Angels in America

by Tony Kushner

  On a nearby street corner, Harper sits on a wooden crate, holding and petting a cat.

  HARPER: Oh! It’s you! My imaginary friend.

  PRIOR: What are you doing here? Are you dead?

  HARPER: No, I just had sex, I’m not dead! Why? Where are we?

  PRIOR: Heaven.

  HARPER: Heaven? I’m in Heaven?

  PRIOR: That cat! That’s Little Sheba!

  HARPER: She was wandering around. Everyone here wanders. Or they sit on crates, playing card games. Heaven. Holy moly.

  PRIOR: How did Sheba die?

  HARPER: Rat poison, hit by a truck, fight with an alley cat, cancer, another truck, old age, fell in the East River, heartworms and one last truck.

  PRIOR: Then it’s true? Cats really have nine lives?

  HARPER: That was a joke. I don’t know how she died, I don’t talk to cats I’m not that crazy. Just upset. Or . . .

  We had sex, and then he . . . had to go. I drank an enormous glass of water and two Valiums. Or six. Maybe I overdosed, like Marilyn Monroe.

  Did you die?

  PRIOR: No, I’m here on business.

  I can return to the world. If I want to.

  HARPER: Do you?

  PRIOR: I don’t know.

  HARPER: I know. Heaven is depressing, full of dead people and all, but life.

  PRIOR: To face loss. With grace. Is key, I think, but it’s impossible. All you ever do is lose and lose.

  HARPER: But not letting go deforms you so.

  PRIOR: The world’s too hard. Stay here. With me.

  HARPER: I can’t. I feel like shit but I’ve never felt more alive. I’ve finally found the secret of all that Mormon energy. Devastation. That’s what makes people migrate, build things. Devastated people do it, people who have lost love. Because I don’t think God loves His people any better than Joe loved me. The string was cut, and off they went. Ravaged, heartbroken, and free.

  (Little pause)

  I have to go home now. I hope you come back. Look at this place. Can you imagine spending eternity here?

  PRIOR: It’s supposed to look like San Francisco.

  HARPER (Looking around): Ugh.

  PRIOR: Oh but the real San Francisco, on earth, is unspeakably beautiful.

  HARPER: Unspeakable beauty.

  That’s something I would like to see.

  (Harper and Sheba vanish.)

  PRIOR: Oh! She . . . She took the cat. Come back, you took the—

  (Little pause)

  Good-bye, Little Sheba. Good-bye.

  (The Angel is standing there.)

  ANGEL: Greetings, Prophet. We have been waiting for you.

  Scene 3

  Two A.M. Same night as Scene 1. Roy’s hospital room. Roy’s body is on the bed. Ethel is sitting in a chair. Belize enters, then calls off in a whisper:

  BELIZE: Hurry.

  (Louis enters wearing an overcoat and dark sunglasses, carrying an empty knapsack.)

  LOUIS: Oh my God, oh my God it’s—oh this is too weird for words, it’s Roy Cohn! It’s . . . so creepy here, I hate hospitals, I—

  BELIZE: Stop whining. We have to move fast, I’m supposed to call the duty nurse if his condition changes and . . . (He looks at Roy) It’s changed.

  Take off those glasses you look ridiculous.

  (Louis takes off the glasses. He has a black eye, with a nasty-looking cut above it.)

  BELIZE: What happened to you?

  (Belize touches the swelling near Louis’s eye.)

  LOUIS: OW OW! (He waves Belize’s hand away) Expiation. For my sins. What am I doing here?

  (Belize takes the knapsack from Louis.)

  BELIZE: Expiation for your sins. I can’t take the stuff out myself, I have to tell them he’s dead and fill out all the forms, and I don’t want them confiscating the medicine. I needed a packmule, so I called you.

  LOUIS: Why me? You hate me.

  BELIZE: I needed a Jew. You were the first to come to mind.

  LOUIS: What do you mean you needed—

  (Belize has opened Roy’s refrigerator and begins putting all the bottles of AZT into the knapsack.)

  BELIZE: We’re going to thank him. For the pills.

  LOUIS: Thank him?

  BELIZE: What do you call the Jewish prayer for the dead?

  LOUIS: The Kaddish?

  BELIZE: That’s the one. Hit it.

  LOUIS: Whoah, hold on.

  BELIZE: Do it, do it, they’ll be in here to check and he—

  (Belize has filled the knapsack and closed the empty refrigerator.)

  LOUIS: I’m not—Fuck no! For him?! No fucking way! The drugs OK, sure, fine, but no fucking way am I praying for him. My New Deal Pinko Parents in Schenectady would never forgive me, they’re already so disappointed, “He’s a fag, he’s an office temp, and now look, he’s saying Kaddish for Roy Cohn.” I can’t believe you’d actually pray for—

  BELIZE: Louis, I’d even pray for you.

  He was a terrible person. He died a hard death. So maybe . . . A queen can forgive her vanquished foe. It isn’t easy, it doesn’t count if it’s easy, it’s the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet. Peace, at least. Isn’t that what the Kaddish asks for?

  LOUIS: Oh it’s Hebrew or Aramaic or something, who knows what it’s asking.

  (Little pause. Louis and Belize look at each other, and then Louis looks at Roy, staring at him unflinchingly for the first time.)

  LOUIS: I’m thirty-two years old and I’ve never seen a dead body before.

  It’s . . .

  (Louis touches Roy’s forehead.)

  LOUIS: It’s so heavy, and small.

  (Little pause)

  I know probably less of the Kaddish than you do, Belize, I’m an intensely secular Jew, I didn’t even Bar Mitzvah.

  BELIZE: Do the best you can.

  (Louis hesitates, then puts a Kleenex on his head.)

  LOUIS: Yisgadal ve’yiskadash sh’mey rabo, sh’mey de kidshoh, uh . . . Boray pre hagoffen. No, that’s the Kiddush, not the . . . Um, shema Yisroel adonai . . . This is silly, Belize, I can’t—

  ETHEL (Standing, softly): B’olmo deevro chiroosey ve’yamlich malchusey . . .

  LOUIS: B’olmo deevro chiroosey ve’yamlich malchusey . . .

  ETHEL: Bechayeychon uv’yomechechon uvchayey d’chol beys Yisroel . . .

  LOUIS: Bechayeychon uv’yomechechon uvchayey d’chol beys Yisroel . . .

  ETHEL: Ba’agolo uvizman koriv . . .

  LOUIS: Ve’imroo omain.

  ETHEL: Yehey sh’mey rabo m’vorach . . .

  LOUIS AND ETHEL: L’olam ulolmey olmayoh. Yisborach ve’yishtabach ve’yispoar ve’yisroman ve’yisnasey ve’yis’hadar ve’yisalleh ve’yishallol sh’mey dekudsho . . .

  ETHEL: Berich hoo le’eylo min kol birchoso veshiroso . . .

  ETHEL AND LOUIS: Tushbchoso venechemoso, daameeron b’olmo ve’imroo omain. Y’he sh’lomo rabbo min sh’mayo v’chayim olenu v’al kol Yisroel, v’imru omain.

  ETHEL: Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya-aseh sholom olenu v’al col Yisroel . . .

  LOUIS: Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya-aseh sholom olenu v’al col Yisroel . . .

  ETHEL: V’imru omain.

  LOUIS: V’imru omain.

  ETHEL: You sonofabitch.

  LOUIS: You sonofabitch.

  (Ethel vanishes.

  Belize hands Louis the knapsack.)

  BELIZE: Thank you, Louis. You did fine.

  LOUIS: Fine? What are you talking about, fine? That was . . . fucking miraculous.

  Scene 4

  Two A.M. Joe enters the empty Brooklyn apartment.

  JOE: I’m back. Harper?

  (He switches on a light)

  Harper?

  (Roy enters from the bedroom, dressed in a fabulous floor-length black velvet robe de chambre. Joe starts with terror, turns away, then looks again. Roy’s still there. Joe’s terrified. Roy does not move.)

  JOE: What are you doing here?

/>   ROY: Dead Joe doesn’t matter.

  JOE: No, no, you’re not here, you . . .

  (Joe closes his eyes, willing Roy away. He opens his eyes. Roy’s still there)

  You lied to me! You said cancer, you said—

  ROY: You could have read it in the papers. AIDS. I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression.

  You feel bad that you beat somebody.

  JOE: I want you to—

  ROY: He deserved it.

  JOE: No he didn’t, he—

  ROY: Everybody does. Everybody could use a good beating.

  JOE: No, no, that’s—I want you to go Roy, you’re really frightening me. Get out. You don’t belong here—

  He didn’t deserve what I did to him! I hurt him, Roy! I made him bleed! He . . . He won’t ever see me again.

  (Realizing that this is true) Oh no, oh no . . . What did I do that for? What did I do? What did I— (Joe starts to cry. He stops himself, violently shaking his head)

  Tell me what to do now.

  (Roy doesn’t respond.)

  JOE: I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, I thought I’d find my way, the way you did, to the, to the heart of the things, to the heart of the world, I imagined myself . . . safe there, in the hollow of . . . but . . .

  (Little pause)

  I’m . . . above nothing. I’m . . . of the world. Whatever . . . that means, whatever God thinks of the world, I think He must think the same of me.

  Tell me what I do now.

  (Roy shrugs.)

  JOE: I’m a liar. I lied. I never told you how much you frighten me, Roy.

  (He walks toward Roy.)

  JOE: I’m not blind, not . . . blind as I tried to be. I’ve always seen, known what you are. And, and I’m not like that. Not like you. But I’ve lied and lied and lied . . .

  (Joe is facing Roy. He puts his head against Roy’s chest, lost. Roy’s surprised, pleased, moved. He puts his arms around Joe, a tender, careful embrace. Joe raises his head. They look at one another.)

  ROY (Gently): Show me a little of what you’ve learned, baby Joe. Out in the world.

  (They kiss, intimate, uncertain, as affectionate as it is sexual.)

  ROY: Damn.

  I gotta shuffle off this mortal coil.

  (Looking up at the ceiling, warning the Powers Above:) I hope they have something for me to do in the Great Hereafter, I get bored easy.

  (To Joe) You’ll find, my friend, that what you love will take you places you never dreamed you’d go.

  (Roy vanishes. Joe doesn’t move, eyes closed.

  He opens them when Harper enters. They stare at one another.)

  HARPER: Hope you didn’t worry.

  JOE: Harper?

  Where . . . Were you—

  HARPER: A trip to the moon on gossamer wings.

  JOE: What?

  HARPER: You ought to get your hearing checked, you say that a lot.

  I was out. With a friend. In Paradise.

  Scene 5

  Heaven: in the Council Room of the Hall of the Continental Principalities. As the scene is being set, a Voice proclaims:

  A VOICE: In the Hall of the Continental Principalities; Heaven, a City Much Like San Francisco. Six of Seven Myriad Infinite Aggregate Angelic Entities in Attendance, May Their Glorious Names Be Praised Forever and Ever, Hallelujah. Permanent Emergency Council is now in Session.

  (Power for the great chamber is supplied by an unseen immense generator, the rhythmic pulsing as well as the occasional surges and wavers of which are visible in the unsteady lights, and audible continuously underneath the scene until its cessation [indicated in the text].

  At the center of the room is a very large round table covered with a heavy tapestry on which is woven a seventeenth-century map of the world. The tabletop is covered with ancient and broken astronomical, astrological, mathematical and nautical objects of measurement and calculation, cracked clay tablets, dulled styli, dried inkpots, split quill pens, disintegrating piles of parchment, and old derelict typewriters. On the table and all around the room are heaps and heaps and heaps of books, bundles of yellowing newspapers and dusty teetery stacks of neglected and abandoned files.

  On one side of the table, a single bulky radio, a 1940s model in very poor repair, is switched on, its dial and tubes glowing. The six present Continental Principalities are gathered about it, sitting and standing. The Angel of Asiatica is seated nearest to the radio; the Angel of Antarctica is farthest away.

  The Principalities are dressed uniformly in elegant, flowing, severely black robes that look like what justices, judges, magistrates wear in court.

  All six sound very much alike, as if speaking with a single voice. Their speech is always careful, a little slow, and soft, like mild old people; in everything they say there’s a distinct tone of quiet, enduring desolation and perplexity. This tone doesn’t vary; even when they argue they sound tentative, careful, broken.

  They’re almost completely still, but as they listen they turn slightly, slowly, looking to one another for comfort. Asiatica and Africanii intermittenly hold hands.

  The Principalities are aghast, frightened and grief-stricken at the news they’re hearing on the radio—which they’re not supposed to be using. They listen intently to the dim, crackly signal.)

  RADIO (In a British accent): . . . one week following the explosion at the number four reactor, the fires are still burning and an estimated . . . (Static) . . . releasing into the atmosphere fifty million curies of radioactive iodine, six million curies of caesium and strontium rising in a plume over eight kilometers high, carried by the winds over an area stretching from the Urals to thousands of kilometers beyond Soviet borders, it . . . (Static)

  ANTARCTICA: When?

  OCEANIA: April 26th. Three months from today.

  ASIATICA: Where is this place? This reactor?

  EUROPA: Chernobyl. In Belarus.

  (The static intensifies.)

  ASIATICA: We are losing the signal.

  (The Angels make mystic gestures. The signal returns.)

  RADIO: . . . falling like toxic snow into the Dnieper River, which provides drinking water for thirty-five million— (Static, then) . . . is a direct consequence of the lack of safety culture caused by Cold War isolation— (Static, then) . . . Radioactive debris contaminating over three hundred thousand hectares of topsoil for a minimum of thirty years, and . . . (Static) . . . now hearing of thousands of workers who have absorbed fifty times the lethal dose of . . . (Static) . . . BBC Radio, reporting live from Chernobyl, on the eighth day of the . . .

  (The radio signal is engulfed in white noise and fades out.)

  EUROPA: Hundreds, thousands will die.

  OCEANIA: Horribly. Hundreds of thousands.

  AFRICANII: Millions.

  ANTARCTICA: Let them. Uncountable multitudes. Horrible. It is by their own hands. I I I will rejoice to see it.

  AUSTRALIA: That is forbidden us.

  Silence in Heaven.

  ASIATICA: This radio is a terrible radio.

  AUSTRALIA: The reception is too weak.

  AFRICANII: A vacuum tube has died.

  ASIATICA: Can it be fixed?

  AUSTRALIA: It Is Beyond Us.

  ASIATICA: However, I I I I I I I would like to know. What is a vacuum tube?

  OCEANIA: It is a simple diode.

  ASIATICA: Aha.

  AFRICANII: Within are an anode and a cathode. The positive electrons travel from the cathode across voltage fields—

  OCEANIA: The cathode is, in fact, negatively charged.

  AFRICANII: No, positive, I I I I— (She begins carefully to examine the works in the back of the radio)

  EUROPA: This device ought never to have been brought here. It is a Pandemonium.

  AUSTRALIA: I I I I agree. In diodes we see manifest the selfsame Divided Human Consciousness which has engendered the multifarious catastrophes to which We are impotent witness. But—

  AFRICANII (Having concluded her examination,
to Oceania): You are correct, it is negative. Regardless of the charge, it is the absence of resistance in a vacuum which—

  ANTARCTICA: I I I do not weep for them, I I I weep for the vexation of the Blank Spaces, I I I weep for the Dancing Light, for the irremediable wastage of Fossil Fuels, Old Blood of the Globe spilled wantonly or burned and jettisoned into the Crystal Air—

  AUSTRALIA: But it is a Conundrum, and We cannot solve Conundrums. If only He would return. I I I I do not know whether We have erred in transporting these dubious Inventions, but . . .

  (Opening a huge dusty Book) If We refer to His Codex of Procedure, I I I I cannot recall which page but—

  (There is an enormous peal of thunder and a blaze of lightning.

  The Angel of America ushers Prior into the chamber. Terrified and determined, he stands before the council table.

  The Principalities stare at Prior.)

  ANGEL: Most August Fellow Principalities, Angels Most High: I regret my absence at this session, I was detained.

  (Pause.)

  AUSTRALIA: Ah, this is . . .?

  ANGEL: The Prophet. Yes.

  AUSTRALIA: Ah.

  (Exchanging brief, concerned glances with one another, the Angels bow to Prior.)

  EUROPA: We were working.

  AFRICANII: Making Progress.

  (Thunderclap. Prior’s startled. Then, realizing they’re waiting for him to speak, he musters his courage and says in a small, uncertain voice:)

  PRIOR: I . . . I want to return this.

  (He holds out the Book. No one takes it from him.)

  AUSTRALIA: What is the matter with it?

  PRIOR: It just . . . It just . . .

  (They wait, anxious to hear his explanation. A beat, then:)

  PRIOR: We can’t just stop. We’re not rocks. Progress, migration, motion is . . . modernity. It’s animate, it’s what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it’s still desire for. (On “for” he makes a motion with his hand: starting one place, moving forward) Even if we go faster than we should. We can’t wait. And wait for what? God—

  (Thunderclap.)

  PRIOR: God—

  (Thunderclap.)

  PRIOR: He isn’t coming back.

  And even if He did . . .

  If He ever did come back, if He ever dared to show His face, or his Glyph or whatever in the Garden again. If after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century He returned to see . . . how much suffering His abandonment had created, if all He has to offer is death . . .