ACT TWO
Scene One
A couple of minutes
later. KEVIN is in the bathroom straightening his clothes. INEZ has just
entered the bedroom and is heading for the mirror above the dresser.
KEVIN
Well, that wasn’t much.
(From the left of
the corridor HOUSEBOY enters leading ADELE, MILLIE, LES and ARCHIE, all
attired in evening clothes and all eager and excited. HOUSEBOY nods toward
Kevin’s room, then receives a huge tip from LES. HE bows in gratitude as
he exits.)
KEVIN
Just my luck to waste it
on the ugliest woman in all five hundred acres. When I think of Miss Tall
Sultry Crimson-Headband---or even Lena Martina--- Why the fuck can’t I
say no?
(MILLIE taps on Kevin’s
door. INEZ opens it.)
MILLIE
I might have known.
INEZ
(parodying social
grace)
Do come in, won’t you? Mr.
Koshkarian will be with you in a moment.
(tiptoeing to the
bathroom door)
Kevin, dear. You have guests.
(In the bathroom,
KEVIN winces.)
ADELE
(to Millie)
Isn’t that revolting!
INEZ
Can I help it, my dear, if
Mr. Koshkarian prefers what’s in a woman’s soul?
MILLIE
Since when is that part of
the anatomy called soul?
(KEVIN emerges from
the bathroom. ADELE moves forward, hand extended.)
ADELE
Oh, Mr. Koshkarian, I do
hope you’ll forgive our barging in this way.
(KEVIN inadvertently
yawns.)
KEVIN
Oh, I’m sorry.
(glancing toward
Inez)
It has nothing to do with
you. Believe me.
ADELE
I’m Adele Allen. We met at
dinner. And this is Millicent Carstairs, Les Farnsworth and Archie Weatherby.
(KEVIN nods at all
of them, suppressing another yawn.)
ARCHIE
I say, old chap, you’ve been
the smash of the evening. We’ve done nothing but talk about you since you
left the dinner table.
MILLIE
We’re thoroughly captivated.
You’ve thought of the most delightfully original approach we’ve heard in
years.
LES
I think this calls for a
little celebration.
(HE opens his coat
and strapped inside we see bottles of champagne. From his pockets, he pulls
out glasses.)
MILLIE
Les, darling, I knew I could
count on you!
ADELE
Now Mr. Koshkarian, you must
tell us all about your era.
INEZ
Go ahead. Tell them.
KEVIN
What?
INEZ
About the new world, the
communal world---
MILLIE
Now, now, dear, no tipping
the scales, please. Mr. Koshkarian has already proven he has his own imagination.
KEVIN
So you still think it’s some
kind of joke?
LES
Oh, it’s not just some
kind of joke. It’s quite the best we ever heard.
ADELE
He’s really quite brilliant,
you know. He’s pretending we’ve hurt his feelings. Really, Mr. Koshkarian,
we believe you. Don’t we, everybody?
LES, MILLIE & ARCHIE
We believe you!
ARCHIE
All those who want Tinker
Bell to live, applaud!
(Laughter and applause.)
ADELE
Now do tell us about your
world of the future.
INEZ
Go on. Tell them.
ADELE
All right then. If you won’t
tell us about your world of the future, you can at least correct us.
KEVIN
Correct you?
MILLIE
Yes, we thought up the most
scrumdiddliumptious game! All based on your dinner conversation.
LES
It’s like "Going to Jerusalem",
only we call it "Stepping Out of the Future".
ARCHIE
Here, old man. I go first.
I’m stepping out of the future with a---a golden wireless.
ADELE
Archie, really! Anyone can
have a golden wireless now. In the future the wireless has to do something
it doesn’t do now---like smell.
ARCHIE
I got it! I’m stepping out
of the future with a smelly golden wireless.
ADELE
He means a golden wireless
that emits odors as well as voices.
LES
(to Kevin)
You see, then, how the game
is played.
ADELE
And all you have to do is
correct us.
INEZ
What did I warn you about
them? Superficial is as superficial does. And all based on myths and lies
and ill-gotten lucre.
MILLIE
Inez, do be quiet. We’re
playing a game.
INEZ
Fools, you’re all dancing
to your destruction!
ARCHIE
For a Bolshevik, dear heart,
you do have an extraordinary gift for popular song phrases.
ADELE
Please, all of you. We must
play the game. Archie went first, and you, Mr. Koshkarian, must correct
us---if necessary.
INEZ
(to Kevin)
Correct them. Correct everything.
KEVIN
There’s no such thing as
a smelly wireless---unless you mean a radio with a piece of Limburger on
it.
ARCHIE
Oh, I say! That’s capital!
ADELE
Really, Mr. Koshkarian, your
imagination does appear more limited than we had suspected. If it’s the
world of the future, why can’t there be a wireless that emits odors as
well as sounds?
KEVIN
I don’t know why there can’t
be. I just know there isn’t.
ADELE
For the sake of the game---
MILLIE
Mr. Koshkarian is absolutely
right---even for the sake of the game.
KEVIN
How on earth do you know?
MILLIE
All I know is what I personally
would want. And I certainly wouldn’t want a wireless that emits odors.
Think of how unbearable it would be if a politician was making a speech
and started sweating.
LES
Or if he’d just eaten a very
large plate of baked beans.
MILLIE
Les, really!
ADELE
Start again, Archie.
ARCHIE
Personally I like a smelly
golden wireless.
LES
Sorry, old man. This is a
democracy, and you’ve been overruled.
ADELE
Well?
ARCHIE
Quiet. I’m thinking. The
trouble with the democratic system is it does have the most execrable way
of freezing one’s creative juices.
MILLIE
So does a whole quart of
scotch before dinner.
ARCHIE
All right. I’m stepping out
of the future with---
ADELE
And taking---
ARCHIE
And taking---
ADELE
With me---
ARCHIE
I say, Adele, do button your
lip. I’m stepping out of the future and taking with me---a little black
box with a strange device which will bring me back to the future with Mr.
Koshkarian.
ADELE
That’s not fair!
ARCHIE
And why not? Really, Mr.
Koshkarian, I do loathe this era. So vulgar, so lacking in human dignity.
What I’d like---
ADELE
What he’d like would be a
medieval castle and a crown.
ARCHIE
Do tell us, Mr. Koshkarian,
that your world of the future has some beauty in it.
ADELE
Go on with the game!
ARCHIE
Tell me it’s more like the
past. Tell me it has the Elizabethan imagination, the Renaissance excitement,
the Grecian intellect---tell me---
KEVIN
You really want to see the
future?
(HE goes to his laptop
and brings it to them.)
LES
Looks like a small movie
screen. What does it do?
KEVIN
Just about anything you can
think of.
(HE switches it on,
but nothing happens. HE jiggles it, shakes it, still nothing.)
Shit! I was using it just
before. You can ask Lena. She saw me using it.
ADELE
I want to play the game!
ARCHIE
You see, my dear fellow,
what the noble submissive American woman has become.
KEVIN
If you think that’s bad,
you should meet my wife! Wait! I do have something from the future.
(HE hurries to his
briefcase and pulls out a folder, hands it to Archie and Millie and Adele
while LES refills the champagne glasses.)
MILLIE
(reading)
"Versailles Village---for
robust, active Senior Citizens".
ADELE
What on earth is a "robust,
active senior citizen"?
KEVIN
Those are people over sixty-five.
LES
Oh, old people.
KEVIN
We don’t use that phrase.
(INEZ has been rummaging
through the briefcase. SHE pulls out a paperback and her eyes widen with
delight.)
INEZ
The Huomo Myth: A Portrait
in Mass Ingenuousness.
(KEVIN’s back arches
in fear. HE pounces on her and wrests the book from her hands.)
INEZ
You didn’t tell me you had
it on you!
KEVIN
I forgot.
INEZ
Give it to me!
KEVIN
I was going to use it to
check some of the interior photographs.
INEZ
I must see that book!
MILLIE
Inez, what on earth are you
doing to Mr. Koshkarian?
(LES, ARCHIE and
ADELE are too absorbed in the brochure.)
INEZ
Give it to me!
(KEVIN makes a fist
as if to sock her and SHE retreats. HE slips the book into his jacket pocket.)
ARCHIE
I say, this is something,
isn’t it!
LES
Very interesting lithography.
The color reproductions!
KEVIN
You see how one simple thing
like the printing process has advanced in seventy years.
LES
Do come off the future thing,
Koshkarian, and tell us how this was done up.
ADELE
It isn’t the printing, Les.
It’s the photographs of the houses and the interiors and the text. You
must read this.
MILLIE
But who can afford to live
this way except the very wealthy?
KEVIN
That’s the point. It’s not
for the very wealthy. It’s for middle-income senior citizens.
INEZ
It’s for a time when there
will be no very wealthy.
MILLIE
Is this a kitchen?
KEVIN
That’s the kitchen in Model
B---Hadrian’s Villa.
ADELE
Goodness gracious, what are
all these things?
KEVIN
That’s an oven over there.
ADELE
An oven? So high?
KEVIN
And here’s the rest of the
oven over here.
ADELE
Come on now!
MILLIE
How can you have one part
over here and another part over there?
ARCHIE
Think of what hell it would
be on the witch in Hansel and Gretel! I doubt whether she’d be able
to lift those two "robust, active" little children after they’d eaten half
of her roof.
LES
That’s simple. You put one
kid in this oven and the other one in that.
MILLIE
Hush---both of you. Tell
us, Mr. Koshkarian.
KEVIN
You can see from the photograph
it can be done.
LES
We see it’s there. But that
doesn’t mean it can work.
KEVIN
Work? There are devices you
never dreamed of. Push buttons, automatic timers, microwaves which cook
your food in one quarter of the time---
INEZ
Truth, equality, division
of wealth---
KEVIN
Will you get away from me!
INEZ
Rapist!
KEVIN
And this refrigerator here---this
defrosts automatically.
MILLIE
Defrosts?
KEVIN
In other words, it’s an electric
ice box---only you don’t ever need ice. It gives you ice. And not great
chunks of ice. But perfectly formed little cubes.
ADELE
And you invented all this
yourself?
KEVIN
Good God, no! It’s been invented
and improved upon by many over the years.
ADELE
You are clever, aren’t you?
Coming to San Basilica with this.
KEVIN
It has nothing to do with
cleverness.
ADELE
Just what is your game, Mr.
Koshkarian?
LES
Obviously he’s come here
to get backing from Mr. Huomo.
KEVIN
We don’t need backing. Half
the houses are already being constructed.
ARCHIE
Then what’s your part in
all this?
KEVIN
I’m employed by the man responsible
for the entire project, Howard H. Christiansen.
LES
This Christiansen fellow
conceived and executed it with his own money?
KEVIN
No. Mr. Christiansen conceived
it in close conjunction with a committee. And he didn’t finance it himself.
What he did was form a corporation, the Versailles Village Corporation,
which in turn hires Mr. Christiansen at a weekly salary.
ARCHIE
Come again!
KEVIN
It has to be done for tax
purposes, Mr.. Christiansen forms a corporation which in turn hires him
and pays him a weekly salary. Then upon completion of the project, the
corporation sells off each house to individuals. The individuals who have
purchased the homes then assume control of the corporation.
ADELE
And what happens to Mr. Christiansen?
KEVIN
He goes on to something else
and forms a new corporation.
ADELE
Which employs him again and
pays him another weekly salary?
KEVIN
Yes.
ADELE
You made that all up, didn’t
you?
KEVIN
Look. Forget about the corporate
set-up. Just concentrate on the conception of a place like Versailles Village.
Do you like it?
MILLIE
It’s marvelous! Look, Adele,
the things they have for old people---
INEZ
Oh, I see the point now.
Appeal first to their materialism.
LES
But why make this only for
old people?
ARCHIE
Senior citizens, old boy.
KEVIN
There are other planned communities
for young marrieds and such---
ADELE
Young whose?
KEVIN
Young marrieds.
ADELE
What is a young married?
KEVIN
Exactly what it sounds like.
ADELE
It sounds like a bunch of
nymphs and dryads frolicking in a stream.
KEVIN
I happen to be more interested
in a planned community for senior citizens. When you’re young, you can
look out for yourself, create your own future, find your own friends. But
when age sets in, you need the same kind of help and guidance---
INEZ
You need government control!
KEVIN
You need the same kind of
help and guidance you need when you’re an adolescent.
LES
That’s provided you age into
an old adolescent.
ADELE
And you, Mr. Koshkarian,
have already been planning for your old age?
INEZ
For the old age of the world!
KEVIN
Yes. And that’s exactly what
all of you should be doing.
INEZ
Give it to ‘em---go on!
KEVIN
Which brings me to the point.
You’re all impressed by Versailles Village, aren’t you? Miss Allen?
ADELE
Well---yes. Yes, I am.
MILLIE
I think it’s marvelous! And
I do think you should show this to Mr. Huomo. He’d be thrilled.
ARCHIE
The thing that impresses
me, old man, is the idea that all those time-saving devices can free ordinary
people to read, to attend concerts and lectures, to study, to improve themselves---
LEN
Here, here!
KEVIN
Then you’re all agreed as
to the excellence of this project? Good. Because you can all put your names
down for the house you want now.
MILLIE
What?!
KEVIN
There’s no financial obligation.
After all, how can we be sure which of you would be alive when I get back
to the future? But people live far longer in my time, and you’d be ripe
to take advantage of the peace, beauty, comfort and excitement of Versailles
Village, So why don’t you just sign these preliminary no-obligation forms
on the dotted line here.
(HE distributes them
to the Group omitting Inez. ADELE, LES, MILLIE and ARCHIE take them mechanically,
too stunned to speak. LES breaks the silence with a burst of laughter.)
LES
What a superb joke!
MILLIE
He’s marvelous!
ADELE
I wish my father could hear
this!
ARCHIE
I wish Mr. Huomo could hear
it!
LES
I say, it’s a helluva lot
better than predicting when the next eclipse will occur. Mark Twain, are
you listening to this?
(This sends them
into more gales of laughter. The lights rise in Lena’s room. SHE has been
sitting disconsolately on the bed, finishing the last of the desserts.
Hearing the laughter, SHE rises and moves toward the bathroom door, pressing
her ear against it.)
INEZ
Okay, give ‘em the punch.
KEVIN
What punch?
INEZ
I don’t know. You’re the
one running the whole shebang. Don’t let these rich, shallow ninnies get
the last laugh!
(LENA moves through
the bathroom, opens the door to Kevin’s room and pokes her head in timidly.)
LENA
I heard laughing.
ARCHIE
(with a deep bow)
Come in, my dear.
ADELE
She already is.
LENA
I hope I’m not interrupting
anything.
LES
Only an orgy of the future!
(This sends them
into more gales of laughter as LES fills their champagne glasses and ARCHIE
goes to a phonograph on a small table and cranks it up.)
ARCHIE
Join our futuristic orgy,
my dear.
(HE hands her a glass
filled with champagne. As he does, HE spots something on the front of her
dress.)
ARCHIE
Excuse me---
(HE brushes it with
his hand.)
Hmm---cake crumbs.
(From the phonograph
we hear a tinny version of "Just Across the River from Queens". ARCHIE
grabs Lena and begins to dance about the room.)
LES
(bowing to Millie)
May I, madame?
(Together THEY dance.
ADELE, holding her champagne glass, begins to Charleston alone. Then SHE
jumps onto the table and Charlestons madly. The dance becomes more frenzied
and more joyful for all of them.)
INEZ
Look at them!
KEVIN
Looks like fun.
INEZ
Looks like fun! A party member
who says, Looks like fun!
KEVIN
I’m not a party member!
INEZ
And I allowed you to---violate
me!
KEVIN
I was the one who was violated.
INEZ
Oh, you and your kind make
me sick to my stomach. You ought to have your Party Card ripped to shreds.
KEVIN
For the love of Christ!
INEZ
You can go on lollygaging
if you want, but not Inez Gouterman!
(In a quick gesture,
SHE grabs the paperback from his jacket pocket. HE chases her around the
room through the dancing quintet. At last HE catches up with her, grabs
her about the waist, struggling to retrieve the paperback. Gradually DANCERS
cease, compelled by the conflict.)
ARCHIE
I say, you two!
LENA
Oh, he’s always fighting
with someone.
(KEVIN wrestles Inez
to the ground. OTHERS form a semi-circle around them.)
LES
Odds. I’ll take odds.
MILLIE
Oh, I’ll bet on Inez. She’s
the only discus-thrower we had at Radcliffe.
ADELE
Inez, for goodness sakes,
get up from there!
LES
What are they fighting about
anyway?
MILLIE
She has a book or something.
ARCHIE
Any book that’s worth a fight
like that---
(HE steps to the
proper place where he can slyly remove the book from Inez’s outstretched
hand. INEZ screams. ARCHIE peruses the title. A look of fear and confusion
comes over his face. KEVIN and INEZ get to their feet. KEVIN wrests the
book from Archie’s hand, hides it behind his back.)
ADELE
(observing Archie’s
face)
What is it? What was the
book?
ARCHIE
N-nothing.
(Simulating his former
gaiety)
On with the dance!
INEZ
I’ll tell you what it was!
The
Huomo Myth: A Study in Mass Ingenuousness.
LES
The what?
INEZ
You heard me!
ADELE
Mr. Koshkarian?
KEVIN
(to Inez)
I warned you.
ADELE
Mr. Koshkarian. The book
please.
KEVIN
It’s nothing really.
INEZ
Nothing??!! It’s everything!!!
KEVIN
Do you want to get me killed?
LES
Koshkarian, this is serious
business.
KEVIN
Look. This---this is a book
which---well It purports to have certain facts---
LES
Certain facts about what?
KEVIN
About---
INEZ
What a rotten fraud that
plutocratic bastard up there in his ivy tower with his---
KEVIN
Shut up, damn you!
LES
Inez, if you were a man---
(to Kevin)
Hand the book over.
(KEVIN has been backing
up to the window. HE reaches out and lets the book fall.)
INEZ
He let he book fall into
the pool!
(LES doubles his
fist and slugs Kevin. KEVIN tries to slug him back, but LES is too quick
for him and KEVIN falls to the floor.)
LENA
Leave him alone! He’s a sick
man.
ARCHIE
Might as well warn you, old
chap. He was our boxing star at Princeton.
LES
Get on your feet!
ADELE
Les, stop that!
LES
Any man who brings a book
into this place called---
INEZ
(to Kevin)
Are you just going to sit
there and let this capitalist bozo pummel you! Are you a man or a mouse?
LENA
(to Inez)
Get outa here, will ya?
INEZ
Get up on your feet and fight!
Fight for freedom!
KEVIN
Telling them will accomplish
nothing. Dr. Bellagio says one must know who he is and then make an adjustment
to society. Only he didn’t say anything about adjusting to the Twilight
Zone.
(LES knocks him down
again.)
KEVIN
You fucking asshole!
(ADELE and MILLIE
are absolutely shocked by this.)
Okay, just for that, I’m
going to tell you what’s in that book!
INEZ
Attaboy!
KEVIN
It’s a book with facts. Not
those silly lies you people were raised on. It’s a book which tells the
true story of Cyrus Julius Huomo.
LENA
Why do you have to go on
about Mr. Huomo? Why can’t ya leave well enough alone?
KEVIN
Because all of you asked
for it, and it’s about time you knew. We might not be too much better off
than you, but at least our search is for truth.
(LES makes a move
to slug him again, but ADELE restrains him.)
ADELE
Les! We’re rational intelligent
adults, not rowdy school boys.
LES
I won’t stand by while Mr.
Huomo is vilified.
ADELE
Certainly we know enough
about Mr. Huomo, certainly our love is strong enough so that we need not
become violent at that tiny faction of communists and fascists who have
attempted to destroy him.
MILLIE
You say your search is for
truth, Mr. Koshkarian. Then what is the truth?
KEVIN
Step by step?
MILLIE
I don’t know what you mean
"step-by-step".
KEVIN
Lena?
LENA
Huh?
KEVIN
How was Mr. Huomo found?
LENA
Stop about Mr. Huomo already!
Besides everyone here knows how Mr. Huomo was found.
KEVIN
He was found after an Indian
attack by two happy pioneers, Maude and Stanislau Huomo. Maude heard the
Little Baby Cyrus’ cries as if in a dream---
INEZ
Go to it, Kev!
ADELE
Mr. Koshkarian, we all know
that story. It is a sweet, romantic cliché. Surely you must realize
we are enlightened modern people. These foolish legends spring up about
every great man.
LENA
Foolish legends!?
KEVIN
Then how was the Little Baby
Cyrus found after the Indian raid?
ADELE
I’ll thank you not to use
that facetious tone with me. And I’ll also thank you not to use that precious
infantile appellation for Mr. Huomo as a young child. He loathes it.
LENA
What’s she talking about?
ADELE
Mr. Huomo was not found in
any Indian raid. He was born quietly and unobtrusively into a family of
seven at the foot of Imperioso hill.
INEZ
(to Kevin)
That wasn’t the real story!
KEVIN
Sssh!
(to Adele)
Very good, Miss Allen. Now
what was the story behind his chopping down the barn for his mother’s operation?
LES
Just what did this bamboozler
come here for anyway? We don’t have to defend---
ADELE
Les, please. His mother’s
operation, Mr. Koshkarian, is another humbug schoolchild legend. And it
wasn’t a barn he chopped down. It was a woodshed. And he did so when his
father was gone because his family was freezing and one of his brothers
was in bed with pneumonia.
MILLIE
Of course.
KEVIN
And so, according to your
"enlightened version", he didn’t walk fifty miles to return a nickel either?
LENA
Yes, he did!
ADELE
What kind of fool do you
take Mr. Huomo for? Walking fifty miles to return a nickel! It was five
miles.
KEVIN
And his romance with Wilma
Rutkin who died at twenty-two leaving Cyrus Julian Huomo celibate for life?
ARCHIE
I say, must we continue this?
This curious young man is repeating only the tales told by idiots and tenant
farmers.
LENA
Of all the crust!
KEVIN
Then consider me an idiot
tenant farmer. Later I will show you the extent of your idiocy, old chap.
ARCHIE
I beg your----!
LES
(doubling his fist
again)
I swear, Koshkarian---!
MILLIE
Men, please! Mr. Koshkarian,
it’s true that Wilma Rutkin was the great love of Mr. Huomo’s life.
KEVIN
And he has remained celibate
ever since.
LENA
Yes! Yes, he has!
ADELE
Good Lord, how are any of
us to know whether he’s remained celibate or not?
LENA
But he has!
INEZ
Ha!
KEVIN
That’s about as accurate
as The Great Muskegon Wrestling Match.
LES
Which happens to be fact!
KEVIN
Which lasted four hours?
LES
Hell, of course it didn’t
last four hours---it was more like thirty minutes. But it did stop the
Muskegon wars. Check any history book for that.
KEVIN
I know how accurate your
history books can be.
MILLIE
Mr. Koshkarian, we have a
Matthew Brady photograph of the Muskegon brave Mr. Huomo threw, just as
we have photographs of Wilma Rutkin and Mr. Pietre Jones.
KEVIN
Oh, yes, Mr. Pietre Jones.
ADELE
Go ahead, Mr. Koshkarian.
Tell us the version you are trying so hard to tear down---how Mr. Huomo
one day helped a little old man across the street and that little old man
died a few days later leaving his entire fortune to Mr. Huomo.
KEVIN
You appear to know the story
quite well, Miss Allen.
MILLIE
But it’s such a silly story.
LINDA
It is not!
MILLIE
I bet if we went to Mr. Huomo
right now and told him that story, which I’m sure he’s heard a thousand
times, why, he’d just laugh.
LENA
He would not! You are all
terrible! You’re worse than him. Those beautiful stories about Mr. Huomo---saying
they’re all lies and for tenant farmers.
ADELE
And we might add, my dear,
for stable groom’s daughters.
KEVIN
What?
ADELE
Your elegant, enlightened
dinner companion happens to be the daughter of San Basilica’s head stable
groom.
LENA
No! That’s not true!
KEVIN
(to Adele)
How do you know?
ADELE
Mr. Koshkarian, one does
not keep a secret like that for long.
KEVIN
(to Lena)
Then everything you told
me---
LENA
(in tears)
Everything I told you was
real!
ADELE
My dear Mr. Koshkarian, Lena
was invited to this guest house only through the persistent entreaties
of her father. He thought that might be a good way of keeping her from
corrupting all the male hired help.
(LENA, sobbing, rushes
from the room, back through the bathroom doors and into her own room.)
KEVIN
Lena!
(to Adele)
That was an awful thing to
do.
ADELE
But it was you, Mr. Koshkarian,
who is searching for truth, are you not?
INEZ
What are you concerned about
that silly blonde tramp for---when there’s the WORLD!
LES
We were talking about Mr.
Pietre Jones. We’ve all heard that old-man-crossing-the-street business.
It’s a tale told to children like those legends of King Arthur and the
pitcher of milk. In actuality the truth is far more interesting.
KEVIN
You bet it is!
LES
Mr. Huomo has never made
any secret about the way his fortune was accrued. On the contrary, I would
say he was rather proud of having contributed to progress with the invention
of the stall shower.
MILLIE
But it’s the way the invention
came about---that’s the beautiful part.
LES
Mr. Pietre Jones was a diffident,
kindly old man who lived across the hall from Mr. Huomo in the days when
Mr. Huomo’s law practice was failing and he was forced to live in a tenement
in St. Louis. Mr. Pietre Jones, although reduced to such impecunious circumstances,
remained a man of immaculate cleanliness. However, his feeble condition
made it increasingly more difficult to take advantage of the bathtub in
the kitchen. The bathtub was set too high, and to get into it, Mr. Jones
had to hoist himself up on his aged wrists which could not support the
weight of even his emaciated body. Often he would fall in the tub head
first, thus resulting in a series of enormous welts on his poor head. As
the welts increased, forming a peculiar headdress like a garland if small
red onions, Mr. Huomo took note of this when he would greet Mr. Jones in
the hall. Then one night when Mr. Huomo was in his room studying his legal
books, he heard a terrible thud across the hall followed by a scream for
help. He went running through the open door of Mr. Jones’ kitchen. There
lay Mr. Pietre Jones half in and half out of the tub, gasping for life.
Mr. Pietre Jones had forgotten to turn on the water.
ARCHIE
Naturally Mr. Huomo had to
do something to help this frail noble old man, so ingeniously he thought
of converting a small closet into a shower.
MILLIE
Which is exactly what he
did, ripping out the walls to accommodate the new plumbing. Mr. Pietre
Jones was eternally grateful to Mr. Huomo even if both of them were thrown
out of the tenement.
ADELE
It was the gesture, Mr. Koshkarian,
more than the invention itself which so touched Mr. Pietre Jones. When
they were evicted from the tenement, the old man took every penny of his
meager savings from the years he worked as a deckhand on Charles Darwin’s
ship, the H.M.S. Beagle,, and donated it to Mr. Huomo for the sole intention
of setting up a stall shower in the tenement apartments of every old man
in the country.
LES
As luck would have it, the
business boomed, stall showers swept the country, and both Mr. Huomo and
Mr. Pietre Jones found themselves millionaires. Having no relatives, when
Mr. Pietre Jones died, he left his share of the fortune to Mr. Huomo.
KEVIN
And that’s what you "enlightened"
people believe is the way Mr. Huomo made his fortune?
ADELE
We believe it, because it’s
true.
INEZ
Fools! Fools!
MILLIE
Inez, if you don’t be still---
KEVIN
She’s right, of course. You’re
all fools. Do you want to know the story that was in the book I tossed
from the window into the pool?
INEZ
They don’t want to
know---they t must know!
ADELE
Do tell, Mr. Koshkarian.
Why am I beginning to hate that name?
LES
(doubling his fist)
But I warn you---
KEVIN
Oh, I’m only supposed to
tell what doesn’t get me a sock on the jaw.
(moving to the bathroom)
Not on your life, buddy.
I’m telling the truth!
(HE steps into the
bathroom and locks the door. OTHERS are bewildered, glance from one to
the other.)
KEVIN
Can you hear me?
(Lights rise in Lena’s
room. Hearing Kevin’s voice from the bathroom, SHE stands in surprise.)
INEZ
(shouting toward
the bathroom door)
Coward!
KEVIN
Cyrus J. Huomo was not found
in a covered wagon after an Indian raid and he was not born at the foot
of Casa Imperioso hill into a family of seven. He was the illegitimate
bastard of a 48 year old charwoman in a dancehall in Sanders’ Gulch, Nebraska.
(LES lunges toward
the door, but ADELE restrains him. As Kevin tells the "real version", a
sense of overwhelming confidence builds in him. HE inadvertently opens
the medicine cabinet, sees the champagne stashed away and begins pouring
himself glassfuls.)
KEVIN
This charwoman, one Violet
Pritchard, had the baby conveniently enough when a wagon train was passing
through Sanders’ Gulch. She put the kid in the first wagon she could find,
the one owned by Maude and Stanislau Huomo. When they discovered the baby
twelve miles out of Sanders’ Gulch, Stanislau Huomo was all in favor of
dumping it over a canyon. He had six kids of his own---what did he need
with another one? Until the hour he died, Stanislau Huomo never missed
a day without telling the Little Baby Cyrus, "I shoulda dumped you over
that canyon, you miserable little bastard." It was Maude Huomo who fought
to keep the child. But it was not out of compassion, may I assure you.
She and Stanislau had the six homeliest kids west of the Mississippi and
her great ambition was to some day give birth to a child she could bear
looking at. Next to her own kids, Cyrus J. Huomo was Rudolph Valentino.
LES
I’m gonna smash his ugly
face in!
KEVIN
The Little Baby Cyrus grew
up with only two ambitions: to kill his rotten stepfather and to overturn
every outhouse in Mendocino county. It may interest you "enlightened" people
to know that the man who wrote The Huomo Myth, for which incidentally he
received the Pulitzer Prize for biography, says that Huomo had an "outhouse
fetish", which never left him during his entire life and was the result
of careless toilet training.
MILLIE
I won’t stand here and listen
to this rubbish. I’m going to call Mr. St. Clair.
ADELE
Wait!
KEVIN
Are you still there?
ADELE
We’re still here.
KEVIN
It wasn’t a barn he chopped
down, and it wasn’t a woodshed. It was---you guessed it! When he finished
overturning the damned things, he chopped them down. Occasionally with
people in them.
LES
Of all the---!
KEVIN
Walked all those miles to
school, did he? He was the most notorious truant in Solvang. And while
we’re on the subject of walking, he never went two steps to return a nickel.
On the contrary. He ran five miles once when he’d undercharged a deaf old
lady fifty cents. And as for this great love affair with Wilma Rutkin---let
me tell you---he married her for one reason and one reason alone. She had
money from the Rutkin Copper Mines---and that was the reason he married
her. But in four years, he had fallen madly in love with a Floradora girl
named Gladys Dupuis. Conveniently Wilma died of influenza leaving Cyrus
a multimillionaire. Only it’s mighty strange that all the symptoms of her
illness were those allied to arsenic poisoning.
LES
I’ll kill that bastard!
(HE smashes against
the door, jiggles the knob, but finds it securely locked. HE pounds his
body against it, but it still won’t budge.)
Goddamn you! I’m going to
murder you!
KEVIN
How can you murder someone
who won’t be born for seventy years?
INEZ
Don’t stop now! Tell them
everything---the Muskegon Wars---
MILLIE
In which Mr. Huomo fought
valiantly!
KEVIN
You bet he fought valiantly,
considering he started them.
LES
(banging on the door
again)
Damn you!
(to Inez)
And you, too!
KEVIN
One of his many sidelines
was buying up the magnificent handmade Muskegon carpets for a handful of
glass beads and a crate of bourbon selling them for thousands of dollars
to European nobility. When the Great Chief Manaloosa found out about it,
he cut off Huomo’s supply, preferring a more honest middle man. To get
revenge Huomo hired a band of circus roustabouts, dressed them up as Muskegons
and staged an attack on Fort Tomahoola.
MILLIE
Liar!
KEVIN
And as far as the Great Muskegon
Wrestling Match, that incomparable tale of valiance and muscle---it was
all nothing but a gigantic homosexual fantasy on the part of a swish journalist
for The New Orleans Times Picayune.
(laughing and toasting
himself in the mirror)
Photographs! Documents! Huomo
forged them all! The greatest propaganda machine of the 19th
Century! The stall shower? It wasn’t any kind of shower---it was a flush
toilet! Mr. Pietre Jones was the inventor of the flush toilet---Mr. Pietre
Jones, a poor palsied octogenarian with diarrhea. Huomo stole Pietre Jones’
invention, made a fortune manufacturing flush toilets and never gave Jones
a penny.
ADELE
Is that all, Mr. Koshkarian?
KEVIN
Good God, no! There’s loads
more---these are just some of the highlights. After all it’s been three
years since I read the book in hardback.
ADELE
And now that you’re finished
with your scatological outburst, can you explain why Mr. Huomo has shared
his wealth every worthy cause in the country?
KEVIN
Oh, I----
ADELE
And it might interest you
to know that we personally have been involved in several of these charities.
KEVIN
I’m not denying all the charitable
causes. Oh, he’s done that all right. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt took him
aside and said to him, and I quote, "If you don’t start parting with some
of that loot, you old bastard, the whole country’s gonna find out what
a cheap motherfucker you really are."
(MILLIE gasps. ADELE
reels back. HOUSEBOY enters stage right carrying a very wet paperback.
HE taps at the door. ARCHIE opens it. HOUSEBOY steps in.)
HOUSEBOY
Fish out of pool. Someone
drop.
LES
Gimme that!
ADELE
It’s absolutely limp.
ARCHIE
Blow on it.
(HOUSEBOY exits.
ARCHIE begins to blow on it, but LES pulls it away and strides toward the
door.)
ADELE
Where are you going?
LES
I’m taking this to Mr. Huomo.
MILLIE
No!
ARCHIE
Millie’s right.
MILLIE
We can’t let Mr. Huomo see
that---that vile slander. He has so much to do, so much of importance to
worry about---
LES
I’m not standing by and letting
that animated cuspidor come into San Basilica as Mr. Huomo’s guest, eat
Mr. Huomo’s food and then vilify the man without his being able to fight
back.
MILLIE
But it’s all such an obvious
pack of lies. Take it to Mr. St Clair if you will, but not Mr. Huomo.
INEZ
Of course not Mr. Huomo.
You’re afraid of Mr. Huomo.
MILLIE
I most certainly am not.
Mr. Huomo is kindness and goodness---
INEZ
And peukiness….
ADELE
Les is right. We must show
this to Mr. Huomo.
LES
Come on!
(LES, ADELE, MILLIE
and ARCHIE hurry through the hall and exit. INEZ waits a moment, then decides
to follow.)
INEZ
I wouldn’t miss this for
all the rice in China.
(KEVIN is suddenly
aware of silence in the other room.)
KEVIN
Hello? Hello out there? They’ve
gone.
(LENA opens the bathroom
door from her side, KEVIN having forgotten to lock it. HE is so startled
he drops the glass of champagne.)
LENA
They’re gone. To see Mr.
Huomo.
KEVIN
Oh? How come you didn’t go?
LENA
Because I think the whole
thing’s stupid. I think you’re stupid, and I think they’re stupid.
KEVIN
But you heard?
LENA
I heard.
KEVIN
And you---you don’t want
to go see Mr. Huomo?
LENA
Why should I see Mr. Huomo?
I told you. The whole thing’s stupid. I wouldn’t even bother repeating
it to a Raggedy Ann doll.
KEVIN
(retrieving the glass
and refilling it, toasting her)
To you, Lena---to the ability
to believe like you.
(SHE turns and walks
back into her room. KEVIN follows.)
KEVIN
Don’t leave, Lena. Maybe
Madame Spinoza was right after all. I don’t care if you’re the stable groom’s
daughter.
LENA
I don’t care what you care.
A stable groom’s daughter can sign with Thomas Ince, fly solo non-stop
from Cincinnati to Orange, New Jersey and murder her second husband, too,
you know.
KEVIN
You know what, Lena?
LENA
What?
KEVIN
While I was in there telling
the truth about Huomo---
LENA
That wasn’t the truth.
KEVIN
All right. Believe what you
will. But while I was in there I had the most glorious sense of---how can
I say it?---power!
LENA
Yeah.
KEVIN
There’s power in truth, you
know.
LENA
Yeah. There’s also power
in locking the bathroom door.
(KEVIN looks at her
in surprise, then laughs.)
KEVIN
You’re quite a girl, Lena
Martina. Come here.
(HE pulls her onto
his lap and kisses her passionately.)
KEVIN
Oh, Lena! Lena Martina! Involve
me!
(SHE pulls away,
rises, goes to both doors to make sure they’re locked, then checks the
window.)
KEVIN
What are you doing?
LENA
They’ll be back, you know.
And they were all fit to be tied when they left. They’ll be much worse
than that when they come back.
(SHE returns to the
edge of the bed dousing the lamp. The room is suffused with moonlight.)
KEVIN
And yet---for all your belief
in Mr. Huomo, you’ll still come to me like this?
LENA
Yeah.
(SHE starts to undress.
HE runs his hand over her thigh.)
KEVIN
Why, Lena?
LENA
Because Mr. Huomo would want
it that way. Mr. Huomo believes one should turn the other cheek. Mr. Huomo
believes one should love thy neighbor. And Mr. Huomo also believes a condemned
man should eat a hearty meal.
(KEVIN gulps and
his eyes widen in fright as LENA kisses him sensually on the lips. But
the kiss is shattered by the sudden boom of cannons illuminating the room
with angry slashes of light.)
KEVIN
What’s that?
LENA
(dashing to the window)
The cannons!
KEVIN
The gold cannons in the sterling
silver turrets!?
LENA
They’re all going off! In
all the years I can remember---and my father and his father before them---they’ve
never gone off!
(SHE begins to sob.)
KEVIN
But what does it mean?
LENA
The end of the world.
KEVIN
The end of---?
(laughing)
Oh, Lena! Don’t be foolish.
There’s a whole other world later. Why, of course there is. Why it’s got
Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler and Howdy Doody and Wally Simpson and O.J.
Simpson and Homer Simpson and Bart Simpson…
(HE is insecurely
going through the list as the cannons continue their shattering thunder.)
CURTAIN
