CHARON: You hear that bell? It's the Ferry Boat... If you need me, I shall be where the moaning and gnashing of teeth can be heard... Souls pleading for God's mercy, God's judgment. Just row downstream....

 

ROBERT (with sarcasm):  Right! We're really going to come to you!

 

CHARON: Everyone does....Eventually.

 

ROBERT: But we have our own boat. Are you forgetting that?

 

CHARON: What good will it do you?

 

ROBERT: My friend and I can keep in shape...We can row back and forth, back and forth...between the Golden Gate...and this cove....

 

CAMDEN: A new Marilyn Monroe movie directed by Orson Welles is beginning to sound pretty good to me. It might have nudity.

 

ROBERT: It’s by Orson Welles. Every scene will be so dark you won’t be able to see anything.

 

CHARON: Don't be so obstinate! Think of this experience as just another course. You registered for 3 credits in Life, and half-way through the course, you decided to drop out , because you couldn't keep up with the assignments.

 

ROBERT: Assignments? What assignments? Didn't you ever hear of the Doctrine of Free Will?

 

 

    CHARON: Like my friend Socrates, I was merely arguing by means of Analogy.

 

ROBERT: You mean there is something analogous to death?

 

CHARON: I take it you have never attended a one-act play festival?

 

ROBERT: We shall never cross the River of Death. Never! Camden and I shall row back and forth, back and forth. We'll be in splendid shape.

 

CHARON: Ah yes! But in splendid shape for what?

 

ROBERT: That was cruel...cruel....

 

CHARON: Take your time. Save your strength. I'll be back for you later.

 

CHARON DISAPPEARS INTO THE FOG.

 

CAMDEN (calls after Charon) :But, Mr. Charon, how do I know if I'm dead or not?...

 

ROBERT: Feel your pulse.

 

CAMDEN: I don't have a pulse.

 

ROBERT: Me neither. Do you feel hungry?

 

CAMDEN: No.

 

ROBERT: Me neither...Thirsty?

 

CAMDEN: No.

 

ROBERT: Me neither...Do you have to go to the bathroom?

 

CAMDEN: You are really obsessed with bathrooms his morning.

 

ROBERT: Basically, life comes down to plumbing, so just answer the question.

 

CAMDEN: No. I don't feel anything. Not hot. Not cold....

 

ROBERT: Me neither.

 

PAUSE. THEN WE HEAR THE WASTELAND CRY OF GULLS.

 

ROBERT: Well, no sense feeling sorry for ourselves....Let's start rowing.

 

CAMDEN: You're kidding, right?

 

ROBERT: About what?

 

CAMDEN: About rowing back forth between here and the gate ...Forever? And ever?...And ever?

 

ROBERT: How is it different from real life?

 

CAMDEN: Going back and forth, forth and back on a futile mission is no different than real life?

 

ROBERT: Not if you think about it....Oh, sure, there may be small variations in details, but  the overall pattern is not unfamiliar.

 

CAMDEN: You're out of your mind!

 

ROBERT: You have a better idea?

 

CAMDEN: Yes! Let's do as Mr. Charon advises...Let's not make waves.

 

ROBERT: If we are not going to make waves, why are we in the water?

 

CAMDEN: We're not in the water, we're on the water!

 

ROBERT: Same difference. God only loves us when we make waves...

 

CAMDEN: Yes, right. Perhaps you have a direct line to him that I don't. I say we should give in gracefully to the inevitable.

 

ROBERT: Spoken like a true undergraduate.

 

CAMDEN: If I sit here too long, I'm going to get splinters.

 

ROBERT: No,  we shall row and read. Read to me from Phaedrus. Then I shall read to you....And we shall row, row, row our craft gently down the stream.

 

CAMDEN: Life if just a dream, is it?

 

ROBERT: It's not a concatenation of song lyrics.

 

CAMDEN:  O.K. I'll read, I'll read, I'll read...just in case we can slip through the Golden Gate and I have to take a test.

 

ROBERT: The passengers on Charon's Ferry Boat will lean over the railing and discuss us with envy.

 

WE HEAR THE SOUND OF A FERRY BOAT. THE SKY OVERHEAD HAS BEEN CHANGING COLORS. NOW IT IS A BRILLIANT ORANGE-GREEN FLAME.

 

ROBERT: Here comes the Ferry now.

 

CAMDEN: They'll laugh at us.

 

WE HEAR DISTANT PARTY SOUNDS. THE THOMAS AQUINAS BEER PARTY?

 

  ROBERT: Let them laugh. Soon they will all be laughing out of the other side of their mouths. All my life I have obeyed the rules, and where has it got me? Now let us, after death, break all the rules, thrust our oars into the face of eternity, and send heaven into a tizzy.

 

CAMDEN: Oh my God! Allowing you to indulge in varsity sports is a travesty!

 

ROBERT: Row one, pearl two.....Row one, pearl two. Let's put our backs to it.

 

CAMDEN: Over the years, Harvard has definitely been lowering its standards.

 

ROBERT: Read to me.  Caught as we are between the finite and the Eternal, Let us pass the time the best way we can. The others are officially enrolled in a semester of Death. We are not.

We’re not signing up for that course yet.

 

  WE HEAR MOANING AND GROANING..

 

CAMDEN: I bet the administration is going to be surprised. They probably didn’t think it was an elective.

 

ROBERT: We haven’t satisfied all the pre-requisites.

 

   CAMDEN:  I bet biology is one of them. (reads): "Oh my dear, Phaedrus, where are you going, and where have you come from?"

 

ROBERT: What a paradox it is!

 

CAMDEN: What?

 

ROBERT: How that Golden Gate shines in a place without sunlight!

 

A FAINT REDDISH  GLOW  IN  THE DISTANCE. THE SOUNDS OF WAILING AND GNASHING. ATONAL MUSIC.