ADAM: It’s a long story. In the beginning…
CLARISSA: No!
NESTOR: See? Only the guilty disseminate. The truth is pithy and direct.
(Linda enters haltingly, covered in blood.)
LINDA: What would you know of truth?
(Drums)
CLARISSA: Linda!
ADAM: No! I watched her die! Address her ghost at your peril.
(Clarissa approaches with cautious awe.)
CLARISSA: But what could be more consoling than a ghost? Proof, as it is, of human transcendence and meaning.
ADAM: Credit not its words though, as death terminates all responsibility to the living and their notion of truth.
LINDA: I know nothing of the dead as you know nothing of that plaything but if you wish to join them you’ll continue disparaging my veracity.
NESTOR: If you still breathe then breathe to us what happened out there.
LINDA: You would have me deliver such a coveted gift without proper recompense?
CLARISSA: Linda what on earth are you talking about? What happened?
(Linda collapses. Clarissa moves toward her but Linda raises her hand to stop her.)
LINDA: No! Don’t deprive me of this. What remaining strength I have will be used in reaching my beloved.
(She crawls to the area where Adam and Nestor are lying.)
And only his ears will hear the solution to this puzzle, that mystery and mystique shall continue to permeate this place, though he will of course be free to disclose it freely.
(She continues crawling to a point between them but is slowing greatly.)
CLARISSA: You won’t make it, let me help you.
(Drums)
LINDA: No. Must…
CLARISSA: Tell me then. Tell me what to do if left alone.
LINDA: I have no idea but if a rope comes down…
CLARISSA: What? If a rope comes down what?
ADAM: It’s a rescue line, climb up it to safety.
NESTOR: No! It’s a noose, don’t touch it!
CLARISSA: Which Linda, which is it?
LINDA: Maybe use it to bind me to my love.
(She appears to reach out to Nestor only to, at the last second, change direction and place her hand on Adam’s chest warmly. After resting her hand there a moment she suddenly presses down harshly on the gunshot wound. Adam exerts a final convulsion and dies.)
CLARISSA: No!
(Feverishly pointing the gun at Linda)
Get away from him!
LINDA: Shoot and quick! If I repent before the shot rings out I may receive credit for it. Mitigation that will unleaven my sin when what I want is to leave at my basest moment. Shoot!
(Clarissa doesn’t, Linda dies.)
CLARISSA: No!
(She falls to her knees in grief.)
Is there no way to stem this? Is this a breathing organ that sacrifices its component parts the way a boy discards last year’s toys? Or is it his reckless overuse that pits us against each other until only vestigial rust remains?
Adam. Linda. Empty bodies that recriminate against Nature’s negligent incompetence like abandoned storefronts. Come Nestor, let’s bury our dead and remove this blight that there might be a possibility of renewal.
NESTOR: No. The dead will keep. Reload your gun then come remove this spear, that I may re-plant it in whatever walks through that door.
CLARISSA: No Nestor. The medically proper move is to keep it in. If I pull it out the wound will gasp to suck death in quicker.
NESTOR: Don’t pull it out then. Push it all the way through and out the other end. I want to witness my body expel it anyway.
CLARISSA: Keep it in baby, I’ll get help.
NESTOR: We both know there is none, only more strife. I need a weapon to face it.
CLARISSA: Here then, take the gun. But the spear? You have to stay speared baby, I’m sorry.
NESTOR: Listen Clarissa.
CLARISSA: Yes?
NESTOR: We’ve had our disagreements.
CLARISSA: Uh-huh?
NESTOR: That’s it, just we’ve had our disagreements.
(they chuckle)
CLARISSA: Okay.
NESTOR: You’re not going to believe this but it’s surprisingly hard to breathe with a spear in your back.
(Drums)
CLARISSA: Hang in there son. We still have that machine breathed for Charles.
NESTOR: No.
CLARISSA: It kept Charles alive.
NESTOR: But won’t work on Nestor, he won’t let it.
(He gasps.)
CLARISSA: Lungs won’t fill on pride Nestor. You need air.
(Drums)
NESTOR: No, air needs me! I assert that the world needs me, the air breathes me, more than the other way around. Do I have experience of a world without me? Inconceivable, at least by that me. Me without the world? That I conceive of with ease. Yet you ask me to connect to the finite that me might be debased in the process?
(gasps)
I. Will. Not.
(Drums)
Let the world rain its ugliest flames on me. The resulting conflagration will be testament to this unalterable fact: I breathe through spear, without help, or not at all.
(Nestor puts his head in Clarissa’s lap. She puts her hand on it, runs her fingers through his matted hair)
CLARISSA: I know baby.
(Nestor dies. The drums stop.)
No, oh. Oh no. Is there greater gap we feel than between living and dead? Take an orderly century’s progression through life. From bulbous infant to vital adult until ravaged ersatz corpse. The subject may marvel at what he sees in the mirror, the family may gather in secret wish for the release that comes with resolution, but when the wholly expected comes it still shocks in its finality doesn’t it? That so much can instantly devolve into a nullity.
That gap again. Try bridging it but how? Memory’s a poor substitute for presence and though I may chant their names into eternity their eyes won’t alight, their lips won’t curl.
Then am I damned to be both reflective chanter and sole recipient?
A long, thick rope unfurls from above into the center of the room. Clarissa gently lays what was Nestor’s head on the floor and walks over to the rope. She strokes it with her hand and looks up at the invisible source. She raises the end of the rope to eye level and forms a circle out of it. She looks up again and tugs on the rope. Now she takes hold of the rope at its highest point possible and pulls herself up. Her bare feet lift off the ground until she drops herself back down. She walks away from the rope running her fingers through her hair. After some deliberation she returns to the rope with purpose. She takes it and pulls on it gently. The rope comes loose and its entire length comes down around her. She absentmindedly wraps herself in rope until it looks as if a giant serpent has come up out of the ground to coil itself around our Clarissa.
Clarissa sits down. The Drums resume; the pattern, if there even be one, difficult to divine.
CURTAIN
VII. Another Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Do I need, at this late a stage, to even cursorily paint a word picture that seeks to implant in you the sight of a New York City police precinct with phones ringing and mostly weary people shuffling in response? If I don’t and you’ve never actually been in one ask yourself why I don’t and whether this is really a legitimate process. Regardless, in such a place Detective Helen Tame walked through a louder than usual gathering that immediately became quieter than usual to enter a room that looked almost nothing like the representations just referenced to to speak with Captain Frank Furillo but not that one.