Old Perplexity

 

Old Perplexity

 

Scene 1

ELIAS is kneeling, reading a scattering of unbounded papers.  MARCUS comes in behind him.  CRISPIN lies dead behind them both.

MARCUS:

what's the news?  I think we should go Elias.  There's nothing here.

elias:

He's dead.  Marcus.  Already you want to go back.  Or is he just another object to you?  Simply something to sell, to haggle, barter borrow...he starved to death.  Why?  He had plenty food, his legs weren't broken.  How did he come to this?

MARCUS:

he became senile.  Lost his senses.  Forgot where the food was & couldn't remember his legs.  Isn't it obvious?

elias:

Look at these papers.  The ink's still wet.  Are these the words of a mind wandered off?  I suppose it could be but is it not abrupt?  Does the intellect of man forget his legs?  What is this he writes:

"Perfection of the life or of the work?  This creative space is no good for a man with no artistic ability.  the world is drawn into lives & it wraps around like a net.  My soul is a fish caught, dragged.  Something is growing nasty, dominate.  A great cold shadow stretches.  Maybe it is no monster on a hill but a spider on the window glass.  Yet butterflies swirl hurricanes & bees break nations.  What will happen in a time when even the most peaceful of countries threaten the breathed in air?  Will small spiders web the world?  Insects, they crawl, itch, over my skin & inside.  They are everywhere, legion, multitudes, crowds.  I cannot be indifferent to their huge presence, the implications that fall, fly, land on me.  How can a man build his house on rock when the whole world is made out of sand & the shadow of the water rests on him.  To prove & be proved, that is the contestion.  Is the mind noble or the heart, beating courageously?  Beats, beats, swifter than the feet...I am only a cipher of the regrowing hair that survives each cut."

What does that mean?  It sounds haunting but I have no clue.  Marcus how can I go out of the house now I have felt the weight of his body without him?  How can I stop reading without understanding his meaning?  I feel now as if I have never known him.  Everywhere there is snow & we are travel stricken, bounded to homelessness.

Marcus:

Such winds of words.  A full gustful of each breath as if you've only learned your lungs. You do not need to be an anchor to weigh down the whole world.

elias:

but I cannot be an Atlas with the world weighing on me.

MARCUS:

be a Colossus.  Stand over the world.  Forget it's weight, it's light & spins without effort.  We haven't been in this cottage for a long length of constant movement.  But we're here & we've stopped & you feel sick.  It's abrupt.  You won't feel sick forever.

elias:

but always I'll be ill.  What earthly merchandise can be bought for him now?  Listen to what he writes:

  "We try to grow healthy in the shadow of others' illnesses.  Somehow I think art is marred, by thoughts of an improved life, a paradoxical scar, that hurts & hurts reflection, that offers no protection from a series of questions once thought departs.  We see ourselves in no water or glass, no world appearance or healing eye.  No shadow on the earth or wind brushing grass.  Everywhere invisible we stand quick as stone to know ourselves, from our cries in the darkened night, without our friend's flame.  How can we know ourselves from our desire lingering further from our plans as the heat moves from hands to hands scanning the horizon for a growth that somehow is our own but we know the seas do not change for our sakes.  It has no gauge of what is in us strange.  The engulfing tide of time swallowing all things at all times.  We stand in the ending of the sand.  I don't have a skull on my desk but books upon my bookshelf..."

MARCUS:

hard things he writes.

MARCUS:

perhaps he had hard things at rest in his heart...some deep vision...

marcus:

you are not your brother's keeper, or feeder.  You can live without him.  Both of us.  I still need you.

eliaS:

In luck, are we forced to choose?

Marcus:

he starved from his stupidity.  He foolishly emptied his stomach for the sake...of what...a promise just as empty?

ELIAS:

maybe he was overstuffed with another substance.

MARCUS:

ah yes, air.  One wants to be enough of it but never over that edge of the bell-curve that tips from living to dying.

ELIAS:

funny, to have enough can seem almost equal to had enough.  As if our satisfaction completes our contempt.

marcus:

your books are waiting for you to be signed.

ELIAS:

why did we take so long to get here?

MARCUS:

there was a lot of roadkill.

ELIAS:

where?

MARCUS:

on the road.

ELIAS:

a bumpy road to ride on.  I'm still not too sure which route you took.  How much roadkill was there?

MARCUS:

594 birds, 250 turtles & 30 mammals.

elias:

did there have to be so much statistical blood?

MARCUS:

we had to come here somehow.  Why is now beyond me.

ELIAS:

it was unavoidable.  I said "we haven't seen Crispin for a while, let's pay him a call- he's well due for one" You weren't so sure.  You hummed & haared, shook your head, tapped your watch, wrinkled your nose.  Do you remember all three of us playing in the garden?  Building dens in the summer, igloos in the winter.  You, me & Crispin.  We were young the last time we played.  Now we're both old & he's dead.  It feels like a long time ago.

MARCUS:

Look at this place, smell it, even feel it.  It's decrepit, putrid, cold, bare.  No decent plumbing, no realiable lighting...

ELIAS:

yes, the rot has set deep & it crawls my skin no less.

marcus:

It's dusty.

ELIAS:

Paper is the dust of trees.  Who knew so much of it existed?  To come only to add 1 man to the list of dead things.  Why is fast approaching me.  This look accompanied by this smell moving with this feeling- maybe it is not an undiscovered countryside, but a leaving of a country we know all too well.  It is cold & the dirt lies upon this uncovered floor.  I think we must have very thick carpets, the amount of stuff we sweep under it.  Only now I think of what I am stepping on...tripping over.

MARCUS:

sickening.  We should make quick our stay or we will become too sick to return.  You say you are already ill but you do not have to wait at this terminal contemplating your betrayal of all your work.

elias:

the toil has left it's mark.  I don't want to be ruled by autistic businessman, a useful idiot or a cripple giving me advice on walking.  You've driven me around enough for me to lose idea.  All these love miles we do.  The geography of the streets becomes a deadly noise of maze where this endless field of country represents the only silence; the greatest of labyrinths- the desert- the encompassing inescapable open.  Enough, enough, when does it become enough, when will I be enough of enough?

MARCUS:

laugh, & become brave.

elias:

The boy cried wolf until the wolf became a joke, the girl was fearless in her conversation.  Look what happened to their laughter, their bravery.        

MARCUS:

the stories are wrong.  All that story's finished.  Wolves hunt in packs & even wolves need to eat.  The golden girl was just right.  Pay no attention to stories.  Stop playing dot to dot.

elias:

except the ones I write.  The ones you tell me are good & sell to person upon person.  But I wonder, now for the first time, how can they be now that I have read Crispin's writing, my brother who never sold a thing, sentences that I have always felt but could never express, & have seen his dead body.  Was it those words that have killed him?  What could be worth dying for?  I'm sure I've never wrote anything that could kill.  Is this what we all progress to?  Some circle in the million-petalled flower?  To fill an empty purse?

MARCUS:

Look, we got here in record time, be please about that, for least.  It's not total but only.  A speck of the spectacular.  These questions do no good. I feel nothing but pity, contempt, horror, for him & his words & I do not wish to feel them!  You can achieve tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, quintillions, sextillions, septillions, octillions, nonillions, decillions, undecillions, duodecillions, tredecillions, gogols & gogolplexes...but you can't achieve them here

ELIAS:

what are we going back to? Stored furniture? Hip-hop beds? Refitted toilet seats? Clean needlepoint rugs?  Mock Tudor beams? Cinemas for adult films? Duck houses? Monogrammed manhole covers?  Biscuits & Whiskey?  Two houses we can call neither home?   

Marcus:

don't be exaggeratingly flippant.  We'll go to a party.

Elias:

Strange absractions.  Isn't it getting dark?  The day's vanity, the night's remorse.  The fire still burns in this house.  I see his desk of papers, unread but entirely collected.  It will take time to go through them.

MARCUS:

it will take less to leave them.  Have you seen his other rooms?  Hundreds of leaves adorn the wooden frames- a job of pruning, a job for someone with greener fingers than yours, yours black with smudge of print, mine hardened red with work.  Hardly suited- you or I- in this home, just as ill-fitting as our conversations with him.  Troublesome & difficult he was.  Now we can leave his problems here.  We no longer need to worry.  It won't profit us if we do.  This house is ruin, cannot be sold, no will.  A legacy of stored dirt from a hoarder of dust.  It's an old & worn down cottage, not a heavenly mansion raging in the dark.  I'm leaving.  I'll be in the car.  You can stay here, with the rotten wood, with the decaying body, the musty papers, the cobwebs & cocoons...but I am not.  I am going.  I'll sit in the car for half an hour.

MARCUS taps his watch.

marcus:

After half an hour I will start driving.  Go, stay, move, die.  Make your choice.  I've made mine.

elias:

yes, I'm ill.  You make me sick!  You contaminate me, you taint the food, poison the water, fall on the misplaced concreteness, choke on the exhaust.  YOUR LOVE KILLS ME.

Marcus leaves.

ELIAS:

Maybe it is cobwebs that will wrap me over.  Composed in rage, spun in gentle ferocity.  A past entanglement untied- intact.  It is not inadequacy that prevents me but fear.  Fear of what might arise from the basements, the attic, the cupboard.  They are not places I wish to search but where else am I to organize myself?  That...sadness in a comfortable world...there's no lifting from it, release, escape...I cannot fly.   Life...work...That old perplexity.

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