| | Lights on FINDLEY in school space, and SECURITY GUARD in an area somewhere between school and construction site. |
| FINDLEY: | Is he happy? |
| GUARD: | It's hard, physical work -- |
| FINDLEY: | But the fresh air has done him good. |
| GUARD: | He tells me he sleeps well, and he isn't so drained anymore, at the end of the day. |
| FINDLEY: | So much less to worry about. |
| GUARD: | The company's safety record is top notch -- the best. The best equipment, safety harnesses, inspections... |
| FINDLEY: | Of course he misses battering the kids at school with Greek gods and Roman emperors anymore, but then he can always keep his fingers in it -- do some research on his own. Maybe he'll even write a book... |
| GUARD: | They're almost paranoid. Scared the workers get too reckless up there.
|
| |
Lights on construction site. |
| HE: | Hey, down there... you worms! It's glorious up here! (Spreads out his lunch, takes a swig from a beer can.) |
| FINDLEY: | Yes, he sleeps so much better now. |
| HE: | (Subdued.) To hell with you all. |
| CASSIE: | I drink the sacred waters of Cassotis. |
| HE: | They won't even let you take a piss from the top. |
| GUARD: | He doesn't have much seniority, but the fellows look to him. |
| CASSIE: | I sit on my gilded throne. |
| GUARD: | He doesn't get much involved in union affairs. But he's liked by the others, nonetheless. |
| CASSIE: | And vapors from the underground surround me, and I speak in tongues: tongues that appear like serpents; serpents that lie in wait for you, Odysseus; serpents that crush the life blood out of you, my Alexander. |
| GUARD: | All the same, it's a long way from teaching school.
|
| FINDLEY: | From social studies to construction work in the prime of your life. But sometimes change can be good.
|
| HE: | How did it all start? |
| FINDLEY: | Of course we don't have all the answers. |
| HE: | And Why? |
| FINDLEY: | So many questions. |
| CASSIE: | Angelo and I are alone. |
| FINDLEY: | Cassie? |
| CASSIE: | Every day I see her there is blood in my eyes. |
| FINDLEY: | Cassie, where are you? |
| CASSIE: | I am blind. Here I am and I am blind. She has blinded me. |
| FINDLEY: | Cassie, you can start now. |
| CASSIE: | Can't you see me from your world? Can't you hear me at all? |
| FINDLEY: | Anger! |
| CASSIE: | There is so much anger in the world. But I don't feel it. |
| FINDLEY: | Show your contempt, Cassie. |
| CASSIE: | I am without hate. |
| FINDLEY: | Tears. |
| CASSIE: | Emotional recall. |
| FINDLEY: | Cry, for crying out loud! |
| CASSIE: | Have the tears blinded Cassandra? Has the blood? Perhaps she has been blind all along? |
| FINDLEY: | Sorry, dear, I didn't hear your question. (Exits.) |
| HE: | (On the scaffold.) One could almost imagine sitting on a mountain. |
| CASSIE: | Alexander! |
| HE: | Olympus. The gods! |
| CASSIE: | Alexander, why? |
| HE: | I am invincible. |
| CASSIE: | No one could hold you back. |
| HE: | I am a god. I can see the world from my mountain. |
| CASSIE: | But why did you leave me? Because she is a few lousy years older than me? I can -- |
| HE: | I can see the four elements. |
| CASSIE: | What is it that appeals to you? Is she more stimulating? I mean intellectually of course. What makes her so smart, huh? Maybe you just like the way she wags her ass? Is she a great fuck? (Beat.) Or were you afraid? Of me. |
| HE: | But I can only see as far as the horizon. |
| CASSIE: | Afraid for your soul, Odysseus? |
| HE: | (Panicking.) Gods are supposed to see farther than the horizon. |
| CASSIE: | Afraid that after so many years of voyaging between steel desk and screeching chalkboard you'd lost sight of your Penelope? |
| HE: | Gods are supposed see and hear everything. |
| CASSIE: | What did you feel, Odysseus? What did you feel? |
| HE: | I cannot see. |
| CASSIE: | Why did you return to your ship? |
| HE: | And I can only hear the rushing wind. |
| CASSIE: | Why did you leave my island? Who is there to judge you? I would tell no one. But you left. And now your studious fingers grow calluses. Your callous voice utters oaths. The sirens' cries have died, Odysseus. There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. |
| FINDLEY: | (Enters.) Again, Cassie: "Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier and afeared?" |
| HE: | Ah. |
| FINDLEY: | The stage is like a balanced scale. The director must achieve a physical equilibrium, a balance between the left and the right. |
| HE: | Up here everything is in balance. |
| FINDLEY: | Yet there are various forms of balance: Symmetrical, asymmetrical, and esthetic balance. |
| HE: | Innocence. |
| CASSIE: | If you had only waited. |
| FINDLEY: | Now, we haven't much time. |
| CASSIE: | Just to give it a fair chance. |
| FINDLEY: | Your timing is off, Cassie. Where the hell is your timing? |
| CASSIE: | There never is any time. |
| HE: | (Unfolds newspaper.) I don't believe this! |
| CASSIE: | And she. Why does she despise me? |
| FINDLEY: | A director must have compassion. She must enlighten the actress. Allow her to be free from outside tensions. Cause the actor's inner feelings for the character to grow and expand. Until this energy pours out of her with perfect spontaneity. This is how the first breath of life enters the character. This is the beginning. |
| CASSIE: | I had begun to understand him and he slipped away. |
| FINDLEY: | Yet only if the actor has mastered the outside body should she begin to work on expressing the inner self. |
| CASSIE: | Within me there is no fear. But I can feel fear -- their fear. They are afraid. Not of me. They are afraid of the future. |
| FINDLEY: | This achieved, the actress will move and speak without inhibitions, without fears. |
| CASSIE: | They are afraid of the prophecy. Of the predictions made by the priestess, who knew him just once, in the temple on the hill. The priestess, who knew him once, down by the river. The Pythia... (She unbuttons her blouse slowly, deliberately.) September seventeenth. (She takes off her blouse.) It is still so warm... In the autumn sun... Without the wind to cool your skin. |
| FINDLEY: | There's nothing to be afraid of anymore. |
| CASSIE: | Alexander! Odysseus! Where are you? |
| FINDLEY: | Nothing. |
| CASSIE: | No one believes Cassandra! |
| HE: | I feel a breeze. (Laughs.) Ah, it's refreshing after all the lies and the politics... |
| FINDLEY: | Something has been troubling you, my love. |
| HE: | And the "kids." Yeah. Like young goats. Young of flesh but old in spirit. |
| FINDLEY: | You said that you've been watching television until early morning. It's not like you. |
| HE: | They speak in electronic jingles that have imprinted themselves on their picture-perfect brains. |
| FINDLEY: | Is she still on your mind? |
| HE: | They adorn themselves with peer survival uniforms, learn the vital statistics of modern-day gladiators and Hollywood studs. |
| FINDLEY: | Come to me. Let us talk like we used to. |
| HE: | They move as one -- like a school of mackerel -- into the nets of gourmet demagogues. |
| FINDLEY: | Did she and you -- |
| HE: | There they were, day after day, in their seats. Waiting. Waiting for something to happen. I wasn't going to make anything happen. So what the hell were we doing there? |
| FINDLEY: | No, of course you didn't. |
| CASSIE: | Alexander had lost his vision. He had become impotent. He could no longer face -- |
| HE: | And that feeling wouldn't go. |
| FINDLEY: | You are free now, my love. |
| HE: | It's getting stormy. (Shouts down.) You guys are breaking too much wind! (Looks at his sandwiches.) Mmh, raspberry... strawberry... and (Sings.) "tea I drink with jam and bread..." (Tries to catch a fly.) |
| FINDLEY: | Jam sandwiches. You can't live on jam sandwiches, for heaven's sake. |
| HE: | (Still trying to catch the fly.) Amazing. There should be more insects up here. (Shouts down.) But then, flies and bugs go for the stench! |
| FINDLEY: | You can't go it alone! |
| CASSIE: | I, the Pythia, chew laurel leaves. |
| HE: | The company's safety record is impeccable -- the best. The best equipment, safety harnesses, inspections. They're almost paranoid. Scared we get too reckless up here. |
| CASSIE: | I drink the sacred waters of Cassotis. |
| HE: | They won't even let you take a piss from the top. And you're allowed only to fart downwind. |
| FINDLEY: | He doesn't have much seniority, but the fellows already look at him as a leader. |
| CASSIE: | I sit on my gilded throne. |
| FINDLEY: | Even though he doesn't get much involved in union affairs. He's liked by the others. They call him "Professor." |
| CASSIE: | And vapors from the underground surround me, and I speak in tongues: tongues that appear like serpents; serpents that lie in wait for you, Odysseus; serpents that crush the life blood out of you, my Alexander. |
| FINDLEY: | It's a long way from social studies to construction work in the prime of your life... Last night. What did I put into the lunch box? No it wasn't just a dream! Did you like your tomato sandwiches, love? The bean salad, the bran muffins... (Desperately.) A dream-- |
| HE: | (Shouts down.) All right, you maggots, can't you wait for five minutes? |
| FINDLEY: | Did the orange juice keep cool enough in your thermos? Or did I give you coffee? |
| HE: | No, the buzzer didn't sound yet. There is still time. (Unfolds newspaper.) |
| GUARD: | (Enters.) But it did sound... long ago. Everyone has left. Everything is shut down. |
| FINDLEY: | Forgive me, my love. Forgive my fantasies. |
| HE: | Ah, here is a good one. |
| GUARD: | Reading tomorrow's paper again? |
| FINDLEY: | But why not? Why shouldn't we indulge in few dreams? |
| GUARD: | You better leave now. It is late. Tomorrow's news can wait till tomorrow.(Exits.) |
| HE: | You'd think there wouldn't be anything left of her. |
| FINDLEY: | What is it with you? Are you still thinking of her? |
| HE: | (Reads aloud.) Workers found the body early Monday morning.
|
| FINDLEY: | I don't understand you. Why do you read it? It's so disgusting. They like to drag out all the crass details. |
| HE: | Apparently plunged to her death from the seventeenth floor of the new Alexander Tower Plaza construction site. |
| FINDLEY: | It's gore. Nothing but blood and gore! |
| HE: | A company spokesman said that despite the devastating internal damage the fifty-metre fall must have caused, the woman was still recognizable. |
| FINDLEY: | You have to hang that rag on a clothesline just to let the blood drip off. |
| HE: | Foul play is not suspected but authorities, speculating about possible motives for the -- |
| FINDLEY: | No! No more! |
| HE: | Until next of kin have been notified. |
| FINDLEY: | Give me that newspaper. Give me that damn shit-house paper! |
| HE: | They did confirm, however, that the victim is believed to have been blind. |
| FINDLEY: | Cut! Cut! |
| HE: | Keep yer pants on, laddies. I'll be coming. (Gathers his lunch leftovers and descends. Exits.) |
| CASSIE: | (Rises.) "I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry." (She walks unseeingly towards the scaffold.) "Did not you speak?" |
| | She is startled when her outstretched hand touches the scaffold, then holds on as if to a life raft. |
| Where are you, my lord? |
| HE: | (Off.) Cassie! |
| |
CASSIE laughs a girlish laugh. Hesitates, then climbs the scaffold. |
| FINDLEY: | (Off.) Cassie! |
| CASSIE: | Weep, my queen, weep! |
| |
HE, in teacher's clothes, enters. FINDLEY enters, rushes downstage and stares upward, with a movement as if to ward off an apparition. HE turns his head up, reaches out. They all freeze. Blackout. |