Soul of a Whore and Purvis: Two Plays in Verse
Page 12
…All right then. Prime our Third Configuration.
…I shit you not. The firstest puff of smoke
You spy from out their smallest little popgun
I intend to answer with a nightmare. [Hangs up.]
HOOVER: Third Configuration? Isn’t that—
JOHNSON: Let’s us do what Truman orto’ve done.
HOOVER: Won’t that spark a Soviet reprisal?
JOHNSON: Spark a reprisal? Sir, at the end of this finger
I’ve got thirty-two thousand, one hunnerd and ninety-three
Sonofabitchin’ nuclear warheads, and
Them Russkies pack about two thousand more.
Betwixt us we’ve heaped up some twenty-four
Thousand megatons of nasty business.
That’s twenty-four million Hiroshimas in
This little box, under a little button.
That kind of megatonnage leaves no Northern
Hemisphere. Spark a reprisal? Sir,
I’ll spark a God-consuming conflagration.
I’m going to murder everyone in the world.
JOHNSON gulps from a flask.
HOOVER: Shellfish compound?
JOHNSON: No, sir. Mineral oil:
The recipe of crow and shit you fellers
Fustigate my stomach with requires it.
It’ll grease your stuffing and send it along.
[Phone rings.]
[On phone]…Yes. I’ll use the red phone. [On red phone] Señor Khrushchev!
Herr Khrushchev!—What’s he—Translator?—
(Well, he’s unloading just a bit of thunder.)
This is between me and Mao. Here’s a little
Formula to follow, Comrade Khrushchev:
Restraint equals reward. Now, Translator,
Make him understand he’s come between
Mao and me, and he should sit this out.
…If that’s the attitude he cares to strike,
God help the Northern Hemi sphere. [Other phone rings.] Hang on.
[A receiver in either hand]
It’s eight-oh-what?…Well, I’m impressed…Hi, fellers.
“Joint Chiefs of Staff.” I hear that phrase
I can’t prevent my mind from picturing
Pygmies with a spear…Indeed I have.
We’re chatting now…The red one, yes indeed.
What color’s yours?…(They’re remonstrating with me.
…I’m not going to run for a second term.
I dislike this office. I want corners.
I don’t like a goddamn oval office.)
[A third phone rings.] Revelation Central; Jesus speaking.
—Hey! “Huberty Humphrey sat on a wall,
Huberty Humphrey had a great”—Howdy, Hue.
[He’s now dealing with three phones—a receiver in each hand and one laid on the desk before his face.]
[On phones] That wart-face Russkie hasn’t got the sand.
We backed him off on Cuba. Here’s the thing:
I don’t give one dab of rat shit whether
We kiss our grandkids in their beds tonight
Or burn the ocean, earth, and sky to cinders.
[Throws phones aside.]
Sir, are you a Christian man? Make peace
With your creator. Where’s the combination?
HOOVER: I’ve come all over shaking.
JOHNSON: Here we are.
They change it every goddamn day.
HOOVER: I’m all
Aquiver and atingle and aglow!
JOHNSON: This is the selfsame finger I itch my ass with.
HOOVER: And that’s the magic button!
JOHNSON: THERE SHE LAYS.
HOOVER: Push it with your member! Rape it! Rape it!
JOHNSON: Mao may get Taiwan—but he’ll never get this!
HOOVER: My!—there’s megatonnage there, good sir!
JOHNSON: I’m gonna drive this thing to Hot Goddamn!
HOOVER: I’m all afire, and abashed. I’m all aswarm,
I’m prancing in a madness! Shall we dance?
A jittlejot of junko juice
A snittlesnot of turn-me-loose
A razzledazz of hello mom
And there you have your atom bomb
JOHNSON: I’ve just destroyed the Northern Hemi sphere.
HOOVER: The world is ending, and I’m in your arms.
[Music plays. They dance together.]
…I’ve a confession, darling. April Fools’.
I didn’t hand your secret to the world.
JOHNSON: It’s October.
HOOVER: I’m a kinky boy!
JOHNSON: You didn’t tell the Post? No Pravda?
HOOVER: I was only joshing. Now you’ve gone
And diddled with the button!—Are you cross?
JOHNSON:…What does it matter? Sooner or later
One of us was going to flush the toilet.
HOOVER: Round and round and down the spout—hurrah!
They dance near the phones;
JOHNSON grabs one.
JOHNSON: How goes our business?…What? He’s turned around?
Turned around? But what about our nukes?
…All right, rescind the order…Well, goddamn.
Then don’t rescind it, if it wasn’t sent.
…What do you mean? Indeed I gave the order.
[Hangs up.]
Apparently this thing’s not functioning.
HOOVER: Which thing exactly now?
JOHNSON: Ha-ha. Ha-ha.
Somebody’s got a load of explaining to do!
HOOVER: You’ve got a little explaining to do as well.
JOHNSON: Johnson broke the button with his Johnson.
…Have we amused you? Good. Go home. Go on.
…Get on out, J. Edgar. I must nap.
HOOVER:…If the commies get us, it won’t be by war.
They’ll get us in the brain, right in our soft
Impressionable minds. They’ll get us in
The coffee houses and the beatnik poems.
Our spoiled little hairy little children
Dancing in the psychedelic light.
A fond adieu, Your Excellency.
HOOVER exits.
JOHNSON: I don’t feel so excellent today.
[As he dons his clothes, he addresses the hanging corpse.]
…Hook the jug by the ear and hoist it up
For a little smooch. Wonder what I’d do
If somebody ordinarily decent ever
Entered here? Feller like that Purvis.
’Pologize for entertaining in
My skivvies. Turn my liquor breath away.
President of travesties and favors.
Faithful of the balance. Figuring it
To tip down finally on the attractive end.
Unreasonable, childish hope:
And bless you, sojer, may you never spy
The thumbs of bought historians and hostage
Propagandists weighting the boonful side.
I’m traveling to the South week after next.
O, I’ll meet Purvis marching in the sunshine:
Son of light, master of undisguise…
The South, well—down there, certain airs bring back
The sweetness of a childhood I no longer
Find at all believable, of years
I must have dreamt.—Why did I ever waken?
O, I was a knobby little man.
Sir: I put the skinny in skinny-dipping.
Flailing in my slow descent, screaming,
Splashing, the cooling shadow of the bluff
Blanketing us and it all echoing…
I used to like to be the last to leave.
I’d stay there lonely with my chin on my knees,
There by that slow water at the bend
Where right about that time of afternoon The dragonflies dipped down to drink.
And I’d come running for my father’s house,
Hot all over aga
in in the last light,
Thudding like a quarter horse for home,
Falling flat and slurping up the crick.
Lord, that water went down sweet.
…Never since then a truly slakable thirst…
JOHNSON fades from view, leaving visible only the hanging corpse.
BLACKOUT
Scene 2
March 1, 1960: The home of J. EDGAR HOOVER.
HOOVER in silk kimono and garish face paint.
HOOVER: THE CLOWN IS DEAD!
TOLSON [entering]: Jay?
HOOVER: Shot himself!
Phone rings offstage.
TOLSON [exiting]: I’ll get it.
In the course of the scene, HOOVER cleans his features and changes into a business suit, preparing for the day’s appointments.
His housemate CLYDE TOLSON attends.
HOOVER: Marvin the clown has blown his own clown head off!
Clyde, ring up the Post. Ring up The New York Times.
I want those rats to promise me he stays
Entombed on the obituary page,
Or certainly never crawls as far as four,
That he rises no higher than five, not one page higher,
And keeps to the lower half. One column inch.
No photograph!—The clown without a face.
I want this cloaked and shrunken in the stench
Of his self-murder. And: no Dillinger!
Dillinger broke the law, the law broke him:
Let the glory be the law’s, and not
Its instrument’s, the late, lamented Marvin.
I own he was a modest instrument.
He didn’t slaver after glory, merely
Postured himself so it accrued to him.
—Do you know what the poor wretch was reduced to?
Tomorrow his admirers will read
That after a stint with breakfast cereal
He wandered into radio. Somewhere
Down south he kept the farmers in the know
And jazzed it up for barnyard animals.
O, my God, the leader of a horde
Of Junior G-men! Lovely!—Suicide!
The Baptists promise Hell for that, I think.
Dear God, I pray he was your Baptist son.
“Onward Junior G-he-he me-hen
Marching as to war! With the cross of Pur-vis—”
Purvis was the perfect name for him.
He was perverse: He purposely, perversely
Projected a lovelorn, stoic decency;
I believe it to have been primarily prideful,
Perverse and prideful. Are you calling the Post?
No mention of museums!—The the the the
South Carolina—nothing of the kind.
“On then, Junior G-men, on to victory.”
TOLSON [reentering]: Jay—Jay—Jay—Jay…Melvin Purvis has died.
HOOVER: What news do you suppose I’ve just been piping
From the rooftops?
TOLSON: When you pipe I tend
To fail to listen.
HOOVER: Marvin Purvis is dead.
TOLSON: As I have just informed you.
HOOVER: Who told you?
TOLSON: Melvin, actually.
HOOVER: Melvin who, exactly?
TOLSON: Marvin’s name was Melvin.
HOOVER: Morton, Mable,
Or Melba Toast—how did you get the news?
TOLSON: I’ve been on the other line.
HOOVER: With whom?
TOLSON: With Mrs. Purvis.
HOOVER: Well, you can tell her no.
Why would I be moved to eulogize
Some suicidal platter-spinner? No.
Let him be known as the sometime president
Of the Carolina Broadcast News Assembly.
TOLSON: She had a request.
HOOVER: When’s the funeral?
TOLSON: She asks that you not attend the service, Jay.
HOOVER: …I only asked when it was.
TOLSON: Tomorrow at three p.m.
HOOVER: …How did she find our number?
TOLSON: His memo book.
HOOVER: He kept my private number all his life?
TOLSON: …Get back from there, Jay, have a care.
HOOVER: I am at home. Here I make no bones.
TOLSON: You’ve been gamboling past the open view
Like a helium-bloated parade animal.
HOOVER: Do you have the Post on the phone, as I requested?
I want no mention made of Dillinger!
Or Baby Face or Pretty Boy or Cutie
Pie or Pooh the Bear or—infants’ icons!
Clyde, have you seen the wrestlers in Mexico?—
And all these gangsters wore personae like
The Mexican wrestlers do—Clyde, we must get
Immediately half a dozen fearful
Masks from Mexico, and you and I
Shall wrestle.
TOLSON: Mexico is in the mirror,
Should you care to look. Let me get your suit.
HOOVER: When I was a lad, we played cops and robbers.
Purvis and his gangsters shot it out
Across the landscape, but, Clyde, by and large
They played cops and robbers. We fight wars.
Our enemies are ideologies,
And we must smash the vessels that purvey them,
And not just this one or that one—all of them:
Black or Communist or Ku Klux Klan,
All are rationales for disorder,
All are threats to peace and order,
All will wax to a size to challenge
Eventually authority and justice—
TOLSON: John—John—John—John—John—
John, the temple is going to burst asunder.
HOOVER: And talk to The New York Times. The pinko shits.
TOLSON: The vein is standing out all blue and ropy—
HOOVER: The Jew York Times, more like it.
TOLSON: Let’s not start.
HOOVER: The goose step is unattractive, I concede,
But in the man’s defense—what now?
TOLSON: To bring your pressure down…Take two…
Get dressed.
HOOVER: Patriotism, vision, strength,
Consistency and elegance of concept—
TOLSON: Please, Jay, not the Hitler diatribe—
HOOVER: Do we draw across the face of these fine values
Sort of a black veil because a tragic villain
Happened to possess them? I refuse.
TOLSON: I love you.
HOOVER: Yes, the pinstripe double-breasted.
The goose step is both ominous and silly,
I warrant, but in the man’s defense, he didn’t
Invent the goose step…
TOLSON: John…I love you, John.
HOOVER:…HITLER INVENTED THE TWENTIETH CENTURY!
He instituted the control of guns.
We need such a law ourselves, do we not?
May I point out that whereas the Negro may have
To swim up waterfalls to cast a vote,
He nevertheless may purchase firearms?
TOLSON: Suck in. Zip up.
HOOVER: BRING ME THE OBITUARY
OF MARTIN LUTHER KING.
TOLSON: Suck in your gut.
You have a two p.m. appointment with
Senator Johnson.
HOOVER: Senator LBJ
From Cowturdania. Him a good ol’ boy.
TOLSON: He’s set aside half an hour for you.
HOOVER: How would you like to see me double that?
One call and his whole afternoon is mine.
He’ll drop the German chancellor for me.
TOLSON: He owes you favors.
HOOVER: He owes me more than favors.
Bring me a deck of cards.—We’ll play gin rummy!
—In our underwear!
TOLSON: But I don’t play gin rummy.
HOOVER: Not you and I! Th
e senator and I!
He’ll play rummy with me if that’s my pleasure,
And in his undershorts, if that’s my pleasure.
But I think I’ll save that game for the Oval Office,
And play it with the president half-naked.
TOLSON: With Eisenhower? Does he fancy cards?
HOOVER: With LBJ, after he takes the White House.
TOLSON: Will LBJ be president one day?
HOOVER: What earthly circumstance would stay the man?
Cremation, and his ashes on the wind.
Go fish. He’s got a really enormous dick.
We’ll have a round of crazy eights if I
Decree it.
TOLSON: An enormous what?
HOOVER: Shlazool.
Often he pulls it out to drive a point home.
“Mao’s got China but he ain’t got nuthin’ lack ’is.”
TOLSON: Has Elvis Presley become the president?
HOOVER: And Eisenhower!—chrome-dome imbecile.
Unless he’s reading from a page the man’s
Aphasic. Now we’ve given him a button
He can push to set off World War Three.
TOLSON: An awesome power. He—
HOOVER: It doesn’t work.
TOLSON: It doesn’t—doesn’t—
HOOVER: Doesn’t do a thing.
Push it all day long, he won’t succeed
In summoning a shoeshine.
TOLSON: Well!—
HOOVER: What do you take us for? The button’s phony.
When is supper? Should I be home for supper?
TOLSON: You are persona non grata.
HOOVER: What are we having?
TOLSON: Grated persona non grata.
—Jay, back.—First in costume, now half-naked.
HOOVER: They don’t know me.
TOLSON: Only that you live here,
Only that the windows of Director
Hoover’s Georgetown mansion wink
With images of a runaway mannequin.
HOOVER: How will my obituary read?
“Hoover was a fascist bureaucrat, a spy
For Adolf Hitler, shredder of the Bill of Rights”—
And that’s if I succeed. But if I fail:
“Hoover let the tendrils of a cancer