EZRA
(Radio broadcast)
Kike Rosenfelt that snotty barbarian…. The profits of usurers…. If ever a nation produced efficient bureaucracy it has been in Germany…. Eliminate Roosevelt and his Jews or the Jews and their Roosevelt…. Which of you is free of Jew influence, from Jew control …
(As he speaks, light slowly expands to include DOROTHY, who is sketching by candlelight. She is in OLGA’s living room at Rapallo, which is very simply furnished: a table with typewriter, several chairs, kitchen nook.)
DOROTHY
I know how difficult this arrangement has been for you.
OLGA
I wanted it just the way it was, here—white, empty. No junk, no clutter, only candlelight. Now
(Gesturing)
your trunks, your boxes, overflowing everywhere … the three of us here—mess, disorder …
(Static again)
EZRA
(Radio broadcast)
Europe calling, Ezry Pound speaking…. You ’Mercuns would not listen, you would not listen, nothing would make you take the faintest trace of a half-possible interest in Hitler’s warnings. This war was made to make debts, it was made to impose the gold standard—for manipulation by kikes. You don’t want to hear this, you turn off your radio, you go back to sleep…. When this war is over, everything will be just as it was before—until the next one gets going—and you will have killed off some women and children and you’ll feel proud.
All we’ve got now—it cost us three years of war—is a revelation of hoaxes, designed by the London Times and the rest of the press swine, to conceal the basic issue, which is economic—always economic: world usury, the creation of wars by an international band of Yid bankers.
OLGA
And never, ever any money, except what I could earn—playing my violin every chance I get, down in the village, then climbing back up here in my evening dress, the violin over my shoulder … I’ve hidden an old pair of espadrilles under the steps down below, for the climb—alone, in the middle of the night.
EZRA
(Radio broadcast)
Of the three murderers, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, Stalin is the most open. He’s never tried to deny his hand in mass murders, assassinations. He’d argue it’s just part of his business. Roosevelt would say that a murder today is committed solely in the hope of preventing murder by his great-grandchildren.
DOROTHY
I’ve understood from the beginning what Ezra needs: perfect peace and quiet.
EZRA
(Radio broadcast)
Mr. Churchill who is an arrant coward and a clever sceneshifter has never faced Mencius’s question: Is there any difference between killing a man with a sword and killing him with a system of government? Oh yes, I want this war to stop. I’d like to conserve a few art works, a few mosaics, a few printed volumes—what’s left of the world’s cultural heritage.
FDR
(Radio broadcast)
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a day which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
OLGA
The United States will come into the war now—no more excuse for neutrality.
DOROTHY
The Allies will crush us.
(To OLGA)
We must help each other now.
EZRA
(Radio broadcast)
On Arbour Day, Pearl Arbour Day, at twelve o’clock noon, I retired from the capitol of the old Roman empire to Rapallo to seek wisdom from the ancients. I wanted to figure things out. I had a perfectly good alibi, if I wanted to play things safe. I was translating the Analects of Confucius …
SCENE 2
Setting: Next day, the living room at Rapallo.
(OLGA is sitting on a small sofa, copying music. She holds the papers in her lap. DOROTHY, at the other end of the sofa, is working on a small watercolor. EZRA sits at a table covered with books and papers. There is no other furniture in the room. For a beat, all work in silence.)
EZRA
(Looking up)
What is the answer to the philosopher’s question?
(Both women look up. It’s not clear which one EZRA is addressing.)
Confucius asked his disciples, “You think I’ve learned a great deal, and kept all of it in my memory?” Dorothy?
DOROTHY
(Continuing to paint)
Your memory is phenomenal, Mao.
OLGA
(Checking watch, getting up)
My English student will be waiting.
(She rises, puts on coat.)
EZRA
Wait, Olga. Your answer.
OLGA (Irony)
You know everything, Ezra.
EZRA
(Quoting from his manuscript)
“It is not so. I have reduced it all to one principle.”
DOROTHY
(To EZRA)
It’s almost time for you to leave for Rome, you don’t want to be late for your broadcast—again. I’ll make you a sandwich for the train.
(Rising)
We have a tomato, I believe.
(She goes to a shelf, takes down a tomato, bread, and cheese, makes sandwich, wraps it.)
EZRA
Soggy, long before Rome. Is nobody going to ask me what the principle is?
DOROTHY
What is the principle, Mao?
EZRA
I will tell you. Rapacity—the main force of our times.
(He picks up his manuscript.)
If a book contains this wisdom, it’s impossible to force any publisher to print it …
OLGA
And so we can’t pay the rent, even for one establishment.
EZRA
(Ignoring this)
My usual publishers refused my last Confucius. What hope do I have for my translation of the whole Analects?
DOROTHY
None, I’m afraid. It was different in London, before the war, when everyone was saying you were the greatest poet of the twentieth century …
EZRA
… my photograph was even published in Australia!
DOROTHY
In your little green jacket.
EZRA
William Butler Yeats called me “a solitary volcano”!
OLGA
(At the exit)
I must go—my student pays me today.
EZRA
And I must catch my train—with or without my sandwich. I may have to eat my boots.
DOROTHY
Be careful, Mao. The Americans have been bombing the tracks out of Milan. They’re saying the Rome line will be next.
OLGA
(To DOROTHY)
Fuss, and more fuss. He’ll go anyway, as you know—he always does. Rome Radio, for three years, twice a week, regular as a clock, but who, may I ask you, listens?
DOROTHY
You and I, Olga.
EZRA
All the English-speaking world! And don’t forget—three hundred and fifty lire, each broadcast—for getting the truth out, to a world gone mad.
(He begins to assemble papers etc.)
OLGA
(To DOROTHY)
He doesn’t even read you his scripts anymore.
DOROTHY
There are jumps in them I can’t follow.
EZRA
I saw it all coming, after the First War—the War to End All Wars.
DOROTHY
Did you find anything other than a tomato for his sandwich?
OLGA
Bit of cheese. I was down to the market by six.
DOROTHY
I heard you.
(Attempt at humor)
Herd of wild elephants on the stairs.
OLGA
YOU could go.
DOROTHY
Your Italian is better.
OLGA
You could have learned! Sixteen months trapped here together—
&
nbsp; EZRA
Birds in their little nest must agree!
OLGA
(To DOROTHY)
I never invited you to move in here.
DOROTHY
Ezra did. I had no choice; my apartment was requisitioned—
OLGA
It’s convenient, for you—but what about me—my feelings, my convenience—forced to live together, the three of us, after all these years. Before, at least, when you lived down the hill, I didn’t have to confront, every day—
EZRA
(Interrupting her)
The facts, Ma’am, just the facts. You, Olga, mia amorata; Mao here, La Signora Pound.
(Quoting Confucius)
“If the terminology be not exact, if it fit not the thing, government instructions will not be explicit, and business cannot be conducted properly …”
OLGA
Stop it, Ezra! The sayings of Confucius can’t be made to fit every situation!
EZRA
“If business is not properly run, rites and music will not be honored …”
OLGA
How am I supposed to get on with my life? I’ve completely stopped practicing my violin!
DOROTHY
I hardly see how I am preventing you.
OLGA
You LISTEN!
DOROTHY
This apartment is very small.
OLGA
I’ll just give my violin away, then—too fine an instrument to let go to waste!
DOROTHY
Here, Mao—for the train.
(Gives him the sandwich)
EZRA
(Examining it)
Cucumbers and watercress?
DOROTHY
We ate our last cucumber a week ago, and since the war the villagers don’t gather watercress—the English who loved it are all gone away.
EZRA
(Puts sandwich in his pocket)
There are some crimes that nothing will whitewash.
SCENE 3
Setting: Radio studio in Rome. May, 1945.
(On a darkened stage, spotlight on EZRA with microphone.)
EZRA
The United States has declared war ILLEGALLY through what I consider to be the criminal acts of a president—Stinky Roosenfeld —whose mental condition is NOT, as far as I can see, all that could be desired of a man in so responsible a position …
He has broken his promises to the electorate; he has to my mind violated his oath of office—and his oath of allegiance to the US Constitution. After Pearl Harbor I spent a month trying to figure things out. I consulted Confucius and Aristotle, both of whom had seen empires fall—and decided I had to return to these airwaves to talk to you again.
What sort of old age do you picture for the boy who is sent off to machine-gun women and children? And what sort of bill is the American people expected to foot for this attempt to control the world? If you want a permanent garrison in Europe—just how large a garrison would it require, and WHAT would be the annual costs to taxpayers in Kansas and Californy?
(The Pisan prison cage begins to rise around him.)
The United States has been MISinformed. I don’t think it’s the function of the commander in chief of the United States American Army to dictate this citizen’s politics. Free speech without free radio is a mockery! I am only exercising my rights as a loyal American …
BLACKOUT
SCENE 4
Setting: The Cage, Disciplinary Training Center, Pisa.
May, 1945
(The cage is now complete. EZRA gets down on his hands and knees to examine the sharp spikes at the bottom of the cage wires. SGT. WHITESIDE, an African American, enters, carrying a bedroll, latrine can, packing case, etc.)
EZRA
Who are you?
SGT. WHITESIDE
(Coming to attention)
Sergeant Paul Whiteside, US Army, Disciplinary Training Center, Pisa.
(He salutes. EZRA responds with the fascist salute.)
Not in here, Mr. Pound. There are rapists and murderers out there in all those other cages—patriots all—you wouldn’t want them to … misunderstand.
EZRA
Whiteside. Good old ’Mercun name. Grandparents born in slavery? Virginia, from your accent?
SGT. WHITESIDE
North Carolina.
EZRA
Mother octoroon?
(No response)
Quadroon?
SGT. WHITESIDE
My mother is half white.
EZRA
Old Massa hisself, pretty black slave his concubine, half-tone pickaninnies running all round the plantation!
SGT. WHITESIDE
(Ignoring this)
This is your latrine. It’ll be emptied every other day.
EZRA
You read poetry, Whiteside?
SGT. WHITESIDE
I read Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes …
EZRA
Good man, old Hughes! I wrote him years ago re what classics should be taught at those nigger universities. Old Hughes wrote me back, “We are unfortunately not yet up to that standard.”
(No response)
My grandfather, Thaddeus Pound, was an abolitionist. I understand the black heart of American history—rape, miscegenation …
SGT. WHITESIDE
Latrine there,
(Indicates bucket)
sleep here. Reveille at 0700.
EZRA
Why do you want to speak like a Havud sophomore? One race and one race only—YOURS—has fostered a speech mellow and full—in charm not inferior to that of the eighteenth century.
SGT. WHITESIDE
Belt. Shoelaces.
(SGT. WHITESIDE removes EZRA’s belt and shoelaces.)
EZRA
My shoelaces?
SGT. WHITESIDE
The Army doesn’t want you to hang yourself.
EZRA
(Going to the spikes)
They want me to slit my wrists—save them the trouble.
(He leans down as though to slice his wrists. SGT. WHITE-SIDE intervenes. There is a moment of closeness.)
If I am not hung for treason, I think I have a good chance of seeing the president. I could have stopped this war.
SGT. WHITESIDE
It’s late. Go to sleep, Old Man.
(Harsh blue lights bathe the cage as EZRA begins to take off his boots.)
EZRA
Turn out those lights!
SGT. WHITESIDE
You’re considered dangerous. Mr. Pound. We’ve got to watch you. Twenty-four hours a day.
(SGT. WHITESIDE leaves the cage, locks it.)
EZRA
You don’t know who I am.
(He finishes taking off boots, examines his feet.)
Blisters big as marbles. I borrowed these boots in Rome—two sizes too small. The Americans were marching north, Mussolini in hiding, the Italian Army fleeing. I told the hellcats in Rapallo, “I have to see the Leoncina—Mary—my daughter, with her peasant family in the Tyrol.” They didn’t want it—the hellcats—the two of them, united front, for once, telling me, “Don’t make more trouble.” Trouble’s my middle name.
The Leoncina deserves to hear the truth—finally. Maybe my last chance to explain. I started walking north. Two days on the road …
BLACKOUT
SCENE 5
Setting: Memory of the Italian Tyrol. A few years earlier, in September 1943
(Newsreel shots of Italy during the 1943 invasion, smoking ruins at Monte Cassino, Italian soldiers surrendering.
MARY enters, wearing Tyrolean costume, carrying a basket. Lights indicate this is in EZRA’s memory. EZRA enters.)
MARY
Babbo—you’re limping!
EZRA
Boots two sizes too small—I walked all the way from Rome.
MARY
(As EZRA limps toward MARY.)
We heard on the radio this morning—Mussolini’s been liberated by the Germans!
Impossible!
MARY
No, it’s true—flown to Berlin to meet with Hitler. But how did you get here, Babbo?
EZRA
Slept on a bench one night, under a haystack the next. Had to come all the way to see my only daughter.
MARY
My real family is here, Babbo. They raised me. Have you forgotten?
EZRA
Well, I had no choice. Olga wrote me from the hospital, two days after you wuz born, said, “I can’t look after it, having no talent that way. But, there’s a Swiss peasant woman here, from Gais—her child has died—she’s agreed to nurse it, take it in …”
MARY
You mean me?
EZRA
Olga called you “it” for a while.
MARY
She frightens me.
EZRA
I know the feeling.
MARY
But you wanted me, Babbo?
EZRA
Tried to have you live with us, in Venice, but only visits permitted. Olga was adamant! Her violin, you know. Needed peace and quiet.
MARY
And when I did visit, those terrible afternoons when she tried to teach me Italian, reading to me and making me translate. I never could do it. I only spoke German, then.
EZRA
She wanted to “form” you.
MARY
But not live with me, not love me. But you, Babbo …
EZRA
The American bar, in Venice. You used to love their cheese sandwiches.
MARY
And afterward, always ice cream—gelato cioccolata. That much Italian I could say. Then you’d take us swimming at the Lido … Where you told me that you missed your “family” and wanted to go back to Gais.
MARY
Well, you asked me.
EZRA
You wanted to go “home.”
Treason Page 16