The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore Read online

  The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

  AUTHOR'S NOTES

  Sometimes theatrical effects and devices such as those I have adopted in the third (and I hope final) version of this play are ascribed to affectation or 'artiness', so it may be helpful for me to explain a bit of my intention in the use of these effects and devices, and let the play's production justify or condemn them.

  I have added to the cast a pair of stage assistants that function in a way that's between the Kabuki Theatre of Japan and the chorus of Greek theatre. My excuse, or reason, is that I think the play will come off better the further it is removed from conventional theatre since it's been rightly described as an allegory and as a 'sophisticated fairy-tale'.

  Stage assistants in Japanese Kabuki are a theatrical expedient. They work on-stage during the performance, shifting set-pieces, placing and removing properties and furniture. Now and then in this play they have lines to speak, very short ones that serve as cues to the principal performers. ... They should be regarded, therefore, as members of the cast. They sometimes take a balletic part in the action of the play. They should be dressed in black, very simply, to represent invisibility to the other players. The other players should never appear to see them, even when they speak or take part in the action, except when they appear 'in costume'.

  The setting represents the library and bedroom of the white villa, downstage, and the bedrooms of the pink and blue villinos: most importantly, the terrace of the white villa, which I think should extend the whole width of the proscenium with a small apron for a white iron bench, a step down from the terrace.

  Separations between interior and exterior should not be clearly defined except by lighting. When a single interior is being used, the other interior areas should be masked by light, folding screens, painted to blend with the cyclorama, that is, in sea-and-sky colours: they should be set in place and

  I36 AUTHOR'S NOTE

  removed by the stage assistants. The cyclorama and these folding screens represent, preferably in a semi-abstract style, the mountain-sea-sky of Italy's 'Divina Costiera' in summer. Since the villas are, naturally, much further apart than they can appear on the stage, the director could adopt a convention of having actors, going from one villa to another, make their exits into the wings: wait till the stage assistants have removed the screens that mask the next interior to be used: then come back out and enter that area.

  August 1963

  PROLOGUE

  At rise: the stage assistants are onstage: All the interior areas are mashed by their individual screens: the light on the cyclorama suggests early dawn.

  one: Daybreak: flag-raising ceremony on Mrs Goforth's

  mountain.

  two: Above the oldest sea in the Western world. one: Banner.

  [two hands it to him. two places the staff in a socket near the right wings and attaches the flag to it. A fan in the wings whips it out as it is being raised so that the audience can see the device on it clearly.]

  one: The device on the banner is a golden griffin. two: A mythological monster, half lion and half eagle. one: And completely human.

  two: Yes, wholly and completely human, that's true. one: We are also a device.

  two: A theatrical device of ancient and oriental origin. one: With occidental variations, however. together: We are Stage Assistants. We move the screens

  that mask the interior playing areas of the stage presentation. one: We fetch and carry. two: Furniture and props. one: To make the presentation - the play or masque or

  pageant - move more gracefully quickly through the course

  of the two final days of Mrs Goforth's existence. mrs goforth's voice [off, half-sleeping]: ahhhhhhhh,

  MEEEEEEEEE .. .

  [The harmonium player produces a sound of distant church bells.] one: The actors will not seem to hear us except when we're in

  costume.

  two: They will never see us, except when we're in costume. one: Sometimes we will give them cues for speech and

  participate in the action.

  PROLOGUE

  MRS GOFORTH'S VOICE [off]: AHHHHHH, AHHHHHH, AHHHHHH . . .

  [they show no reaction to this human cry.] mrs goforth's voice [off, more wakefully]: another day,

  OH, CHRIST, OH, MOTHER OF CHRIST!

  [There is silence, a pause, as the cyclorama's lighting indicates the progress of the day toward the meridian.] together: Our hearts are invisible, too.

  [The fan that whipped out the flag bearing the personal emblem, the griffin, of mrs goforth, dies down and the flag subsides with it and will not whip out again till the flag-lowering ceremony which will take place near the end of the play. Now it is Noon. Electric buyers sound from various points on the stage. The stage assistants cross rapidly up centre and remove a screen, the middle panel of which is topped by Mrs goforth's heraldic device, the gold griffin. The library of the white villa is unmasked and the play begins.]

  SCENE ONE

  MRS goforth and her secretary, blackie.

  mrs goforth: I made my greatest mistake when I put a fast car in his hands, that red demon sports car, his fighting cock, I called it, which he drove insanely, recklessly, between my estate and the Casino at Monte Carlo, so recklessly that the police commissioner of Monaco came personally to ask me. Correction, beg me. Correction, implore me! - To insist that he go with me in the Rolls with a chauffeur at the wheel, as a protection of his life and of the lives of others. - M. Le Commissionaire, I said, for me there are no others. - I know, Madame, he said, but for the others there are others. - Then I confessed to the Commissioner of Police that over this young poet with Romanov blood in his veins, I had no more control than my hands had over the sea-wind or the storms of the sea. At night he had flying dreams, he would thrash his arms like wings, and once his hand on which he wore a signet ring with the heavy Romanov crest struck me in the mouth and drew blood. After thai, necessarily - twin beds....

  blackie: Mrs Goforth, excuse me, but the last thing I have typed up is - oh, here it is. - 'My first two husbands were ugly as apes and my third one resembled an ostrich.' -Now if this passage you're dictating to me comes in direct sequence it will sound as if you had put the fast car in the hands of the ostrich. [A long, tempestuous pause.]

  Mrs goforth: Aren't you the sly one, oh, you're sly as ten flies when you want to give me the needle, aren't you, Miss Blackie? My first three marriages were into Dun and Bradstreet's, and the Social Register, both! - My first husband, Harlon Goforth, whose name I still carry after three later marriages - that dignified financier, tycoon! - was a man that Presidents put next to their wives at banquets in

  I4O THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE

  the White House, and you sit there smoking in my face, when you know I've been told to quit smoking, and you make a joke of my work with a dead-pan expression on your Vassar girl face, in your Vassar-girl voice, andI WILL. NOT TOLERATE IT! - You know goddam well. I'm talking about ray fourth husband, the last one, the one I married for love, who plunged off the Grande Corniche between Monte Carlo and - died that night in my arms in a clinic at Nice: and my heart died with him! Forever.

  [Her voice breaks.]

  blackie: I'm sorry, Mrs Goforth. [Puts out cigarette.] - I'm no writer but I do think in writing there has to be some kind of logical - sequence, continuity - between one bit and the next bit, and the last thing you dictated to me -mrs goforth: Was it something I put on the tape-recorder in my bedroom after I'd been given one of those injections that upset my balance at night ?

  blackie; I took it off your bedroom tape this morning.

  mrs gofor
th: Always check those night recordings with me before we begin to work the following morning. We're working against time, Blackie. Remember, try to remember, I've got two dead-lines to meet, my New York publishers and my London publishers, both, have my memoirs on their Fall List. I said Fall. It's already late in August. Now do you see why there's no time for goofing or must I draw you a picture of autumn leaves falling?

  blackie: Mrs Goforth, I think those publishers' dead-lines are unrealistic, not to say cruel, and as for me, I not only have to function as a secretary but as an editor, I have to collate the material you dictate to me and I'm not being sly or cruel, I'm just being honest with you when I tell you-

  mrs goforth [cutting in]: All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness!

  blackie: I think we'd better stop now.

  MRS goforth: I think we'd better go on, now!

  blackie: Mrs Goforth, the Police Commissioner of Monaco was right when he told you that there were 'others'. I am

  SCENE ONE

  141

  one of those 'others'. I've had no sleep, scarcely any at all and-

  mrs goforth: You've had no sleep? What about me, how much sleep do I get?

  blackie: You sleep till noon or after!

  MRS goforth: Under sedation, with nightmares!

  blackie: - Your broker is on the phone. ...

  [the stage assistants have entered with phone.]

  MRS goforth [immediately brightening]: Chuck, baby, how're we doing? Ah-huh, glamour stocks still slipping? Don't hold on to 'em, dump them before they drop under what I bought 'em at, baby. We'll start buying back when they hit the basement level. - Don't give me an argument, SELL! SELLl HELLl - It's building into a crash! So, baby, I'm hitting the silk! High, low, Jack and the game! Ho ho!

  [She bangs down the phone, exhilarated, and it is removed by one of the stage assistants. The other assistant has rushed to the stage right wings and he now appears in a white doctor's jacket. This is one of the costumes that make the assistants seen and heard by the other actors.]

  assistant (as dr lullo): Buon' giornol

  MRS goforth: What's he wheeling in here that looks like a baby-buggy for a baby from Mars?

  [He is pushing a 'mock-up' of a portable X-ray machine.]

  blackie: It's something your doctor in Rome, Dr. - what? Rengucci? - had sent up here to spare you the trouble of interrupting your work to take a new set of pictures to show what progress there is in the healing of the lesion, the lung-abscess, that -

  Mrs goforth: Oh, so you're having private consultations with that quack in Rome ?

  blackie: Just routine calls that he told me to make sure to spare you the trouble of-

  Mrs goforth: Spare me no trouble, just spare me your goddam presumption!

  dr lullo: Forse piu tarde,fors' un po piu tarde?

  Mrs goforth: Will you get your sneaky grin out of here? VA. VA. PRESTO!

  142 THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE

  [He retires quickly from the lighted area, mrs goforth advances both fearfully and threateningly upon the medical apparatus.]

  My outside is public, but my insides are private, and the Rome quack was hired by my bitch daughter that wants to hang black crepe on me. Wants to know if I'm going and when I'll go. Doesn't know that if and when I do go, she gets one dollar, the rest goes to a - a cultural Foundation! � named for me? Blackie, wheel this thing off the terrace, to the cliff-side of the mountain and shove it over!

  blackie: Mrs Goforth, you mustn't ask me to do ridiculous things.

  mrs goforth: I don't do ridiculous things and don't ask anyone else to do 'em for me. But if you think it's ridiculous of me to show my opinion of Rengucci's presumption and -Look, watch this! Here we go, perambulator from Mars. Out, down, go!

  [She thrusts it violently on to the forestage, where it is seized by the stage assistants and rushed into the wings: she crosses on to the forestage, leaning forward to watch its fall off the cliff. After a couple of moments, we hear a muted crash that signifies its destruction on the rocky beach under the mountain. Then she straightens, dizzily, with a fierce laugh, and staggers back toward the library area, where blackie, meanwhile, has closed her notebook and rushed off stage. Heart-beat sounds as mrs goforth moves distractedly about the library area, calling out breathlessly for blackie. She presses several buttons on the inter-com. box on the desk: electric hungers sound from here and there on the stage but no one responds: She washes down a pill with a swig of brandy: the heartbeat sounds subside as her agitation passes. She sinks into the desk-chair.]

  MRS goforth: - Ahhh___

  [Then she activates her tape-recorder and speaks into it with a voice that is plaintively childlike.]

  - Blackie, the boss is sorry she took her nerves out on you. It's those night-injections I take nights for my - neuralgia -neuritis - bursitis. The pick-up pills and the quiet-down pills: nerves shot....

  SCENE ONE

  143

  [A wave booms under the mountain.]

  - Oh, God, Blackie, I'm scared! You know what I'm scared of? Possibly, maybe, the Boss is - dying this summer! On the Divina Costiera, under that, that - angry old lion, the sun, and the - insincere sympathy of the - [Her mood suddenly reverses again.] No, no, no, I don't want her goddam sympathy, I'll take that slobbery stuff off the tape and -begin! continueI dictation!

  [She rises, paces the forestage with a portable 'mike'. harmonium: a phrase of lyrical music: she stops short, lifting a jewelled hand as if to say ' Listen' - Then suddenly the hard accretion of years is broken through. The stage dims out except for her follow-spot on the forestage.] 'Cloudy symbols of a - high romance....' - Who said that, where is that from ? Check tomorrow, Blackie, in Book of Familiar Quotations....

  Begin, continue dictation. [Pause: paces] - The love of true understanding isn't something a man brings up the road to you every day or once in a blue moon, even. But it was brought to me once, almost too late but not quite.... The hard shell of my heart, the calcium deposits grown around it, could still be cracked, broken through, and my last husband broke through it, and I was brought back to life and almost back to - what ? - Youth__.

  - The nights, the nights, especially the first one I spent with Alex! - The way that a lover undresses, removes his clothes the first night you pass together, is a clue, a definite clue, to your whole future relationship with him, you know. -Alex unclothed himself unconsciously gracefully, as if before no one in a - room made of windows, and then, unclothed

  - correction: clothed in a god's perfection, his naked body! � He went from window to window, all the way round the bedroom, drawing the curtains together so that daybreak beginning wouldn't wake us early from the sleep after love, which is a heavenly sleep that shouldn't be broken early. Then came to rest in a god's perfection beside me: reached up to turn off the light: I reached up and turned it back on!

  [At this point, mrsgoforth's watchdogs (Lupos) set up a great clamour on the inland side of the mountain. A man

  144 THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE

  shouts, women servants scream in Italian. Somebody calls,'Rudy, Rudy!'

  mrsgoforth is very annoyed by this disruption of her tender recollections: she presses various buttons on the inter-com. box on her desk.] MRS goforth [shouting over the dogs]: che succede! che

  FA, CRETINI ! STRONZE!! (etc.).

  [The savage barking continues but diminishes a little in volume as a young man, who has been just assaulted by dogs, limps and stumbles on to the terrace: He bears a heavy white sack over his shoulder: looks back as if to make sure he's no longer pursued. blackie appears behind him, panting, looking as if she'd also been roughed-up by the dogs.]

  blackie [To the young man]: Places go mad, it's catching, people catch it I [Draws a breathy There's a doctor up here, I'll get him for you.

  Chris: Can I see Mrs Goforth?

  blackie: Sit down somewhere. I'll see if she can see you, and

  I'll-

  [The
young man, chris, limps out upon the forestage: sinks on to a white iron bench: a wave crashes below the mountain. He looks blankly out at the audience for a moment: then shakes his head and utters a desperate-sounding laugh, blackie rushes into the library area.]

  - Mrs Goforth, I can't stand this sort of thing! MRS goforth: What? blackie: Those dogs of Rudy's, those wolves, attacked a

  young man just now.

  mrs goforth: What young man, doing what? blackie: He was climbing the mountain to see you! mrs goforth: Who is he, what does he want? blackie: I didn't stop to ask that. I had to drive the dogs off to keep him from being torn to pieces before I - asked him questions: Look! [She shows mrs goforth a laceration on her thigh, just over the knee] - The others just watched and screamed like children at a circus!

  mrs goforth: Sit down, have a brandy. A place like this is always protected by dogs.

  [Sound of another wave crashing.]

  SCENE ONE

  145

  CHRIS: BOOM.

  [He discovers that his leather pants, lederhosen, have been split down his thigh.] blackie: That gangster's bodyguard, Rudy, just stood there

  and watched!

  mrs goforth: Blackie, this estate contains things appraised by Lloyd's at over two million pounds sterling, besides my jewels and summer furs, and that's why it has to be guarded against trespassers, uninvited intruders. Have you had your anti-tetanus shot, or - whatever they call it? blackie: Yes, I'm all right but he isn't. [She presses a button

  on the inter-com. box.] mrs goforth: Who're you calling? blackie: I'm calling Dr Lullo.

  mrs goforth: Stop that, leave that to me! Do you think I want to be sued by this trespasser? Get away from my desk. I'm going to buzz Rudy. [Presses another button.] Rudy, dov'e Rudy? Io lo voglio in liberia, subito, presto 1 Capito?

  [Theyoung man staggers to his feet and calls: 'mrs goforth !' mrs goforth/wAt up a pair of binoculars and gashes out at the terrace.

  blackie stares at her with consternation^ Chris: MRS GOFORTH?

  [rudy, the watchman, in semi-military costume, appears on the terraced]

  Rudy: Shut up, stop that shouting. [Enters the library area.] mrs goforth: Aw. Rudy. What happened, what's the

  report? Rudy: I caught this man out there climbing up here from the

  highway.

  blackie: He set the dogs on him. Mrs goforth: That's what the dogs are here for. Rudy,

  what's the sign say on the gate on the highway? Rudy: Private property. Mrs goforth: Just 'Private Property', not 'Beware of

  Dogs'?

  Rudy: There's nothing about dogs down there. Mrs goforth: Well, for Chrissake, put up 'Beware of dogs',

  I46 THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE

  too. Put it up right away. If this man sues me, I've got to

  prove THERE WAS A BEWARE OF DOGS sign.

  blackie: How can you prove what's not true? mrs goforth [to rudy]: Go on, hurry it up!

  [RUDY exits. MRS GOFORTH to BLACKIE.]

  Now pull yourself together: what a day! It's too much for me, I'll have to go back to bed....

  [giulio, the gardener's son, a boy of seventeen, appears on the terrace.] giulio [to the young man, who is applying an antiseptic to his