Goodness

by Michael Redhill

  MICHAEL: I don’t want to talk right now.

  TODD: Are you questioning any of this? Does her story make her an expert in anything but her own suffering? I thought you knew something about that.

  STEPHEN: You remember what your ex used to say, right, Mike?

  JULIA: You just see what you want to see.

  Michael takes the notebook away from Julia.

  TODD: Of course she’s going to make it sound like the slaughter of the innocents. ‘Poor us, sitting there not doing anything to anyone.’ Except breeding.

  MICHAEL: (of what’s happening onstage, to us) Sorry about this –

  STEPHEN: (to Todd) Well, I believe her. She’s speaking from the heart. You can’t fake that.

  JULIA: Of course you believe her. She justifies everything you’re doing.

  STEPHEN: No. No – It’s important personal history.

  TODD: There’s no such thing. Not from the perspective of nations. Everything that happens to people disappears. They forget what they see – what they learn and do. They forget.

  MICHAEL: Look! I’m trying to think here!

  STEPHEN: Is that what you’re doing?

  TODD: I must admit I am getting a little bored. All I get to do is look confused and drool a little. (He takes Michael’s notebook.) Now, this stuff is interesting. (reading) ‘I remember J– saying she thought Colin was boring.’

  JULIA: (looking at the notebook) What does the J stand for?

  MICHAEL: (taking his notebook back) This is private!

  JULIA: Oh, your life is private, is it?

  STEPHEN: But he’ll write about this –

  TODD: He’s not going to write about this. He promised.

  A beat.

  MICHAEL: You people are part of history. I don’t owe you anything.

  STEPHEN: We’re not part of your history.

  MICHAEL: You think genocide isn’t part of my history?

  JULIA: Not Althea’s genocide.

  MICHAEL: I can tell whatever story I want.

  STEPHEN: Evidently.

  Michael succeeds in tearing away the notebook. Holds it to himself.

  MICHAEL: (opening the notebook and flipping through) No … no, I’m not doing this. Okay? I’m here to talk about your father. And whatever he remembers or doesn’t remember, people who agreed with his politics killed Althea’s entire family. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t actually do anything, he certainly didn’t try to stop it.

  JULIA: How the hell do you know?

  MICHAEL: Because it’s more believable that he didn’t! Your father either goaded a country of stupid farmers –

  JULIA: (to Stephen) Stupid farmers?

  MICHAEL: – into murdering thousands of people, or he sat back and enjoyed watching it! And there’s someone just like him behind every haystack. One of them turned a gun on the inhabitants of a little town where my mother’s people lived. That’s why I have a right to tell this story! I would have had forty or fifty cousins if not for your father!

  JULIA: It wasn’t my father –

  MICHAEL: It might as well have been! Why not?

  JULIA: Because he would still have been in school at the time, and he didn’t live in Poland.

  MICHAEL: It’s a metaphor. Okay? Someone just like your father!

  STEPHEN: Isn’t that a simile?

  MICHAEL: Screw off. Christ, I’m arguing with imaginary people.

  TODD: You keep telling yourself that.

  JULIA: Maybe you just like blaming others for things you’re too cowardly to do yourself.

  MICHAEL: And maybe you’re a lying cheating bitch who doesn’t care who she hurts.

  She stares at him, smiling faintly. Then goes off. He’s alone. Althea brings Michael his water, and he drinks it all down.

  ALTHEA: Feverishly taking notes, are you?

  MICHAEL: It doesn’t help.

  ALTHEA: It’s all right. I want you to.

  MICHAEL: You want me to write it down.

  ALTHEA: I thought about it. Who am I to say I own an atrocity? Go ahead.

  He hesitates.

  ALTHEA: Because you’re going to anyway. Aren’t you? (No response from him.) So do it in front of me. Do it. Open it up.

  MICHAEL: (to us) It felt like the darkness of that little room was seeping into me. Whatever was inside of her, I didn’t want it in this book, infecting my own thoughts. Infecting me. (to Althea, standing) I should –

  ALTHEA: What’s your hurry?

  He’s aware of the other characters watching him.

  MICHAEL: Look, maybe can we go somewhere else? I can buy you a cup of coffee or a drink if you want.

  ALTHEA: You don’t like my apartment now?

  MICHAEL: I find it a little dark in here.

  ALTHEA: That’s how I like it. (Beat.) Write it down. (He doesn’t move.) Write it down. ‘She liked to keep her rooms dark.’

  She’s not backing off, so he opens his book and starts writing.

  ALTHEA: ‘It was a small apartment. No art on the walls. Just a couch and a chair and a little throw rug.’ (He’s still writing.) ‘The way she lived, it was like she couldn’t bear to be reminded of all the life beyond her walls. The living pained her. Children hurt her eyes.’ (He’s stopped writing.) Am I getting too personal here now?

  MICHAEL: (closing the book) Why don’t we just get back to your story? Okay? You said Julia Todd died. Tell me how that happened.

  ALTHEA: (Beat.) Someone killed her.

  MICHAEL: Fine. Then how about the man in the bar. You know who he is.

  ALTHEA: He’s someone who left part of himself with me. Do you know what that’s like?

  Long beat as Michael waits for her, wills her, to go on. She doesn’t.

  MICHAEL: How did Julia die?

  ALTHEA: I’m not ready to tell you that.

  MICHAEL: Why did you take that job? As a guard?

  YOUNG ALTHEA: To serve my country.

  MICHAEL: Do you really think you served your country?

  YOUNG ALTHEA: I must have. It still exists.

  MICHAEL: That’s not what I mean. Did you go in to do good, or just to get revenge?

  YOUNG ALTHEA: I wanted. To serve. My country.

  MICHAEL: The UN would have served your country – by trying Todd at the Hague. You’re leaving something out.

  ALTHEA: Am I?

  YOUNG ALTHEA: The UN let the genocide run for ten years before they sent their peacekeepers in, after they figured we were all gone.

  MICHAEL: The international courts would have known what to do with him.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: We knew what to do with him.

  MICHAEL: You knew what you wanted to do with him.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: We had him. Here. In this place where he’d done so much evil. Wouldn’t you have wanted that chance?

  MICHAEL: With who?

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Oh, gosh. Hitler? Mengele?

  MICHAEL: We got our trials and we got as much justice as was possible.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: But you didn’t.

  MICHAEL: First off, Hitler was dead. And the Holocaust happened all over Europe, not in one place. There was a structure to the system, and everyone followed it.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Exactly. You followed. You sat in the room and watched. That’s what you understand – watching. But what if you’d had the chance we did? The man himself, standing in front of you, your eyes on his? You have no idea what it would have been like to get justice on your own terms.

  MICHAEL: It shouldn’t be my terms. Alone.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Really? Didn’t you just visit Poland on a personal vendetta?

  MICHAEL: Don’t try that.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Ustrzyki Dolne, tak? There’s a man there you never found a trace of, whose name you never discovered. But he existed, and you know he did. Let’s call him Tomas Stanczyk.

  SONG: ‘Szerelem, szerelem’ (Hungarian)

  A drone begins.

  Todd stands.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: He was a doctor. Deputized by the Einsatzgruppen �
� someone the Nazis knew people would listen to. Well-liked. On the afternoon of October 12, 1941, he ordered his men to round up all the Jews in the town.

  SONG: Szerelem, szerelem (Love, love)

  They take them, tied together by the wrists, into the town square, where their neighbours have already gathered to watch.

  SONG: Átkozott gyötrelem (Wretched suffering)

  Doctor Stancyck raises his hand. There are three hundred Jews, including your great-grandparents and seven of their children. They’ve all been to him at one time or another. They trust him.

  SONG: Szerelem, szerelem

  They shoot them and they go down like stalks of wheat before the reaper. All this man does is lower his arm.

  SONG: Átkozott gyötrelem

  She puts a club, maybe a machete, in Michael’s hand.

  And here he is.

  TODD: They fell as if trained to die. Standing in the light of a bright fall day, ravens in the trees watching everything, the people standing around, some coming home from the bakery with fresh bread on the backs of their bicycles.

  MICHAEL: None of the people I met there claimed to remember anything.

  TODD: You should have spoken to the ravens.

  MICHAEL: And what happened to you?

  TODD: I married happily – very happily – had five children, and died in my sleep at the age of seventy-nine, three years more than God allots. My wife still enjoys my pension.

  Todd crosses to sit, then picks up and sips Michael’s tea. Michael moves behind him with the machete.

  In your bloodline alone, there are sixty fewer Jews in the world today than there would have been if we hadn’t chopped at the roots when we did. It will take another hundred and thirty years for the population of the Jews in the world to reach pre-war numbers. And little kikes like you are still running around looking to justify their existence somehow.

  Michael raises the machete. He is in stasis – unable to strike, unable to relax – staring at Todd.

  All those people – real people – died for you, and the best you can manage is a little play?

  Michael can take no more. He rushes at Todd with the machete, screaming. Young Althea catches his arm. Michael strains against her.

  TODD: Rubies. Real rubies.

  Young Althea disarms Michael, who stands staring at Mathias.

  ALTHEA: (to Michael) How could you have done that?

  MICHAEL: (turning, defending himself to Althea) I didn’t do anything! He –

  ALTHEA: He what?

  The cast looks to Michael, waiting for his response.

  MICHAEL: I was provoked.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Imagine that.

  Julia enters with her shaving things and is let into the cell.

  JULIA: Thank you.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Be quick about it.

  JULIA: He’s going to look so nice with a smooth face. You’re going to be handsome, Daddy.

  TODD: Where are we going?

  JULIA: We’re going to go home.

  TODD: I want to go to the lake.

  JULIA: I know, Dad.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Where was this lake?

  JULIA: I don’t really remember. He sold the place after my mother died.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: That’s too bad. When they let you go, that would have been a nice place to take him.

  She regards Young Althea. It was a very kind thing to say.

  JULIA: I’ll take him somewhere else with a lake. He won’t know.

  TODD: The lake.

  JULIA: Stay still, Dad.

  Stephen enters, takes in the scene. Young Althea jumps up from her cot. Stephen holds his hand up to calm her.

  YOUNG ALTHEA: I –

  STEPHEN: (to Young Althea) It’s fine. (to Julia) He was getting kind of scruffy.

  JULIA: Look at him now.

  STEPHEN: How is he feeling this morning?

  JULIA: He’s fine.

  STEPHEN: How are you, Mr. Todd?

  TODD: We’re going to the lake.

  STEPHEN: Oh, that’ll be nice. (to Julia) You missed a spot. (to Todd) Would you like to have a visitor?

  TODD: Bring them for afternoon toast and coffee.

  STEPHEN: Bring who?

  TODD: Heh?

  STEPHEN: I hear everything you say, Mathias.

  TODD: Toast and coffee, then. For the neighbours.

  STEPHEN: No, it’s someone else. A nice psychiatrist.

  JULIA: For what?

  STEPHEN: She’s going to ask your father some questions.

  JULIA: You mean you’re having someone friendly to your cause create some data for you.

  STEPHEN: No. This is about the truth, Miss Todd. But upstairs, they seem to need a little something to help them make up their minds. About your father’s fitness. They don’t think he can tell right from wrong! Isn’t that funny?

  JULIA: I want someone to see what’s going on down here.

  STEPHEN: Go. There’s a nice judge up there who just told me to do whatever I need to do.

  JULIA: We’ll see how this judge feels about you torturing a prisoner.

  She leaves to find someone.

  TODD: Margaret?

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Mr. Part? Should we wait?

  STEPHEN: You have your orders, you’ll do as you’re told. Won’t you?

  YOUNG ALTHEA: Yes, Sir.

  The lights change. Todd is the focus. A female VOICE (spoken by Young Althea) plays over the scene. Michael walks very slowly into the scene as it plays – riveted by Todd.

  SONG: ‘Oh Yasna’ (Ukrainian)

  Oh Yasna zhe krasna

  De sonetchko shodyt

  a nyzenko zahodyt

  (The sky is turning red, where the sun is setting, a married man is in love with a young girl)

  VOICE: What is your name.

  TODD: Todd. Mathias.

  VOICE: What colour is a red apple.

  TODD: Red.

  VOICE: What colour is a banana.

  TODD: There is something in apples that makes my mouth dry.

  VOICE: Yellow. What colour is a banana.

  TODD: Yellow.

  VOICE: Bananas come in groups or bunches.

  TODD: Who is this?

  VOICE: Bunches. Answer. Bananas come in mobs or gangs.

  TODD: Who is this?

  VOICE: You are hungry. There is a restaurant nearby.

  TODD: I’m hungry?

  VOICE: There is a restaurant nearby. Is it acceptable for you to go and eat in the restaurant.

  TODD: I can go in the restaurant?

  VOICE: Do you wish to?

  TODD: Yes.

  VOICE: You are hungry. There is nowhere to eat.

  TODD: I am going to have a bowl of soup and some farmers’ bread, Margaret.

  VOICE: There is nowhere to eat.

  TODD: Oh.

  VOICE: You see a man with a roasted chicken. Is it acceptable for you to take the man’s roasted chicken.

  TODD: Who is he?

  VOICE: Answer the question.

  TODD: But who is he?

  VOICE: Is it acceptable for you to take the man’s roasted chicken.

  TODD: How big is the man? (He laughs.)

  VOICE: You are in a lifeboat in a body of water.

  TODD: It is a lake.

  Todd stands. He is in another reality now – remembering. The doctor’s voice recedes.

  VOICE: A ship is sinking and the lifeboat is almost full. There is room for one woman from your country, or three children who are foreigners.

  TODD: (to Michael) There was a gazebo in the back of the house, which looked into the trees.

  VOICE: She is a woman you know – a good woman, a neighbour.

  MICHAEL: Who do you save, Mathias?

  TODD: When they bought the land behind us, they cut all the trees. So it was as if I was the hermit living in the back of their land.

  VOICE: The ship is sinking!

  TODD: Can you imagine?

  MICHAEL: Hey! Who do you kill? ANSWER THE QUESTION.
<
br />   TODD: My trees fall as if they’ve been infected.

  VOICE: I’ve moved in behind you. I’m young and very beautiful.

  TODD: How do they afford this land?

  VOICE: I come and visit you in the gazebo, where sometimes you take the paper and a cup of coffee.

  The lights are changing again.

  VOICE: You’ve never seen eyes like mine.

  TODD: Green.

  VOICE: Silken hair. You said I had the hands of a violinist.

  The voice is Young Althea’s, who now comes into the scene as Helena Sonnen.

  HELENA (YOUNG ALTHEA): I’m Helena Sonnen.

  TODD: I know who you are. What do you want?

  HELENA: I thought we could talk. We’re neighbours. Neighbours talk.

  Michael looks to Althea.

  ALTHEA: The woman he killed.

  MICHAEL: Yes.

  ALTHEA: He relived this. Every night.

  MICHAEL: Helena Sonnen.

  HELENA: I brought you and your wife a bottle of plum wine. I made it last fall.

  TODD: Oh. Thank you. I didn’t realize your property had plum trees, too.

  HELENA: It doesn’t. They’re your plums.

  Despite himself, Todd laughs. She is quite something.

  HELENA: We are going to be neighbours, Mr. Todd. Whether you’re ready for me or not.

  MICHAEL: Love just changes some people for the worse.

  ALTHEA: That’s your position, is it?

  HELENA: We used to have nothing, Mr. Todd. I don’t mean we had enough but we wanted more, I mean we had nothing. Is this seat taken?

  MICHAEL: I remember when I met her …

  JOANNA (JULIA): (to Michael) Is this seat taken?

  SONG: ‘Yonana’ (Zimbabwean)

  This song is heard indistinctly in the background – as if it is party music being played in another room.

  MICHAEL: I was at a party and I was going to leave and go home. But someone poured some more wine into my glass and I stayed a little longer. And she came in around midnight. I would have been home if that person hadn’t filled my glass. I would never have met her.

  JOANNA: Is there any more of that?

  TODD: The future should have come more slowly than it has, Miss Sonnen. Then we could all get used to it.

  MICHAEL: I would have been home if that person hadn’t filled my glass. I would never have met you.