The Traveling Companion & Other Plays Read online

  LUKE: A secret departure? One I’d not mentioned to you?

  MARK: Don’t you know departures can be made without warning? You don’t say you’re going, you don’t even know you’re going, then— [He snaps his fingers.] —you’re gone. —Life’s full of sudden departures; what a pity death isn’t.

  [Mark removes his hands Luke’s eyes.]

  MARK: Don’t pull that cowl over your face.

  LUKE: It protects my eyes from the dust always blowing, blowing constantly—from where?

  MARK: The shrinking earth’s a desert and barren mountains: in our part of it, the vicinity here, most of the chalky white stuff is provided by the Arroyo Seco, down there. I’ve heard that once, a few hundred years ago, there was a river in it—there’s nothing drier and dustier than an arroyo in which there was once a river that’s now dried up.

  [Luke lowers the cowl over Mark’s head. Mark draws it back up.]

  LUKE: I thought you admired my eyes for being so clear, not inflamed?

  MARK: This evening let me have a long look at your face, memorize it, as if I might never be seeing it again.

  LUKE: You said you weren’t going away and I told you I wasn’t either. —I still don’t understand why you kept me waiting here while you were right back there all that time?

  MARK: You learn a great deal about someone you care for by observing him without him knowing you are. You notice whether he waits indifferently, or with increasing concern as it gets later, oh, you learn many things you’d never know otherwise.

  LUKE: What did you observe you didn’t already know?

  MARK: More and more tension in you as the sky started to fade.

  LUKE: You know I’m afraid of the dark when I’m alone at night. If it had gotten a bit darker I would have started home and missed our meeting.

  MARK: —Fear, that’s a bad thing to feel.

  LUKE: A natural thing to feel. Now that women are so much fewer than men, there are bands of nomads that will seize a boy after dark and—

  MARK: I know. Ravage him. And when their lusts are satiated, they leave no witness, just the lifeless body. —Lean back.

  [Luke leans into his embrace.]

  MARK: It always amazes me, the smoothness of your skin under the robe, not granulated at all by the chalky white substance.

  LUKE: I know you like the touch of smooth skin so I keep mine smooth for your pleasure.

  MARK: How do you do that?

  LUKE: Before I go to meet you here, I bathe myself and then immediately I put on my robe.

  MARK: You bathe once a day, before you come here to meet me, not just at night as we’re ordered to do?

  LUKE: I bathe twice, once for you and again at night, Mark.

  MARK: Bathe twice? Did you say twice? But that would mean that you disregard the water restrictions as if they didn’t exist. —You know, this confirms my suspicion that you have another protector, one in a high position in the regime, you little—cheater, yes, you get by with violating the restrictions because you give yourself at night to someone of great power among the—

  LUKE: I’ve never had more than one protector at a time. That one protector now is you.

  MARK: Before me, you had others.

  LUKE: They were necessary. I hardly remember my parents. I’ll tell you something that’ll amuse you. On the wall at my place, I have a colored picture of the lady that was called the Madonna.

  MARK: Those old mythological pictures are a rarity now and could be sold to the Center for special privileges, you know.

  LUKE: I’d rather keep the picture on my wall.

  MARK: What were you going to tell me that will amuse me. Something about the picture of the Madonna?

  LUKE: Once I had a protector. When I woke up one morning, he was standing there staring at the picture. He said, “Is this your mother?”

  MARK: Thought that the Madonna was your mother . . .

  LUKE: The funny thing is that I said, “Yes, that is, that was my mother.” —Women were a comfort. —Why are they disappearing? Do they succumb more quickly to the chalk all about us now?

  MARK: The earth’s not able to support its shrinking population. There’s little food, and even less water. I’ve heard that a man will use a woman a while and then, when she’s no longer desirable to him, not as she was before, he’s likely to destroy her. You see, Luke, the battle between people that happened so long ago that it’s barely recorded, I understand that it had a brutalizing effect. Do you understand me?

  LUKE: Brutalizing—?

  MARK: Opposite effect from the care of a Madonna.

  LUKE: So that now we have only each other.

  MARK: Have I told you that I have a woman at home?

  LUKE: A mother? A Madonna?

  [Mark laughs harshly.]

  MARK: No, what remains of a girl, the remnant of her, used too much, not able now to excite me nor even to—serve . . . only to stagger about, looking more and more frightened. I suspect she knows.

  LUKE: You suspect she knows what?

  MARK: That her withering, frightened look, her choking sounds at night—

  LUKE: From the disease? She has it?

  MARK: She’s breathed too much of the chalk. I think she knows that soon it will be necessary to relieve myself of her presence in my place.

  LUKE: I don’t think you’ll do that. No, you couldn’t do that.

  MARK: You haven’t sat for an hour observing me waiting for you and so you know me less.

  LUKE: Since I know you completely—

  MARK: Are you sure that you do?

  LUKE: I feel secure with you, Mark. And as for the woman you’ve never mentioned before, have you told her about us?

  MARK: I say nothing to her now but, “Oh, are you still here? Go lie down in that corner over there and don’t cough and don’t crawl toward me.”

  LUKE: You’re making all this up, I know it’s not true.

  MARK: You know so little, boy. You know dangerously little. You don’t know enough to distrust.

  LUKE: Oh, I distrust them all except you, Mark.

  MARK: That might be a mistake. The worn-out girl at my place, she—trusted me once as you do. But when I go home tonight, if she’s still there—out she’ll go, I’ll throw the door open, and kick her living or dead body into the wind she can’t stand against, that will sweep her away and bury her in white dust. No, don’t trust. So. —You said you bathe twice a day, before you come here to meet me and again at night, violating the water restrictions?

  LUKE: When I was very young—

  MARK: Younger than now?

  LUKE: Little more than a child, I had a protector, my first, who was very clever, very wise, at secret, mechanical things. Did I say that right?

  MARK: Perfectly. Go on.

  LUKE: One day he put his ear to the earth.

  MARK: In or out of the house?

  LUKE: Both in and out, and he discovered that not far under the earth running under the house there was water, he said a stream of it, not wide, not deep, but—

  MARK: Ohhh . . . .

  LUKE: He was a strong man, he dug and dug down to it and built steps down with stones.

  MARK: But when the house is inspected by the—

  LUKE: Inspectors, no. You see, the opening to the steps is covered over with an old, dry animal skin, and even if the inspectors looked under this ragged leather—you know their eyes are bad, half-blinded by the chalk—they wouldn’t notice the width of the cracks

  MARK: By which you can lift the cover to the underground spring of water? —How very foolish of you!

  LUKE: He did it all, not I.

  MARK: But he’s gone, now, and you have it all to yourself for your own private and—illegal—use. You are not at all wise.

  LUKE [shrugging]: I must live, and to live I mus
t please.

  MARK: But you mustn’t talk about it.

  LUKE: Of course not. To no one but you.

  MARK: No, not even to me, because by talking about it to me, you make me a conspirator with you, as criminal as you are.

  LUKE: Oh, but—you—

  MARK: Would bear the same penalty you would, knowing what you’ve told me and not—informing.

  LUKE: Whom would you—

  MARK: Inform? The ones you inform to. The rulers, the authorities of the regime.

  [There is a pause.]

  LUKE: You believed that story? You didn’t know that it was all made up? Just an invention, like yours about the woman and what you’ll do to her tonight?

  MARK: That was no invention. And neither was what you told me about the underground spring.

  LUKE: You’re holding me so tight it’s hard to breathe.

  MARK: You’re a light-footed boy. You might suddenly spring up and take to your heels.

  LUKE: From you?

  MARK: Of course, now that you realize that you’ve made such a dangerous mistake. I suspected something. And now I know.

  LUKE: But I know something, too.

  MARK: What?

  LUKE: You’ve told me how completely you love me.

  MARK: A thing that I also told the woman when she was desirable to me.

  LUKE: She doesn’t still attract you. I do. Don’t I? Mark?

  MARK: You’ve put in my possession a secret that to keep from the authorities would expose me to the same penalty you’re exposed to. You know what such penalties are?

  LUKE: A term of imprisonment, but—

  MARK: A long, long term, and even if you’re alive when it expires, you’d be—unrecognizable, Luke.

  LUKE: I’d be disfigured, you mean?

  MARK: By more than time, by more than the terminal effect of the chalky white substance.

  [He clamps his arms tighter about Luke.]

  LUKE: What are you, why are you—!

  MARK: I must deliver you to them and repeat your confession and—receive the bounty. Did you know there’s a bounty offered for turning in a person who violates the laws, the restrictions? The authorities regard him with more respect, he’s given a title, sometimes, and his licenses are extended. The inspectors pay his house a—respectful visit, they smile at him and say, “The place needs some improvements in keeping with your new position. We’ll see to that right away.”

  LUKE: The authorities are vicious.

  MARK: I understand that’s always been their nature, even before the people of the earth divided into two or three hostile parts that battled for ownership and rule with the great explosive devices. —Who won? —Nobody. NOBODY!

  [The word “nobody” is echoed, after a couple of moments, from the opposite side of the chasm.]

  MARK: —Hear that? Know what that was? As if somebody called back? That was an echo. So many of the old words have dropped out of use and aren’t known anymore.

  [Pause.]

  LUKE: The authorities are corrupt but we don’t have to imitate them.

  MARK: To save our skins we do.

  LUKE: Would they still be worth saving?

  MARK: I understand that there used to be considerations called moral. And for these considerations, morality, a thing such as the betrayal of someone you love, would be held in contempt. But that was once, long before I remember. Stop struggling. I’m hard and strong. What’s the use? You can’t escape. Light’s faded. We must get going.

  LUKE: Where? The cave? Or my place?

  MARK: Neither this evening, Luke. We’re going to the cabildo where you will stay confined till long out-used, to the end of your time. —TIME!

  [Pause. Then an echo of the word “time.”]

  LUKE: Then kill me. Kill me, Mark!

  MARK: And sacrifice the reward?

  [The wind rises. Luke thrashes impotently in the grasp of Mark.]

  MARK: Call him, the great protector called God. No breath? I’ll call Him for you. PRO-TEC-TOR!

  [Pause. Then an echo of the word “pro-tec-tor.”]

  MARK: What a huge creature, what an immense beast He must have been to have left such enormous white bones when He died . . . Endlessly long ago, the bones of Him now turned to powder that blows and blows about His broken—creation . . .

  [Mark bears Luke futilely struggling down the upstage declivity. The stage darkens.]

  THE END

  THE DAY ON WHICH A MAN DIES

  (AN OCCIDENTAL NOH PLAY)

  For Yukio Mishima,

  in token of long friendship

  and much admiration.

  The Day on Which a Man Dies, (an Occidental Noh Play), was first performed on February 1, 2008 at Links Hall in Chicago, produced by the SummerNITE, Christopher J. Markle, artistic director. It was directed and designed by David Kaplan; paintings were by Megan Tracy. The cast in order of appearance, was as follows:

  THE ORIENTAL: Gerson Ducanay

  MAN: Steve Key

  WOMAN: Jennie Moreau

  SECOND STAGE ASSISTANT: Faith Streng

  SCENE ONE

  An Oriental who performs as the First Stage Assistant, Chorus, and Supporting player, appears in a spot of light on the otherwise lightless stage.

  The Oriental bows slightly, then draws a string to release a large sheet of rice paper, nearly the size of the stage opening. He snaps his fingers: on the paper is projected in large crimson letters the Japanese title of the play, “The Oriental,” in Japanese characters. He reads it aloud.

  ORIENTAL: Tōyōjin1

  [He then moves several paces aside and beneath the title in Japanese appears the title in English, projected in a vividly contrasting color.]

  ORIENTAL [as Chorus]: The day on which a man dies begins at the midnight which closes the day before his death-day.

  [He snaps his fingers: the projected titles in both languages disappear and the spot of light blacks out.

  A few notes of Japanese music on a reed instrument are heard. Then the stage is lighted fully and we see two rooms identical in form but quite different in all other respects. On stage right is the woman’s room, a bed-sitting room in a Tokyo hotel, sparely furnished and well ordered. On stage left is the room in which the man, an artist, works at his painting: it is a room whose effect of violence and disorder, fearfully subjective, is expressed by great stretched canvasses stacked about the walls, all painted in primary colors in abstractions that seem to utter panicky cries.

  The man, the artist, stands over a canvas stretched at his feet. He is holding a spray-gun with which the paint is applied to the canvas. He is breathing as heavily as if he had been in fierce physical combat with the demon inhabiting the canvas beneath. He wears flesh-colored tights on which are painted in color his anatomical details: pink nipples, blue outlines of skeletal prominences, arteries and musculature, blond hair at armpits. A vivid green silk fig leaf covers his groin. He is still young, his physique muscled and tendoned as if his work were a laborer’s. His face is ravaged by the rage apparent in the canvasses.

  After a few moments of staring down at the canvas, he sprays it with more red paint, then hurls the spray-gun away and falls to his knees, smearing the paint about the canvas with his fingers: the image fails him. He falls back on his haunches with a sick gasp in his throat.

  The woman enters the adjoining, well-ordered room, followed by the Oriental, now performing the part of a law student at the Imperial University of Tokyo.]

  WOMAN: Sit down, please. I’ll bring him in. Excuse me.

  [The Oriental bows slightly. As the woman crosses to the partition between the two rooms, he sits on a stool downstage, briefcase over his lap. He is decorous, detached.]

  WOMAN [opens the sliding door in the partition]: Ha!

  MAN [staring straight ahead of
him fiercely]: You still don’t know that—?

  WOMAN: The hotel-manager told me—

  MAN [his face quivering with rage]: I can’t be interrupted when I’m—

  WOMAN: That you were destroying your—

  MAN: At WORK!

  WOMAN: —Room!

  MAN: I have always locked my studio against you.

  WOMAN: This is not—

  MAN: GET THE—

  WOMAN: A studio, this is—

  MAN: FUCK OUT!

  WOMAN: A room in a hotel.

  MAN: Where I work is my—

  WOMAN: You’ve had the furniture removed?

  MAN: Studio!

  WOMAN: This isn’t work, this is—

  MAN [fists clenching]: OUT. NOW! OUT!

  WOMAN: Lunacy, utter—

  MAN: OUT! [His eyes and lips clench tight on an inner violence about to erupt.]

  WOMAN: Lunacy! I knew from the sounds that something—

  MAN: Just once, my first year with you—

  WOMAN: Mad was happening in here when—

  MAN: You interrupted my work with a supper tray and I—

  WOMAN: I heard you shout last night: “Now I’ve got you, you bitch!”

  MAN: Threw it all on the floor and the tray at you!

  WOMAN: I thought: “Is he screaming through the wall at me or—

  MAN: I thought that had taught you—

  WOMAN: Has he got a Japanese hooker in there?”

  MAN: The possible—consequences of—

  WOMAN: But now I see—

  MAN: Intruding upon and shattering an image at the point of— [He stalks, on this line, to the far side of the room and aims the spray-gun at her.]

  WOMAN: You’d reached the stage of shouting at—

  MAN: Coming!

  WOMAN: Your work the sort of insults you shout at—

  MAN: See what I’m pointing at you?

  WOMAN: Me! Oh, yes, a spray-gun!

  MAN: Want it?

  WOMAN: And two empty bottles.

  MAN: Okay, you get it!

  [The man advances and sprays red paint all over her dress. The woman screams furiously. The Oriental sets his briefcase down and rises from his chair, facing the adjoining room. The man’s rage is suddenly satisfied. He makes a sound of choked laughter.]