Barker, Plays Eight

by Howard Barker

  HOGBIN: Dinn – er! (The wind. Pause.) Dinn – er! (Pause. He puts down the pole, flashes his torch at the cage. It is empty. He turns the torch off, then on again. He falls heavily to the floor.) ED – U – CAT – TION! (He seizes the pole. Wields it.) Against irrationality the pole of knowledge! OFF! (He prods at the air. Pause. He approaches the cage.) Are you in there? (Pause.) Are you, though…? (Pause.) Come again…? (Pause. HOGBIN emits a cry of horror. A tiny laugh from the cage. He sinks to the floor. Daylight. HELEN enters, armless, legless, pushed by HOMER in a chair.)

  HELEN: I’ve missed you! I really have! I went to brush my hair, and where were my arms? I went to get out of bed, and where were my legs? Fortunately my creator appeared and lent me limbs, but he can’t do a woman justice as you can, look, he’s got my blouse on back to front. I didn’t criticise. He is at least a hundred, aren’t you. One hundred at least. Gay says you love each other, but how can you, there is nothing to love, or do you love that? Do you love her vacancy and plan to write your signature across her void? My stumps hurt when the wind is in the East, which is the prevailing angle THE MORE THEY INJURE ME THE MORE THEY HATE, can you explain that? You’re educated. (He looks at her.) They want to pity me, it is there only hope, but I am not pitiful, am I? I cannot think why they neglect my face, it is the obvious starting point, but perhaps they need to see me weep. I do weep. Or shout an accusation. They long to be accused. I WON’T SATISFY THEM. (Pause.) My clothes are so exquisite, I found a woman who understands the trunk, as form, its own aesthetic, and her hemming is magnificent. I think in future we shall all be mutants, we shall be born so, and all limbs will be knobs, and some will have more, and some will have less, and there will be such a wonderful variety! It will happen in the womb, how I don’t know, some fine powder will fall from the sky, or something in the water, and we will be such a fascinating menagerie! I set this fashion, as I did in Attica, I was slavishly copied there, but now I am rather too progressive. Do you know what Doctor Savage says, he says I am two mouths, that’s all. TWO MOUTHS! And I ran every morning in Old Troy. While Paris kipped his coital kip I was up and tearing through the market, the porters’ bawdy in the slipstream of my arse! They pelted me with fruit and once I let them cluster me, on sacks. But only once. Royalty is loved for its transgressions but not habitually. (Pause.) Are you deserting me? (Pause.)

  HOGBIN: I am losing my mind…

  HELEN: Which mind? The one you brought to Troy with you?

  HOGBIN: WHICH MIND?

  HELEN: Yes. Which? Do you think you lose your mind? You find others. Do you think you lose your sight? You see by other channels. And the legless also manoeuvre! I once saw a fingerless woman with twelve inch thumbs. OF COURSE I SAY THIS TO CONSOLE MYSELF. (Pause.) You want your mind, but why? To document your pain? To put order in it? To fix its mayhem, why? WELCOME PAIN I ALWAYS WAS EXPECTING YOU. Even in copulation, even in the madness of torrential fuck I knew my agony awaited me. Is Gay delivered of her monster yet?

  HOGBIN: It’s not a monster.

  HELEN: How do you know?

  HOGBIN: Because we’re healthy.

  HELEN: Healthy? What’s health to do with it? Of course it is a monster but it merely lacks the strength SHH! I WAS PUNISHED FOR SAYING THIS LAST MONTH, SHH! (She looks at HOMER.) This man is a monster, aren’t you?

  HOMER: Yes.

  HELEN: I believe he would torture the world to death, for disappointment.

  HOMER: Yes.

  HELEN: Poet’s Troy will be the worst yet. POETS’ TROY, DUCK YOU INNOCENTS! (Pause. To HOGBIN.) Hold me, and tell me what I feel like. I cannot hold myself.

  HOGBIN: I can’t.

  HELEN: Why ever not?

  HOGBIN: I’ll only – I’ll get all – start to –

  HELEN: Go on, then –

  HOGBIN: No.

  HELEN: HOLD ME…! (He goes to her, puts his arms round her. Pause.)

  HOGBIN: I want –

  HELEN: What? What do you want?

  HOGBIN: A clean, white shirt… (Pause.) A tie… (Pause.) And trousers, with a perfect crease… (Pause.)

  HOMER: When Troy fell I followed Odysseus. I followed him because I could not bring myself to look into the ruins. We all knew, there was a history in the ruins. But I thought, there will be no public for a song about the ruins.

  HOGBIN: IT’S YOUR JOB, YOU BASTARD. (Pause. CREUSA enters.)

  CREUSA: You wife’s in labour. (HOGBIN detaches himself from HELEN, starts to go.) The Mums are in attendance. But you may wait. You wait, and pace. Up and down, you pace. Your painless hours. Pitiable thing. (He goes out. To HELEN with joy.) Another baby! (Pause.) My son appeared.

  HELEN: Did he?

  CREUSA: As if to cleanse me. My lost son. As if to make the juice of kindness flow from my dry and withered ducts. Tears from the baked kernels of my eyes. As if, flinging our arms about each other we would cry, ‘Forgive…!’

  HELEN: And…?

  CREUSA: And I would be washed in pity and walk with a serenity I never found in all my kicked-up life…

  HELEN: But…?

  CREUSA: It isn’t like that. (Pause. Then HELEN laughs.) Yes, do laugh. You know, don’t you, it isn’t like that? The redemption? The reunion? All lies? (HELEN laughs.) She knows, she knows better than you! (She looks at HOMER.) REDEMPTION FUCK. (Pause.) No, we change, we do change. There’s the misery. Except for you. (Pause.) He told them, tear your breasts off. But they made a torso out of you instead. Men don’t grasp metaphors, do they? Not swift to connect. Under the circumstances the babies recommend you may keep the rest –

  HELEN: I thank the babies –

  CREUSA: Do you?

  HELEN: Profusely. (Pause.)

  CREUSA: I think even as you say a thing, you know it to be false. You know it, and yet you say it. I think you are the enemy of all Troys no matter whose. I think you believe nothing and therefore ought to suffer everything imagination might conceive. I AM A BETTER PERSON THAN YOU.

  HELEN: Yes.

  CREUSA: However cruel.

  HELEN: Yes.

  CREUSA: For all the rotting of my kindness and the crumbling of my soul –

  HELEN: Yes –

  CREUSA: I AM. I AM. (Pause. She runs to HELEN, holds her.) Oh, you sliced thing you make me SHUDDER. (To HOMER.) Doesn’t she? Make you SHUDDER? (She caresses HELEN.) Say you deserved it, say you earned it, say it, say…

  HELEN: Yes…

  CREUSA: I cannot resist you. I, the better person, cannot resist you, why? When you are so incorrigible, why? This terrible but honest place. This island of confessions. I long for you, and my son is earth, is pebble. (To HOMER.) Can you explain that? (He shakes his head.) HE DOESN’T WANT TO KNOW ANY MORE… (She lovingly undoes HELEN’s buttons.) And he puts her blouse on back to front…

  SCENE SIX

  SAVAGE is sitting under the cage.

  SAVAGE: So Alexander the Great came to the barrel where Diogenes was living FUCK KNOWS WHY HE LIVED IN A BARREL THE POSEUR and said I am the most powerful man in the world, come to listen to you, the wisest man in the world, speak. And the yob waited. The yob waited for the poseur. And Diogenes said, timing this exquisitely, and WITH ALL THE CALCULATION OF A MAN WHO KNEW NO AUTOCRAT WOULD STOOP TO TEAR HIS BOWELS OUT, the poseur said, BELIEVING HIMSELF SECURE IN HIS REPUTATION AS FIVE PERSIAN ARMIES BEHIND THEIR STAKES, said, YOU HAVE TO ADMIRE THE PREDICTABILITY, YOU REALLY DO, you are standing in my sunlight. (Pause.) DO YOU CALL THAT WIT! DO YOU CALL THAT INSOLENCE? (Pause. A tiny laugh from the cage.) The intellectual Bajcsy-Zsilinsky had been a racist murderer, an anti-semite, a killer of trade unionists, a scrawler of slogans, a publisher of slanders, an editor of intimidating magazines, anti-pity, anti-intellect, but when the Nazis came he met them with a gun. HE HAD TRULY TRAVELLED. And they shot him in a cellar. BANG. The futility of acquiescence versus the futility of resistance. BANG. Why are you dressed like an accountant? (HOGBIN has entered, and waits.) Are there accountants in Mum’s Troy? How can there be when there’s no money? But no
, that’s logical, that’s symmetry, the increase in the level of poverty will be matched by the rise in students of accountancy, and as for poverty we recommend more barrels! (Pause.) No, you’re worried, I can see you are. I go on, and you’re worried. I humour myself and you fret. THAT’S HOW WE ARE, JOHN! I pretend. I act sympathy. (He pretends to listen.) The ear – extended. (Pause.)

  HOGBIN: It ain’t normal. (Pause.)

  SAVAGE: Ah.

  HOGBIN: IT AIN’T NORMAL.

  SAVAGE: Pity…perhaps…

  HOGBIN: They say it’s me.

  SAVAGE: Who does?

  HOGBIN: The Babies.

  SAVAGE: Say it’s you…?

  HOGBIN: I said why don’t yer let me see it, they said just stand there, I said you’re hiding something they said wait, I said it’s my kid too, you – and I released a torrent of abuse –

  SAVAGE: Well, naturally –

  HOGBIN: I was that tense –

  SAVAGE: Inevitably –

  HOGBIN: And I saw it, and it was – (Pause.) They say I am a genetic criminal. (Pause.) What’s that? (GAY enters, sits. Long pause.)

  GAY: I do not love it. (Pause.) How I wanted to… (Pause.) And how absurd to want.

  HOGBIN: A GENETIC CRIMINAL, WHAT’S THAT! Gay, you testify –

  GAY: The testicles can testify.

  HOGBIN: Gay –

  GAY: SHH, I AM THE TEACHER! (Pause.) Because I know, and always knew, to be born was absurd. So absurd that to be angry was equally absurd. And just as being angry was absurd, so caring was absurd. Quite as absurd. Which left me only – ecstasy. Not my mother’s ecstasy, not the fucking-out of consciousness – but the different ecstasy of perpetuating absurdity because what else can you do when you are the victim of a joke but participate in the joke and so outjoke the joker? LAUGH LOUDER, ALWAYS LOUDER STILL. So birth was ecstasy. Through the red blankets of pain I applauded all the blind and inexorable circumstances that brought life into this sticky planet. MORE LIFE! AND MORE LIFE YET! (Pause.)

  HOGBIN: We’ll find a shack. I’ll put some flowers round the –

  GAY: If only it were malice! The surge of mud that – the earthquakes that – the flood which suffocates the infant and the murderer. If only it were malice…but it isn’t…how intolerable…How impossible to assimilate… (Pause.) So of course you’re guilty. You have to be. And I have to hate. (She extends a hand to him.) What’s your innocence got to do with it? (He takes her hand.) Hide, then. (She shouts.) THE CRIMINAL IS TOUCHING ME! Hide…!

  HOGBIN: Gay –

  GAY: POL – ICE!

  HOGBIN: HIDE WHERE?

  SAVAGE: And so, to hide him from his enemies, Athene wrapped him in a mist…

  HOGBIN: Give us a mist, then!

  GAY: POL – ICE!

  HOGBIN: (Running one way, then back again.) Mist…! Mist…? No mist!

  SAVAGE: Opinion.

  HOGBIN: Wha’?

  GAY: (Hurrying out.) THE CRIMINAL ENEMY OF MUM’S TROY! (She points to HOGBIN.)

  SAVAGE: OPINION – (Men rush in with sticks.) IS – THE – MIST. (HOGBIN turns to face them. A fraction of calculation elapses.)

  HOGBIN: Helen did it. (They stop.)

  I mean.

  I mean, the misery that woman’s.

  I mean, her life continues in the same old.

  I mean, the very sight of her.

  I ask you. (Pause.) I am the Accountant and therefore the disposer of all life and death, all marriage, surgery and literacy any of my calculation, yes, even the colour of the woman’s pants and the baby’s rash. (Pause.) She is guilty, you know that as well as me –

  EPSOM: I ‘ave chopped ‘er twice, son –

  HOGBIN: And is that sufficient? Two?

  GUMMERY: Stood in her blood –

  HOGBIN: I ask you. I don’t seek to persuade, I merely ask –

  GUMMERY: Her blood stopped round my ankles –

  HOGBIN: Sufficient, was it? Two? I ask, that’s all –

  EPSOM: WHAT MORE IS THERE? (Pause.)

  HOGBIN: What more? What more? Is imagination suffocated then? Is anger drained? Is all possibility exhausted by four strokes?

  EPSOM: We ain’t sophisticated –

  HOGBIN: No, but dream a little, you have dark yards of unthought thought –

  GUMMERY: Common soldiers, of the wars –

  HOGBIN: Common, no! It is the likes of her have taught you commonness! You have in you the seeds of every genius who ever walked, but unwatered, no, don’t, don’t, it hurts to hear your nature stamped on, and by you… (Pause.)

  GUMMERY: I have axed seven Troys. What are you after?

  HOGBIN: After?

  GUMMERY: YER CAN’T MANIPULATE THE PEOPLE.

  HOGBIN: And would I try? Would I? I, scarcely shot of his virginity, new to the razor, gauche, louche, cunt-mad, cunt-terrorized, swallower of substances and kicker of cans, would I aspire to work one over you? You, whose faces are bibles of experience, would I have the neck? (Pause. They admire him.) Educated I may be, for all that means, and perceptive, yes, gifted, I grant you, and with skills of certain sorts, Accountancy and the European Mind, but arrogance, I’m spared, as you can see. (He bows.) All my wits are fagends, chip bags, and gutter dross beneath your boots… (Pause.)

  EPSOM: Thank you.

  HOGBIN: No more than your due.

  EPSOM: He says so.

  HOGBIN: I say so, and repeat as often as you fancy –

  EPSOM: AND AGAIN!

  HOGBIN: I praise, I praise, but listen to what little judgment I have assembled, Helen’s limbs are neither here nor there –

  EPSOM: No, neither. Here nor there.

  HOGBIN: (Acknowledging.) You have the sticks, to you the wit – But Helen still rules Troy, the explanation for your unhappiness. (Pause.)

  GUMMERY: What unhappiness?

  EPSOM: ‘HO ARE YOU CALLING UN’APPY? (HOGBIN permits himself a smile.)

  HOGBIN: The unhappy, how slow they are to recognize themselves…! I say instead, unfulfilled. (Pause.) A jug half empty. An engine at low revs. An athlete with bound feet. I ask you, have you never thought you could do more?

  EPSOM: You ‘ave the echoing tones of an advert for mother’s tonic –

  HOGBIN: WELL, YES, BECAUSE GREAT TRUTH SHARES LANGUAGE WITH GREAT ERROR, and luscious sunsets are reflected in slum windows… (Pause. HOGBIN waits.)

  GUMMERY: (At last.) Yes…

  EPSOM: Brian –

  GUMMERY: Yes, I said. (Pause.) Because yes, who’s happy? Don’t say you are, Les, don’t please, your fifteen pints are testimony to a desperate life. –

  EPSOM: AND YOUR BODY. (Pause.)

  GUMMERY: My body? What of my body?

  EPSOM: I’ve often thought, why is Brian so very – infatuated – with ‘is body? A woman’s, yes, that I cop, but to lavish such attention of yer own –

  GUMMERY: WHAT IN FUCK’S –

  EPSOM: Evidence of something, Brian –

  GUMMERY: WHAT! WHAT!

  HOGBIN: You see! You see, how once we look, we see! All points to our restlessness, and why? Because we know, we know, in every area, we are not whole… (A profound pause.)

  GUMMERY: (Looking around.) We’ll say we couldn’t find you… (To SAVAGE.) Could we? Couldn’t find him? (They go out. HOGBIN sinks to his knees, exhausted, ecstatic.)

  HOGBIN: Oh, wonderful, oh, luscious, GIFT OF THE GAB.

  SAVAGE: I see your education was not wasted…

  HOGBIN: All your seminars – SHIT ON THEM – all your criticism – PISS ON IT –

  SAVAGE: Yes, yes –

  HOGBIN: The Speak. The Speak! THE – WORD – SAVES – LIFE! (EPSOM comes back.)

  EPSOM: You do it.

  HOGBIN: (Horrified.) What?

  EPSOM: (Flinging a sickle, which slides over the floor.) What Helen needs. (He goes out again. HOGBIN looks in horror at SAVAGE. SAVAGE lets out a laugh.)

  HOGBIN: Laugh. I love laughter. (He laughs again.) No, I love it. I do. Laugh. In the death camp. In the execution cha
mber. Balls to giggling, no, real laughter, please, the cosmic stuff, YER THINK I CAN’T DO IT, CUNT? (SAVAGE stops.)

  SAVAGE: I think it’s easy. I think there is nothing easier in the world.

  HOGBIN: FLESH, WHAT’S THAT?

  SAVAGE: Quite.

  HOGBIN: The jets come down, maim, maim! The rattle of the bofors, FLESH, WHAT’S THAT?

  SAVAGE: You tell me.

  HOGBIN: The stabbing on the Number 3. The wife carved in the basement. FLESH, WHAT’S THAT?

  SAVAGE: Indeed…

  HOGBIN: Two ‘undred pounds of murder in the Mercedes boot, FLESH, WHAT’S THAT! (Pause. He is kneeling on the floor with the weapon.) Shove off, I ‘ave to prepare myself… (Pause.)

  SAVAGE: Will you tell Helen, or will I? (Pause.)

  HOGBIN: Me.

  SAVAGE: I’ll send her, then?

  HOGBIN: Yes. (SAVAGE looks at him.) Go on, then. (SAVAGE withdraws. A great silence, attended by a movement of sky and light. At last HOMER appears, pushing HELEN. They stop.)

  HELEN: My boy. My only one. (HOGBIN doesn’t move. SAVAGE enters. HOMER goes to HOGBIN, who is dead. He looks at SAVAGE.)

  SAVAGE: HE REFUTES THE ARGUMENT. And how? By counter-argument? Not Hogbin. No, Hogbin chooses to ignore. NO MORE QUOTATION OF THE EMACIATED TEXTS! The testimony of experts, the beautifully laid bricks of theory, the towering cathedrals of logic, NOT FOR HIM! (Pause.) I wrote on his report, this student follows arguments, but lives by instinct, but which instinct, SHAME? (Pause.) They’ll put this down to love. But is it? (He grabs HOMER.) Is it? Is it love? (GAY enters. SAVAGE releases HOMER.)

  GAY: Is my husband dead? (They look at her.) We were going to grow old together…! (Pause.) We were. When he had done his sentence. I would have waited at the prison door, holding the unloved blob. I would and he – (To SAVAGE.) Unforgivable, isn’t it? UNFORGIVABLE PESSIMISM! (Pause.) Which I have never suffered from and cannot for the life of me comprehend. (She looks at him, feigning objectivity.) Of course the only man I ever loved would choose to kill himself, that was as certain as night follows day, water runs downhill, etcetera, so why I, heaven knows why I – (She begins caressing his body, kissing him, undressing him.) should be like this – at all – I can’t – think – what – (She moans.)