Leaping Off the Page: Any Time of the Year Edition

by L. Ruth Carter

  A LEPER’S SONG

  ( 2 Kings 5)

  A Monodrama

  I have written three treatments on the story of Naaman: “Naaman’s Dilemma” and “Two Captive Maids”—both of which are One Act plays. The third, “Leper’s Song” is a monodrama, and it contains much of the same text as “Two Captive Maids”.

  Preamble: The Bible is full of stories. It is full of real people. People just like you and I. We are going to meet one of them now. We know very little about her, but she was pivotal in her particular story. Come with us to the country of Syria, around 700 B.C. We are in the courtyard of a lovely home. The people who live here are wealthy and influential. They have many slaves. Let’s peek in on one of them now as she relives “A Leper’s Song”.

  Scene: This takes place in Syria, approximately 700 BC. We are outside the home of Naaman, in a courtyard. There should be a couple of pillars and lots of flowers. Enough to show that it is a place of beauty. A stone bench slightly right of center stage cants slightly towards down left.

  A little girl enters. An adult can play her, but she is quite young and must be played realistically young, not cutesy young. She is a maid. She carries a bucket of water and a rag. She puts the bucket on the floor down left, dunks the rag in the water, then starts scrubbing the floor in front of the bench. She could be talking to herself, or we could have a couple of other servants also doing chores. In which case, she would relate the story to them and they would respond accordingly.

  (Looks up from her scrubbing. She is on her knees)

  Leprosy is horrid. (Pauses in her work, straightens, holding rag in front of her) It’s a bad disease. I mean, people die of it! (Concerned, sits back on her heels) And Captain Naaman had it. Real bad. (Walks to the pail of water down left and stoops down on haunches. Swishes rag in water)

  (Wrings water from rag and looks up) He was awful sick. (Smiles her admiration) Captain Naaman is a big, brave man. (Stands up. Returns to center stage. Shakes her head and holds rag to her chest, not realizing she’s dripping water on herself) He’s a soldier. (Proudly) A commander! And the king really likes him because he wins lots of fights. (Sadly) But he was also a leper.

  (Notices the dripping water, tries to pat it off, gives up and gets down on knees to start scrubbing again) Lots of people have leprosy. (Holds hand out, looking at it) It makes their skin bad and their toes and fingers fall off. (Touches nose protectively) Sometimes their noses! (Grimaces) It’s foul. (Another shrug) But lots of people have it. And they have to go away because they’re dirty and might make other people sick. (Sighs) And then they die. (Shrugs again) It happens. A lot!

  (A change in energy - brisker. Goes to bucket to re-dampen the rag.) So Captain Naaman had leprosy. (On haunches, pauses in her work) And Lady Naaman was very sad. (Shakes her head) I saw her crying one day. (Stands up, faces down center, remembering) That’s when I found out. She told me, you see. (Wanders slowly to center stage, shaking her head) I felt bad because she was crying. (Small smile, conveying her affection and her concern) You see, Lady Naaman is nice to me. (Sits on bench, hugging herself, once again forgetting her rag) I didn’t like to see her crying.

  (Looks away down right, remembering) Sometimes I cry. (Shuddering, lost in the memories) That’s because the bad soldiers came and took me away from my parents and my home. (Turn face as if explaining to somebody down center) I lived in Israel then. That was my home. The soldiers brought me here to Syria and (matter of factly) now I have to live with Captain and Lady Naaman and be their maid. I cry because I’m lonely. I miss my parents. (Beat) I miss my God, too. Can the God of Israel still be my God now that I’m in Syria? So I cry.

  Well, I was sad to see Lady Naaman cry. She told me Captain Naaman had leprosy and that he couldn’t be a soldier anymore and that he would die. (New energy. Leaps to feet with fists on hips) Well, I couldn’t believe it! (Paces down right) I know leprosy is bad and all that. (Stops and turns face to focal point) I mean I just said so. (Resumes pacing) And I know people die of it. But they don’t have to! (At center, facing forward, hands back on hips) Die of it, I mean. (Shakes head, gets on knees, barely starts to scrub and stops in amazement)

  And you know what? Lady Naaman didn’t even know that! (Scrambles to her feet) When I told her, she just stared at me and said, (deadpan) “Leprosy kills.” I mean just like that! (Repeats deadpan) Leprosy kills! (Amazed) Well! (Pacing energetically) I just couldn’t believe that Lady Naaman didn’t know that God can do anything. Anything! (Slower—wanders down right, remembering) Why, I remember when my daddy told me that God made the whole world! (Brisker—back to center stage) Well, then, he can certainly heal leprosy.

  (Sobers, sits on bench) That’s when Lady Naaman told me that she and Captain Naaman and the soldiers and the king, even, didn’t know about God. I mean, (taste the words) the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That’s what my daddy used to call God. He used to call Him Yahweh, too.

  (Story-telling mode. Brisk) So I told Lady Naaman about Elisha. He’s a prophet. (Knowingly) That means he’s a man of God. (Smiling) Because he believes God and obeys Him, God does miracles through him. (Big grin) Boy, you should hear some of the stories!

  (Back to the story) Anyway, I said, “Lady Naaman , if only my master” - that was Captain Naaman - “if only my master were with the prophet who is in Samaria! For he would heal him of his leprosy.” (Explains parenthetically) Samaria is part of Israel, which was my home.

  I told Lady Naaman some of the stories about Elisha and God’s miracles.

  She said, “He is a great man.”

  And I said, “Yes, but it’s God who is great. Elisha is great because he is God’s man.”

  (Frowns slightly, scrubs floor) I’m not sure she understood that. I’m not sure I really understand it, either, (matter of factly) but that’s the way it is. (Firmly—no doubt about it) It is God who is great. (With reverence) The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yahweh. God.

  I guess she didn’t have to understand it to believe it, because she told Captain Naaman .

  (Wide eyed wonder) And then Captain Naaman told the king!

  Can you believe it? The king!

  So then the king gave Captain Naaman a whole bunch of money and a letter to give to the king of Israel, and told him to go to Israel and get healed of the leprosy. So Captain Naaman went.

  (Big smile) Well, he got back home yesterday. (Up and moving about. By this time the task of scrubbing the floor is totally forgotten. She waves the rag around like a banner) You wouldn’t believe the commotion! I mean, I never saw such a fuss! (Sees them sitting around the courtyard—relives it) The king was there and lots of important people and they were (dances a bit with the rag) all cheering and shouting and dancing around. (Stops, says very gently) Lady Naaman was crying again. (Perhaps she’s crying too) This time it was because she was so happy.

  (Hushed) Then everything got real quiet so that Captain Naaman could tell his story. (Feeling important) He told how, after his long journey and all that money, he didn’t see Elisha at all! Elisha had the audacity to send his servant with a message. His servant! It was an outrageous lack of manners! Didn’t he know how important Naaman was?

  “And what did this rude servant say?” asked the king.

  “He told me to go and wash in the Jordan River seven times and I would be cleansed of my leprosy.”

  (Giggling, moves down stage) Oh, you should have seen Captain Naaman when he got to that part of the story. (Paces back and forth with great vigor, miming Naaman . From this point on she will go back and forth between being Naaman and being herself) He stormed back and forth and shook his fist and bellowed to show how angry he had been at such a suggestion.

  (Jump up on bench and stand arms akimbo) “Wash in the Jordan River, indeed!” he raged. (An aside, drop pose) His face got quite purple when he said this and the king laughed and said that Captain Naaman should keep his day job.

  “Did you wash?” asked Lady Naaman .

  “
I did not,” retorted Captain Naaman . “I said, (resumes pose of indignation) ‘Wash in that filthy, muddy river! I would not so demean myself.’ (Steps down from bench, continuing as Naaman ) I thought Elisha should come to me and (gestures) wave his hand over me and the leprosy would just disappear. (Minces down right, burlesquing her imitation) I was, after all, doing him a great honor by coming to him. (A quick, rueful grin as the little girl, then back to exaggerating Naaman’s actions)

  “And I also thought that if I had to wash, why couldn’t it be in some of the nice clean rivers here in Syria? (Marches towards the bucket down left) So I marched off, absolutely furious at the insulting way I had been treated.”

  (Goes back to being the little girl and looks off, warmed by the memory) He stopped then in his pacing and looked off in a gentle kind of way and a small smile came to his eyes. (Hugs self) He looked at his servants who had gone with him on the trip.

  (Looking off towards stage left. She is lost in Naaman ’s wonder. No burlesquing) “I have good, loyal servants,” he said. “I don’t deserve them. They came after me and convinced me to do what the prophet had told me to do. (Shakes head) They used logic. (Turns head to glare over audience’s heads) Spare me from logical servants! They’ll get you every time! (Shakes head again and walks slowly to the bench) They reminded me that if the prophet had asked me to do a great deed of velour, I’d have done it. (Faces audience and nods) They were right. I would have. (Goes energetically down right with lots of macho muscle flexing) I’d have climbed a great mountain or swum a mighty sea or… or wrestled a bear if that’s what the prophet had asked me to do. (Stops)

  (Turns in and says softly) “So I did it. (Walks to the bucket stage left and kneels before it on one knee) I went down to that scrummy river and I bathed. (Dips into the dirty water with fingers and feels its texture) Seven times. The first time, there was no change. The second time, nothing. Third, fourth, fifth and sixth, the leprosy was as scabrous as ever. On the seventh wash, (holds hand out, looking at it) my skin was completely restored. (Feels arms and face) It was like that of a baby. Soft and clean and healthy. (Lifts radiant face up towards the focal point) The leprosy was gone. (Almost a whisper, head bowed) All gone.”

  (She stands quietly, being herself again and wipes hands on apron. Walks to bench) That’s when Lady Naaman started crying again. She cried softly so that it wouldn’t interrupt his story and she hugged me tightly. (Looks at bucket as if Naaman were still there) I saw that Captain Naaman and some of the tough soldiers with him had tears in their eyes. (Wavering smile) I was crying, too. Now Captain Naaman won’t lose his fingers or toes or even his nose. (Firmer, bigger smile) But I wasn’t surprised like those others were. (Absolute assurance) I knew God would heal Captain Naaman because I had been praying He would.

  (Moves to down center to a spot she has never been before, overlooking the audience. She has once again taken on the persona of Naaman , but more subtly so. It is her convictions that ring out) Captain Naaman stood straight and tall before his king and concluded, “I went back to the man of God. I wanted to pay him the money you had sent but he refused it. I told him that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel. And I tell you that now. The God of Israel is God. There is no other.”

  (Raises arms and face) He raised his arms and face to heaven and cried out, (ringingly) “Praise be to God!”

  (Drops pose, completely back to being the little girl) And I say that, too. Praise be to God. (Hugs self. With soft reverence repeats) The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (A firm nod) The God of Captain Naaman . (Goes to bucket, dips in rag, stops and looks up with a radiant smile—just realizing it) Oh, and the God of me! Right here in Syria!

  Curtain

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