Darkness runnaways

Motto:

 ”The people were so happy that the police felt obliged to interfere.”

DARKNESS RUNNAWAYS

by Laurenţiu  Budău

translated by  Alexandra Budău

THE CHARACTERS:

- ANA POP

- CLEMENT POP

- ALBERT POP

- THE OLD MAN

- CATHERINE

- MRS. SCOTT

- WILLIAM

- SIR EPSTEIN

- MISS GOLDHEART

- THE POLICEWOMAN

- THE POLICEMAN

- THE REPORTER

- MRS.HARRIS

- A GROUP  OF MUTES

-2010-

 ACT I

S C E N E  1

(The Policewoman, The Policeman  and the Old Man)

THE POLICEWOMAN: Stop, stop, stop or I’ll shoot!... You have entered illegally on a private property. Put your hands up in the air!

THE POLICEMAN: Put your hands up, I said, you son of a bitch, hands up! Throw the bag!

THE POLICEWOMAN: You stubborn, stop, I said! Stoppp!... He is going to put us into trouble, sergeant Bananas. He is rather an  idiot or he is deaf.

THE POLICEMAN: Sue, prepare the handcuffs. He could be a sort of     fugitive from the lunatic asylum of Sir Epstein. Good , at  least,  he  disposes  of  only  two  sort  of  speeds:slow  and  very slow… Stoppp!!!

THE POLICEWOMAN: Take care so that he won’t bite you, Tybalt. These idiots with perfect teeth are unpredictable. See if he has the identification tablet at his neck. He owns a penknife! Spray!!! Electroshock!!!

 THE POLICEMAN: What are you plotting in the middle of the night in the neglected orchard of Mrs. Goldheart ?! For two weeks you have put us in ambush like sitting on embers. Talk!

THE POLICEWOMAN: He is a little bit hard of hearing. Dirty man! What did you wanted to do with these pits?... What did you wanted to hide? Maybe you have killed that eccentric old lady, you have stolen all her jewelry  and now you are trying to hide them around here, until things go quiet.

THE POLICEWOMAN: Electroshock! We know this technique of              rotten florin.Amateur. Ha-ha, it has been practiced by others without any success. Tybalt, you have the connection.

THE POLICEMAN: Okay! I have taken it Sue!... You have the right to remain silent, bla,  bla, bla… the state can offer you a freeattorney, bla, bla, bla, bla. It’s hilarious. Let’s take this shit face quickly to the police station             until our schedule doesn’t end. My sweetheart mother-in-law is waiting for me to take her to the Vitality cemetery.

THE POLICEWOMAN: And the legal proceedings?

THE POLICEMAN: Okay Sue.You take care of case. Don’t start complaining. After the clothes he wears he doesn’t seem from around here. I feel a little bit swollen and I am out of humor to see that fat with stinky mouth. I’m going to take a look round about the hall. The atrocities with tomato sauce are my specialty.

THE POLICEWOMAN: Are you going to leave me alone with

this violator? Tyb! Think! I’m still a woman with all her complexes. A  few  moments  ago  you  have  told  me  that  I’m  so  vulnerable. Remember!

THE POLICEMAN: You confuse “vulnerable” with “penetrable”. He doesn’t seems aggressive boss, look what a bright look he has, I bet that he has the brain like a baby’s ass... and then again he can’t offer you more pleasure than I already did. Tie him to you with confidence, you are a clever girl!

THE POLICEWOMAN: You asshole! They shouldn’t aloud all the retards at the police station. That’s what I have to get if I give myself to all the pigs. And when I think that I’ve set you free of your  pathetic  virginity, I feel I’m going to throw up… And you, why are you eavesdropping, you psycho old man…pervert! Keep your face near the wall! Hands and legs in the air!

S C E N E  2

(The Policeman, Miss Goldheart)

THE POLICEMAN: Miss Goldheart !!! Miss Goldheart !!! MISS GOLDHEART:Tybalt Como, what are you doing at this hour at my door? I haven’t given a penny for the children from Africa for 49 years. I prefer to pray for them. It’s better. Shalom! THE POLICEMAN: But who has mentioned Africa, miss Goldheart….

MISS GOLDHEART: Not a single word about Haiti. Always after these charity campaigns suddenly appear other rich men. Leave me an account number or ask at the synagogue. Shalom!

THE POLICEMAN: But who has mentioned Haiti, miss Goldheart. Of this it takes care the Salvation Army and the Catholic Church and as you well know, those catholics never ask too many questions. They adapt and that’s it…The charity isn’t  negotiable.

 MISS GOLDHEART: I don’t understand where you want to get, Tybalt Como, as well as I don’t understand what are you doing dressed with these drawers at my door. You know that I have never received on Halloween.

THE  POLICEMAN: These  drawers,  miss  Goldheart, represent an official policeman uniform.

MISS GOLDHEART: Yes?! Well change that gay designer of yours with a goat. I am with my taxes and duties to date, so, spear me. I’m not paying anything in addition. I will denounce you to the Prime Minister. He is the nephew of my brother. What insolence. This state is capable to make  mince meat of me. When are you going to put taxes on the air and dampness so that you can finish me once and for all?!  Irrationals. A living tax payer is always much more precious than a dead one and that under any circumstance with all his kindness can not be named a tax payer.

THE POLICEMAN: But this isn’t about taxes madam. So far of this it takes care other department. Any tax payer, in this case you benefits of an absolutely free way of  protection…

MISS  GOLDHEART: Don’t  trick  me  Tybalt  Como,  I’ve known you since you’ve been wearing spotted trousers. You have been lazy since then, you have been lazy like a  pro.  You have to avoid figures of speech when you are talking with a venerable old lady full of farts…. thoughts, I wanted to say.

THE POLICEMAN: Oh me, but it can’t be, under no circumstance had I thought of you  as an venerable old lady....aged I wanted to say; as for those farts of thoughts. I don’t have any doubt, they float everywhere like ghosts of a skunks tribe. Shortly: in the last 24 hours have you been attacked?

MISS GOLDHEART: Ewww !!!

THE POLICEMAN: Attacked?

MISS GOLDHEART: I don’t remember. I didn’t take my yellow pills today. Thanks for remembering me. Wait, I have to fix my denture.

THE POLICEMAN: Raped?

MISS GOLDHEART: I wish. Never. Can u set me an appointment? At least to put  some lipstick on. I can’t stand those bloody hags that appear on television broken-hearted cursing the 20 years old violator because he has ruined their live, or what’s left of it, when, in fact, he has accomplished their last, big and unbending joy before they would be carried by the hearse. The best ladies are the ladies after 80 years and, I’m glad, that some men still remember this insignificant detail... Do you wish to try your luck, Tybalt Como? I’m on sales!

THE POLICEMAN: What?... Auntie... I have tastes.

MISS GOLDHEART: Has anyone told you today that you are an asshole? Woman-hater! You  don’t like totems, right?!... If you keep me in front of the door much longer, you risk to catch the Sabbath, and, in the Sabbath, it isn’t aloud to move anything not even  the  tongue  in  the  mouth  of  a  lady.  Shalom  definitive  and irrevocable, and close the iron door after you when you decide to be smart and co-operative!

THE POLICEMAN: Miss Goldheart, lets leave these jokes for the times when you will wear miniskirt  again, the hair in the windand young breasts. Half an               hour ago a very dangerous lawbreaker was seen in the orchard of the domain, in Eden, while he was making some holes of about a quarter of elbow. Make a formal complaint.The prison of our town has been empty for too much time. It squeaks. Bring it to live.

MISS GOLDHEART: I don’t give a damn. Grease it with vaseline. That orchard should be renamed… The animals from the forestry make much more damages in that  ruin and, until now, it didn’t bother anyone to close them in a fold. I’m glad to hear that someone gives a damn about my musty lands. If that man isn’t just a budgetary geologist that is searching to justify, by I don’t know what unorthodox methods, his anaemic salary… yes, yes, ask him to come here to serve him with a cup of English tea.  On  this dreadful weather a cup of English tea is something more proper for an untroubled human being that is looking for nonsense.

S C E N E 3

(The Policeman, The Policewoman and the Old Man)

THE POLICEWOMAN:  Well, well sergeant Como, what have I found, in the knapsack of this miserable, while  you have been lazy... some very cute plants in little plastic glasses. Things start to get complicated...

THE POLICEMAN: On the contrary, they are clearing up. Thegeologist  became botanist, and the botanist drug dealer. Cannabis in swaddle or ditch, we’ll clear this up later.The guy was looking to create a secret plantation of cannabis or ditch. We are going  to  get  promoted  Sue,  promoted.  The televisions  and  the tabloids from the capital will raid over us. I can already see the titles: ”The gang of drug dealers annihilated “... “Tybalt Como wins the fight with the mafia clans”... ”The policemen of a country                town win the hydra of corruption ”... ”The Queen has advanced him to the rank of knight....”

THE POLICEWOMAN: The thing with the hydra was awsome. I almost pee myself  when I heard it. You are good compositions, sergeant. Are you sure that those green things are cannabis or ditch and not some black radish?

THE POLICEMAN: A hundred per thousand, Sue sweetie, cannabis or ditch.We will clear this up later which one. They have shown some sketches with them, at the initiation course. They were green like these and with leaves. They will put at least one of us to take the place of that fat Jonathan Doubtfire. Our accomplishments will be recognized; who knows maybe they will transfer us to be in charge of an important department from the capital. When it’s about promotions Tybalt Como knows how to sacrifice himself. Go early to the hairdresser  so that you won’t be taken by surprise of the events. The image counts. Make a speech something like ”Born me mother with luck and throw me in the fire”. Put him a round of handcuffs to the legs as well. For security. You have the connection. THE POLICEWOMAN: Blip-blip-hurrah! We don’t have leg handcuffs in endowment, you mighty. I have only  one hair bow left but it’s limped.

THE POLICEMAN: It doesn’t matter you smart ass, how thin are his ankles are ,the handcuffs are just fine for the legs. Can’t you see he is just skin and bones. Call for backups! No,no backups let us not reduce our  accomplishments. What can the backups do with such a walking skeleton, they can only give him some injection withcalcium. First take out the cell phone so           that we                can immobilize the lawbreaker. Rambo was a little child compared with us. Wait so that I climb a rock to look more imposing and study the light. Glory, money and cigars! Farewell you butts!

THE  POLICEWOMAN: Ahh,  my  battery  is  dead!...  Are  you sure that the plural from butt is butts?

 THE POLICEMAN: “When you aren’t sure look sure!”. That’s what my old man whispered to me when he was dying. Butts how  otherwise?  Only  not....the  recipe  is  infallible  boss.”  In  life everything  is attitude “ he reached to whisper between hiccoughs. He didn’t leave me too much fortune, he old fox, outside of a barn with empty bottles, but these words from him make more than a truck with silver spoons.

THE POLICEWOMAN: Let’s get the bloody hell out of here because this fog got into me like a  chalk broken  with the sledge hammer, and those from the police station don’t get suspicious and come all after us.

THE POLICEMAN: Attitude! Let’s first pass by miss Goldheart to drink a hot cup of tea. We are invited. Towards glory you never have to rush you but walk towards it confident and with dignity.  Reason!  (sing)  On  the  shore  of  lake  Felone \  My  love walked with fear \ Caring sentimental a demijohn \ With sparkles as a glow-lamp...

S C E N E   4

(The Policeman, Miss Goldheart, The Policewoman, Old Man)

THE POLICEMAN: Miss Goldheart! Miss Goldheart!

MISS GOLDHEART: I don’t like  postmen that rang more than twice. They are rude ,uneducated and they carry bad news. On Solomon’s time those who carried bad news, their head was cut off or  democratically  at  option  any  organ.  The  last  postman  that  I received around ’43 announced me that my deceased husband had just died at Stalingrad, with his head cracked by a bottle of  vodka. THE POLICEMAN: Accept my heartfelt sympathy! Did he had a strong head?

MISS GOLDHEART: Anyways he was a pig. He had left seven years ago in a May morning to buy some headache pills and he forgot to come back. After the event, I found out that coming back he had mistaken the town and he had moved north with a 20 years  younger  one.  Like  Ulises  with  Clio,  and  with  that  stupid Penelope, I should have waited for him knitting socks with tassels. The elbow and the crowbar! Forgive me  darling but since then I can’t stand postmen! I think I’m going to throw up everytime I see their foolish uniform.

THE POLICEMAN: But, miss Goldheart this is the uniform of our  sweet               county policeman. Black and pink and svarovski diamonds. Sorrow twinned with ingenuity.

MISS GOLDHEART: Change your designer with a camel, or better don’t, send him to Russia to look after my bloody husband so that he can bring those headache pills and the rest… Why are you three? It better came just one, but followed by a wolf                dog, or just the dog alone. These trained animals are much more intelligent than humans, with him I would have get along wonderful; maybe we would have played bridge too. During war time it came half of a postman, without an arm ,without a leg, without an eye and a ear and he brought me the             telegram in his teeth drooling.                The Parliament has promised that he will make  budgetary discounts. I will reclaim you at the Prime Minister, he is the brother of my nephew and he has promised that he will diminish the taxes. Wait so that I can note down your names, you ticks… Hey, but aren’t you Tybalt Como ,that guy with spotted trousers that I caught 25 years ago peeing on the stone turtles in front of the residence?... And why do you say it calls you in a different way? Have you changed your sex?!

THE POLICEWOMAN: Lady, he didn’t say that his name was anyway and he has a very good sex and I, in his place, I wouldn’t change it with nothing and no one, I can guarantee you that. Can we make a call from your place…? We have an immediate case and we don’t have time to chat.

MISS GOLDHEART:  What a  butch  attitude! What  a diction!... Of course you can. Would you like an English tea? Of course. How many are you?

THE POLICEWOMAN: Three! Where do you have the phone?

MISS GOLDHEART: In the bathroom, on the pumice stone. It runs with coins. Are you sure that you don’t have the wolf dog with you?... That’s a shame. I was keeping a femur in the fridge for any possibility.  So I have to make tea for five. I always put one more because everytime I serve, I drop a cup of tea on the floor because I get nervous.          Don’t pass those regular four minutes because I didn’t get my pension this year… How did you say your name is, in  case I would like to reclaim you?

THE POLICEWOMAN: We are on an undercover mission, note there down A, B and C. Is it enough?

MISS GOLDHEART: And the dog has a number or a name ?I don’t  remember… Slowly,  let  me  note  that  down.  Who  is  “C” because I wouldn’t like to make a confusion? Am I obtrusive?

THE POLICEWOMAN: You are! The complaints are received every day at our office between 10 and 9. Good tea!

THE POLICEMAN: Good tea!

MISS GOLDHEART: So between 10 and 9. Drink with confidence, I have boiled it only three times untill now. It’s kosher, that means it’s half English because it is bought from here and it is fabricated in China with addition of wood wool and excrements of sacred rat. You can still feel the taste. It is sugared with molasses. Good tea! But the mister with the crossed arms and the hands dirty of soil doesn’t get tea?

THE POLICEMAN: I don’t think so it is too weak for him. He prefers the strong drinks. Those that lift you above this material and materialistic world. Now he is praying … Good tea!

MISS GOLDHEART: Is he the designer? He looks familiar. I have a laipse. Is he a  Buddhist?  All these Buddhists have healthy liver, from scented sticks… And plus he is quiet like Chaplin, the brothers  Max and Buster Keaton in one place… Maybe he would like a femur… it has gristle also. Can he chew?

THE POLICEWOMAN: He prefers rather to be stunned like Peter and Paul at once. He is admiring your floors. Who has polished them? They are of course of walnut, aren’t they?

MISS GOLDHEART: You don’t     know    anything about plants… from canine wood. Very good tea! Is it good?

THE POLICEWOMAN and THE POLICEMAN: Of course. Very, very good tea!

MISS GOLDHEART: Shall I pour you more?

THE POLICEWOMAN and THE POLICEMAN: No, no, no, no!

THE POLICEWOMAN: Can I use your phone? I want to make an immediate appointment at the hair salon. Honestly. I pay! How much?

MISS GOLDHEART: How nice, I didn’t figure out from the start that you are a woman. Have you noticed that today women resemble more and more with men? The same scattered haircuts, the same clothes, the same sprawling walk… One pound! I have no change to give you. Thank you, I don’t accept bribe for authorithes I always make discounts; but you must know that the device is only for background. I use to rub my back with the handset. The doctor recommended me a ultrasonic treatment.But, if you wish to take a shower you can use it for  free. The shampoo is from the house. Have you brought a towel? I don’t use to lend it.

THE POLICEWOMAN and THE POLICEMAN: !!!!

THE POLICEWOMAN: No problem, right now we are going to buy it!... Bananas get me away from this stupid harridan because I feel like I want to comb her nerves and straight them until she doesn’t want it.

THE POLICEMAN: Greetings from Mister Churchill!!!

THE POLICEWOMAN: …And       the         Queen  mother!!!! MISS GOLDHEART: Greetings to bitch Laika!

S C E N E  5

(The Policeman, Miss Goldheart)

THE POLICEMAN: Miss Goldheart! Miss Goldheart!

MISS GOLDHEART: I don’t know you, I don’t answer to that kind of surveys “What have you  been  doing in the last 100 years?”. Technically I am a deceased woman and a deceased woman shrinks into         oneself like Nefertiti in a jade. All my identity documents  have  disappeared  with  the  lovely  fire  of  the  orchard, broken out by those extremists with ridge.

THE POLICEMAN: And I am the grave digger from Hamlet.

MISS GOLDHEART: How is the young master feeling?

THE POLICEMAN: He has doubts concerning the match- making. He has sent me to  get him back the knapsack with the weeding invitations. Miss Goldheart stop tormenting me, it’s me Tybalt Como  and  I  have  forgotten  an  old  knapsack  and  full  of strange plants, in plastic glasses, in the lobby from the entrance.

MISS GOLDHEART: Whose knapsack was?

THE POLICEMAN: Mister “C “’s… Mute guy!

MISS GOLDHEART: Aha,I understand, I don’t know who are you talking about. In this  house nobody has entered over a century. Can you see the spiders?

THE POLICEMAN: The obstruction of the law is punished with, with… with much more than you can imagine. Shall I refresh your memory: it is about the gentleman that had his hands crossed and who under any circumstance wanted to touch that sticky tea and impossible because he had a  healty liver and because it was only half of how it should be…. Buster Keaton, Chaplin and Shogun in one place. Sullen old man!

MISS GOLDHEART: Aha, the Buddhist! So what, do you think I had the courage to  touch that slop. I only drink coffee. Clever guy he caught it, not like you and by the way, it has passed my lipse, his name isn’t “C” is Pop and he lives with his parents, with my allowance, on unlimited time,in the summer kitchen of the hall. Say goodbye to the knapsack. It makes part of the patrimony. In it has been brought my grandfather in the  first  World War, or, well, what was left of him. Do you want to see him?

THE POLICEMAN: Grandfather?!!! How?!

MISS GOLDHEART: Pop.  P.O.P.! I remembered. That’s the name of the old man that  brought him here to my house. He is a refugee and he is helping me with work around the hall for some months. He knows how to sew by hand on the right and on the left. A real joy. A nephew of mine, director at Hollywood, promised me that he will put me in a movie just because of this.

THE POLICEMAN: Grandfather!!! What refugee P.O.P.?! Oldlady, Buster Keaton           from earlier is a trafficker, do you understand old lady EL T-R-A-F-I-C-A-N-T-E! I caught him while he was trying to start an illicit plantation of ditch or cannabis on your property. This is what we will establish subsequently, after the investigation.

MISS GOLDHEART: Long live him. Will you kiss a frog?... What do you want to establish?

THE POLICEMAN: If it is ditch or cannabis.

MISS GOLDHEART: And if it is oak what will you do?

THE POLICEMAN: Oak!!!

MISS  GOLDHEART: Look  on  the  internet  to  convince yourself. Me, when I have  doubts I don’t brave, I get informed. Myself, I’ve helped him to put the acorns, brought from his land, in glasses and some months I have kept them here on the ledge until they have sprout. I have been singing them ’’La Marseillase’’ every morning. I hope that you haven’t harmed these helpless plants or else I will reclaim you and you’ll see, with  swarovski also, at the Plants protection. If you didn’t know we have Animal Protection, Animal Protection but we don’t have Human Protection. Of this it takes charge everyone how they know and how their conscience tells them. When I’m going to go,there where I will go, definitely and irrevocable, I will leave to these poor refugees my desolate orchard to bring it back to life. You know how much an oak lives? THE POLICEMAN: I have no idea! 50-60 years.

 MISS GOLDHEART: Keep that in mind, Tybalt Como: With branched boughs, that confers  him greatness, the oak grows at a height of 40 metres. And this impressive dimension gets at the end of a secular life, existing oaks  live almost 800 years! A vigorous presence in the forested lands from the mild areas from the north, the common oak is a leafy tree (whose leaves go dry at the beginning of the cold season). It is also called European oak, but his  scientific  name  is  Quercus  Robur,  growing  along  our  entire continent, from Scotland and Spanish until Ukraine. Like in the case of the majority of trees with rich treetop, the roots of the oak lay in the earth on a difference of an approximate level equal with the one that the boughs grow above.” Look what pictures! Art!

THE POLICEMAN: Gigantic! Stupid and ignorant!

MISS GOLDHEART: What? Who?

THE POLICEMAN: ME.

MISS GOLDHEART: Do  you wish  to contradict  you? Wait….And this is not everything: it is then the time for the oak to fructify.The flowers  have  different  sexes,  in  the  same  tree.  The masculine ones are grouped in inflorescences named catkins, and the feminine ones are like little buds.  Yearly, from these, some thousands of acorns are formed during the summer months, falling in the first weeks of the  autumn. A tree being at the maturity can fructify even 50.000 acorns, but very few of the ones that fall down on the ground will sprout and turn into mature trees. Besides, lots of these fruits don’t even get on the soil, attracting entire  flights of birds and a lot of animals, who feed with them there on the spot or carry them  to their  shelters, to  keep  them as  provisions for  the winter (the seed from the fruit is rich in starch and fats). The most  big  “collectors”  of  acorns  are  the  magpies  and  the squirrels, that carry the future provisions on long distances, helping in this way, through involuntary plantings, to the spread of the oak.” And you say, you ignorant, that the oak is a shady plant…

THE POLICEMAN: That was the first impression, wrong otherwise. Now I belive that in deed it is a shady plant. Gigantic. It truly is a noble tree.

MISS GOLDHEART: Tell me about it ?! Remember: ”In Great Britain, 29 May is the  day  of the Oak. It is in fact, the commemoration of Charles the second birthday, that escaped from Cromwell’s soldiers (after              the battle from Worcester, from September 1651), hiding in oak.” Pam-pam! It writes here black on white? It writes! So, set free Mister Pop and apologize because you have interrupted  him from a voluntary planting. Jackals!After all that had happened to him and his family, in that awful country from where he had got the acorns and everything, you come over him with fists and canes. We are civilized nation. I’m going to tell your mother, Tybalt Como, let’s see what opinion she has about one like this, and I hope I won’t see you around here because I will reclaim you to Charles and the Queen and to that guy from the environment, hell knows what is his name because they change him from two to two months like rabbits.

S C E N E  6

(Ana Pop, Albert Pop)

ANA POP: You’ve promised me Albert that you won’t drink again,even from when we decided to leave .

ALBERT POP: I know but this was a case of  major force. Some guy around here  invited me to take a draught because his wife had given birth to his child.

ANA  POP: Whaaat?

ALBERT POP: Girl. He was sad. A daughter isn’t born everyday . You try hard to raise her ,to take her at the best schools, to clothe her after those jokes of magazines, you try to make her speak polite to you and without any grammatical mistakes and one day she comes, almost when you at least expect it, some no one and he penetrates your whole work with his sexual organ. Don’t you get like you want to throw the hatchet in the clouds? Don’t you feel like you want when that who calls himself son-in-law and shows his teeth, who touches your daughter in front of you whom you know with what sacrifice you have raised her, don’t you feel like, I say, you want to choke that hairy throat and get his ass in some of those beautiful gates with pikes from cast iron.

ANA POP: Of course you want to, because your father-in-law  that’s    what     he          has         done     to you when you were touching me like an asshole in front of everybody when we were coming back home from the church. Lucky that there, at us, there weren’t any pikes like these ones in all the corners. How do you want this mankind to grow just like this, looking at the sun and at saints? Have you forgotten cockerel when you were waiting for everybody from the house to fall asleep so that you can sneak beside me and how you left when you heard the tomcats starting to sneeze on the fence?

ALBERT  POP: That was so long time ago as if it didn’t happen to us but to other ones and we have to take in count that this mankind has grown quite a lot that it hasn’t no place to fit and it gets out like a piece ofdough that grows and gets out of the basin on the table and then on the  floor. (sings ironically) Hallelujah, hallelujah! And the spawns from the east are going to leave to those from the west and they are going to greed at the bread, the wine, the house and the virgins of those ones and great rowdiness will start. In that  hour great hatred will born and they are going to eat each other alive because the fields will be enough but the sharing will be unjust for some. Hallelujah, hallelujah! Why do you smash with the stone Abel, the nice smelling head of your brother Cain and why do you dress in his white shirt of floss silk instead of washing yours in tones of tears(burps). Halle…

ANA  POP: You crock and profane drunk ! You don’t have to complain that others steal your faith when you have already lost yours or you have left it like a baby in a rush basket in the dark will of the waves. If we have forgotten who we are, in vain, we have arrived, man, with great sacrifice until here, until in the land where milk and honey flow and the dogs walk with pretzels in their tail. And if we left from where we left we didn’t leave because we would have died without food or drink but because those crooked from above had killed the hope of going ever straight.Our life wasn’t ours anymore but it had become ,from nowhere, overnight, theirs, the humpbacks. Forgive me Lord for the addiction of my speech and for the disarray of my thought; because for this son , we have left our land and our four           goats, our native house               and the deads from the cemetery and we have left in wandering only with the faith in You and the Virgin Mary. Amen. Because for this cruel son , untouched of any  woman,  for our  nephews and  for  the  nephews of  the nephews  that  will  come  from  his  ruby  blood  we  have  left  our troubles in the hands of the gentles and we  started in wandering because of the repulsion of our better ones like in the old times like old men running because of  the  fear of the pagans. Thank God! Thank You. Have mercy Virgin Mother !

S C E N E  7

(Catherine, Clement)

CLEMENT: Are you waiting for someone?

CATHERINE: !!!

CLEMENT: Are you waiting for someone?

CATHERINE: Stop staring at my ass because you are making me feel weird. And if I wait,are you interested?

CLEMENT: Swimming and fishing are forbidden in the harbour, looking is free.

 CATHERINE: Tar and flakes! Are you here to hook up?... That beats hell. I  thought that at least here I can be at last alone. Maybe you want to know and what is my bra number?

CLEMENT: Three. For sure three. At your  jeans you wear 26 , at your shoe 35, your name starts with C. Twice a week you come until here at the ferryboat and you look at the sea and the boats… Are you waiting for someone?

CATHERINE: Maybe, but this isn’t the business of a snotty. Are you from the navigation? Apprentice? Look how is the deal, mousse, if I have to pay some fine for this thing I will pay, just leave me alone. If you want something else, get your mind of it. I will have sex only with who I like and I don’t like you at all. You look inexperienced. Maybe I dream of a commander. You have your face full of pimples and you look immature. Go away.

CLEMENT: If you want to know I take care of my face,  maybe too much and because of this I become irritated terribly. Yesterday I looked better but yesterday there was no one that leaned so interesting on this blunt rail.

CATHERINE: Are you sure you don’t have nothing to do with the costal police? Okay, you have convinced me, I belive you. You are free, otherwise I will start  screaming towards those beefy dockers and you will be hard pressed.

CLEMENT: I don’t eat the human beings I don’t know. If you want I can buy you the bike. I like the Frankweet oldies models.

CATHERINE: Naughty!... Let your beard grow, it’s cooler, it makes you a little bit more mature. Put some gel on. And now consider this discussion over , smart ass.  You are starting to make me feel bored. Beat it, the wave is coming!

 CLEMENT: Maybe I’ll find something to work and I will have a lot of time then.  Maybe I will invite you at a terrace. Don’t worry ,I have money , I got something from the office for the refugees.

CATHERINE: You stupid, this money will only suffice for a pack of cigarettes. You have a very good accent. You almost tricked me . I could swear that you are from the suburbs. Where did you learn the language so well?

CLEMENT: From school, from dictionaries , from

movies. Do you like movies?

CATHERINE: I’ve seen Titanic twenty one times, but you have to know that you  still don’t interest me … Look here comes my commander , the mighty one with beard and gun. The one who is signing.

CLEMENT: …I know , because of the pimples. Because of that you don’t like me. All my aspirations are reduced to an equipped commander in a white dock? You could have chosen a rear admiral. If you didn’t know he is higher in distinction. CATHERINE: You foul, it can be noticed from far that you are a virgin and I don’t want to have you on my conscience. I already have others on my soul and after I don’t want to tie myself to you and that’s it. The first time you make love in life it has to be something sacred , like in the novels.

CLEMENT: That’s how it was with you?

CATHERINE: That is how it should have been , but I don’t like to talk about it. Leave my helmet alone. That’s it. Free love is nonsense. I don’t wanthim to see me with you. He is so possessive and aggressive …

CLEMENT: At least tell me what’s your name.

 CATHERINE: Catherine. Back home they called me Cat. Are you happy? You  would have liked me more if my name was Gioconda ? Leave now…..Heyy!Are you from the east? CLEMENT: Yes . Does it matter?

CATHERINE: For others maybe,f or those noisy extremists with ridge for sure, for me it doesn’t.

CLEMENT: …And the movie?

S C E N E  8

(The Policeman, Ana Pop, The Policewoman)

THE POLICEMAN: Lady Hanna, I really belive you, but a document or a staying card would be helpful. Very helpful.

ANA POP: Not Hanna, but Ana. If you belive me then why the hell do you  need  those papers? Madame Goldheart guarantees for us. We are refugees not law breakers. I really would like you to be in our place and someone to annoy you whenever he wants and  how he likes...

THE POLICEMAN: In this case I feel obliged to ask you to come with me at the police station. How many did you say you are?

ANA  POP: Four.

THE  POLICEMAN: Four?! A group. Are you pregnant?

Ana Pop: At my age, I don’t think so. At least until yesterday I wasn’t.

THE POLICEMAN: And then where is the fourth one?!Here you are only…..

ANA  POP: Me Pop Ana, my husband Pop Albert, the one that is sick, my father-in-law Pop Ilie,  this one who doesn’t speak that you, brought from the orchard and              the        boy – Pop Clemente that is not present.

THE  POLICEMAN: Where is he?

ANA  POP: Who?

THE  POLICEMAN: Your boy,who else?

ANA  POP : Why, isn’t he allowed to walk because he isn’tparalyzed.   Maybe                he         is at some girls because he isn’t crippled. But I will be surprised if he            finds someone on his  taste around here, because our girls are better and                much more housewives. Not often do you find a tufted one and dressed proper in this little town. He is looking for some skirts like all those boys that haven’t grow downy beard. Don’t you want to grow your birth rate because we have resistant  lashes to shocks? When have you heard in this European Union of yours of free circulation? Because we inform you that we didn’t get here with the barrow. I would really like to hear the opinion of your mate, pale face. He seems more human.

THE POLICEMAN:  She is a girl, for God sake! A girl! What is with everybody today?! Her name is agent 003.

THE POLICEWOMAN: Tyb, I will pretend I didn’t hear this eastern  countrywoman  that  rambles  about  my  sexuality  and  my hormones. You have the connection 002.

THE POLICEMAN: Pretend,pretend 003! This woman doesn’t seem like she is pretending and she is asking your opinion like to a true man. How could I be so blind until now and mistake you with a woman. Take-over! Take-over! Are you still claiming that those bumps under your neck are breasts?

 THE POLICEWOMAN: These eastern guys have               a terrific swearing…

THE POLICEMAN: Which one?

THE POLICEWOMAN: ”I will put you back in the place from where you’ve been born!”.Over!

THE POLICEMAN: Only from  this  moment  I start tounderstand something from the philosophy. Great wording. Do you know others Sue? Sue? 003?

ANA  POP: Leave her I will tell you all of them with steam and with inbred tone if you keep pulling me. Mister policeman or whatever you are because after these clothes you don’t look like one, at our place when you don’t do anything it’s called that you sit without doing anything and this smells like damage and waist of time. Wouldn’t it be better to ask Miss Goldheart in private what’s with us here, because she is only hundred steps far from here; because me and my husband and this old man of my father-in- law, we promised the woman that we will finish cleaning the orchard and straighten up the fences. And around our place the word is word and the borsch is borsch.

THE POLICEMAN: Borsch? What kind of swearing is this one?... What’s borsch?!

ANA POP: A sort of soup of yours, but much more sour and much more tasty.

S C E N E  9

(Miss Goldheart, Sir Epstein)

MISS GOLDHEART: A cup of tea, two,three, Sir Epstein?

SIR EPSTEIN: I’m in a hurry Sheila, at lunch I have a meeting with the mayor. A scotch with ice would be proper. I heard that you started renovating.

MISS GOLDHEART: At a certain age each of us should try to make order in his  life before coming in front of The Great Accountant.

SIR EPSTEIN: Right. Have you decided to whom are you going to leave your things? My offer remains valid. I want to extend. You know that this is my dream. The empire of the lunatics is in need of a big building, like the one from Gregor Smith, so that it would be credible, Miss Golden-Heart. I will pay in advance and over the market price.Everything remains untouched until…

MISS GOLDHEART: If I were interested in money, I would have been the iron widow of             Rothschild and I would have been crying on a platinum toilet… What are your “children” doing?

SIR EPSTEIN: They lead an easy life. They are like some angels with broken wings that are put to get fat. Sleep, food, walking around the institution, they fall in love one with each other and  then…shit. A lot of shit. Their families give a lot of money there,  enough  to  make  sure  that  things  around  there  are  under control and to save the appearances. I bring them a golden box of chocolate tied with pastel bows and  they  leave me a big check. Belive me Sheila, nobody cares in deed of these silent mongrels. Sometimes , when I have time to look in their eyes , it seems for a moment that those lunatics understand perfectly everything, they are a burden for the holders that leave their black cars on the alley in front of my cabinet; because my large and trivial smile and full of falsity would want , from all my heart , for them to be taken home for ever or to disappear only for just some hours in the nothingness. MISS GOLDHEART: Hell of a business have you  chosen John.You should have become a baker or a rock singer and it would have hurt you somewhere of all these sorrows.

SIR EPSTEIN: This is my pact Sheila, I can go with any car I want , at the reception, the ladies look over the shoulder with hunger after me when I appear with some semi-drunk teenager at my  arm , I’m a respected teacher , even feared I could say ,it doesn’t lacks me almost anything from what a mature man  would want on this world.

MISS GOLDHEART: And still….

SIR EPSTEIN: You know better. It exists just a “but”. The happiness can’t be bought  but it is acquired. Shall we do the business?

MISS GOLDHEART: It is almost twelve.I thought you said you were in a hurry. The orchard doesn’t belong to me anymore, John. Over some years you will see in stead of these  old and burned apple trees just some seedling oaks.A real wonder.

 SIR EPSTEIN: Did you sold Eden?!... Tell me it’s all a joke. My patients have already got  used  with this sad landscape from  their  neighborhood.It  made  them  resign  more  easily.  They became much more calm and quiet when       they looked at            the carbonized trees and  they didn’t rejected the treatments anymore, their desire to go fully disappeared. They got interiorized , locked like in a steel pod. Ah, look that I talk without knowing about this at past…

MISS GOLDHEART: The squirrels will invade that blackened place like some flames of living purple. The birds will return and will fill the place of voices. The new owners will lift a rustic thing over there,to humanize the land.Would they want to start pottery? Let them start. I’ve helped them already to get all the permits. The ones from the environment are pleased with all this fashionable thing... bio and  eco. They have everything. Demonstrate that they have activity at the Minister, it is justified. They have decided to give as an example Eden, to popularize it. I guess they have already prepared to finance it, but for the moment they keep it secretly.They want to announce it in a festive setting.Next week it will already come a television to get some interviews.

SIR EPSTEIN: I’m getting crazy….Did you sold Eden?... Did you sold it Sheila, without saying a word ?...I would have given anything you’ve wanted on this ruin. Specious! Hag that isn’t satisfied! How many zeros were on the check of that one who succeed it to persuade you to sell it to him, I’m curious?

 MISS GOLDHEART: No one. It was a donation. I had to purchase  with  something  the  “paradise”  of  my  own  conscience. Barter. Simple. A gesture.

SIR EPSTEIN: Donation?! You are out of your mind. The act can be canceled. I know a lot of lawyers.

MISS  GOLDHEART: You wish,  great  Mister  teacher  of psychiatry. I have  let  myself  consulted  preventive  by  fellow  of yours from a rival clinic.Does the name Gregor Smith rings a bell? I have annexed documents near the donation act that I’m very normal. Want more scotch?

S C E N E 10

(The Reporter, Ana Pop, Albert Pop, The Old Man, Clement Pop)

THE REPORTER: I would like you to tell brief, for the viewers, what made you pick this area. Action!

Ana Pop:The need.

THE REPORTER: I understand, but which….

ANA POP:You don’t understand anything, you pretend that you understand but you don’t understand anything and no matter how much would you try to understand it your  brains what was the thing that made us stop around these scarped regions you will still not try to get at any  conclusion  because you don’t really care about this thing. If you had really been interested to find out something, first, you would have asked me what is my name. But around here only the policemen are really interested about the full name of the refugees and immigrants ,about their antecedents, about their social statement and especially if they are going to stay around here, as if they were afraid that we won’t catch mosses and that we couldn’t roll over anymore.

THE REPORTER: I appreciate your sincerity, but don’t worry, we know that the problems of adapting to the environment induces  in  most  of  the  cases  stress…  all  the  harshness  will  be eliminated at           editing. Our editorial office produces just teased and recorded broadcastings. Nothing live. Even from since I’ve taken the decision to make this coverage our sources had provided to us the identity of this group, Miss Hanna Pop and I would like to remind you that this is not a political broadcasting but an ecology one.

ANA POP: Ecology is still a sort of politics, mister. Do you wish to tell how they  were searched and hunt down until now all sort of agents that looked more like flayers than people?; for many times we  have been gathered and sent home in your stylish planes with some coins sliped in our pockets on the way back and for how many times we needed to fill in some papers in which we promise seriously that we will remain at home quiet so that we can listen to your everlasting sermons about the necessity of sacrifice curves  for the reopening of the national economy… Home, home, home, they kept repeating us until we felt sick of this home  that wasn’t for us “home” anymore. After the dog has escaped his leash once ,it’s difficult to tie him back again. And my name isn’t Hannah Montana but Ana Pop from Buturuga de Jos. And if you really want to find out…

 THE REPORTER: Let’s invite now to the microphone, the patriarch of this family, her dean  John, sorry, Ion Pop to tell us about how did he           get the                idea of  transporting around here a knapsack, that originally is called”straista”, so how did you get the idea of  bringing  here        the  miraculous  acorns that,because to  be sheer, a lot of them exist as well here.Please , don’t avoid  the microphone, speak bluntly and loud….

ION  POP: !!!

THE REPORTER: I insist. Come closer , don’t fear to tell loudly what you think,we live in a free country, a progressive one…

ION  POP: !!!

ALBERT POP: Don’t get annoyed on him, he would speak all sort of things if he could,but he is mute. A holm felt over him in his youth,when he was working at “silvic”, because from there he gets his bad luck . But I will tell you in his place because nobody will get upset.  Just at the border when the Hungarian customs  officers  wanted  to  throw  away  his  bag  full  of  acorns, because they thought that it could have been filled with all sort of powders, I found out what he was carrying with him. We thought that it was food, but it wasn’t. And when those customs officers wanted to throw away his bag and in instance I see the old man how it turns around and and how he wants to take out his chaise at them, that because of him we wouldn’t have passed . Luckily my wife Ana talked to him and made him nicer. Those customs officers had seen as well that it was nothing with the bag and they let us go. He is quick of temper, I know him from youth he is sullen , because like this are all men that their wife died, but otherwise he is a good man, the bread of God not otherwise and because of that Miss Goldheart has fond of him,  she says that he looks like her brother that drowned when he was little, because he is hard worker and he doesn’t care about anything else than his things and  he loves the forest much more than a woman. But it better talk my son Clemente Pop, because he is very smart and he knows a lot, more than us in one place, because he passed the   school leaving examination first in highschool, he participated at all the Olympics, from where he  returned with some big glass plates written very lovely with his name. I would have given him forward , because he really wants to become a scholar ,but from where the sack of money and he is a little bit sick and because of that we have all come until here to work ,to make him a durable house and to send him to those famous schools, for him to become a great man and to carry on the name Pop,Pop’s forward. Because of that my father-in-law has put the acorns into ground so that the children of Clemente have where to stay when there is heat and to have healthy branches in which to look at the lighters of the night when they would come with their girls to stay underneath the trees. There you are, that I speak a lot and without any meaning.

 THE REPORTER: The uselessness and the fluffs will be cut at the editing. Tell me, please, Clement, if you honestly belive that there is any chance in this competition between plastic and glass, between chlorophyll and carbon, between organic and artificial, between idealism and pragmatism?... Don’t you consider that this  neighborhood in process of transformation might damage the inmates from Epstein institution, unused     with the radical developments of the environment in which they are treated with distinguished professionalism and that could produce them disorders of their own reality?

CLEMENT  POP: ???

THE REPORTER: This one is mute as well?!.... Cut!... Enough !!!

ACT I I

S C E N E  1

(Sir Epstein, William)

SIR EPSTEIN: Will,Will I have the sensation that you avoid me darling and you know what is said that the one who avoids someone…..is a cow. Come on I’m just joking boy, don’t be so rigid. The times when you were coming to my office to ask me shy about “The Furious”, a round of equipment or a new leather ball are over. Nice times. You know I never hesitated when it was about to put my shoulder to work and to gather the team. How was that song that our boys shouted when they got drunk after the victory? WILLIAM (hums it shy):On the shore of lake Felone/ My lover walks with fear/ Carrying with love an osier bottle/ With neon sparkles…

SIR  EPSTEIN:  And I turned the hat/ And I undone my belt/ And she had lost any fear/ When we had challenged eternity… The professional             beggars dressed in tail coat were standing only near the church and they bended with style when you slipped your fingers in your pocket,after small change… Nice times, I feel that I’m going to cry. What, you didn’t think I can be capable of some feelings,junior?... Are you still playing football with the boys Will?

WILLIAM: Mhm,when I have free time, but it is crappy to play in three or four dizzy people when you can’t even gather two teams of five… and to play with the kids isn’t a big deal, it seems like you are a  donkey between sheeps. It isn’t any fun, especially when you discover that the ball is still round and not square like others have taught you. The hell with those times Sir Epstein and everything is spinning without a sense like a turkey hen stuffed with toilet paper and rosin.

SIR EPSTEIN: What about your wish of becoming coach at the capital,what has become of that wish Will, dust? Where are the dreams, the aspirations, your ideals, your creed? I always liked your  determination.  I’ve  even  said  it  to  your  father  before  the disaster happened: ”This boy of yours will get far, Tom. I can feel it.He has lard!”. I think you haven’t quit drinking, you tough guy, Will!

WILLIAM: My dreams have been left in the plate that I have before me at lunch, Sir, and then I have never wanted to become a coach but an umpire and that is a different fish food.You know that I have to take care of my mother and of my sister after my father was chewed by that  installation. Before I would have found easier a job, but since those people from the east have come it’s harder every time. You can’t make too many whims when you find something, especially when you know that, behind you, twenty grasshoppers of these  wait for you to quit so they can get your job.I can say that I passed much more difficulties before, but these ones from now never… and neither the perspectives are very encouraging.

 SIR EPSTEIN: You are right, you are right!So umpire?!It doesn’t enter how it entered, now it enters how it exited….Ha-ha! Everything has gone crazy Will, even to me things don’t go how they   went. If               today someone like you, Will,  came to ask me something, I don’t say I would refuse but I would think more, like in business, if I had something to win after his request. Now, even those who have some position prefer to keep their sick relatives at home and to hire some unqualified eastern woman to wipe their ass, than to bring them to me who I have recognized diplomas for this activity. Some other times I moaned of  requests and I could have denied easy two or three petitions per month , now I have ten empty rooms and no one calls me. Luckily I haven’t fallen asleep until now and I have earned as much as I need it, thanks God. I don’t have wife, children,  I’m happy and I sleep ten hours per night without turning a single time. I don’t care, but I have no clue what will happen to this country if some definite measures aren’t taken of emergency. This firmness lacks to everybody. Too much tolerance ruins. Who they think they protect with these kindergarten idealistic statements.

WILLIAM: The government has promised that …

SIR EPSTEIN: Sorry that I have to disappoint you but he doesn’t care about our stupid government and what happens to us. Believe me he is much more interested in those stinky people from Afghanistan and Irak, that wash themselves with sand, than your faith of the personal and own citizen-William Scott junior. He wants to shake good his ass and for the Americans and the Europeans and he wags his tail like a dog in front of the hunter and he leaves us , the little ones, to smash our brains and find out how to get out from the shit. And we will eventually get out from the shit and without his help. I’m convinced, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you to come at the institution.

WILLIAM: I would really like to believe you mister, but I don’t see how. The key and the locker can be found at all those smarts , from above, with beard and glasses.

SIR EPSTEIN: I see that you are a smart guy Will but in this case you are wrong. When we are so abandoned, like that hippie from the bible Iov in the belly of the whale, we have to help ourselves , otherwise this bloody politics of them will be ruined and they will put the flag on our chest. We have to be united and we have to  eliminate the intruders among us until they conquer us… What refugees? Our               academicians   have the moral duty      to reformulate this stale stigma. No one is cannoning there in the east,there are no  massacres, they should wait quietly and not run from the imaginary dangers. What, haven’t us waited enough after the war and we haven’t nagged anybody for this. We have become united and        we have started              working and we  haven’t started complaining like these ones,that want in a moment to be good and the manna to fall from the sky . Since that iron curtain has been lifted we can watch quietly their pathetic show from here also, they don’t need to get inside our soul like amateurs. They should go to hell back to their home and leave us like we were before they had come like a flood among us. Love with reluctance doesn’t know mercy,Atilla spoke. This can’t go on. Read the tiltles from        today’s               newspaper:” Consensus and solidarity in the big family of European Union!”,”Brangelina asked Thailand  to  receive  the  muslim  refugees  from  Myanmar”,  ”The United States  announce that they will receive 80.000 of refugees from all the world”, 80.000, William, and this is             just the beginning ,”The European Union wants an unique politic for the refugees that live it’s area”… I’m sick.sick,sick!              Too much tolerance makes us look like some stupid monkeys from a Plexiglas shopwindow. Look, I have 54 years and I have never thought of going  somewhere  else  until  now,  outside  the  orchard  Smoth  in which the gulf is a real delight of the senses and look at these ones, they change countries casual like disposable shirts. In the morning they are in Italy, in the afternoon in Spain and at dinner at us, where they also  prepare to sleep. Let them die there in their native and poetical  countries  to  release  us  from  begging  sewed  with  white cotton. Out with those trashes! We have to convince them somehow, that there have to be some efficient methods. We have to learn to make ourselves and for good cleanup.

WILLIAM: I don’t think they will understand with one or two good words they  had also brought they children with them. The church supports them too. The whole thing is messy. Some of them even have mixed marriages, because I don’t know what seemed to our ladies that they had the fly much more puffed than the ones of the boys around here. That sucks. It’s with charm. You can’t get in their life like this with one or two … They are also people.

 SIR EPSTEIN: Probably… What blame do we have? What are we, ornamental plants, the statues from Madame Tussaud? And when you think that there are among us plenty that agree with them and that create them all sort of facilities. And those can’t wait for it. I wouldn’t like to give examples, I think you know  them also… There are all sort of methods. We have to attack. See,see! Think like in football , Will, at a strategy, use  your brain until it starts to rust. The time has come for you to help also, if you want to become a coach or a umpire. Everything depends of just a simple telephone… A simple telephone to a certain person and the thing is almost  done…  Gather  “The  Furious”  tough  guy,  Bob,  Charley, Shark and Tommy. Rather than going to every pub with all the loafers they would rather do something useful for the country. If we want , we can all be a single team like at the start.  We and the grasshoppers , Will. Not only we have to score in the goal of these beggars, but we have to persuate them to leave the field even from the first round.

WILLIAM: Oh my, it’s going to be difficult-difficult. With some of the boys I haven’t met for four or five years. Tybalt has become a policeman and one of them I’ve heard he became minister…

SIR EPSTEIN: Tybalt isn’t a bad guy , but he is a closed case…Yes, yes I have also heard about that milksop Jimmy that he would have been repented. A stupid less. Even so he didn’t made        too         many money     in defensive. He was in                the team just because his father was the manager of Lakes Bank and no one dared to  contradict  him  in  the  moments  when  he  scowled  from  those favorites of Austrian general. I will fill in that check, so that it would be easier for you to think. You tell the sum … like old times … But until I find that fucking pen tell me, please, if you don’t remember somehow where lives that proud old lady of Sheila Goldheart who walks, how long is the summer, with those hideous lace umbrellas, on the orchard?

S C E N E  2

(Mrs. Scott, Catherine, William)

MRS. SCOTT: Did he call again?!Tell those bastards that we don’t need any maid and no old men to take care of them. We are a mature nation, with perspectives and no charges. They should let us complete our beauty sleep. Wrinkles don’t suit us. CATHERINE: I will tell them mother, I will tell them, don’t  be  so  irritated  like  a  cage  of  parrots  under  the  tarpaulin. Amiability costs. What if it was reverse?

MRS. SCOTT: What do you mean,reverse?! That sun from the harbour has affected your head since you don’t wear hats but little caps. I’ve asked you for three weeks to pass by Lyzzie to buy me a red papillote. Right?! Just that , a red ordinary papillote, I didn’t ask you more. If I had asked William it wouldn’t have been such a problem with everything that is going through his mind. A red papillote , a red papillote, a poor red papillote!!!

CATHERINE: Stop it mother, you make such a noise for a trifle. You have a full box of red papillotes of all colours. What for you need one more?

 MRS. SCOTT: The same you did to me with the stripped socks for the dog. If a crisis appears and that manufacturer of papillotes locks the factory, my life is ruined and destroyed for ever . I will have to beg the unfortunate red thread from Madame Cross our neighbor with owl head and I don’t like that at all. I don’t want for people to tell that I am poor. I rather be grandmother than poor. Of course,you don’t love me at all if a wish so insignificant like mine leaves you so indifferent and makes you continue to put on your make-up  with nonchalance. I hate you! Ungrateful child and....

CATHERINE: Don’t bother to continue. I know the speech by heart. I will get you one hundred boxes with red papillotes, dark red and livid just spare me now. Are you satisfied?

MRS. SCOTT: For nothing, if you didn’t get me when I need it them, now they don’t have any value. All day long you think just of that uneducated commander that didn’t know to send me any flower when  he took you out in town. You’ve succeeded to make me unhappy ,deeply unhappy.(cries formally)

CATHERINE: And you believed it? That commander is just a rumor, is just an  invention  so that all the stupids from the neighborhood don’t annoy me . Enjoy, I am more a virgin than those saints from  the cathedral but this doesn’t use me at anything, not even to light the gas range with it. Are you satisfied?... I was alone at the movie, the Titanic. I knew that flower was so important for you, I would have bought you the most  beautiful and immortal bouquet of Chinese plastic and I would have assured my ears for at least one month. Please, mommy, don’t waste your nerves with all the trifles. I know that you suffer because of dad , but that doesn’t give you the right to make our existence a hell. I didn’t decide for things to happen this way, mother. Think that, outside that fucking papillote, there  are  people  that  face  real  problems  and  that  don’t  make  a tragedy from  trifles. Look around at all these desperate refugees , without jobs and without shelter,from whom you trip everywhere and that ring without stopping at doors. Have you started again to get spoiled,mother?!

MRS. SCOTT: Here darling you are mistaken, for sure... I’m not suffering at all for my deceased husband because he was a great selfish person, the same as you are, and he didn’t know ever to show me how much did he appreciate me.In his eyes I was less than his daily dose of beer that he had to serve carefully. You know that I caught him one day in the bathroom when he was talking to her?      At the beginning I didn’t want it             to believe, I’ve been suspecting that there was someone else with him there and they have something I don’t know what to share. I open quietly the door,because he never got locked there with three lockers like you and what do I see: he was standing naked in front of the big mirror and he was talking to her,  caressing her... Once he was talking, once her, in fact it was also him with his voiced changed like a real ventriloquist.  Ewww! He also put a name to this one, Patricia or something like that, anyways something with P or X and he was caressing her systematic every night,after he thought I was sleeping like a log. In the night of Saint Patrick he had composed her an ode and he recited it all sweaty, standing like a masher on the knee. Bastard, viper, at least if he had been good for something, because even today I’m surprised how did I managed to do not one but two children with him and to stay mentally healthy. It’s well that at least God punished him, because  when that machine chewed him, he grabbed his belly first,by my substitute, by the usurper of that huge and disgorged  Patricia,by that yucky filling, before it made him fringes, that we had to reconstitute him like a Lego. Luckily that we had some photographs A1 format, because the dinosaur didn’t fit in the normal ones that are usually on the desk.

CATHERINE: You are abominable!!! You eat his insurance and you talk bad  about him in all the houses that you enter. Let him rest in peace together with his Patricia there where he is.

MRS. SCOTT: And how did he eat my days? He ate them roasted, big-bellied! Luckily your brother Will doesn’t seem to  him  just  in  one  way.  Anybody  can  foul  him  if  he  wants  it. Otherwise he is thin and very well sculpted from that football from school, he brings all the money at home when he gets a job and he really cares about me, he isn’t fake like you and he doesn’t talk with his belly.I have checked and over cheked him... The ballet has made you stupid definitely, you have to know this Catherine. He will receive this house because in you and your dances I don’t trust . CATHERINE: Thanks for your honesty but you have to know that you didn’t surprise me with your announcement.It was flying in this domestic air filled with whims.

WILLIAM: Pa-ram! When you miss fighting lock two women in a phone booth... I hope you have finished for today!

 MRS. SCOTT: What’s the sketch ?!... You are exaggerating , Willy, we were  discussing a little bit more fervent otherwise nothing unusual. What have you got     in that   huge package?

WILLIAM: Treats. I’ve passed over Lyzzie and I got you a tailor-made costume like Mrs. Hariss has.

MRS. SCOTT: ...Red!!! You know where to touch a  woman that still thinks she is young.Carmine! I had a premonition. She will be so jealous bitch... I won’t ask you where did you get the money so that I won’t put you in a confusion. You are mature and directly responsible of your actions, hopefully        reasoned ones. If some policeman rings at  the door, I will absolutely deny everything.With irritation and spontaneity. You see Catherine,why I need that bloody spool and that I didn’t make neck for nothing? I always knew, William, that you are the most wonderful and thoughtful child from the many children I have  got  and I thank Heaven that I didn’t have too many.

WILLIAM: If it doesn’t fits you, it will change you without making too many whims, I have spoken with that ugly from the cash register, take care of the ticket;and to you Cat I give you absolutely and official, that thick book of Robbie Nash from the shop window that you stared all summer...

CATHERINE: Tar and flakes! Its “Secrets”?! Did you do that for me Will and you bought me “Secrets”?!... But it is so expensive that I never imagined that I will hold in my  hands this jewel. I will back off peacefully in the back orchard, to devour it but, before that, you deserve a stamp filled up with lipstick... Have you discovered a treasure, you smart ass?

 WILLIAM: Mhmm!I have received a job. I am boss! Catherine: You boss, smart ass?! Get out of here. What sort of job?

MRS. SCOTT: Ignore her. Don’t you see that she is jealous. She is jealous, jealous little one!

CATHERINE: Hell.I was just asking so that I could do something!

MRS. SCOTT: It doesn’t matter what he is doing there, no matter how long he is payed. Right,Will?

CATHERINE: It always interested you the number of the money and not their smell. What sort of job,Will? Kneel down and confess!

WILLIAM: At a tidiness company. We do everything there...

CATHERINE: ???

WILLIAM: Tidiness, what bloody hell. Don’t you know what tidiness means? We move and  draw attention upon us.

MRS. SCOTT: I have also told her that ballet makes her stupid. It weakens the sinaps. She should leave it. You tell her again. She is confused by the most elementary  words.  Ana has apples. Nina has blackberries. Tidiness equals           salubrity, equals hard cleaning, equals elimination of waste products. We have a rich language and charged... of synonyms.

CATHERINE: Why did you blush Will, there is no disgrace in making tidiness, hygiene is something noble, it chases away the germs. Do they also receive girls in case I were interested? WILLIAM: Only men that know when to be quiet and when to talk. The manager say that they are more efficient when they have to draw attention... Secrecy before anything else.

CATHERINE: To draw attention, i don’t understand, to whom draw attention?

 WILLIAM: Those who get in a mess.This is it!Did you understand?

MRS. SCOTT: Simple-simple-simple! Ballerina! To draw attention equals to point out, equals to warn, equals to prevent!

S C E N E  3

(Albert Pop, Clement Pop, Ana Pop)

ALBERT POP: You little one, pay attention where are you going and with who because I have heard from some that the things are becoming messy. Last week, when those of Ploae were coming back from a shop, from where they have bought sausages, because they were hungry after a day of charging bricks, some with bandanas on the face have shot in the air. ”Next time, they said, we won’t shot in the air if we will catch you around here again, you peasants. Go back where your mother has born you and eat her slops!”and they vanished like ghosts in the dark. Those of Ploae got really scared and one of them got into an epileptic crisis right there on the spot, that he almost died,if it wasn’t for a kind shop girl who called the ambulance.

CLEMENT POP: Those happen around here, because it’s democracy  and  everybody  can  say  what  he  wants  and  what  he thinks, nobody is putting a fist in the mouth like they do to us. The devil isn’t so colourful as you see it. It’s a passing and organic phenomenon  of  rejecting  the  minority  by  some  officials  of  the majority. There     are some extremists with ridge,    ex unadapted sportsmen, that imagine that we are the plague for the crisis that has stroke without looking too much in a way or another and that’s it. Light vapours.

ALBERT POP: Natural, unnatural, passing, immortal, I say you have to take care of  yourself and to stop going wherever you want, because like any volcano, as I know with my four classes, he  throws  at  first  light  vapours,  as  if  you  say  it  is  a  joke  and something insignificant and after that it comes that horrible eruption with rocks and lava that makes you hairraising, perm and curly forever. We have enough work to do around here  until we make things work around this place. I don’t say to put your bone to work, because I know you have fragile lungs but, if you can’t stay still, ask Miss Goldheart to borrow you something to read. The house is filled up with old papers in which the moths are swarming.You set them free with this occasion.

CLEMENT POP: Their time will also come. If I sit in only one place I would feel like in a prison, because I choke and how can I stay locked between four walls when, some steps away from here, the waves are jumping in the harbour and the real and free life that we all wanted is fussing. This is the world in which from now on we will have to live and if we hide like ostriches from her fear, without knowing it, she will live us.

ALBERT POP: You are the identical copy of my beloved wife, you run as a colt in the storm without fearing the lightnings. Maybe it’s better this way or who knows...

 ANA POP: Leave Clemente alone, you coward, you have found a reason to skip work to show what a responsible father you can be, but you don’t fool me with your mighty concern. Go back near your father-in-law and see that this time it won’t fall again a rooted tree on his head because maybe his voice will come back and your hapiness will be gone.

ALBERT  POP: Have you got jokes for me in your show? I was just talking nonsense because I’m not that smart as you are, I’m good only to beat out these palms as shovels to build the future centre of the Priests and nothing else. Only that The Mighty and all the angels won’t let happen some prank with our Clemente, because you will be signing your conviction with me. You will eat ember! ANA    POP: Albert the expert one!

ALBERT  POP: Hanna Montana!

ANA POP: You will sleep with Hanna Montana and with Auntie Demijohn until you  will remember what’s my name. Respect me, man because you have been rude with me. From now on you will crawl in your knees to make me be kind, to receive you near my lap. Three months is your fast Popica.

ALBERT POP: What has to do the fast with the fool. Stop saying quotes from the  orality of that monk because I have only joked woman, what can’t someone tell a joke?Don’t take me the only joy of my ending manhood, because I am also stressed like a farm hen from how many I hear it happens with others. Really you, you put everything at kidneys and bile, as if tomorrow is the flood and it still hadn’t run dry the blankets and the cloth uncombed on your hair.

ANA POP: If I can be different, I wouldn’t say no, but it still hasn’t come that time... Leave him alone, I told you!

S C E N E  4

(Miss Goldheart, Ana Pop)

MISS GOLDHEART: Albert, please send father Ion to go and look at the Swiss pendulum from the entrance. It suddenly stopped and something like this hasn’t happen since the earthquake twenty years ago. I know that he is handy.

ANA POP: Go quickly, husband, because a lady doesn’t ask you this nice every day. It isn’t proper for time to stop whenever he likes, from every lint. Tell him to not enter with mud like woodsmen in a boyar house and to dress with a clean pullover... Miss Goldheart, really, please come to our kitchen because we have in the oven, some rustic pies of ours,with goat cheese,that are in the oven to brown.

MISS  GOLDHEART: They have to be good, Ana,but with my teeth I’m afraid I will make a laugh of myself... You don’t have to feel indebted with    Eden, there will not fit many  things in the jar with ashes in which the undertakers will put me with the funnel. Everything that is essential will be left outside.

ANA POP: You talk nonsense, Miss Goldheart, you will burry us all. I still see you healthy. Green.

MISS GOLDHEART: I would really like you to be right Ana, but I feel that my knuckles won’t keep me long enough. My only fear is that I won’t die asphyxiated because of the old stoves from the manor and to be found , after some weeks,with the nose sunken, eaten by the cats ; although I would really like to get to see how this place will be reborn from ashes and how those oaks of yours will rise.I am jealous that I didn’t get that idea until now and I left all this  time  to  be  lost  for  nothing  but  originality  is  not  my  best point.From  now  on  I  will  leave  this  plan  on  your  hardworking hands.I’ve wasted my life like a fool when I could have made with any hooligan a child,so that you know I had a lot of     claimants,not that I would have been beautiful as the sun but I had some clot in our little town this is related with the beauty also, even sometimes with the hunger.Too bad I was too proud and I listened only to myself... I would like you to burry my ashes over one of their roots and to resurrect at the same time with this place ... Do you promise me Ana?

ANA POP: From where we come from,smart people don’t burn themselves but they burry them Christian in the cemetery,                for preservation, until the second coming of Sacred Jesus ;but,if this is the fashion around here , we will make,at the right time, everything after your wishes Miss Goldheart, only if we have permission from the big ones around here, because I have noticed that is rigour and we don’t  want            to get bad           with the management.

MISS GOLDHEART: After I won’t be anymore, you have to demolish this house because it keeps bad luck , or you just leave it deserted so that time to melt her and the ivy to flood her.It is good to start a  new  life without carrying the frozen memories of the others... Keep safe this paper somewhere,it is my will and in it stays your protection and your tranquility for times that are yet to come.

 ANA POP: Bless Lord your slave Sheila and give her  long  life,safe  from  the  temptations  of  the  devil  and  of  bad things. Because pure light and mourning star she is for us in the desert of our  human lost, the laid hand that caresses us, the open door in the darkness... Amen.

S C E N E  5

(Clement Pop, Catherine, The Policewoman)

CLEMENT POP: 4 o’clock has arrived, the commander hasn’t...

CATHERINE: Perseverance can be, why not,a quality. Hello!  I  don’t  know,  but  I’m  surprised  to  see  you  again.  You become predictable like the tides. How are your businesses going, don Juan?

CLEMENT POP: I’m in the phase of accumulations, Gioconda. I’m studying the human body.    I want to go to the Medicine School.  My ideal is to become a gynecologist  and  to contemplate assiduous the central point of the feminine miracle.

CATHERINE: Oww!You are going to analyze me, more precisely. Have you already made an obsession?

CLEMENT POP: Better an obsession than a trephination. Marry me, Cat! So that you could be my permanent object of study. I posses an uncertain future but a respectable one!

 CATHERINE: At what time do you wish to finalize the operation  ,  because  at  two  o’clock  I  am  expected  by  Madame Duchamp at classes ... Between four and five I have a sandwich break. At least your past,don  Juan, is safe?... Mmm yes, even the silence is an answer when the words can’t be told. Where do you want to do it, in an open place, on the esplanade, on a mast?

CLEMENT POP: I am free now also, if you are free Cat. You can put a white drapery on the head, we will find a notary that is out of job from plenty and in a quarter we will get married.I hope you  have brought the hawser with you . The commander can be your witness, two beach sharks and a rubber whale can successfully represent the friends. They will look good in the photos with their wide open eyes (because of the even of course), only that the guy has to stay a little far from you, so that he won’t be mistaken with the chosen one. I’m a little bit puny because, eh, in the childhood I was also sick, but I’m recovering by agility and speed.I shake my elbows and I slip much more faster.

CATHERINE: You have humor, a quality more and more rare to the representatives of our species. Tar and flakes! The majority are rigid and their palms sweat when they want to talk to me. To you they don’t. You think I would be considered decent if I could know your name, before the proper   ritual,    your name, mister....

CLEMENT  POP: Clement Pop. Pop Clement.

CATHERINE: I have memorized it. What’s your last name?

CLEMENT  POP: Clement, of course.

CATHERINE: Catherine Scott future Pop.Ha-ha!It doesn’t sound that bad. Very easy to memorize it especially because from right to left it can be read also Pop. Nice to meet you. Are you still a virgin?

CLEMENT POP: And from the right and from the left. I thought you said you can read anything on my face like a fax paper. CATHERINE: ...We will have work to do. A lot. You will deepen gradually all the subject. This new thing for you can be traumatizing. Do you mind, for fun,a leather  whip, some glass nails,some  steal  balls,  a  chainsaw  (saw  with  chain)?  It  helps  to eliminate the stress.

CLEMENT POP: I  will  sacrifice  myself  for  the perpetuation of our biped  species. When are we going to start the operation?

CATHERINE: If you have lost your patience , we can do it now, without lubricants, near this shiny balustrade, so that anyone could see us. The place is perfect,  occasional  photos will have the perfect light, away from here you can see a cardboard rainbow. It’s an unusual mode  to show publicly our love without prejudices.  What  are  you  doing,  aren’t  you  going  to  take  your clothes off?... Are you hesitating ?!

CLEMENT POP: I have my trousers sewed directly on me with cynicism. My first wife does that when I go out without her. CATHERINE: No problem. I always have with me a sharp scissors for the virgin  bigamists that ask for my hand with preponderance. Lift your hands!

THE POLICEWOMAN: CITIZENS!!! The beach is just one hundred steps away in the valley. If you want, for  fun, there is a special zone for the nudists, recently renovated and according to the existing norms. Circulate, please! Circulate!

S C E N E   6

(Sir Epstein)

SIR EPSTEIN: Hello, hello tough guy! It’s the sixth time when I try to call you!Yees... I believe you... why not. Tell me, what the hell were you doing last night to scare those fuckers? I have warned you to take care of those irresponsible alcohol addicts. If one got to note down your car number you are in trouble. You will go to prison, and you Will will get the most of all as being the abettor , the boss. I don’t think you are burning of desire to become the sexual             toy of some gang of hairy prisoners... Right some moments ago that square head have  left from my office, your ex mate, that weak policeman who belives that he is the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes  and that woman that looks like a man with rabbit teeth. Exactly, Como and the string woman. That perch, yes. They had the air that they knew more than they want to tell me but I’m not made with the finger. What happened?! Exactly!... Be calm, from me they didn’t get a word about this matter, I even argued with them a little because I am a respectable person that knows his rights as well as his obligations, because every Friday night I am invited by the mayor at dinner, etc, etc. And I don’t allow to get me trough this kind of provincial shit without any concept. I don’t get angry, it just seems to you, I am even calm, I’ve taken a fist of pink pills from the ration of my patients and I have started to  form a very semi-bright vision concerning our colaboration, Will;                especially because  I  have  found  out  after  the  event  that  they  are  in  fact contraceptives dyed with the marker. I have explained you only several times what is the number one priority in the delicate problem and it seemed that you agree with me 100%, at least until one point... We don’t have any forces and any funds to settle things with all these hungry scamps and to start pointless waves in the mud.My targets ,excuse me,ours are clear and bright: Pop, Pop and again Pop... Why do I have something just with these ones? They have surrounded            me from everywhere like the Soviet Union, forgetting to ask me if I might suffer of claustrophobia. Hm!Reason! If the televisions get to make them national stars we will all blow up and I will never get to extend. If some rough investigator shows up from the capital we could pour a  petrol can on us and we would have to go in the most perfect order to the lime pit... They asked and about the forgotten fire of Eden some years ago so that you know; yes, yes, that messy business that seemed to have died from lack of proofs and witnesses and that had been classified... That one in which all the trees from the orchard got made in one night ashes and the gardener of the domain had been found carbonized with a bottle of whisky on his chest , even though there were a dozen of persons that were ready to swear on the Bible that the guy was completely abstemious in that matter...Curiously, I agree with you 100% in this matter, very curious. Of course you have nothing to do , I didn’t even think of that,you were too little to be involved in this little  job,but,if the deceased Scott-senior still lived he would certain have something to tell you. He ran all that night naked with the torch between the trees as if you thought he was a drunk satyr looking for the nymph with turtledove tail. He was worth filming, he was so hot... maybe I even filmed him with one of those little machines with which I record my patients when they are in trance... Don’t be upset, but he was a memorable figure. The reincarnation of Falstaff, Oberon and Dracula under the same shirt. A real novel character, a figure what can I say. At night he got transformed as if he had double identity, totally opposite to the real one. I also helped him putting some pain killers in his beer, you know that he had a real cult for this brown rot-gut and it was enough to suggest him some indications... He would have been the perfect actor for any director with some vision. The whole world is a stage and all the people are  actors even the villains. Because of this ,theater is practiced with success in prisons. Catharsis ! ... Easy, easy,  take  the  things  as  they  are,  even  my  father  wasn’t Saint George, if you know what I want to say to you, otherwise how would I have gathered this fortune. Calm                down,   I don’t want to discover the comic past               of your predecessor. Of course it is awkward but let’s go back to the theme. Don’t you understand that my lunatics will become responsible? That green which will shine near them it will give them alternatives, doubts in their case, there should not be alternatives and any doubts. The institution Epstein has to represent for their little brain the only alternative, as long as they have money to spend for their imaginations and illusions. No “but”,there’s no place to go back. Oh no, someone is calling! Don’t you have the guts to hang off, until I don’t  finish  with  the  stupid  one  from  the  other  line!...  Hello!... Hellooooo! What a surprise Mister Mayor, all my respect. Of course I have recognized you , how could I not recognize you, no, no you are not disturbing me for sure. You are the only person on this planet incapable of disturbing me. How could you disturb me. I was only talking with a client of mine, yes, yes, common things, nothing important.Saturday?!... Saturday... Saturday... of course I am free for a golf match in the wonderful Smoth garden, I hope I will bring my talent so that I can do good, oh yes and the capricious and lovely Miss                Sophie, by all means Mister Mayor. A feminine companionship is always preferable to an old dog, even if he is purebred, even if in both cases you risk to be bitten when you are feeling better. Ha,ha! Spiritual of course, you have always liked to be surrounded by people with spirit and by young deer in fur coats! Greetings to Mrs. Mayor and to the superb twins...Oh,I’m not in town, of course, of             course,               I was thinking that after so much exhaustion leading our little town   you have the right to some moments of  innocent and intense relaxation ...

 S C E N E  7

(Miss Goldheart, A Group of  Mutes and Good Looking )

MISS  GOLDHEART: Ecce Homo and Pro Domo! I have asked for  a  chimney  sweeper  and  instead  of  one  I’ve  got  four.Good! Shouldn’t you come at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning?! I thought that those               from Smoke & Smog  are extremely          punctual, but not that punctual. Exactly like in the advert: If you want to believe us / Call to get stunned!... How ,you clean from the inside to the outside?! This  is  how  it’s  done  today?  Brilliant,  I  haven’t  heard  of  this method. So that you know I have some stairs which are left from the Waterloo  battle,  I  keep  them  for  the  skate  but  don’t  count  on them,they are just for design and there is no one at this hour  that could bring them to you,because the people that help me have left to the neighbor town to see some materials... Who is the boss? The fat guy or the thin one? Stan or Bran? None? Impossible, in every activity from this world in which there are two, one has to be by all means the boss,usually the one that doesn’t carry the box with tools. It is pretty cool this company of yours, absolutely revolutionary... Clean from the inside to the  outside or from the outside to the inside? Aha! It doesn’t matter, does it? The important thing is the result,yes, yes, sure. Leave that door from the entrance open, in the case in which it  turns  to dust, this  is  how        the ones from the Billy&Son acted, they used empiric methods, because of that I have renounced to their services. Last time  they broke from negligence the bust of my grandfather and they dirtied with soot the grizzly fur that is in front of the chimney and where do you put that they stink of garlic like some common exorcists... Bloody amateurs , that I had to reclaim them,not that I cared too much at the broken figure of my grandfather but this sort of things aren’t made to a devoted customer for  half  a  century.  After  some  time  from  this  thing  they  went bankrupt and they got out of the branch with booings. Now I have heard that they had opened a donut shop right at the west train station. If  they make the donuts in the way they cleaned              the chimneys for sure a lot of people will get ill at the stomach and with the stomach, boy, you are not allowed to play , because it is not a wall ,you have to give him what he needs and in time if you want to have a good digestion. Since we were born, the Goldheart family, we have had the stomach as an infantryman helmet,if you throw a glance through the family ossuary you will notice of course that the only parts that haven’t rotten are still our iron stomachs. With them I have faced history ,gentlemen. Yes, so quiet you are, it’s not that I didn’t love to talk alone, because you have come so punctual , at midnight, to solve this ugly problem and to carry who knows what college  conversation. Did someone from you all has read Freud or Nietzsche?... I doubt, it can be read on your hood because you also don’t like Germans ;I understand , they are a little bit perverted with their preciseness.Too much precision  leads to hypocrisy . Have you seen what porn movies they make ,without any fantasy, so that you feel you want to throw  up not otherwise, they are like documentaries or didactics. The Latins are experts!... Here is the chimney ,if I knew  you would take me by surprise, I would have gathered from the objects. I knew they would not bother you , what a big deal is to clean a stove. Round moves from right to left , up and down and wipe solid at the corners.Have you noticed gentlemen that stove is feminine gender. Extraordinary... I thought that men are the first that notice the gender before they start to clear them. Six are of feminine gender  and they are exposed in the house and all of them have to be cleared solid so that they don’t catch fire by themselves . In the case I have forgotten to tell you, each of them reign in some room, because the deceased was chilly and when he came drunk, he forgot what room is with stove and he went to sleep wherever he got; so because of that we had to make one in all the six bedrooms so that he won’t get sick of doubts. He would have wanted to make one in the basement, but I got bold and I told him in his face: ”Until here baby ,if you do this I will go and get chill wherever I will see.Take as landmark the dusty bottles and the cabbage barrels, because in the army you were the commander  of  a  scouts  division!  ”The  basement  got  without  a stove , in exchange he left, spinning in his wooden leg when he got stimulated, by a much  younger one....

S C E N E  8

(Sir Epstein)

SIR EPSTEIN: The emergency number ?!... It isn’t important who I am,” A respectable man” it is enough so that you could write it down there in the register or to be more precise: ”a passerby with civic sense”... I know that you respect the procedure, yes of course I use a phone card number which soon after this I will throw it away so that I won’t risk to carry me through courts or the police  office  as  witness.  I  know  how  works  this  programme  of protecting the witnesses with which you can wipe your ass. You support the idea of  truth but in fact you are ruining for ever your life.Thank you, but I don’t have an outcast vocation. I wanted to tell you that if you force too much the introduction with this standard questions you risk when you will arrive at the scene to find not a suffering human but a warm               corpse. More precisely             on Old Mountain 56 , lies in agony an old lady with the head cracked and not because of the meditation. The perpetrators?!... Those refugee toad-eaters who she had taken over her protection and put them at dinner  with  her.  I  saw  them,they  were  all  in  the  pear:  the  old man,the man with his wife and their boy          and how they tried to get rid  of  the  body.  Four  against  one.  Terrible.  If  she  manages  to survive the old lady will precisely need successive plastic surgeries to look more or less acceptable . How can I give you so  many precise details? Madam, I have a sense of observation sharp as a claw and a pachyderm memory. I have participated twice at “I want to be billionaire” and I assure you that I repeated all the answers before....I couldn’t interfere because I was afraid that I will have the same fate    , because of that Iwhisper, they still beat her. My God…….Yes,Old Mountain 56, exactly,the manor of Miss Sheila Goldheart near the burnt orchard. Hurry up or do what you know!!!

S C E N E  9

(The Reporter)

THE REPORTER: Our viewers maybe they still remember the recent coverage broadcasted by our television in which it were presented the projects and the aspirations of  a refugee family from the east the area of the ex orchard Eden,placed in the neighborhood of Epstein institution and donated to them through the kindness of the owner from then Miss Sheila Goldheart. The new owners,Pop family made up from five members, they were promising in front of everybody an  ecological and ambitious project for the rehabilitation of the place. We are not here today,altough we would have wished it, to evaluate the unrolling of the project which at the date of his start had aroused a wave of sympathy almost  national,we are not here today for that,I specify,lets go on with the further support of this laudable step but to lay your judgement about a moral problem . We come back contrary with the format of our broadcasting ,this time straight from the place of the event to take the pulse of the events. To our disappointment, to all of us,this family has turned up to be eventually a law breaker group with occult interests , strange to the moral       of  the  civilized society  in           which  we  live                in.  After they succeded              to win the trust of the owner Sheila Goldheart,  making her to sign a donation act perfectly legal concerning Eden orchard, the Pop group tried to get their hands on the rest of the fortune in circumstances that will be made clear afterwards by the experts of the police. Failing this thing ,in the night on 30 to 31 August current year,they proceeded to the physical elimination of the baroness , leaving  this thing unfinished only partly; the victim being in the present   interned at the intensive care and in a  state of unconsciousness at the Cherry hospital from town. The comments that are needed are redundant. We all know the popular saying: ”You give them a thread of hair and they take your      headoff”, but we don’t                have,under any circumstance , to fall under the empire of the  emotions hunted by the adrenalin and to exercise the body-jumping in this matter. The question that is needed is if our society is prepared to face this new wave of challenges that threaten it in the integrity and being of itself, if it has  the capacity and the power to repress this wave of hate  on  behalf  of              some people  who  tried,  in  these  desperate situations ,to help them and to place them in their native structure and if  they shouldn’t take some emergency and restrictive measures concerning the access and the limitation of the refugee’s number of any type on it’s territory ... Look, right here at the border between the respectable Epstein institution and the burned orchard a group of lu.... sorry, patients I wanted to say , they protest against criminal actions of this family and they chant slogans anti Pop like “We the lunatics don’t want the Huns !”, ”Mister Mayor you are not normal!” and others that can’t be given on TV only with beeps. If you agree with the limitation until zero of the number of foreign citizens in our country send a message to  the number that appears on the screen with the text “No” and reverse , if you don’t agree send a message at the same number with the text “Yes”. Look out! You can send how many messages you wish with both texts, the price of a  message being a pound with Vat included. At five messages sent you have a discount of 20%. At ten messages you get prize a jingle with rabbits and magpies. We         will come back  after adverts                on this  theme with an interview exclusively given by his His Excellency Sir John Epstein , the well-known and popular teacher of our university (who we hope that in the near future to win the Nobel and Pullitzer prize) and who draws a signal of emergency in front of these facts that have shaken our community ! We wait that the town’s mayor to come out from his bovine and characteristic lethargy and to get noticed in front of his electors , but especially in front of those who hadn’t elected him, concerning        this brutal events. Advertising! Advertising! Advertising!

S C E N E  10

(The Policeman, Miss Goldheart, The Policewoman)

THE POLICEMAN: Are you sure, Sue,that this is the side- room where we were supposed to enter? How can we identify the victim with this pile of           bandages in which she is rolled up? It is the first time in my  life  when I am asked to take declarations to a mummy. I think I am hunted by the same feeling that Harrison Ford had in those coffins filled             up with tarantulas from Indiana Jones, lady, is this you?!

THE POLICEWOMAN: She was  difficult                and in   her best days ,more than that now. What if she doesn’t want to collaborate with the authorities now? We will have to come  here twice every day, or who knows we will have to guard her until she will be in the mood for that.Knock harder in that plaster... Has she said anything?!

THE POLICEMAN: I think she snores , poor woman... I agree with her, after all those hits ... I’ve read somewhere that , in some cases, the pain can induce a state of         trance similar to sleep or like the one induced by the TZE TZE fly.

THE POLICEWOMAN:Insist Bananas, the atmosphere is full of meds, it creates me comedowns...pull her nose, shake her bed , do something! Threaten her with the fine.... Sing “Happy birthday!” MISS GOLDHEART: Tttt!

THE POLICEMAN: It’s her, she is, I have no doubt , I recognize her after the  varix ... they look like some corals from Little Mermaid. I think she was pretty hot at her time. Health, Miss Goldheart! The subscription! I am the cable guy!... Do you want a pretzel?...Greetings from Laika!... U-uuu!

THE POLICEWOMAN:Lie by her side in the bed. Let’s capture this wonderful moment over which you can put your resignation. Start the voice-recorder. Sergeant!

THE POLICEMAN: It’s just a simple formality. You ask her these general questions boss,like that from ex woman to ex. The savours of a possible rape you can discuss it on length like between girls and without my presence. I’m going to smoke a cigar with the blonde nurse from the lobby the               one to whom the nose was sniveling.

MISS GOLDHEART: Aaaaa!

THE POLICEWOMAN: You won’t. Endure. Did you write it down?!

THE POLICEMAN: What?!Did she say anything?!

THE POLICEWOMAN: “Aaaa!”. It’s a good start. Soon she will say and articulate sounds. Reception!

 THE POLICEMAN: For me to say articulate sounds were necessary three years sharp. My mother had already made white hair and her mustache had grown as Stalin’s mustache. Lets hope that in this case it  is  going to last less. One-two-three, microphone test! Cherry hospital, salon 313, September the 7th the hours two and 36 minutes. The interrogation of the so called Sheila Goldheart born.... MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss!!!

THE POLICEWOMAN: Quick, until we don’t lose her. Can you confirm if  the perpetrators from your manor were four as number?

MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss!!!

THE POLICEWOMAN: That they asked you , under the guns threat , to reveal the place where you hide your family jewels and to sign a paper in white through which in real you are giving up to all your movable and unmovable possessions?

MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss!!!

THE POLICEMAN: That you have two months and 25 years ....

MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss!

THE POLICEWOMAN: You are pissing me off Tybalt Como! Tell your jokes in your thought.Here, it is getting  made a serious report that can get until the Minister.

MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss,yess!

THE POLICEWOMAN: I go back. Did you fight back?

MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss! THE POLICEWOMAN:How? MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss!

THE POLICEMAN: Have you ever paired with a rhino?

MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss!

THE POLICEWOMAN: Tybalt!

 THE POLICEMAN: Stop, Sue, in the state in which she is she would even tell you that in her body lives Ben Laden with two kalashnikov machine guns and four mortars.

MISS GOLDHEART: Threee!Heyyy!

THE POLICEWOMAN: What are                we going to report to Jonathan Doubtfire?! I refuse to think. He will start again to shout that the Mayor is pressing him with this declaration and that he has others going through his mind. We have to solve it somehow.

THE POLICEMAN: Handle it boss, you have all the authority. At pay you always stood above and I didn’t hear for you to complain. Invent! It’s just a simple formality. Everybody know who are              the perpetrators. They announced them also at the television, Sue.

THE POLICEWOMAN: It isn’t good, Tyb. It is in stake the fate of some people. The truth has to be on the first place. I also have conscience Bananas. I have also made Hippocrates oath.

THE POLICEMAN: And what were his words? Do you remember him?

THE POLICEWOMAN: The words, no. The sense, yes. Something like that I have to be always in the job of the citizen and the community in which...

THE POLICEMAN: Ask her once if she had recognized the attackers...   Have you recognized the attackers lady, have you recognized those that have given you a head in the mouth and who turned your arms behind your back?

MISS GOLDHEART: Yesss!

THE POLICEWOMAN: I’m going crazy!!! I better participate at the dissection of an alien, 002, rather than finish this interrogation. THE POLICEMAN: See boss, it is so simple... And they were they, the Pop family, the ones that hit you, those Pop motherfuckers, yesss?!

 MISS GOLDHEART: ...No.

THE POLICEWOMAN: Hmm, did they say anything... did they betrayed themselves somehow?

MISS GOLDHEART: On... sho...  re… la...  lakeeeeeee... Feee...

THE POLICEMAN: ...lone?!

ACT        III

S C E N E  1

(Mrs.Scott, Clement)

MRS. SCOTT: What an honor, what an honor! Come in please, Catherine should arrive  soon. A wonderful opportunity to discuss, relaxed,with a gentleman,at a cup of tea.

CLEMENT: Thank you madam but I don’t really like tea, from where I come from it isn’t used so often,only when you catch a cold.

MRS. SCOTT: This is in deed a problem mister commander. I thought that at the North Pole it is something usual.If William was at home I would have sent him after some liquor. 

CLEMENT: That either... Please stop telling me mister and also commander,madam...

MRS. SCOTT: …Suzie for the close ones. Thee me!!!

CLEMENT: I thought it was enough to thee your daughter but if you insist....

MRS. SCOTT: I insist!... Neither wine?!

CLEMENT: Water, straw and fight...only ,”Suzie”. Joke!

 MRS. SCOTT: Don’t tell me you are an adept of masochism because you will make me deeply unhappy. I cry very easily so that you know, when I was little I could have cried and at command. Do you want to see?

CLEMENT: A woman who tries in pain doesn’t predict anything good,especially when you have left your umbrella at home. Cat has spoken to me amazing about yourself... you.

MRS. SCOTT: Really?! Nothing surprises me. Do you like babies? Oh, what a foolish question,you are so young.You got to have at least twenty four years.

CLEMENT: Twenty two, in December.

MRS. SCOTT: Only that much?! You are a very imposing guy, you don’t  look  like and you don’t have a belly at all. Belly, ah….God,I think I am obsessed of           protuberances.What is right is that mine didn’t have also one at your age... Sagittarius or Capricorn?

CLEMENT: I’m working... Sagittarius... Everybody that hunt look good.I am here in this house only to clarify certain aspects of my relationship with Catherine.I wouldn’t like you to believe that...

MRS. SCOTT: But we don’t believe anything and nothing,be calm. We are atheists who feel reality with the fingers of the soul. Asure me just that you have serious intentions concerning her and that is enough.I’m still a mother...

CLEMENT: Very serious. We have decided to cross with delicacy all the stages, without burning them.

 MRS. SCOTT: Right. All the hunters have a strategy when they decide to shot or to rape a deer. Where will you live? Or you will burn this stage also? With what incomes will you support yourselves? Can                you guarantee me that I won’t see                her some morning back home with the luggage at my door,preganant and with a wet handkerchief ? I don’t have patience with the hygiene of the little ones and I didn’t think I will become a grandmother at such a young  age...  I  want  to  still  spend  my  childhood.  Before,  I  was wearing long dresses,but since a while I wear only skirts more and more shorter.I still have signal. I steal mourn,don’t think too far. CLEMENT: You look good with this tailor made costume. And the colour is right ,it goes with your hair. You have an excess signal in fact,five little lines. If I were a talented painter, I would have asked you to pose in a more relaxed posture, like our discussion.

MRS. SCOTT: Nude?! Posible... My ex husband used to tell me that I look like a stewardess that wants to take place of the pilot ... It is normal to be interested in certain details. To guarantee the  persistence of a feeling feed it with money. A lot. Preferable with checks. I have ended the quote. I seem rather pragmatic,right? CLEMENT: You don’t seem, you really are... yourself is. The first condition concerning the persistence of a feeling is that it has to exist , the rest are savours. I think I should leave.It is enough for the first  visit. I am expected by someone dear at the hospital. Cat will understand.

MRS. SCOTT: Thank you for the flowers.They are absolutely  charming,commander.  You  have  to  come here  some other time.

 CLEMENT: I remember you, with respect, Suzie, that my aspirations are much more developed than this passing maritime function...

MRS. SCOTT: Maybe now I understand Catherine, why she loves you so much because from a time, she          is absolutely weightless. I’m afraid sometimes for her            not to rise above the buildings  like  a  balloon  filled  up  with  helium  and  not  to  start disintegrate. Maybe we should have meet each other  twenty years ago.

CLEMENT: Twenty years ago I was very well rolled up in diapers, ”Suzie”, I used only the look language and I wasn’t enough gentleman... Better later than  never, right?

S C E N E  2

(The Policeman, William)

THE POLICEMAN: Glory, money & Cigars! Farewell, you, butts! Cranes and spouts, William Scott!!! Still alone? I hope you still like girls, you stallion.

WILLIAM: They are good Tyb just to have something to grab when you take off your pajamas, otherwise there is a washing machine, a microwave, junk food and... the right hand.

 THE POLICEMAN: Leave the nonsense.Two weeks ago I saw you with the gang in the center of the town and how you licked with  your  look  the  blonde“nuns”  from  the  Red  Cross,that  were standing there.  You seemed very in action... How are your things going?

WILLIAM: Like to everybody, because I won’t be more mighty ... Mixed,mixed!I  don’t complain but I either don’t give off.

THE POLICEMAN: I wouldn’t say, guessing by the clothes. Company, company. You always were good at rags, peasant. Does your sister still ask about me?

WILLIAM: I’m going to punch you Como,no matter how tall you are. As much as your mother of me. Ocupado! Cat has tastes  at  men.  She  doesn’t  think  to  specialize  on  these  kind  of scarecrows with bows.

THE POLICEMAN: Peace, peasant. When we were still playing football  you  were  champion  at  invisible  faults.  I  didn’t know you so sensitive. Do you want me to lend you a handkerchief , Boom-boom?

WILLIAM: Lend it to your sister , policeman. Delicado! I heard that you blessed Sharkye with a fine. This sort of things aren’t made to an old friend, Tyb.

THE  POLICEMAN: The chainsaw is chainsaw, the job is job. I won’t lose my bread because of some lunatics. Nobody asked him to climb on the spire naked and to make like a ring dove. If I hadn’t done that, he risked to be arrested, son of  a mongrel bitch. Like this he just escaped with some days of work for the community and a warning.If he doesn’t stop, next time I will get bad.Bad.Jonathan Doubtfire wants to install the order in the little town. Already he has calmed down those assholes with ridge. He has made them lambs. He has castrated them.They eat from his hand.

 WILLIAM: Let him install his mother! Traitor. Axe tail... ”When the clouds gather and the pots are broken/ Your companion is called Far/ When the full is  empty and the hope is shared/ The team is team until death!!!” ...We all swore this when we scratched our hands in  the locker room after the victory with those from Castbridge. Seven to one, for us, you full back and if we didn’t have from the start the carrot in the ass we could have fucked very good those fops, at least ten beans.

THE POLICEMAN: Bull shits, I was almost rejected at the medical  visit  because  of  that,you  horse.  Luckily  the  doctor  had pretty good diopters and he didn’t see the sign. Grow up! If you handle unclean things, I tell you that you to have give up, because it isn’t a joke.Those ones from the capital have their eyes on us and they ask results.That black helicopter that you have seen last Sunday on the stadium was the Minister’s. The liberty is a gift which you don’t  feel  it  only  after  you  have  lost  it.  You  wouldn’t  want  to receive Christmas gifts on the street of the black fort.

WILLIAM: Don’t you dare threaten me, because I will punch you loser.

THE POLICEMAN: Try it, you horse. Your muscles don’t impress me at all now. The problems are solved otherwise, starting from a certain age. Take it as a friendly advice, from an ex ”The Furious”.

 WILLIAM: Arrest me, brother John Wayne, tender one... Put me the handcuffs and read me my rights. Our country will end  badly  because  of  people  like  you.Because  of  this  strangers laugh of us. We mock each other and during this the”germs”do what they  want.  They  rob,  they  kill,  they  rape.  You  saw  what  those communist  refugees  did  to  the  senile  old  lady  near  the  Heaven.... who knows what will happen next.

THE POLICEMAN: The perpetrators haven’t been caught yet, but after how they act it seems like they are native. Very native, captain. I hope you had nothing to do in that business...I have my eyes on you.

WILLIAM: Of course, John Wayne, I shake only thinking              of your phosphorescent eyes that watch over in the darkness. I maybe have a moron face but not an informer one.There are other things of which you have to take care Mister Swarovski. You better zip your fly because all the community has heard what you do during the night beats.  Wipe that sick lipstick from your neck if you want to be scary or credible.

S C E N E  3

(Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Harris)

MRS. SCOTT: Close, please, Mrs.Harris, the windows because those damn bells have deafen me. They should in the end make a law that will take care of the poor atheists ears, efficient like the one for the bigots. What sort of celebration would be exactly in the middle of the week, because since morning they keep pulling the bells like they were the fifes of the Apocalypse?

MRS. HARRIS: What, Suzie, haven’t you heard?! The old lady Goldheart has passed away and today is the day in which she says farewell to the world.

MRS. SCOTT: Goldheart, the immortal one?! ...Wasn’t she a jew,why would they pull the bells for a jew? Extraordinary! At these ones, I heard that they wrap the naked corpse how his mother has born him, in a sheet, they don’t cry anything,there comes the rabbi, their  party boss, he keeps a  speech                without               any importance, like at a party and            that’s it. Goodbye and kiss! Everything is like some sort of meeting. Plus, minus and equal, without brackets. Only at us we burry the deads with bells and priest, pardon, the priest stays on the edge of the grave, because they only burry the deceased.

MRS. HARRIS: She didn’t want to be buried she wanted to be burned and used like a sort of  fertilizer in her own orchard, to be reborn on the vegetable way, according to the tendencies.

MRS. SCOTT: Typical. Frills with spinach. All the cost is reduced to a can of gasoline. Because of that the wise Americans get crowded through Irak, to make for us all (or at least that is what they say so )use of a can of gasoline... This is how those with two universities end up. Without undertakers.I think the relatives  are very happy and they hop a lot like Hava Nagila.

 MRS. HARRIS: No, she hasn’t got anyone. She left everything, by will, on the hands of a no one, some refugees who asked the pastor to allow one of them to pull the bells all day long,because  this is the custom from where they come from. And the pastor didn’t have anything to object, because ten years ago who gave him money to repair the roof of the church from the hill when everybody didn’t want to. Not even that rich one Epstein, that neighbour who has an institution as large as a factory, where he gathers ill people             even from abroad, not even the Mayor that whoremonger, not even Foreman,the boss of the bank or Gringo, the owner of the cattle slaughterhouse, all those with their nose in the sky  who sit on celebrations at the service, smelling whiskey and cigar in the first seats like some television stars... Nobody else than the jew Sheila Goldheart made that Christian gesture. Yes, yes, Sheila Goldheart, you heard well. They also shared some boiled and sweetened  corn,  candles  and  she  invited  them  to  dinner,  at  the manor, for all that got crowded in there and I assure they weren’t few, because the deceased, we have to admit, was a very charitable being. She was able to put a pretzel in every tail of a  street dog that passed through her legs. For those who couldn’t  come or didn’t want to come they gave them a cup of black wine and some sail handkerchief or a towel, hell knows  what this would mean, but nobody said anything and some of them left even blushing.

 MRS. SCOTT: The humankind has turned with the ass up. Ewww! We had to rich the strangers and to poor ours... I think she had over one hundred, that decrepit hag. I know her even since I was on the tricycle how she walked, like a lunatic, with her              little lace umbrellas, all summer on the dike like an amateur painting. She seemed, all the time, that she waits for some forgetful that is late, to arrive at the pub. She had the luck that she didn’t got paralyzed before. At least nobody got to command her. Good job. I would like to have a death like her also...

MRS. HARRIS: For God sake, Suzie, spit over your shoulder. What has come into you ,like this suddenly? I can see that you don’t know all the terrible things that happened, lately, in our town. I’ve told you, buy a TV, because it isn’t the end of the world, or at least rent one and you will stop having personal opinions.They have shown at the news and in rerun. Twenty masked guys entered in her house one night and they slaughtered her like a schnitzel because she didn’t want to show them the documents of the house and the money, but before that,some say that they all tried her until dawn.  Brrr!  That  one  from  the  morgue  didn’t  confirm,  I  think because he didn’t wanted to stain the  memory of the victim or because he received money to shut down his mouth... Bad mouths say that the perpetrators were even those bloody-fuckers that she left them everything, but myself doesn’t believe so. They seem like some  good  men.  Concerning  the  proofs,  the  guys  worked  clean leaving no trace. Professionals. The police is mad and they promised a good reward.

 MRS. SCOTT: In virtue of our police, we could all die one day and these fuckers won’t be able to find any proof. Because of lack of proofs they would be able to declare that we put our nail in the neck because of too much spleen or  that we are collateral victims of the comedown. Can’t you see what sort of uniforms they wear, like they are all some jokers. Yes,yes,listen to me,everything happens to them because of the uniform. All these versed beggars seem really nice, until the contrary task for the beginners from the order made at the call of the boots. I wouldn’t want not even dead to have something to do with them. My skin gets chicken only when I see them on the same side of the pavement and I try very hard to control myself to not go backwards...

MRS. HARRIS: You yes, but it seems like your girl has a different opinion. She spun like a humming top and she babbled near one from the freak ones, to whom it has just come out his mustache,      there in front of everybody, near the doors of the crematory. She babbled like a dove, glu, glu! They seemed like they know each other for a long time and like really... deep... and she sure didn’t want to change the pavement ...

MRS. SCOTT: You must have been mistaken Mrs.Harris, my  Catherine  is  engaged  with  a  very  good-looking commander, who has all the chances to advance quick in his career and not by any chance she would make couple with some parvenu. I have pretensions from  her,what the hell.Before she got that new job , Will supervised her very briefly and he reported me every time she changed her boyfriend or it occura big fight. Negative, negative.

 MRS. HARRIS: Of course. Affirmative.Talk to her. And then don’t look like you don’t know Suzie, we know each other for such a long time, it was the guy that entered your house last week, with that huge bouquet of roses who you embraced at departure as if someone has stuck you on him with super glue. I have recognized him after the favourite ones.

MRS. SCOTT: Impossible Ellen, if he were strange, I would have figured              it out.   He had aperfect accent                and some manners like I haven’t seen for a long time to  the jokers from around     here, plus some serious intentions concerning         Cat. I wouldn’t  have  accepted  him  if  I  knew  he  came  from  the  East. Believe me.

MRS. HARRIS: I believe you,how can’t I believe you. Some of these tricked my niece, Mary, that she left the poor one, pregnant. If you didn’t know it I tell you now so that you won’t hear it from others. My brother, Gary, had almost tried to hang himself for that when he found out  but in the end he hadn’t got a choice. What’s right is that mongrel child looks like a candy, as if he wants to make him  jealous, and he is very healthy. He swallowed the noodle my brother and now he works very hard to provide for all of them. If you meet him you won’t recognize him. He looks like a ghost in yoke.

MRS. SCOTT: For God sake! I have to speak by all means with William!... William!!! William!!!

 S C E N E  4

(The Reporter, The Policeman,The Policewoman)

THE REPORTER: Until when!!! ...Yes, yes, good people, dear viewers, as you suppose from these images, we are back in the little town on the shore of Lake Felone with the same burning desire of truth and triumph  of the blind justice that tangles between the thalers, trying to be impartial to take the pulse of the events. What happens in this place is representative for the mood of the entire nation, invaded and humiliated in her own democratic  existence. Because what          means                democracy today when the external challenges  sabotage our economical, politic and moral stability. A few  months  ago  we  were  present  in  this  place  to  attend  at  the miracle of planting with much ado of some foreign acorns, event that predicted the renaissance of the burned domain of the baroness Sheila Goldheart, let her ashes be light and her numberless sins forgiven, provoked by generosity... Storm in.... potty! Yes, yes, you heard well. In the potty, ladies and gentlemen! Some weeks after this  vegetal  travesty,  the  venerable  baroness  lays  victim  of  the unclean greed of her own protegees, the Pop family, against who there is no tangible proof, not even the declaration told when Miss Goldheart lived, taken        from the bed of               suffering of the great defender of truth, the local sergeant Tybalt Como, also nick-named by the mouths which gossip Bananas due to the length of his nose and to Mister policeman Sue or something like that. The facts are obvious. We regret that the chief of the police, Jonathan Doubtfire, 000 in the documents of the institution, didn’t want to honor us with the presence in this telecast, pretending that he is ill at the stomach with some expired clams and he delegated two of his subalterns, 002 and 003, to represent him. Mister Sue, I’m not here to ask you why you have a woman’s name (even if I am completely justified) and if it is legal this thing but in case in which you don’t get to solve this simple  case  and  it  could  get,  thanks  to  your  obvious  collective discontent, to a  real popular revolution and to street movements, what measures of maintaining the order will you use?

THE POLICEWOMAN: At point one I would like to contradict presenting you my              new developed silicone implants brand Douglas&Douglas, as about point two I can say that I have stuck to all the pills from the area, posters with the substantial reward for the one that will give us decisive information about this unhappy case. We count on the maturity of the population abstention of any kind of feedback against to some one hundred legal refugees, whom the bad luck of the history have constrained them to ask our protection until          the successful solution of the case. 003, you have the connection!

THE POLICEMAN: Thank you “miss”Sue, I have taken it.I want to say hello on this way  to all my friends from the football team “The Furious” and to remind them that I am by their side and that I support them unconditional in their actions...in their actions, yes. In these hard moments I can say only             that “When the full is empty and the hope is shared/ The team is team until death !!!” Ahoy because it is need it!

 THE REPORTER: Emotional is the decision of those from around here, that watch over, even when they have tough stomach problems, for our silence, to all of us. And if we started with lyrics , we will end our special live telecast           with the passive choir of the Peaceful Lunatics (P.L) from the Epstein institution, praying double with them: Come you shy among us/ When your life says to you “garbage”/ To be just the two  of us/ Cowboy...” Cut!!! Publicity! Publicity!

S C E N E  5

(Catherine)

CATHERINE:  Why do you avoid me, Clementes? Are you bored              already? ...I accept. Purity can  become boring and sometimes imbecile but, please, remember, even you asked me near the lake to keep us fresh like the fresh steams which rise miraculous from the cheeks of the water and I agreed with that,even if I lusted you until pain, forgetting to step over the threshold and falling like a vegetable in front of Miss  Duchamp and her ballet misses ,in the middle a very complicated dance figure. Not I have decided for things to have the look that you know and I’m not even the God of words or thoughts which surround me, I’m not the cause of the happening or the chaos which digs in trenches in the headway that we wish for. Think, honey, the rainbow doesn’t  become rainbow until it doesnt’t          complete it’s miraculous specter from which nothing misses from what it isn’t supposed to miss. If I can’t be your rainbow, et me become at least one of the colours that define him and I won’t miss your alienation. I have put near my bed a little leather suitcase in which I have put a pyjamas, a new toothbrush, the used stuffed teddy and the last  pair  of jokes in decent state and I wait for you to call me on an unknown island on which to start... What to start? ...Tar and flakes! What            bloody hell to start?! ...It is the time for oaks to fructify. The masculine flowers are grouped in inflorescences called catkins, and the feminine ones are like some trembling  buds...  Why  did  I  put  near  the  bed  the  little  leather suitcase and why did I hide in it the pyjamas with flowers, the toothbrush, the jokes and Teddy? Stupid me, desperate me, like the last Eve refused at export and condemned to get dusty on the shells of a empty and rusty storeroom. My Scott proud lays like a rotten cloth forgotten in the water, in the turbid washbasin of  your peasant coldness. Shame on you Catherine Scott, your dough has grown too much and it stinks of     indecency and  whoredom and it shows his teeth of untamed tiger. Pull out the womb nailed above your legs and throw it over the bleeding moon like a cap without luck. Two watchdogs that spin around you and make a circle of white slobbers like a mighty foam of man. Sit down Suzie, sit down, be nice, be nice... William... wait... sit... come here... up... stay... good... good... wait... stay... you aren’t allowed, you aren’t allowed I tell you, you aren’t allowed, you aren’t allowed... Fetch! Fetch! Sit down... stay... no... position... sit down....sit downnnnn! I go crazy, I go crazy! Let me go mother, throw me the keys from the handcuffs and I promise you that I won’t bite you, only twice like a real grateful daughter.

                Let me go, to hear how they run on the steps the torturers in white jumpers and how they prepare for me the sheet from the upholstered saloon with sponge,that son of a bitch Epstein,devil may comb him. Let me go mother, mother, help  me Miss Duchamp, who doesn’t know anything else than to shout with your trilled beak then when I mistake... chat  step,  demi-plie, grand-plie, releve, saute, port-de- bras, battement tendu, battement tendu jete, rond dejamb, battement fondu, changement de pied echappe, clementissimo...That’s it, that’s it, don’t snuggle me like this because I will throw up ...stop stinging me you brutes, I’m good, I’m good like a fox without tail, I promise. Help me to wake up God. Save me!  Save me Clementes! Fake! Fake!

S C E N E  6

(Clement)

CLEMENT: And what if I am late?! I won’t come in... I better come late than arrive earlier and to climb on the stable like a foul in the head of the table, like a loser clown who only wakes pity and who is only good to receive expired whipped cream tarts in his face... Arrogance is punished, as if the books say. Why arrogance wouldn’t be punished       if even  the sense from        the swaddle is punished. The black pawns stand in front of the white pawns and they are looking in their eyes full of dark rings. So what? It is good that they study each other and with respect. The kings have fallen, the towers have fallen, the horses run without any blemish over the checked plains and only the bishop sighs. It is enough place on the polished table and the mixed pieces look good, very good like how they are mixed. It is not a view for the nostalgic people who prefer the vacuum spaces which don’t       predict                anything constructive. Ahoy!!! Is there someone here?! ...Wake up you squared heads and move your asses because the convoy is hearing, the lamps must be cleaned and filled with clear oil , it has to be broken the spigot of the barrels. Open the heavy doors, grandfather, because today it has to appear, for sure it has to appear. I know  because  a lightning has stopped in front of my leg and it has written with a finger in the dust her name. So what there is fog, she won’t mistake the road because I will call her over the mists with steadiness, she won’t hang her dress between the  thorns because I will send the fireflies to accompany her. What, from where do I know, I have spoken to her last night when we were watering together, with a hat of wished the oaks. Yes, yes, because of that they grow tug in the  morning and they screw greedy in the ashes so that they can recover. Yes, yes, those laughters were ours and those whispers that you thought they were weasels  were  ours.  Nothing  that  you  heard  over  the  hills  were anyone  else. Why had we borrowed to others what is only ours?! Didn’t you teach      us so that we shouldn’t borrow our soul to anyone?! Because even the soul doesn’t belong only to us what else could it be closer to us?!

                Open the heavy doors, don’t think twice grandfather, let their heavy iron moan like a marine creature which opens her slug eyelids after a thousand years. Don’t you hear?! Don’t you hear her?! I knew that you were speechless  not that you also have the broken tympans.Trop...trop...her heel resounds easy over the clifs ....it is close,it is so close that I hear her breath and who knows her breath better than me, contemptible. It smells mint and absinth, beaten basil with a stone and of sparkle of  grit. Of locust flower smells the mouth of my bride and of     stepped grass by colts. A little, a little. Gathered up... Let the trumpets sing like a bow over the palace and the back of the drums crack under the  beats. Let cymbals make a carpet which would light his path. Comes, comes the bride and she has to be received  according to her rank. Fill the windows with lamps and bring heavy tables. This is how its meant to be, this is how its meant to be. Grab the mourning and put him into high boys. This is how its meant to be. His time has passed and the deads have their clothes wet of the many tears. It is meant for them to party behind our back because many have waited this day of joy that is meant for them too. Catherineeee! I am here, Catherine, I am here and everything is prepared with punch for your arrival.

S C E N E  7

(Sir Epstein, William)

SIR EPSTEIN:  Shit! I don’t want to hear a thing. That stupid sister of yours has done to me enough problems and if your mother didn’t interfere in time we risked to get in trouble because of the neighbours.Yes,yes, a real lady Madam Scott and if she didn’t sign  the  petition I had  to  retire  my  words  because  the  people gathered like looking at a bear. Luckily that Bob from the television is my man and he doesn’t cast any bullshit, that is because he knows that,when the accounts are closed, he will get something also;and in some concerns the thing is as solved, at the end of the month you can start those courses you yearn for. We have to pass only one hop. A small one...

WILLIAM: And with the police what will we do Sir Epstein, because in Tybalt I don’t trust any more. He has changed a lot since he flaunts with that uniform and that tin badge around town...

SIR EPSTEIN: This is just an opinion. People never really change, they just fake it.A Furios remains always a Furios. He doesn’t have to do anything, just to close his eyes for 24 hours and for that I promised him that I will arrange with the mayor to put him in the place of that son of a bitch 000, of Doubtfire... and with the events that will follow no one will have anything to say about this change. He  will lose and the last disciples that he has among the counselors. We promote youth, the change of anger,the fear of the common wealth. Clash the glass with me, Will,for that. At midnight we will clean the city of lepers and parvenus.

 WILLIAM: You know well that I don’t drink ,sir Epstein. I get sick only from the smell.

SIR EPSTEIN: Be a man, bloody hell. A future arbiter has to know to suck solid  otherwise he has got into trouble with those beats of players. Until fourty I didn’t put a drop in my little man, because of  principles and I had only to lose .I didn’t even dare to look into one woman’s eyes as for her skirts I don’t  even talk about it. And in business a man who doesn’t drink is considered a spy  that  has  to  be  executed  without  delay.  Look  closely  to  my phalanges. Aaa! Not a single tremble... Listen to me, I’m like that one with a single  principle in life which is that alcohol has to be strong... HA-HA! We have to change by all means the hymn ,when we settle down a little bit, don’t you think?

WILLIAM: Why do we have to change it? I like the old one also which disengages only nostalgia: “On the Lake Felone shore/ Lo...”

SIR EPSTEIN: Bullshits! Grow up Will and change your shorts with some of camouflage. Buy a hat! ”Proud and free” it will be called the new song of the Furiosi and with entertaining rhythm I put my hand in fire that the boys will melt after it.Energy! The energy is what misses you, Will. Nostalgia is the  domain  of women and Slaves. Strong characters are defined through dinamism. Dinamism.

WILLIAM: Yes, maybe. I came to talk about the plan.

 SIR EPSTEIN: Oh, pragmatic as usual.Good job,you have a white ball. Look  what  we will do.Tonight I will put my gorillas to set free the saloons of patients and to lead them with torches trough the orchard until the home of the Pop’s. I think they are 80 at all, as a company if I am not mistaken. You with the guys will  get  dressed  in  some  white  jumpers  and  you  blend  quietly among them. Without guns, only white guns  so that they won’t sweat.The rest is part of the... improvisation. If you hear a siren you will retire over the hedge and you will run each other to his house. The rest is my business. Clear?!

WILLIAM: As much it can be. What about Cat?

SIR  EPSTEIN: Well haven’t we settled ? I will keep her at the insulator two or three days so that no one will suspect that she isn’t part of the landscape and after that she is free like the bird of the sky. Later she will also thank us for this kind gesture.A little lesson won’t harm anybody, especially when it comes from the dear ones.

S C E N E  8

(Albert Pop, Ana Pop, Ioan Pop, Clement Pop)

ALBERT  POP: I told you, what did i tell you... with these ones isn’t a joke, they don’t want to like us and peace.There isn’t any doubt, that crowd is heading here. Woman, bring that rusty fork, so that I can  keep it by my side. How someone enters over that hedge of ours without my permission in that moment I will crack his head without any warning. The laws from around here give me this right. Bring the fork woman I said and you  father-in-law take the axe under your arm and show what a man you are and you Clemente go inside and call the police  until someone from them decides to answer. Maybe you will have more luck than I did.These torches over the hill are  coming more and more impending and there are heard some cow mooings. Do you hear?! My hair rises because of them and my knee is trembling. The gentlemen from around here have bad thoughts about us.

ANA  POP: You shut up Alberte and light a cigarette and you father calm down and bring a chair. This moon is just like ours like a heifer which stays among girls. Because of so much work we have  forgotten to stop and look how she mighty passes over some and over others. Bring a chair father, bring a chair I said and throw the axe in the ditch.

CLEMENTE POP: Shall I bring a chair for me also, mother?!

ANA POP: Bring one for you also Clemente and stop being sick beacuse of your horny Caterinca, if it is written to be yours she will come for you and at the end of the world or at the bottom of this lake even if you turn into a grain of sand and hide into a shell. Give me five,because in three days she will come after you by her own will  and she will tell you no matter what to forgive her,like this are the virgins who haven’t tasted men and they don’t know how to keep him close, listen to me and take the things as they are ...bring one for me too but with backrest,to rest my back. Make me Alberte a massage with  alcohol if you haven’t drink it yet... What sings this crowd that is coming closer, boy?

 CLEMENTE POP (listens carefully): “On the shore of Lake ...Felone/ My love... stepped ....with fear...”

ANA POP: This song doesn’t sound like an intimidation one, it is similar to a love one, yes, yes, it has beautiful lyrics, we will have to learn it too if we decide to stick around here. Father, note down it’s lyrics on a board, we mustn’t forget it.

ALBERT POP: Have you lost your mind...only a vocal group I don’t give a damn now.They will kill us with the songs also these fuckers...Hallelujah, hallelujah! And when those from the east will come over the ones from the west these ones from the last will rise against and they will dress up as angels and they will go with a big crowd to kill them. Fear and despair will bring their song and the beasts will hide ashamed in caves and the fish will cover their eyes with mud. The moon will get heavy because of their anger and she will make a sword that will fall from the sky over the guilty one and over his children. Hallelujah, I say to you... fuck, here I stopped because the words tangle in my mouth like the rotten molar in a crust. Hallelujah...

ANA  POP: Bring a chair for you too Alberte or you know what, lets gather all the chairs that are in this house because they are over one hundred and put them here in the yard because the ones who come over the hill must be very tired.

ALBERT POP: Okay-okay and after that what we will do?

ANA  POP: We will all sit down and shut up.

ALBERT  POP: ???

The end of the play.

© 2010  Laurenţiu Budău