Soul of a Whore and Purvis

by Denis Johnson

NURSE: You do? You do? Do you?

  WILL: With his last breath he proclaimed his innocence.

  SIMON: A whitetail deer goes walking past in the rain

  A dream of volcanoes rides past on a train

  A spider crouched alive betwixt her lungs

  NURSE: I’m sorry; but it stops him—

  WILL: When you yank

  His crotch a couple yanks, it shuts him up?

  NURSE: Manipulation of the scrotal—well—

  I know! The whole world’s highly entertained!

  He’s quite a favorite hereabouts. A team

  From Dallas, on the first of every month,

  Descends upon us, specialists from Dallas—

  WILL: How about that!—lining up to plunk

  The magic twanger of my brother’s scrotum!

  My helpless brother’s balls! Nurse…Vandermere:

  I’m not here visiting the vegetable.

  This thing they’re gonna do—I’m here for that.

  NURSE: What—thing?

  WILL: Wal now I don’ perzackly know.

  I would assume the staff would know.

  NURSE: The staff?

  WILL: The personnel employed here. Such as you.

  NURSE: I don’t know anything about a thing.

  WILL: A medical procedure, I presume,

  At which, for reasons they have not explained,

  They want the whole damn family to assemble.

  NURSE: But…nothing’s scheduled…

  WILL: Nothing.

  NURSE: Not a thing.

  WILL: The vegetable’s entire day is free.

  NURSE: What you don’t seem to realize is a coma

  Doesn’t make them deaf. They hear us talk,

  They understand, and Simon knows what’s what.

  WILL: You claim the calabash is cognizant.

  NURSE: If I was being visited by you,

  And I was in a coma—I would die!

  WILL: I think—Is that my sister-in-law out there?

  NURSE: I’d slip on out to sea and sail away.

  WILL: It is. Ah, God!—the other one! Her sister!

  What’s this all about?

  SIMON: Who owns the rain

  NURSE: It doesn’t take a death grip!

  WILL: Like he cares!

  He didn’t even blink. He kinda sorta

  Rolls his eyes around though, doesn’t he.

  A six-foot-long Señor Potato-Head…

  And not one blister, huh? Not one hair singed.

  That’s what ya git fer smokin’!—might as well

  Be ashes, huh?

  NURSE: He got like this from smoking?

  WILL: Not exactly smoking—breathing smoke,

  Smoke inhalation. Very bad for you.

  SIMON: I would kiss you even if it killed me

  Meanwhile, JAN and STACY have entered.

  JAN: Let him a-lone!

  WILL: It shuts him up, or so

  I’m told—and as we’ve just been demonstrating.

  SIMON: Even if it killed me I would kiss you

  JAN: Simon, hon?…I think he’s glad to see me!

  STACY: Simon? Can he hear? His voice is all—

  SIMON: Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur

  JAN: See! He knows Ko-ala Lumpur!

  STACY: All those voices, all those different—Jan,

  I never heard those voices before.

  Did you ever hear those voices before?

  NURSE: Visiting hours haven’t really started—

  STACY: He’s like a boombox on a merry-go-round!

  WILL: This is Simon’s wife, my sister-in-law—

  JAN: Jan.

  NURSE: I’m pleased to meet you.

  JAN: This is Stacy,

  Simon’s sister-in-law, which is because

  I’m Simon’s wife, and she’s my sister—Calling

  Koala Lumpur! Simon!

  STACY: Can he hear?

  JAN: Are you receiving, Simon?

  WILL: No. He’s not.

  STACY: He talked right to us!—He was buying gold

  In Koala Lumpur when the fire struck

  That shopping mall and pumped it full of smoke

  And choked him till he got like this! Now, Simon,

  Form your thoughts, take all the time you want,

  Visiting hours haven’t even started—

  WILL: He isn’t “forming” any “thoughts.” All right:

  You’re here; he’s here; everybody’s here.

  Now how about a little explanation?

  JAN: Well! The lights came on!

  NURSE: It’s eight a.m.

  It’s still a half an hour till official—

  WILL: And not “Koala.” K-U-A-L-A—

  JAN: He was buying gold, he was investing—

  Tragedy strikes us anytime it wants,

  Even in places like Koala Lumpur—

  STACY: Kua-la Lumpur, Kua-la Lumpur, Jan—

  JAN:—No matter what you try to call yourself!

  You can’t escape life even by pretending!

  Meanwhile, the DOCTOR has entered.

  DOC: So, Simon draws a crowd!

  NURSE: They jumped the gun

  A couple minutes, Doc—

  DOC: Good morning, all!

  SIMON: I have a dog who is a lilac bush

  JAN: We have a dog who is a lilac bush!

  SIMON: Kuala Lumpur Kuala…Kuala…Kuala…

  STACY: Lumpur—Lumpur—Lumpur, Simon, Lumpur!

  JAN: But, see, our dog is buried by the lilac!

  We always say he’s turned into the lilac!

  So, Doctor, when he says I have a dog,

  He’s talking about our actual universe,

  And an actual dog, also an actual lilac.

  And even if we don’t have a koala bear,

  There actually are koala bears in China,

  Or over there where Kuala Lumpur is.

  DOC:…Mind is the only actuality.

  Breakfast chimes sound.

  STACY: O, Doctor…Nasum? That is so…pro-found.

  Like what if this life isn’t really real?

  DOC: And what if we’re like Simon, in a realm

  We can’t imagine, in a spastic coma—

  STACY: A hospital in some enchanted dream,

  A magic hospital…A “spastic coma”?

  DOC: What life we truly live we’ll never know.

  The only hope we have is to assume

  That what we see is where we are…

  STACY: Doctor,

  Why does Simon jabber like a zoo?

  DOC: The human brain, the…May I know your name?

  STACY: Forgive me: Stacy Daley Morgan Blaine.

  But I should drop the Blaine, as I’m divorced—

  Again! But then, I didn’t drop the Morgan—

  DOC: Now, isn’t “Blaine”—? Now, Simon, you’re a Blaine—

  STACY: Well, I was married to him, first. He gets around.

  DOC: In rather a tiny circle!

  WILL: He’s a sucker:

  Snoring in the kingdom of the vegetables

  He ain’t a whole lot dumber than he was.

  DOC: I see, and, Stacy, that makes you the patient’s—?

  STACY: Former wife and current sister-in-law.

  I’m sure you know my sister, Jan—

  DOC: Of course.

  A real Penelope!—

  STACY: And Will, our brother-in-law—

  Jan’s former brother-in-law, but now her current,

  And currently my former brother-in-law.

  DOC: Pleased to meet you, Will. And, Stacy: charmed

  And very pleased.

  STACY: The feeling’s…mutual…

  SIMON: I sound like I’m shrinking

  STACY: —And! A “spastic coma”?

  DOC: The injury to Simon’s synapses,

  The anaerobic outrage to his brain,

  The shock of oxygen starvation on

  A mystery so frail as the elec
tric

  Pilgrimage an impulse undertakes

  Along a route of stimulated nerves

  Has induced in Simon Blaine a wild condition,

  A hyperactive, vegetative state,

  A chronic, spastic, comatose condition

  Marked by baffling random episodes

  Apparently the property of the dark

  And chiefly somnolent prefrontal lobes:

  Pseudo-verbal, faux-autistic, splashed

  With flowery jets and startling and bright

  Ejaculations with aphasic overtones.

  STACY: Overtones…and episodes…I see…

  DOC: He reads out almost epileptic when

  We hook him to the EEG. And so…

  STACY: He has these fits.

  DOC: And so he has these fits.

  —A rare and baffling form of coma.

  JAN: Rare?

  There’s never been another coma like it!

  STACY: And nothing can be done?

  DOC: A case like this,

  We offer consolation. Never hope.

  JAN: But you’re not God.

  DOC: And I don’t claim to be.

  JAN: But he’s right there! Right here!—Simon!

  Wife to Simon! What are you thinking, Simon—

  I wish I could join him there. I struggle to get there.

  But how do you struggle? I struggle with my heart,

  My soul. I make an effort in my chest.

  With my love, my force of love.—It’s bullshit!

  He’s there and I’m here. What are you thinking?…

  TELL ME! TELL ME! RE-TARD! WRETCH! TELL ME!

  DOC: Nurse!

  NURSE: Ma’am! No!

  WILL: Jan, stop it!

  STACY: Stop it, Jan!

  [A brief struggle.]

  Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it! STOP!

  …There are comas and there are comas, Jan.

  This is one of those. The kind the very

  Wisest doctors cannot comprehend.

  So let’s stop beating around the bush, OK?

  Your husband isn’t ever coming home.

  This spastic coma person isn’t Simon,

  ’Cause Simon’s off in Coma-Simon-Land

  Married to a Spastic Coma Girl.

  He doesn’t hear a single word we say.

  He doesn’t, and he didn’t, and he won’t.

  So no more sex. Just learn to masturbate.

  —O, well! I’m sorry! I don’t make the rules!

  WILL: Will someone give this stupid bitch a shot

  And put us all out of our misery?

  STACY: You wish you had your little death machine?

  WILL: You bet your plastic boobs.

  DOC: Now—now—now—now—

  STACY: You’re the reason I divorced him, Will—

  When we were living in North Houston, Will—

  I don’t forget who introduced him to

  Sylvester’s Big-As-Texas Topless Lounge—

  JAN: I wouldn’t be caught dead inside that place!

  STACY: You’ve always been a rotten influence—

  JAN: In there it’s all black light and fuzzy dice!

  DOC: Ah, me!—it’s difficult to make a point

  In these surroundings. Why don’t we adjourn—

  WILL: No. What procedure have you scheduled here?

  DOC: Excuse me. Was there something scheduled?

  WILL: Yes!

  I drove all night from Huntsville to attend—

  To what were you referring, Jan? You claimed

  Some bold experiment was taking place—

  DOC: Have we experiments on the agenda, Nurse?

  NURSE: Not from now till three p.m.—No, sir!

  JAN: ’Cause all you know to do is grab his pecker!

  Experiments won’t save him! He needs faith!

  You saw the pictures on TV, you watched

  The faces of those red-hot, burning people—

  Like faces in a painting, witnessing

  Their resurrection in a revelation,

  Riding escalators toward the flames

  Like souls ascending toward Atomic Heaven—

  STACY: Or Hell! Pockets of Hell! Of Hell!—I mean,

  Subterranean shopping center fires

  Are breaking out all over God’s green earth.

  It’s punishment for something—you know what:

  Divorce, and dope, and gambling; lesbians,

  Teenage sexpot prostitution rings,

  Child-molester grandmas, Mardi Gras—

  WILL: What the hell full name is Stacy short for?

  STACY: It’s not. I’m only Stacy, ma chérie!

  WILL: And now what? What are these fools up to

  Out the window here? Will someone promise me

  My family is not a party to

  This further nonsense in the parking lot?

  Here we have a maniac with a cross,

  I mean it’s big, this sucker’s big enough

  To mount a dolphin on, he’s standing there

  Beside it like he’s posing for a photo—

  Looking stupid, I don’t have to add—

  And, am I psychic? Why am I so sure

  That these two other maniacs are coming here?

  JAN: That’s William Jennings Bryan Jenks, the healer.

  WILL: A heeler. What is that? A person?

  JAN: Yes,

  A healer is a person.

  WILL: There are dogs

  Called blue heelers—fact my neighbor has one.

  Had one, I should say. It’s dead. It drowned.

  MASHA and BILL JENKS enter, both in quite conservative garb,

  MASHA in gray, BJ in black. BJ’s hair has grown out; he wears it swept back in a shining pompadour.

  BILL JENKS: Where’s this drowning victim?

  …This is the man who drowned?

  STACY: Nobody drowned him. He was in a fire.

  BILL JENKS: Is this a burn unit?

  NURSE: Perpetual Care.

  He wasn’t burned.

  BILL JENKS: The fire didn’t burn him?

  STACY: More like he suffocated in the smoke,

  Which you could almost say the fire drowned him—

  WILL: Coincidence, here—I was telling how

  My neighbor’s dog got drowned last Sunday morning.

  Nobody home, he went and jumped right in

  The swimming pool and couldn’t clamber out.

  Hung on—hung on—hung on till noon, almost—

  Gave up; went under; drowned.

  BILL JENKS: How do they know?

  WILL: They don’t. I do. I let it drown. I watched,

  Sipping a Bloody Mary on a Sunday morn.

  The rest of God’s creation was at church.

  Sunday morning; drinking alone: I love it.

  I don’t like heelers.

  WILL and BJ stand, each facing the other, as in a mirror.

  BILL JENKS: Are you copying me?

  WILL: Are you copying me?

  BILL JENKS: Cut it out.

  WILL: Cut it out.

  BILL JENKS: All I have to do is remain silent.

  …Well, aren’t you going to copy that?

  WILL: Aren’t you going to copy that?

  BILL JENKS: You win.

  WILL: You lose.

  MASHA: Brother, we’re in danger.

  WILL: Will Blaine…

  BILL JENKS: Bill Jenks.

  STACY: Well! Bill and Will! Could be

  You guys are twins! Twins torn apart at birth—

  SIMON: Watch me jack off with my solar flare

  STACY: Simon Blaine, hush! You’ve got company!

  MASHA: The lesser demons bow to something here.

  Satan’s pouring honey down my spine.

  BILL JENKS: Satan can’t be everywhere at once,

  And right now he’s in Hollywood or Vegas.

  WILL: Who publishes the diabolical

  Itinerary? There a cable channel?
>
  BILL JENKS: He gravitates toward Sodom and Gomorrah.

  WILL: Really.

  BILL JENKS: Sure. The old boy craves a little

  Action same as everybody else.

  WILL: Was it Twenty-Twenty? Or Sixty Minutes?

  I thought they made a worldwide fool of you.

  —OK, it’s rude of me to say so, sorry—

  What’d you call your outfit there in Dallas,

  Church of the Holy Sacred Bank Account?

  Ripped of your congregation, shot a guy,

  Landed up in Huntsville, where I work:

  I bet I’ve seen you, out there in the fields

  Hacking with a hoe (—excuse me, ma’am!),

  Slaving away with black-eyed Susans winkin’

  And stinkin’ like a Dallas trollop (—’scuse me!);

  Suspected dealer, quantity cocaine—

  BILL JENKS: O yeah, I shot a man. He didn’t die.

  I get the chance again—who knows?

  WILL: You’d think a guy would sense his status!—Yeah,

  They had you on with Ron the Levitator

  And that frog-voice freak transvestite with a lisp

  Driving his spangled automatic wheelchair,

  Jimmy—

  NURSE: Boggs! “The Singer of the South”!

  You oughta heal his singing!

  BILL JENKS: There are limits.

  WILL: I have to say, he does look like he’s healed.

  Healed by whom, by use of which powers,

  I couldn’t guess. Or even healed of what.

  But, anyway, he’s acting different now.

  BILL JENKS: That’s right. He ran a marathon last month.

  WILL: That’s right. He came in way behind the pack.

  BILL JENKS: That’s right, and running on two legs. His spangled

  Wheelchair graces our museum now.

  WILL: They mentioned that—You have your own museum!

  BILL JENKS: Most of one. Construction’s under way.

  WILL: Construction’s stalled, according to Sixty Minutes,