Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition (34 page)

ETHEL
: Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya-aseh sholom olenu v’al col Yisroel . . .

LOUIS
: Oseh sholom bimromov, hu ya-aseh sholom olenu v’al col Yisroel . . .

ETHEL
: V’imru omain.

LOUIS
: V’imru omain.

ETHEL
: You sonofabitch.

LOUIS
: You sonofabitch.

(Ethel vanishes
.

     
Belize hands Louis the knapsack.)

BELIZE
: Thank you, Louis. You did fine.

LOUIS
: Fine? What are you talking about, fine? That was . . . fucking miraculous.

Scene 4

Two
A.M.
Joe enters the empty Brooklyn apartment
.

JOE
: I’m back. Harper?

     
(He switches on a light)

     
Harper?

(Roy enters from the bedroom, dressed in a fabulous floor-length black velvet robe de chambre. Joe starts with terror, turns away, then looks again. Roy’s still there. Joe’s terrified. Roy does not move.)

JOE
: What are you doing here?

ROY
: Dead Joe doesn’t matter.

JOE
: No, no, you’re not here, you . . .

     
(Joe closes his eyes, willing Roy away. He opens his eyes. Roy’s still there)

     
You
lied
to me! You said cancer, you said—

ROY
: You could have read it in the papers. AIDS. I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression.

     
You feel bad that you beat somebody.

JOE
: I want you to—

ROY
: He deserved it.

JOE
: No he didn’t, he—

ROY
: Everybody does. Everybody could use a good beating.

JOE
: No, no, that’s—I want you to go Roy, you’re really frightening me.
Get out
. You don’t belong here—

     
He didn’t
deserve
what I did to him! I
hurt
him, Roy! I made him
bleed!
He . . . He won’t ever see me again.

     
(Realizing that this is true)
Oh no, oh no . . . What did I do that for? What did I do? What did I—
(Joe starts to cry. He stops himself, violently shaking his head)

     
Tell me what to do now.

(Roy doesn’t respond.)

JOE
: I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, I thought I’d find my way, the way you did, to the, to the heart of the things, to the heart of the world, I imagined myself . . . safe there, in the hollow of . . . but . . .

     
(Little pause)

     
I’m . . . above nothing. I’m . . .
of
the world. Whatever . . . that means, whatever God thinks of the world, I think He must think the same of me.

     
Tell me what I do now.

(Roy shrugs.)

JOE
: I’m a liar. I lied. I never told you how much you frighten me, Roy.

(He walks toward Roy.)

JOE
: I’m not blind, not . . . blind as I tried to be. I’ve always seen,
known
what you are. And, and I’m not like that. Not like you. But I’ve lied and lied and lied . . .

(Joe is facing Roy. He puts his head against Roy’s chest, lost. Roy’s surprised, pleased, moved. He puts his arms around Joe, a tender, careful embrace. Joe raises his head. They look at one another.)

ROY
(Gently)
: Show me a little of what you’ve learned, baby Joe. Out in the world.

(They kiss, intimate, uncertain, as affectionate as it is sexual.)

ROY
: Damn.

     
I gotta shuffle off this mortal coil.

     
(Looking up at the ceiling, warning the Powers Above:)
I hope they have something for me to do in the Great Hereafter, I get bored easy.

     
(To Joe)
You’ll find, my friend, that what you love will take you places you never dreamed you’d go.

(Roy vanishes. Joe doesn’t move, eyes closed
.

     
He opens them when Harper enters. They stare at one another.)

HARPER
: Hope you didn’t worry.

JOE
: Harper?

     
Where . . . Were you—

HARPER
: A trip to the moon on gossamer wings.

JOE
: What?

HARPER
: You ought to get your hearing checked, you say that a lot.

     
I was out. With a friend. In Paradise.

Scene 5

Heaven: in the Council Room of the Hall of the Continental Principalities. As the scene is being set, a Voice proclaims:

A VOICE
: In the Hall of the Continental Principalities; Heaven, a City Much Like San Francisco. Six of Seven Myriad Infinite Aggregate Angelic Entities in Attendance, May
Their Glorious Names Be Praised Forever and Ever, Hallelujah. Permanent Emergency Council is now in Session.

(Power for the great chamber is supplied by an unseen immense generator, the rhythmic pulsing as well as the occasional surges and wavers of which are visible in the unsteady lights, and audible continuously underneath the scene until its cessation [indicated in the text]
.

     
At the center of the room is a very large round table covered with a heavy tapestry on which is woven a seventeenth-century map of the world. The tabletop is covered with ancient and broken astronomical, astrological, mathematical and nautical objects of measurement and calculation, cracked clay tablets, dulled styli, dried inkpots, split quill pens, disintegrating piles of parchment, and old derelict typewriters. On the table and all around the room are heaps and heaps and heaps of books, bundles of yellowing newspapers and dusty teetery stacks of neglected and abandoned files
.

     
On one side of the table, a single bulky radio, a 1940s model in very poor repair, is switched on, its dial and tubes glowing. The six present Continental Principalities are gathered about it, sitting and standing. The Angel of Asiatica is seated nearest to the radio; the Angel of Antarctica is farthest away
.

     
The Principalities are dressed uniformly in elegant, flowing, severely black robes that look like what justices, judges, magistrates wear in court
.

     
All six sound very much alike, as if speaking with a single voice. Their speech is always careful, a little slow, and soft, like mild old people; in everything they say there’s a distinct tone of quiet, enduring desolation and perplexity. This tone doesn’t vary; even when they argue they sound tentative, careful, broken
.

     
They’re almost completely still, but as they listen they turn slightly, slowly, looking to one another for comfort. Asiatica and Africanii intermittenly hold hands
.

     
The Principalities are aghast, frightened and grief-stricken at the news they’re hearing on the radio
—
which they’re not supposed to be using. They listen intently to the dim, crackly signal.)

RADIO
(In a British accent)
: . . . one week following the explosion at the number four reactor, the fires are still burning and an estimated . . .
(Static)
. . . releasing into the atmosphere fifty million curies of radioactive iodine, six million curies of caesium and strontium rising in a plume over eight kilometers high, carried by the winds over an area stretching from the Urals to thousands of kilometers beyond Soviet borders, it . . .
(Static)

ANTARCTICA
: When?

OCEANIA
: April 26th. Three months from today.

ASIATICA
: Where is this place? This reactor?

EUROPA
: Chernobyl. In Belarus.

(The static intensifies.)

ASIATICA
: We are losing the signal.

(The Angels make mystic gestures. The signal returns.)

RADIO
: . . . falling like toxic snow into the Dnieper River, which provides drinking water for thirty-five million—
(Static, then)
. . . is a direct consequence of the lack of safety culture caused by Cold War isolation—
(Static, then)
. . . Radioactive debris contaminating over three hundred thousand hectares of topsoil for a minimum
of thirty years, and . . .
(Static)
. . . now hearing of thousands of workers who have absorbed fifty times the lethal dose of . . .
(Static)
. . . BBC Radio, reporting live from Chernobyl, on the eighth day of the . . .

(The radio signal is engulfed in white noise and fades out.)

EUROPA
: Hundreds, thousands will die.

OCEANIA
: Horribly. Hundreds of thousands.

AFRICANII
: Millions.

ANTARCTICA
: Let them. Uncountable multitudes. Horrible. It is by their own hands. I I I will rejoice to see it.

AUSTRALIA
: That is forbidden us.

     
Silence in Heaven.

ASIATICA
: This radio is a terrible radio.

AUSTRALIA
: The reception is too weak.

AFRICANII
: A vacuum tube has died.

ASIATICA
: Can it be fixed?

AUSTRALIA
: It Is Beyond Us.

ASIATICA
: However, I I I I I I I would like to know. What is a vacuum tube?

OCEANIA
: It is a simple diode.

ASIATICA
: Aha.

AFRICANII
: Within are an anode and a cathode. The positive electrons travel from the cathode across voltage fields—

OCEANIA
: The cathode is, in fact, negatively charged.

AFRICANII
: No, positive, I I I I—
(She begins carefully to examine the works in the back of the radio)

EUROPA
: This device ought never to have been brought here. It is a Pandemonium.

AUSTRALIA
: I I I I agree. In diodes we see manifest the selfsame Divided Human Consciousness which has engendered
the multifarious catastrophes to which We are impotent witness. But—

AFRICANII
(Having concluded her examination, to Oceania)
: You are correct, it is negative. Regardless of the charge, it is the absence of resistance in a vacuum which—

ANTARCTICA
: I I I do not weep for them, I I I weep for the vexation of the Blank Spaces, I I I weep for the Dancing Light, for the irremediable wastage of Fossil Fuels, Old Blood of the Globe spilled wantonly or burned and jettisoned into the Crystal Air—

AUSTRALIA
: But it is a Conundrum, and We cannot solve Conundrums. If only He would return. I I I I do not know whether We have erred in transporting these dubious Inventions, but . . .

     
(Opening a huge dusty Book)
If We refer to His Codex of Procedure, I I I I cannot recall which page but—

(There is an enormous peal of thunder and a blaze of lightning
.

     
The Angel of America ushers Prior into the chamber. Terrified and determined, he stands before the council table
.

     
The Principalities stare at Prior.)

ANGEL
: Most August Fellow Principalities, Angels Most High: I regret my absence at this session, I was detained.

(Pause.)

AUSTRALIA
: Ah, this is . . .?

ANGEL
: The Prophet. Yes.

AUSTRALIA
: Ah.

(Exchanging brief, concerned glances with one another, the Angels bow to Prior.)

EUROPA
: We were working.

AFRICANII
: Making Progress.

(Thunderclap. Prior’s startled. Then, realizing they’re waiting for him to speak, he musters his courage and says in a small, uncertain voice:)

PRIOR
: I . . . I want to return this.

(He holds out the Book. No one takes it from him.)

AUSTRALIA
: What is the matter with it?

PRIOR
: It just . . . It just . . .