Scene Three
The stage is dark.
A spotlight falls on Lena and another on Kevin in Lena’s room in approximately
the same positions we left them. Only the chairs they are tied to are no
longer the ornate antiques of the past, but simple, ordinary, functional
wooden chairs. Except for them, the room is bare, having been stripped
of all its finery.
KEVIN
Lena?
LENA
Huh?
KEVIN
What are you thinking about?
LENA
The same as always.
KEVIN
You still believe.
LENA
He’ll come, and he’ll save
us.
KEVIN
It’s been a long time, and
he hasn’t come.
LENA
That doesn’t make any difference.
KEVIN
It’s difficult to say how
long a time it’s been.
LENA
They never let the light
in.
KEVIN
Even so, what has it been---a
century, a decade, a year, a weekend? And---when you’re not thinking of
him---what do you think about?
LENA
Things.
KEVIN
What things?
LENA
(shrugging)
Things.
KEVIN
Tell me, Lena.
LENA
I can’t.
KEVIN
You must tell me. I’ve never
had so much time to think before. And it frightens me. I don’t like what
I think about. No, that isn’t quite true. It’s more that I don’t like not
thinking about things. At first I still tried to apply logic. I wanted
to know where everyone outside was, where your father was, and why didn’t
he save us if he knew where you were, and he should have known where you
were because he asked Mr. Huomo to let you stay here for the weekend. But
then if there is no Mr. Huomo, how could he have asked Mr. Huomo---therefore
he didn’t know where you were and therefore he couldn’t save us. So you
see why I gave up logic. Logic can always be defeated by logic. Then, after
I gave up logic, I thought of Phyllis and the twins and Dr. Bellagio and
Versailles Villages. But they couldn’t sustain me for long. Then I thought
of everything that’s happened since the bus left me here at San Basilica---of
Inez Gouterman and Les Farnsworth and The Huomo Myth and the Bas-Relief
Scroll. I thought maybe because of what we sometimes overhear in the hallway
and outside, I thought maybe time can pass at different speeds in different
places. Like in this room it’s still the weekend and in the next room it’s
a century later. But all that makes me very dizzy, and in a way it frightens
me. And so the void comes, the emptiness---and that is more frightening.
But you know what sustains me? You know what I fill the void with?
LENA
What?
KEVIN
Ceylon.
LENA
What?
KEVIN
Ceylon with its sultry moonlit
nights and languid palms. Ceylon with its orange sunsets and emerald mornings.
I make up stories, I rearrange the facts. What if the note had not fallen
into the hands of Anna Sing? What if Hans was the one who betrayed you?
What if he had been in love with Anna Sing?
LENA
Hans in love with that skinny,
slimy, slit-eyed Chink? Whatsamatter, you crazy or something?
KEVIN
That’s the trouble, Lena.
I don’t know where to go from there, and that’s why the emptiness, the
void. You see, I have no imagination. Outside of my own hostile world---in
which I review and re-review all the things I should have said and done
that I didn’t---outside of my sexual fantasies---I have no imagination.
The real world had to be the real world, and the make-believe world wasn’t
even for children anymore. And we did this to protect ourselves from getting
hurt. We also protected ourselves from beauty, romance, involvement. I
would trade any part---any part of that real world I knew for one evening---just
one evening---with you in Runaway Wives or Carlton Manor or on that non-stop
solo flight from Cincinnati to Orange, New Jersey. I hear someone coming.
(HOUSEBOY, HOUSEBOY’S
WIFE, GARDENER, GARDENER’S WIFE, GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW and STEWARD enter
from stage right led by INEZ. All are dressed differently. Asians no longer
wear the costumes of servants, but conventional unstylish business clothes.
INEZ, however, is in a wide skirt, a Persian wool Cossack hat and matching
Persian wool jacket. The lights come up in Kevin’s room. It, too, has been
stripped of all its finery and now contains a low Japanese table with cushions
surrounding it and a myriad assortment of artificial flowers choking every
corner of the room.)
INEZ
Yes, my comrades, we are
returning to the room in which our empire was first conceived. What a fitting
place to celebrate our anniversary!
(SHE leads them into
the room. THEY take places around the table. GARDENER’S WIFE goes to a
corner, removes glasses and sake from a cabinet and proceeds to pour and
distribute.)
INEZ
We had some difficult times,
comrades, but look how we’ve come through! When I think of the humble beginnings---how
we had only an ideal and a dream--- No, I will take nothing but the most
meager credit. I was the guide, so to speak, but you, my dear comrades,
were the power. Yes, it’s true that I contributed the fortune my father
left when he choked to death at the breakfast table on a buckwheat pancake---a
fortune in that opiate for the masses, player-pianos---and it’s true, also,
that I kept the factory running and producing those ghastly babbling instruments
in order to pour funds into this---the Great Utopia---and it’s true that
most of the real ideas were mine. But no! I shall take no credit. It is
you, my dear comrades, who achieved it all---by following my directives.
Oh, we had our conflicts and disappointments to be sure. At the beginning
we thought it would be fine to invite all your relatives and friends from
all parts of the world to live here at Ing Pandawan, which, as we all know,
means The People’s Blood in Mindanoan. And it would have been perfectly
harmless had all your relatives and friends not brought their relatives
and friends. But no matter. After the initial civil strife, starvation
and bloodshed, we realized we could not live at Ing Pandawan and draw a
curtain around us to protect us from the corruption and filth of the outside
world. We know, also, that the land could only provide us with a certain
amount of sustenance---and to maintain our strength and our dream, we must
industrialize. Oh, we had many false steps. We found that the antique cotton
gin, the only machine we could then afford in the world market, did not
do all we hoped it would do. Mainly because we could separate the cotton
quicker and cheaper by hand. As a result, many of our fellow comrades accused
us of exploiting them. But I shall say no more about those dear, departed
cotton-pickers. For equally as important was the gradually increasing knowledge
that cotton doesn’t grow in this climate. Ah, but no matter. Step by step,
trial and error, one bounces back higher than before. And we did bounce
back! Converting all the bathtubs at Ing Pandawan into distilleries may
not have been a complete success, but nor was it a complete failure. It
was doomed, I think, only by our enthusiasm. We should have left at least
one tub for bathing. Since you, my dear comrades, are of a finer, more
sensitive race with a far keener and deeper olfactory sense, I realize
that the smell of unwashed flesh for so long a period of time, while I
hardly noticed it, asphyxiated at least a hundred and fifty of our dear
workers, Ah, but live and learn! It was when we sat down, exhausted, hungry
and overworked, and, if you will permit a momentary nudge of sleeping dogs,
just a trifle testy, it was then we figured scientifically chart by chart
what the world outside was crying for---it was then, dear comrades, that
we hit upon the commodity that not only has true meaning for us and the
world, but which has also made us rich, famous and happy, happy, happy!
And that commodity, of course, is artificial flowers! Artificial flowers---our
artificial flowers---which have carried artificial flower making to its
apotheosis---flowers which look more real than real flowers, last forever,
and smell better than real flowers because they do not smell at all. No,
they do not smell at all and fill a house with heady odors which lead to
the three esses---sin, sex and sinusitis. But although we have cornered
the artificial flower market of the world and have more money now than
the rotten capitalists who owned Ing Pandawan before us, ours has remained
a cause---not a mere bourgeois racketeering self-interested monopoly. Our
artificial flowers have done what no other industry could achieve! They
have freed the world’s gardens for the production of FOOD! To you, dear
comrades. The toast is to you!
(ALL lift glasses
and drink. INEZ gags, clutches her throat and drops to the floor dead.
When the Servants speak, they all speak in perfect, unaccented English.)
GARDENER’S WIFE
Well, I thought she would
never drink.
GARDENER
(to Steward)
Take the body away. It still
smells of the distillery days.
(STEWARD drags body
out the door and into the hall, then exits stage right.)
HOUSEBOY
(toasting sardonically)
To all us happy, happy comrades.
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
We were happy once.
GARDENER
When we were building and
struggling, but now it is day unto day, worse than long ago when we were
nothing.
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
Silence, Fumiko! We must
not speak so. Someone shall overhear us.
GARDENER
Who can overhear us besides
the two in there?
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
We are expecting many visitors---visitors
who look up to us, who have come to see the way we live and what we have
achieved.
HOUSEBOY
Let them come! Let them see!
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
You have had enough to drink.
HOUSEBOY
Look who dares to tell me
I have had enough to drink---I, your leader!
(HE laughs uncontrollably,
sadly. STEWARD returns, reseats himself at the table.)
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
Fool!
(to the others)
Which brings us to the two
in there.
(In Lena’s room,
SHE and KEVIN are straining to hear each word.)
HOUSEBOY
What of them?
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
They have served their purpose.
GARDENER’S WIFE
Yes, it has been very wise
to use them as an example of the old decadent way of life.
HOUSEBOY
Then we let them go.
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
Are you mad? One does not
let enemies go.
HOUSEBOY
But if they were enemies
once, they are powerless now.
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
It is thinking like that
which makes strong communes weak.
HOUSEBOY
But they would have let usgo.
GARDENER’S WIFE
That is why they are where
they are.
HOUSEBOY
No, I am sick of killing
and bloodshed.
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
I am sorry to hear you say
that, Hifu. Because you have been chosen to kill them.
(LENA and KEVIN react.
HOUSEBOY jumps to his feet.)
HOUSEBOY
Never!
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
Do not make Ohu do it---
HOUSEBOY
I am your leader!
(ALL except HOUSEBOY’S
WIFE laugh.)
I am! Your leader!
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
You are a fool!
(withdrawing a pistol
from her tunic)
It is either them---or you.
(SHE rises. OTHERS
follow.)
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
We will give you exactly
seven minutes.
(OTHERS exit leaving
Houseboy alone. HE paces the room, deeply troubled, attempting to work
up enough courage. Lights rise further in Lena’s room.)
KEVIN
And it seems like only yesterday
you were singing with him:
Oshie got rings on
her fingers,
Bells on her toes---
Well, the time is up, Lena.
Whatever time it is---no matter how protracted or diminished or convoluted---
LENA
It isn’t up.
KEVIN
But I want to say something
to you---I want to say---I love you, Lena.
LENA
The time isn’t up!
KEVIN
Yes, it is, and we must speak
quickly. Do you love me, Lena? Let me die with that knowledge. I say "die,"
because I’m convinced that I can never get back to wherever it is I was.
Therefore wherever I am I remain mortal, and whatever is mortal dies. So
tell me if you love me, Lena. Even if you don’t, I love you. I’m not just
saying that so you can say you love me. I used to do that. But I don’t
anymore. I’d like you to say you love me, but you don’t have to, because
I love you anyway. But do you love me?
LENA
Whatdya talking all that
junk for? We oughta be thinking of ways to escape.
KEVIN
Escape?
LENA
Whatdya think I been thinking
about all this time?
KEVIN
Well---I---
LENA
While you been wasting all
that time figuring out what everything means, I been working.
KEVIN
And?
LENA
I think I got it. When that
door opens and in walks the enemy, he says, "Aha!" And you say, "Gimme
a cigarette---a dying man has a last wish." Then he gives you a cigarette,
and as you smoke it, slowly, slowly, you eye him carefully, so carefully
you make him feel uncomfortable, until he says, "That’s enough smoking!"
Then, just as he is about to pull the cigarette from your mouth, you lunge
forward and hit him in the belly, making certain the lighted end catches
onto his shirt or his trousers or anywhere it can go up in flames. Then
you wriggle close to the flames and let them burn through the ropes on
your hands---then you free your feet and come and free me and ZOOMO---off
we go!
KEVIN
Really?
LENA
Now you got that?
KEVIN
Yeah? I mean yeah.
LENA
Okay---let ‘er rip!
(HOUSEBOY unlocks
the bathroom doors and enters.)
HOUSEBOY
I am afraid I come on a most
unpleasant mission.
LENA
(to Kevin)
Well?
KEVIN
He didn’t say, "Aha!"
HOUSEBOY
Please do not think poorly
of me. It is not I who wish to do this.
LENA
(whispering)
Gawhead---ask!
HOUSEBOY
I do not enjoy---
KEVIN
A cigarette please? A dying
man has a last wish.
HOUSEBOY
Yes. Yes, of course.
(HE reaches in his
jacket pocket, extracts a cigarette, puts it in Kevin’s mouth.)
Forgive me. I cannot let
your wrists free,
(HE lights the cigarette.)
LENA
Slowly---slowly---carefully---
(KEVIN begins a terrible
siege of coughing. HOUSEBOY grabs cigarette from his mouth so that he will
not burn himself.)
LENA
Whatsamatter now?
KEVIN
I forgot. I gave up smoking.
LENA
Oh, Christ!
KEVIN
We learned how dangerous
it is.
HOUSEBOY
You do not know how painful
this is for me.
LENA
Yeah, can you imagine how
we feel?
KEVIN
But why me?
HOUSEBOY
I beg your pardon?
KEVIN
Why me?
LENA
Here we go again!
HOUSEBOY
You are the enemy.
KEVIN
I don’t mean that. I mean
everything from the time the bus left me here. Why have I been singled
out to witness all this? There must be some reason.
HOUSEBOY
Some reason? Perhaps that
is where you make your first mistake.
(KEVIN knits his
brow in confusion.)
Murder is a terrible thing,
and I do not approve. But what am I to do? A leader is only a reflection
of his people. He does not change his people. He bends with them as a poplar
in the wind. I remember you both fondly. We sang sings together---
Dasa long since you’ve
been away---
But there is no more
singing.
KEVIN
I’m sorry, Lena.
LENA
Oh, you---!
KEVIN
Maybe there’s something else
I can do.
LENA
Pray!
KEVIN
Pray?
LENA
To Mr. Huomo! Pray hard!
Pray for help!
KEVIN
Why not? I still believe
he existed. And how do I know The Huomo Myth is really true? Maybe
Lena’s version is as true as any version.
LENA
Don’t think! Pray!
(HOUSEBOY raises
the pistol. LENA and KEVIN sit with their eyes shut tightly, praying.)
HOUSEBOY
Forgive me, my friends---
(HE raises the pistol
to shoot. All at once, one of the beams from the ceiling crashes down on
his head. HE drops to the floor. KEVIN opens his eyes in disbelief.)
LENA
Hurry! The cigarette!
KEVIN
What cigarette?
LENA
The one he took out of your
mouth because you gave up smoking, you dummy! It’s there in the ashtray---still
lit.
(KEVIN forces the
chair bit by bit toward the ashtray.)
And all the time you gotta
keep saying, "I believe! I believe!"
KEVIN
(as he goes about
the task of raising the rope on his wrist to reach the cigarette)
I believe---I believe---I
believe---
LENA
With feeling. As if you really
believed.
KEVIN
If he can do that, I believe.
(At last HE gets
the rope to burn enough to separate. Then HE unties his feet, hurries to
Lena and unties her.)
LENA
Quick! Out this way!
(SHE leads him through
the bathroom doors, into his old room. SHE sees the artificial flowers
for the first time.)
Ugh!
(SHE directs him
through the door to the hallway.)
The other entrance!
KEVIN
But where will we go?
LENA
Anywhere---to Solvang---Santa
Barbara---
KEVIN
But who knows what we’ll
find? What era will we wind up in? Maybe they’ve taken over Solvang and
Santa Barbara. Maybe as soon as we get past the gatehouse, your face will
fall like that woman in Lost Horizon. Or mine! Maybe there isn’t
anything out there.
LENA
Then why dontcha stay here?
KEVIN
No!
LENA
Then you know what to say.
KEVIN
Yes. I believe, Lena, I believe.
And who knows? When we get to Hollywood maybe Thomas Ince will want me
for the male lead in Runaway Husbands.
(In Lena’s room,
HOUSEBOY makes a last concerted effort to crawl past the door and into
the hallway. HE raises the pistol and shoots. The bullet hits Lena. SHE
falls. KEVIN pounces on Houseboy, wrests the gun from him. In the scuffle,
HOUSEBOY is shot. KEVIN runs back to Lena.)
KEVIN
Lena!
(dropping to his
knees, holding her head in his arms)
Oh, Lena!
LENA
(expiring)
I---I love you---
KEVIN
(tears streaming
down his face)
Oh, no! No!
(kissing her lips
and rising slowly)
But why you? You believed!
(HE hears sounds
of commotion offstage. HE races to the exit to the left. In a moment, GARDENER,
GARDENER’S WIFE, GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW, STEWARD and HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
come running on from the right. GARDENER’S WIFE goes to Lena; HOUSEBOY’S
WIFE to Houseboy.)
GARDENER
Quick! Call the guards!
GARDENER’S WIFE
She’s dead.
GARDENER
Get her out of here.
(GARDENER’S WIFE
and GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW help carry the body offstage, then return.)
STEWARD
(at the phone in
Lena’s room)
Corinne, call the guards!
(clicking the base)
The line’s dead.
GARDENER
Impossible!
(grabbing the phone,
then slamming it down)
Quick! Get the guards!
STEWARD
(rushing offstage
right)
Guards! Guards! One of the
decadent two has escaped!
GARDENER’S WIFE
(at the window)
It is too late. He is past
the foot of Casa Imperioso Hill. Casa Imperioso Hill? Why did I say that?
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
(to Houseboy’s lifeless
body)
Fool!
GARDENER
Is he---?
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
Yes.
GARDENER
Poor Hifu.
GARDENER’S WIFE
What will the visitors say
when they arrive to observe our successful commune?
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
Perhaps they will say, "Poor
Hifu".
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
They will say "stupid, incompetent,
bungling Hifu".
GARDENER
No. They will not say that.
They will praise and revere him.
GARDENER’S MOTHER-IN-LAW
Have you lost your senses?
GARDENER
And they will never say "Hifu".
For his name was not Hifu.
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
His name was Ohu.
GARDENER’S WIFE
And sometimes Dasa and Oshie
and Allah---
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
Ohu, beautiful doll,
You great big beautiful
doll---
GARDENER
Great noble Ouishil.
GARDENER’S WIFE
Ouishil?
GARDENER
Ouishil overcome!
Ouishil overcome!
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
Ouishil.
GARDENER
They will tell of how Ouishil
was born of lowly peasants, poor, oppressed peasants who labored for seven
cents a week in a sardine factory in Monterrey.
HOUSEBOY’S WIFE
He was born in Mindanao.
His mother was an actress.
GARDENER
He was born in the ladies’
room of that sardine factory during a strike. A gory, murderous strike
in which the capitalist bosses and their henchmen police wiped out every
living worker in the factory.
GARDENER’S WIFE
Every living worker except
the Little Comrade Ouishil.
GARDENER
The Little Comrade Ouishil
was discovered close to death by a poor Mexican janitor who had come to
clean the room.
GARDENER’S WIFE
This janitor, Arozco Ortega,
took the Little Comrade Ouishil home to his wife, his childless wife, who
loved the boy as she would her own son.
GARDENER
And the Little Comrade Ouishil
grew up strong and courageous and incapable of telling a lie.
GARDENER’S WIFE
And once when his father,
the good Arozco Ortega, was out cleaning the sardine factory lavatories,
the Little Comrade Ouishil’s mother fell ill and they called for the doctor.
And the doctor, a poor black man disbarred from the AMA for advocating
socialized medicine said, "Oh, Little Comrade Ouishil, your mother must
have an operation immediately---
(THEY are all listening
to the story with fascination and awe.)
SLOW CURTAIN
