Resurrection Blues Page 6

  FELIX: Why’s that?

  STANLEY: If he gets known as a magician he thinks it could take away from his main message.

  FELIX: Which is what, in a few words?

  STANLEY: Well, you know . . . just don’t do bad things. Especially when you know they’re bad. Which you mostly do.

  Pause.

  FELIX: You like women?

  STANLEY: Well I’m . . . yeah, I guess I’m kind of on the horny side.

  FELIX: You ever light up with them?

  STANLEY: Me? Well there’ve been times when I almost feel I have, but . . . I guess I’ve never blinded any of them.

  FELIX, some embarrassment: I want to talk to him, Stanley. For personal reasons.

  STANLEY: Well, if he shows up, I’ll tell him.

  FELIX, attempting cool: . . . I want you to emphasize the personal. Let him pick a place and I’ll meet him alone.

  STANLEY, realizing: . . . Oh!

  FELIX: I’m interested in discussing the whole situation. You understand?

  STANLEY:—Okay, I’ll tell him.—You want to be any more specific?

  FELIX, hesitates: . . . No, that’s . . . that’s about it. Suddenly suspicious, hardens. He didn’t send you to me, did he?

  Stanley looks away.

  Stanley?

  No response.

  Did he send you?

  No response.

  Why did he send you?

  No response.

  Answer me! Did you get yourself arrested?

  STANLEY: It’s complicated.—I can’t stand the idea of him being . . . you know . . . hurt. So I thought maybe I could talk to you about it.—See, I think in some part of his mind he thinks it would help the people.

  FELIX: If he’s executed.

  STANLEY: Crucified.

  FELIX: He wants it.

  STANLEY: . . . In a way, maybe.

  FELIX: How would it help them?

  STANLEY: Well, now that the revolution’s practically gone, people are pretty . . . you know . . . cynical about everything.

  FELIX: What about it?

  STANLEY: To see a man tortured for their sake . . . you know . . . that a man could actually like care that much about anything . . .

  FELIX: You’re telling me something . . . what are you telling me?—Does he want it or not?

  STANLEY: Oh no! No. It’s just that . . . you see—Rapidly overwhelmed by the vision’s horror.—he gets to where he just can’t like bear it—

  FELIX: Bear what!

  STANLEY: Well . . . the horror!

  FELIX: What horror, what the hell are you talking about!

  STANLEY: Well like—excuse the expression—living in this country! Like when he takes a walk and sees some—some guy sending out eight-year-old daughters to work the streets, or those little kids a couple of weeks ago killing that old man for his shoes . . . Or, excuse the expression, the Army opening up on that farmers’ demonstration last spring . . .

  FELIX: Those people had no permission to . . . !

  STANLEY, more and more stridently: Well you asked me so I’m telling you, right? A massacre like that can start him shivering and he can’t stop crying! I’ve seen him go for . . . like two hours at a time, crying his heart out. Then he stops and he’s cool for a while. We even have fun. Then he sees something and it like hits him again and he begins talking like in . . . Swedish, sounds like, or Russian or German—he once told me in a joke that he’s trying to find out what language god understands. Then he falls asleep, and wakes up sounding like anybody else—and that’s when he doesn’t know.

  FELIX: Doesn’t know what?

  STANLEY: Well . . . whether maybe he really is supposed to die, and . . . like cause everything to change.—I mean, for your own sake, sir, I would definitely think about just letting him go, you know? I mean this can be dangerous!

  FELIX: I think you know where he is, Stanley. I asked you in a nice way, now we’ll try something else.

  Goes to the door, grasps the knob.

  STANLEY: You going to hurt me?

  FELIX: I’m stashing you away until you make up your mind to lead us to him. And incidentally, there’s some hungry livestock in there that I don’t think you’re going to enjoy. Get in!

  Felix opens the door and the blinding white light flies

  out; he raises his hands to shield his eyes.

  My god, he’s back!

  Stanley falls to his knees facing the open door. Felix steps to his desk, presses a button, loud alarm bells go off as he shouts into his intercom . . .

  Captain! Come quick, he’s back, he’s back!

  Captain and two soldiers come in on the run.

  Captain and soldiers rush out through the door. Felix

  yanks Stanley to his feet.

  FELIX: Why did he come back? What’s this all about, Stanley?

  STANLEY, scared, elevated: God knows!

  FELIX, grabs Stanley, shakes him: Answer me! Answer me!

  STANLEY, almost lifted off the floor by the throat:—I think he just can’t make up his mind, that’s all—whether he really wants to—like die. I mean it’s understandable, right ?—

  Felix releases him.

  . . . with this great kind of weather we’re having?

  Captain and two soldiers back out of the cell doorway;

  they are trembling, trailing their rifles, staring in

  at the cell.

  FELIX: What’s this now!

  He rushes to the cell, looks in. Then turns to the soldiers.

  How’d he get out!

  They are speechless. Whirls about to Stanley.

  Talk to me! Why’d he come back! Why’d he escape?

  STANLEY: I don’t know! . . . Maybe to get your mind off me? I mean . . . it’s possible, right?—for a friend?

  Blackout.

  SCENE 4

  Café table. Henri seated with a bottle of water and

  glass. Skip enters, looking about.

  HENRI: Mr. Cheeseboro!

  SKIP: Hi. Sitting. I don’t have much time. What can you tell me?

  HENRI: Can I order something?

  SKIP: I’ll have to leave in a few minutes.

  HENRI: No news, I take it.

  SKIP: Nothing. And you?

  HENRI, a shake of the head: I thought an exchange of ideas could be useful—the two of us, quietly . . .

  SKIP, slaps his own cheeks then lets his head hang: I’m beginning to smell the dead-dog stink of disaster. Straightens up. Tell me—why’d the General let this man escape?

  HENRI: It was a complete surprise to him. I spoke to him shortly after it happened; he was absolutely shocked . . .

  SKIP: But he had him locked in a cell.—We’ve made a large down-payment, you know. . . . Or may one appeal to logic in this country?

  HENRI: This is why I thought you and I ought to talk.

  SKIP: About what?

  HENRI: Have you any interest in history? Or philosophy? Where did you go to school?

  SKIP: Princeton. But my interest was business, frankly. No philosophy, no culture, mainly the market.

  HENRI: Oh, but poetry and the stock market have a lot in common, you know.

  SKIP: Poetry and the market!

  HENRI: Oh yes. They are both based on rules that the successful never obey.—A few years ago I spent some time in Egypt . . . you’ve probably been there?

  SKIP: Egypt?—I’ve shot commercials all over Egypt . . . Chrysler, Bayer Aspirin, Viagra . . .

  HENRI: . . . Then you know some of the wall paintings and sculpture.

  SKIP: Of course.—What’s this about?

  HENRI: I want to tell you about a surprising discovery I made there. I am far from expert on the subject, but . . .

  SKIP: What are you, a businessman or an academic?

  HENRI: I retired from the pharmaceuticals business some years ago. I still breed fighting bulls but I’m getting out of that too; I’m basically a scholar now. In Egypt . . .

  SKIP, takes out a cell phone and punches numbe
rs from notebook: Excuse me.

  HENRI: If you’re making a local call . . .

  SKIP: The General’s office. To tell him I’m here.

  HENRI: Doubt that’ll work . . . Glances at watch. . . . this close to lunch.

  SKIP: Good god, why don’t they fix it?

  HENRI: They? There is no “they” here; hasn’t been in most of the world since the fall of Rome.

  SKIP, snaps his phone shut: What can you tell me about this guy’s escape?

  HENRI:—I know how absurd this is going to sound, but I ask you to hear me out. Slight pause. I had a very distinct feeling at the time they found him gone, that he had never been in that cell.

  SKIP: But they had him, they’d captured him.

  HENRI: They believed that, yes.

  SKIP: What are you talking about?

  HENRI, considers:. . . It struck me one day in Egypt . . .

  SKIP, starting to rise: Look, I have no interest in Egypt . . .

  HENRI, voice hardly raised: This may save your neck, Mr. Cheeseboro! Do sit; please.—

  Skip goes still.

  It struck me one day; that there were lots of images of the peoples the Egyptians had conquered, but none showing Jewish captives. I am far from expert in the subject but I couldn’t find more than one or two menorah—candelabra—a vague star of David . . . almost nothing, really. Which is terribly strange when the Jews are supposed to have drowned the whole Egyptian army, don’t you think? And Joseph was the Pharaoh’s chief adviser and so on? It would be, let’s say, like writing the history of Japan with no mention of the atomic bomb.—

  SKIP: But what is the connection with . . . ?

  HENRI: One day the thought hit me—could the whole story of the Jews in Egypt have simply been a poem? More or less like Homer describing magical cattle, and ravenous women and so on? Ancient peoples saw no difference between a vivid description of marvels and what we call reality—for them the description itself was the reality. In short, the Jews may never have been literally enslaved in Egypt; or perhaps some had been, but the story as we know it may have been largely fictional, an overwhelmingly powerful act of the imagination.

  SKIP: If you’re telling me this guy doesn’t exist, I’m . . .

  HENRI: That depends on what you mean by “exist”; he certainly exists in the mind of the desperately poor peasant—he is the liberator; for the General his crucifixion will powerfully reinforce good order, so he must exist . . . and I know a suicidal young woman of high intelligence who insists that he has restored her will to live, so for her he certainly exists. And needless to say, for you, of course . . . his execution will sell some very expensive advertising, so you are committed to his existing.

  SKIP: But he can’t be imaginary, the General spoke with him.

  HENRI: Not quite. According to the General the fellow never said a single word. Not one. The General spoke at him.

  SKIP: But didn’t I hear of this . . . apostle of his they’ve just jailed? He’s certainly spoken with him.

  HENRI: A fellow named Stanley, yes. I understand he is a drug addict. I needn’t say more; he could be put away for the rest of his life unless he cooperates. Drug-taking is a felony in this country.

  SKIP: Really. But they export tons of it.

  HENRI: They do indeed. The logic is as implacable as it is beyond anyone’s comprehension.

  SKIP: Then what are you telling me?—Because you’ve gotta believe it, the money we paid the General is not a poem.

  HENRI: But it may turn into one as so many other important things have done. The Vietnam War, for example, began . . .

  SKIP: The Vietnam War!

  HENRI: . . . Which was set off, mind you, by a night attack upon a United States warship by a Vietnamese gunboat in the Gulf of Tonkin. It’s now quite certain the attack never happened. This was a fiction, a poem; but fifty-six thousand Americans and two million Vietnamese had to die before the two sides got fed up reciting it.

  SKIP: But what is this light . . . not that I’m sure I believe it . . . but he emits a light, I’m told.

  HENRI: Yes. I saw it.

  SKIP: You saw it!

  HENRI: At the time I thought I did, yes. But I was primed beforehand by my two days in the upper villages where everyone is absolutely convinced he is god—so as I approached that cell door my brain demanded an astonishment and I believe I proceeded to create one.

  SKIP: Meaning what?

  HENRI: Mr. Cheeseboro, I have spent a lifetime trying to free myself from the boredom of reality.—Needless to say, I have badly hurt some people dear to me—as those who flee reality usually do. So what I am about to tell you has cost me.—I am convinced now apart from getting fed, most human activity—sports, opera, TV, movies, dressing up, dressing down—or just going for a walk—has no other purpose than to deliver us into the realm of the imagination. The imagination is a great hall where death, for example, turns into a painting, and a scream of pain becomes a song. The hall of the imagination is really where we usually live; and this is all right except for one thing—to enter that hall one must leave one’s real sorrow at the door and in its stead surround oneself with images and words and music that mimic anguish but are really drained of it—no one has ever lost a leg from reading about a battle, or died of hearing the saddest song. Close to tears. And this is why . . .

  SKIP: I don’t see why . . .

  HENRI, overriding: . . . This is why this man must be hunted down and crucified; because—he still really feels everything. Imagine, Mr. Cheeseboro, if that kind of reverence for life should spread! Governments would collapse, armies disband, marriages disintegrate! Wherever we turned, our dead unfeeling shallowness would stare us in the face until we shriveled up with shame! No!—better to hunt him down and kill him and leave us in peace.

  SKIP: . . . You’re addressing me, aren’t you.

  HENRI: Oh, and myself, I assure you a thousand, thousand times myself.

  SKIP: On the other hand, shallow as I am I have twins registered at Andover; maybe some need to be shallow so that some can be deep.

  He starts to rise.

  HENRI: Please! Go home!

  SKIP: I can’t go home until this job is done!

  HENRI: You could tell your company there was nothing here to photograph! It was all imaginary, a poem!

  SKIP: It’s impossible, I can’t pull out of this.

  Starts off.

  HENRI: I hope you won’t take offense!

  Skip halts, turns, curious.

  Our generals are outraged, a cageful of tigers roaring for meat! Somebody may get himself crucified—and not necessarily a man who has done anything. Do you want the responsibility for helping create that injustice!