The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore Page 9

Chris: I know you better than you know me. I admire you: admire you so much that I almost like you: almost. I think if that old Greek explorer, Pytheas, hadn't beat you to it by centuries, you would've sailed up through the Gates of Hercules to map out the Western world, and you would have sailed up further and mapped it out belter than he did, no storm could've driven you back or changed your course, oh, no, you're nobody's fool, but you're a fool, Mrs Goforth, if you don't know that finally, sooner or later, you

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  need somebody or something to mean God to you, even if it's a cow on the streets of Bombay, or carved rock on the Easter Islands or -

  MRS goforth: You came here to bring me God, did you?

  chris: I didn't say God, I said someone or something to -

  MRS goforth: I heard what you said, you said God, my eyes are out of focus but not my ears! Well, bring him, I'm ready to lay out a red carpet for him, but how do you bring Him? Whistle? Ring a bell for him? [She snatches a bell off her desk and rings it fiercely.] HUH? HOW? WHAT? [She staggers back against the desk, gasping.]

  chris: I've failed, I've disappointed, some people in what they wanted or thought they wanted from me, Mrs Goforth, but sometimes, once in a while, I've given them what they needed even if they didn't know what it was. I brought it up the road to them, and that's how I got the name that's made me unwelcome this summer.

  stage assistant: Tell her about the first time!

  together: Tell her, tell her, the first time! [They draw back to the wings.

  The harmonium player begins to play softly.]

  chris: - I was at Mrs Ferguson's mountain over Palm Springs, the first time. I wasn't used to her world of elegant bitches and dandies.... Early one morning I went down the mountain and across the desert on a walking trip to a village in Baja, California, where a great Hindu teacher had gathered a group of pupils, disciples, about him. Along the road I passed a rest-home that looked like a grand hotel, and just a little further along, I came to an inlet, an estuary of the ocean, and I stopped for a swim off the beach that was completely deserted, swam out in the cool water till my head felt cool as the water: then turned and swam back in, but the beach wasn't deserted completely any longer. There was a very old gentleman on it. He called 'Help!' to me, as if he was in the water drowning, and I was on shore. I swam in and asked him how I could help him and he said this, he said: 'Help me out there, I can't make it alone, I've gone past pain I can bear.' - I could see it was true. He was elegantly dressed but emaciated, cadaverous. I

  22O THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE

  gave him the help he wanted, I led him out in the water, it wasn't easy. Once he started to panic, I had to hold on to him tight as a lover till he got back his courage and said, All right, the tide took him as light as a leaf. But just before I did that, and this is the oddest thing, he took out his wallet and thrust all the money in it into my hand. Here take this, he said to me. And I -

  mrs goforth: Took it, did you, you took it?

  Chris: The sea had no use for his money. The fish in the sea had no use for it, either, so I took it and went on where I was going.

  mrs goforth: How much were you paid for this-service? chris: It was a very special difficult service: I was well paid

  for it. mrs goforth: Did you tell the old Hindu, the Swami, when

  you got to his place, that you'd killed an old man on the

  way and -

  Chris: I told him that I had helped a dying old man to get

  through it.

  mrs goforth: What did he say about that? chris [reflectively]: What did he say: - He said, You've found your vocation: and he smiled. It was a beautiful smile in spite of showing bare gums, and - he held out his hand for the money: the hand was beautiful too in spite of being dry skin pulled tight as a glove over bones. mrs goforth: Did you give him the money? chris: Yes, they needed the money: I didn't: I gave it to them. Mrs goforth: I bet you did. chris: I did.

  mrs goforth: Did he say thank you for it? Chris: I don't know if he did. You see, they - No, I guess you don't see. - They had a belief in believing that too much is said when feeling, quiet feelings - enough. - Says more....

  And he had a gift for gesture. You couldn't believe how a hand that shrivelled and splotched could make such a beautiful gesture of holding out the hand to be helped from the ground. It made me, so quickly, peaceful. That was important to me, that sudden feeling of quiet, because I'd come there, all the way down there, with the - the spectre

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  of lunacy at my heels all the way. - He said: Stay. - We sat about a fire on the beach that night: Nobody said anything.

  MRS goforth: No message, he didn't have any message?

  chris: Yes, that night it was silence, it was the meaning of silence.

  mrs goforth: Silence? Meaning?

  chris: Acceptance.

  MRS goforth: What of?

  chris: Oh, many things, everything, nearly. Such as how to live and to die in a way that's more dignified than most of us know how to do it. And of how not to be frightened of not knowing what isn't meant to be known, acceptance of not knowing anything but the moment of still existing until we stop existing, and acceptance of that moment, too.

  mrs goforth: How do you know he wasn't just an old faker?

  chris: How do you know that I am not just a young one?

  mrs goforth: I don't. You are what they call you! [He takes hold of her hand.]

  chris: As much as anyone is what anyone calls him.

  mrs goforth: A butcher is called a butcher, and that's what he is. A baker is called a baker, and he's a baker. A -

  chris: Whatever they're called, they're men, and being men, they're not known by themselves or anyone else. [She presses a button that shrills on the stage.]

  mrs goforth: Rudy? Rudy!

  chris: Your bodyguard's gone, Mrs Goforth. [She goes on pressing the button.]

  He left with the contents of your strong-box, your safe.

  Mrs goforth: - I've got on me all my important jewels, and if Rudy's gone, I want you to go, too. Go on to your next appointment. You've tired me, you've done me in. This day has been the most awful day of my life....

  Chris: I know: that's why you need me here a while longer. [He places his arm about her.]

  Mrs goforth: Don't, don't you - scare me!

  Chris: Let me take you into your bedroom, now, and put you to bed, Mrs Goforth.

  1ZZ THE MILK TRAIN DOESN'T STOP HERE ANYMORE

  mrs goforth: No, no go, let me GO!!

  [He re/eases her: picks up his canvas sack.] Heyl

  [He pauses with his back to her.]

  -Did somebody tell you I was dying this summer ? Yes, isn't that why you came here, because you imagined that I'd be ripe for a soft touch because I'm dying this summer? Come on, for once in your life be honestly frank, be frankly honest with someone! You've been tipped off that old Flora Go-forth is about to go forth this summer.

  Chris: - Yes, that's why I came here.

  MRS goforth: - Well, I've escorted four husbands to the eternal threshold and come back alone without them, just with the loot of three of them, and, ah, God, it was like I was building a shell of bone round my heart with their goddam loot, their loot the material for it. - It's my turn, now, to go forth, and I've got no choice but to do it. But I'll do it alone. I don't want to be escorted, I want to go forth alone. But you, you counted on touching my heart because you'd heard I was dying, and old dying people are your speciality, your vocation. But you miscalculated with this one. This milk train doesn't stop here anymore. I'll give you some practical advice. Go back to Naples. Walk along Santa Lucia, the bay-front. Yesterday, there, they smelt the smell of no money, and treated you like a used, discarded used person. It'll be different this time. You'll probably run into some Americans at a sidewalk table along there, a party that's in for some shopping from the islands. If you're lucky, they'll ask you to sit down with them and say,
'Won't you have something, Chris?' - Well, have something, Chris I and if you play your cards right, they might invite you to go back to an island with them. Your best bet is strangers, I guess. Don't work on the young ones or anybody attractive. They're not ripe to be taken, and not the old ones, either, they been taken too often. Work on the middleage drunks, that's who to work on, Chris, work on them, sometimes the old milk train still comes to a temporary stop at their crazy station, so concentrate on the middleage drunks in Naples.

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  Chris: This isn't the time for such - practical advice. �.. [She makes a gasping sound and presses a tissue to her mouth, turning upstage.]

  MRS goforth [turning front]: - A paper rose ... [The tissue is dyed red with blood.] - Before you go, help me into my bedroom, I can't make it alone....

  [He conducts her to the screen between the two rooms as the stage assistants advance from the wings to remove it.] -It's full of historical treasures. The chandelier, if the dealer that sold it to me wasn't a liar, used to hang in Versailles, and the bed, if he wasn't lying, was the bed of Countess Walewska, Napoleon's Polish mistress, it's a famous old

  bed, for a famous old body___

  [The stage assistants remove the screen masking the bed.] chris: Yes, it looks like the catafalque of an empress. [He lifts

  her on to the bed, and draws a cover over her.] mrs goforth: Don't leave me alone till -Chris: I never leave till the end.

  [She stretches out her blind, jewelled hand, He takes it.] mrs goforth: - Not so tight, the -chris: I know, the rings cut your fingers.

  [He draws a ring off a finger. She gasps. He draws off another. She gasps again.] mrs goforth: Be here, when I wake up.

  [Then the stage assistants place before her the bed screen with the gold-winged griffin cresting its middle panel. Light dims out on that area and is brought up on the turning mobile. Music seems to come from the turning mobile that casts very delicate gleams of light on the stage.

  blackie appears on the forestage as the stage assistants bring out a dinner-table and rapidly set two places. Then they cross to the flag-staff by the right wings and begin to slowly lower the flag.] one: Flag-lowering ceremony on the late Mrs Goforth's

  mountain. two: Bugle? �

  [A. muted bugle is heard, as if from a distance.] That's not Taps, that's Reveille. one: It's Reveille always, Taps never, for the gold griffin.

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  two [Snapping his fingers]: Let's go. [Exeunt with folded banner.

  chris comes from behind the bedroom screen, on to the terrace where blackie sits coolly waiting.

  The stage assistants reappear in mess-jackets bearing a small table set for supper on the terrace: they place it before blac kI e : she rises and pours wine into a medieval goblet as she speaks to chris.] blackie: - Is it - is she - ?

  [chris nods as he moves out on to the forestage.] blackie: Was it what they call 'peaceful'?

  [chris nods again. ] With all that fierce life in her?

  chris: You always wonder afterwards where it's gone, so far, so quickly. You feel it must be still around somewhere, in the air. But there's no sign of it. BLACKiE:Didshesay anything to you before she - ? chris: She said to me: 'Be here when I wake up.' - After I'd

  taken her hand and stripped the rings off her fingers. blackie: What did you do with - ?

  CHRIS [giving her a quick look that might suggest an understandable shrewdness]: - Under her pillow like a pharaoh's breakfast waiting for the pharaoh to wake up hungry....

  [ She comes up beside him on the forestage and offers him the wine-goblet. The sea is heard under the mountain.] blackie: The sea is saying the name of your next mobile. chris: boom!

  blackie: What does it mean?

  chris: It says 'Boom' and that's what it means: no translation, no explanation, just' boom '.

  [He drinks from the goblet and passes it back to her as -]

  THE CURTAIN FALLS SLOWLY THE END