by John Guare
MATT: I’m going to get pneumonia—
MATT wraps himself in a blanket. SARAH opens a chest filled with glass ampules.
SARAH: What is this?
MATT, sings idly:
“It’s cold in Rome
It’s so cold in Rome.”
PETE: What are these ampules?
MATT: “I’m freezing to death / Cos it’s cold in Rome.”
PETE: Are you a drug dealer?
MATT: Don’t break it open! It’s creosote. That one’s benzine.
SARAH: Creosote?
MATT: It’s one of the poisons in the air. It’s sprayed as a pesticide. This one’s asbestos. This is sulfur dioxide. This one’s chlorine. This carbon monoxide.
PETE, to us: He had been mixing these toxins that are in the air into his paint.
MATT: This bottle is methylene chloride. These are PCBs.
PETE, to us: He told us it’s not enough to paint with toxins.
MATT: I want my paint to contain the chemicals that poison the air. These airscapes—I want to show what they’re full of.
SARAH: The titles—“Dunedin”? “Tokelau”?
MATT: That one—when I finish it—will be called “Bounty.” That unfinished one is “Kermandec.” This would be “Antipodes”—“Gisborne.” They’re names of towns in New Zealand.
MATT, to us: The pollutants in the air have burst the ozone layer over New Zealand, which now has the highest incidence of skin cancer on the planet. I want to show what will inevitably happen to us if we don’t address—
PETE: Where do you get these toxins?
MATT: A friend from college is a chemical engineer.
SARAH: That lunatic Barry?
MATT, to us: Barry makes me the toxins I need. He halo-genates the chlorines, the benzines—It’s very simple—any child could …
PETE: Your work is rhapsodically beautiful—Tiepolo skies—clarity—
MATT: Beeswax gives it the shimmer. The secret is the entire painting is toxic.
SARAH: You never told me this.
PETE: Art and politics do not mix—
MATT: I’m not political.
SARAH: You’ve put my life in danger!
PETE: Not political!
MATT: It would be political if I wrote manifestoes about what was in the painting. I want you to discover it for yourself.
PETE: How? By dying? You want your paintings to kill the viewer? Get these out of here!
MATT: My paintings can’t be any more lethal than the very air we breathe.
SARAH: You’ve put the entire Academy in danger—
MATT: Darling, we’re in danger every moment of our lives.
SARAH: I thought I knew you.
PETE: Is there any more paint hidden? Don’t lie!
MATT shakes his head no. PETE and SARAH look around.
PETE: You’re worse than a drunk hiding booze.
MATT: Yes. I’ve hidden paint in chandeliers like some dope fiend.
PETE, quiet: Get him upstairs—
SARAH: Matt, let’s get you settled.
MATT: What about the paintings?
PETE: We’re going to store them in a safe place.
MATT: I have to finish them—that one only needs a gash of red.
PETE: Don’t touch the red!
SARAH, quiet: What do I do with these tubes of paint?
PETE, quiet: Wait till midnight. We’ll dump them in the Tiber. Oh god, this heat—these flies! Get him out—
SARAH: Come to bed.
PETE: Matt, I’m going to store these—
MATT: Where are you taking them?
PETE: To a safe place—until we contact Los Alamos and they tell us what to do with them. Get him to bed.
SARAH: Let’s go.
MATT, touching the canvases: My unborn babies. I promised them they might be masterpieces.
PETE: Stop mourning them. They’re the past.
SARAH: Come outside.
They go outside. The light is a dark pink.
MATT: Look at that sky.
PETE: The Italians call that Inbrunire: Becoming brown. That five minutes when the sky turns from pink to brown before night, before it’s black.
MATT: That’s what I want to paint—that—
SARAH: You can’t—at least not in the same way.
MATT: Will they take my prize away?
SARAH: Everybody wants the best for you. Come, darling. Come to bed.
MATT: Wait till the light goes. Inbrunire. Imagine having a name for five minutes worth of light.
SARAH: In the morning we’ll work everything out.
They watch. Pink. Brown.
MATT: We have a bet. You bragged you had ideas.
PETE: No pastels. No watercolors.
MATT: Give me a reason to be an artist. It’s my salvation. Find the equivalent that will make me feel the same way. I won’t settle for anything less.
PETE: Nothing less.
They watch. Brown. Black. MATT and sarah go. pete calls to RENZO.
PETE: Renzo? Dove è il garbage dump?—
Looks in dictionary.
Uno scarico dei refiuti—big-time refiuti—refiuti tossici.
RENZO: Malagrotta—vicino a Ciampino aeroporto—
PETE: Could you take these out there tonight?
RENZO: No—mi dispiace—
PETE: Per piacere? You have a truck. I’ll give you money, all my money.
PETE gives him money. RENZO counts it. He nods yes. PETE shakes his hand. RENZO goes. SARAH returns. PETE takes tubes of paint and puts them in a garbage bag.
SARAH: Will you do it, Pete? Will you give him the idea—
PETE: Of course—of course—everything will be fine—
PETE kisses SARAH. She pushes him away. PETE moves to kiss SARAH again.
SARAH: No.
In the darkening light, RENZO and PILGRIMS take the canvases away. The studio is clear. Darkness.
The next day. Bright morning light. Music! In the cleared studio, MATT, cleaned up, watches while PETE and SARAH pace.
PETE: Idea eighty-eight! Glass blowing! Revive ancient techniques. Organs of the human body done in Venetian glass.
SARAH: No. Glass blowing is all about lead—too toxic.
PETE: That forty-foot puppy dog covered with nasturtiums in Rockefeller Center. People love it. A summertime Christmas tree. It makes people feel fuzzy—
MATT: I was not put on this earth to make people feel fuzzy.
PETE: Cool. Funky. Weird. Make monuments out of tooth-picks—
SARAH: —Or chocolate!
MATT: Art is heroic.
PETE: Heroic? Forget it. Art today is cozy. What you want is the cerebral, the ironic.
SARAH: Younger artists are doing wonderful things with computers and getting attention and making money—
MATT: Computer-generated art? I am a Luddite. Sarah, why aren’t you supporting me?
SARAH: Don’t hate me, but I couldn’t be happier at this turn of events.
MATT: What are you saying?
SARAH: I felt a traitor, falling in love with a painter.
MATT: A traitor?
SARAH: I can’t say it—
MATT: Say it!
SARAH: It’s not the right time—
MATT: When? Our fiftieth wedding anniversary?
SARAH: I feel—and this is the result of my doing a lot of thinking here at the Academy—thoughts I’ve never had before—thoughts I’ve kept locked in—thoughts that scare me but I know are true—but living in Rome has showed me that—
PETE: Don’t hold anything back—
SARAH: Painting is so—phallocentric.
MATT: Phallocentric?
SARAH: The cylindrical, oh so masculine, penile tubes of paint whose only purpose is to subjugate the powerless female canvas. The macho brush, tumescent with paint, bursts, its rainbow orgasm flowing out so smugly onto the silent victim.
MATT: You’re calling canvas a rape victim?
PETE: Come on, the canvas
asked for it.
MATT: When it’s a bad painting, it is the rape of the canvas. But when it’s Caravaggio painting Jesus calling St. Matthew—
SARAH: That was then. Centuries of patriarchy finally over—
PETE: Go girl go!
MATT: That’s the way you feel?
SARAH: I didn’t expect a year in Rome to make me change the way I think! What am I suppose to do? I can’t go back to the Met and look at all that oil.
PETE: So. We agree. Painting is dead.
MATT: So, wait. What else is dead?
SARAH: The novel. The theater.
PETE: Cinema. Photography.
SARAH: The family. God. The state. Gender. Language.
MATT: So what’s alive?
PETE: What becomes art when everything’s dead? Collage! You take all the medical records, your biopsies, your x-rays, the lab tests and—
MATT: —And what?
PETE: Paste them on your old, useless easel! Matt’s Unfinished Symphony. Dripping with self-pity. People would snap that up!
MATT: No! I’m still reeling from what you said about the paint—
SARAH: We’ll find the answer. We’ll find the answer.
PETE, to us: We ran over idea after idea—
To MATT:
Slice animals in half and float them in formaldehyde—
SARAH: Old hat. I see wonderful things with flourescent bulbs.
MATT: Phallocentric?
PETE: Idea three forty-nine. Tattoo yourself with the stigmata —yes! The wounds of Christ—where your squamos cell cancer was—sit in your gallery and we’ll watch you get tattooed.
SARAH: Yes! I like this!
MATT: Performance art? No! And, no, I don’t put every pill I’ve ever taken on beautifully wrought chrome shelves. I don’t float basketballs in water. I don’t show my bedroom with all my dirty clothes and sheets and condoms and cigarette butts. I paint it. You hang it.
PETE: Then just hang out. People don’t actually like to see art but everybody likes to know an artist. You could be the actual artist that everyone knows.
SARAH: You’re not being productive.
PETE: I’m offering him a life of fun!
MATT: You boasted “It’s easy. Anybody’s an artist. I’ll find the idea.”
PETE, frustration: Idea three fifty-six. Set the American Academy on fire.
SARAH: Idea three fifty-seven. Let’s go away. Get your head screwed back. We can go to Sicily. The islands off Sicily. Stromboli. Rustica.
MATT: No. It’s over.
PETE and SARAH look at each other. It’s hopeless.
SARAH: Have you ever been to a Seder?
MATT: A Seder? Don’t go religious on me.
SARAH: When you have your Seder during Passover, you always set a place for the great prophet Elijah—snatched up to heaven in a whirlwind of fire—who just might come back today. He’ll bring the Messiah with him. He’ll answer all the questions. You’re in the desert now with boils and locusts and squamos cell cancer. But it’s not the end. Keep the door open for Elijah. Embrace the unexpected.
MATT: Would that be a fortune cookie or is that what they call Zen?
SARAH: It happened to me. The day I walked into that gallery and saw you, Elijah was there for me. My life won’t ever be the same again. I know Elijah’s there for you. Be quiet. Just be quiet so you can hear his small, still voice. Whoever walks through that door might be the story of your life.
PETE: Marry me, Sarah. Be the story of my life?
There is a commotion outside. MATT and SARAH continue their scene.
MAN’S VOICE: My glasses were in the suitcase—I can’t see the money. Where’s my jet-lag medicine?
WOMAN’S VOICE: Where are my prayers? Which is the bag with Pete’s things?
MAN’S VOICE: We’ve been to St. Peter’s, so next is Maria Maggiore, then St. John Lateran. Then—what’s the fourth church? I forgot the fourth church!
MATT throws his pencil down.
PETE: How can we hear Elijah with all of this racket?
PETE looks out. He gasps.
PETE: Omigod.
SARAH: What is it?
PETE: Am I hallucinating? It’s my parents—
To us:
And outside getting out of a Roman cab, staggering towards the gate of the American Academy in Rome, I saw two of the reasons I had fled America.
A man and woman in their 50s spill out of a cab, in wrinkled, crummy clothes; their luggage is plastic sacks and old suitcases. They are RON and DOLO. They are in chaos. RENZO comes out of his small office.
RENZO: Can I help you?
RON: St. Peter’s. St. John Lateran. Maria Maggiore. what’s the fourth church? I forgot the fourth—
RON is reassembling the luggage.
DOLO: We’ll try St. Peter’s tomorrow. Today we find our Peter—
RENZO: You have to be quiet.
DOLO: This is a nice place. Peter’s going to make us stay here. I wonder what window is his?
RON: How many rooms here?
RENZO: May I help you?
A cannon explosion. RON and DOLO clutch each other.
RON: No!
DOLO: Oh God!
RENZO: It’s twelve o’clock noon! The cannon of Garibaldi!
RON: Every day?
RENZO: Every day.
RON: Jesus Christ—
DOLO: Is that the fountain you throw the coins into?
RON: We get to Rome. We get to our hotel. I think It’s a hotel.
DOLO: It’s run by nuns from the Philippines.
RON: We’re only allowed to use the room for eight hours a day. We got the four p.m. to midnight shift. We got to hang out till It’s four.
DOLO kisses the ground.
RON: Get up—she’s got the jet lag—
DOLO: Peter is here—Peter is in Rome—I feel him.
Looking at RENZO:
Don’t he look like the barber on Roosevelt Avenue?
RON: No, he don’t look like—You sort of do. Is there a bell boy for our bags?
RENZO: We are not a hotel.
RON: The sign says “American Academy in Rome.” I’m an American. I’m in Rome.
RENZO: This is an institution for artists.
RON: Goddammit! I’m an artist. I’m more of an artist than the people here. I happen to be a painter. My work is seen around the world. I have a show in New York right now.
DOLO, proud: Underwear.
RON: The subject matter is immaterial.
MATT, to PETE: Your father’s an artist?
PETE, aghast: You could’ve fooled me.
RON: I am here to see my son, the noted Rome prize-winner, Peter Shaughnessy.
RENZO, beaming: Why didn’t you say—
RON: You know him? Dolo, he knows—
RENZO looks up to the studio. PETE leans out, urgently. PETE puts his finger to his lips, shakes his head no.
RENZO: I have not seen him.
PETE picks up a phone in the studio.
RON: But you said you know him—
RENZO’S telefonino rings.
RENZO, phone: Scusi. Accademia Americana.
PETE, phone: Renzo! You haven’t seen me—
RENZO, phone: Pete?
RON: Did you say Pete?
PETE, phone: Say you never heard of me—I’m not here—
RON: Didn’t he say Pete? You said Pete?
RENZO, to RON: You were the one who said Pete. He’s not here.
RON: Not here now?
PETE, phone: Not here ever.
RON: He’s gone out for a short walk?
PETE, phone: You don’t know me.
RENZO, to RON: I have to get back to—
RON: Or do you mean he’s not here?
PETE, phone: You do not know me—
RENZO, to RON: I do not know him.
RON: But we send mail here—
RENZO: I do not collect the mail.
RON, taking out a photo: Look at his picture?
RENZO: He does not look familiar.
DOLO: He’s dead. He’s dead. I know it.
RON: Shut up “dead.” Are you new here?
RENZO: No. Yes.
RON: Is there anybody inside the office to talk to?
RENZO: Today is Sunday.
RON: Other people must know him. He won the Rome prize. This is the American Academy—
The phone rings.
RENZO: Permesso. Accademia Americana—Bright: Ciao, Adele!
RENZO sits to chat with a friend.
RON, holds out photo: Shaughnessy. He’s tall. Brown hair. Thin. He won the prize two years ago. We haven’t seen him in two years. Maybe he’s lost his hair—
DOLO: He’s dead.
RON: Shut up with the dead!
RON, to RENZO: Look at the picture again. Maybe he’s fat with all the spaghetti?
RENZO: Please.
RON: We’re not barging in. We’re not prying. I want to make sure he’s not on drugs. I’m no stranger here. I was stationed here in the Air Force back in the sixties. I know all about Rome. La Dolce Vita. Anita Ekberg strutting around in that fountain.
DOLO: We watched Three Coins in the Fountain on the television before we came. I thought it was a sign. The three girls coming to Rome to find happiness and they all do. I want that for Peter. I want to toss a coin in that fountain and say to Peter, “I want the best for you.”
RON: We just want to know he’s all right.
RENZO, pained, looks up at the studio.
RENZO: I can’t help.
RON: Do you speak English? Maybe you don’t understand what I’m saying. Peter Shaughnessy. Our boy. We’re not stalkers. The Mrs. and me won a raffle at our church in Sunnyside for this pilgrimage to Rome—Holy Year. Three days. Go to four churches. Get all your sins for all time forgiven. Sounded like a good deal to me—provided you drop dead as soon as you come out of the fourth church.
DOLO: Where is that fountain where you throw the coins in?
I got it here in my book—I want to see that—
RON, holds up photo: Look again—
RENZO: I am not able to help you.
DOLO: Can we sit here a while? Recuperate from the Vatican. We couldn’t get into St Peter’s—
She opens up sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. She offers one to
RENZO.
