The CTR Anthology
Page 42
Almira: (desperate) It sucks the clams right out of the sand. (Unfortunately it doesn’t.)
Sedna: Too much effort.
Almira: I couldn’t find a shovel.
Sedna: Humans are peculiar.
Almira: Haven’t you ever had a craving for clams?
Sedna: Often.
Almira: I’m hallucinating. Or dreaming. (She inverts the plunger and sits.) Allie. Get it together. You’re talking to yourself!
Sedna: There’s nothing wrong with dreaming.
Almira: Oh yeah. Since George dragged me down here I’ve been having some really peculiar dreams.
Sedna: You take yourself too seriously. What you need is to loosen up … have a few laughs.
Almira: Ahah! Ahah!
Sedna: (thinking Almira is barking at her. She barks back.) Arhuh! Arhuh!
Almira: Almira!
Sedna: That is your name?
Almira: How do you know my name?
Sedna: (playfully she gives a seal-like roll) Ahruh! I know who you are.
Almira: You are not real. (Almira takes out a bag of chips from her beach bag.) My mind has collapsed.
Sedna: It happens to the best of us.
Almira: Only temporarily. (Watching Sedna.) You know my name … what do I call you?
Sedna: Humans can’t pronounce my real name. But you may call me Sedna.
Almira: So where do you live?
Sedna: In the mother of us all. She who embraces us, bathes us, and to whom we will return when our time is come. (Almira doesn’t understand.) The sea!
Almira: (laughing) I’m talking to a mermaid.
Sedna: How predictable!
Almira: You don’t really look like a mermaid.
Sedna: Oh? Go on …
Almira: You’re very heavy.
Sedna: (advancing on Almira) … And you are so thin I could play chopsticks on your ribs! (Sedna plays a macabre version of chopsticks on a piece of bleached bone.) You know nothing about merpersons.
Almira: Oh for heaven’s sake! A liberated hallucination.
Sedna: (shivering with disgust) Merpersons have fish heads and human legs. They also have a disgusting habit of trapping unsuspecting fishermen.
Almira: Then grant them three wishes …
Sedna: Actually … they eat them!
Almira: You’re not going to eat me … (Sedna chases after Almira.) Heeelllppp!!!
Sedna: Selkies find humans … indigestible.
Almira: Selkies?
Sedna: I’m half seal and half… human.
Almira: Are there more of you?
Sedna: We’ll see. How did you like my present?
Almira: Sorry?
Sedna: I thought you might be curious as to where it came from. (Sedna rolls the musket ball toward Almira. Wind chimes are heard.) I brought you another.
Almira: This afternoon. You were in the fish shack?
Sedna: I am discreet.
Almira: I didn’t see you.
Sedna: I left at the appropriate moment … but … you did see my little gift. Musket shot!
Almira: I don’t want it!
Sedna: No! Humans don’t like to be reminded of their responsibilities.
Almira: (beginning to gag) Take it away.
Sedna: You ask if there are more of me. You with your muskets, and knives and axes and clubs and harpoons! We have been wiped out forever. Too often we selkies have been mistaken for seals. Then you humans had the nerve to lament our loss from the world in poetry and songs of mermaids … pushing those left into the mists of legend. (Softly.) “Death to our best friends.”
Almira: My dream.
Sedna: My dream.
Almira: You?
Sedna: What do you recognize now, Almira?
Almira: You’re in my dream?
Sedna: Night after night.
Almira: But it’s daylight!
Sedna: I could make it night.
Almira: Leave me alone.
Sedna: When you decide to leave the Earth alone.
Almira: Stop tormenting me!
Sedna: (blowing into the conch shell. Again the sound continues at her bidding, growing darker to accompany the nightmare.) This could be my dream.
Almira: It isn’t like this. My dream is always the same.
Sedna: What is your dream? (Sedna summons the sounds of the sea.)
Almira: I’m in the sea.
Sedna: I’m in the sea.
Almira: There are waves.
Sedna: Lots of blue waves.
Almira: I’m swimming on the beach, as far as the eye can see …
Sedna: People are watching.
Almira: I can hardly see them.
Sedna: Black silhouettes shimmering in the glare of the ice.
Almira: They laugh and say I am beautiful.
Sedna: Swinging their arms up and down …
Almira: They wave … floating, my hair is like seaweed. Dead seaweed. Only dead seaweed is free. They wave again …
Sedna: Thump!
(The sound reverberates into the cries of seals baying. It is eerie and barely perceptible as a “real” sound.)
Almira: Red! Blood! In my eyes. All around me … thuck … thuck … thuck …
Sedna: (simultaneously) Hold on … hold on …
Almira: Arms rising and falling. Cry out loud …
Sedna: Father!!!
Almira: Not my baby!! Not while it still suckles. Scream.
Sedna: I’m going to die.
Almira: I’m alive. Underwater it is quiet. So quiet it hurts. Softly … boomp … boomp.
Sedna: (overtop) Wwwwwhhhhyyyy?
Almira: My heart mingles with the streaming blood and milk.
Sedna: I was your daughter, father.
Almira: I have to breathe.
Sedna: I’m too tired to breathe.
Almira: Maybe on the bottom I’ll breathe …
Sedna: Why did you throw me away? I loved you …
Almira: Down … down … down … down …
(Together they gasp for air.)
Sedna: Wake up!
Almira: It’s not my dream. I’ve been dreaming your dream. Why?
Sedna: Because you care.
Almira: A long time ago.
Sedna: Not so long ago.
Almira: Perhaps that was a dream too.
Sedna: Once you fought passionately for the great creatures of the sea.
Almira: I can do nothing … I’ve tried.
Sedna: I know how you feel.
Almira: And just how do I feel?
Sedna: Trapped! By something you can’t change.
Almira: I can.
Sedna: Will you?
Almira: Watch me.
Sedna: Almira, the mystery of your womb makes you more powerful than that!
Almira: There’s no baby.
Sedna: You always feel that way with the first.
Almira: I’m tired.
Sedna: Me too.
Almira: Too tired to have a baby.
Sedna: I’m tired of my world being a place of depleted things made up of stories of what never was …
Almira: Who are you?
Sedna: (sound of the sea and Sedna’s music) When I was born, the sea held many marvellous creatures and nowhere was there a place more mysterious or a greater haven of life! And dotted throughout the seas were pools of shimmering sand, milky white crescents, where the creatures came for rest, and to feed upon sweet dewy grasses, and mate; listening to the heavy grey roll of the sea. So many worlds there were! For three million years I have travelled and I have slept in a hundred islands. Islands appearing and disappearing … Now there is but one left. After that is gone there will be none.
Almira: I need some rest. That’s why I’m here for some peace and rest.
Sedna: Come with me.
Almira: I can’t.
Sedna: Fight with me! (Pause.) What has happened to you?
Almira: I’m an observer. I watch and wait.
(George st
ands and circles the horizon with the glasses.)
Sedna: You don’t know what it is to watch the bitter barren days pass one after the other; day after day; watching and feeling the end close in, knowing I am the last!
Almira: Be quiet.
Sedna: You need me. I need you … And the child.
Almira: (Picking up the plunger) There is no baby.
(Distant sound of a heartbeat.)
Sedna: Come with me, Allie …
Almira: (swinging the plunger) Stay away.
Sedna: You are powerless to make me do anything.
Almira: I am human.
Sedna: You pathetic creature.
Almira: You’re some hallucination. (She clubs Sedna.)
Sedna: You’re hurting me.
Almira: Or some screw loose in my head.
Sedna: Don’t!
Almira: (tugging on Sedna’s body) Let’s see who’s in whose skin …
(The cries of baying seals join the heartbeat.)
Almira: (with one last yank she pulls off Sedna’s head-dress.) You’re a woman.
Sedna: And sometimes a seal.
George: Almira! (He is looking for her in the shack. Then calls outside.) Aaaaalllllllliiiiiiieee!
Almira: There’s George.
Sedna: (Helpless without her skins Sedna can barely walk. Desperately she tries to retrieve her head-dress.) Life is precious to me … it once was to you.
George: Where are you?
Almira: On the beach.
George: Hurry! The sun is going down.
Almira: I should go to George.
Sedna: No …
George: It’s getting dark.
Almira: It’s getting dark.
Sedna: You let your eyes be closed in darkness.
George: You won’t be able to see.
Sedna: A darkness from which no light will be emitted ever!
Almira: George needs me.
Sedna: I need you.
Almira: He can’t light a lamp.
George: Aaaalllliiieeeee!
(Almira turns towards George’s cry. Sedna lunges and retrieves her headdress.)
Sedna: Lice! Earth’s cockroach! (Within the sound are the cries of distant wailing voices.) I am not an hallucination! I am a selkie!! (Slowly she climbs up onto the upstage rock.) You think you have power because you are human? You whose stay on this Earth has been so short! All you have done is increase the power of death! Can you understand the language of the birds and animals? NO! For it you did you would hear how their sweet cries mock you. You know nothing! Watch! What do you see? Now a porpoise, now a raven or dog, fish, or … (Sedna stands with arms outstretched. In one is an axe, in the other the headpiece.) … perhaps a rare Hood seal! While in the heavens the moon, stars, sun, hasten to my call. Clouds! Quickly now! (The sky darkens with her call.)
Sedna: (descending from the rock, she puts on her head-dress) I am not a bare-breasted manifestation of a sex-starved fisherman. Mermaids indeed!
Almira: Stay away.
Sedna: (as Almira cowers she advances with the axe upraised) Here comes your darkness to cower and hide in. Run to George. Run from the sickness of men. But you cannot run from me! Each creature that lives in this sea, each boat that travels her waves and the people on board, of them, I know when they will live and when they will die!! (Blackout.)
Almira: NNNOOOOOOO!!!!
George: Aallllmmmmiiirrraaa!
ACT TWO
SCENE SEVEN
(On the beach. There is no sign of Sedna or her tail.)
Almira: George?
George: Almira!
Almira: What are you doing here!
George: What are you doing here?
Almira: I’m confused.
George: You fell asleep. I decided to go for a walk.
Almira: That’s right. I woke up. You were gone!
George: When I went back up you were gone.
Almira: I was hungry.
George: Didn’t you hear me?
Almira: I heard you. “It’s getting dark.”
George: Dark? Blackout! Just like that! One big cloud drifted right over top of us. I couldn’t see to put one foot in front of the other … (Pause.) I looked everywhere for you!
Almira: And …
George: Nothing.
Almira: Nothing?
George: I swear. Sixty seconds ago you weren’t on this beach. We got to get away from here.
Almira: You go!
George: And leave you alone?
Almira: Just for a few days.
George: It’s too isolated.
Almira: It’s familiar.
George: You expect me to leave you alone here when you say … it’s familiar.
Almira: It’s as if I had lived here before.
George: This place is weird. I’ve been taking notes. This place is empty!! No ducks, no squirrels, no shags, no gulls, no fish! Not even a clam to be found.
Almira: (remembering) Clams! I was on the beach.
George: You weren’t.
Almira: I was plunging for clams. George is here. I’m here …
George: Somewhat.
Almira: Where is she?
George: Stop it, Almira.
Almira: Oh boy. Get out your book and sharpen your pencils …
George: You’re frightening me!
Almira: I’m frightening me. (Pause.) That old fisherman. Blasted on Hermits? He was right.
George: Tell me exactly what you saw.
Almira: (whispered) A 3000 pound seal.
George: A Hood seal is only a half tonne.
Almira: I was talking to her. (Shouting.) Sedna!
(Sedna pops up from behind the fish shack.)
George: Sedna?
Almira: That’s her name.
George: The seal has a name?
Almira: It’s not her real name.
George: Of course not.
Almira: Where could she be hiding?
(Sedna plays hide and seek with Almira.)
George: A 3000 pound seal …
Almira: Well, around that.
George: That narrows places down. (Pause.) In the sea.
Almira: Of course.
George: Come off it, Allie!
Almira: It was so obvious.
George: You don’t seriously expect me to believe you were talking to a seal.
Almira: Actually Sedna is a selkie.
George: Almira! there is no such thing as a selkie. Dugongs! Fishermen thought dugongs and manatees were mermaids.
Almira: No they’re not. They’re half human and half seal.
George: (moving into the shack) We’re getting out of here.
Almira: Sedna needs our help.
George: We need help!
Almira: That nightmare where I’m swimming away from the blood … it’s not my dream!
George: Whose is it?
Almira: Sedna’s!
George: This is a nightmare.
Almira: (grabbing George’s pencil and notebook) Endangered … the selkie … who is our … our … dream.
George: You’re trying to save a hallucination.
(Sedna begins to slowly circle the shack to the faint rhythm of a drumbeat.)
Sedna: There was a time when the Earth’s spirit was the spirit of everything that walked and crawled and swam on her surface.
Almira: Pardon?
George: I am talking to you.
Sedna: I am not a hallucination.
Almira: In a second.
Sedna: I am not a merperson.
George: It’s too late.
Sedna: I am a selkie.
Almira: By donating your time and money, we can ensure that selkies continues to live on this planet. No postage required for federal politicians. (She looks at George, triumphant.)
George: We could have stayed here forever.
Almira: I’m serious, George.
George: So am I.
Almira: This is something I could fight for again.
George: Deadly serious.
Almira: Sign this letter with me.
George: No way will I sign that letter.
Almira: We promised to work together! Love each other!
George: I remember! But there is nothing to share in this fucking insanity! SAVE A SELKIE? There is something out there! And it stinks. It’s a putrid, rotting …
Almira: Stop!!
(Sensing what is occurring Sedna slips from her tail and leaves it on the beach. On it she places the axe.)
George: I know what’s upsetting you.
Almira: All that is upsetting me is you.
George: I’m gone.
(Sedna perches on the large outcropping of rock behind the shack.)
Almira: (crumpling the letter) Somebody help me.
SCENE EIGHT
(George does not hear Sedna until the last exchange.)
George: (throwing stones) Damn. Goddamn. Talking to a selkie. (Shouting up to the shack.) You want me to leave?
Sedna: Definitely.
George: I won’t leave.
Sedna: Well, I won’t leave.
George: I’m pathetic.
Sedna: Poor pathetic creature.
George: I can’t leave (Noticing the seal corpse.) What the fuck is going on?
Sedna: Trick or treat!
George: (gagging as he goes nearer) I got rid of you!
Sedna: Are all humans cowards?
George: It’s this place. This beautiful … empty place. Nothing here … except a stinking rotten corpse.
Sedna: Flattery will get you everywhere.
George: (picking up the axe … dreamlike) I’ll get rid of you.
Sedna: I’m not going anywhere!!
George: Then everything will be all right.
Sedna: I want to keep things as they are for awhile.
George: I’ll cut it into pieces.
Sedna: Don’t touch me.
George: If the tide brings it back again no one will recognize it … Cut it up!
Sedna: Don’t you dare touch me.
George: I’ll fix it, Almira. There’ll be no more seals.
Sedna: The mighty protector of his family.
George: (kicking the corpse) Go away!
Sedna: (whispered) Father …
George: Close your eyes. (Paralysed.) Do it!
Sedna: (coming down behind George) May the dogs eat your hands and feet.
George: (closing his eyes) I love … (On the first blow Sedna cries out in anguish. She is joined by the baying seals. On each cry Almira tosses in a nightmare.)
Sedna: No!
George: Love!
Sedna: No!
George: Love!
Sedna: No!
George: Love!