by Tony Kushner
PRIOR: —In your own backyard—
ANGEL, PRIOR AND BELIZE: You never lost it to begin with.
(The Angel coughs. Prior is disturbed and confused by the citation; she is confused and disturbed that humans know these lines. For Belize it’s proof, of course, that this is a dream.)
ANGEL: Turn Back.
PRIOR: Please, please, whatever you are, angel or, or—
ANGEL: Undo.
PRIOR: I’m not a prophet, I’m a sick, lonely man, I—
ANGEL: Till He—
PRIOR: I don’t . . . understand this visitation—
ANGEL: Till HE returns again.
(The Angel picks up the Book. Prior is now both terrified and very angry.)
PRIOR: Stop moving. That’s what you want. Answer me! You want me dead.
(Pause. The Angel and Prior look at one another.)
PRIOR: Uh-huh, well I. I’M TIRED! Tired to death of, of being done to, um, infected, fucked-over and tortured by, by you, by this—
Is this, is this, disease, is the virus in me, is that the, the epistle, is that the prophecy? Is this just . . . revenge, because we, because you think we ruined . . .
No. No, I want you to go away, you go away or I will, I’ll leave, I can leave, too, I’ll—
(The Angel steps aside and gestures to Prior to leave. He hesitates and starts for the door. As he passes near her, the Angel touches him gently on the shoulder.)
ANGEL (Leaning in, quiet, intimate): You can’t Outrun your Occupation, Jonah.
Hiding from Me one place you will find me in another.
(She takes her hand from his shoulder.)
ANGEL: I I I I stop down the road, waiting for you.
(Tenderly, she puts her arm about his waist.)
ANGEL (Almost a whisper): You Know Me Prophet: Your battered heart,
Bleeding Life in the Universe of Wounds.
(The Angel presses the Book against Prior’s chest, then presses her body against his. Together they experience something unnameable—painful, joyful, in equal measure. There is a terrible sound.)
ANGEL: Vessel of the BOOK now: Oh Exemplum Paralyticum:
On you in you in your blood we write have written:
STASIS!
The END.
(She releases Prior, who sinks to the floor. In gales of music, holding the Book aloft, the Angel ascends.)
Scene 3
The bedroom disappears. While this is happening, Prior stands, and, again, with deliberate, unhurried pace, changes into his street clothes. When he’s ready he resumes his place beside Belize, who’s waiting, thinking, on the street in front of the funeral home.
Prior and Belize stare at one another, silent for a beat, and then:
BELIZE: Uh-huh. I . . .
Well what do you want me to say?
PRIOR: It’s . . . nuts.
BELIZE: It’s . . . worse than nuts, it’s— “Don’t migrate”? “Don’t mingle”? That’s . . . kind of malevolent, isn’t it, ’cause— (Continue below:)
PRIOR: I hardly think it’s appropriate for you to get offended, I didn’t invent this shit it was visited on—
BELIZE (Continuous from above): —you know, some of us didn’t exactly choose to migrate, know what I’m saying, some of us— But it is offensive or at least monumentally confused and it’s not . . . visited, Prior. By who? It is from you, what else is it?
PRIOR: Something else.
BELIZE: That’s crazy.
PRIOR: Then I’m crazy.
BELIZE: No, you’re—
PRIOR: Then it was an angel.
BELIZE: It was not an—
PRIOR: Then I’m crazy. The whole world is, why not me? It’s 1986 and there’s a plague, friends younger than me are dead, and I’m only thirty, and every goddamn morning I wake up and I think Louis is next to me in the bed and it takes me long minutes to remember . . . that this is real, it isn’t just an impossible, terrible dream, so maybe yes I’m flipping out.
BELIZE (Angry): Stop.
(Tough, harsh, very clear) This is not dementia. And this is not real. This is just you, Prior, afraid of . . . Of what’s coming. Afraid of time.
But see that’s just not how it goes, the world doesn’t spin backwards.
(Prior starts to say something. Belize holds up his hand, forbidding, and Prior obeys.)
BELIZE: Listen to the world, to how fast it goes.
(They listen, and the sounds of the city grow louder and louder, filling the stage, sounds of traffic, whistles, alarms, people, all very fast and very complex and very determinedly moving ahead.)
BELIZE: That’s New York traffic, baby, that’s the sound of energy, the sound of time. Even if you’re hurting, it can’t go back.
You better fucking not flip out. There’s no angel. You hear me? For me? (Continue below:)
THE ANGEL’S VOICE: Whisper into the ear of the World, Prophet. (Continue below:)
BELIZE (Continuous from above): I can handle anything but not this happening to you.
THE ANGEL’S VOICE (Continuous from above): Wash up red in the tide of its dreams,
And billow bloody words into the sky of sleep.
(Prior steps back from Belize, withdrawing.)
PRIOR: I’m sorry, baby, I . . . I’ve tried, really, but . . . I can’t, it follows me, it won’t let me go. So, maybe I’m a prophet. Not me, alone, all of us, the, the ones who’re dying now. Maybe the virus is the prophecy? Be still. Maybe the world has driven God from Heaven. Because, because I do believe that, that over and over, I’ve seen the end of things. And (He puts his hand near his eyes) having seen, I’m going blind, as prophets do. Right? It makes a certain sense to me.
THE ANGEL’S VOICE: FOR THIS AGE OF ANOMIE: A NEW LAW! (Continue below:)
PRIOR: Oh, oh God how I hate Heaven. But I’ve got no resistance left.
THE ANGEL’S VOICE (Continuous from above): Delivered this night, this silent night, from Heaven,
Oh Prophet, to You.
(Prior kisses Belize good-bye.)
PRIOR: Except to run.
(He limps away. Belize watches him go.)
ACT THREE:
Borborygmi
(The Squirming Facts Exceed the Squamous Mind)
January 1986
Scene 1
Several days after the end of Act Two. Split scene: Joe and Louis in bed in Louis’s apartment, which is tidier, homier. Louis is sound asleep. Joe is awake, sitting up, watching Harper, who is in the living room of their Brooklyn apartment. She’s dressed in a soiled nightgown. Returning Joe’s stare, she removes her nightgown; she stands shivering, facing him in her bra, panties and stockings.
Hannah, in a bathrobe, enters the Brooklyn living room, carrying a dress over her arm and a pair of shoes. She puts the shoes down in front of Harper.
HANNAH: Good you’re out of that nightdress, it was starting to smell.
HARPER: You’re telling me.
HANNAH: Now let’s slip this on.
(They put the dress on Harper.)
HANNAH: Good.
HARPER: I hate it.
HANNAH: It’s pretty.
Shoes?
(Harper steps into them.)
HANNAH: Now let’s see about the hair.
(Harper bends over; Hannah combs Harper’s hair.)
HANNAH: It can be very hard to accept how disappointing life is, Harper, because that’s what it is, and you have to accept it. With faith and time and hard work you reach a point where . . . where the disappointment doesn’t hurt as much, and then it gets easy to live with. Quite easy. Which . . . is in its own way a disappointment. But.
There.
HARPER: In my old life, my previous life, I never used to get up at five A.M.
(To Joe) This is a nightmare.
HANNAH: I said I’d open up.
HARPER (Fake admiration): You volunteered.
HANNAH: I can’t sit around, idle.
HARPER: You just got here, you could . . . sightsee, you could—
HANNAH: I didn’t come for fun.
HARPER: You came to the right place.
HANNAH: I leave messages for him at work. They say he’s not in but I know he is, but he won’t take my calls. He’s ashamed.
JOE: She’s right.
HANNAH: I’ll fix myself.
JOE: I am.
HANNAH: And we can go.
(Hannah exits.)
HARPER: You’re in love with him.
(She crosses into Louis’s bedroom. Joe shrinks from her, afraid, but he’s careful not to wake Louis.)
JOE: I am?
HARPER: Don’t ask me. Are you?
JOE: How’re you doing?
HARPER: Huh. Maybe you’re not in love with him. If you were, you wouldn’t ask me that. You wouldn’t be brave enough. You’d know.
LOUIS (Still asleep, starting to wake): Joe . . .?
(Louis is asleep again.)
HARPER: I have terrible powers. Maybe I’m a witch.
JOE: You’re not a—
HARPER: I see more than I want to see. You can’t do that. I could be a witch. Why not? I married a fairy. Anything’s possible, any awful thing.
JOE: Leave, Harper.
HARPER: I knew you’d be with someone. You think of yourself as so lonely all the time, but you’ve never been alone.
JOE: Oh that isn’t . . . You don’t know. I have felt very alone.
HARPER: Till now.
(Harper puts her hand under Louis’s head, and pushes up; Louis startles awake.)
LOUIS: Who are you . . .?
JOE (To Louis): I—It’s nothing, just . . .
(To Harper) Go.
(She vanishes.)
JOE (To Louis): Morning.
Sleep well?
LOUIS: No.
Did you?
JOE: Soundly.
LOUIS: How do you manage that? These fucking dreams, every . . .
Don’t you have—
JOE: I don’t dream.
LOUIS: Everybody dreams.
JOE: I don’t.
LOUIS: Ever?
JOE: Not that I can remember.
Not since I started, um, being here, with you.
LOUIS (A beat, then): You’re a conundrum.
JOE: Solve me.
(Embarrassed) Sorry, that was really—
LOUIS: But you can’t—
JOE: Weird, that was really—
LOUIS: You can’t solve conundrums, they’re . . . bafflements, you can only, um . . .
JOE: Conjecture.
(Louis nods.)
JOE: So ask me something.
LOUIS: Like . . .?
JOE: Something you’ve never asked me before.
It should be easy, you haven’t asked much.
(Louis looks around the room, as if not recognizing any of it, then he stares hard at Joe. A beat, then:)
LOUIS: Who are you?
Scene 2
Same day. Roy in his hospital room; near his bed, there’s a mini-fridge with a locked door. He looks worse than before, gaunt, gray. The pain in his gut is now constant and it’s getting worse. He’s on the phone, a more elaborate model than the one in the previous scene; this phone has buttons.
ROY: No records no records what are you deaf I said I have no records for their shitty little committee, it’s not how I work I—
(He has a severe abdominal spasm. He holds the phone away, grimaces terribly, curls up into a ball and then uncurls, making no sound, determined that the party on the line won’t hear how much pain he’s in.
Ethel Rosenberg appears in her hat and coat. Roy sees her enter. He watches her walk to a chair and sit. He resumes his phone call, never taking his eyes off Ethel, who stares at him, silent, unreadable.)
ROY: Those notes were lost. LOST. In a fire, water damage, I can’t do this any—
(Belize enters with a pill tray.)
ROY (To Belize): I threw up fifteen times today! I COUNTED.
(To Ethel) What are you looking at?
(To Belize) Fifteen times. (He goes back to the phone) Yeah?
BELIZE: Hang up the phone, I have to watch you take these—
ROY: The LIMO thing? Oh for the love of Christ I was acquitted twice for that, they’re trying to kill me dead with this harassment, I have done things in my life but I never killed anyone.
(To Ethel) Present company excepted. And you deserved it.
(To Belize) Get the fuck outta here.
(Back to the phone) Stall. It can’t start tomorrow if we don’t show, so don’t show, I’ll pay the old harridan back. I have to have a—
BELIZE: Put down the phone.
ROY: Suck my dick, Mother Teresa, this is life and death.
BELIZE: Put down the—
(Roy grabs the pill cup off the tray and throws the pills on the floor. Belize reaches for the phone. Roy slams down the receiver and snatches the phone away, protecting it, cradling it.)
ROY: You touch this phone and I’ll bite. And I got rabies.
And from now on, I supply my own pills. I already told ’em to push their jujubes to the losers down the hall.
BELIZE: Your own pills.
ROY: No double blind. A little bird warned me. The vultures are—
(Another severe spasm. This time he makes noise)
Jesus God these cramps, now I know why women go beserk once a—AH FUCK!
(He has another spasm. Ethel laughs.)
ROY: Oh good I made her laugh.
(The pain is slightly less. He’s a little calmer)
I don’t trust this hospital. For all I know Lillian fucking Hellman is down in the basement switching the pills around. No, wait, she’s dead, isn’t she? Oh boy, memory, it’s—Hey, Ethel, didn’t Lillian die, did you see her up there, ugly, ugly broad, nose like a . . . like even a Jew should worry mit a punim like that. You seen somebody fitting that description up there in Red Heaven? Hah?
(To Belize) She won’t talk to me. She thinks she’s some sort of a deathwatch or something.
BELIZE: Who are you talking to?
(Roy looks at Ethel, realizing/remembering that Belize can’t see her.)
ROY: I’m self-medicating.
BELIZE: With what?
ROY (Trying to remember): Acid something.
BELIZE: Azidothymedine?
ROY: Gesundheit.
(Roy retrieves a key on a ring from under his pillow and tosses it to Belize.)
BELIZE: AZT? You got . . .?
(Belize unlocks the ice box; it’s full of bottles of pills.)
ROY: One-hundred-proof elixir vitae.
Give me the key.
BELIZE: You scored.
ROY: Impressively.
BELIZE: Lifetime supply.
There are maybe thirty people in the whole country who are getting this drug.
ROY: Now there are thirty-one.
BELIZE: There are a hundred thousand people who need it.
Look at you. The dragon atop the golden horde. It’s not fair, is it?
ROY: No, but as Jimmy Carter said, neither is life. And then we shipped him back to his peanut plantation. Put your brown eyes back in your goddamn head, baby, it’s the history of the world, I didn’t write it, though I flatter myself I am a footnote. And you are a nurse, so minister and skedaddle.
BELIZE: If you live fifty more years you won’t swallow all these pills.
(Pause)
I want some.
ROY: That’s illegal.
BELIZE: Ten bottles.
ROY: I’m gonna report you.
BELIZE: There’s a nursing shortage. I’m in a union. I’m real scared.
I have friends who need them. Bad.
ROY: Loyalty I admire. But no.
BELIZE (Amazed, off-guard): Why?
(Pause.)
ROY: Because you repulse me. “WHY?” You’ll be begging for it next. “WHY?” Because I hate your guts, and your friends’ guts, that’s why. “Gimme!” So goddamned entitled. Such a shock when the bill comes due.
> BELIZE: From what I read you never paid a fucking bill in your life.
ROY: No one has worked harder than me. To end up knocked flat in a—
BELIZE: Yeah well things are tough all over.
ROY: And you come here looking for fairness? (To Ethel) They couldn’t touch me when I was alive, and now when I’m dying they try this: (He grabs up all the paperwork in two fists) Now! When I’m a— (He can’t find the word. Back to Belize) That’s fair? What am I? A dead man!
(A terrible spasm, quick and violent; he doubles up. Then, when the pain’s subsided:)
Fuck! What was I saying Oh God I can’t remember any . . . Oh yeah, dead.
I’m a goddamn dead man.
BELIZE: You expect pity?
ROY (A beat, then): I expect you to hand over that key and move your nigger ass out of my room.
BELIZE: What did you say?
ROY: Move your nigger cunt spade faggot lackey ass out of my room.
BELIZE (Overlapping, starting on “spade”): Shit-for-brains filthy-mouthed selfish motherfucking cowardly cock-sucking cloven-hoofed pig.
ROY (Overlapping, starting on “cowardly”): Mongrel. Dinge. Slave. Ape.
BELIZE: Kike.
ROY: Now you’re talking!
BELIZE: Greedy kike.
ROY: Now you can have a bottle. But only one.
(Belize tosses the key at Roy, hard. Roy catches it. Belize takes a bottle of the pills, then another, then a third, and then leaves.
As soon as Belize is out of the room Roy is spasmed with pain he’s been holding in.)
ROY: GOD! (The pain subsides a little) I thought he’d never go! (It subsides a little more. Then to Ethel) So what? Are you going to sit there all night?
ETHEL: Till morning.
ROY: Uh-huh. The cock crows, you go back to the swamp.
ETHEL: No. I take the 7:05 to Yonkers.
ROY: What the fuck’s in Yonkers?
ETHEL: The disbarment committee hearings. You been hocking about it all week. I’ll have a look-see.
ROY: They won’t let you in the front door. You’re a convicted and executed traitor.
ETHEL: I’ll walk through a wall.
(She laughs. He joins her.)
ROY: Fucking SUCCUBUS!
(They’re laughing, enjoying this.)
ROY: Fucking blood-sucking old bat!
(They continue to laugh as Roy picks up the phone, punches a couple of buttons and then stops dialing, his laughter gone. He stares at the phone, dejectedly, not noticing that Ethel has vanished.