Resurrection Blues (8 page)

 

SKIP: What are you, a businessman or an academic?

 

HENRI: I retired from the pharmaceuticals business some years ago. I still breed fighting bulls but I'm getting out of that too; I'm basically a scholar now. In Egypt . . .

 

SKIP,
takes out a cell phone and punches numbers from notebook:
Excuse me.

 

HENRI: If you're making a local call . . .

 

SKIP: The General's office. To tell him I'm here.

 

HENRI: Doubt that'll work . . .
Glances at watch
. . . . this close to lunch.

 

SKIP: Good god, why don't they fix it?

 

HENRI: They? There is no “they” here; hasn't been in most of the world since the fall of Rome.

 

SKIP,
snaps his phone shut:
What can you tell me about this guy's escape?

 

HENRI:—I know how absurd this is going to sound, but I ask you to hear me out.
Slight pause
. I had a very distinct feeling at the time they found him gone, that he had never been in that cell.

SKIP: But they had him, they'd captured him.

 

HENRI: They believed that, yes.

 

SKIP: What are you talking about?

 

HENRI,
considers:
. . . It struck me one day in Egypt . . .

 

SKIP,
starting to rise:
Look, I have no interest in Egypt . . .

 

HENRI,
voice hardly raised
: This may save your neck, Mr. Cheeseboro! Do sit; please.—

 

 

It struck me one day; that there were lots of images of the peoples the Egyptians had conquered, but none showing Jewish captives. I am far from expert in the subject but I couldn't find more than one or two menorah—candelabra—a vague star of David . . . almost nothing, really. Which is terribly strange when the Jews are supposed to have drowned the whole Egyptian army, don't you think? And Joseph was the Pharaoh's chief adviser and so on? It would be, let's say, like writing the history of Japan with no mention of the atomic bomb.—

 

SKIP: But what is the connection with . . . ?

 

HENRI: One day the thought hit me—could the whole story of the Jews in Egypt have simply been a poem? More or less like Homer describing magical cattle, and ravenous women and so on? Ancient peoples saw no difference between a vivid description of marvels and what we call reality—for them the description itself
was
the reality. In short, the Jews may never have been literally enslaved in Egypt; or perhaps
some
had been, but the story as we know it may have been largely fictional, an overwhelmingly powerful act of the imagination.

 

SKIP: If you're telling me this guy doesn't exist, I'm . . .

 

HENRI: That depends on what you mean by “exist”; he certainly exists in the mind of the desperately poor peasant—he is the liberator; for the General his crucifixion will powerfully reinforce good order, so he must exist . . . and I know a suicidal young woman of high intelligence who insists that he has restored her will to live, so for her he certainly exists. And needless to say, for you, of course . . . his execution will sell some very expensive advertising, so you are committed to his existing.

 

SKIP: But he can't be imaginary, the General spoke with him.

 

HENRI: Not quite. According to the General the fellow never said a single word. Not one. The General spoke
at
him.

 

SKIP: But didn't I hear of this . . . apostle of his they've just jailed?
He's
certainly spoken with him.

 

HENRI: A fellow named Stanley, yes. I understand he is a drug addict. I needn't say more; he could be put away for the rest of his life unless he cooperates. Drug-taking is a felony in this country.

 

SKIP: Really. But they export tons of it.

HENRI: They do indeed. The logic is as implacable as it is beyond anyone's comprehension.

 

SKIP: Then what are you telling me?—Because you've gotta believe it, the money we paid the General is not a poem.

 

HENRI: But it may turn into one as so many other important things have done. The Vietnam War, for example, began . . .

 

SKIP: The Vietnam War!

 

HENRI: . . . Which was set off, mind you, by a night attack upon a United States warship by a Vietnamese gunboat in the Gulf of Tonkin. It's now quite certain the attack never happened. This was a fiction, a poem; but fifty-six thousand Americans and two million Vietnamese had to die before the two sides got fed up reciting it.

 

SKIP: But what is this light . . . not that I'm sure I believe it . . . but he emits a light, I'm told.

 

HENRI: Yes. I saw it.

 

SKIP: You saw it!

 

HENRI: At the time I thought I did, yes. But I was primed beforehand by my two days in the upper villages where everyone is absolutely convinced he is god—so as I approached that cell door my brain
demanded
an astonishment and I believe I proceeded to create one.

 

SKIP: Meaning what?

HENRI: Mr. Cheeseboro, I have spent a lifetime trying to free myself from the boredom of reality.—Needless to say, I have badly hurt some people dear to me—as those who flee reality usually do. So what I am about to tell you has cost me.—I am convinced now apart from getting fed, most human activity—sports, opera, TV, movies, dressing up, dressing down—or just going for a walk—has no other purpose than to deliver us into the realm of the imagination. The imagination is a great hall where death, for example, turns into a painting, and a scream of pain becomes a song. The hall of the imagination is really where we usually live; and this is all right except for one thing—to enter that hall one must leave one's real sorrow at the door and in its stead surround oneself with images and words and music that mimic anguish but are really drained of it—no one has ever lost a leg from reading about a battle, or died of hearing the saddest song.
Close to tears
. And this is why . . .

 

SKIP: I don't see why . . .

 

HENRI,
overriding:
. . . This is why this man must be hunted down and crucified; because—
he still really feels everything
. Imagine, Mr. Cheeseboro, if that kind of reverence for life should spread! Governments would collapse, armies disband, marriages disintegrate! Wherever we turned, our dead unfeeling shallowness would stare us in the face until we shriveled up with shame! No!—better to hunt him down and kill him and leave us in peace.

 

SKIP: . . . You're addressing me, aren't you.

 

HENRI: Oh, and myself, I assure you a thousand, thousand times myself.

SKIP: On the other hand, shallow as I am I have twins registered at Andover; maybe some need to be shallow so that some can be deep.

 

 

HENRI: Please! Go home!

 

SKIP: I can't go home until this job is done!

 

HENRI: You could tell your company there was nothing here to photograph! It was all imaginary, a poem!

 

SKIP: It's impossible, I can't pull out of this.

 

 

HENRI: I hope you won't take offense!

 

 

Our generals are outraged, a cageful of tigers roaring for meat!
Somebody
may get himself crucified—and not necessarily a man who has done anything. Do you want the responsibility for helping create that injustice!

 

SKIP: I've been trying hard not to resent you, Mr. Schultz, but this I resent.—I am not “creating” anything! I am no more responsible for this situation than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were for Jesus' torture!

 

HENRI: But Jesus was already long dead when they wrote about him, he was beyond harm!

SKIP: Well, I can't see the difference.

 

HENRI: But Mr. Cheeseboro, this man is still alive!

 

SKIP: We are recording a preexisting fact, Mr. Schultz, not creating it—I create nothing!

 

HENRI: But the fortune you've paid the General has locked him into this monstrous thing! Your money is critical in his decision!

 

SKIP,
exploding:
You have utterly wasted my time!

 

 

HENRI: And so the poem continues, written in someone's blood, and my country sinks one more inch into the grass, into the jungle, into the everlasting sea.

 

SCENE 5

 

 

 

EMILY: I've never in my life eaten three lobsters.

 

FELIX: But they're very small, no?

 

EMILY: Even so.

 

FELIX: Of course, small things can be better than big sometimes.

 

EMILY: Oh?
Catches on
. Oh, of course, yes!

 

FELIX: I beg you to forgive my forwardness.

EMILY: Not at all—I like it.

 

FELIX: I can't help myself, I am desperate for you not to slip away.

 

 

EMILY: You're a contradictory person, aren't you?

 

FELIX: I have never thought so; why am I contradictory?

 

EMILY: Well, you seem so tough, but you're also very sentimental.

 

FELIX: Perhaps, yes. But with very few people. This is a hard country to govern.

 

EMILY:—I must say, your face seems softer than when we met.

 

FELIX: Possibly because something grips my imagination as we converse.

 

EMILY: Grips your imagination?

 

FELIX: Your body.—I beg you to forgive my frankness, it's because I am sure, Emily, that I could . . . how shall I say . . . function with you.

 

EMILY,
equivocally:
Well now . . .

 

FELIX: How fantastic—you are blushing!
She laughs nervously
. My god, how your spirit speaks to me! There is something sacred in you, Emily—for for me it's as though you descended from the air.—I must sound like I have lost my mind, but could you stay on some weeks? Or months? I have everything here for you . . .

 

EMILY: I'm afraid I have too many obligations at home. And I'm going to have to get busy saving my career.
Pointedly
. . . . Unless you'd decide to do what I asked.

 

FELIX: I beg you, my dear, you can't ask me to call off the search. The General Staff would never stand for it . . .

 

EMILY: But if you insisted . . .

 

FELIX: It's impossible; the honor of the Armed Forces is at stake. This man is trying to make fools of us.

 

EMILY,
reaches out and touches his cheek. Surprised, he instantly grasps her hand and kisses her palm
. Why do I think you don't want to catch him, Felix . . . you personally?

 

FELIX,
cradles his face in her palm:
. . . To tell you the truth I'm not sure anymore what I want.

 

EMILY: . . . Just out of curiosity, you really think my haircut started it?

 

FELIX: Oh yes, absolutely, it went straight to my heart.

 

EMILY: Imagine. And here I was thinking it was too short.

 

FELIX: No—no, it's perfect! I had one look and it was as though I . . . I was rising from the dead.

EMILY: . . . Could we talk about that?

 

FELIX: About what, my dear?

 

EMILY: The . . . ah . . . difficulty you have that you've been . . . alluding to.

 

FELIX,
fear and eager curiosity:
What about it?

 

EMILY: . . . Unless you don't feel . . .

 

FELIX,
steeling himself; deeply curious:
. . . No—no, of course not, I have no fear!

 

EMILY: Well, what I think, is that you have to seem invulnerable to the world, and so you suppress your feelings.

 

FELIX: I am running a country, Emily, I cannot expose my feelings to . . .

 

EMILY: I know, but that suppression has spread down and down and down . . .
Running her finger up his arm and down his chest:
until it's finally clobbered . . . your willy.
Quickly
. You're simply going to have to let your feelings out, Felix, is all I'm saying.