Julia cannot reply.
YOUNG ALTHEA: (moving away from Julia) I’ll let you in early, tomorrow.
TODD: (calling to Young Althea as she passes) Margaret?
JULIA: (to Young Althea) I know you have goodness in you. I can feel it.
YOUNG ALTHEA: (calling back, hard) You have two minutes, Miss Todd.
Young Althea walks away from Julia.
TODD: (suddenly confused, agitated – looking now to Julia) Margaret, Margaret?
JULIA: No, Dad. Dad. Margaret is not here. (She tries to calm her father.) Listen. Listen. (He comes to stillness.) You know she’s dead.
TODD: Margaret.
JULIA: Yes, Margaret. They murdered her. Your wife. My mother.
TODD: My mother.
JULIA: NO, DAD. Listen to what I’m saying. My mother was Margaret. Margaret was your wife. I’m your daughter. Margaret and Mathias’s daughter. Julia.
TODD: (irritated) I know. I know who you are.
JULIA: Do you know that you’re sick?
TODD: I’m not sick. I just don’t … I can’t remember. Everything.
JULIA: You are sick, Dad. (searching his eyes, then quietly) Right?
TODD: What?
JULIA: (quietly) You wouldn’t lie to me. Would you?
TODD: (Beat.) Where are we?
JULIA: The courthouse.
TODD: Take me inside. Where is your mother?
JULIA: Dad …
TODD: There’s nothing wrong with me!
YOUNG ALTHEA: (returning) I heard that.
JULIA: He just asked for my mother, and she’s been dead for more than twenty years.
YOUNG ALTHEA: He could be lying to you as well, Miss Todd.
JULIA: (considering him) He isn’t. I know he isn’t.
She touches his face. He grasps her violently.
TODD: BLOODY PEOPLE!
JULIA: Ow! Dad – let go of –
TODD: Swarming our … the places we built!
Todd throws Julia to the ground.
MICHAEL: Jesus … what happened?
ALTHEA: Listen.
JULIA: Althea! Unlock the door!
YOUNG ALTHEA: Listen to what he’s saying.
JULIA: Althea! Unlock this door!
Young Althea remains motionless, watching.
MICHAEL: (to Althea) And you just watched?
TODD: (grasping his daughter’s throat) Get the fuck off my lake!
Young Althea remains inactive, watching.
ALTHEA: I stopped him. (on Michael’s look) I did.
Todd is now strangling Julia. Young Althea waits a moment longer to see if this is a ploy, but then becomes convinced that Todd really is going to kill Julia and leaps into the struggle. She unlocks the door to pull Julia out, but Todd’s strength is immense.
TODD: Filthy woman!
YOUNG ALTHEA: It’s Margaret, Mathias! It’s Julia! Let go of her!
TODD: Do you hear what she says about me? I would never touch you! You filthy –
JULIA: Please Dad –
TODD: (confused and desolate) LOVE?! Never!
Young Althea begins to beat Todd, and he finally releases Julia, who falls back into her arms.
MICHAEL: My god. Was she hurt?
ALTHEA: She lived.
MICHAEL: He could have killed her.
ALTHEA: Anything could have happened.
The two women stand back from the cell, where Todd now paces like a trapped tiger. Julia is trying to catch her breath.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Do you want me to call a doctor.
JULIA: No, don’t …
ALTHEA: He didn’t know what he was doing.
YOUNG ALTHEA: He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
JULIA: (Julia refocuses her attention on Young Althea.) Do you really mean that?
YOUNG ALTHEA: I’m not your friend, Miss Todd.
JULIA: But you must know by now …
YOUNG ALTHEA: I do. (Silence.) I want to reach him. And I’ve tried. I’ve slept down here, next to the cell, listening … but he talks … nonsense.
JULIA: Then tell the court that.
YOUNG ALTHEA: It’s not my place to tell the court anything.
JULIA: But they’ll listen to you. (Young Althea just stares at her.) Please. Look. I have my doubts, too.
YOUNG ALTHEA: No you don’t –
JULIA: About what happened in this country. He sent me away after my mother was killed. I don’t know if he … I don’t know.
YOUNG ALTHEA: You don’t know if he what?
JULIA: I lived far away from here.
YOUNG ALTHEA: You don’t care what happened.
JULIA: I do, but it’s not the point any more. You can’t put a man on trial who forgets three decades of his life! He can’t even deny what he’s accused of.
YOUNG ALTHEA: His illness is the denial.
JULIA: You and I have the same purpose, and –
YOUNG ALTHEA: (rounding on her) Don’t you say that! Don’t you dare say that!
JULIA: I mean, we both want justice.
YOUNG ALTHEA: No, we don’t. You want someone to fix this for you. But what I want is beyond your power to give.
JULIA: (Beat.) You’ve given up.
YOUNG ALTHEA: You will as well. His disease is going to eat everyone’s hope.
JULIA: Althea.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Don’t use my first name.
JULIA: Help us.
YOUNG ALTHEA: You don’t know my dead.
JULIA: (Beat.) You’re right. I’m sorry.
She leaves, but Michael is watching intently, certain she won’t leave it like this. But she doesn’t return.
MICHAEL: ‘You’re right, I’m sorry’? (to Althea) That’s what she said?
ALTHEA: She didn’t press me any further.
MICHAEL: Well, you’re not the easiest person to talk to, are you? (to Julia) She just told you she knows your father is sick. You don’t give up now.
JULIA: You heard her. I don’t know her dead.
MICHAEL: That has nothing to do with the present situation!
ALTHEA: You take her side.
MICHAEL: I don’t. I just don’t understand how she could have walked away from you.
ALTHEA: I should never have told you she was beautiful.
MICHAEL: She was savvy. (Beat.) There’s more here. Remember when she followed Stephen out of the room? You said you didn’t know what happened next.
Michael moves Stephen into the scene.
STEPHEN: He lied then, he lies now. He’s a liar. Isn’t he? Thank you, Miss Todd. See you upstairs.
Michael moves Julia into the scene.
JULIA: Shit. Wait! Hold on a second!
Michael watches the next scene unfold. He is now writing the dialogue between Julia and Stephen. Their acting changes slightly as a result.
JULIA: Stephen.
STEPHEN: What?
JULIA: It doesn’t have to be like this, with the two of us at each other’s throats.
ALTHEA: Excuse me.
MICHAEL: Just let me finish –
JULIA: You want a trial and I want my father. Tell your people we are not like them, we are – MICHAEL: merciful –
JULIA: (overlapping) – merciful and let my father return to Geneva.
ALTHEA: What are you doing?
MICHAEL: I’m working this out.
JULIA: And after you let him go, you arrest me – The Daughter. Charged with sheltering a suspected war criminal. And you have your trial.
ALTHEA: For god’s sake.
MICHAEL: Don’t you think she would have tried this?
ALTHEA: It doesn’t matter what she tried. This is all in the past. Speculating on something I never saw or heard is pointless.
MICHAEL: Aren’t you curious, though? About what she was thinking?
ALTHEA: Why don’t you just come out and say it:
Althea regains control of the dialogue, and uses it to mock Michael’s imagined version of events. The acting expands again.
JULIA:
I already carry the ‘burden’ of being a Todd. I can bear it for him, too.
MICHAEL: Well, don’t simplify.
ALTHEA: No. This is where you’re going. Listen!
JULIA: I’m not afraid to pay the cost of his freedom.
STEPHEN: Your courage startles and moves me, Miss Todd. Are you really this brave? (to Michael) She could get to me, I totally buy it.
ALTHEA: And then they fall in love and nothing ever goes wrong for anybody ever again.
MICHAEL: Don’t make me out to be an idiot just because I’m interested in what was going through her mind.
ALTHEA: Too bad I don’t have her diary for you.
MICHAEL: Not nice.
ALTHEA: I’m telling you everything I know. Why do you want more?
MICHAEL: Why aren’t you more curious?
ALTHEA: You had a divorce.
MICHAEL: That has nothing to do with this.
ALTHEA: Exactly. But you can’t figure out what went wrong with your own story, so you’re going to straighten out mine.
MICHAEL: That’s not what I was –
JULIA: You don’t get to reinvent your world using me.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Using us.
STEPHEN: User.
MICHAEL: I just thought it would be interesting to consider that she might have been willing to sacrifice her–
ALTHEA: Well then, she probably just ran out and offered to fuck Stephen in exchange for her father’s freedom.
JULIA: How about it, big boy?
STEPHEN: Well ... hot diggity! (calling to Young Althea) Let the old guy go! C’mere you –
They kiss furiously.
MICHAEL: All right, enough. Why don’t you just cut to the chase then, okay? Todd stood trial or he didn’t. He went to jail, he hanged, he’s living in a condo in Argentina. I have a plane to catch.
ALTHEA: So go catch it.
Stalemate.
ALTHEA: You think it’s easy for me to tell you this story?
MICHAEL: I know it isn’t.
ALTHEA: I don’t care if you want a tidy, happy ending.
MICHAEL: I’m not interested in an easy –
ALTHEA: Good, because my story isn’t ‘easy.’ The people in it don’t behave courageously. They’re selfish and they’re blind – and your noble little woman there? She gets a bullet in the face.
Michael stares at her.
ALTHEA: Oh, so I have your attention now?
MICHAEL: What are you talking about?
YOUNG ALTHEA: (of Julia) She’s dead.
ALTHEA: You want to tart that up a bit?
MICHAEL: (to Julia) You’re dead?
JULIA: For more than twenty years, now.
MICHAEL: (Beat.) My god … why does everything keep –
ALTHEA: What – ?
MICHAEL: GOING TO HELL! GOING TO SHIT! I can’t fucking stand it. I am not going to put myself through – This is not heading in any direction that interests me, okay? I’m sorry, I apologize, but I can’t –
ALTHEA: You can’t – ?
MICHAEL: I have things to do before my flight. And, frankly, all you seem to care about is making me look some some clueless fuckwit anyway.
JULIA: Prick. You got what you deserved.
MICHAEL: (warning her) You should watch what you –
ALTHEA: Sit. Down.
Silence.
MICHAEL: I came to you of my own free –
ALTHEA: No, you didn’t. You were sent to me. Remember?
Michael looks at her.
But why you? Out of a barful of men and women, he could have talked to anyone. Why did he pick you? Michael can’t answer that.
MICHAEL: Please. Let me go now. Okay?
ALTHEA: Touch me. (Beat.) DO IT.
He begins to tentatively reach out to her. Althea grabs his hand and presses it to her face.
ALTHEA: Am I real?
MICHAEL: Yes.
ALTHEA: I live and breathe?
MICHAEL: Yes!
ALTHEA: Good.
The three women sing.
SONG: ‘Vreme mi dojde’ (Bulgarian)
Vreme mi dojde, dzan’m Mavrode
(High noon has come, Mavrode)
Vreme pladnino, je
(There is no shade)
ALTHEA: You sit down. And listen to my story.
Helpless, he comes to the chair, but, before he takes his seat: blackout.
Act Two
We hear Althea’s voice before we see her. She’s singing. Lights come up on Althea, facing out at Stage Left, drinking from a mug of tea. As she speaks the following, the lights come up on Michael at Stage Right, listening to her. The rest of the stage is in darkness, although we sense presences there.
SONG: ‘Tobela’ (Zimbabwean)
Iyo-o / Iyo-o / Iyo-o
(a soothing sound)
Ayitobela Murena
(O Pray to God)
Iyo-o / Iyo-o / Iyo-o
(a soothing sound)
Ayitobela Murena
(O Pray to God)
Chorus:
Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena
Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena
Horiyatsa
(Look around / pay attention)
Hamuzani waka
(To what is happening)
Tobela
(Pray)
Ayitobela Murena
(O Pray to God)
Chorus:
Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena
Tobela Murena / Tobela Murena
ALTHEA: Do you believe in your own death? Every moment you are alive is endless and the present goes on and on with you inside it. Of course the end is truly coming, but it’s so far off, and, in the meantime, the spring bulbs need bringing out of the dark and the windows must be cleaned. These distant murmurings of unrest are like the way you sometimes hear your name on the wind and you shudder. Because it’s eerie that the wind should know your name.
She hands Michael his tea.
But something is growing. Somewhere, always, people are unhappy. Rumours take on flesh, and then, as if in a fairy tale, we see the torches coming down our street. We must hide! Quickly, silently, tell the children not to say a word! How is it possible that this very morning I made bread with my sister, and now I wait with her in the dark? Outside, they’ve already begun to kill. We hear glass breaking and sudden shouts, followed by silence.
You’re hiding now, standing behind your wife’s dresses in your closet and they find you there and drag you out to the street, throw you down and the blood is roaring in your ears as you feel around in the dirt for your glasses and around you a human noose is tightening. You beg for your life, and in begging you’ve already given it. It’s theirs, they realize this, it is an astonishing power. What was once unimaginable becomes simple and suddenly common. Like an instinct they didn’t know they had. They kill with whatever is at hand. With stones and wooden clubs, with knives, with bullets, with their own hands and feet – ancient forms of murder – and you feel your body, this inviolate body that has been yours alone since the moment you entered the world, is being broken apart. You are going to die, this is your death. And then, seeing you dead, they look on you, breathless, and with wonder they think imagine what that was, to have deserved this fate. (Pause.)
How’s your tea?
MICHAEL: My … ? Fine.
ALTHEA: There’s more.
MICHAEL: (of the tea, confused) More … ?
Althea looks at him. She doesn’t mean the tea.
MICHAEL: (paralyzed) Okay.
ALTHEA: They entered our houses. Came in as if they belonged there and we didn’t. We looked at them with pity. We’d had them as dinner guests once and now they smashed the plates and broke the wineglasses. They put my parents into the back of a pickup truck and drove them off. We never saw them again.
MICHAEL: Were there camps?
ALTHEA: No. They spared themselves that expense. They took my parents to the edge of town and just shot them. Left the bodies uncovered in a field. I found
my father’s suit jacket on a skeleton five months later. His best suit. And then, after that, taking people away somewhere was too much trouble. They just came and killed. They found me and my sister and her husband, their little boy, and some friends of ours, and they made us go to a church. They pushed us up to the altar – where we read from so many of the same texts as they did in their own churches – and they made us perform. We had to sing our old national anthem. They told us to stand on one leg and said we were storks and said they were storks, too. Pointing their guns at us. If you put a leg down, they acted surprised and said that you were only pretending to be a stork and then they shot you. My nephew, Domenic, began laughing when my sister put her foot down. And they said to him, ‘Why are you laughing?’ and he said it was because, of all the things that could make you die, imagine that it would look like a schoolyard game. They took him out of the line and put the gun in his mouth and told him to laugh some more and they would spare him. And out of him came this unworldly laughter, as if the sun and the moon were laughing at the stupidity of being human. It was a real laugh, a deep, deep laugh. And they shot out the back of his head and he stopped.
A pause. Michael perhaps attempts to, but is unable to speak.
They killed us all. Except me. I was last and … they sent me home. I don’t know why. (Beat.) Maybe so there would be one person left to tell of their might.
Althea begins to sing very quietly to herself.
SONG: ‘Binaya’ (Taaisha, Central West Africa)
Binaya la bis stobu sala daneh bifoghu
Binaya mashi mashi hu sala daneh bifighu
Binaya Binaya Binaya Binaya
(This is a song sung by a grandmother to a child who is on the cusp of adolescence – a song of goodbye to a little one who is growing up.)
Long pause. We can hear them breathing.
MICHAEL: Would it be okay … if I had glass of plain water?
She gets up and leaves. He watches her, then turns again, puts his head in his hands. He’s completely undone.
TODD: Hey. (He gets Michael’s attention.) How’s it going?
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