1. society

1
We Are Motivated by Love
A Play in Two Acts
By Garry Victor Hill
Cast
Mika Horne
Writer, Former University Professor
Rosa Horne
Writer, Former Head Mistress
Rachel Wovoka
Rosa’s eldest child, aged thirty
Bill Wovoka
Rosa’s eldest son aged in his early twenties
Joshua Wovoka
Rosa’s second son aged seventeen
Moshe Wovoka
Rosa’s younger son aged fifteen
Alice Wovoka
Rosa’s younger daughter aged fourteen
Herbert Horne
Mika’s father
Larry Palmer
Australian tourist
Roland Bradley
American Journalist
Inspector Stavkas Policeman
Jack (voice only) History Professor
Setting
An apartment in Athens in 1983
Disclaimer
We Are Motivated by Love is a work of fiction and no representation of any
particular person living or dead is intended. No real institution, written work or
group is depicted and any similarity to either a real person, group or institution is
unintended and entirely coincidental
2
3
Act One
The Set
One room occupies the entire stage. Doors are stage right (leading to the kitchen)
and stage left (the front entrance) Centre stage is a long table with six dining
chairs. Underneath the table is a long bean bag. The table is far out from the wall
so people can move around it. At the table’s centre is a small gong and its
hammer. On the stage left side a typewriter is placed. Near the entrance placed
above head level, there is a large bright yellow poster with NOTHING IS
IMPOSSIBLE written in bold black letters. Below this is a book case, on the top
shelf is a Madonna statue dead centre and two large container jars on each side of
the Madonna. The next shelf contains a bakerlite phone, and a ghetto blaster and
the remaining shelves hold books. Beside the bookcase is a high vertical pile of A4
typing paper weighed down by a large alarm clock. Behind the table chairs and
symmetrical with them are uniform size portraits in identical frames of Marx,
Bertrand Russell, Freud, Moses, Guevara and Trotsky and at centre an unknown
woman. Above these is a gigantic reproduction of Goya’s ‘Satin Devouring his
Child’ Past this is a massive wine rack full of bottles. On top of this is a large
gong. Near the kitchen door are two posters. One is identical to the NOTHING IS
IMPOSSIBLE poster in size and colours and is symmetrical with it, but has a
4
different message DO NOT BE A PIG IN THE KITCHEN WHILE AFRICA
STARVES! Above this is a message board with HOUSE TIMES at the top.
Everything in the room is oppressively symmetrical.
*
Scene 1
As the play opens Mika is at the table typing while the ghetto blaster plays
bird twittering noises. He is a short, redheaded, frizzy haired man with a tear
shaped goatee, no moustache and a scar which runs from his scalp to his chin. He
has tattoos going from his wrists to his elbows and around his lower neck. They
are in vivid light blue and orange and are flame shaped with deep red outlines. He
wears copper bracelets and rings to counter arthritis. His movements are jerky and
he has a birdlike mannerism of crooking his head into his shoulder when he thinks
over things. His mouth is usually in a strange grin and his eyes are always excited,
as if amused at something only he could see. Although he is in his forties his
mannerisms suggest a teenager. He habitually wears a Melbourne Carleton
football sweater and football shorts and is barefooted.
SOUND: (A knocking at the door.)
MIKA: “Come in Bradley! You are very early! No worries, you were always
early for lectures. Door’s unlocked. Turn off those twittering birds!” (He has an
Australian accent)
(Enter Roland Bradley Stage left. He turns off the ghetto blaster. He is in his
thirties, He has a Vandyke goatee and moustache. His expensive, immaculate
summer clothing of a three piece white suite, panama hat and name brand sandals
and glasses suggests a yuppie. Both give false slightly uneasy smiles as they shake
hands and exchange brief greetings)
ROLAND BRADLEY: (Upper class English accent) “Wouldn’t it be better
to set up in the garden?”
MIKA: (shaking his head) “Not even millionaires in Athens have real
gardens, they get the penthouses, some have grass strips. Like most Athenians we
only have enough space for pot plants on a little patio. Besides, the traffic noise
would mar the taping and the pollution is so thick we would cough. We never open
the windows.”
5
(Together they set up the taping program)
MIKA: “Alice! Breks two?”
ROLAND BRADLEY “Alice breks two?
MIKA: “That’s house code. ‘Alice cook breakfast for two’ is a mouthful.
Every extra second for extraneous words and syllables costs a second or more. We
added them up over a day – over seven minutes were lost. We need every one of
those minutes. Codes save time.”
(Roland Bradley who was smiling suddenly picked up at the use of the word
‘extraneous’ and the smile fades and his faces becomes suspicious)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “For?”
MIKA: “My latest project, my book, but I’ll tell you about that in the
interview.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “The walk from the Syntagma Square was tiring in
this heat. Can you get me a large class of water?”
MIKA: “Alice! Wah!” (Alice rushes out soundlessly and expressionlessly
carries a carafe of water and two glasses which she puts on the table. She is in a
hastily put on dressing gown and large fluffy slippers)
MIKA: “Guests can have as much water as they like.” (He gestures to the
water with munificence. Roland Bradley stares and Alice waits expressionless for a
few seconds. Seeing she is not needed she exits Stage Right.)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Why does she wear slippers in this heat wave?”
MIKA: “Alice and everybody else wears slippers so as to move silently
while I work. Everybody in la casa knows how my work will change society for
the better and how I must have quiet to work.” (Mika holds up a pair of pink fluffy
slippers for Roland Bradley, who stunned for a few seconds, almost loses his
temper but calms down.)
ROLAND BRADLEY: Well we had best get on with the interview. We will
have to rush, won’t we?”
MIKA: “Why?”
6
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Because Larry, yes good old Larry Palmer, our one
time mate gone mad, just happens to turn up at Athens airport and when I
questioned him as to why he was following me, he said. “Oh no he was here to see
Mika after siesta.”
MIKA: “Coincidence?”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “I think not.”
MIKA: “Perhaps he got a passenger list or perhaps he collected gossip about
your travel plans and stalked you because he still holds a candle for your wife.”
(Roland Bradley grits his teeth, snarls and is clenched jawed and wild eyed
for a few seconds, but then becomes extraordinarily calm very quickly and sets up
the tape.)
ROLAND BRADLEY “The interview. A practice run, television cameras
later.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Yes the interview” (He holds up five splayed
fingers and drops them with each second of the countdown. When he speaks it is
with a cheery, chummy, but patronizing voice)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Good Morning America! In today’s episode of
‘The Great Shapers of our Century’ we will interview one of the great voices of
sixties radicalism, a man who became one of the globe’s most famous activists and
writers of that generation. A childhood hero who became my old professor, Mika
Horne.” (He says that name with overwhelming affection and humour, as if he and
the audience are recalling a renowned and much loved humorist and
humanitarian.)
Now Mika before we start, a personal note, your flame tattoos, the ones you
had put on yourself to demonstrate solidarity with napalmed Vietnamese – how do
you see that now, as a mix of youthful idealism and exuberance - or as something
else?”
MIKA: “Oh solidarity with the oppressed was always there and still is and
growing up in New Guinea amongst the indigenous people - and the white naval
people, not to have tattoos seemed odd. My father had six! Different cultures
different perceptions.”
7
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Indeed, indeed. Perhaps for our younger listeners
we should discuss that background. Mika Horne was an only child, born in Cairns
Queensland Australia in 1935 he moved to northern New Guinea in 1939 when his
father, a professional boxer, took up gold mining. His mother was a teacher.
During the Japanese occupation Mika and his mother were caught behind enemy
lines where his mother worked as an agent and coast watcher for the Allies. Young
Mika began his political activity aged seven when he carried messages for his
mother to the guerillas. Years later they worked together in leftist politics. Today
she is still a heroine and an inspiration to Mika. Her photo along with those of
Freud, Marx and other inspirations adorn Mika’s living room walls even as we
speak.”
(He pauses and plays some Papuan indigenous music while glaring with
hostility which stays when he speaks again in his paly tones)
“Mika I believe you first met your current wife in your New Guinea days and that
she was your primary school teacher?
MIKA: “Oh yes, She was born in PNG in 1924 to American missionary
parents and during the war married a GI she was nursing. They stayed on as
teachers until when independence approached in 1975 and then they moved to
America, but the USA was not right and I met Rosa at an independence
conference...”
ROLAND BRADLEY: You made your name as a writer in the early sixties
by attacking all basic assumptions about duty, obedience, order, gender roles,
treatment of the environment and work. You were a decade ahead of your time.
Then your later books focused on consumerism, Vietnam, Aborigines sexism, CIA
plots and the Kaolini dictatorship. Your sales total well over a million. Now you
are branching out again, once more attacking all social assumptions…”
MIKA: “No! no! no! Before giving the globe a blueprint for equality and
justice I am analyzing why all previous attacks on exploitative societies failed to
lead to a just, equal world. When the five volumes appear they will show why the
world went wrong following supposedly great thinkers as trailblazers led us to
disaster. I show where for starters Freud went wrong on psychology, Ghandi’s
errors on non-violence, Einstein’s mistakes with physics, De Vinci’s errors in
art,..”
8
ROLAND BRADLEY: (interjecting in hinting tones) “This is rather
grandiose.”
MIKA: (failing to take the hint) “Certainly. It is indeed grand. My first
books influenced millions, but this will influence billions.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “How?”
MIKA: “So many have denounced inequality and praised equality, but few
have given concrete plans for achieving absolute equality on a global scale for now
and for future generations.” (Mika pauses and smiles) “I have.” (Roland Bradley’s
eyes briefly enlarge but he then becomes expressionless) What is more this is done
with a simplicity that any moron can understand. In Plan A I address the basic
problems, food, clothing and shelter. First in the global constitution everyone is
guaranteed eighteen hundred calories a day; generous when around twelve hundred
is considered the minimum. Likewise living space – eight square metres for
everybody alive now and for future babies to inherit. Likewise water for all
purposes – four litres per person.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “But what happens when the population increases
but rain does not?”
MIKA: “That good point will be answered when we get to Plan B. Now as
well as food and water everyone alive will get for the length of their allocated
lifetime of eighty years a desk one point two metres long and half a metre high
with an adjustable chair and a typewriter. If personal computers happen as they
probably will everybody gets one and typewriters will be phased out: as you see
my scheme is not inflexible. Everyone also gets a bed three metres long as there
are no people over that height. It will be one metre high with two compartments,
one for toiletries and one for winter clothes, made of hemp to the same design.
Hemp clothes last decades. No wasting of energy on silly fashion and goods that
wear out.” (Mika pulls over a long rectangular lego set that has different coloured
bands)
“Now Professor Felix Daso has calculated that the world’s current
population, which is approaching five billion and will hit six at about the turn of
the century, is not a worry because if you stacked all of the world’s people one on
top of the other they would fit into a cube five miles long by five miles high. Good
point, professor, but obviously the top layers will form an elite that will quite
obviously crush the lower: a very literal development of the class system. No under
9
my phalanx system nobody is crushed, everybody gets a place on a floor. Twenty
thousand to an apartment level four kilometres long by a half a kilometre wide.
That means five rows of four thousand beds each with twenty fridges and showers
per thousand and eating benches five hundred metres long in the non-sleeping
section. Which will also have a massive exercise area. Structural needs will be met
by steel pillars.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Twenty thousand people in one bloc.”
MIKA: “No twenty thousand people on one level. Each bloc has twenty
levels, at least to start with.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “To start with.”
MIKA: “As mentioned my scheme must be flexible for future developments.
As population grows you add new levels for the surplus population. Third worldist
peoples will not be oppressed by fascistic birth control methods forced on them by
middle class westerners worried about apartments replacing their bungalow
suburbs. Instead we will have true equality. Everybody gets electricity at the flick
of a switch. Everybody gets running water, a full stomach, a bed to sleep in and
equal gym usage. I’ll show you.” (He puts the lego set on the table and adds a new
level of lego that fits perfectly.)
“The idea came to me will I was playing with Alice’s Lego. Roof and ceiling
will likewise match and fit perfectly. They can rise hundreds of stories if need be.
We can filter down the food and water by giant helicopters like Howard Hughes
spruce goose plane. The only difference is that we build out of stone and steel
instead of plastic, which tends to warp and splinter in strong sunlight.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “But the traffic congestion, the noise from radios
and television and cars-”
MIKA: “Won’t exist because all those middle class things won’t exist.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “You mentioned no walls and you forgot about
summer clothing.”
MIKA: “Historically privacy is a middle class development and looking at
the big picture, one that has existed for a very short time. Did tribal peoples ask for
privacy before they humped each other or shitted on toilets? Of course not! Bit by
bit we will ween people off such concepts as consumerism, privacy ownership,
individuality and shame. Introduce a concept gradually as if each of the gradual
10
steps is the last one and you can get people used to anything. Within a generation
personal bedrooms will be as archaic as clipper ships and summer nakedness will
be thought normal.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “A great many people will object to this.”
MIKA: “Needlepricks and flatchesters mostly. Calcutta’s untouchables, the
starving in Ethiopia, Djakarta’s slum-dwellers will be clamoring to get into the
blocs. Making eighty is beyond their dreams. It is only the middle classes, a
numerically small proportion of the globe’s population, who would see any loss of
any type by bloc living. Do you really think that the urban sprawl of bungalows
and holiday cabins and highways can continue to chew up the world’s best
farmland forever? Capitalist or Communist, it will be the same. Sooner or later any
system that does not want famine has to institute something like this.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Very Likely. The multinationals, their right-wing
think tanks and their governments talk like this, more smoothly, more soothingly
but essentially with similar ideas and with consumerism and bread and circuses
added as a soothedown.”
MIKA: “Exactly. I’m just more honest, just and totally egalitarian! No
jaguars, Swiss chalets, Mozart, no board members or stock markets! Gone! Gone!
Gone! Swept off the earth! Everybody equal! ”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “For two hundred years socialism and trade
unionism were about getting equal material rights for the working class and the
poor. Now you got it you want the reverse. Twenty years ago you were vigorously
campaigning for working class people to have equality by having their own homes
and gardens. So many gave all our time all our wealth to that crusade-“
MIKA: “Ralph Waldo Emerson said that consistency is the virtue of small
minds.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Actually that was Alexander Pope. The Emerson
quote you are thinking of concerns shadows. Something about being consistent is
to chase to yesterday’s shadows.”
The two men stare at each other, no longer smiling.
MIKA: “That generation that opposed censorship and supported Civil
Rights. That generation that backed the Communists in the Vietnam War but
wouldn’t live in true Communist ways for themselves. That generation that gave
11
up in 1971 and 1972 and went for their holiday homes, Volvos, paid holidays and
superannuation… They would not give up their wine collections and four course
meals and Picasso prints on the wall to live in true anarchist Communism would
they? Most won’t come out in support of Thatcher and Reagan – at least until their
precious luxuries are threatened hey? You came out of that generation and you
seemed better than that. Are you?
ROLAND BRADLEY “Why do you have ants crawling over the bloc
model?”
MIKA: “Because I put sugar on it. That’s so they would come. There is so
much we can learn about social organization from ant’s nests. Everybody works,
everybody knows their place and their tasks and there are no drones. Second
reason! The ants are the same size as the humans would be. This is so that when
we examine the bloc we keep a sense of proportion.”
ROLAND BRADLEY stares enigmatically for some time. His tone has
become coldly hostile
ROLAND BRADLEY: “And what happens to those who reject your
utopia?”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Plan B.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Which is?
MIKA: “Antarctica.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Do you mean that people who don’t want to live
your way are going to be forcibly taken to -”
MIKA: “Well look at Australia. The first people there were taken in chains
against their will and look at how well their descendants do.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Nothing grows in Antarctica. Antarctica is all ice
and rock!”
MIKA: “For now.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Meaning what?”
MIKA: “Wait till we mine that rock to build the blocs! Wait till we melt the
polar icecap!
12
ROLAND BRADLEY: “That will flood all the world’s beaches!”
MIKA: “Which rival Swiss skiing fields as the preserve of the middle class.
Also beaches are often inhabited by elderly retirees long past their use by dates. All
they usually do is sit around trying to wank or listening to classical music, a sure
sign of poofterism or intellectual elitism. They produce nothing but shit and farts
pessimistic ramblings and jabber. All they are god for is body parts to keep the
younger unfortunates in the work force going. Nobody with self-respect wants to
go ga-ga and how many at past eighty don’t or do anything productive for the
majority?
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Some old people lead productive lives.”
MIKA: Only a few and why should the world’s majority be held back for a
few? How many African slum dwellers make it past eighty, producing works of
genius? Even though I am a genius my rules will apply to me. At eighty I’ll take
my final tablets. Okay oldies can’t work or tackle on the field anymore, but it is a
rare one that even turns up to barrack for a football team. Idiotic surfies are worse.
Have you ever talked to the dopiest creature on this planet, an Aussie surfie
chick?” Have you noticed the level of idiocy in any of those Californian beach
movies?”
(Roland Bradley sighs and stares.)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “There was always this element in your thought,
awaiting development and you were not the only one. Even at the brightest
moments Bree could see it. The golden sixties… yesterday’s shadows…
(Roland Bradley but has a momentary look of sadness, then goes almost
expressionless. Mika has ignored him and continues.)
MIKA: ‘Besides that ice cap water will irrigate the Sahara and turn it back
into a breadbasket, which it was before male dominated hunter gatherer societies
killed off the animals with their specie genocide. All havoc on this planet is caused
by alpha males and their vainglorious urge to conquer, control and dominate.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: (as if speaking to a retarded child) “The Sahara is
mainly sand and rock, water has no productive effect on sand and rock.”
MIKA: “They are the necessary ingredients needed for building the blocs!
And then we find out what lies beneath”
13
ROLAND BRADLEY: (sardonically) “Please tell me about Plan C.”
MIKA: “Ah the Planet Trifaladore! A true paradise awaiting humanity but
first we must educate them in the bloc reeducation sessions. Hold on while I put on
my costume. It can of course only approximate the appearance of Trifaladorians.”
(Exit Mika kitchen entrance. Roland Bradley quickly picks up random pieces of the
manuscript, scans through them and phones)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Michelle? Hold the camera crew, take a siesta. You
will know that forty is not far off when disillusionment comes from childhood
heroes. No interviews today.”
MIKA: (emerges S.R.) “Costumes in the wash. The whole globe will
understand the necessity for equality and honesty and freedom and follow my
detailed blueprint for achieving it-”
BILL: (Bill, a young man rushing in from Stage Left) “Larry’s at the next corner
looking for our number.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Just when I thought today’s potential weirdness had
peaked.”
MIKA: “You see now that I planned to avoid a confrontation, not cause one.
Bill get yourself an ice cream. Pronto.” (He gives Bill a coin, he is stunned by a gift
and he leaves S.L. as Roland starts packing his equipment)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “If you will excuse me, we are holidaying on
Majorca and will be back next week. If you want the interview let us hope that
Athens is a Larry free zone.”
*
Scene 2
Mika, Alice and Bill have been joined by three others, Rosa Wovoka and her three
other children, Rachel who is thirty, Joshua who seems a retarded teenager and
Moshe, a younger quiet, teenage boy. Rachel has a permanent sneer on her face
while Alice, Bill and Moshe have expressionless faces but sullen body language.
Although she is approaching sixty Rosa dresses like a teenager and has dyed hair.
All sit at the table, all wear pink fluffy booties. The children all have plates before
them with each of them having one slice of bread, a piece of fruit, peanuts and
lettuce and a class of water. A sixth plate before an empty place has the same.
14
Rosa’s and Mika’s plates have abundant vegieburgers and four bread slices, two
pieces of fruit and red wine. Mika types away oblivious while the others sit
absolutely still. As the clock strikes twelve Mika stops typing.
MIKA: “Well let us see if Larry’s trainable.”
(As the clock rings out twelve the bell rings. Rosa’s face goes into a smirk.)
ROSA: “He’s trainable.”
MIKA: “Reached a paragraph exactly to the bell. I am better at self-training
than teaching others.”
(He claps his hands twice and like animals in a pavlov experiment the children
start to eat hungrily. Rosa puts on a smile and goes to the door.)
ROSA: “Larry!”
LARRY: “Hello! Made it! Mika!”
(Larry is a tall, thin man approaching thirty. His long hair is awry and he has a
working class Aussie accent. He smiles and nods a lot. He has faded blue patched
jeans and an army surplus shirt, but immaculate and stylish cowboy boots. He
carries an enormous rucksack which Rosa and Mika stare at knowingly and
exchange glances over it. Mika puts on a smile for Larry and gets up shaking his
hand.)
MIKA: “Happy as Larry! He finally made it – all the way from -”
ROSA: (disrupting to get attention she gives a four clap, the one used by
Australian primary school teachers. They give a responsive double clap as
children do) “Now everyone stop eating and listen. This is Larry Palmer from
Australia. As you know Larry has given us considerable help with the groundwork
and information collecting so necessary for our book that exposes the Kaolini
dictatorship. Therefore he is an honoured guest and may do as he wishes, as if this
were his own home. Even if he comes in wearing leather boots. Leather comes
from the skins of dead cows Larry. We have nothing to do with the exploitation of
animals in our home.”
(Larry’s eyes gleam but as Rosa claps her hands he goes into a baffled facial
expression. Rachel stands and speaks in a sing-song voice.)
15
RACHEL: “Hello! My name is Rachel. I am thirty and an unemployed slut,
but we are all so happy here in sunny Greece that absolutely nothing matters.”
(Bill steps forward as Rachel steps back.)
BILL: I am Bill. Living in PNG that means that I’ve met Australians
before.”
(With prompting from Moshe, Joshua stands and with his mouth drooling and his
eyes unfocused he nods repeatedly until Moshe pulls him down.)
ROSA: My son Joshua has problems he is working on.”
(Moshe sticks his head forward and nods timidly then Alice takes her turn.)
ROSA: (in a steely but level voice) “And this is my youngest daughter Alice.
She is just fourteen and any man who thinks of touching her is heading for major
trouble – legal trouble. Jail trouble. As those young hoodlums who hang around the
Agora looking for naïve tourists well know. I got two of them jailed last month.
Ever seen the inside of a Greek jail?”
(Larry’s mouth drops in fear and sensing a weakness she presses her advantage
with a sneer and gleaming eyes that become a snarl.)
LARRY: (puzzled and trying to bolster his confidence.) “No and why would
I want to? Anyway I’m not into teenyboppers. Besides my testicles were just about
ground to pulp by this blonde stenographer. She is a beauty queen. Won a trip to
Europe by coming first in a Farah Fawcett look alike contest. (Larry pauses
puzzled by the stunned faces.) We sat side by side on the same connecting flight.
How’s that for good luck? She is from Winterset Iowa.” (Rachel stifles amazed
laughter. Rosa and her sons and Alice drop their jaws in amazement. Larry seems
puzzled by this response.) “That’s where John Wayne comes from.” (Larry absent
mindedly wipes his moth with the tablecloth.)
MIKA: “Larry you look jet-lagged. Why don’t you get some sleep?
LARRY: “But I haven’t seen you since seventy-eight, five years and we
could have a great old rave.”
ROSA: “Yes raving is something you are good for, isn’t it Larry?”
LARRY: “It is just aussie slang for enthused talking.”
16
ROSA: “Well Larry we do not use slang in this house. At school and then
Teacher’s College I gained first place for English and I will not tolerate slang,
sexist comments and pig’s manner’s here. You are not in pigpen Australia here.”
LARRY: “A few minutes ago I was an honoured guest.” (Rosa storms out,
Mika starts typing and fearfully Moshe pulls on Larry’s sleeve.) I thought we could
talk. Why can’t we get stoned and listen to some rock. These Greek bands are
really good from the bit I heard on the way here.”
MIKA: (snarling and loud) “Moshe! Show Larry to his room. Make sure
that he gets some sleep. That should shut him up!”
*
Scene 3
(Mika types, grinning maniacally as he types out the theme to the Blue Danube
Waltz. Larry emerges, from the kitchen, stretching.)
LARRY: “Are these guys in that incredibly crowded National Gardens park
the ones that sell Moroccan hashish for the price of a chocolate bar? My treat!”
(Mika ignore him, typing on, Larry assesses.) “Mate you need to relax.” (Vexed,
Mika smashes his fist into the table.)
MIKA: “How can anyone relax in the National Gardens? So many people
try to do that you can barely see the grass. They have to kick them out at siesta’s
end so the grass and tree roots have a fighting chance! Rosa! Iced Coff!”
(He continues typing as Rosa rushes out from S.R. with an iced coffee.)
ROSA: “Well Larry now that you have disturbed Mika eight minutes before
dinner and disrupted today’s timetable -”
LARRY: “Oh timetables are not that important, it’s alright.”
MIKA: “No it is not alright! A timetable is a timetable! Exploited people
across the globe are our dependents. They rely on us and the timetable works as a
weapon in the fight for their liberation bloc living will give and you are wrecking
that weapon with your selfish concern for self-pleasure. Now read and learn
something in that oafish head!”
ROSA: “And could you learn something useful?”
17
(Mika returns to typing while Larry goes to the shelf and picks a book and goes to
the bean bag sullen faced, becoming like the children.)
MIKA: “Pot luck Larry. That’s the best art book in our collection. Don’t get
greasy fingermarks all over it.”
LARRY: “No I won’t get it dirty. Seventy-five pounds. This year’s printing.
You beg us for money.”
ROSA: “A gratis review copy. Mika reviews many books, sometimes three
dozen a week.”
LARRY: “I know. I sent him dozens; so did Jack and Amanda, They said he
must be a genius to read so many books a week and review them, but where are
they-”
ROSA: (quickly) “Now really Larry why does someone like you choose to
read a book like that?”
LARRY: “Because Berenguer-“
ROSA: (shreiking) “It is pronounced Ber-en- gu-ere! Musically pronounced,
with soft intonations that rise like joyous flute notes, not Bear ran garahh, like
some stupid Australian suburb full of magpies in trees and bungalows filled with
stupid lazy Australians.” (She pauses for breath and her voice is less shrill, but still
steely.) “So why did you chose that book?”
RACHEL: So why don’t you let him read it? He bought you hundreds.”
MIKA: (while staring at Rachel) “Thou has committed fornication, but that
was in another country… She stained the time past, light the time to come.”
(Rachel, takes steps back in acquiescence. As Larry puts the book back the
doorbell rings and Moshe and Bill enter with many cartons of Chinese takeaway,
lemonade and wine. Joshua comes out of the kitchen excited, nodding his head
vigorously and pointing to the cartons.)
JOSHUA: “F-F-Food! R-r,r,r, Real Food!”
RACHEL: “Thanks Larry.”
LARRY: “For?”
18
RACHEL: “Joshua’s birthday food, we can have a real party! You paid for
this!”
LARRY: “No I didn’t.”
MIKA: (entering from the kitchen and followed by Rosa who stays
motionless near the door) “Well yes you did. I put your name on the bill. Although
we eat natural foods sparingly so that we don’t exploit third wordlist peoples, a
little treat occasionally such as to doubly celebrate your arrival and Joshua’s
birthday is okay. You aren’t going to deprive Joshua of his treat are you? Being a
retard he has no intellectual pleasures, just oral ones.”
(Joshua smiles and begins to drool and tries to say food as if on cue. Rachel’s
sneer becomes more pronounced. Larry stares at him with furrowed eyebrows and
a suspicious look.)
LARRY: “Well… no.”
MIKA: (smiling and showing overwhelming and soothing charm) “Good on
you, always generous, always helping others! One of the foot-soldiers of the sixties
revolution that made whatever we achieved possible and sent us so many books,
magazines, clippings - .”
RACHEL: “So why can’t he look at the thousands of dollars worth of books
he purchased?”
MIKA: (After giving her a warning glance) “Nobody said he couldn’t. Do
these voices in your head say these words? You know Rachel you are becoming
delusional again, sounding as if you are delusional from drugs. Should your parole
officer hear of this?”
ROSA: “Actually it is Larry who is delusional. First he claims to have sent
us many, many books worth thousands. So where are they? No such books exist in
this house. Look through this house as much as you please. You won’t find any
such books. Now listen to this. (She holds up a diary.) ‘Athens Airport is like
every other airport on this trip, except for one thing: I see Roland Bradley, his wife
and two children. It is definitely him. When I say their names they turn around-”
LARRY: (interrupting) “That’s my personal diary!”
ROSA: “Personal? Going to say it is private?”
19
MIKA: “Well nothing is personal or private here mate. That’s middle class
bullshit and we will never see the paradise of Marx’s true communism, anarchist
communism where individuals can truly flourish, until we liberate ourselves from
ideas of personal and private. I bet you think that money for this meal was your
money that we don’t have a right to, don’t you?”
LARRY: “That food costs as much as I spend on food for a week.”
MIKA: “Din-din!”
(The others sit at the table and go for the food like hungry wolves.)
*
Scene 4
(Later that night. Larry is writing while on the beanbag. Mika is typing. Traffic
noise is in the background.)
LARRY: “You already have the collected works of Sigmund Freud in the
paperback edition. So why ask me to carry the hardbacks all that way?”
MIKA: “The hardback edition is more authoritative. It will look better in the
bibliography. You brought the Freuds?”
(Larry nods, but uneasily. Mika rushes over to the rucksack and quickly and
intently rummages through things, tossing clothes, maps and paperbacks aside and
then briefly smiling when he finds the uniform hardbacks and piles them up, but
then the smile fades when he cannot find more and he becomes coldly angry.)
MIKA: “Where are the rest?” (This is in an interrogative tone and when he
repeats it he becomes shrill.) “Where are the rest? Eight volumes! Only eight
volumes! Twenty-four make up the set!”
LARRY: “They weighed too much. Even if I could carry that much weight
without breaking my back the airport people said it was over the weight limit.”
MIKA: “Time and time again I have to tell you to stand up for yourself and
yell shriek and throw a neuro and be morality incarnate and be stubborn and make
such a pest of yourself that they either give in or threaten you with the police! Then
you threaten them with slander and over ninety times out of a hundred you get your
own way.”
20
LARRY: “They were so heavy I couldn’t lift them and when I put them on
my back from the table and stood up I fell backwards and the rucksack broke.”
MIKA: (points to NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE slogan and he speaks slowly
and patiently) “Those words are very true, but they only apply to those who have
the will, so why don’t you admit to me and yourself that you don’t have the guts,
the will or the unselfishness to bring me the books our cause relies on?”
LARRY: “You need Avis rent aburro. I need to see something of Athens.
(Exit Larry S.L. Mika shakes his head and rings on the phone.)
MIKA: “Paco can you hold on the purchase of the collected paperback
Freuds? I’ll need them a bit longer.” (He sighs and exits S.R. A few seconds later
Joshua pokes his head out of the kitchen. His eyes gleam with cunning and focus
on the rucksack. He darts over to it and feels the canvas fabric for quality, smiling
approvingly, but sneers at the clothing, except for the boots and Akubra, which he
tries on and he smiles as they fit. He finds a folder, scans through it and gleefully
takes the cash left and assesses the paperbacks, puts them in the rucksack and
scrawls THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE ME below the Goya painting. He then exits
by the front entrance. A few seconds later Mika and Rosa emerge, smiling smugly
as they look at Larry’s piled possessions.)
ROSA: “Well he took your lecture about possessions seriously.”
MIKA: “Nah, he’s just gutless and fled as soon as he could, just like Pete,
Amanda, Osaka, Shintaro and that poofy one from Oregon, Fernando, Fernan?”
ROSA: “Femo. Well it didn’t take much to get Larry moving did it? The
Chinese meal was more than we expected, we would not have got anything more.”
MIKA: “Look what he wrote on the wall. I’m amazed that he had the guts to
do that even behind our backs. He was always so meek, never charged the police at
demos. ”
(Rosa’s gaze goes towards the kitchen, she emerges stunned, holding an empty
jar.)
MIKA: “Larry stole the house money!”
ROSA: “Call the police!”
21
(Enter Larry from the front entrance, coughing from pollution, staring at
where his boots and rucksack were. The open empty wallet is there instead. He
becomes angry.)
LARRY: “Call the police alright! You stole my money and the best pair of cowboy
boots I ever got! Handmade Greek leather and I bet you stole my books and my
genuine canvas and burnished leather R.M.Williams brand rucksack and Akubra to
sell on the side! Mad sly psycho bitch! Call the police!”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS (awaiting at the entrance) “Who calls for police?”
ROSA: “He is a thief!” (She holds up the jar.) “House money taken!”
LARRY: “Setup!” (He nods to himself.)
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “A youngish Englis or American was seen going
through the mailboxes and running; he knew where domestic keys were kept.
People describe him as a man of much simplicity given to nodding his head. He
was seen carrying a green rucksack, wearing new cowboy boots and was wearing a
cowboy hat.”
LARRY: (nodding) “They are called akubras and that’s my R.M. Williams
rucksack an-” (He suddenly realizes how much trouble he has just got himself into
and starts to quake with fear while Stavkas stares levelly slightly amused.) “I
didn’t do it, somebody else-”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “We should discuss this matter at the police
station.”
LARRY: (shaking his head vigorously) “My father always said never go to
the station with the police. He told me that when I was six years old and then when
I was twelve an-”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “And I am telling you that you can come
peaceably or I can call the regular police, not tourist police like me and if you resist
arrest from them you face five years imprisonment – even if you are found
innocent of the initial charge, which I suspect is so.”
LARRY: (pointing to Rosa) “She did it, she stole my things as a setup.”
ROSA: “I did not!”
22
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “Perhaps. The neighbours say this is a strange
apartment. Now Senior Larry we will take your statement about stolen property,
come.”
(Larry sighs and with his head bent down they leave S.L..)
*
Scene 5
(The next morning. Larry is asleep on the bean bag before the bookcase. Beside
him are his cowboy boots and hat. The phone rings and although groggy, he
answers.)
LARRY: “Jack ringing all the way from Australia!”
JACK: “How is it all going?”
LARRY: “Oh the Pantheon and the National Gardens were magnificent, but
they boot you out in the afternoon so the trees can live, so many people they kill
off the grass. The king can keep his palace, must take him six days of the week to
clean and it still looks daggy. Why do people want to be king for? They can’t say
what they think or do what they want. They marry dags in alliances of convenience
but this Greek queen seems nice, she has blonde hair, a nice smile and shapely
legs. “
JACK: “Royal queens are different to beauty queens, don’t even think about
it, You’ll end up in a Greek jail.”
LARRY: “Greek jail cells are interesting places. Prostitutes, burglars,
transvestites, tourists who hit those funny little soldiers in the skirts. Gaelic kilts
are manly, but these guys wear frilly little black things that look like mini-skirts.”
JACK: “What were you in for?”
LARRY: “Suspicion, only overnight. They caught the real burglar, Joshua
red handed on another job. He had my gear and money and confessed. He handed
everything back voluntarily and was under-aged, so we shared takeaway pizza and with the inspector. Not a bad bloke for a cop, he let us go. The American
consul got him a ticket home. You know him, Joshua Wovoka.”
JACK: “Wasn’t he the retarded son?”
23
LARRY: “Only pretending. He says Mommie Dearest didn’t like it when he
was showing signs of being smarter than she was, so she gave him dopey roles to
play and he pretended to be until he couldn’t take her anymore. Mate she is a
classic loud mouthed, anal retentive, sadistic psycho control freak bossy psycho
bitch! He left Delores for this? Delores who was a dead ringer for Catherine
Denevue and nice personality to boot?”
JACK: “Delores is doing well now she has time to run her own gift shop.
After Rosa gave up teaching a decade back she soon gained a global reputation for
being one of the most highly rated proof-readers in the publishing business.”
LARRY: “What’s that got to do with anything?”
JACK: “Some sad news.”
LARRY: “Ready.”
JACK: “Aids can be transmitted heterosexually.”
LARRY: “You wouldn’t kid me about a thing like that? Maybe it is just
tabloid press wankers trying to scare people so as to make more sales.”
JACK: “It is in respectable scientific magazines.”
LARRY: “Are any heterosexual women from Winterset Iowa known to be
infected?”
JACK: (levelly but with suppressed amusement) “I will investigate and keep
you informed. Time to settle down with one woman.”
LARRY: “Except for microwaves, videos and Emmylou Harris the nineteen
eighties are shaping up as a very bad decade. Yuppieshit rule.”
JACK: “So where will you go next?”
LARRY: “Mika has to be saved from her before I go anywhere else. She’s
knocked all the fun out of him with her rules. They’re up to something: they write
to everybody that they are poor and ask for money, but they are rolling in it –
somebody’s moving about, bye mate. ”
(Enter Rachel S.R. from the kitchen as he puts the phone down.)
RACHEL: “Keep your voice down. We have a few minutes. Now how long
have you known Mika?”
24
LARRY: “Since 1966 but it felt like I knew him since I read his first book
two years before that. (His voice picks up in cheer and enthusiasm as he recalls)
He was one of the first people who turned me on to socialism. When that first book
came out it was like, well it was like all the thoughts that were ever in my mind
about how good the world could be were there in print – and it all seemed possible
then.”
RACHEL: “And now?”
LARRY: (He looks at her and shrugs his shoulders.) It was a great book
wasn’t it?
RACHEL: “It was a very great book. What was he like then?”
LARRY: “A real madcap, lots of fun. He was often high on dope and his
own energy. Sometimes he would take on roles and act weird, have everybody in
stitches, even the police who would be there to arrest him. The dope Dolores,
Mika, Jack, Amanda and I would get through… (He smiles in recollection) We
were all happy then.”
RACHEL: “So what happened?”
LARRY: “It all started to fade when the Vietnam War did, but it was still
okay till the end of the seventies, but some people got crazy, some got doctrinaire,
some got rich.”
RACHEL: “And which one did Mika get?”
LARRY: “Another one, set up; we all got that one, Nine of us.”
RACHEL: “What is the full story?”
LARRY: “Mika initiated this anthology that exposed the Kaolini
dictatorship. Mika did the introduction and the chapter on secret police. Jack did
the government financing by Ibbitti Metals and and how they financed our
university, and killed off of the indigenous people and devastated the environment.
Roland Bradley did their suppression of information and financed propaganda in
the west.”
RACHEL: “And what chapter did you write?”
LARRY: “Oh I’m not much of a writer. I sold it when most booksellers
would not touch it.”
25
RACHEL: “Did it ever occur to you or any of those academics that exposing
the mining company that was financing their university would lead to massive
problems?”
LARRY: “Oh yes. Roland Bradley knew just how it was going to go, so did
Jack, he said Ibbitti Metals would be mad as cut snakes and go for us and clean the
uni out of all radicals. He said we would all be set up on a pretext that had nothing
to do with the book and we were set up. For sexual involvement with a whacko uni
student, but she was crazy. She didn’t accuse me and lucky for Jack that he was in
England when she said they were involved. His penis couldn’t stretch from
England to Kaoliniland so he could prove his innocence.”
RACHEL: (incredulous, she laughs) “Oh did the others have long enough
penises?”
LARRY: “Two were women. Didn’t do them any good. She said they were
lesbian rapists. One of them turned right-wing and is a speech writer for some
American politician. Roland Bradley had an alibi and got a job as a journalist, but
he’s not really radical anymore, just giving to trendy radical charities and reciting
what’s trendy so as to keep his job, his bosses are trendy. I think he’s a spy for
somebody. The second woman accused committed suicide. Another lecturer got a
job as a garbage-man. The others are in jail in Kaoliniland or on the dole.”
RACHEL: “And what was your alibi?”
LARRY: “Different set-up at the same time. I got drunk and gave Roland
Bradley a mouthful of well-deserved put-downs and said he was a secret homo and
a cuckold which he is, so they said I attacked this trendy idiot and that I was
paranoid and mad and homo. That discredited me pretty well. They said exactly the
same about Mika.”
RACHEL: “Yes they did.” (She sighs and assesses him for a few seconds)
“If everybody knew the book would lead to a very powerful, murderously ruthless,
mining company getting them sacked and slandered why on earth did they go
ahead and publish it?”
LARRY: “Mika convinced everybody that it was their duty not to commit
the crime of the turning of the blind eye, not to be the pampered lap dogs of
Western imperialists and live in a world of delusions.”
26
RACHEL: “The crime of the turning of a blind eye - that would be not
speaking out against exploitation, wherever it occurs?” (Larry nods and Rachel
sighs.) “And he also told you about the theory of complicity, those self-destructive
willing victims didn’t he?” (Larry nods again) “When today’s mail comes it will
have cheques from the supporters, those opponents of the Kaolini dictatorship who
admire his book. Others are environmentalists who fight Ibbitti Metals. A few are
still people like you and Jack. Most, are readers now, not activists anymore. They
want to buy the books he rarely really reviews. Most reviews are written by my
mother or myself. Here they come; watch quietly.”
(Enter Rosa and Mika, Moshe and Bill. All except Mika wear pink fluffies,
he carries a pair. They line up behind the chairs, the sons carry breakfast on trays
which they hold up above the table until Mika hits the gong. At the sound they then
place the trays on the table. The meals are similar to yesterday’s meal in Scene 2
Each of Rosa’s children and now Larry have one slice of bread, half a slice of
fruit, nuts and beans and a class of water. Rosa’s and Mika’s plates have abundant
salad and six bread slices, two pieces of fruit, chocolate and red wine. Larry stares
at the different serves. Rosa notices his look.)
ROSA: “Lenin ordered higher rations for the Bolshevik leadership. We find
it necessary for now.”
MIKA: “Today there will be a slight variation to schedule which will take
five minutes, all of those minutes will come out of free time.
Sadly we must discuss the Judas Iscariot we harboured in our mist. He will
be discussed, then unpersoned. Joshua was not the retard he seemed. After
sabotaging the manuscript he defaced this room with paranoic ravings, gave
information to the police and like Judas left with our money. If you think I
exaggerate his treachery listen to this.” (He nods to Rosa who reads
expressionlessly from a note)
ROSA: “‘I hate you all, dupes and bullies. My uncle sent me money so I can
go back to Wisconsin. I am going to get into the marines so that next war I can kill
commies and people like you and make the world free. If the marines won’t have
me next year I’ll hand out election material for Reagan.’”
MIKA: “Now before he is unpersoned, which means he will never be
referred to ever again, which means anything connected to him will be cast out,
does anyone want to say anything about Joshua, anything at all?”
27
BILL: (banging his fist into the table) “The traitor! The crypto revisionist
petty-bourgeois spy traitor! (It is difficult to interpret if Bill is being genuine or
satirical. Rosa and Rachel look at him suspiciously. Moshe and Alice are
expressionless.)
MIKA: (He hits the gong) “Joshua Wovoka!”
(He hits the gong again) “Joshua Wovoka!”
(He hits the gong for the third time, but with such force that it topples, and in a
panic he rushes to save the Madonna and does so. Relieved, he resumes his seat.)
“Fortunately we have a replacement for Joshua, Larry!”
LARRY: (putting up his hand) “Can I just say-“
ROSA: “Yes Larry.”
LARRY: “Wasn’t it just said that Joshua’s name would never be said
again?”
ROSA: “By you, visitors and the children; Mika and I may have to refer to
him. If we must do so his name will always bear the affix traitor.”
MIKA: “Now as Joshua’s replacement it will be your task to put out the garbage,
daily wash dishes at break, and every Thursday and Saturday give me physical
relief when called upon. (Larry’s eyes widen in fear and his glances dart around)
Tenno means tennis, gives my muscles a break from typing. That’s physical relief.
(Larrysighs in relief) Breks is breakfast, serve it up and bring it pronto. Everything
is done as soon as I request it. Din-din is dinner. Shoppo means go to the market,
you will always get a list every Friday.”
ROSA: “And never deviate from it. Do you know what deviate means?”
MIKA: “No loud talk ever or vistors without a vetting from Rosa or myself.
They could be spies. Any questions?”
LARRY: “You need a break.”
MIKA: “Actually we need to go into our morning session.”
(He slowly hits the gong twelve times to toll then Rosa claps her hands the
way primary school teachers do to get attention. Her children and Mika clap back
in submission.)
28
ROSA: “Remember who you are! Remember where you come from! All!”
(All except Larry recite the following words in unison. Except for Rosa and Mika
who seem sincere, the others appear resentful and weary.)
“No man is an island entire to himself, any man’s death diminishes me because I
am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know whom the bell tolls, for
it tolls for thee.”
LARRY: (eyebrows furrowed and puzzled) “The real quote is longer.”
MIKA: “I improved it, got to the guts of it.”
LARRY: “Oh.”
MIKA: “News! Just as the news goes round the world we bring our news
round the table. Everybody contributes some vital news that effects the world!
Rosa!
ROSA: (In tones as if she has lost neighbors) “Twenty-three people are
known dead in El Salvador. The death squads have struck again.”
MIKA: “Terrible, fascism is alive and well. Alice!”
ALICE: “Three famous Australian writers have died this year. Paul
Brickhill, Alan Moorehead and Wilfred Burchett -”
MIKA: “Oh really Alice show more maturity – not one of them wrote
anything as good as I did; they were petty-bourgeois, not worth the ten seconds
you spent on them. Moshe! Do better!”
MOSHE: “There’s a terrible lot of bullying going on in Russia’s army
barracks in Siberia.”
MIKA: “Yes That’s better. Russia has never really been destalinised. When
we have global power destalinization must be one of our first tasks. Larry get the
idea?”
LARRY: “My cowboy boots have gone missing again.”
(Mika’s jaw drops, vexedly Rosa raised her gaze to the heavens and her children
show fear, except Rachel who is amused.)
MIKA: “Bill!”
29
BILL: “US Imperialist agents, almost certainly CIA, have denied their guilt
in the assassination of President Akuna.”
LARRY: “Who died in a plane crash.”
MIKA: (laughing) “Don’t they always? Plane crashes are their favourite
method. Look at all the radicals and critics of society who died in plane crashes.
Will Hayes, Ord Wingate, Glen Miller that same year -”
LARRY: “Will Hayes was a comedian, He crashed in 1935, twelve years
before the CIA was even formed.”
ROSA: (screeching) “Oh shut up you stupid loud mouth, you silly man! You
have a chance to learn from a man acclaimed as a genius and you butt in!”
MIKA: “JFK, Che, Martin Luther King, accidents were they? Sorry about
that pick-axe in your scull Trotsky, thought your brain was an iceblock? Plane
crashes? The CIA hated rock music, why do you think Buddy Holly’s plane was
packed with rockers? Hemingway survived two African crashes, days apart, you
think they were a coincidence? Hi Dag Hammarskjald, UNO chief and President
Okuna you both disagreed with the Americans, your fatal African crashes were
accidents; they happen a lot in Africa! Tell that to CIA victims.”
LARRY: “Evidence?” (Mika suddenly jumps on the table and pirouetting,
hurls plates and cutlery around. Larry laughs.) “Good one! The madcap surrealist
is back!”
MIKA: “I am in the role of a CIA agent doing what you think they do,
leaving evidence scattered around. Here is evidence of a CIA inspired domestic
dispute. If there was no evidence, if the dining table was neat and clean in your
mind there was no domestic dispute! No evidence of CIA involvement is definite
evidence the CIA are behind things!”
BILL: “You were told he was a genius!”
LARRY: (shaking his head and confused) “I don’t understand.”
ROSA: “Do you really think that a man acclaimed as a genius by Nobel
Prize winners, by Pulitzer Prize winners, a man who sells books by the thousands,
has time to explain basic logic to a racist cowboy clod like you?”
LARRY: “I want my cowboy boots.”
30
BILL: “You can’t have them. They were sold this morning and the rest of
your junk- underwear and toothpaste excepted. We have food money in the jar
now. We took your cash as well. The group is more important than the individual,
especially when he conspires with a non-person to rob us of our food money.”
LARRY: “Joshua took the money!”
ROSA: “You admit to buying a pizza that you shared with a traitor and a
policeman?”
LARRY: “It was my money so if I am buying everybody’s food here
everybody should get equal serves! Vegieburgers for everybody and ice cream on
Sunday dinner!”
MIKA: “Individualistic rewards for individual effort functions as the
ideological heart of capitalism.”
LARRY: “They were my boots! Boots that good cost twelve hundred dollars
in Sydney and eighty in Athens. Real cowboys can’t afford them in Australia, just
film stars and rock stars can.”
ROSA: “Those boots are a worldly vanity, incompatible with the spirit of
self-sacrifice and self-abnegation that socialists must have in their hearts.”
MIKA: “Those boots that you obsess with are clearly a strong part of your
identity, but look at the cowboy persona and you will see that your boots and hat
are every bit as bad as Nazi jackboots and a Nazi helmet with a prominent
swatstika. How often do we see a black cowboy in any of those shows? My theory
of no evidence being the strongest proof is clearly demonstrated: cowboys are
racist.”
BILL: “And exploitationist!”
MIKA: “Yes! You watched that tv show Cattledrive a hundred times. Have
you ever wondered what happens to the cattle when they are taken to the town –
you think they are going to be given a paddock for retired cows?”
BILL: “It is called the slaughterhouse!”
MIKA: “And with good reason!”
LARRY: “You talk like vegetarians, but you ate Chinese beef last night.”
31
BILL: “You need to study Marx’s theory of contradictions in dialectics and
you will see that everything that exists contains contradictions.”
MIKA: “And my theory of the falsity of the obvious fact.”
ROSA: “A development of the theory of no evidence being irrefutable proof.
Only philistine morons believe in the triumph of the proven fact. Facts and
statements prove nothing.”
LARRY: “But you just made a-”
RACHEL: “And you need to be quiet and listen.”
ROSA: “Yes you need to listen indeed. We are trying to help you overcome
this cowboy racism. Getting rid of that silly hat and those ugly boots was only the
first step. Now how old were you when you first saw an Aboriginal?”
LARRY: “I don’t know, there weren’t any Aborigines in Tasmania.”
MIKA: “The theory of no evidence is irrefutable proof proven! You never
saw Aborigines because there were no Aborigines to see! You killed them off!”
(Mika starts putting a call through on the bakerlite.)
LARRY: “I never killed anybody! Punched Jack MacParkinson’s nose in but
he hit Bozo my colt with a whip first, for a bit of fun he said, besides he was born
Scottish, not Aboriginal. Then there were the Tarazin brothers in that pub fracas,
but they weren’t Aboriginal were they?”
MIKA: “My great-great grandmother was an Aboriginal and I will not
tolerate racism.”
ROSA: “And my great-great-great-great-grandfather was a Cherokee, a
native American forced from his land and made to walk the trail of tears to a
virtual concentration camp, herded all the way by fascist cowboys in uniform. And
unlike that archetypal example of Mika’s theory of those self-destructive willing
victims compliant in the theory of complicity, and for that matter Tasmanian
Aborigines, I will not tolerate bullies, racism or hearty Aussie brutality.”
LARRY “I read that both groups resisted, they weren’t willing at all.”
MIKA (holding up the phone) “You don’t believe us, so Jack will confirm it
happened. Jack are you ready?”
JACK: “Ready as I will ever be at three in the morning.”
32
MIKA: “Let’s not waste time. Just answer this with a simple yes or no. Did
or did not Australians at Risdon Cove in the year eighteen o’ four hunt down
Tasmanian Aborigines and send their sculls to Sydney in pickle barrels in an
attempt to exterminate them?” (Mika smiles as the phone goes dead.) You just
heard my theory of no evidence being the strongest proof being clearly
demonstrated. Jack does not muddy the evidence with philistine facts. His silence
is proof. Facts do not exist.”
LARRY “But that statement is a fact and how can you have proof, theories
or evidence without facts?”
(Mika is baffled by this and loses his temper. He repeatedly hits a stunned
Larry with the beanbag then Rosa and Bill kick him. Larry runs for the door and
seeing he needs shoes, grabs those nearest, fluffies. He exits by the front.)
*
Scene 6
(The next night. The doorbell rings. Alice in a dressing gown emerges S.R. and
goes to answer. Inspector Stavkas and Larry, looking bedraggled and still in
fluffies is beside him. S.L.)
ALICE: “It’s the police at the door.”
MIKA: “Lamebrain! Polezi! Loud and clear spoken once loudly, you
wasted three seconds on words you didn’t need!”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: (in a curt tone) “Good evening Senior Horne.”
MIKA: “Beunos Nochas Senior Fascista. Y-”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “We are not going through this problem yet
again. You insist on speaking Castellano. This is Greece. You insist on search
warrant, you insist on calling me fascista – and your guests, who are found
sleeping on park benches, in stoops and doorways and now with Senior Larry in
Byzantine era excavation sites, do not say much, but say you threaten more money
by litigation.”
(Mika starts to speak, but Stavkas holds up his hand and this stops him.)
“You have many friends Senor Horne, but unless they are rich and famous they
end up at my police station. Now to another matter.”
33
MIKA: (eyes gleaming and smiling smugly) “Oh and what would that be?”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “The archbishop reported the theft of his mitre,
crozier and gown. The thief was strangely brazen. All witnesses describe a
laughing little red-haired footballer with flaming tattoos on his arms, coming to
this bloc.”
MIKA: “Although my genius has correctly been described as unique, my
physical appearance is far from unique.”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “I would reverse that order.”
MIKA: “Witno!”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: (sighing and waving his hands) “No need no
need!”
(Rosa and all the children emerge S.R. and recite in unison)
“We have been with Mika in this apartment for the last fifty days and he has never
left so he cannot possibly have done whatever the fascista police and their hireling
petty-bourgeois allege in some crypto-fascist conspiracy. Five alibi witnesses
means you will never win in court and are wasting your time and ours. Adios
Senior Fascista.” (They wave goodbye mockingly)
LARRY: “Besides why would anyone want to steal ceremonial robes? (He
then speaks with a touch of subconscious sarcasm) They would hardly be wanted
on the black market.”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “If they are Senior Horne will know the buyer.”
(He exits. Mika returns to typing as if nobody else exists. Larry stares resentfully)
LARRY: “Tonight is Friday. Monday is a public holiday and I’ve wired Jack
for a loan; it should be in Tuesday morning. That is when I go to Rome.”
BILL: (sneering) “Mika and I know places that change money on weekends,
don’t we Mika?”
MIKA: “ Get us a good deal and check the mail.” (Exit Bil S.L.)
MIKA: (smiling gleefully) “Oh it is going to be a fun filled long weekend. I
might even take time off my book. You haven’t asked the title. It is called
‘Masochistic Compliancy: Why there are really no blameless victims.’”
34
(Mika laughs gleefully in a menacing way while Larry looks fearful.)
*
Scene 7
(The next morning. The doorbell rings. Moshe goes to answer. Larry and Inspector
Stavkas enter carrying souvlakis, ice cream, red wine and lemonade which they put
on the table. Stavkas carries in a harp. Larry wears his rucksack, hat and boots
and is gleeful.)
LARRY: “Lunch everybody!” (Rachel, Alice and Moshe emerge, looking at
the food.)
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “We have found the culprit, who confessed.
Perhaps in the near future he will tell us more about many similar thefts.” (Their
smiles freeze.) “We have also found the mystery of Senior Larry’s extreme concern
with his boots.” (He nods to Larry who takes a boot off and peels away an inner
lining to reveal money as padding.)
LARRY: “It isn’t just the money or the way they are the world’s best boots.
I’m breaking them in for my grandfather who said to. I promised him a pair as it is
the only thing he ever asked me for. He’s ninety-one and I don’t want him to feel
that I’m always a failure. To bring him the world’s best boots all the way from
Greece would show him I can succeed at something. Besides I’ve just paid for my
pair, they will be ready Tuesday afternoon.”
RACHEL: “Larry why do you have a harp?”
LARRY: “It was cheap at the price, the old lady in the market had to make a
sale to feed her starving children and besides I know how to play one. I learnt in
high school orchestra and always wanted one.”
RACHEL: “And how are you going to get it back to Australia?”
LARRY: (confused) “Oh if the postage is too much I’ll just give it to the
Harpist busking in Monastiraki Square. Two of her strings are broken and
her base has cracked. Even if she doesn’t want it somebody can always use a
harp.”
RACHEL: (staring and sighing) “Larry the food is good, real good, thanks,
but don’t buy anything more and can’t we use the money for airfares?”
35
LARRY: “To go where? Besides Moshe and Alice will need parental
consent. Besides there’s not enough money for airfares to where?”
RACHEL: “Australia. Jack’s money will get us there. When parole period
ends I can be their guardian and guess which day parole clearance ends?”
LARRY: “Tuesday?”
RACHEL: “Midday Tuesday. Seista is at one. That is when we leave, very
quietly.”
LARRY: “But all the officialese! And your mother will never sign away her
children, will she?”
RACHEL: “Leave the officialese and mother to me. She will sign. Now that
new harp, why don’t you play a song for us while we eat.” (They start to eat. Larry
tunes and then starts to play, the notes are soothing and they are smiling.)
LARRY: (singing) “Looking at you my breath becomes a sigh-”
MIKA: (shouting offstage) “Looking at you my breath becomes flames of
rage!” (Mika enters S.R. and Rosa follows in tears)
ROSA: “Musical lyrics are trite, simplistic commercial tripe to keep morons
enslaved by taking their focus off politics and their exploitation! It fills them with
emotional masturbation and sexual innuendoes.”
MIKA: “Yes! There’s living in truth by seeing truth.”
ROSA: “Traitor! Pop music always appeals to morons, homos and
needlepricks! Larry you are obviously a case of arrested development!”
MIKA: “Looking at you I see a traitor. Playing silly love songs while
Ethiopians starve and their breath is the death rattle while brainwashing capitalist
advertising is the last thing they see. And what is our Bill looking at right now?”
ROSA: “Bars!”
LARRY: “It is just a phase, most teenagers going through trying drinking!”
MIKA: “Prison bars you idiot!”
LARRY: “Oh he was probably the caught thief in the market the old lady
who sold me the harp told me about. So why don’t you just do that five witness
chorus thing?
36
MIKA: “Because he confessed after your pal Inspector Stavkas had it all set
up on camera and showed him. Because they have the stolen goods identified by
the owners, including you and those infernal bloody boots!”
LARRY: “So that’s why Stavkas wanted me to sign the receipt before he
would give them back.”
MIKA: (moving over to the harp, he plucks a string to make an annoying
sound. His voice loses its polished academic quality and he sounds like an angry
Australian yaboo) “What good’s music? It’s vague, usually full of middle class
values and tripe sentimentality. Worst of all it wastes time!”
ROSA: “Those useless Papuans! They only came to school to play music
and sport! No interest in participle forms or parsing irregular verb forms.”
MIKA: “You like music? Well for those who like music, here’s some
music.” (He goes to the ghetto blaster) “Here’s the music Nixon made when he
gave the children of Hanoi Christmas presents in 1972.” (The sound of jets revving
up comes out of the ghetto blaster.) “In seventy-two war pig America outdid Hitler
in the number of phallic symbols it dropped on defenseless women and children.
(The whining sound of falling bombs takes over. Mika imitates them and makes
rata-tat-tat noises.) “Hey baby let me blow you up with my napalm bomb oh yeah!
Rot your flesh real good oh yeah Maybe I should be a rock star. Here’s great art
and here -” (He points to the Goya painting.) “Satan always devours his own
children, the bloodlust and selfish appetites of the male. War pig America! All the
peoples of the whole earth are your children!”
ALICE: “I was three years old in 1972.”
MIKA: “Nobody is innocent. All, even three year olds, can commit the
crime of complicity by the crime of turning the blind eye, by not asking why.”
ALICE: “You mean like asking why do Vietnamese get so desperate that
they go to sea in leaky boats and drown and nobody asks why or says anything?”
MIKA (staring, he tries to work out if Alice is undercutting him with a
clever rhetorical question or being naïve. He gives up) “Godfeed! Tonight Moshe
will be Athens’s new Adolf Eichmann! Mao, Lenin and Jack London got it right,:
socialism is for the strong.” (Moshe sighs and exits stage left to the kitchen) “Larry
you are familiar with the Bolshevik Lunarcharsky? Lenin’s Minister of
Education?”
37
MOSHE: (suddenly aggressively resentful) “Luna-tick-arse-key!”
LARRY: “I don’t like communism much. Silly buggers and dangerous. ”
(Larry shakes his head in agreement with himself)
MIKA: “Then you won’t know of Lunarcharsky’s theory of god building.
He stated that in a time of late capitalist decay and therefore massive insecurity
even socialist personhood needs a God to worship. True enough and in more
precise ways than Lunarchasky dreamed up we control ours.”
LARRY: “How?”
MIKA: “By controlling what every individual in every single species
realizes is the primary requisite for life, food.” (Mika looks up at Satan devouring
his child) “I wonder if God in his heaven has to eat and did Goya get it right, that
God does not only destroy the accursed races like the Amalekites, but devours
them on whims to feed his carnivorous appetite.”
LARRY: “That’s deep mate, pretty deep.”
MIKA: “Godfeed!” (Mosh emerges carrying a jar full of live mice and lifts
the lids on the jars.) “Make them squeal! Ignore the squeals, those cries for mercy!
Just as the whities ignored our pleas for mercy on the trail of tears! Just as the
Indigenous Charlo Islanders pleas were ignored by Ibbitti Mines and they
unleashed Kaolini on those innocent gentle people. Be merciless, be triumphant!
Yahweh! Yahweh!”
(Larry walks over to the jars and looks down into them and recalls wide eyed in
terror.)
LARRY: “Tiger snakes! Lots of them! Tiger snakes! The most dangerous
reptilian mongrels on this planet, well next to doogites and pythons and the brown
bush snakes in the Burrawang ranges! Not many species go into the attack on
humans but those mongrels do! How did you get them into Greece?”
MIKA: (speaking very calmly, even soothingly like a doctor with a difficult
patient now he has driven Larry into frenzy) “Larry calm down. We all knew what
they are. There is no need to repeat information that we already know. They are
indeed tiger snakes.”
LARRY: (Giving her some money) “Quick Rachel! Buy a double barreled
shotgun from that sports shop, single shot rifles won’t get them all in one blast. I’ll
38
watch them meantime.” (He puts the lids back on and Moshe smiling takes the
mice out. Rachel shakes her head laughing)
MIKA: (very calmly, very venomously) “Defying God is a very dangerous
thing.”
*
Scene 8
(That night. The set is dark Larry is in his sleeping bag and he lights a candle. This
reveals Rachel beside him also in his sleeping bag. Their bare shoulders reveal
that they have been sexually involved.)
RACHEL: “Reminds of my teenage socialist days in Papua. I had to read
socialist literature in bed late at night and by candle light, so dearest mother would
not know. Some of the titles I read are there on this shelf. The more things change
the more they stay the same.”
LARRY: “So what changed Rosa?”
RACHEL: “That whole fossilized twilight of the British Empire thing was
coming to an end anyway. She was really into that British Empire thing so much
that even Aussies up there laughed behind her back. She told Papuans they should
be grateful to the empire for it would educate them in ways superior to their
primitive darkie rubbish. Winston Churchill’s face on the drinking mugs? Singing
‘God Save the Queen before and after school? Converts are more Catholic than the
Pope.”
LARRY: “She talks like she was born into the Communist Party.”
RACHEL: I was among those caned for refusing to salute the Australian flag
and the portrait of the queen. ‘There can be no favourites among those duped by
communism or those imitating uppidity niggers calling themselves Black Panthers!
Black or white, Darkie or American, all will get the same punishment; No
disloyalty to the empire will be tolerated. Standard practice means crushing darkie
disobedience at first sight!’
LARRY: “Something sure changed!”
RACHEL: “By 1972 everyone knew that independence was coming. No
more beer on the verandah while the house servants did the work and the white
massa said ‘Boss boy carry on’ and the head man really ran the plantation while
39
massa enjoyed his beer. Then the scandal of Daddy’s native mistress became
public and he left. She knew the independent government would sack her. Then at
the newsagents Mother saw Mika’s book. ‘Oh that sells everywhere, even here! He
must be making a fortune! And those feminists, they get whatever they want!’ She
went to Sydney for a feminist study group and returned talking like she had fought
beside Che and Castro. Converts are more Catholic than the Pope.”
LARRY: “And now?”
RACHEL: “Now it took a while, but this afternoon I’ve booked a holiday
for the four of us on Crete, even with rushed priority prices we will have to wait
two weeks before the flight out.”
LARRY: “Why the wait?”
RACHEL: “A few reasons. First as soon as this parole ends I’m applying to
be legal guardian for Moshe and Alice. Red tape takes time.”
LARRY: “She will never agree to give up her kids.”
RACHEL: “Watch it happen. Bill’s probably blabbing and this place is a
robber’s hideout being watched, a raid will come any day. Stavkas doesn’t sit in
the café opposite our ground floor entrance every lunch because of the food. Bill’s
arrest means he’s onto the stolen goods routine. The plastic Madonna’s interior is
solid hashish; that’s fairly safe.”
LARRY: “God! The nuns at school told us about statues causing miraculous
visions, but we thought it was bullshit. Do nuns smuggle dope that way?”
RACHEL: “Sooner or later Stavkas will find out about the tiger snakes.
They’re rented out against roosters in illegal cockfights. Mika has to carry them
out to the gangster’s locale once a week; if he doesn’t the gangsters will get very
very angry.”
LARRY: “What else does he rent out?”
RACHEL: “Rooms in brothels. He encourages backpackers like yourself to
come visit and stay. Tells them the place is full but he knows of a room real
cheap…He rents out me as well.”
LARRY: “So he starves Bill, Moshe and Alice to live off their child support,
gets free copies of review books and pay for books he doesn’t review, rips off
40
packpacker guests… any other…” (frowning and puzzled) “ You just said he rents
you out.”
RACHEL: “Yes I did. My hashish habit is expensive, he didn’t start me off
on that or the way I paid for it. Anyway child support and his dwindling royalties
barely paid for water and electricity before he turned crooked. I was the first of his
schemes. He actually got me a suspended sentence with his famous presence and
that Shakesperean quote about the quality of mercy. He could have wrung tears out
of Margret Thatcher, with the result that I got parole, then on the courthouse steps,
reality hit.”
LARRY: “He wanted you to do the drug courier routine?”
RACHEL: “That came a little later. Verbatim: ‘I get thirty percent of what
you get from clients plus you doing anything I like whenever I like. For that you
get protection and glowing reports. No deal - nothing good will be said to the
parole officer and its inside you go baby.”
LARRY: “And your mother agreed to all this?”
RACHEL: “From before the arrest till after the parole hearing she was away
in New York trying to get his books published and making desperately needed
money working in publishing. She returned to find the theory of the triumph of the
accomplished fact was proved. While she didn’t like it, it gave her a break from
satisfying his more distasteful sexual tastes, brought more money in and they
worked out a compromise. He gets me on ritual nights, otherwise no – and no
Alice. I can cope with one more ritual night.”
LARRY: “I don’t want you to! You and him! No we get out of here now!”
RACHEL: “Parole completion comes the night after. I’ll fake aids
symptoms, no better, my quack will make up a faked suspected aids report. He
won’t be able to get me out of here fast enough.”
LARRY: “Aids is going to be a sad end to what’s left of the sexual
revolution, most of it is commercialized anyway.”
RACHEL: “Yes it is. I hope you don’t intend to settle down with some
angelic virgin.”
LARRY: “Said before I wasn’t into teenyboppers. Settle down uhm, the
sixties were good but have faded or gone mad haven’t they?”
41
RACHEL: “Here’s the deal. We wait on Crete for two weeks while we all
work out where to next. Australia or Wisconsin. You can come with us or cause
havoc elsewhere in Europe. If after two weeks of incessant sex you are tired of me
or I’m tired of you it’s no hard feelings bye. If it’s better than that, well… But I’m
not just doing the guardian thing for a sham. (As she talks she passes him a note)
“Now here’s my quack’s address and instructions, He’s open till ten, get that
suspected aids certificate for two thousand drachmas.”
LARRY: “Looks like you are ahead of me.”
RACHEL: “Oh yes!”
(Exit Larry S.L. As the door closes Alice and Moshe emerge S.R.)
ALICE: “Are we really going to Australia?”
MOSHE: “We should only believe it when our feet are on Australian soil. I
want to feel clean rain on my face, not acid rain that scars.”
ALICE: “I’m going to see parrots and galahs and we will have our own
garden with bright green lawn and healthy leafy trees and pretty flowers. We can
swim on the golden sands that won’t have any tar on them and breathe fresh air
that doesn’t make us sick and if we can’t find work you won’t have to sell yourself
because they have the dole and I can go to uni for free and there won’t be any mad
people there because all the mad Australians come here.”
RACHEL: “You saw him in rehearsal” (Alice and Moshe nod) “What way
was he wearing his rabbit ears?”
ALICE: “Backwards, and in the yellow costume with red fluffies.”
RACHEL: (sighs, and is about to say something vexed, then changes her
mind) “We aren’t there yet and we have to go through the ritual one last time.”
*
Scene 9
(Mika is alone typing. He wears the stolen archbishop’s vestments and mitre, but
beneath that yellow rabbit ears pop out. Larry is at the end of the table, reading
the Berenger book but pensively looking at Mika frequently. Mika looks at his
wristwatch and begins tolling on the gong.)
42
MIKA: “Ritual Time!” (Mika jumps on the table and crozier in one hand,
stretches his arms as high and wide as possible) “Welcome to ritual time!” (Larry
fearfully looks at the door) “Holy, Holy, Holy! May All the Saints Adore me!”
(Off screen Aboriginal clap sticks begin and a droning hum starts up. Moshe first
blowing a didgeridoo then Alice and Rachel rhythmically hit clapsticks while Rosa
is last on a trombone. All are dressed as traditional Australian Aborigines with
ochre body decorations and Rachel Alice and Rosa chant Aboriginal place names
as they circle the table “Bungendore, WaggaWagga, Cunnamulla, Boona. Allora
Kuranda, Gundagai, Geelong, Mildura, Ceduna, Kalgoolie, Norlunga, Balgownie,
Murichidore, Noosa, Uralla, Bennalong! Morabbin! (In a dramatic gesture Mika
thumps the table with the crozier and they freeze then sit on their heels looking
upwards. Mika turns on the ghetto blaster and it blares out fifties and sixties rock
to which Mika exuberantly prances and sings. Larry is motionless with his mouth
wide open. The music stops and Rachel Alice, Rosa and Moshe began to chant in
unison with hands upraised. “Mika Horne! Mika Horne! Mika Horne! Mika
Horne!” (Mika’s response is to bask face uplifted and smiling sweetly.)
MIKA: “Let me quote Chè. (He says the name with a wide loving smile)
“‘At the cost of sounding ridiculous, may I say that the true revolutionary is
motivated by feelings of love.’ ”
LARRY: “Misquote I think.”
ROSA: “Shush you ignorant person.”
(Larry is then ignored. Mika begins to sway as he hums a sweet tune to himself.)
MIKA: (singing) “You shine like a real good summer sun up!
So watcha gunna do when the moon comes up?”
RACHEL: (singing with faked delight) “Fill your loving cup!”
MIKA: (singing) “Oh yeah baby oh yeah that’s my little buttercup!”
(Rosa, Alice and Moshe start humming the jaunty chorus as part of the ritual.)
MIKA: “I am the super pope! Not just for those who clog up Vatican City
but for all humans, for all species on earth and other planets. Why should one old
man with atrophied testicles and archaic jingles get those adoring crowds when
they could have me? My testicles are twice normal size and full to overflowing.
My tripling, rippling, sacred writings offer heaven as easy. In my sacred scriptures
43
no hell exists for failure unless you make one. Greater than Moses, the Archangel
Gabriel, Superman or Dracula, like them I to am a shape changer!” (He discards
the religious robes and emerges in a bright yellow heel to scalp rabbit costume
complete with a fluffy tiger tail and large ears, worn backwards. He bounds
around the set like a kangaroo, with his hands up in imitation of a kangaroo’s
paws. The he abruptly stops and dances as if to an invisible jazz band) “I am a
matalope, a shy gentle vegetarian creature from the planet Trifaladore.”
Rosa, Alice and Rachel sit down and raise their hands in mock yearning and
sweetly chant in unison. “Oh welcome you bright, glorious and gentle creature.”
MIKA: “And welcome to you! I can cure blindness, literal and metaphysical.
Cover your eyes.” (Except for Larry, who seems petrified, they all do so) “Now
imagine my cousin Tiresias, a donkey who walks on two legs. As he prances in
your mind’s eye your insights will increase, the more vigorously he prances the
more you see. I am your healer. Follow me!” (He prances for a few seconds) “Not
working! To gain paradise we must make atonement.” (He hits the gong three
times and then stretches his arms upward) “We matalopes on Trifaladore have
never known war, pollution or filth. We came to frolic and play with you, but you
kill our missionaries off. Your wars, your pollution, your egotism, your anxiety.
Abandon them all if you wish to enter utopia. Make Atonement.’
(All except Larry and Mika) “We must atone! Through our fault. Through our
fault, through our most grievous fault in thought word and deed we must atone to
you glorious creature and liberator of all.”
MIKA: “When will the messiah come?” (Smiling he flicks his fingers
inward, indicating himself)
(All except Larry and Mika) “Who can tell? Perhaps he is already amongst us.”
LARRY: (nodding his head vigorously before and during his shouting)
“You’ve gone mad you silly bugger!”
(He is ignored he stares at the floor oblivious to the proceedings.)
MIKA: “For eating more than starving Africans.”
(All except Larry and Mika) “We must atone.”
MIKA: “For the crime of being white.”
(All except Larry and Mika) “Guilt! Guilt! Guilt!”
44
MIKA: “For cruelty to dumb animals and sexism towards women.”
(All except Larry and Mika. The chanters have tones of resentment. Larry starts
nodding his head with an amazed face.) “We must atone.”
MIKA: “For Carleton losing six-nil to a schmuck team like Warragabbarra.”
(All except Larry and Mika with uncertainty and a loss of unison) “We must
atone.”
MIKA: “You hymie shmuks! You desert dust eating dags! Stalinists! Fools!
Idiots! Traitors!” (They hang their heads in shame. Mika stands three quarters to
the audience, hands on hips. Larry stares) “You don’t have to present me with
faked reports about suspected aids. None of you are worthy of me! Tonight I
masturbate!” (He storms off chanting ‘Yahweh, Yahweh’ while Rosa bursts into
tears)
ROSA: (to Larry) “See what you have done!” (Larry goes into his stunned
face) “The great man just wanted a bit of energy-burning fun. True genius comes
with some mild eccentricities that we normal but blind people cannot understand,
being on a lower level. You however with your oafish stupidities and cowboy
fascism are on the lowest level and you are leaving this house by dawn at the latest.
Say your goodbyes!”
(Exit Rosa by the kitchen. They all wait.)
RACHEL: “See you at five in Syntagma Square, outside the King George
Hotel. I will handle everything. Now Larry, any man who wants to have anything
to do with me at all must avoid certain topics. Can you guess what they are?
LARRY: “Mika, drugs, politics-“
RACHEL: “Add Stalinism, fascism, communism, Chè Guevara, Sigmund
Freud, Leon Trotsky, English Grammar, feminism, oppressed Third World
peoples, the starving people of Africa, blocs, Antarctic colonization schemes,
Jacques Lucan and the whole capoodle of French Post Structuralism, football,
feminism, Kaolini and his accursed country and when it comes to art, I never ever
want to see another bloody copy of that Goya painting ever again! Ever! Clear?””
LARRY: “Thought there would be more. Let’s just say politics in general.”
45
RACHEL: “There will be more, but let’s just say that for now. No we will
add the main cause of all this bullshit – anal sex. I hate it more than all the rest of
his mad rubbish put together.”
ALICE: “If we stay longer we might see Mika defeated and put away.”
RACHEL: “How so?”
ALICE: “I looked at today’s mail. The only person he fears visits in a
month.”
RACHEL: “He fears nobody.”
ALICE: “Yes he does. I saw his scared face when he saw the name on the
envelope.”
RACHEL: “So who is this extraordinary individual?”
ALICE: “His father.”
*
46
ACT TWO
Scene 1
(A week after ritual night. Mika is typing. Rosa is proof-reading at the other end of
the table. Enter Bill S.L. in a uniform of the Greek fascists. They are stunned.)
BILL: “You meet some interesting people in jail and guess who paid my
bail? You convinced me that socialism should be hard and tough. They convinced
me there should be some nationalism in it.”
MIKA: “Traitor!”
ROSA: (desperately) “Oh he’s just going through a teenage phase. Girls
love a uniform and he has been tomcatting around.”
BILL: “Here’s the deal. I jump out the window and as it is first storey I’ll
break a leg or two and the crooked doctor says specialist treatment in America, no
jail for Bill!” (Bill smiles as he yells and takes a flying leap, S.L. a fall sounds)
ROSA: “See what you have done!”
MIKA: “See what Larry has done! The family have fallen apart since that
fascist fiend, that Machiavellian manipulator, that creepy cowboy turned up here!”
(Just as Rosa runs to the window from offstage the sound of a dump truck at work
comes through. Mika continues his typing. Rosa returns walking slowly and with a
face in agony and gasping for breath)
ROSA: “The dump truck didn’t see him. All I could see were his boots.”
MIKA: “Don’t let Larry get to you. People are worth more than boots.”
(Rosa looks stunned and stays that way) “So Bill realised what we are –
capitalism’s garbage, okay? So facing jail, which is a total loss of liberty, he
sacrifices himself so graphically that others will truly see and cannot commit the
crime of the turning of the blind eye. The circumstances of his death give an
unanswerable visual symbol to expose the capitalist system! Brilliant! He had the
47
makings of a genius! He is so important to me that the rest of the day goes on his
obituary. What was his birthdate?”
(Rosa is staring and panting at Mika like someone who has just woken up. Mika
continues with his typing.)
*
Scene 2
(Two weeks after Bill’s supposed death. The manuscript pile has grown higher and
the NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE slogan has EXCEPT IMMORTALITY added to it.
The Goya painting has been covered by a floral tribute with BILL WOVOKA 19631983 in the centre. Mika is typing at the table. A key turns the door and a figure in
bike riding gear including a helmet walks in. He takes the helmet off and it is Bill.
Mika is stunned.)
BILL: “Yes its me? Did you really think I would jump into concrete? Four
mates held the borrowed fireman’s trampoline thing. The goat had his hooves, skin
and head removed and was roughly mashed up while wearing a fascist uniform.
Then we tossed him and my boots and wallet into the dumper at the right time.”
MIKA: “But the coroner?”
BILL: Rushed from overwork! Besides there was the evidence, crushed
bones muscles ectera, stuck to bits of uniform. Mother was a witness and there
were the dealers who were witnesses to my death because did not want me to be a
witness for Stavkas.”
MIKA: “So where have you been?”
BILL: “On the Peloponnese.”
MIKA: “Rosa’s away on a publishing assignment; she’s back next week.”
BILL: “Don’t tell her.”
MIKA: So you not are back for your mother’s benefit?
BILL: “No, for yours.”
MIKA: “You have my attention!”
BILL: (Biting his lip and uncertain about how to go on) “Mika when I was
in custody I was initially attracted to the fascists, then thinking over it after the
48
faked death I saw what made them what they are and I could see what places you
where you are now.”
MIKA: “I am not a fascist!”
BILL: “No you are not, but you were born with too much energy and
imagination in a land where people can still get ahead and the sixties was a time
when, all that wealth and affluence and confidence… anything seemed possible…”
MIKA: “Anything is!”
BILL: “Look at your situation. My mother is your last follower and you two
are not good for each other. Larry and Rachel exposed you. No more book
contracts, review copies or guests. Stavkas is on to you and assembles the
evidence. How will you go in jail? You sit here in this little apartment and think it
is an empire.”
MIKA: “And it is. A man’s home is his castle.”
BILL: “Filled with stale air, and surrounded by pollution. No subjects reside
here anymore and other stacked up little apartments with their own house lords.”
MIKA: “And this criticism leads where?”
BILL: “To a better place. I learned to dislike you fast, then being on the run
means living on three slices of bread a day again and I could do it easily while
others got themselves into trouble trying for more. I saw first-hand that your idea
of the compliant self-destroying victim often applies and you have to fight back
against your exploiters. At least nobody exploits you, so I imitated and nobody
exploits me.”
MIKA: “This better place.”
BILL: “The Peloponnese. Beautiful rich soil, established orchards,
refreshing rain, high male migration rates to Canada, the U.S. and Australia, so
there’s no overpopulation, noise and pollution. Views so beautiful that they take
the breath away. Few people down there live in tenements, you could find a
farmhouse or a townhouse with a garden easily. The word utopia originally meant
nowhere and how can you build nowhere? The word acardia came from down
there and with reason. Developers aren’t onto it yet. Space Mika. Lots of spinsters
and widows, with common sense and good hearts, but don’t marry just for material
49
advantage, it causes them misery and it suggests manipulation and a lack of
character. The community will exclude you for that.”
MIKA: “Are you suggesting that I end up a farm laborer? I am one of the
world’s greatest writers. I was acclaimed -”
BILL: “In 1963, when the first book came out, The year I was born. That’s
twenty years ago now. And physical work in fresh air and soil would do you good.
More and more evidence comes in about the deleterious effects of regular desk
jobs.”
MIKA: “Deleterious! There’s a big word from young Bill!”
BILL: “Mika don’t start. If you own your own farm you don’t have to get
ahead by putting others down.” (Bill writes out a message and gives it to him)
MIKA: “I started out as a farm laborer!”
BILL: “You should have stayed one! Here’s my number, good for another
few weeks. Being dead is advantageous, no mother, no jail, but it remains risky in
Greece, one caught squealer and I’m gone inside for ten years. Better to be home in
the Midwest, not Wisconsin, maybe Minnesota, fine fishing there. (He pauses as if
regretting his words) Maybe not: the world is a wide place and there’s better than
Minnesota in it. Anyway first I’ve got to earn the money to be smuggled out of
Greece. Ring if you change your mind, but don’t leave it too late.”
(Exit Bill S.L.)
*
Scene 3
(The apartment a week later. The memorial to Bill has been replaced by the
famous photo of Chè Guevara with pinned rabbit ears and a red background. Mika
types and hears heavy footsteps that make him uneasy. Enter Herbert Hone. He
pants for breath but has a steely, no nonsense quality to him. He is aged about
seventy but is mentally very sharp.)
HERBERT HONE: “And how is my youngest boy?”
MIKA: “Been up to much?”
50
HERBERT HONE: Read I Claudius on the flight over. Quiet a tale isn’t it?
Incest, blackmail, adultery, political intrigue, suicide, acclaimed geniuses
hungering for ever more glory and that Galigula.” (He shakes his head)
MIKA: “No dodgem footsies old Dada. Kick straight to the goalposts.”
HERBERT HONE: “You are in major trouble without a way out. One child
dead, others stating that you forced them to run up mountains daily in Athenian
summer heat. Involving yourself and them in drug deals and one in prostitution.
You will be lucky to avoid jail. Stavkas is working on deportation.”
MIKA: “The mountain runs were just toughening exercise. Bill is not really
dead and the rest is unproven and therefore litigatious – more money for us.”
HERBERT HONE: “The first time I saw you out of the cradle was the
Christmas the war ended. Nine years old and war sharpens instincts. They were
saying to me kill the little monster now.” (Mika laughs)
MIKA: “So why didn’t you?”
HERBERT HONE: “My instincts have been proved right.”
MIKA: “They were then. The Japanese treated the Papuans better than the
Australians ever did. Less racism, better pay. Mum was a collaborator, mistress to
a Jap officer. He used to give me presents; I was a camp favourite.”
HERBERT HONE: “Just like Caligula.”
MIKA: ‘I cheered at his execution. Upset him as much as Mum’s applause.
She was smart enough to use the illiterate maid as a courier and watcher, never to
write up anything she heard or saw and keep the documents hidden and then reveal
them the day after Nagasaki. The maid was dismissed.”
HERBERT HONE: “Reverse heroic role model imitation it seems.”
MIKA: “I laughed at the way she took everyone in, so did she. If she could
get away with it and they believed it whose fault is that? Is life supposed to protect
the gullible and stupid from the intelligent? If the Wovokas did not want to be
slaves they could have left. None of the Kaolini academics had guns pointed at
their heads to force them to write for the book. They are all willing victims giving
in to emotional blackmail and peer group pressure the way the weak always do.”
51
HERBERT HONE: “At last you are being honest. You always seemed to
believe your own bullshit. Or is this something else? Maybe this is not honest. A
concealed plea for instilled discipline? You want a halt to the madness, but can’t
do it? ”
MIKA: (trying a charming smile) “I’m just a lovable scampy con-artist and
prankster trying to get through life.” (His father stares at him motionless and Mika
sees it is not working. He picks up a mouse and it begins to squeal) “In that squeal
you hear the beginnings of all calls for morality, decency and fairness. The pathetic
plea for mercy of the defeated weakling. Give me the snake’s swift merciless bite.”
HERBERT HONE: “Mika the great anti-fascist. I spent six years of my life
in the army to stop people who talked like that.”
MIKA: “FaScism, like love never really dies, it changes form. The radical
days are fading and conglomerate multinational coorperations will buy us out. My
price won’t be yachts or a tv job like Roland Bradley. They are doing things with
genetics and cells that open up vistas of immortality for the elite. We might have
Regan as president for decades more. The number of celebrities who have
acclaimed me as a genius…”
HERBERT HONE: (Picking up a page from the manuscript) “Enter Moses
and Hitler in pink tutus waltzing together while behind them Albert Einstein,
Marx, Mao and Freud do a chorus line dance to the The Blue Danube’ All the
characters wear Phalluses as hats. The old shock them till they ban it routine –or
just idiocy?
He ignores Mika and looks around the room, sighing and focusing on the
pictures.
Che Guevara and Trotsky together, as if they were pals. Che shook hands
with Trotsky’s assassin when he welcomed him to Cuba. Bertrand Russell, the
great man of peace huh? He tried to get the yanks to nuke the Russians before they
developed the bomb. Peaefreaks almost always go like that.”
MIKA: “So why are you here?”
HERBERT HONE: “Come back to Australia with me before you go to jail.”
MIKA: “Go to jail? Just like in a monopoly game I’ll take my chances.
Trouble and I are old mates and Trouble knows I win. And if you go round saying
52
I’m mad ask yourself why you barrack for a shit team like Warragabbarra while
I’m smart enough to follow Carleton!”
(Herbert Hone sighs and leaves S.L.)
*
Scene 4
(Two days later. The set is unchanged. Rosa enters, carrying travel bags. Her face
is resentful and full of hate. Mika looks up from typing and does not read her face.)
MIKA: “Rosa darling! God news!”
ROSA: “Don’t try it on me! Trying to butter me up with confected good
news that will be a fiction because I am fed up with you – as is the world!”
MIKA: “The world?”
ROSA: “The publishing world, the literati world, the radical world and the
Wovoka’s world!”
MIKA: “What is meant here?”
ROSA: Larry and Rachel and my two younger children and prior visitors are
telling the same stories about us and Stavkas, who hates your guts as so many do,
listens, reads and collects. Others are listening and won’t publish you or donate
anymore - and I am not donating my wages anymore. Work for money like
everybody else! I told you that fascist cowboy would be nothing but trouble and
that it would be easier to pay a freight bill for the Freud volumes!”
MIKA: “Bill is alive and was in this apartment right where you are standing!
ROSA: “Do you think that my grief for my dead son makes me gullible so
that playing on that will keep me here? I saw him killed!”
MIKA: “No you didn’t, not in reality!”
ROSA: “I have to put up with my eldest boy dead, his brother vanished and
the other three fled – and with Larry Palmer, fascist idiot extraordinaire soon to be
my son in law, but I will not put up with anymore of your lies!” “
MIKA: “‘The Globalist Planet’ in a tribute article last year acclaimed me as
the world’s greatest living writer!”
53
ROSA: “The world’s greatest living writer wrote ‘Castro done many fine
analysisis from the Mexican exile.’ In one sentence we find that the participle form
was needed thank you very much and as for that plural form… and done - as if
writing an analysis is a finished ditch-digging labor! The better word would be
made or completed. As for misleading the children by telling them that pluperfect
sentences are perfect sentences mistyped. They will end up bad grammarians.
Villain! Fraud! Liar!”
(Rosa storms out with her bags)
MIKA: “The ship is sinking, the captain stands alone and the rats know
when to jump ship.”
*
Scene 5
(The next day. Mika types. He has drinks ready. After a knock Roland Bradley
enters and nods. He has an enigmatic face.)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “I saw Rosa Wovoka at the airport...”
MIKA: “Oh you should not listen to her.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Actually I should and I did so that others will not.”
MIKA: “Oh I see, you were a comforter allowing her to let off a little steam
so there would be no scandal.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “No you do not see. I convinced her that it was not
in her interest to have your activities made public. Involving children in your mad
rituals, the stolen goods, the drug deals, the brothel room rent out. Any of them
could lead to jail terms for her.”
MIKA: “I begin to see.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “At last. I backed you against my old university so
you quietly backed me when we said that Larry was mad and dangerous and
paranoid. A bit too quietly, but oh well it worked. I kept your six charges of sexual
involvement with your students out of the media. That took a great many favours,
which I hated giving. Fortunately Kaolini also used his influence to make sure that
did not unfold as his daughter was lover number six. Why he did not put a bullet
through your extremely thick scull is beyond me.”
54
MIKA: “Because two of my fellow writers were Americans and not even
Kaolini, so dependent on Americans, would dare kill or imprison Americans. And
there was that meeting where I showed him a copy of the document to be opened
in the case of my death.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “You seduced her because you knew-”
MIKA: “She knew what she was doing.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Your penis got you were facing non-renewal of
contract and a ban from any teaching anywhere in Australia before you decided to
take up a contract at Kaoliniland’s new university. Publishing the exposè there
saved you from similar charges and becoming an expatriate in Greece was
lucrative.”
MIKA: “Uni was becoming boring anyway and the tropical heat in
Kaoliniland wearies me.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “I was extremely fortunate to get the job I now hold.
Eight others who went along with you were not so lucky. Samos is still in jail. If I
admit that I was fooled by you it will make me look like a fool. If you continue
with your current behavior you discredit yourself and give credibility to what Larry
says, about you and ultimately about me.”
MIKA: “Oh mate you and your mates discredited Larry long ago.
Everybody knows he’s a mad, dangerous, paranoid, poofter simpleton. ”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Everybody thought they knew. Now Rachel and
Alice and Moshe are all telling the same story. People are even listening to
accounts of the bugs bunny routine.”
MIKA: “Oh nobody is going to listen to poofter Larry’s CIA backed right
wing rantings. Everybody knows he’s a mental case after you and your wife and
friends gave him a nervous breakdown, good work.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “He’s living quietly with Rachel, now his new wife
and they adopted her siblings. He’s sworn off drugs and politics and actually lives
a normal life and doesn’t talk in that loud simple way anymore. He’s getting
credibility, not that he cares, he just says politics is trouble and he is out of
trouble.”
55
MIKA: ‘Oh we don’t want that. Or stories about you as a habitual plagiarist
blackmailing plagarised dissidents and students into acquiescent silence. Oh we
don’t want that. Tolerating Larry’s affair with his wife because you thought you
could poofter him. Oh we don’t want that. Stories of people you know being
stranded in Kaoliniland while you ran off with their money. Oh we don’t want that.
Stories about that sado-maso paedophile ring of Westerners preying on Kaoliniland
boys. Almost most of all we don’t want that. But the one we don’t particularly
want is the leak.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Ah yes the leak.”
MIKA: “Roland Bradley, so pedantic, such an expert and so cautious. You
supplied over thirty factual errors. We were sure that you were fed misinformation
by Ibbiti Metals, their puppet Kaolini or the CIA to discredit the book, but it was
you misinforming yourself. So Kaolini would lean on somebody to get you a
journalist’s job.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Go on.”
MIKA: “Many believed the supposed victim because the prosecution knew
so much, about concealed body scars, times when there were a lack of alibis, who
and what was in the house… We thought it was bribed house servants, but it was
you, the one never charged.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Now listen. The pedophile story is wrong. That
started out as a speculation. Larry developed into one of his conspiracy theories,
most of which are right, not that one. He did not renew an old affair with my wife.
The idiot actually thought he could be platonic friends with us, which is why I
miss-guessed. I do whatever I have to. That book was obviously going to sink us.
You left me no choice. In a world where idiots, nutters and fads rule I can quietly
advance myself. Those years on the Rhodes Oxford scholarship weren’t just about
the degree. I knew that the upper U English accent would have an appeal back
home, it helped make me one of America’s top journalists. It was just one of the
things I did to advance myself.” (He begins to smirk and raises his head as
approving of himself in a mirror)
MIKA: “Maybe you are telling the truth about not being a closet poof.
Maybe that is just another phoney thing that you do to advance yourself.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Larry should be dead, but that will lead to domestic
problems and police suspicions towards me, and suspicions that he was killed for
56
saying the truth. However you are another matter. If I had you obliterated, my god
the sheer number of your enemies would keep conspiracy theories overwhelmed
for a decade.”
MIKA: (Although momentarily worried he becomes aggressive) “I dare you
to. I dare you!”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Dead you would be a wonderful martyr, a great
writer and a true friend whose death was a profound shock. The trouble with that is
twofold. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life being bored to death by
interviewing conspiracy theorists. Second; one of them may get it right.”
MIKA: “Your turn to have a plan B.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Oh yes. You are going to act like a normal person
for the rest of your life. No more rituals, theories, affairs, illegal activities,
trifaladorian planets, strange publications and utterances. No more drugs. And you
are to destroy this mad manuscript, it proves that you are every bit as mad and silly
as Rachel and Larry say – it also proves that you are a fraud, Rosa’s style is too
different.”
MIKA: “Anything else?”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “For twenty thousand a year you are off to Cheviot
Island, where you the great humanitarian and celebrity, will lead the indigenous
peoples in their fight to save the environment against US Yankee American
imperialists who want to mine recently found copper deposits.”
MIKA: “So who will get the leases? The Japs, China, a multinational?”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Kaolini will break free of his Ibbitti mentors and
ultimately will annexe, to save the Cheviot Islanders from foreign imperialism, but
that won’t involve you directly. He expects you to denounce him.”
MIKA: “You still work for him.”
(Roland Bradley takes out a flight ticket and flops it on the table. He picks up the
manuscript and hurls it out the door. Mika gasps and starts to scream, but then
Inspector Stavkas enters brushing off parts of the manuscript.)
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: “Ah paper, paper, paper, but then I have the only
important piece of paper.” (He takes out a document and smiling waves it.) Your
deportation order. You have twenty-four hours Mister Mika!”
57
MIKA: “Not if I appeal against police brutality in my own home. Nobel
Prize winners will back my truthfulness and journalists!” (he begins to giggle)
“Those wonderful, wonderful journalists! And the trendies!” (Mika begins to
stagger around the room recoiling as if hit by an invisible assailant.) “Stop hitting
me fascista! Not the rubber house, no not that!”
(He collapses to the ground giggling.)
“Roland Bradley! You saw the police attack didn’t you?”
(Roland Bradley stares at Mika expressionlessly then briefly at Stavkas.)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Yes I saw the police attack.”
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: (sighs) “You win for now, but don’t call me
fascist again. My parents were socialists who unlike you and Mista Mika did not
gain sex, money and power from being socialists. All they wanted was enough to
live on and justice and they worked with their hands and were killed for socialism
in our civil war. What you and the great Roland Bradley do to socialism is worse
than what you do to children.” (He walks out and Roland Bradley waits until he is
out of earshot.)
ROLAND BRADLEY: “That was triply stupid. You had a sure way out of
being either blackmailed or murdered – a deporting protective police escort to the
airport and you worked to make sure that it failed. Then your routine convinces me
that the Cheviot Islanders will consider you a silly bugger, good for nothing but
laughs. You convince me that you will never grow up or sane up after I tell you
I’m considering killing you unless you do. Well I ‘m not considering anymore. I
am going to kill you.’
(For the first time Mika looks scared)
“One watches the window, the other two the door. You can either die by having a
crotch shot if you try escaping or live twelve hours longer if you go with them
when they come at dawn. A mysterious disappearance has advantages.”
(Roland Bradley cuts the phone line) “They are down there waiting for my word.
Now a good prolonged bashing is what you deserve to start with. I felt like giving
that to you after you set my class up to watch ‘The fallacy of the Triumph of the
Fact’ – and it turned out that you had put the cameras at the bottom of toilet bowls.
58
MIKA: “You never could take a joke – I’m just a jolly joker, brightening up a dead
old world with fresh ideas.”
ROLAND BRADLEY: “Well jolly joker, the joke is now on you. You are going to
eat your words very literally. They are bringing up a full length mirror so that for
once in your life, at the end of it, you will see yourself as you really are. Then we
are going to send you on a long trip, the type cute bunnies go on, off to Trifaladore.
Go to heaven and turn left into outer space. Dawn flight” (He exits by the front.)
*
Scene 6
(Dawn comes in from S.R.. All the portraits and posters are down and like the
books, are scattered. A blood splattered full length mirror is S.L. crumpled up
paper lies scattered. Mika sits disconsolate and huddled on the bean bag, bloodied
and bruised, clutching his midriff. He has flecks of his manuscript around his lips.
He wears his rabbit ears and fluffies. He hears slow footsteps and starts to
whimper. Enter Herbert Hone)
HERBERT HONE: “This is your lucky day.”
MIKA: “Yes? O How so?”
HERBERT HONE: “You are a selfish manipulating mad brat, but you are
my selfish manipulating mad brat. One contact killer chickened out. He contacted
Stavkas, he contacted me and I decided it was cowardly to just wait and see what
dawn brings.”
MIKA: “It seems some of my theories are not so good. They broke a finger
every time I refused to eat a page. I can’t type anymore. My stomach is in cramps.”
HERBERT HONE: “When you are on the receiving end from someone like
yourself? It was all a conceited bully’s kid’s game to you and real to him.”
MIKA: “I want to go.” (He stands slowly beaten and dejected)
HERBERT HONE: “Home? A flight ticket?”
MIKA: “Where’s home? Nowhere is home and Trifaladore is nowhere.
Every free place, every happy place is nowhere. (he pauses as if a realisation has
come to him and he speaks with sadness) Even the blocs won’t be happy places.”
HERBERT HONE: “I have a car. Where to?”
59
MIKA: (He takes Bill’s card and gives it to Herbert) “That’s where Bill
works, somewhere down on the Peloponnese that hasn’t been wrecked yet. If you
have a camera we can take a photo for his mother.”
HERBERT HONE: “We can do that. Do you want to take anything?”
MIKA: (looking around) “No.” (He tosses his rabbit ears away) “I never
want to see this apartment again. All I want should be fresh bread, blue sky and
clean air, simple things, but so hard to find.”
(They exit)
The end
60
The Characters
MIKA HORNE: He has several of the peculiar physical characteristics of
Algernon Swinburne and also has his titanic maniac energy, audacity, hypocritical
erratic right-left politics, sadistic relationships, puerile attention seeking and
exhibitionism and erratic talent. Swinburne however, liked children, had a genuine
talent, and was extremely unfocused. He had no sustained sexual relationships with
women and was virtually an alcoholic. Swinburne was also an English aristocrat
while Mika is a plebian Australian and Swinburne seemed incapable of running a
household. Mika also has something of the fairy world about him, a mischievous
Puck or Peter Pan gone wrong. In the confrontation with his father his fascistic
statements could be played as an appeal to stop him as Herbert suggests or He
could also be played as another Pol Pot revealing his secret plans and awaiting his
chance.
ROSA WOVOKA: Although she is not aware of it herself, she is a careerist
who goes whichever way the wind blows and covers this with loud dogma which
she embodies. This allows her to enforce morality to keep her control. Part of
Mika’s appeal is his immaturity. She is also striving to live adolescent dreams that
WW2 and an early marriage thwarted.
THE CHILDREN: They are sullen, obedient and resentful and are normal
children trying to cope with an odd situation. Their rebelliousness has been
manouvred into subservience long before Larry’s arrival
RACHEL WOVOKA: More than any other person in the play, she knows
what is going on nd knows people’s motivations more than they do, but the parole
rules enslave her.
LARRY PALMER: At first Larry seems to be a simpleton living for
immediate self-gratifying sensations, but he is at the apartment for more than cheap
drugs and fun. He wants to recapture the fading idealism of the sixties which he
sees embodied in Mika. He is more naïve and slow to think about consequences
than stupid.
ROLAND BRADLEY: Careerism incarnate. He is immaculate, careful with
his words and initially seems reasonable and liberal, far from being as dangerous
as he is. He is not obviously ruthless and sadistic until Act Two. Coldly intelligent,
he is quick, remorseless and decisive in his actions.
61
INSPECTOR STAVKAS: He is more of a tourist advisor and aide than an
ordinary inspector and is almost always in a vexed state due to Mika.
HERBERT HONE: An ordinary working class Australian, he is puzzled by
Mika and the situation they are in.
*