ALL: Take off your pajamas Bill!
BILL (to audience): Don’t think about it. Think about leadership. No, don’t think about leadership. Don’t think. We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.
(SNOW WHITE turns her back to the audience, removes her pajama top, stretches luxuriously.)
DAN: Bill are you going to take off those . . . goddamn . . . pajamas?
BILL (to audience): Leadership means . . .
(He begins unbuttoning his pajama top. Again, “The Ride of the Valkyries”. He approaches SNOW WHITE. He places a hand on her shoulder. She turns and embraces him.)
SNOW WHITE: No.
BILL: No?
SNOW WHITE: No.
BILL (aside): Unbearable beauty.
SNOW WHITE (drawling): Nooooo.
BILL: They’ll blame . . . me.
SNOW WHITE: As do I.
BILL: What did I do wrong?
SNOW WHITE: I don’t know. I only know that it’s . . . not enough.
BILL: More.
SNOW WHITE (agreeing): More.
BILL: You want more.
SNOW WHITE: Much more.
BILL: Your demands are great.
SNOW WHITE: Average.
DAN: (thrusting himself between them): Bill, if you don’t—
SNOW WHITE (sarcastic): Dan, I believe I hear the market falling. Two points. One, two. (Mimes listening) Three. Hadn’t you better call your broker? (DAN rushes from the room) Four. (All the others except BILL rush out. SNOW WHITE speaks to BILL) You: see?
BILL: Freud said . . .
SNOW WHITE: I don’t want to know what Freud said.
BILL: Freud said that the two values left to this civilization were money and the beauty of women.
SNOW WHITE: Clever devil.
(Blackout)
(Lights up on HOGO holding a telephone)
HOGO: Hello, is this the IRS? Hogo de Bergerac here. I have your reply to my letter of the sixteenth, in which I offer to inform on Bill, Kevin, Edward, Hubert, Henry, Clem, and Dan for 17 percent of the monies collected. (Pause) The what? (Pause, HOGO looks at letter) Your reference number is 175 dash 05 dash 1272. (Pause, HOGO scowls.) 175 dash 05 dash 1272. (Pause, HOGO is growing angrier.) Yes, well, I have your letter stating that you may only pay 8 percent to informers, but my fee is 17 percent and that’s that. (Pause) I am aware that if you paid me 17 percent all the other informers would want the same, but that’s not my problem, is it? Good God, 8 percent. That’s damn little for doing such a vile and dishonorable thing, damned little. (Pause) There’s what involved? (Pause) There’s patriotism involved? (Pause) It’s my duty as an American citizen to come forward with this information if I have it? Well, listen here, IRS. I am not an American citizen. I am under Panamanian registry. So just forget my duty as an American citizen. Eight percent. No, I don’t think I’m talking to you anymore, IRS. There would be some pleasure in doing the thing just for the pure vileness of it, but there is more pleasure in spitting on your 8 percent. Eight percent. Goodbye, IRS. Eight percent. Goodbye, IRS and bad cess to you.
(Blackout)
SCENE TWO
(SNOW WHITE’S bedroom. A large mirror, a bed, a window. SNOW WHITE removes her blouse, then her slip, then her bra. Standing by the mirror, she regards her bare breasts, by pointing her head down.)
SNOW WHITE: Well, what is there to think about them? These breasts? (Pause) Usually I don’t think about them at all. But recent events, or lack of events, have provoked in me a crisis of confidence. But let us take stock. These breasts, my own, still stand delicately away from the trunk, as they are supposed to do. And the trunk itself is not unappealing. In fact, trunk is a rather mean word for the main part of this assemblage of felicities. The terrific belly smooth as sour cream! The stunning ass, in the rococo mirror! And then the especially good legs, including the important knees! I have nothing but praise from this delicious assortment! But my curly mind has problems distinct from, although related to, those of my scrumptious body. The curious physicality of my existence here on earth is related to both parts of the mind-body problem, the mind part and the body part. (Pause) Although I secretly know my body is my mind. The way it acts sometimes, spontaneously and scandalously hurling itself into the arms of bad situations, with never a care for who is watching or real values. This damned body! (Pause) Not the best I’ve ever seen. But not the worst.
(PAUL enters and moves to the edge of SNOW WHITE’S space. He is wearing monk’s robes.)
PAUL: God Almighty! It’s a good thing it occurred to me to stand under this tree and look through this window. It’s a good thing I am on leave from the monastery. It’s a good thing I had my reading glasses in my upper robe pocket, (PAUL puts on glasses) Now I can read the message written on Snow White’s unwrapped breasts. What beauty! What torment! She is just like one of those dancers one sees from time to time on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and in selected areas of other cities. Looking through this window is sweet. The sweetest thing that has happened to me in all my days. I savor the sweetness of human communication, through the window.
(HOGO enters PAUL’S space and pushes him roughly aside, taking his position.)
HOGO: You are slime, sir, looking through that open window at that apparently naked girl there, the most beautiful and attractive I have ever seen, in all my life. You are a dishonor to the robes you wear. That you stand here without shame, gazing at that incredible beauty, at her snowy buttocks and so forth, at that natural majesty I perceive so well, through the window, is endlessly reprehensible, in our society. I have seen some vileness in my time, but your action in spying upon this beautiful unknown beauty, whom I already love with all my heart until the end of time, is the vilest thing that the mind of man ever broached. I am going to set a rat chewing on your anus, false monk, for if there is anything this world affords, it is punishment.
PAUL: You have a good line, citizen. Perhaps next you would care to make a few remarks about unearned pessimism.
HOGO: It is true that I am in favor of earned pessimism, Paul. And I have earned mine. Yet at the same time I seem to feel a new vigor, optimism, and hope, simply through the medium of pouring my eyes through this window.
PAUL: It is strong medicine, this.
(They stand gazing for a moment Then HOGO wanders off’, moonstruck, PAUL remains.)
PAUL: Yes, this is a situation that requires careful study. And after that, more careful study. Let’s see. I’ll need four hundred feet of number ten cable . . .
(Blackout)
(HOGO, at stool, and JANE, HOGO is sharpening a variety of knives.)
JANE: What’s this?
HOGO: Just some work I brought home from the office.
JANE: What are you thinking about?
HOGO: Edges.
JANE: It doesn’t look like office work to me.
HOGO (aside): This cello-shaped girl still has some life left in her. Why don’t I spend more time looking at her and drinking in her seasoned beauty? Why is it we always require “more”? Why is it that we can never be satisfied? It is almost as if we were designed that way. As if that were part of the cosmic design.
JANE: What are you thinking about?
HOGO: I love her, fane. Whoever she is, she is mine, virtually if not actually, forever. I feel I have to tell you this, because after all I do owe you something for having been the butt of my unpleasantness for so long. For these years.
(With an operatic cry, JANE runs off, passing HENRY, who is entering.)
HENRY: Bill must be brought to justice for his bungling. This latest bit is the last straw absolutely. I see the trial as a kind of analysis really, more a therapeutic than a judicial procedure. When he threw those two six-packs of Miller High Life through the windscreen of that blue Volkswagen—
(SNOW WHITE’S space. Kitchen setup, SNOW WHITE scoring meat with knife.)
SNOW WHITE: Oh, why does fate give us alter
natives to annoy and frustrate ourselves with? Paul has dug a pit outside the house, from which he is keeping watch, watching me, through a system of mirrors and trained dogs. Why, for instance, do I have the option of going out of the house, through the window, and sleeping with Paul in his pit? Luckily that alternative is not a very attractive one. Paul’s princeliness has somehow fallen away, and the naked Paul, without his aura, is just another complacent bourgeois. But I thought I saw, over his shoulder, a dark and vilely compelling figure not known to me. Who is that?
(Lights up on JANE, who is standing before what appears to be a six-foot-square spice rack, filled with little bottles. An ape stands by her side. This could be a stuffed ape if desired.)
JANE: Now I have been left sucking the mop again. Hogo de Bergerac no longer holds me in the highest esteem. His highest esteem has shifted to another, and now he holds her in it, and I am alone with my malice at last. Face-to-face with it. For the first time in my history, I have no lover to temper my malice with healing, wholesome, older love, (JANE picks a bottle and reads the label) Dryshade. (Replaces bottles and picks another) Scumlock. (Replaces bottles and picks another) Hyoscine. (Replaces bottle and picks another) Azote. (Replaces bottles and picks another) Hurtwort. (Replaces bottle and picks another) Milkleg. (Replaces bottle, fondles ape’s head) Now I must witch someone, for that is my role, and to flee one’s role is bootless. But the question is, What form shall my malice take, on this occasion? This braw February day? Whose sweet life shall I poison, with the tasteful savagery of my abundant imagination and talent for concoction? I think I will go around to Snow White’s house, where she cohabits with the seven men in a mocksome travesty of approved behavior, and see what is stirring there. If something is stirring, perhaps I can arrange a sleep for it—in the corner of a churchyard, for example.
(Blackout)
SCENE THREE
(A courtroom setup, BILL in the dock, DAN as judge. The other five men as jury-spectators.)
DAN: Bill, will you begin? Can you explain this most recent embarrassment, the hurlment of two six-packs of Miller High Life in a brown paper bag through the windscreen of a blue Volkswagen operated by I. Fondue and H. Maeght? Two absolute and utter strangers, so far as we know?
BILL: Strangers to you, perhaps. But not to me.
DAN: You were acquainted with them previously.
BILL: Yes. Sixteen years ago.
DAN: First, give me the circumstances of the hurlment.
BILL: It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.
DAN: What is your authority?
BILL: The cathouse clock.
DAN: Proceed.
BILL: I was on my way to the coin-operated laundry.
DAN: With what in view?
BILL: Laundering. Snow White being, as you know, reluctant in these days to—
DAN (hastily): As we know. And the Miller High Life?
BILL: I had in mind drinking it while watching the machines. (Pause) There was a lot of laundry.
DAN: Proceed.
BILL: I then apprehended, at the comer of Eleventh and Neat Street, the blue Volkswagen containing Fondue and Maeght.
DAN: You descried them through the windscreen.
BILL: That is correct.
HENRY (interrupting): The windscreen was in motion?
BILL: The entire vehicle.
EDWARD: Making what speed?
BILL: It was effecting a stop.
DAN: You were crossing in front of it.
BILL: That is correct.
DAN: What then?
BILL: I recognized, at the controls, Fondue and Maeght.
HENRY: This after the slipping away of sixteen years?
BILL: The impression was indelible.
EDWARD: What then?
BILL: I lifted my eyes.
EDWARD: To heaven?
BILL: To the cathouse clock. It said, four.
DAN: What then?
BILL: The hurlment.
DAN: You hurled said bag through said windscreen.
BILL: Yes.
DAN: And then?
BILL: The windscreen shattered. Ha ha.
DAN: Did the court hear you aright? Did you say ha ha?
BILL: Ha ha.
DAN: Outbursts will be dealt with. You have been warned. Let us continue. The windscreen was, then, imploded upoil the passengers.
BILL: Ha ha.
DAN: Facial injurement resulted in facial areas a b c and d.
BILL: That is correct. Ha ha.
DAN: You then danced a jig—
KEVIN (standing): Objection!
DAN: What is the objection?
KEVIN: My client, your honesty, did not dance a jig. A certain shufflement of the feet might have been observed, product of a perfectly plausible nervous tension, such as all are subject to on great occasions, weddings, births, deaths, and so on. But nothing that, in all charity, might be described as a gigue, with its connotations of gaiety, carefreeness . . .
DAN (irritated): All right, all right. Now, Bill, to return to your entanglement of former times with the victims, Fondue and Maeght. In what relation to you did they stand, sixteen years ago?
BILL: They stood to me in the relation, scoutmasters.
DAN: They were your scoutmasters. Entrusted with your schoolment in certain lores.
BILL: Yes. The duty of the scoutmasters was to reveal the scout mysteries.
CLEM: You were a scout, then.
BILL: Yes. I was a patrol leader.
HUBERT: Which patrol?
BILL: The, uh, Beaver Patrol.
DAN: Proceed.
BILL: We were competing with the Wolf Patrol in a map-reading exercise. (Pause) Fondue and Maeght came to me before the exercise. (Pause) The Beaver Patrol had to win, they told me. (Pause) They had staked their reputations on it. (Pause) There was a great black horse, they told me. If the Beaver Patrol did not win, the great black horse would come to me by night. And devour me, they said.
CLEM (taken aback): They did!
BILL: I led the Beaver Patrol into a cornfield. It was the wrong cornfield. The Wolf Patrol won.
CLEM: And did the horse come?
BILL: No. But I awaited it. Lying on my cot listening.
DAN: You waited for it.
BILL: Yes. (Pause) I await it still.
HENRY: One more question: is it true that you allowed the fires under the vats to go out, on the night of February sixteenth, while pursuing this private vendetta?
BILL: It is true.
DAN: Vatricide! That crime of crimes. Well, it doesn’t look good for you, Bill. It doesn’t look at all good for you.
(Blackout)
SCENE FOUR
(SNOW WHITE on stage)
SNOW WHITE: Paul is frog. He is frog through and through. I thought he would, at some point, cast off his mottled wettish green-and-brown suit to reappear washed in the hundred glistering hues of princeliness. But he is pure frog. So. I am disappointed. Either I have overestimated Paul, or I have overestimated history. In either case I have made a serious error. So. There it is. I have been disappointed, and am, doubtless, to be disappointed further. Total disappointment. That’s it. The red meat on the rug. The frog’s legs on the floor.
(HOGO enters.)
HOGO: I love you, Snow White.
SNOW WHITE: I know, Hogo. I know because you have told me a thousand times. I do not doubt you. I am convinced of your sincerity and warmth. And I must admit that your suave brutality has made its impression on me, too. But this “love” must not be, Hogo, because of your blood. You don’t have the blood for this love, Hogo. Your blood is not fine enough. Oh I know that in this democratic era questions of blood are little de trop, a little frowned upon. People don’t like to hear people talking about their blood, or about other people’s blood. But I am not “people,” Hogo. I am me. I must hold myself in reserve for a prince or prince figure, someone like Paul. Paul has the blood of kings and queens and cardinals in his veins, Hogo. He has the purple blood of
exalted station. Whereas you have only plain blood in your veins, Hogo, blood that anybody might have—the delivery boy from the towel service, for example.
HOGO: But what about love? What about love which, as Stendhal tells us, seizes the senses and overthrows all other considerations in a giddy of irresponsibility?
SNOW WHITE: You may well say “a giddy of irresponsibility,” Hogo. That is precisely the state I am not in. I am calm. As calm as a lamp, as calm as a hat. As calm as you are giddy.
HOGO: Well Snow White your blood arguments are pretty potent, and I recognize there is a gap there, between my blood and the blood royal. Yet in my blood there is a fever. I offer you this fever. It is as if my blood were full of amperes, so hot and electrical does it feel, inside me. If this fever, this rude but grand passion, in any measure ennobles me in your eyes, or in any other part of you, then perhaps all is not yet lost. For even a bad man can set his eyes on the stars, sometimes. Even a bad man can breathe and hope. And it is my hope that, as soon as you fully comprehend the strength of this fever in me, you will find it ennobling and me ennobled, and a fit consort suddenly, though I was not before. I know that this is a slim hope.
(HOGO kneels on ground at her feet.)
SNOW WHITE: No, Hogo. It does not ennoble you, the fever. I wish it did, but it does not. It is simply a fever, in my view. Two aspirin and a glass of water. I know that this is commonplace, even cruel advice, but I have no other advice. Goodnight, Hogo. Take your dark appeal away. Your cunningly wrought dark appeal.
(HOGO rises, bows, and leaves.)
(JANE and SNOW WHITE, stage center)
JANE: Drink this. It will make you feel better.
(JANE offers SNOW WHITE a glass.)
SNOW WHITE: What is it?
JANE: Vodka Gibson on the rocks.
SNOW WHITE: I don’t feel bad physically. Emotionally is another story of course.
The Teachings of Don B. Page 27
