The House of Blue Leaves and Chaucer in Rome

by John Guare

MATT begins taping as SARAH sweetly takes PILGRIMS by the arm. PILGRIMS kneel in the confessional.

  PILGRIM 1: Bless me Father for I have sinned. I was a prostitute. I sold my body—for no reason —I don’t know why I did it—I was possessed—I want that forgiven—many men in a night—for years—I want God to forgive—

  SARAH starts stacking video cassettes.

  PILGRIM 2: Bless me, Father—Listen to me, listen I had a good reason to sell the drugs. My wife had the how do you say it the mul the mul the multiple the scler the scler the sclerosis. I sold the drugs to pay for her treatment. I’m not responsible for the people who died from the dope I sold them? Am I? That’s not a sin. I want to be forgiven—

  The stack grows higher.

  PILGRIM 3: Bless me, Father. Years ago, I stole money from the bank where I worked in Gloversville, New York. I didn’t steal to help anybody. I did it to impress a woman who left me. I vanished. I want to go home to Gloversville, New York. I want to die forgiven. This voice every day saying Thief Thief Thief.

  PILGRIMS:

  —I came on this tour to Rome to find peace—

  —The tour guide promised peace—

  —I can’t live this way anymore—

  —I have ice on my heart—

  —Every breath I take burns me—

  —Could you find the Pope and ask the Pope to forgive my sins?

  PILGRIM 3: —I don’t have the money to give back to the bank, but will God understand?

  PILGRIMS:

  —I still have this burn in my heart that I came with

  —This guilt—

  —My sins whip me—

  PILGRIM 4: My baby fell off the boat. I let him drown. I was angry. You know how when you get angry you don’t think—that’s not a sin—he drowned—I thought he was joking—why do I feel it’s a sin? Help me, Father. Bless me?

  PILGRIMS:

  Forgive me

  Bless me

  Forgive me

  I have sinned

  Forgive me

  MATT and SARAH embrace beside a tall stack of videos.

  Bright music plays. MATT pulls off his white collar. Laughter.

  MATT, to us: It’s one year later.

  A show like the “Charlie Rose Show.” CHARLIE interviews MATT, who is healthy and successful.

  CHARLIE: You couldn’t use paint. Did you ever think of quitting?

  MATT: Art? Never. It’s my curse. My joy. You embrace the unexpected and move on.

  SARAH: It’s like Marcel Duchamp says. It’s—

  MATT: —Not like I’m quitting painting. Now I’m drawing on chance.

  CHARLIE, to SARAH: And you were a curator at the Metropolitan Museum. Now you’re what’s being curated at the Whitney. What’s it like—switching sides?

  SARAH: The Academy changes your life in ways you never expected—

  CHARLIE: You conquered cancer.

  MATT: I was a healthy person who happened to have been invaded by a cancer.

  CHARLIE: You couldn’t use paint anymore. You looked around for a new medium at the American Academy and together you and Sarah stumbled upon the device of betrayal.

  MATT: Charlie. Interviewing.

  CHARLIE: —Interviewing pilgrims in Rome and showed them not in some museum but on the giant TV screens in Times Square.

  SARAH: —Which somebody called—

  MATT: —The St. Peter’s Square of the devil.

  CHARLIE: They have—as these reviews say—transformed the use of video into a tool as authentic as pencil on paper.

  SARAH: Thank you.

  MATT: I feel if paint gave Rembrandt cancer and it was the new century, Rembrandt would work in video.

  CHARLIE: What is it about taping the confessions that so enraptures everyone?

  SARAH: Man without a mask.

  MATT: The face beneath the face.

  SARAH: Matt saw something in these faces that believed.

  MATT: To be in the presence of such staggering belief in the need—

  SARAH: —For purification—

  MATT: —Was overwhelming. We were anthropologists going into another culture.

  CHARLIE: Margaret Mead in Samoa?

  SARAH: Dian Fossey in Africa.

  MATT: Gauguin in Tahiti. We were pilgrims.

  CHARLIE: You knew you were home.

  SARAH: Yes!

  CHARLIE: The show is staggering. All these confessions. These pilgrims’ tales. One critic has said it’s like Chaucer in Rome. How many pilgrims did you interview?

  MATT: Two thousand—

  SARAH: Two thousand six hundred and forty-two.

  CHARLIE: All secretly. They all thought they were going to confession. Did you ever feel you were violating their privacy?

  SARAH: Privacy?

  MATT: Charlie, there’s no such thing in the twenty-first century.

  CHARLIE: How many lawsuits have been filed against you?

  SARAH: Well, eleven hundred—give or take a few.

  MATT: You’re not a success until somebody sues you.

  CHARLIE: Tell me about it. The two most powerful videos are the first ones you did. Let’s roll—

  DOLO appears in light.

  DOLO: Another letter said I had another baby at a high school prom and murdered it at the prom and went right back dancing. The letter had a cut-out finger pointing at me. Sinner, sinner. Another letter had proof I blew up the World Trade Center and another letter knows I murdered John Lennon. I think I’d remember killing John Lennon. But how could I kill O. J. Simpson’s wife? I never been to California. How could I shoot down an airliner that crashed? How could I murder a six-year-old beauty queen in Colorado? I didn’t kill Princess Diana. I wouldn’t bring down the plane that killed John John and his wife. But I did. These letters keep coming saying I have proof and these are all sins. Can you forgive them?

  DOLO fades.

  CHARLIE: Who are these people?

  MATT: Their identities aren’t important.

  SARAH: It’s their prayers.

  MATT: The secret spiritual life of America.

  CHARLIE: Look at this one—

  RON appears in light.

  RON: I look at that spot in the apartment where my father killed my mother. And I look at my wife who I hate. And there is an undertow in Sunnyside …

  PETE appears.

  PETE, to us: I was there that night. I had left Rome. I gave up on Christ’s fingernails. I returned to the college in upstate New York, where I taught. They took me back, even though I don’t have tenure. Or a doctorate. I came down to New York City for a conference on Renaissance paintings. I didn’t have the money to stay at a hotel. I came out to Sunnyside. I stayed in my old bed. I needed laundry done. It was my home and, as much as I hated them and was shamed by them, I needed them. We had a typical horrible silent dinner. Tuna Wiggle—which is Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup mixed with a can of tuna with crumpled potato chips sprinkled on top and put in the oven till it’s burned. Proust had his madeleine. I have Tuna Wiggle. After that culinary treat, I sat down to watch television before I stumbled back into the time capsule of my old bed. I looked at the TV and saw my mother’s face. I wondered if some botulism in the Tuna Wiggle was making me hallucinate.

  DOLO’S VOICE: One of the letters said I had a baby when I was very young.

  PETE: My father was asleep in his green plastic Barcalounger, but there he was on TV.

  RON appears, watching a TV. RON hears himself:

  RON’S VOICE: —And pretty soon I know I will do the same to her as my father did to my mother. Which is why I would like to have her sins forgiven before I do it because it’s in my bloodstream—like me being an artist.

  DOLO appears behind ron.

  PETE, to us: My father heard his voice and woke up. My mother heard her voice and came out of the bedroom. They watched the show.

  MATT: They were the parents of a friend of ours—

  RON and DOLO cry out in rage, disbelief.

  RON, overlap: Y
ou knew? You knew? Pete? That priest? You knew? How could you? Pete? How could you?

  DOLO, overlap: Pete, oh, Pete. Were you there, Pete? You knew! That priest wasn’t a priest! You knew! Were you there?

  PETE, to us: I ran out of the house. I walked all night. I sat up in the waiting room of Grand Central until a train came that would take me back to my campus upstate New York. Way upstate. I would finish my doctorate. I would somehow get my life together. I was teaching Renaissance painting—Giulio Romano—Tintoretto—to a particularly recalcitrant group of future car dealers when someone—a graduate assistant—came into my classroom and interrupted me to tell me that my father had strangled my mother and then killed himself. Gregorian chant. RON comes slowly to DOLO, who smiles at him. RON takes DOLO off into darkness.

  Silence.

  Then lights. A TV studio. Laughter.

  CHARLIE: You work together—do you like that?

  MATT: I was so alone painting.

  SARAH: I couldn’t bear the loneliness of the library—

  MATT: But together—

  SARAH: Four eyes are better than two.

  CHARLIE: Will you go back to painting?

  MATT: Charlie. Being a painter is like being a safe cracker. If you don’t do it for a while, your fingers lose their touch. I’ve outgrown painting.

  CHARLIE: More videos?

  MATT: Blimps. No. We’re into dirigibles.

  SARAH: The Elijah Project.

  MATT: —Sending dirigibles over cities around the world with signs on them like—

  SARAH: “Accept change.”

  MATT: “Make friends with adversity.”

  CHARLIE: Those are yours? I’ve seen them!

  MATT: “Embrace the unexpected.”

  CHARLIE: You’ve done that. What does it mean? The Elijah Project?

  SARAH: Charlie, we have to have some secrets.

  CHARLIE: One of the most remarkable shows in years. Matthew Gee and Sarah McCarty, this year’s winners of the greatest prize in the art world, the Bucksbaum Prize. How much is it?

  MATT & SARAH: A hundred thousand dollars.

  CHARLIE: Bucksbaum indeed. See Matthew Gee and Sarah McCarty at the Whitney. “Chaucer in Rome.” Read the book. Watch the video. See the film. The success is beyond your wildest dreams—proving yet again there’s a lot of money in sin.

  MATT: Thank you, Charlie.

  SARAH: Thank you, Charlie.

  CHARLIE: And good luck on your wedding.

  MATT: A friend from Rome is marrying us.

  CHARLIE stands up and turns into FATHER SHAPIRO marrying MATT and SARAH. Happiness. A Vivaldi mandolin concerto.

  FATHER SHAPIRO: My favorite wedding story? The marriage at Cana. Water turning miraculously into wine. You two wonderful people turning into rare wine. I now pronounce you man and wife.

  SARAH, to us: Why did we get married? We didn’t want to lose each other. I felt at that moment our lives had turned into wine.

  MATT, to us: We had been together so long that I didn’t think marriage would make any difference but the moment Father Shapiro said the I now pronounce you’s, we moved into instant blinding sunlight. We had been living in the early morning shadows for so long and now it was noon—and everything mattered.

  SARAH, to us: We went to—

  MATT: —Where else?

  SARAH: —Italy for our honeymoon.

  MATT, to us: We stopped off—

  SARAH: —Where else?

  RENZO appears at the gate.

  SARAH: Renzo!

  RENZO: Congratulations on your successone! It all happened here—

  MATT, looking up: Paradise! All new fellows?

  RENZO: Everybody new. Everybody wonderful. Everybody at peace.

  MATT: No room for us?

  RENZO: Always room for the two of you. Whatever happened to Pete?

  MATT, awkward: I haven’t seen Pete since that day.

  SARAH, uncomfortable: We lost touch with Pete after we came back to America.

  RENZO: But you were such friends—Pur troppo.

  RENZO goes.

  SARAH, to us: We went to Sicily—

  MATT, to us: And then got a boat and sailed to an island off Sicily.

  SARAH, to us: We went for a little passegiatta.

  MATT, to us: We passed a terrible little dive.

  SARAH, to us: We went in for a beer.

  MATT, to us: Our eyes got adjusted to the dark.

  PETE appears, carrying a tray. MATT and SARAH sit at a table.

  SARAH, to us: We saw Pete.

  PETE looks at them.

  MATT: Pete? Pete Shaughnessy? Pete? It’s Matt—and Sarah —we’re married—we’ve been looking for you—

  SARAH: We’re here in Sicily on our honeymoon—

  MATT: Can you sit? Where the hell have you been? You win! You’re an artist! Pete? How about another bet? Give me another idea?

  PETE stares at them blankly. MATT and SARAH are unnerved.

  SARAH: Where the hell have you vanished to? We called where you teach. They didn’t know.

  MATT: Pete?

  PETE, to us: I looked at them.

  When I was young—well, not so young—but young—school young—I loved my research. I loved being in the library, going off to museums, staring at paintings, wondering about the history behind each painting—not how it was made but where it fit into history—what had come before it and what came after. And I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

  There was a young woman in my class who intrigued me because she also worked as a model for a life study class to support herself. She was very funny and told me about the poses she had to strike during the day and how she loved being looked at while she was nude, senza veli—feeling all these pencils taking her shadow. She was not a very good scholar, but she was attractive beyond any experience I had ever had and she liked me—why? I don’t know—perhaps she thought I could help her with a paper. The point is we met at the library one night and I walked her back to her apartment and she asked me in. Her one room was filled with charcoal drawings students had made of her body and then given her in token. I told her I did not have my pencil with me but would like to see what—to see how—well, we ended up in her pull-out—her bed. She lit candles. Her skin was even more luminescent than—do you know the paintings of De la Tour? Not important if you don’t—

  What terrified me that night about being with her was discovering the power here—in me—in my own body. The feeling she could generate in me. I did not feel that she gave it to me. She revealed to me what was in me—the joy, the ecstacy, the ecstatic state that was in me—that belonged to me, that I had read about but could not imagine that this potential for joy belonged to me—flowed in this body. We fucked and fucked and I finished and she said, “Will I see you tomorrow?” Did she say I love you? Yes. She slept and I got up and dressed and left her house quietly and ran and ran for many miles. The power that was in me—that I did not know was in me—that made life so different—that changed my idea of who I was. I ran and ran.

  I never called her again. I walked away if I saw her or else nodded and passed by …

  When I got the news that my parents had died because of an idea I had had—the power that was in me—I ran and ran and then ran further than I ever imagined and came here to this island off an island—and got a job.

  I saw in a Herald Tribune that some rare tourist had left behind that Matt and Sarah were married. Yes, Matt and Sarah were famous enough to be on the People page. I didn’t finish the article—and here they were …

  MATT: I have to say how much I owe you. Money—I’d like to give you a share—Sarah and I are married!

  SARAH: Do you hear us? Pete?

  PETE gives no response. MATT and SARAH overlap in their nervous excitement.

  MATT: I’m sorry your mother died. Your father. It had nothing to do with the tape. You didn’t betray them. They should be grateful to you.

  SARAH: You gave them an immortality. We put them in a
time capsule. Maybe a thousand years from now, they’ll be the images we remember from today—one of the reviews said that—what it was like to be alive today—

  MATT: I want to share my happiness with you. We had a bet. You won. You gave me a new life.

  PETE gives no response.

  MATT: You’re an artist. You are. You can’t stay here. There’s no art here. No life. Not in some dive on an island off Sicily—

  SARAH: Come back to America. Let us help you. It was just a bet—you’re brilliant—

  MATT: You’re our friend. You have to let us help you as you helped me. Write the catalogue for our next show—

  SARAH: We’re so happy. You gave us that happiness. We want to pay you back.

  In a deliberate rhythm:

  Don’t do this to yourself. You didn’t commit any sin. None of us has.

  MATT: It’s Father Matt! I forgive you! You are forgiven!

  MATT blesses PETE, PETE steps back. PETE looks blankly at MATT and SARAH and shrugs.

  PETE: Mi chiamo Pietro.

  PETE turns away. MATT and SARAH are shaken.

  SARAH, to us: He went back into the dark. Pete?

  MATT: Pete?

  A bell starts ringing. One at first, then more and more.

  MATT, to us: I looked up at the small TV set over the bar. The bells came from a documentary on the TV about the Holy Year last year. II Giubileo.

  SARAH, to us: So long ago.

  MATT, to us: The screen was filled with the faces of thousands of pilgrims, looking for absolution.

  VOICES:

  Forgive me

  Bless me

  Perdonatemi, Padre, perchè ho peccato

  The ice on my heart

  VOICES:

  The fourth church

  Af et Beni. Dörüncü kilese

  Forgive me.

  PETE appears in light.

  CURTAIN

  AFTERWORD

  A play can take hours, days, or years to write. Here are some notes from my journal about the serendipitous journey of writing this play.

  In 1988, my wife, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, was named president of the American Academy in Rome, which means she is the CEO in New York City. The director, who lives in Rome, the noted Medieval historian Professor Lester K. Little, is the resident head and leader of life at the Academy, day to day. Adele travels to Rome five or six times a year. I get to follow along perhaps three times a year for periods of up to eight weeks.