MR. UNIVERSE

by Jim Grimsley

  J. I wouldn’t be disturbed if you pray aloud.

  PAUL. Perhaps I should pray aloud but simply pray a very innocuous sort of prayer.

  J. That doesn’t sound like the ticket to me.

  PAUL. No. It sounds rather like a sort of prayer consommé.

  J. You should simply go on as if you were in your own private prayer chapel with the usual microphone in front of you.

  PAUL. I suppose that is the only realistic choice. (Notices SOL HEIFFER holding the tray; recognizes the tray and shudders.) Oh no, Sol Heiffer. I couldn’t possibly do that.

  (SOL HEIFFER smiles beatifically.)

  J. (to PAUL). Are you all right?

  PAUL (gesturing to the tray). No. I couldn’t possibly. Do you know what that is?

  J. I expect it’s a sacramental service.

  PAUL. I ordinarily take the Sacrament at the beginning of the hour of prayer.

  J. Again, I must encourage you to follow through with all your usual procedures.

  PAUL (somewhat horror-struck). But I simply cannot. There is no question. I can’t be eating of your body and drinking of your blood right in front of you. That’s simply out of the question. (Signals SOL HEIFFER unequivocally to exit with the sacramental tray.) The thought of the transubstantiation occurring right before your very eyes.

  J. I find the possibilities to be somewhat interesting.

  PAUL (unrolling a prayer rug). My knees aren’t what they used to be.

  (PAUL does brief vocal warmup.)

  PAUL. There. Now I feel relaxed. (Pause. Closes his eyes and clasps his hands, then opens his eyes and speaks to J.) I would prefer that you didn’t begin answering my prayer till I get through the whole thing. Context, you know.

  J. Of course. Whatever you like.

  PAUL (relieved). Our Father, in the name of the Son, I beseech you. This is only a test. I beseech you yea verily in the name of the swan, the duck and the bone. This is only a test.

  (In the prayer kit are a can of Sterno; a ritual stand on which to burn the Sterno; a silver or stainless steel plate; cash; a copy of the Wall Street Journal; a fertility goddess, a candy bar; and a cassette recorder, which SOL HEIFFER operates.

  Silently PAUL arranges the ritual objects downstage of the prayer rug.

  SOL HEIFFER holds the prayer kit while PAUL removes the objects one at a time.

  He first places the can of Sterno, unlit but ready for ignition, on the ritual stand, and places the stainless steel or silver plate next to the stand.

  Next he places the fertility goddess in front of the can of Sterno, facing the audience.

  He lays the Wall Street Journal at his right hand and the candy bar at his left hand, then lights the Sterno.

  Taking the whole stack of cash in his right hand and pulling off single bills crisply in his left, PAUL begins the prayer.

  He holds the cash, one bill at a time, over the Sterno flame and lets it burn.

  PAUL holds each bill as long as possible as it burns, then places the remnant in the silver plate, letting it burn on if God so pleases.

  When he has burned three bills, he reaches for the Wall Street Journal without looking at it and waves it up and down, slowly, three times, lowering it to his right again and returning to the burning of cash.

  Then he begins the prayer.

  When PAUL begins the spoken prayer, he should reach over as part of the ritual and turn on the cassette recorder.)

  PAUL. O Father, God of the patriarchs, hear our humble prayer. We beseech you and most humbly invoke you. We turn to you with our whole hearts and our whole minds, open to you and quivering in anticipation of your divine presence. We are filled with love and a rich sense of nostalgia at this time. A warm spirit of brotherhood has come upon us on this wonderful day which you have created. We know in our hearts that we are blessed, and we declare before the world that you are a good God, a great God, and we are unworthy of you in any way, absolutely. Without question we are as the dust of your dust. You are over us as the sun is in the sky. Without you we would be less than the mustard seed, for we are filled with sin from the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb, and we are foul and black with loathsome crawling oozing superating vile ulcerated cankerous sin till the day of our miserable death when worms and maggots will nest in our flesh and consume this worthless temple of sin in time’s embrace. You are the Almighty God of Jerusalem and we are the vermin whom you have chosen, through your infinite grace, to love and cherish as if we were worthy of such a sublime emotion. We whose spirits are troubled within a burden of flesh. Not to mention my own slight infirmity. For we are humble and you are great. And so in humility I approach thee in prayer. I pray and beseech you, be good to the weak and the afflicted, and strike down the strong and the mighty where they be unworthy of the great rewards you have heaped upon them. And bring blessedness to the widows, the orphans, the poor and the suffering. Have mercy upon us, now that you have sent your shepherd to live among us, and let him afflict us not with too much revelation. Teach us the truth as we are able to receive it and not all at once in a rush so that we are apt to forget big chunks. Bring peace abroad to all peoples and here in our city as well, from neighbor to neighbor and kind to kind. Above all, work out your own will among us, and teach us to live more as you would have us live. For me, I would ask only that you help me to get the deposition I need to convince my adversaries within the church that I am the cornerstone of your church and of your message in this world. Please reveal to me this revelation for which I have waited and yearned through all these ages. Please let me hear the words that will teach me faith in my own salvation, after such a long career. In the name of You-Know-Who I pray. Amen.

  (At the end of the prayer, PAUL eats the candy bar, chewing serenely and gazing into the audience.

  During the prayer itself, SOL HEIFFER stands attentively just behind PAUL.

  Toward the end of the prayer, J. gets her attention.

  He produces an object wrapped in wax paper from his robe and signals that he wants to give this object to SOL HEIFFER secretly.

  SOL HEIFFER signals that she wants to know what it is.

  J. signals in some manner that it is her tongue and repeats this when SOL HEIFFER cannot believe him.

  SOL HEIFFER takes the package, opens it quietly.

  The audience should glimpse the fleshy object.

  J. indicates that it is a peel-and-stick tongue that she has only to put in place.

  SOL HEIFFER mimics his gestures of instruction.

  By the time she turns her back on the audience to put the tongue in place, PAUL should be eating the candy bar.

  She drops the bloody paper on the floor and makes a series of convulsive gestures.

  There is a bright flash of light.

  She turns, and her fingers are bloody.

  She looks at J. in amazement.

  PAUL rises, licking his fingers after the candy bar.)

  SOL HEIFFER (holding out her hands toward PAUL). It’s a miracle. Look.

  (PAUL freezes.

  If an intermission is deemed necessary, it should occur here, and the stage should go to black.

  If no intermission is employed, no blackout is needed.)

  J. I thought your prayer was very touching.

  PAUL. She spoke.

  SOL HEIFFER. Yes I did.

  PAUL. What happened?

  J. I healed her.

  PAUL. Just now?

  J. Yes.

  SOL HEIFFER. It’s a miracle. See? (Sticks out her tongue.)

  PAUL. Yes. Yes my dear, it certainly is. (Examines her mouth, pats her on the head.) Isn’t that wonderful.

  SOL HEIFFER (pointing at J.). He did it. He’s terrific.

  PAUL. He certainly is, isn’t he?

  SOL HEIFFER. It was in wax paper. My tongue was. And it was a peel-and-stick. See? (Finds the peel-and-stick tab on the floor.) You just peel. And stick.

  PAUL. So I see. (Pause.) Now, go and gag yourself. Find a gag, or make one, an
d tie it round your head and through your mouth.

  (SOL HEIFFER places the prayer objects back into the prayer kit.

  She may stay as long as necessary during the following, but should be offstage by the mention of “crippled and suffering martyrs.”)

  J. You aren’t reacting exactly as I expected.

  PAUL. You don’t seem to grasp the subtle implications of your capricious behavior.

  J. Capricious?

  PAUL. Yes, absolutely. Sol Heiffer is one of the great religious symbols of our time, and now you have ruined her. When she could not talk she had great significance. Her usefulness on posters and in brochures alone was fabulous, a real cornerstone of divine inspiration. Wise and holy through her silence. But now. In words she will destroy herself. Reduce her significance to naught. Inspire no one. When she speaks she will seem just like everybody else. A tedious bag of ailments and rheumy thoughts. Lacking that mystery with which we have so carefully surrounded her.

  J. I thought you would be pleased. That her voice was restored.

  PAUL. Of course, I do not question your wisdom in choosing to do as you have done. That would be totally inappropriate, and I would simply like to declare my faith that you have performed this miracle with the inscrutable majesty of divine will, inexplicable and all knowing, moving as it moves, without explanation or conceit. (Pause.) We will somehow adjust to this abrupt change in the status of one of our best crippled and suffering martyrs.

  J. I expect you could rip her tongue out again, if you like.

  PAUL. What do you mean, “again”? I did not rip out her tongue in the first place.

  J. Pardon me. A slip of the tongue on my part. As it were. Anyway, I’m sure she would agree to the procedure. Provided you use the proper anesthetic technique. (Pause.) Or perhaps without anesthesia at all. I suppose there are people who enjoy that sort of suffering.

  PAUL. Like nails, tearing through the flesh and bone of the hand.

  J. The innocent hand.

  PAUL. Yes. Innocent, by all means. If only I had been there to see it.

  J. I could tell you about worse. Horrible tortures. Agonies beyond belief. Infinite crucifixions within the tormented physical recesses of black-hole singularities. Bringing salvation wherever it was needed across the whole expanding cosmos, my Father’s idea of a joke, I suppose.

  PAUL. I couldn’t possibly have her tongue torn out.

  J. I’m not entirely convinced by your tone.

  PAUL. No, really. It would be beyond my power. My sense of justice or charity. Above all, charity. Which is of course a polite term for love, the love of one being for another. No, I love Sol Heiffer far too much to order her tongue ripped out by the roots, savagely. I love her for so many important reasons that it would be hard to prioritize them. No, I could not order such an act.

  J. At any rate, to change the subject, I did find your prayer to be very touching.

  PAUL. Coming from you, I take that as a great compliment.

  (Crowd noise erupts with great violence, much closer this time.

  Enter SOL HEIFFER, gagged but obviously bursting with news.)

  PAUL (to J.). What are they doing now?

  J. I really don’t have the slightest idea.

  (SOL HEIFFER makes it obvious that she knows.)

  PAUL (to SOL). Go and get me a report. From anyone you can find.

  (SOL HEIFFER motions to the gag and offers to give the report herself.)

  J. She could tell us herself, you know.

  PAUL. She? Her?

  J. Yes.

  PAUL. Apparently she has caught a glimpse of something. (Pause.) But it would never do. Would it? No. It is better for women not to speak.

  (The crowd noise continues until indicated.

  Sounds of demolition, stone crashing, glass breaking.)

  J. I think we should listen to her.

  PAUL. Naturally one would suspect so. But let us examine this thesis of yours more closely. What leads you to this supposition? Her eager manner, that’s what. Her overwhelming enthusiasm at the prospect that she herself might be the messenger whose news sets into motion certain awesome events. Here she’s only had her tongue back ten minutes or so and already she’s blabbing gossip into every listening ear.

  J. Actually she doesn’t have her old tongue back. This is a brand-new tongue.

  (SOL HEIFFER is somewhat shocked by this news.)

  PAUL. Whatever the case. There’s something undeniably cloying about her behavior. This is the nature of women, of course. Whatever she has seen, she would corrupt with her testimony. By the fact of her nature. No, it’s better that women should not speak. Words will get her nowhere. Only in the purity of her suffering silence was she near the divine mystery of her true being.

  J. (to SOL HEIFFER). You really should object to this sort of wholesale characterization.

  PAUL. For the good of her soul I cannot allow even that much speech on her part.

  J. (to PAUL). I don’t think it’s very wise of you to take that tone with me.

  PAUL. She is my servant, my obedient flock member, one who turns to me for guidance. (To SOL HEIFFER.) I’m sorry to chastise you so, servant of God. But you have always found my advice to be beneficial to you in the past. (Sighs.) I can’t order someone to rip your tongue out again for you. That would be wrong of me. But I can say, sincerely, with all my heart, that you ought to rip out your tongue yourself, immediately, for your own good. Do it now, do it in this room. Get a little enamel pan to catch the blood. But for the sake of your immortal soul, Sol Heiffer, you must not speak. It is better that you keep silence. Even about what you have just seen.

  (SOL HEIFFER looks at J.)

  J. I can’t replace it again if you do. Maybe if you rip off a breast or something, I could help you.

  PAUL. A breast? (Laughs.) That would hardly be sufficient when it is silence that you so desperately need, and not a flat chest. Again, Sol Heiffer, I cannot compel you. It would be wrong for me to exercise undue influence in this matter. But I believe it to be of the utmost importance. To the salvation of your (we hope) immortal soul. Not to mention its trickle-down effect on our organization, for we would simply have no further use for you if you could speak. Even the story of your miraculous healing would not suffice to repay us for the investment we have in your ongoing suffering. You should think primarily of the salvation of your own soul and secondarily of the good of the organization to which you owe so much. And you should rip out your tongue at once.

  J. By way of compromise, may I offer an alternative?

  PAUL. I don’t see how any alternative could be sufficient.

  J. Now this is interesting. Don’t you think it a little cheeky on your part to dispute with me in a matter of theology. Clearly if I am the one who is presenting the compromise, it must be sufficient to the cause.

  PAUL. This makes me extremely uncomfortable, your pulling rank on me like this.

  J. I’m sorry to upset you, really, but I can’t allow my position to erode any further than it has already.

  PAUL. What are you suggesting?

  J. Well, I think it’s very simple. You have as your objective the preservation of this woman’s silence as a resource for the edification of others. She, for her part, is delighted at the advent of this perfectly legitimate miracle which has restored her voice. A voice which has not been lifted to the praise of God in such a long time. And I am sure this poor voiceless woman longs to spend a minimum of a day in prayer before she rips her tongue out once again. I sense her longing for just exactly this sort of arrangement. Am I describing your fondest wishes, Sol Heiffer?

  (SOL HEIFFER nods somewhat hesitantly.)

  PAUL. This seems to me a very dubious proposition.

  J. And, as an extra bonus, she could tell us what’s happening outside.

  PAUL. Your compromise proposition has great appeal to me and I will give it every consideration. But I’m afraid it’s just out of the question. You have no idea. The havoc such a situation wou
ld wreak. Women speaking openly of their feelings and concerns at every sort of public gathering. The destruction of logic and reason. Chaos, in short. No. We will have information presented to us by a male adequately trained to such testimony.

  (SOL HEIFFER, hesitant at first, removes the gag.)

  SOL HEIFFER. There isn’t anybody in the building. To report.

  PAUL. So you fully intend to defy me and speak in my presence.

  SOL HEIFFER. I just thought you would want to know that a lot of people have deserted the building. A lot of people. They’ve gone outside to dance with the strangers.

  PAUL. Dance?

  SOL HEIFFER. Outside. With those people in the courtyard.

  PAUL. Everyone is gone? They’re dancing? But I didn’t hear any music.

  (SOL HEIFFER and J. look at each other.)

  SOL HEIFFER (after a moment, lying). There wasn’t any music. They were just dancing.

  PAUL. Are you sure?

  SOL HEIFFER. I saw them. I watched.

  PAUL. And you yourself heard no music. And you are hearing no music now.

  SOL HEIFFER. No.

  PAUL (to J.). And you? You also hear no music.

  J. It would be impossible to speculate.

  PAUL. Then you do hear something.

  J. If there was dancing, it is very likely that I heard the dancing. The music that was inherent in the dancing, the rhythmic shuffling of feet over the flagstones of the courtyard. The low hum with which most people pass the day, the repetition of some bland tune from radio. Multiplied by all the hundreds, possibly thousands.

  SOL HEIFFER. Thousands. Definitely.

  PAUL (to J.). This is what you told them to do when you were in the market.

  J. I don’t recall demonstrating any dance steps on the melon cart.

  PAUL. Don’t ridicule me. This is what you have been planning all along. The total disruption of my activities. You are attempting to destroy me. I should have foreseen it.

  SOL HEIFFER. They weren’t destroying anything.

  PAUL. Be quiet. How many people do we have left?

  SOL HEIFFER. Some. I can’t count.

  PAUL. Any guards? Any carpenters?

  SOL HEIFFER. I saw old Joseph, he’s still here.