The Unseen Hand, page 13
TOM: Just leave the books where they are.
(DONNA stops and faces TOM, her arms full of books.)
DONNA: Look. I don’t give a damn anymore about how it looks.
TOM: That’s just too bad. We started it and now we’ll finish.
DONNA: We started nothing. You never even wanted a bookcase at all. In the beginning.
TOM: But now it’s there and it has to be finished.
DONNA: Has to be nothing. We leave it as it is.
(She approaches the bookcase.)
TOM: Stay where you are!
(DONNA stops, MOM and POP remain indifferent throughout all this.)
DONNA: Is it that important to you really? I mean in your heart of hearts?
TOM: Most important. It’s become essential. It’s become overpowering to me. Coloring every moment of my waking hours. I wake up thinking of this bookcase and I sleep dreaming of it. I walk around with the smell of it in my nose and I can see it in the future. I have a picture in my head of what it might become and I plan to fulfill that picture if it’s the last thing I do.
DONNA: Swell!
(She drops the books abruptly on the floor, TOM swings the paintbrush through the air so that paint streaks down the front of DONNA.)
Shithead!
(They stare at each other but do not move, MOM and POP simultaneously pull a book out from each of their respective piles and start reading them with their backs still to the audience.)
TOM: I could have compromised a day or two ago while it was still in the planning stage. But now it’s too late. Now it’s definitely too late.
DONNA: You’ve become very definite very fast.
(She moves slowly toward the second paintbrush as TOM stalks her, holding the brush in front of him like a weapon.)
TOM: I find it helps. I’m not so wishy-washy and I can make fast decisions on a moment’s notice.
DONNA: Right on top, as they say.
TOM: Exactly.
DONNA: Must be nice.
TOM: It is. I feel at home in any situation. I baffle everyone around me and I’m known for my wit.
DONNA: A joy to be with.
TOM: Of course.
(DONNA grabs the other brush and dips it in the paint, TOM makes a lunge toward her but backs away, they hold the brushes in front of them and crouch for attack.)
DONNA: People must flock to your side. You must have what they call “magnetism,” a pulling sensation. That’s the opposite of repulsion. Something like yin and yang.
TOM: Very close to it.
(They rush at each other and slap the brushes across each other’s face—this should happen almost as though they were making a mockery of the fight, like two old gentlemen slapping each other with gloves—they back away and resume the crouch more typical of a street fight with knives. MOM and POP gradually turn toward the audience while sitting on their stacks of books, they become very engrossed in their reading, POP turns toward stage left and MOM toward stage right.)
DONNA: How could it lie dormant for so many years? Just under the surface and itching to pop out.
TOM: I had no chance. No field to practice in. I’d throw rocks now and then but there was always something left over. Some extra zest.
DONNA: All the windows you broke in preparation. All the dirt clods you threw. And the people chasing you across acres of vacant lots, firing shotguns and swearing your name.
TOM: My name was death in the neighborhood. I hung around with enemies of the town. Even enemies of myself.
DONNA: But now!
(They charge and slap each other again with the brushes, then back away.)
TOM: Yes! And my health has changed for the better. Even my eyes sparkle and my ears are clear. My whole body pulses with new life.
DONNA: The trouble is the longevity. Its lasting power. It seems like a stage to me. Just a frame of mind. Temporarily manic is the way I’d put it.
TOM: But that’s so wrong. So easily overlooking what’s right in front of you. You can’t see it the way my veins stand out? The way my temples throb?
(They charge and slap each other, this time more deliberately and enjoying it less, they back away.)
DONNA: You’ll fall back into it again. Wait and see. You’ll sleep for days, afraid to get up. You’ll wet your bed.
TOM: I’ll jump out of bed! You don’t even know. You haven’t seen me when I’m at my best.
DONNA: You’ll tremble under stacks of blankets, afraid to show your face. How will you account for the lies you’ve told?
TOM: Nothing false about it. I’ve gone through that stage. That pubic stage.
(By this time MOM and POP are directly facing the audience and remain that way to the end of the play, deeply absorbed in reading.)
DONNA: Prone on your back forever and ever. You’ll cry to be read to. You’ll want a bedtime story twenty-four hours a day. And no lights. I’ll have to read to you with a flashlight tucked under my arm. The room will be dark and you’ll whimper until you fall asleep.
TOM: It could never happen now!
(They charge and viciously paint each other with the brushes, then back away; they are both covered with white paint by now.)
DONNA: All you’ll have is a tiny little glimmer of your present excitement. The rest will have gone and you’ll lie there forever, trying to get it back. The bed will be your house and home and your head will be glued to the pillow. Your arms will be stuck to the sheet and your legs will be paralyzed from the hip down. You can’t turn your head because you drool from the mouth and pus will run out your nose. Your eyes fill up with water and pour over onto your cheeks and each ear hums from hearing nothing. You lie in pools of urine and feces for days on end until the bed and you become one thing. One whole thing and there’s no way of telling where the bed stops and you begin. You smell the same, you look the same, you act the same, you are the same.
(The lights change to white; the door opens and ED enters with his arms full of books, he kicks the door shut, DONNA and TOM drop the brushes on the floor and look at ED, MOM and POP keep reading.)
ED: Hi.
DONNA AND TOM: Hi.
ED: Decided to bring up a load.
DONNA AND TOM: Good.
ED: Where should I set them?
DONNA AND TOM: Oh, anywhere is all right.
(ED crosses and piles the books down center, then turns and looks at the bookcase.)
ED: How’s it coming?
DONNA AND TOM: Not bad.
ED: There’s not as many down there as you had me believe. I mean by the way you were talking anybody would think you were flooded with books. But there’s just a few. A couple more trips and you’ll have it done.
DONNA AND TOM: We decided to stay.
ED: What? No, I mean a couple more trips up the stairs and you’d have it all finished. The books.
DONNA AND TOM: We’re staying up here.
ED: Well, I can’t bring them all. One trip is all I have time for. It won’t take very long and you forget the climb after a while. You were probably counting the flights as you came up. That’s always bad. If you stop counting, it’ll go much faster. I can assure you of that. I personally find work to be easier if I distract myself rather than pour my full concentration into it. That way you forget about your body and therefore you’re not conscious of being fatigued or exhausted. In fact I usually finish up a day’s work fully refreshed. I know that seems odd to most people but it’s true. Work tends to boost my energy rather than diminish it.
DONNA AND TOM: That does seem strange.
ED: The trouble is I don’t have enough time. I wouldn’t mind bringing the rest up for you but I really have to go.
DONNA AND TOM: That’s quite all right.
(They both turn upstage and stare at the bookcase with their backs to ED.)
ED: It’s just too bad all the way around. We should all take some time off. You know? Why don’t we do that? We could all go up there this very minute and take a little rest. We’d be just in time for the first snow. And we could make some kind of special dinner. You know, a turkey dinner with cranberry sauce. Then we could build a fire and sit around drinking hot chocolate. Then we could—
MOM AND POP: (Reading from the books) And the snow started early and came so soft that nobody even noticed. The only way we could really tell was the way the trees slowly changed from green to white.
ED: We could do that. It would just be a visit. I’m all moved in so I don’t need any help.
MOM AND POP: It fell for hours and hours, then days and days, and it looked like it wouldn’t stop. In fact everyone decided that it wouldn’t stop and it kept going on. Falling down and down.
ED: There’s really enough room even though it’s small.
MOM AND POP: But the funny thing was that there wasn’t any wind and there wasn’t any cold. It just fell and changed everything from the color it was to white. But it got thicker and thicker so the people went outside but it didn’t get any better. It got thicker and thicker and covered all their trees.
ED: I really can’t hang around. I have to get back to my house now.
MOM AND POP: It got so bad that they had to climb a hill and watch from the top while their houses disappeared. It happened very slow but they never sat down and their legs got very strong.
ED: I’ll even buy the food and cook it all myself.
MOM AND POP: It happened very slow and they stood very still until the smoke went away from their little chimney tops. Then the trees disappeared while they all just looked and didn’t say a word but stood in a line looking straight ahead. The blanket moved up and the valley disappeared but the people didn’t cry and it kept coming down and it kept piling up and they all just stared and didn’t say a word.
ED: If I could stay I would!
(Everyone but ED says the next lines simultaneously in perfect synchronization. MOM and POP still reading and facing front, DONNA and TOM still facing the bookcase, and ED somewhere in the middle.)
ALL BUT ED: The place was in white as far as they could see and not a sound or a wind or a hint of cold or hot. Not a taste in their mouth or a sting in their nose. And they moved very slow away from the place. And they moved and they moved and they didn’t say a thing. Didn’t laugh, didn’t cry, didn’t moan, didn’t sigh, didn’t even cough as the snow came down.
ED: It’s just too bad!
ALL BUT ED: And once they turned they didn’t turn around and once they walked they didn’t even stop and they met more people as they went along, all new people as they went along, and the ground was white for as far as they could see and the sky was white, as white as it could be, and the crowd was thick and the air was thin but there wasn’t any cold and there wasn’t any hot and they couldn’t even stop.
(ED joins in at this point as they all say the lines in perfect unison; they don’t wait for ED, he simply joins them.)
ALL: So they just moved on and on and on and as the story goes they never did stop, they never did drop, they never lagged behind or even speeded up. They never got tired and they never got strong and they didn’t feel a thing. And nobody knows how they ever got lost, how they ever got away. To this very same day nobody knows how they ever got away.
(The lights change to blue, all the shelves fall off the bookcase onto the floor, none of the actors move; the blue light dims out very slowly to the end of the play, MOM and POP stand slowly as the other actors start to hum “White Christmas” very softly, begin picking up all the debris from the floor and carrying it offstage through the door. MOM and POP read alternately from the book, staying on either side of the stage; the other three clean the entire stage, starting with the debris, then the books, then dismounting the entire set and taking it off so that the stage is completely bare by the end of the play; they hum the tune more loudly as they continue, likewise MOM and POP read more loudly.)
POP: The original plan unfortunately hasn’t changed, despite publicity to the contrary. The radial city exists much the same as it always has in the past. In fact it never really occurred out of a preconception on the part of individual architects or city planners.
MOM: It occurred more out of a state of frenzy and a complete lack of consideration for the future function of a place to live and/or work. The present condition is only the outcome of that lack of consideration.
POP: Consequently the city as it exists today affords certain people who live in certain areas many more benefits and varied ways of living than it does certain other people. This situation occurs in terms of center points similar to the hub of a wheel. The center of a city always offers people more diversions, more necessities, and more of everything they need to stay alive.
MOM: Therefore the center is densely populated and has a greater coagulation of excitement in the air. The farther one gets from this center point the less one is aware of the excitement. As one moves toward the country and more rural areas the excitement has all but disappeared.
POP: The problem seems to be one of accommodating people with the pleasures and necessities of the city and at the same time offering them plenty of open green space—since city parks are nothing more than tiny breathing places or overly synthetic versions of the real thing and they also make it tremendously difficult to forget the city (if that be their function) for the simple fact that they were conceived in the midst of horrendous skyscrapers.
MOM: Skyscrapers, too, have never solved any congestive problems since they were built more out of the need for space than with any consideration for the human being. Hence when the day’s work is done, there is a terrible conglomerate of people pushing their way out of the base of each building and rushing to more rural developments.
POP: The obvious alternative to this radial concept seems to be what might be called the “linear city” or the “universal city.” As an example the city would stretch in a line from the tip of Maine to the tip of Florida and be no wider than a mile. The city would stop immediately at its mile width, at which point the country would commence. This would allow any citizen with the ability to use his or her legs to walk from the midst of the city into the midst of the country.
MOM: Unexcelled transportation systems would be put into use for the traversing of the city’s length. An underground system traveling at the speed of two hundred miles an hour. An overhead system traveling at the rate of four hundred miles per hour. Two very wide belts, much like conveyor belts, would stretch from Florida to Maine and be in perpetual motion twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. One belt moving at the rate of four miles per hour, the other at eight miles per hour.
POP: These would be primarily used for any person walking from someplace to someplace and if they couldn’t afford the higher-speed systems. A person walking on the four-mile-an-hour belt would obviously be walking four miles an hour faster than his normal pace. If he or she became tired he could then sit down on the eight-mile-an-hour belt and maintain the same speed.
MOM: Skyscrapers would be eliminated in preference to elongated parallel structures with many outlets along their sides. Thus eliminating heavy congestion at one exit.
POP: Cultural centers would be evenly distributed along the entire length of the city. Museums, concerts, movies, theater, et cetera, would be readily available to everyone rather than the chosen few.
MOM: State borders would disintegrate and all police cars would be the same color as well as all license plates.
POP: Schools would be functional rather than regional and the children could walk to the country on their lunch hour.
MOM: Employment opportunities would vastly increase.
POP: Water shortage would be extinct.
MOM: Cross-country linear cities would develop.
POP: Stretching from coast to coast and crisscrossing the vertical cities.
MOM: The vertical cities stretching north through Canada and south through Mexico.
POP: All the way into South America.
MOM: Each city no less than ten miles from the next city.
POP: Forming ten-mile squares of country in between.
MOM: Desert cities and jungle cities where cities have never been.
POP: Ocean cities and sky cities and cities underground.
MOM: Joining country to country and hemisphere to hemisphere.
POP: Forming five-mile squares in between.
(The stage is bare by this time, the other three actors are offstage but still humming the tune, MOM and POP still face front.)
MOM: Elevated cities suspended under vacuum air.
POP: Forming two-mile squares in between.
MOM: Cities enclosed in glass to see the sky.
POP: Forming one-mile squares.
MOM: Cities in the sky to see the glass.
POP: Forming squares in between.
(MOM and POP close their books, the lights dim out, the other three actors stop humming offstage.)
Red Cross
Red Cross was first produced on January 20, 1966, at the Judson Poets’ Theatre with the following cast:
CAROL: Joyce Aaron
JIM: Lee Kissman
MAID: Florence Tarlow
It was directed by Jacques Levy.
SCENE
The bedroom of a cabin. There is a screen door up center leading out to a small porch. A window stage left and stage right. There are twin beds, one under each window with the heads facing upstage. The tops of trees can be seen through the screen door and each of the windows to give the effect of a second story. As the lights come up JIM is sitting on the bed to stage left facing CAROL, who is sitting on the other bed. Everything in the set plus costumes should be white.
