by Tony Kushner
TONY
He is the wise son. I am the wicked son.
MICHAEL
“I am like unto a man seventy years old, yet I never found biblical proof as to why the Exodus from Egypt should be recited in the evening service until ben Zoma . . .”
TONY
Elaborate, be praiseworthy.
MICHAEL
ben Zoma, a Jewish mystic who went to Heaven and lost his mind as a result—
TONY
The thirteen attributes, no doubt.
MICHAEL
Possibly.
TONY
Go on.
MICHAEL
. . . Explained the verse, “So that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt all the days of your life.” (Deuteronomy, chapter 16 verse 3): “The days of your life” implies the daytime while, “All the days of your life,” implies the nights. And the sages amplify this by saying, “The days of your life,” refers to this world; “All the days of your life,” to Messianic times as well.
And now we will perform an exegesis on the traditional lack of exegesis concerning this passage.
TONY
The reason people skip over this hardly lengthy section has something to do, I think, at least on the surface, with the tension set up in the form of the Seder between the forward-moving motional urgency of appetite, on the one hand, and the profound reluctance on the other hand of true critical thought to move ahead. Wait, wait, there is more to glean, there is always more. Also, everyone has stored up in her or his actual memory or probably after three or four thousand years of Seders probably stored in your genetic memory are nightmare Seders of days gone by when fathers and sons competed for the honor of being most praiseworthy, elaborating and prolonging as these rabbis did till Dawn.
(They add the Schapiro’s Kosher Wine.)
MICHAEL
The rabbis who nobody wants to hear from anymore return in the Haggadah a second time in the plague section.
TONY
Counting the fingers and the fingerbones of God.
MICHAEL
Multiplying plagues. 260 plagues. 400 plagues. In this way exalting the Miracle of Liberation.
TONY
This bit is also skipped over.
MICHAEL
Because it is lengthy, confusing, too close to dinner to be endured, and exceedingly bloodcurdling.
(Tony stirs the ingredients.)
TONY
It contains a Ten Plagues mnemonic, Detzakh Adash Beahab. The letters of which contain the first letters of the Ten Plagues. Detzakh Adash Beahab translates literally, “A scorpion bit my uncle.”
MICHAEL
This ancient mnemonic apparently inspired Jewish communities in North Africa and in Tijuana Mexico to compose a Pesach counting song, “A Scorpion Bit My Uncle,” but the traditional song has been largely abandoned in this century, due to the arrival of modern insecticides and a concomitant lessening of the anxieties provoked by the mnemonic. In countries to which the scorpion is not indigenous, the song never caught on.
TONY
This fear of skipping, of cheating, of eliding, effacing, passing over with many a secret sigh of relief the imponderably weighty inheritance of millennia of Jewish intellectual, theological, political, historical, mystical effort. The imponderabil-ity creating as symptom the desire to skip.
MICHAEL
The propensity to skip.
TONY
Yes.
MICHAEL
Gracefully, but guiltily.
TONY
Yes.
MICHAEL
I know what you mean. The elegant uneasy skip of the dilettante. The, “I don’t need to know that,” as opposed to the injunction, “Know everything, know it all. Even the curlicues: Know them.” Be praiseworthy.
TONY
Which symptom producing the ache of insufficiency. The tribal genetically encoded Darwinian anxiety of inexorable decline down through the generations, the entropic cooling down unto Death.
MICHAEL
And hence of course how perfect that what we skip is this brief odd strobic glimpse of these particular five men, these Protean daddies, their massive hairy forearms, wound tightly, perhaps even a little cruelly, with the leather phylactery straps, their bulky foreheads bound and bearing boxes enshrining tiny curled-up parchment leaves representing leaves of flame upon which are inscribed letters of flame representing words and sounds which are the dark crackle of midnight-devouring Holy Fire. Tented with tallises, fringy with tzitzits. Reclining. On pillows. Talking and singing through the night.
TONY
That is too elaborate. Perhaps.
MICHAEL
Talking about the Exodus. What has passed. How the future is to receive it. How to carry the imponderable burden of it.
TONY
Judaism has as a distinguishing feature its unreasonable difficulty. It is unappeasably hard. You must remember. You must remember everything. You must write down what you remember. You must read what you have written every year. Not once a year but for a whole week. And even worse you must understand. And even worse you must elaborate on that understanding.
MICHAEL
The freeing of the slave only commences the wandering of the now-homeless. The freed slave is still unfree. Only after his arrival in some safe shelter is the freed slave free. The Exodus is also an affliction.
(They pour each other a glass of Extra Heavy Malaga.)
TONY
A woman in the town I grew up in searched her house the night before Pesach with a candle searching out the Chametz as is traditional, and she made a big pile of crumbs but forgot to burn them and left the unburned Chametz in the dustpan in the utility closet and maybe it’s a coincidence but from her chicken soup, which she thought the room was cold enough to let stand outside the refrigerator overnight because the refrigerator was full of kugel and whatnot and so everyone at the Seder table the next night got botulism and had to go to the emergency room.
MICHAEL
Why is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights gay Jewish men are channeling their mothers. On this night gay Jewish men are channeling their great-great-grandmothers from the Russian Pale.
The rabbis reclining at Bene-Berak that we skip over in the Haggadah are plotting rebellion against the Roman Empire. Perhaps instead of recounting the Exodus as they are supposed to have been doing they are working out strategies of resistance. This garrison is weak, that one is vulnerably positioned, we might roll big stones off the tops of those cliffs and bash in the skull of that centurion, this captain, that governor. Is Death a part of the miracle that brings liberation?
TONY
For instance God Forgive me God Forgive me, but how is Senator D’Amato doing with those chest pains?
MICHAEL
Perhaps the young students rushing in in the story to warn the rabbis that day has arrived are speaking in code. Perhaps, “Hear Oh Israel,” in this instance means, “Put away the maps, the Romans are nearby.” This is conjecture and so inappropriate as elaboration. Akiba declared Bar Kochba Messiah and commenced the rebellion.
TONY
Bar Kochba is slain.
MICHAEL
And Akiba is tortured and slain.
TONY
And the Temple is destroyed and the Diaspora begins. A condition of permanent Exodus.
MICHAEL
A liberation and also an affliction. In some Haggadahs the Akiba section ends with a quadruple benediction: The Place, God, The Torah, God. Ha-Makon, Hebrew for “The place,” is one of God’s many names.
TONY
Towards which perhaps we are wandering.
(Pause.
They taste the charoset.)
TONY
I apologize for my earlier fit of pique. It’s the stress, the stress, I’m under a lot of stress.
MICHAEL
Who isn’t?
TONY
We all are.
MI
CHAEL
We are.
TONY
Blessed is The Place. Blessed is God, giver of The Torah. Blessed is The Torah. Blessed is God.
MICHAEL
H’ag Sameach.
(They toast each other, and drink wine.)
END
Terminating
OR
Sonnet LXXV
OR
“Lass meine Schmerzen
nicht verloren sein”
OR
Ambivalence
This play is for
Deborah Glazer, Ph.D.
Terminating was produced by The Acting Company (New York City) in association with the Guthrie Theater Lab (Minneapolis) on January 7, 1998 as part of “Love’s Fire,” an evening of plays inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnets. Mark Lamos was the director, Michael Yeargan was the scenic designer, Candice Donnelly was the costume designer, Robert Wierzel was the lighting designer and John Gromada was the sound designer. The cast was as follows:
ESTHER Erika Rolfsrud
HENDRYK Stephen DeRosa
DYMPHNA Lisa Tharps
BILLYGOAT Hamish Linklater
Thanks to Mark Lamos, who asked me to do this, always a wild joy to work with. Thanks to my sister, Lesley Kushner, for her generosity regarding my primitive (writer’s) capital accumulation.
Characters
ESTHER, an analyst, early thirties
HENDRYK, a former patient of Esther’s, early thirties
DYMPHNA, Esther’s lover/domestic partner/spousal
equivalent, late twenties
BILLYGOAT, Hendryk’s soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, early thirties
Place
Esther’s office on the Upper West Side, New York City
So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet seasoned showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As ’twixt a miser and his wealth is found:
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world might see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean-starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine, and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
Sonnet LXXV —SHAKESPEARE
Esther is an analyst, and this is her office. Hendryk sits on the couch, he does not lie on the couch. Esther and Hendryk are roughly the same age. Esther is nicely turned out, Hendryk is a godforsaken mess. Dymphna, Esther’s younger domestic partner, sits in a chair near Esther. Billygoat, Hendryk’s erstwhile much-more-attractive lover, sits near the couch.
HENDRYK
I’ve gained twenty-four pounds.
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
Last night on the subway I urinated.
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
In my pants.
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
Bladder, um, bladder control, loss of, sudden loss of . . . Waters breaking, whoosh! Drenched!
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
I’m broke.
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
I spent all my money on these . . . these . . . these . . .
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
I . . . (He waits for the “Hendryk.” It doesn’t come)
I, I didn’t need them, it was just, they’re . . . Drapes. It was an idea I had, to, to sew real, uh real, uh actual chicken feathers—
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
. . . Quilted, sort of, big squares between sheets of sheer, um, raw . . . silk.
(He waits for the “Hendryk.” It doesn’t come so he says) Hendryk. I find I’m saying raw a lot these days, raw silk, raw . . . um, burlap steak wound meat eat me raw the, the raw truth. Raw and, um, rank. Rank . . . betrayal.
ESTHER
Hen—
HENDRYK
All this coil is long of you. Mistress. As they say. RAW. Not like I’m not perfectly contented to be free of this room and the constraints of your ultimate indifference to the, uh, the uhhhhh, the.
(Pause.)
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
I want to come back.
ESTHER
No.
HENDRYK
Why not?
ESTHER
I—
HENDRYK
Why?
ESTHER
We terminated.
HENDRYK
So?
ESTHER
You . . .
Because.
HENDRYK
What?
ESTHER
You frighten me.
HENDRYK
You’re not supposed to say things like that. You’re not supposed to say anything, really.
ESTHER
I can say anything I want, Hendryk, you’re not my patient anymore.
HENDRYK
But still.
ESTHER
Well you do frighten me.
HENDRYK
I am in love with you.
ESTHER
Transference.
HENDRYK
I don’t believe in transference.
ESTHER
Uh-huh.
HENDRYK
All love is transference. Breast, mom, every fucking other fucking—
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
I love you.
ESTHER
Hendryk, you do not, I mean—
HENDRYK
I do. It’s not—
ESTHER
Hendryk, I—
HENDRYK
. . . transference.
ESTHER
I HAVE PROBLEMS OF MY OWN, HENDRYK! PROBLEMS! PROBLEMS!
DYMPHNA
I thought you terminated with him. Tell him to leave. Is it bad today?
HENDRYK
This isn’t going well and perhaps I should . . .
(Pause.)
ESTHER
I should not have said that you frighten me.
HENDRYK
Counter transference.
ESTHER
Well . . .
HENDRYK
Unanalyzed countertransference.
(Pause.)
HENDRYK
What?
ESTHER
It . . .
HENDRYK
Oh. It’s . . . not counter . . . So, it’s . . . what? Reality?
ESTHER
Hendryk.
HENDRYK
I am, I mean I actually am . . . Frightening? I mean, me?
(Pause.)
HENDRYK
I. Um. The. Um. A-ha. A . . . ha. Wow.
ESTHER
How would it make you feel if I said you were frightening?
