eNewsletter Moon Palace - Paul Auster
2005
MOON PALACE
Adapted from Paul Auster’s novel by
Paul Stebbings & Phil Smith
for TNT theatre and ADGE
paul@tnt-theatre.net
Set: to one side a rostrum from the back of which rises a diagonal cloth up towards the flies. In this cloth there is a hole, of distorted angles, representing grave, cave, door etc. dark and black within. A ramp from behind leads though this grave entrance to the level of the rostrum. Maybe text can appear on the cloth, by using UV paint/lights, etc. The cloth can change colour for different scenes – green for central park and the cemetery, red for the canyons of the West, etc. Behind the cloth there is a small A frame ladder and a large A frame ladder, with a plank bridging the two, enabling a performer to appear above the cloth. A moon shape is hung – which by lights in it or some other device can read Moon Palace. Upstage of the cloth and on the other side of the stage – a collection of abstract shapes – cylinders, boxes, etc. – form the New York skyline, but can be disassembled to make a trash can, a horse, etc.
(Or possibly the cloth could be extended across the stage with a cloth New York skyline rough enough to double for the desert valley landscape for Effing/Barber’s trip. And then using crates – supposedly full of books but only one actually so - in front of the cloth to create all the furniture, shapes, tables as required).
[START SFX 1: MOON LANDING. CURTAIN UP – FOUR MASKED FIGURES STANDING ON STAGE]
Two tombstones next to the grave opening. MS is standing by the hole that is now a grave – music/song, a Jewish lament, a rabbi intones a Hebrew prayer. Maybe MS and Rabbi approaching the grave.).
MS: I always dreamt of finding a father one day. I never thought it could happen.
RABBI: You’re not Jewish, are you?
MS: My mother is, that’s her grave there.
RABBI: But not this man?
MS: I don’t think he was anything. He was my…father … I suppose. [END SFX 1]
RABBI: You are a very disturbed young man, you should see a doctor. (Presses hand and exits).
MS: (Talking to the grave.) [START SFX 2] You lied to me, Dad. You want me to feel sorry for you? Me? Feel sorry for you? Well what about me? What about me, you fucking elephant! (Screams at grave.) Say something, you big bag of guts, or I’ll smash your mouth! [END SFX 2] (Almost climbing into the grave to strike the coffin.) I bury my father in the grave that was meant for me. [START SFX 3] If there is any man in the world I could choose for my father it would be you, Pops. I can’t hate you… ! O, Dad, you’re my best friend. I do love you. Why didn’t you talk to me when you were alive inside your big fat flabby skin? ( He walks away from the grave – music, stylised anguish then he returns to the grave and sits beside drawn back by the gentle impulse rather than the rage). OK, OK. This is me, Dad. This is how I got here to sit beside your grave. This is my walk on the moon. How did I do it? How did I make it through all them craters and with no air? Coincidence. Or Fate. If there is any such thing.
(He walks over to the furniture made out of cases and, as he talks, searches for food among the cases. Finally finds a dried crust and tries to chew on it. He takes the unchewable crust from his mouth. Takes a book and tears out a page and chews it. Looking at the book as he speaks.)
MS: You should be real proud of your son, Dad. A recent graduate of Columbia University! And a psycho. Crazy and broke because I wanted to be both. I stopped buying food. Only nourishment I get is from dead Uncle Victor’s books. I never go out. I just stare at the neon sign of the Chinese restaurant across the street and drink Bourbon till my wallet runs dry. Shit Dad! I want to be different but I’m just being young in a different way. I want to be poor, I want to be hungry. I invent countless reasons but in the end it boils down to despair. I want to spit on the world. I’ve decided the best thing I can do is nothing. I’ll turn my life into a mystic work of art. I’ll teach myself to savour the taste of my own death. Darkness has seduced me, the darkness of total eclipse. The moon will block out the sun and in that moment I’ll vanish. I will be dead without a dime. [END SFX 3]
(Knocking on a door).
VOICE: Mr Fogg? Mr Fogg!
MS: Yes, that’s me.
VOICE: The rent, Mr Fogg, the rent is due.
MS: Yeh, next week, I’ll truly have it for you next week, man.
VOICE: Yes, see, that’s what you said last week, Mr Fogg. You’re out on the street, buddy, unless you come up with thirty bucks by tomorrow.
MS: Yes, Sir, I know, Sir. Yes, Sir. It’s not a problem.
VOICE: No rent and there will be, Mr Fogg. OK, you bin warned.
MS: Yes, Sir, sure, Sir, right, Sir. (To himself.) Shit. [START SFX 4] (Turns out pockets). Fifty cents. Aw, Uncle Victor… I sold all your books. [END SFX 4]There must have been a thousand here. Aw, Jesus. One book. No clothes but this stinking Mets shirt, your pants, Uncle Victor, and no furniture – total possessions: one old clarinet. (To the clarinet.) [START SFX 5] It’s my family, now, Uncle Victor’s clarinet. (Blows it, squeaky noise.) I always liked baseball more. (To clarinet.) I can’t sell you ‘cos it’s all I got left of a family I never had. The truth only comes out when you have nothing, when you do nothing, when you become nothing… [END SFX 5]
(Clarinet music. This could be a theme that always stands for the absence of a father.)
VOICE: Thirty dollars, Mr Fogg! By tomorrow!
MS: OK, OK, you fuck!! I got no family, no things, no nothing, do you hear!! I got to get out of this place, got to think about this! Got to find the wisdom!! [START SFX 6]
(MS bursts out of room.
Music and noise of night-time New York, sudden garish lights, steam rising from manhole covers, people moving and dancing by, the Statue of Liberty picks him up and waltzes him around – hippies, bankers, different races and calls, different areas, a momentary flash of Chinatown which then dissolves into Wall Street, then Harlem – every time he looks up, he sees the Moon Palace Restaurant light illuminated… fighting his way towards it, but he is always swept up by the passers-by and can never make his way to it - jazz and heavy rock. 1969. But as each passer-by picks him up they as soon fling him down again.)
MS: Freak! Hey… let her go… Stop it! Stop!!
(He ends up dancing with a trashcan, the music stops and he rummages through the trash can and finds a stale crust of a pizza. He wolfs it down. Then despairs.)
MS: Somebody help me! I’m dying!! Jesus Christ!! (Sees a house.) Bobby? Hey, is that your place, Bobby? (Now knocking on door). Bobby? Please be home!! Bobby! Please God be at home. [END SFX 6] (He is hugging the trash can. A breakfast party Guest appears. Meanwhile Kitty and another guest make a table from the cases and load it with plates of food.)
GUEST 1: Hi, I’m Brian. You a friend of Kitty’s?
MS: No, Bobby, man. I’ve been looking for him for days, I been leaving notes under the door… Bobby! Bobby!
GUEST 1: Cool it, man. Bobby’s gone to Chicago.
MS falls over.
GUEST 1: Hey buddy, you okay?
MS: I’m so hungry.
GUEST 1: Hey, Kitty! [START SFX 7]
(Kitty dances forward. She wears an identical Mets shirt and similar trousers.)
KITTY: (dancing to him) [END SFX 7] Hey folks, meet my long lost twin brother! What’s your name?
MS: MS. As in manuscript.
(MS’s eyes pop out at the sight of all the food on the table.)
GUEST 1: Well, join in the fun, Mister Manuscript! This was a house warmin’ party, but it’s Kitty who’s hot!
MS eats ravenously. Music which is slow but orgiastic, the four eat, pour drinks (beers?) and laugh and flirt but in slow time as MS finds it hard to distinguish between hallucination and reality – MS is bolting his food down so quickly that the others stop eating and watch him, fascinated.)
GUEST 1: Hey, man, are you hungry or what!!
MS: Starving, starving myself to the edge of death. Like the Buddha. Like a hermit monk who seeks wisdom through hunger. But I’m weak and I like hotdogs.
GUEST 1: Well, I’ll take hotdogs before wisdom!
MS: No, both wisdom and hotdogs!
KITTY: He’s cool. Eat, brother.
(Kitty feeds MS, like a mother would a child.)
Guest 1: (Raising bottle of beer.) Here’s to Kitty’s house here on Earth and to our American heroes walking on the Moon! You know it’s a great thing to spend a billion dollars to walk around on a rock, where you can’t even get a beer! (Kitty puts salad bowl on head and mimes moon walk, MS puts a pan on his head they mock moon walk as a guest speaks into a can imitating the beeps and commentary. Moon lighting – so the cloth seems like a moonscape. Kitty and MS bump into each other and collapse in slow motion).
ALL: (toast) : “To the moon!
MS: To the moon!!
(Goes into moonwalk mime.)
GUEST 2: Anything to report, Apollo?
GUEST 1: It seems everything is just fine up here on the moon, mission control! Hey, wait... it seems… we’re about… on no… we’re about to be hit by an asteroid!!
MS: I’ve landed!
GUEST 1: Yeh, man – Kitty too!
GUEST 1: Aw come on, guys, we know no one landed on the Moon. It’s a CIA hoax, they made all those pictures in a TV studio, they want to take our minds off of Vietnam!
GUEST 2: Yeah, it’s some rinky-dink bullshit filmed in a Hollywood studio!
KITTY: Can they do that? Fake it? Men on the moon?
GUEST 2: It’s just another bullshit movie!
(Bangs bottle down on the table.)
MS: No! No, no, no! Now you just stop right there, man! Men have been going to the moon for hundreds… thousands of years!
KITTY: Who has?
MS: Lots of people, Kitty, it’s literature: Lucian, Godwin, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells – they all went!
KITTY: No real people?
MS: What about Cyrano de Bergerac – huh? Wasn’t he a soldier, a poet and a syphilitic philosopher? And what a nose, man! According to him the moon is just like here, and when you stand on the moon the earth looks just like there. (MS acting out a lot of Cyrano’s description.) The moon folk are eighteen feet tall, they speak forty seven languages, and none of them have any words! They eat all their food by smelling, the only legal currency is poetry, and the worst crime you can commit is….virginity!
GUEST 2: Amen!
GUEST 1: You better watch out, Kitty.
KITTY: Virgin, my ass. Go on. We’re hungry to know more!
MS: Well, kids have to be rude to their parents. There are books that talk, cities that travel and the longer your nose is the better for you. Cos men with little ones are castrated.
GUESTS: Oooh.
MS: Instead of swords on their belts, the men wear big bronze dildos. (MS mimes an erotic sword fight with an invisible dildo, leaping about and waving it at Kitty.) Ain’t it better than death!! (He dances up to Kitty – all clapping MS on, but he suddenly staggers and pulls back, almost fainting. Kitty jumping up to help him.) I have to go. Urgent business calls me away, my friends! You are dear, good people, and I promise to remember you forever.
(MS frees himself from Kitty and starts to go – but Kitty rushes to him and cuts him off).
KITTY: You’re a strange brother. You look like a man but then you turn yourself into a wolf. It’s all mouths for you, isn’t it? First the food, then the words. But you are forgetting the best thing that mouths are made for. I’m your sister and I’m not letting you leave before you kiss me good bye. (They kiss [START SFX 8] and MS stumbles backwards thru’ the “door”).
MS: This is like a dream…
(MS starts to speak but Kitty shushes him and MS disappears backwards thru’ the opening, then reappears walking backwards into the street.)
MS: Wow!
(Kitty and Guests clear the table and food as - moon music and a happy /ecstatic MS moonwalks thru’ New York, arriving back at his apartment – tries his keys but they don’t work – [END SFX 8] Landlord appears from the opening, throwing a crate into the street.)
LL: Jesus Christ, you still here?
MS: I abide here.
LL: Your name Ponce?
MS: No, its Fogg, you know its Fogg.
LL: Well, a guy named Ponce is renting this place now. (Throwing out another crate and an empty bourbon bottle.) Jeez, look at the state you left it in! More like a coffin than an apartment. Well, you’re gone, Son. You’re out on your ass.
MS: Hey, look man, I was gonna do the place up but my designer’s been on vacation. Bird’s egg blue we were plannin’ on? Huh? But then would that shade of blue match the tiles in the bathroom, what d’you think?
LL: I think you’re fuckin’nutz!
MS: You don’t like Bird’s egg blue?
LL: Think you’re a smart college boy, eh? Let me tell yuh something- you got some bad kinda problem.
MS: No problem, man, a few financial setbacks. The stock market’s been down lately.
LL: You need money you got to work for it, not sit around all day on your ass like some chimp at the zoo. How you gonna pay rent if you don’t have a job?
MS: But I do have a job. I get up in the morning.
LL: You get up in the morning!
MS: Then I see if I can make it through another day. That’s full time work, no coffee breaks, no week ends, no vacations. But the money’s pretty low.
LL: You sound like a screw up to me. A smart college boy screw up.
MS: College ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
LL: You know - if I was you I’d see a Doctor. Everybody’s gone crazy! If you wanna know what I think it’s all them rockets and things they keep shootin’ into space. You send people to the moon and something’s gotta give. You can’t mess with the sky and expect nothing to happen.
MS: Like what?
LL: Like you getting’ thrown out of this apartment. What about that? Now git! And you can take your shit with you! (Throws books at MS.)
MS: Hey! (Dodging.) And what about my clarinet?
LL: Is that what it is. (Hands MS the clarinet.) You a musician, then?
MS: Yes. (Blows clarinet horribly). No. It’s my inheritance. All I got in the world. It’s worth a fortune?
LL: Really? (Holds his hand for the clarinet.)
MS: Only to me, pal, only to me. (Makes mad noise).
LL: Jesus, will you shut the fuck up with that thing!! You crazy college kid, go shoot to the moon! Out! Vamoose!!
(Landlord throws a last book at MS.)
LL: I said get the hell out of here!!
(Music as MS moonwalks across the stage, thru’ the streets of NY.)
KITTY: (knocks) Hi?
LL: (Appearing.) I thought I told you to git, screwball… o – sorry, Miss, I thought you were -
KITTY: MS? I’m looking for a young guy, the tenant. MS.
LL: Mr Fogg, if that’s who you mean, is presently out on his ass. You can try the monkey house down at the zoo? Or the park benches.
KITTY: But he’s my brother!
(Looks at Kitty hard.)
LL: Brother! (Looking up to the sky.) Crazy fucking spacemen.
(He exits.)
KITTY: Hey, hey! (Hammering on the door.) He’s in danger! I know! (then to herself.) I’ve never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life…
(She goes.)
MS: If only she’d come by five minutes earlier but she didn’t. The miracle is she came by at all. All I can see is the edge of a great cliff and I gotta jump. I’m nothing, just a dead man falling head first into hell. [START SFX 9]
(Falling music. Then a dollar bill flutters down from the flies.) [END SFX 9]
MS: (Picking it up.) Oh my God! A ten dollar bill! [START SFX 10] This is a sign, man. If you make yourself ready for luck then luck will find you. This is one profound event, my brother! (Shouting to passers-by who walk by ignoring here.) A miracle! A miracle!! Open yourselves like I have and good things will come to you!! Listen to me, empty yours souls, make your souls empty and good fortune will fill you up!! Listen to me, I am one of the great philosophers, one of the hidden ranks of a great secret society of those who know that man needs nothing. I am undreaming the American Dream.
(MS picks up a piece of discarded food and bites into it. A kid passing by with his mother.)
KIDS: Hey, Mom, look at that funny man . He’s eating garbage! He’s eating trash!
MS: (to Kid) I am not eating garbage. I am challenging the American Way. I am an instrument of spiritual sabotage, the weakest part of the machine. I am dying proof that the American system is a failure. The greedy land is falling apart. Why don’t we let the Indians have it back! [END SFX 10]
(Hobo enters. Eyes MS’s one possession – the music case).
HOBO: What yer got in there? Hey. Mister, what yer got in the case? Wassit worth? A dollar? A dime, dinner add’a diner? (His speech begins to fracture into snippets, a kind of skat over which MS talks).
MS: I don’t have a father but I got a clarinet.
HOBO: You busk with that thing?
MS: Nope, I can’t play it.
HOBO: Why don’t you sell it? I could get you a good price…
MS: Thanks, but no thanks. It’s all I got left. Got given to me by my Uncle. My Mom wanted him to be a father to me, but …anyhow, he played clarinet in a band called The Moon Men. (Blows excruciating notes, but the music picks up on this and turns it into a jazz moon theme.) He gave me all his books before he died, all his wisdom, Victor was his name.
HOBO: Victor, sounds like a loser to me. What’s in a name?
MS: Oh my name is very important to me. MS – Marco Stanley. Born and named after great explorers!
HOBO: You’re late, Mr Marco Polo?
MS: Late?
HOBO: They already discovered Central Park. Bah, what’s in a name? Yeah, man! They called me Felix - that means lucky, yeah? Look at me, man! I’m a bum!
MS: Hey, hey! Having nothing can be OK! I’ve got nothing! And my life is one grand journey!
HOBO: No, man, I can see your life is shit.
MS: No - my life is on the inside.
HOBO: So’s shit.
MS: Yeah. I hadn’t thought of that…are you a mystic?
HOBO: Hell no! (Looking at the clarinet.) Nice instrument.
MS: I’d never sell it.
HOBO: (Shrugs.) How you gonna eat?
MS: I don’t care.
HOBO: You listen to me, now, man. You gotta get practical. I may look like a loser but I’m also a winner. You’re looking at a guy who once made a thousand dollar bet with a gangster named Duke.
MS: What’s in a name!!
HOBO: Yeah, man!! Now that bet was on a horse called Cigarillo, I tell you buddy you should have seen that horse.
MS: For real?
HOBO: Put your hands on your head.
MS: Why?
HOBO: You busy or somethin’. You got a convention you gotta go to?
MS: No…(MS gets up.)
HOBO: Put that thing down. (Puts clarinet down.) Now you bend over. Trust me. Now make like you’re a horse. Like you’re that Cigarillo – just the fastest, meanest, racehorse in all of Kentucky! (MS bends and the Hobo kicks MS in the arse so MS falls over and then the Hobo grabs the clarinet case and runs off).
MS: Hey!
HOBO: (Running back on and hitting MS.) You fuckin’ Commie, go back to Russia, you fuck! Fuckin’ Commie!
(Hobo exits with the clarinet case, running off, leaving MS on the ground.)
MS: Come back, come back! That’s all I got of my folks! It’s all I got! [START SFX 11]
(He slumps and passes out. The lights dim as night falls, first sound of distant thunder, then a big flash of lighting and the sound of immediate thunder and the crash of rain as it begins to bucket down. The rain revives MS, who tries to stand, recoiling from the rain. He stumbles about looking for some shelter. Through the sound of the rain the sounds of rough sex from the cave. Woman: “Harder, harder!” And male voices: “Take this, you bitch!!!” More screams and grunts. MS staggers towards the cave, looking for shelter.)
MS: (To people inside the cave.) Help me! Help me!
(MS is promptly sick into the mouth of the cave.)
WOMAN’S VOICE: (off) Jack, there’s some creep out there.
JACK AND THE OTHER MAN: Whadda fuck?
(Two men in state of partial undress appear dimly – in the lightning flashes - in the mouth of the cave. Jack steps in the sick. Looks at MS who stumbles backwards.)
JACK: You dirty bird!!
MS: Please… Help me.
OTHER MAN: (Raising gun and pointing it at MS.) One more word, asshole, and I’ll give it back to you six times.
(MS backs off, then stands, swaying.)
WOMAN: (Emerging, doing up her clothes.) I can smell his vomit!
JACK: Come on. Let’s get out of this sickbag. [END SFX 11] [START SFX 12]
(The Woman and Jack exit, the Other Man following, walking backwards, covering MS with his gun. When they are gone, MS staggers over to hide in the cave. He hovers, barely in view inside the cave, then slumps to his knees, shaking and shivering.
MS: Before the white man, Manhattan was a forest. There is a spirit in the forest and now that I am dying I am close to understanding. There is a wind and when the wind dies so will I.
The sound of singing as the storm recedes – after the storm the park takes on a sort of hallucinogenic beauty, swirling colours – the city lights glowing – music with a Native American Indian feel, cross referred with New York jazz. Two Native American Indians cross the stage, tracking. Behind them, and part of them is Kitty dressed in a 1960s version of hippy-fied Indian dress, with headdress, or headband and one feather, etc. As the two Native American Indians exeunt, Kitty sees MS kneeling in the cave.) [END SFX 12]
KITTY: MS? Jo mei yeh lei hai yee to? Ai ya, lei yat sun hon. Sor chai.
(She raises him up and they dance a little, then he falls, and she removes her headdress and the lights are up for reality in the Park).
KITTY: O, baby, what were you doin’ in the park? Baby, you’re sweatin’ like a pig. How long you bin’ here?
MS: Forty days and nights …
KITTY: No, MS, no… O, you poor dumb bastard! You’re comin’ home with me.
(Kitty leads him away, laying him down on a bed made from crates, covering his shivering body with a sheet)
KITTY: You acted like a madman, you know! You nearly killed yourself, brother! It was grotesque, unhinged!
MS: I thought I was acting with courage, but it turned out I was just a coward: rejoicing in my contempt for the world - I’m sorry.
KITTY: What did you want?
MS: To be a Saint and wander, godless, through the world doing good works. I believed that.
KITTY: The Saint of Central Park! (She bows down before him like a disciple, gently mocking through movement and dances around him as he speaks, rising unsteadily from his bed.)
MS: Our lives are a series of shocks and accidents. Every day is a struggle to keep our balance. I decided to give up that struggle. Not because I wanted to die but I thought that by abandoning myself to the chaos of this world, it might reveal to me its secret harmony. The point is to accept things as they are, to drift with the flow of the universe.
KITTY: And did you succeed, my sick guru?
MS: Just because I failed doesn’t mean it was wrong to try. If I came close to dying, I believe that I’m a better person for it.
KITTY: I think you were a nicer person before you tried to kill yourself.
MS: Hmm. Why do you always dance?
KITTY: Because it’s in me. And I am in my body. Unlike you, Mister Brain.
MS: Words dance in my head.
KITTY: Why don’t you make us some coffee, Headcase?
MS: OK. Where’s the coffee?
KITTY: Up there on the shelf. (MS reaches up, his back to Kitty, who is in the costume of The Dragon Lady. Moving silently up behind MS, she puts her arms around him from behind.) [START SFX 13]
MS: (He gasps. His voice shaking.) Who… Who’s that?
KITTY: It’s the Dragon Lady. She’s coming to get you.
MS: I think she’s got me already.
KITTY: You like me a little bit, don’t you?
MS: A lot more than a little bit. You know that.
KITTY: I don’t know anything. I’ve waited too long to know anything.
(Oriental/modern music – the Chinese Dragon dances on again, unremarked among the realism. The Dragon wraps around them and they dance love, three figures intertwining).
MS: You are an earthquake in the centre of my loneliness. An angel from another world. You blow me away by the simple fact that you are.
(The Dance now continues between the Dragon and Kitty as MS speaks over the music.)
MS: Kitty shares a room over the Dance School so we’ve nowhere to make love except everywhere. We take thrilling risks in outrageous places. It’s erotic mysticism, a secret religion with just two members. Watching her dance is almost as good as making love to her. I love it but I didn’t understand it. It’s beyond words. I abandon myself to the spectacle of pure motion.
KY: (Exhausted, she backs off from the dance.) C’mon, MS, let’s go. [END SFX 13](He kisses her on the cheek and then uses a towel to towel her down. She catches him by the hand and leads him into lift.)
MS: Where are we going?
KY: Your favourite restaurant?
BOTH: Moon Palace.
MS: Chinese food again?
KY: I thought you liked the taste of Chinese?
MS: I do.
(The Moon palace sign is illuminated.)
MS: See the restaurant sign? (They both look up as if they were directly underneath it.) It was all I would look at it from my apartment.
KITTY: Did you dream of bringing your dragon lady here?
MS: No. Never. I was dying then. Now I am back in the land of the living. With you.
(They go into the restaurant and sit down at a table. Waiter brings fortune cookies to the table?)
KITTY: Look I saved this for you – from a fortune cookie.
MS: (Opens the cookie and reads.) The sun is the past, the earth is the present and the Moon is the future.
KITTY: Be careful, darling. The moon is a dead place. Don’t go staring at it too long. You promise me?
MS: Promise. [START SFX 14] (Freeze.) I lied. (Shouts) I lied! I lied!! I never took my eyes off the moon. [END SFX 14] [START SFX 15] Kitty! Kitty! (Runs from grave). I’ve seen the perfect job, listen, listen! Look, read!
(Kitty breaks off from her exercises.)
MS: (Reads) “Elderly gentleman in wheelchair requires young man to serve as live in companion. Daily walks. Light secretarial duties, $50 a week plus room and meals.”
KITTY: (Uneasily.) It was meant for you.
MS: It’s fate. Or some bizarre coincidence.
KITTY: I hope you get it…
MS: I’m gonna get it. Just like I got you. It was meant. Hey, NOW!! Let’s make love! Now!
KITTY: Not now, baby. It’s my time of the moon.
MS: Hey, just cos I might be moving out don’t mean I need you any less. Right?
KITTY: OK, MS, its OK. You run along now and get a job. [END SFX 15] (She kisses him chastely and to music they dance back to back for a moment the MS springs across the stage towards a new life – Kitty remains onstage for while performing very cold exercises. MS bounces back on.).
MS: I got the job. I got the job. I start work on November the first, the Day of the Dead. (Knocks on ground).
(The spectral figure of Mrs Hume, maybe masked, maybe played by a man, appears suddenly in the grave opening, now the front door of Effing’s House.)
MRS HUME: Good morning, Mister Fogg. (MS steps back in shock.) My name is Mrs Hume. You will be seeing a great deal of me, Mister Fogg. I am Mister Effing’s nurse and housekeeper. (She looks him up and down like meat). Mister Effing is waiting for you. (Sudden change in light, a gothic window gobo). Please don’t be put off by Mr Effing’s ways. He is a little strange, he often gets over excited. I would ask you to be tolerant, Mister Fogg. The man who looked after him for thirty years, he died last month. You will be taking that dead man’s place. [START SFX 16] (The breath seems to leave MS and he struggles for air. Mrs Hume is suddenly gone, backing in to opening – Effing’s voice comes out of the dark – followed by his wheelchair bound body- Gothic music – echoes of Bernard Hermann’s music for Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’?)
EFFING: Emmet Fogg, [END SFX 16] what kind of a sissy name is that? (He wears a black blindfold).
MS: MS Fogg, Sir, the M is for Marco, the S for Stanley. Explorers, Sir.
EFFING: If anything that’s worse. What are you going to do about it?
MS: Nothing, Sir. My name and I have been through a lot together. (Effing who has seemed very weak and deathly suddenly wheels fast forward and grabs MS’d hand, feeling its texture, placing it on his cheek).
EFFING: Now come over here and let me feel your muscles. I can’t have a weakling pushing me around the streets. (He grips MS’s arm with unnatural strength –savage chord) If you’ve no muscle you won’t be worth a goddammed thing to me. Are you afraid of me, boy? You should be. You work for me you’ll get to know the meaning of fear! I may not be able to see or walk but I have other powers, powers that few man have ever mastered.
MS: What powers?
EFFING: A force of will that can bend the physical world into any shape I want. On the night, four years ago that I went blind, I blacked out the whole of New York City. Do you remember that?
MS: Couldn’t that have been a coincidence?
EFFING: There are no coincidences, boy. Everything in the world is made up of electricity. Each action is connected by a force field to every other. Even our thoughts give off electricity. The man that is strong enough to control his thoughts can change the world! Don’t forget that!
MS: OK… I won’t forget that.
EFFING: You will probably grow to hate me, Fogg. But just remember that there is a hidden purpose in everything I do, and it’s not for you to judge me.
MS: OK. I’ll keep that in mind.
EFFING: Good. Now. Can you talk for two or three hours without losing your voice? Can you read to me for an entire afternoon?
MS: I think I can do that yes, Sir.
EFFING: As you can see I have lost the power of my sight. My relationship with you will be composed entirely of words, and if your voice can’t go the distance you will be less use to me than shit. Now, turn to the book shelf behind you and take down the book on the fourth shelf, twenty two volumes along.
(He does.)
MS: I have it.
EFFING: Is it ‘The Voyages of Sir John Mandeville’?
MS: Yes. Do you know the position of every book in your library?
EFFING: It is a power that I have. Absolute memory. I can forget nothing. Now, read to me from Chapter Six.
MS: OK (reads) “Some time after the migration of the Tartars to this place, about the year of Our lord 1162 they chose for their king a man named Genghis… a man named Genghis Khan…”
(MS rushes across the stage and throws his arms round Kitty, while a recording of MS reading the book to Effing is played over the sound system.)
MS: It’s amazing. The old man has these incredible powers! At least he said so – and I saw some of them… He thinks they’re supernatural, but I think they are just a sort of power of personality
.
KITTY: Maybe it’s just his money?
MS: No, no. (Kitty gives him a sceptical look.) No! He’s a master! All the books he makes me read to him, sometimes I think they are really for me. They’re all about voyages, journeys…He’s a crazy, crackpot guide to the secrets of the world!
KITTY: Oh, you have found your master. Are you going to worship him?
MS: No, no, no, Kitty, it’s not like that! He’s terrible. He’s selfish, arrogant, cruel; a burnt out old man living on the border between madness and death. I can’t stand it Kitty. I can’t stand to be in the same room as him any more.
KITTY: (Grabbing him.) Then leave. Walk out. Forget him.
MS: I will… I will… No, I don’t want to go! There’s something… I need in him. I’ve walked away too many times.
KITTY: Okay MS. Yee gor lei jee tou lei hoi sum, kam lei jo la.
(Change of light. Kitty dances away. Effing wheels himself on.)
MS: (reads) “…one of approved integrity, great wisdom…”
EFFING: Louder!
MS: (reads) “…one of approved integrity, great wisdom…”
EFFING: Clearer!
MS: (reads) “…one of approved integrity, great wisdom…”
EFFING: You have the voice of a school girl!
MS: I’m sorry, I –
EFFING: I don’t pay you to apologise. Just read it!
MS: (Reads from book then just as he gets into his stride is interrupted.) “…one of approved integrity, great wisdom, commanding eloquence and eminent in his valour...”
EFFING: Stop. Stop right there. Where’s my fucking dinner? Mrs Hume! It’s SIX O’CLOCK!!!
MRS HUME: (Appearing with soup) Here it is, Mr Effing. On the dot of six.
EFFING: Rubbish, you’re late! You’re permanently late. You put the clocks back so I can’t tell the time. You think I am stupid just because I am blind? You sit in that kitchen reading your dumb women’s magazine’s at my expense, stealing, that’s what it is, stealing my money! (Of soup) What is this shit?
MRS HUME: It’s mushroom and potato shit. I put in a little pepper as you like it so.
EFFING: Trying to poison me, no doubt.
MRS HUME: Oh yes, Mister Effing. That’ll kill you in about nine minutes then I can get my hands on all your money.
EFFING: Oh I know that’s what you want, so you can go and buy fancy jewels and furs, But it won’t help you Mrs Hume. You will always be fat, fifty and unfuckable!
MRS HUME: Little you could do about it!
EFFING: Don’t you believe it. (He strokes his groin.) The little guy has never quit! My legs only shrivelled because all their life went to my dick!!
MRS HUME: Yes, yes… that’s enough schoolyard talk, thank you. Now, drink your soup before it gets cold.
(Mrs Hume exits. Effing makes extraordinary noises drinking his soup [START SFX 17] – these noises are magnified and distorted on the tape and turn into a sound collage – MS runs back and forth pursued by the soup slurping Effing in his highly mobile wheelchair until he runs into Mrs Hume’s arms and is comforted on her ample bosom to the sound of a lullaby – maybe a music box.) [END SFX 17]
MS: My mother was killed by a bus. One day in Boston, she died. I was eleven years old. I never ever knew my father and my mother was dead. I missed her for a very long time. I still miss her now; every day. I never even knew my father’s name.
(Mrs Hume strokes his head, then Effing who has suddenly listened starts to break down too).
EFFING: I died once.
MS: You’re not a ghost are you?
EFFING: No, but I died. I will show you my obituary. Julian Barber, 1894 to 1916.
MS: But your name is Thomas Effing…
EFFING: I know that. But I was born Julian Barber. I was a painter, a true artist. I died and was reborn. Now it’s time to die again. And it’s your job to write my last obituary - the obituary of Thomas Effing. You’re a literary kind of a fella, ain’t ya? Now, let’s make a start. I might die any minute and no one would know the truth.
(MS starts to wheel EFFING off - he continues offstage himself whilst the lights dim on the stage, the ‘painting’ disappears, the soldier/dancer dances/rides off. MS sits next to Kitty who has moved to sit on the crates, as if in a Cinema – MS and Kitty eat popcorn and snog – illuminated by the flickering light of a movie. MS pulls away and talks to Kitty.)
MS: So that’s what I’m doing. I’m writing his second obituary. He already died once. And his name is not Thomas Effing. It’s Julian Barber. Boy, would you believe it!
KITTY: I don’t believe it. I think he’s lying about everything.
MS: If he’s lying he’s the greatest storyteller ever. He has this incredible story of being way out west with Indians and outlaws! It’s like a movie!!
KITTY: O, really - like a movie, like a Marlboro ad, as real as that?
MS: Yeah. Yeah. I know how it sounds. But the cornier it gets the realer it feels. Like a creaky old bit of silent film. The titles come up, then the light flickers, smoke in the beam of light from the projector. The picture grows like a flower in the middle of the screen.
EFFING: The Thomas Effing Story! Caption: “New York City 1916. And there he is, Julian Barber, a young artist struggling for inspiration in the Big City.”
[START SFX 18]
(Music perhaps based in some way on piano accompaniment to a silent movie.
Image: Young Effing – played by the Effing actor, tearing up own his work in despair. Rather than just tableaux maybe these images should be silent, animated snatches of silent movie melodrama with that wild, mugging, theatrical acting, lit in such a way as to create a monochrome appearance.)
[END SFX 18]
MS: He returns home at night but to a cold and frigid wife.”
KITTY: Poor man.
[START SFX 19]
(Image: Wife, played by the male dancer, repelling frustrated artist’s advances.)
[END SFX 19]
MS: “But then one day he meets an older artist – William Blakelock no less - who tells him of the great American Desert.
“Go West, young man, and find the passion you are denied at home.”
KITTY: Go West!
[START SFX 20]
(Image: Artist with rucksack and Stetson, sheds beret and cravat.)
[END SFX 20]
MS: He tells his wife he is going into the Wilderness. On her knees she offers him everything to stay – even herself!
KITTY: At last!
[START SFX 21]
(Image: The artist accepts with enormous energy and passion.)
[END SFX 21]
MS: Little does he know that he will never see his young wife again. And already in her belly grows a child!
(Image: The wife alone. Tearful. Proud of her swollen belly. Image: Dodge City. Saloon – cowboys, cards, drinking, danger, casual shoot outs. Artist rides in.)
MS: He takes the stagecoach to Dodge City where at the Boot Hill Saloon he hires a guide. But he’s the meanest guide in the West.
KITTY: Grrr!
[START SFX 22]
(Image: bristlingly-moustachioed bad cowboy.)
[END SFX 22]
MS: They set off through Utah, Nevada, and the badlands of Nebraska, every day riding over the bones of Pioneers.
KITTY: Eww!
[START SFX 23]
[END SFX 23]
MS: Every night he paints by moonlight while the guide plots their position by the stars.
(Image of Artist painting on an invisible canvas, as he does the blue light around his changes a little more green, a little more blue as if he is painting the space around him. [START SFX 24] Guide, played by the male dancer, playing a solo game of cards. As the action now becomes more ‘live’ the music becomes more complex and textured.)
YOUNG EFFING: See the stars? A here only exists in relation to a there. We can only find ourselves by looking at what we are not.
GUIDE: What’s all that shit – all colour! I don’t recognise nuthin!
YOUNG EFFING: (Throwing down his brush.) I can’t paint anymore! This land is too big!!
GUIDE: (Laughs.) Come on, then let’s play some cards, boy? (Shuffling the pack. Evil grin.) I’ll be gentle with you. (Deals the cards. They play a series of hands, Artist winning them all.) Aw, Jesus, you took me for sixty dollars.
YOUNG EFFING: Forget it. It was a bit of fun!
GUIDE: Don’t you fucking patronise me, City Boy!! (Fingers his gun. He draws. Fires. Guide aims his gun at Artist who cowers back.) See you in hell!!
KITTY: What happened?
MS: The bad Guy left him to die in the desert!] He pulls himself along the ground, fighting for life but headin’ for death.
KITTY: Lord, have mercy.
Yep… “A miracle.” [START SFX 24 REPEAT] He finds a cave, like Ali Baba, full of food and water.
(Image: Artist finding the cave, looking about furtively, goes in. Using the grave for the cave.)
MS: And a dead body. An old Hobo with a bullet in his skull. He steals the clothes from the dead old man; dresses himself in them. But, somehow he starts to think the land is watching him.
(The Artist emerges from the cave, dressed in the Hobo’s clothes. Paintbrush in hand, he gestures with it in broad brushstrokes and the set begins to turn red like the desert.)
YOUNG EFFING: Fuck Art! The wilderness teaches me truth. Alone with light, and colour and nature (Then with Effing speaking with him:) I realise that the true purpose of art is not to create beautiful objects, but to understand the world and find one’s place in it. I will never paint another picture. [END SFX 24 REPEAT]
KITTY: Good for the old guy!
MS: You should see what happens next. Final reel [START SFX 25] – The shoot out at the Cowboy Cave! Months pass by. Effing waits in the cave. Plotting. Watching. Then, one hot night the Gresham Gang come ridin’ over the hill.
KITTY: The Gresham Gang?
MS: Yeah, who do you think left all that stuff in the cave? Outlaws. Maybe they killed the hobo first but it was their cave and they were coming home.
KITTY: Oh, no. What about our artist?
MS: Effing sees them comin’ down the valley and hides.
(As Effing/Artist hides to one side of the cave, MS and Kitty join the male dancer, donning the cowboy hats and taking the guns and bags of loot he brings on for them. The music rising towards a climax. They ‘dismount from their horses’ and enter the cave, one by one,)
Outlaws: Hey, Tom, we’re home! (Picks up skull.) My oh my poor Tom you lost a little weight since we saw you last! (They dump bags of silver.- as the last one is entering Effing/Artist jumps him/her and hand over their mouth, twists and breaks their neck. Music stops. Stick snapped offstage. Music continues. The dead Gresham gang member slumps to the floor and Effing/Artist drags them to one side. Takes the gun from the dead gang member. Then Effing/Artist creeps into the cave. Pause. Then sound of gunfire inside the cave. Second gang member staggers out of the cave, bleeding from wounds, slumps to the ground and tries to drag themselves away from the cave. Sounds of struggle in the cave and blows struck and groans. Effing/Artist appears in the opening of the cave aims at the gang member on the ground and fires into their body, they spasm and die. Effing/Artist still looking at the corpse when the final gang member, bleeding around the face, staggers from the cave and grabs Effing/Artist from behind. Effing/Artist drops his gun. The gang member scrambles towards it, but Effing/Artist catches them, from behind, and ‘garrottes’ them his paint brush, squeezed against the gang member’s throat).
MS: Tom’s back! Tom’s back from the dead!
Outlaw: Tom, Tom how come you alive? We killed you Tom? How come you’re still alive!
MS: Yep, I am Tom. Don’t you doubt it, I am Thomas. A dead man’s killing you. I’m Tom and I’m never going to be no one else.
(Outlaw dies. Effing/Artist looks at his deadly handiwork, shocked. Music reflects his mixture of triumph and uncertainty. Effing/Artist looks about to check there is no other gang member and then enters the cave, reappearing almost immediately dragging the bags of loot. He opens them and is amazed at the money he finds. He digs into each bag in turn throwing showers of silver dollars high into the air, into a beam of blue light, which remains while all the other lights fade to black, the dollars shimmering in the light.)
MS and Effing: Dollars! Dollars! Dollars! Dollars!! [END SFX 25]
(The beam of light finally fades to black.)
Interval
[SFX 26]
ACT 2
[START SFX 27]
(Music – eerie – deathly dramatic, moonlight. From the cave opening emerges the figure of the young Effing /Artist , – holding bags of silver, a rifle and a pack on his back - he moves towards the wheelchair in a spotlight stage left. As he walks and talks he discards the bags, rifle etc. becoming regressively aged as he walks, putting on the dark glasses, etc. – till he sits in the wheelchair as an old man. Hugging the bags.)
EFFING: I was a killer; a murderer of two men. But I was also dead, missing for so long that the world thought me dead. I had stopped being Julian Barber. Out there in the desert, closed in by rocks and blistering light, destiny simply cancelled me out. I came back to life again as Thomas Effing. Not Doubting Thomas, you understand, but Fucking Thomas? And I invested. In California, in France, then back to New York. (The lights turn to the Chinatown lighting, Moon Palace sign lights up.) Until one night in Chinatown, after visiting a girl and then an opium den…
(In silhouette we see a mime of Effing and an attacker, the attacker creeping up and striking the already swaying and staggering Effing. Then running off after robbing him. The injured shadow of Effing pulling himself offstage.)
EFFING: I was crippled. And then age blinded me. Punishment enough for the murder of two thieves who had themselves killed. There now. My story has come to an end.
MS: Already? But that was more than forty years ago? What about the rest of your life? [END SFX 27]
EFFING: It’s not important. My obituary is almost complete. I’m ready to die.
MS: I don’t know if you are telling the truth or not. Your story has a fantastic and magical quality. Are you remembering facts or inventing a parable to explain the meaning of your life?
EFFING: I am dictating an obituary. I thought I had made that clear.
MS: (Shrugs.) It doesn’t matter. I understand it now. It still doesn’t make any sense but I understand it.
EFFING: I shall die on May 12th. Exactly two months from today.
MS: You can’t possibly know that! You’re perfectly healthy! You can’t make that sort of thing up!!
(Lights switch over to Kitty who is exercising – this is a stylisation without music, a physical rigour to be placed besides MS’s intellectual rigour).
KITTY: He can’t possibly know that! He’s perfectly healthy! He can’t make that sort of thing up!!
MS: He is. He does. He ….He is himself. (MS with a book in hand he glances up at her but is immersed in the book).
KITTY: No he’s not he’s someone else.
MS: By accident, by coincidence.
KITTY: Or fate.
MS: Now you are believing him and his…power.
KITTY: Oh, put that book down. Come on, dance, stretch, feel. (Picks him up but he can’t move – partly because he won’t let go of the book).
MS: Nothing is a coincidence. Look at this book, will you? He gave it to me.
KITTY: Books, books, books!
MS: Just read the title.
KITTY: The American Wilderness by Solomon Barber. So?
MS: Barber.
Kitty: Barber, Effing’s real name!
MS: Look. (Reads) Solomon Barber born 1917 in New York City.
KITTY: So Effing has a –
BOTH: Son.
(Switch of lights to Effing in wheelchair)
EFFING: Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. Anyway, if I have I never met him and he won’t meet me until I’m dead. But before that I have one last thing planned. One final event to put in my obituary: I am going to give the Gresham gang’s money back.
MS: But they’re dead.
EFFING: O, murdered, in cold blood.
MS: How are you going to give their money back then?
EFFING: O, it’s a work of genius my boy!! Are you ready for some fun, my son?
MS: Sure… always ready for some fun…
EFFING: And so is your young lady friend, eh ha hah ha. You must read me some pornography, Fogg. I want to die with a hard on, Now, my fucking plan, Thomas fucking Effing, is a masterpiece.
(Effing holds up bag of loot, putting his hand in and pulling out a handful of large denomination dollar bills.)
MS: (Impatient) What’s that?
EFFING: Twenty thousand dollars! And you are going to wheel me though New York with it.
MS: Isn’t that a little dangerous?
EFFING: I have such wondrous intentions, no one would ever guess what I have planned!
MS: A blind man on the street with $20,000 cash! You’re out of your mind!
EFFING: You shut up or say goodbye to your job, you little fucking squirt. You take care of me, you faggot! Let’s do it! [START SFX 28]
(They “leave” the house and the streets of New York are established thru’ movement, music and soundscape. MS wheels Effing
EFFING: Stop! Stop right here! No. Tell me who you see.
MS: Well, there’s a lamppost.
EFFING: What kind of a lamppost?
MS: Well, a perfectly ordinary lamppost.
EFFING: You fool. There’s no such thing as a perfectly ordinary lamppost. There’s no such thing as a perfectly ordinary anything. Now, if you hadn’t noticed, I am blind. I want you to describe to me what you see. I want every detail. Now use your eyes.
MS: I see a woman walking a big furry dog. I see a man walking.
WALKER: Have a nice day!
MS: He’s a very friendly man. I see a girl playing basketball. She shoots! She scores! And the rebound!! I see a man reading a newspaper. I see a junkie…
EFFING: Wonderful. Give the junkie fifty dollars from the bag. Go on.
MS: But he’s a junkie?
EFFING: So? Give him the money, you creep! We’re not snobs, we’re a pair or Robin Hoods, ready to bestow our loot on any deserving soul that crosses our path.
MS: Excuse me..
JUNKIE: Don’t touch me..
MS: Excuse me.
JUNKIE: Don’t touch me, asshole!!
MS: This is for you. (Hands over the 50 dollars. Junkie embraces MS.) Don’t touch me!!
Junkie: Thank you, thank you, man! All on food, man.. all on food! (Junkie exits.)
EFFING: Now that I am nearly dead I don’t feel the need for money any more. What possible use is it to me? Only thing that makes sense is to give it back to where it came.
MS: You’re not going to tell me he was part of the Gresham gang!! You killed them all! And it wasn’t even their money in the first place. How are you going to find their victims? A bunch of anonymous strangers.
EFFING: Exactly! If there’s one thing this godforsaken city has got aplenty, it’s anonymous strangers! The streets are filled with them. There are millions of them all around us!
MS: You can’t be serious? You’ll cause a riot.
EFFING: We’re not going to throw it at any old fucker!
MS: Couldn’t we hire a car and do this? (He shivers.) It would be stupid to get sick.
EFFING: I’m not afraid of anything, Fogg. Now, if you are in with me, fine – but shut the fuck up! We’re going to do this my way.
(Orlando on, dancing.)
Effing: What’s that?
MS: It’s a guy dancing… with an umbrella full of holes.
Orlando: (In black mask maybe – he holds an umbrella without fabric). Hey, man!! What you guys doing standin’ out here in the rain? You gonna catch your deaths!!
EFFING: Is it raining, my friend?
Orlando: (Holding umbrella over Effing) Man, you only ask that, ‘cos my umbrella is keepin’ this damn rain off of you.
EFFING: (Feeling the bare spokes of the umbrella.) Why you’re right, my friend. Is he not, Mister Fogg?
MS: (Shouts from grave) Yeh. Sure. It’s raining. (Holds out hand and laughs as it’s dry). Cats and dogs.
Orlando: Hey man, careful of them puddles! You don’t want to get my nice shoes all wet with them wheels o’yours!
EFFING: (Holding Orlando’s hands.) You are an artist, my man, you bring the non-existent to life. You are imagination. You give the world back to an old man!
Orlando: Hey, look! It’s stopped! (Folds umbrella). I don’t need no umbrella now. You two have it. Weather could change any second. And things change all the time. If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything! [END SFX 28]
EFFING: It’s like money in the bank.
Orlando: You got it, Mister, just stick it under the mattress and save it for a rainy day! [START SFX 29] Yeah! Revolution. (Gives black power salute and saunters off humming and singing:)
Raining, raining, raining dollars,
Raining dollars from the sky.
Raining raining pouring down
Skies that are grey
Are blowing away
(Roll of thunder).
MS: OK. It is going to rain. Let’s get back.
EFFING: We’ve hardly started!!
MS: Its freezing, Mister Effing and it’s going to pour and we’ve no…. protection…
EFFING: Nonsense! We have a magic umbrella! Once you open it you become invincible!
(Effing opens the spokes of the umbrella. Crash of thunder and music of falling rain. The two dancers now open real umbrellas and dance behind Effing as passers by fighting through heavy rain and against gale-force winds. MS goes to the audience.)
MS: I got some old hippies here getting stoned..
Effing: Ah, good. Give them fifty dollars each, but don’t try to score off them, Fogg.
MS: See, I got… there’s an old drunk here pissing himself…
Effing: O lord… give him fifty dollars and another ten for some new underpants.
MS: Looks like a banker over there…
Effing: Don’t give him a bean!
MS: O there’s a junkie here with needles in his arms.
Effing: Lordie, lordie, lord… go on. Fifty dollars.
MS: Let’s see… looks like a teacher over here..
Effing: A torturer?
MS: No.. a teacher.
Effing: That’s the same thing. Don’t give him anything. (Thunder.) O blow you winds and crack my cheeks. Blow, you cataracts and hurricanes spout, till you have drenched the steeples and drowned the cocks!
MS: Free money!! Free money for all!
EFFING: We’ve cracked the secret of the universe. Free money! Money for one and all!!
MS: Free money! [END SFX 29]
(EFFING howls with happy wheezing laughter. As the lights dim to darkness, except for flash or two of lightning, MS carries off Effing. Effing throwing wads of money about him. Blackout).
(Lights up, Effing’s head is sticking out of the grave/opening which is made up by Mrs Hume as a bed – MS actor off having time to change from the wet clothes).
EFFING: (Weakly.) What day is it, you fat old bag?
Mrs Hume: May eleventh, Mister Effing.
EFFING: I am going to die tomorrow.
Mrs Hume: You stupid old fart. You are not going to die. If you hadn’t gone out in that storm you’d be as right as rain.
EFFING: (Laughs at the accidental pun.) You silly old woman. It’s time to die. Where’s the moon man?
MS: I am here.
EFFING: I can’t see you, but then I’ve never seen you.
MS: What do you want?
EFFING: To hear your voice. I want you to describe this room to me as I die. I want to understand every little detail as I leave it. But first there is one last detail for you. My obituary.
MS: I will send it to the Times.
EFFING: No, send it to my son.
MS: Your son? Is it… Solomon Barber?
EFFING: Fucking awful name. I never met him, you know. He’s the product of that single night of fucking with my cold fish wife before I left for the West. He’s a fat, childless, unmarried, broken down wreck. A teacher in some dismal backwater college no one’s ever heard of. For all his brains, his career has been one long fuck up.
MS: And you want him to know your story?
EFFING: Tell him when it’s too late. (Laughs) When I’m dead I will like that. Now get on and describe the room to me. I want every last detail. [START SFX 30] (Coughs and wheezes, progressively finding it harder to breathe through the next speech. Quiet music of dying. As the voice of MS speaks Effing reaches out as if touching the object described, but he soon becomes too weak for this.)
MS: (recorded now?) Above the bed there is a framed street map of Paris from 1933, it extends from the Gare du Nord to the Latin Quarter and from the Trocadero to the Gare du L’est. Although the paper is rather yellow but the street names are clear and in the top corner is a tricolour supported by cockerels. The frame is black and gold. Although the gold paint is chipped. The map hangs at a slight angle. And there is a little dust on the top of the frame. Below the map is a bureau, heavy wood, maple I think with some inlay of walnut. The bureau has four long drawers and handles of metal that are probably zinc copper alloy. On the bureau there is a green writing pad, an inkstand and a letter holder. There are two fountain pens, both made in England which have fine nibs, somewhat caked with old ink.
EFFING: What colour (barely able to speak) is the… ink pad?
Voice: Green. Similar to the green of the upholstery of the chair that stands before the bureau.
The chair is imitation Chippendale and has a high curved back. There is a small chip in the wood on the upper left hand side of the hooped back.
The legs of the chair curve slightly. The chair is at an angle of 45 degrees to the bureau…. [END SFX 30]
(As Effing fades into death so the volume of the description fades into silence, the dying music with it. MS dances across the stage with Kitty, MS first weeping then screaming, the music and recording dying away to silence, they dance on so that we just hear the dead sound of Kitty and MS’s feet on the stage as they dance – as Mrs Hume draws sheet across the tomb/bed and Effing’s head disappears into the grave. Kitty comforts a weeping MS.)
MS: What time is it?
Kitty: Two minutes past midnight.
MS: He did it! He died on the twelfth!
Kitty: You can cry. (AS MS struggles with emotion – then he laughs and they all hug and laugh - Mrs Hume goes and Kitty and MS embrace with passion. Dance of sex as MS speaks.)
MS: We threw Thomas Effing’s ashes from a boat on the Hudson River, just as the Statue of Liberty came into view. Goodbye Thomas Effing. Goodbye Julian Barber. Goodbye. I wrote to Solomon barber. I thought he should have a chance to attend his father’s funeral. He didn’t reply. I can hardly blame him. To live your whole life thinking your father was dead and then to find out he was alive all along. But then one day a letter from Solomon did show up. Kitty! Kitty! We have to get going! I really don’t want to be late. Kitty, come on! (Sees Kitty in startling dress.) Wow! You look amazing!! Dragon lady! Pretty!
Kitty: Where are we going?
MS: To meet Solomon Barber and tell him that he had a father. One hell of a father.
Kitty: Where is he?
MS: In the lobby of the Moon Palace.
Kitty: How will you know who he is?
MS: He said he’s the biggest thing there. [START SFX 31]
(Two people inside one vast suit, or one actor in a fatsuit, with a fez and cigar become/s Solomon Barber – he waddles on to heavy music, pausing to feed himself snack from a bag). [END SFX 31]
MS: Excuse me, I’m looking for…
SOL BARBER: A fat man! Hi, I’m Solomon Barber and you gotta be MS? And who’s the pretty lady?
MS: This is Kitty, my –
Kitty: Fiancée.
MS: (Amazed) Are you?
Kitty: I am. (They kiss).
SOL BARBER: Am I interrupting anything?
Kitty: Not at all. Pleased to meet you Solomon.
SOL: BARBER: Pleased to meet you!!
Kitty: MS and I have read all your books. I am the future Mrs Fogg.
SOL BARBER: Fogg, - you know I used to know a Fogg!
MS: That’s my name, MS Fogg. I prefer just MS. As in… you know … books.
SOL BARBER: O, I know books. They’re my life!
MS: Shall we sit down?
SOL BARBER: Thank God, I’m starving!!
MS: To the Barber family!!
SOL: To the family Fogg!
Kitty: So who was this Mister Fogg that you knew?
SOL BARBER: Miss Fogg. She was a gorgeous and innocent student of mine many years ago. A lovely lady, I should have married her. Huh? Hey, let’s have some more Duck. Don’t you just love the way they do Duck here, all (makes sucking and kissing noise) yummy!
(They are seated now at a table at the Moon Palace – Kitty and MS are feeding each other with chopsticks, Barber shovelling down food with a spoon. A cigar in one hand.)
KITTY: So why didn’t you marry this gorgeous student?
MS: Hey, Kitty, try this seaweed, it’s an aphrodisiac!
SOL: She wouldn’t have me and you know a professor can’t mess about with his students. I learned that lesson the hard way. So no Fogg for me! But I will have some of that pork.
MS: Well. My mother was a Fogg but she was no innocent student. She knew a lot of men!
SOL: Well…I don’t really know what happened to my Miss Fogg. I just know… I lost her.
(SOL BARBER pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth. Recovers and puts the food in his mouth.)
Kitty: Hey, don’t be sad. Love is always good.
SOL BARBER: O, “love is good”, good food is always good, and good company is good. (Beams and embraces them). I would have liked to have loved my father – if only he would have come to me - (waves the obituary) in the flesh - but at least I know that he thought of me at the end of his life.
MS: Here’s to Thomas Effing, then, the old bastard!
SOL BARBER: I’ll eat to that! (Slaps his belly and laughs at himself. Touches Kitty’s cheek (on face).) The presence of young love makes me feel great! Let’s do something! Not just tell old stories! (He looks embarrassed for a moment, then brightens.) What do you say we spend some of my father’s money on finding those paintings he left in that cave all those years ago in the West?
Kitty: Wow!! MS?
SOL BARBER: Why not? It’s romantic!!
MS: But how do you know there even was a cave? What if that’s just a story too?
SOL BARBER: How much of anything… is the truth?
Kitty: Maybe he didn’t always stick to the facts but I think your father always told the truth.
SOLOMON BARBER: Even if the cave is just a story, it’s all that left of my father. I’m willing to pay anything to stand in that cave where my Dad shot the Gresham Gang!
Kitty: (To MS, excited.) It’ll be dangerous!
MS: We’ll all go. No one should climb mountains alone.
SOL BARBER: Especially fat men.
Kitty: MS and I will be your Indian scouts. (They leap up and career round the restaurant armed with chopsticks- flashback to musical themes of earlier Wild West section).
MS: We’ll find you your daddy’s cave!
Kitty: Go West, young man!
SOL BARBER: Go West, fat man!
(All roar with laughter.)
SOL BARBER: It’s a deal then! I’ll buy the provisions and equipment, and we’ll meet Monday. All my life I’ve studied and written about the lives of other men! And now this is my story! Pow pow! Pow pow! [START SFX 32] It’s a dime a dozen cowboy novel!! Pow pow!
(They break apart. Lots of larking about. Blackout and Sol exits [END SFX 32])
MS: So what did you think of Solomon?
Kitty: Well, I liked his hat. Anyone who eats like that is trying to kill himself. It’s the same thing as watching a man starve himself to death.
MS: Why does he do it? He’s intelligent, he’s charming, he’s…
Kitty: Unhappy. Didn’t you see it? The way he talked about that Fogg woman?
MS: Well, we’ll make him happy! If we can’t give him a lover, we’ll give him a father. A legend. A cowboy. Let’s pack. We’re goin’ out West. (Takes box and shoes off)
Kitty: I can’t go anywhere. [START SFX 33]
MS: What?
Kitty: I can’t dance. (He goes to kiss her she breaks away). I can’t…
MS: What do you mean?
Kitty: Feel my stomach.
(He does.)
MS: I can’t feel anything.
Kitty: I can’t feel anything either. I feel nothing for that child.
MS: What are you talking about?
Kitty: Love means the two of us and that is all. A child has no part in this. I want us to be together. And I want to dance.
MS: So?
Kitty: I need an abortion.
MS: You want to... murder the child? [END SFX 33]
Kitty: I’m too young to be a mother, MS…
MS: Our own mothers were no older than you are now. Come on…
Kitty: How can I go on dancing if I have a child to take care of.
MS: I’ll take care of the child.
Kitty: No. You can’t deprive a child of a mother.
MS: What about depriving it of its life?
Kitty: I want our baby one day, but not now.
MS: But we have a baby now!!
Kitty: No. (cries).
MS: I want to be a father, Kitty! Please! This is my chance to undo the loneliness of my childhood, to be part of a family, to belong to something that was more than just myself. Shit!! Shit, shit, shit! (He sits on the floor, deep in his self-pity.) If my own mother had been sensible she would have aborted me. (Shouting) If you kill our baby you will be killing me along with it!
Kitty: I’m going to the clinic, darling. (She gets up.)
MS: I’ll pay for you, but you will pay too.
Kitty: I know that. Don’t you think I know that? (She goes to the bed at the foot of the grave – A doctor in a mask comes out – now the percussion before the speeches has taken over and it becomes her agony – a duet of abortion, surgeon and patient. MS looks on responding to the rhythm with aggressive martial arts like movements far away from her. The foetus is removed and dropped in the grave. MS walks towards the bed.)
MS: I watch you suffer and I enjoy it.
Kitty: Help me.
MS: I want you to suffer, to pay for what you’ve done. [START SFX 34]
(MS Races away from the bed and starts hitting himself to percussive beat).
MS: There is so much ugliness and cruelty inside me! Everything has gone. My whole life has been taken away from me.
Kitty: Hold my hand. Be tender.
MS: I am going now. You may never see me again.
Kitty: MS! MS!
MS: I am not human. I am a block of dead wood.
Kitty: Help me.
(MS Races away from the bed and starts hitting himself to percussive beat.) [END SFX 34]
(Solomon Barber enters – waddling and absurd in a Stetson and rusksack. Carrying MS’s kit.)
MS: Kitty’s body is part of my body and without it beside me I feel mutilated, cut out.
SOL: Something awful has happened. Tell me.
MS: Ask Kitty, let her tell you.
SOL: Kitty won’t tell me anything. But I know she wants you back.
MS: Can’t go back!!!
SOL: You’re like a wounded animal, MS. Curled up in pain, refusing to budge. Come on, MS. If you can’t give Kitty a break give yourself one.
MS: (Entering.) I don’t need anything.
SOL BARBER: You need a job. Come on! (Tosses the equipment to MS.) You can be my trailblazer. Just us. Two lonely guys. In the desert. Trying to get back to Thomas Effing’s cave. Whadd’yuh say?
MS: Some explorer you’ll make…
SOL: We’ll go in comfort and rent an air conditioned car. A Pontiac! An air-conditioned Pontiac, named after an Indian Chief! Come on! By driving this car out West we will be paying homage to the dead, those valiant Indian warriors who rose up in defence of the land we stole off of them!
MS: OK. OK, Chief. But only because it’s a useless quest, with an unhappy ending. A shitty little fairy tale. Only going away matters. A leap into emptiness.
SOL: Hey, we’ve got a deal, partner!! But don’t you go shooting me in the wilderness!
MS: Hey, Solomon, since we’re going there’s somewhere I’d like to visit. It won’t take long.
SOL BARBER: Sure. We’ve all the time in the world. You wanna get something to eat?
MS: No, I want to see my mother’s grave.
SOL BARBER: Sure. Yeah…why not? My god, why not?
MS: My mother was lonely all her life..
SOL: MS, you sure you want to do this?
MS: It’s sentimental, I know.
(Two tombstones to one side.)
SOL: Where is it?
MS: (Sees his mother’s tombstone and goes to it. Pulling up weeds from around it.) Why don’t they take better care of it? Why didn’t I take better care of it? (Scraping away dirt, reads.) “Emily Fogg.” Rest in peace, Mom. [START SFX 35]
SOL BARBER: O, Emily… o my Emily…
MS: What are you talking about, Sol? Emily is my mother? What the fuck are you talking about, man!! Uh? You knew my mother? What are you fucking SAYING!! Huh? Say something you big bag of guts, or I’ll smash you in the mouth!
SOL BARBER: O, Jesus God MS, why did you have to bring me here? Didn’t you know this would happen? Emily was my student. Didn’t you know? Look at my face? I suppose to you its so fat but I see your face, and it’s my face. Your name is Barber, not Fogg. Don’t you know? [END SFX 35]
MS: (Head in his hands.) Know! How the hell was I supposed to know? This is too much, too much, man! If you loved my mother so much, why didn’t you take care of her?
SOL: I don’t know…son.. I..
MS: Why didn’t you take care of me? Why didn’t you take care of your own son, Dad!!
SOL BARBER: I’m still your father! (Backing off). I’ve been so…
MS: What about me! What about ME! [START SFX 36]
SOL: MS!!
(SOLOMON BARBER jerks back from MS’s threat, totters and falls backwards into the grave with a great sliding musical chord. MS starts to laugh hysterically, howling with laughter. Then he just howls.) [END SFX 36]
(Blackout.)
MS: Solomon Barber born 1917, died 1970. It took a crane to get you out of the grave and into the hospital and a hearse to put you back. O, Dad, if there’s one man in the world I could want to be my father it’d be you, Dad… I can’t hate you, you’re my best friend. I can forgive you now, Dad – for never being there for me. But I can’t forgive myself.
(Chinese music – Kitty dances on – her voice maybe recorded or spoken. Kitty joined by another dancer in love/sexual duet.)
MS: Kitty? It’s me. [START SFX 37] Don’t hang up.
Kitty: MS? Is that you, MS?
MS: I’m out of town. Solomon died. He was my father. There was no one else to tell but you.
(Music dominates – then voice escapes again – MS is trying to reach Kitty).
MS: Yeh, my father.
Kitty: O, poor MS, poor Sol, poor everyone.
MS: I’m sorry I had to tell you.
Kitty: Oh god MS, if only you knew how long I’ve been waiting to hear from you.
MS: I’ve made a mess of everything haven’t I?
Kitty: You can’t help what you are.
MS: I’ve gone on loving you every minute, you know that, don’t you? [END SFX 37]
Kitty: Jesus Christ, MS, what are you trying to do to me? How can you start talking about love now? It’s not fair. You don’t have the right to do that. Not now.
MS: I tried to live without you. I tried but I can’t.
Kitty: Well I tried to. And I can.
MS: I don’t believe you.
Kitty: It’s too late. I can’t open myself up to you anymore.
MS: You’ve found someone else, haven’t you? You’re in bed with him now, aren’t you?
Kitty: That’s none of your business.
MS: Just tell me!
Kitty: MS, I can’t stand another word. OK?
MS: Wait. Please. Please. Take me back. I’m begging you. I love you.
Kitty: That’s no good now. Joi geen, MS, be good to yourself. Lei ji kei siu sam di.
(She bangs down the phone and she collapses, the other dancer carries her off.)
MS: What about me!!! [START SFX 38]
(MS smashes up the ‘phone box’ all around him. Music of destruction. Then MS goes to the graveside.)
MS: The truth comes out when you have nothing. When you become nothing. [START SFX 39] We made a deal, Dad, to go find Thomas Effing’s cave. We made a deal, Chief. And the moon will rise over Utah. A full moon, as round and as yellow as a burning stone. This is where my story ends and this is where my life begins.
(An American Indian enters and looks at MS. She looks at something on the other side of the stage. Effing has entered, pushed in his wheelchair by Solomon barber. MS joins them.) [END SFX 39]
Audience play out. [START SFX 40]
THE END
Copyright Paul Stebbings & Phil Smith 2001 tntpaul@aol.com
TNT Theatre
28 Danes Rd
Exeter EX4 4LS
