by Zenovia
the ability to undo the past.”42
[ANDROMACHE, a tall noblewoman, enters the room dressed in mourning clothes. Her hair is long and golden, like that of ASTYNAX, and her skin is pale. Her face is gentle and kind. She is the mother of ASTYNAX.]
ANDROMACHE: My child, I can hear you.
I have been able to hear you,
but I could not see you until this moment.
I wanted to reach you and could not.
Give me your hand or at least your little finger.
Dear child, so young in my arms,
so precious.
How well I remember the smell of your skin.
How well I remember our parting,
a parting that cut my life in half.
I was no longer in life.
What happened to me afterwards did not bother me.
I could not cry as I had no more tears in me.
I could not laugh, I could not love, I could not live.
And yet live I did, and I carried my body around,
weighted down by the coffin I live in.
Dear child, my life stopped when you lost your life.
ASTYNAX: Mother, sweet mother,
at last I can see you.
So long I could hear you,
I could smell you,
but I could not see you,
I could not touch you.
Mother, hold me.
I have missed you for all eternity.
Look, mother, look at Ulysses.
Isn’t he a man full of regret?
ANDROMACHE: My precious child,
you are still loving the world.
You are still wanting to do good,
even to the murderer of your life
who stands motionless across me.
Look at him.
He doesn’t look like a fearless warrior now, does he?
What is the matter, Ulysses?
Can’t you out trick, outwit, break the laws of this law?
Look at you, Ulysses.
Look at what you have reduced my son to:
a shadow to be seen only by the dying.
Look at what you have reduced my life to:
a shadow in another shadow.
And look at what you have reduced your life to.
ULYSSES: Astynax, what can I do for you?
ANDROMACHE: You can give him back his life,
let him grow into a man,
let him know of love and let him die from old age.
What is the matter, Ulysses?
You, who defied the gods.
You, who thought you defeat and beat all.
You, who could outwit and outfox the fox.
Here you stand, knowing
you are at the hands of something
bigger and greater than you.
You are in the laws of life and death,
and you cannot move forward or backward.
You are helpless, as my son was.
You are helpless like I was.
You are helpless.
ULYSSES: I am here and I am accountable to all of you.
I draw you all into me.
I have searched and ached
for this wreckage of my life,
for the wreckage that I made out of your lives.
I have two marriages:
one of love and the other of blood,
and the blood has drowned me and consumed me.
The armies of those I love,
the armies of those I have driven into the ground,
consume me and engulf me
and in turn I have engulfed them.
They will not let me be until I go with them,
respond to them.
And I charge them full with the force
of my passing and coming life;
they charge into me.
And here we both are found,
locked in a struggle:
neither one winning, neither one losing.
Now I can hear.
When I was in full life
I was deaf to the suffering of others.
Now I can hear
“the splashing of tears,
the measureless rivers of human tears,”43
tears that I have caused—
and for what?
What am I taking with me in my other journey?
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
What have I left in kindness, in generosity?
Who will remember me?
Children and inexperienced men
that marvel at the conquests of war
and think me a hero
because I had a powerful army with me,
because I caught the enemy asleep and slaughtered them.
But no one will go into the life of the slain and butchered,
as if they did not matter in the scheme of things.
Now, in my last moments on this earth,
I can truly see with my own eyes
and with the eyes of those that I have destroyed.
SIREN: Ulysses, Ulysses, I kept you safe on the sea.
Return to the sea
DESTINY: He cannot escape me.
I am him and he is me.
We have a division within us.
I am the anchor of his nature,
the outcome of his choices,
the outcomes he did not want to face,
the compass of his human journey.
All he has touched in love or violence
will now seek and collide into him.
He seeks and collides into them
with the full force of his body and heart.
[ULYSSES falls to the floor.]
ASTYNAX: There are particles of light.
Look at the particles of light.
[points]
I can see them.
SIREN: [weeping] Those particles of light
came from the collision of his past into his present.
There are also particles of the night.
[There is weeping.]
ASYTNAX: At last I see your hand and face clearly, Ulysses.
I am no longer afraid of you.
I no longer hide from you.
You have come to be with me.
You have come willingly.
ULYSSES: I embrace all of you
for all of you are parts of me,
parts I have lost,
parts I have killed,
parts that find me in the darkest night of my soul.
It is through my death that I embrace you.
I should have been a balanced and wise man
and embraced you in my life
and kept all of you alive.
It is through my embrace of you,
through my death,
you release me, and I release you.
We are no longer bound to each other,
we no longer seek each other out,
we no longer weep for each other.
We have undone the knot
that has kept us bound and haunted to each other.
SIREN: No, no! Ulysses, don’t leave!
Don’t leave me!
I won’t be able to reach you!
Who will listen to my song?
No! No!
PENELOPE: Ulysses, my love,
you have cut the thread.
The knife and law of the unseen
has cut the thread to your
life.
You have taken another journey;
I cannot follow.
Haunt me, follow me,
give me no peace or rest.
Be with me.
Curse me, bless me with your tears.
ULYSSES: My darling, you are so lovely.
Your eyes reveal the promise of dawn
and I have so much growing life around me.
Here the thread quivers and breaks and you cannot follow.
There are many in the room
and all seek me.
SIREN: Ulysses, I cannot reach your hand!
Swim to me!
Swim to the sea!
VOICES TOGETHER: Ulysses,
are you ready for your arrival?
Are you ready for your departure?
The world that you burned,
the world that you have saved,
will claim you, will consume you.
You wanted it this way.
The unspoken laws of the universe want it this way.
You have fallen in this battle.
The spear that is made from the bone of a sting ray
will pierce your heart.
Are you ready for your departure?
PENELOPE: My love.
ULYSSES: I seek you all.
I seek you all.
I embrace you all.
I am ready for my departure.
PENELOPE: Whisper to me. I am being engulfed by darkness.
The sun has gone from my world.
My love, I cannot bear to lose you for an eternity.
Take me with you.
ULYSSES: I am taking you with me
and you are keeping me with you.
We suffer from a tension and suspension,
for the finite is in the infinite,
and the infinite in the finite.
We have found our home in each other’s hearts.
This is how we keep each other alive.
This is how we keep our love alive.
When a bird and a fish fall in love, where do they live?
PENELOPE: In each other’s hearts,
my love, my life.
ULYSSES: We are the bird and the fish.
Look for me in the sea, in the sky, in your heart.
I live inside you now.
PENELOPE: My love, you have become more powerful,
for now I have our youth,
our life together and your death together.
You live inside of me
and that has made you more intense and alive in me.
I have known love, and therefore,
how can this love ever die?
It continues in a different shape or form.
It continues,
the seed continues.
SIREN: Kiss me, Ulysses.
ASTYNAX: Kiss me, Ulysses.
DESTINY: Seal your destiny.
Die well, Ulysses.
SIREN: Ulysses, you never told man the secret of the siren’s song.
It is the opening of a man’s heart
to reveal either the emptiness or fullness,
and how much truth can you bear?
SIREN/ASTYNAX/ANDROMACHE/
DESTINY: [together in voice and thoughts] Do you see him?
My eyes cannot follow him
He has gone beyond the abyss and beyond separation.
Did you know him?
Did you love him?
Will you remember him?
It is in the last moments of life that a man sees—
truly sees—
the purpose of life,
the mystery of death,
truly sees, with the eyes of his soul,
the beauty, miracle, and wonders of the world.
These things that he did not really see while alive.
It is at this time that trees, flowers, and mountains,
rivers, birds, and the sunrise and sunset return
and envelop all his senses.
It is upon our death that the world and
life becomes precious and lasting to us.
[There is weeping. The stage is in total darkness.]
ACT IX
I Am Ready For My Departure
Colours of Sunrise
[In this section of PENELOPE’S dialogue with herself and the reader, we are once again returned to the secret chambers: “in my beginning is my ending” and “in my ending is my beginning.”44
PENELOPE has come full circle, and this is her life message and thoughts on all the defeats and joys she has experienced in living with and without Ulysses, her thoughts on the purpose and meaning in life, and her thoughts about her departure from the audience’s life.
It is the beginning of a new day. All the struggles have been fought and PENELOPE has multiplied in emotions and spirituality and intellect, and she knows her place in her life and the world.
The lights start to come on to create a Dawn. (The play begins with night and it ends with dawn.)
PENELOPE is standing, facing the audience, holding her sword upwards. She is standing by the sea.]
PENELOPE: I am ready for my departure.
Has my life and journey brought you sadness?
Devotion and belief
that our love will continue in the world?
There is no world without the making of love
over and over again.
YOUNG PENELOPE: I took the journey.
I travelled on the journey of life.
I was blessed and cursed.
I planned and plotted to remain alive—
not surviving like animals
but alive, with imagination, vision, and dream.
BOTH: I am ready for my departure.
PENELOPE: I go from life to life
and I am ready to continue,
to continue, to continue.
I am ready to eat away at eternity with the tiniest of shells.
YOUNG PENELOPE: Hail to you, my love!
PENELOPE: My brother, my comrade, my lover.
BOTH: You are welcome, whoever you are.
PENELOPE: Have you seen Ulysses?
YOUNG PENELOPE: Does he send a message with you?
PENELOPE: I have lived in exile among the dead, the living, the sirens,
and the birds.
BOTH: They have chosen me
and I embrace them as my home.
YOUNG PENELOPE: Ulysses was a wild bird.
PENELOPE: Ulysses was the salt in my journey,
the sea I swam in and on.
I am departing at the Dawn of the world—
your world, my world, their world, our world,
so many worlds,
and we thought there was only ours.
The world that makes and breaks
and remakes itself over and over again.
BOTH: The “eternal recurrence,”45
the eternal making of the world,
over and over again.
PENELOPE: I want a universe for you where nothing dies.
YOUNG PENELOPE: Is there such a universe?
PENELOPE: A universe where nothing dies
is where death is in life and life in death.
Both are different births and endings;
therefore, we go from life to life
where you make the world over and over again
in the image of deep longing,
deep searching,
deep seeking,
deep surrendering,
in the image of deep love.
YOUNG PENELOPE: I have whispered and shouted the eternal code
of the beloved and the lover of the earth.
BOTH: For all I know is from this earth, this moment,
as if time does not exist—it is an illusion.
I am not concerned by time,
although when I have transformed,
this time as I know it
will not exist for me.
It will still continue to exist for others,
but I would have changed into something else,
something I do not recognise in this time,
as the caterpillar does not recognise the butterfly,
nor does it know it is the same entity.
Time has been distant from me.
Life has been the one that I have chased after.
It is life that has been my siren:
connecting me, disconnecting me, playing with me,
tormenting me, offering me, removing from me,
taking from me, giving to me, and always laughing:
“This is not the end between you and me!”
This universe does not die. It multiplies.
It scatters its seeds into the next generation.
It changes and transforms the previous generations,
as all layers of generations are suspended and quivering
above and below each other—
the world makes itself over and over again.
BOTH: Keep loving the earth; keep devoted
to the life you are in.
Do not take the face of another.
Remain true to yourself.
YOUNG PENELOPE: And now that you are leaving,
take some part of me with you into the light.
I have touched parts
of your unspoken world.
We are taught not to share our vulnerabilities,
our sensitivities, our visions,
and therefore this becomes the unspoken world of another,
the sunken world.
How can you live a full life with a full heart—
with a sunken vision?
Vision is meant to be lived and shared, not drowned
where even the mermaids lose their glory.
I have travelled on the sea of life
without maps and charts.
I have lived the human adventure with a full heart.
PENELOPE: How does it stand here,
above and below,
backwards and forwards?
YOUNG PENELOPE: The relativity of time and travel
from one place to the other,
without even seeing movement,
not a sound . . .
You are pushed into the world
and pulled without any warning, without any sound,