7 / 7
7/7 (performed at Edinburgh as The Circle Line) By Thomas Jackson
PREFACE
You could say that these two plays, 7/7 and Plastic England, are about guardian angels. On the whole I don’t think much of plays in which the author explains at great length in a preface what the play is about. Works of art should speak for themselves. Don’t tell me, show me. Nevertheless, in this case I am going to, because much of my background inspiration is taken from the writings of D.W.Winnicott and Christopher Bollas, and since these names are not especially well known to the general public I thought a few introductory remarks might help. Winnicott’s great contribution to psycho-analysis, I suppose, was his insight that because the human infant is born extremely prematurely (at nine months instead of twenty-one, a consequence of the combination of upright walking mother and very large headed infant),during the first months of a child’s life he (she) is physically separate from but psychologically merged with his (her) mother. His mother, as it were, lives his psychological life for him. The idea has been taken further by Christopher Bollas. It is during this merged period (the analysts call it symbiosis) that the child becomes a personal subject rather than a merely biological object, through his identification with a woman who is a person already. The process of becoming oneself through becoming imprinted with another’s personal being is never completed in infancy, and we go on seeking a more complete metamorphosis of the self, both in people and in objects in which we invest the hopes of our quest, all through life.
Think what happens when somebody says something to you and you then reply. You don’t consciously make sure that you are using the right grammatical construction, or (normally speaking) carefully choose the words you are going to use, or even assess the ideas you are going to put forward, you just say ‘Yes, I’ll come on Friday’ or whatever. It is as if we have another hidden person inside us who is doing all our thinking for us, a self within a self. Bollas thinks that there is a yet other self even within that, a kind of origin self that surfaces in our dreams. In a dream we return to the simple self-awareness of infancy. In the dream my self-conscious intelligence is no longer the shaping agent whereby I order the events of my life into a coherent logic. We are deconstructed, as it were, ‘loosened into an archipelago of many beings’, held together not, as in waking life, by the conscious logical self but by something or someone else, just as in infancy our as yet unintegrated personality was held together by the mother’s embrace.
In the dream we are not moving within our own chosen meanings, even though the materials of the dream are drawn from our own lives, but within a narrative scripted by another. Who is this other? It can only be a hidden self who is ‘the mother’, so to speak, of the conscious self we know. I’m interested in the relationship we have with this deeply hidden feminine self, dwelling somewhere within us in another dimension from that of every day. Only known to us in our dreams, and sometimes, perhaps, in moments of inspiration and sudden spasms of unsolicited self-knowledge. There is the world we know and habitually move in, but also this other dimension. The here and now particle is also the everywhere and nowhere wave. For me contemporary physics is enchantingly riveting. Religion has always known about this other dimension. But now science is beginning to discover it too.
It was always going to be difficult to put physics on the stage? Have I succeeded? I leave you to judge.
Cast: Michael Gibson Michaela Gibson
Prologue
At the back of the stage are two free-standing door frames. Between them and nearer the front a sofa.
Enter Michael and Michaela. They stand next to each other at the front of the stage.
Michael: Hello. I’m Michael. I’m thirty four years old and an investment banker. Not to put too modest a point on it a highly successful up-and-coming investment banker. Last year I took home £317,000 in salaries and bonuses. I will be a millionaire by the time that I am thirty eight. Don’t you feel guilty about that? people say to me. No I do not. I am not a sentimentalist. I am a trained scientist and a Darwinian. There are winners and losers. I’m sorry but that is the way the world is. Two things explain the world and Darwin discovered both of them. One is that things evolve through random selection and the other is the competitive aggression that enables those who had the lucky break to capitalize on it. Winners and losers. I’m a winner. Sorry mate, it was me that got the lucky break and me who had the balls to grab the opportunity with both hands. The fact that it wasn’t you who got the lucky chance is not my problem. Go and cry somewhere else. There’s no pattern in it. It’s just accidental and meaningless. Call me hard if you like. OK I’m hard. (line 13)
C.V.: Public School. 4 A’s at Science A Level. Captain of the First XV. Head of School. Did well. My only regret is that I never got the science prize. Then Oxford. Read Natural Sciences and, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear, landed a first. I went on to a master’s degree and specialized in the DNA of mitochondrial protein assembly. I then left academia for the City where, I have to say, my scientific training has proved very useful. Fortune favours the prepared mind is as true in finance as it is in science. I’m married. Have been for five years but as yet no children. In that department, I have to admit, things aren’t going too well. In fact divorce is on the horizon. But there’s no use being sentimental and crying about it. If you find you have dug a hole for yourself stop digging, climb out and move on. Move on, move on, life evolves, move on, that’s my motto. Well that’s me. Stay with me if you can. I’m worth knowing. (25)
Michaela: Hello I’m Michaela. Look, Michael, can you leave me alone for a few minutes, I want to talk to the audience on my own. Michael, will you please give me just a few minutes on my own? (Michael departs with obvious reluctance). He’s so frightened I’m going to get out of control and escape from him. It’s a bit of a façade really, all this hard stuff. Like most people, he’s really a pussy cat inside. Now, about me. If you think I’m the usual kind of stage character, well not exactly. I call myself Michaela because, you might say, I’m the feminine side of Michael, though that doesn’t really quite catch it. His inner self might be nearer the mark. No not that, precisely. A previous age.might have called me his immortal soul, but that’s not very helpful language to us today. His Doppelganger? His Guardian Angel perhaps? Yes, but in an important sense no, as the philosophers say. Perhaps even his Fairy Godmother? Yes that too, but only up to a point. None of these, not really. I think I can best explain who I am by borrowing a few ideas from quantum physics. Quantum physics? There’s going to be a mass walk-out. Give us our money back. We didn’t come here for a lecture on physics I (40) hear you cry. Hang on a minute, hang on. Just two or three simple ideas O.K.? Don’t worry if you can’t understand it. The good news is that the scientists can’t understand it either. That’s the most important idea in this play and I hope by the end you’ll see why. Are you up for it? No mass walkout? Nobody leaving? I haven’t frightened you off? Brilliant. Here goes then. (She goes to the wings and returns with a flip chart on an easel - or a slide projector)
Right. Let’s think about very small things. When we’re dealing with things that are very very small, something as small as electrons, it turns out that if you do experiments on them in one way they’re particles, tiny little specks of matter, bits of stuff. But if you do other kinds of experiments on them, amazingly, they reveal themselves to be waves, not bits of matter at all but waves of – well nothing really, just waves. It’s weird. How can they be both particles and waves? But it got weirder. Heisenberg came along. I vish to announce to you my uncertainty preenciple. Heisenberg showed that if you measure an electron’s position, to find out where it is, you can’t measure it’s momentum to find out how fast it’s travelling, and if you try to find out how fast it’s going you can’t find out where it is. It’s nowhere in particular. In limbo. For you Tommy ze var is over. According to Heisenberg this isn’t just because we don’t have delicate enough instruments. It’s because this kind of uncertainty is a fundamental property of matter at this very small level. But we thought science was all about proof and certainty. What’s all this then? (60)
Einstein just hated it. Accurate measurement after all is the very foundation of science. (Mad scientist tearing his hair out) I’ll show zem (deep in thought – then light bulb in the head) I vill devise a thought experiment that will blow all this stuff right out of ze water! Pouf! (Pause) O.K. let’s have a breather and leave it there for the moment. To sum up so far. Electrons on one level are bits of stuff, this not that, here, now, at a particular time in a particular place. But on another they’re waves going nowhere in particular very very fast. We’ll have one minute break. So you can cough, shift in your seat, say ‘ what on earth is this woman talking about?’ and so on. (times by watch)
Right, minute’s up, next idea. (70) (Irish accent). Not so fast Albert by all the leprechauns in Donegal! In 1963 an Irishman called John Bell devised a theorem that came to be known as Bell’s Inequality. He theorized that if two particles A and B were both fired in opposite directions from position X at the same time, one in direction Y and the other in direction Z - got that: two particles fired from same point at same speed in opposite directions - (flips picture on chart) and THEN a change was made to A after it had left X but before it reached Y, then if Einstein was right B would not be affected. If Heisenberg was right then B would be affected. The experiment was actually performed in 1981 by Alain Aspect and his team in Paris. Actually they did it not with electrons but with photons, which, to put it crudely, are little bits of light. Photons zey are more sexee. They took two photons that were polarized at right angles to each other and then fired them towards points Y and Z both thirteen metres distant from X. At that far apart it takes a signal travelling at the speed of light 40 nanoseconds to traverse the distance. Aspect was able to alter the angle of A after only 10 nanoseconds. After only ten nanoseconds? Sexee eh? What happened? B immediately and instantaneously altered its angle as well. Fantastique! Magnifique! Incroyable! Ze penalty shoot out ‘as been won by Heisenberg! A few years later the same experiment was successfully performed at Geneva over a distance of eleven kilometres. Eleven kilometres is such a vast distance compared to the dimensions of an electron, scientists concluded that even if two particles that had once been in intimate (90) contact with each other – note that, had once been in intimate contact with each other - or entangled as physicists say, were on opposite sides of the universe, they would still be in instantaneous communication with each other Scientists call it non-locality. Two tiny scraps of matter billions of light years apart in instantaneous communication with each other. What do you make of that? Weird eh? What a strange place the universe is.
You must be wondering why I am telling you all this. My real point is this. It’s not just photons and electrons that are both particles and waves. Everything is, atoms, molecules, chromosomes, cats, dogs, cows, elephants - and humans. We all exist both on the limited and particular level of the visible and measurable here and now, and on that of the instantaneously communicating, invisible, universal wave. It’s just that much above the level of atoms wave lengths are so short it becomes impossible to measure them. Michael is the particle aspect of Michael Gibson. I’m the wave dimension. Hang on to that thought because it’s important if you are to understand what happens later in the play. My job is to try to guide Michael through this visible particulated world into the invisible holistic universe where we all truly belong. It is in that sense that I am his Guardian Angel or his Fairy Godmother. But it’s not easy. The problem is that I can’t tell him what to do because he is a free agent. I can only make suggestions, most of which he brushes off with contempt. You will already have seen for yourself what a self-assured and pig-headed bastard he is. Still he’s my self-assured and pig-headed bastard, (110) so I’m going to have to make the best of him. At the end of the day he’s mine, my own dear, dear person. Michael’s my representative on earth, you might say. Think again about that ‘..had once been in intimate contact with each other.’ I’m suggesting that on the human level the word for that is love. And you never know what might happen. In a world whose deepest level is that of quantum uncertainty you never know what strange deeply inscribed pattern might emerge from random accidents. So let’s see what I can do with him. Let the action begin! (exit)
Scene 1 (enter Michael and Michaela. She is two feet behind him which is always her default position unless she is directed otherwise).
Michael: Ah! Rosemary’s not home yet. Thank heavens for that. At least I can have five minutes peace having a drink in my own bloody home. (Mimes going over to cabinet and pours drink)
Michaela (from over his shoulder): You’re drinking too much
Michael: Shut up woman.
Michaela: I just think you ought to know.
Michael: I don’t want to know. Just keep quiet will you . Nag nag nag (they sit side by side on the sofa)
Michael: A good day. The Zurich deal went through with less problem than I’d expected. (10) Michaela: Don’t forget you’ve got to see the Head of the Bank tomorrow about that Z twenty five futures fiddle that you pulled.
Michael: Do you remember at school when we used to sing songs in the showers after rugby matches?
Michaela: I try not to.
Michael: Those were the days, eh? Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem, Onward Christian Sodomites.
Michaela: About Z twenty-five futures –
Michael (sings): Onward Christian Sod o-omi-ites/ Marching into-o bed/ Life’s a mighty cock-up/Mostly in the head (20)
Michaela: Stop evading the issue. The Z twenty-five futures fiddle.
Michael: Will you just shut up. I’ve only just got home and I’m having a drink. I don’t want to hear about the Z twenty five futures deal.
Michaela: Fiddle
Michael: Deal
Michaela: No. Fiddle
Michael: Deal. Deal. Stop twisting things. It was perfectly within normal codes of practice. The way you put it you make it sound worse than it is.
Michaela: Just suppose there were a Head of the Bank, which of course there isn’t, and you’d been hired by him, which of course you haven’t, and a shady deal, which of course it isn’t, that you’d pulled off, which of course you didn’t, had been exposed, which of course it hasn’t, and the bank was worried about its reputation, which of course it isn’t, then of course the reason the Head of the Bank wants to see you is just to have a cup of coffee, or maybe it isn’t. (35)
Michael (getting up and stamping round in a rage followed by Michaela who mockingly mimics his movements): Will you just shut up. Give me some peace. I don’t want to hear any more about Z twenty five futures.
Michaela: Just reminding you it would be sensible to think what you’re going to say.
Michael: The bank won’t be worried about Z twenty five. Who do you think runs it? The Dalai Lama? It’s a bank. All they’re interested in is bottom line. They won’t want to let me go on any account. I reckon they made half a million out of me last year. (Noise of outer door slamming) Oh no, it’s Rosemary. The one chance I had for a bit of p and q on my own and you’ve spoilt it worrying me about Z twenty five.
(one of the doors opens as if an invisible person is opening it)
Michael: You’re back then. I hope you’ve cooled down. Apology please.
(pause)
Michael: I shall raise the matter as soon as you come home if I want to. (Michaela grimaces at the irony of it) You need to face up to your responsibilities. (50) (pause)
Michael: You’re just incredible. My fault? It was my fault? Who ordered the damn thing in the first place? (Michaela signals to the audience that in fact it was him)
(pause)
Michael (mimicking in a feminine voice): ‘Well you take it back then’. I don’t see why I should take it back. You ordered it.
(pause)
Michael: Oh no I didn’t.
(pause)
Michael: I did not. For the last time. I DID NOT. You ordered it. It’s your responsibility. You either fucking pay for it or you take it back (Michaela does a Heil Hitler)
(pause)
Michael: Great balls of fire. We can’t go and see your mother on Saturday.
(pause)
Michael: Not again. For crying out loud you miserable suspicious cow. I am not going to slope off to see Sylvia. Though I don’t know why not. At least she’s got good legs and lets you have a drink. I always watch Chelsea when they’re at home on Saturdays. And this Saturday it’s Man United. At Stamford Bridge. Man United. Having sex with Sylvia in full view right out there on the pitch. The whole bloody team. Do you think I’m going to miss the game of the season so we can go to see your awful mother. (Michaela in despair)
(pause)
Michael: Oh yes she is awful.
(pause)
Michael: Bloody awful. She had to be somebody’s mother and you poor mare she picked you. She leaks so much pity, when all the babies were lined up she spotted the really ugly one and took it home (Michaela horrified and tries to tap him on the shoulder but he is not having any). (70)
(pause)
Michael: Bloody bloody awful. Your mother! (mimicking Rosemary’s mother) ‘Oh Michael, you’re an investment banker, would you please sell some raffle tickets for the church. Oh Michael, isn’t this earthquake, this hurricane, this flood in Bangladesh, this murder in Ormskirk awful’. Yes it is but don’t tell me about it you annoying old bag. She’s the holy edition of the News of the Bloody World. (shouting) Read the latest. Read all about it. Cat dies in Huddersfield. Council fails to collect bins last week. Millions die in Ethiopea. Viscount caught shop lifting. Who does she think I am? The Pope? The pastor of mankind? Does she want me to worry about every bloody awful thing that happens in the whole bloody awful world? I’m sorry about Bangladesh. I’m sorry about the poor cow in Ormskirk. Sorry sorry sorry. But I didn’t do it and there’s nothing I can do about it. So stop worrying me about it. (Keeping the world out gestures from Michaela).
(pause)
Michael: For the last time I am not having an affair with Sylvia. I don’t keep on accusing you of having affairs. Though you’re so bloody ugly these days I don’t imagine anybody would want to. STOP ACCUSING ME OF HAVING AN AFFAIR . (Michaela signalling to audience and mouthing ‘He is having an affair’. Michael rushes towards Rosemary and starts knocking her head violently against a wall. Michaela is beside herself with dismay. Rosemary escapes and we see and hear the door bang to as if an invisible person has fled through it) (90)
Michael (crossing to the door, opening it and shouting after her).: Don’t worry I’ll sleep on the sofa all right. At least Sylvia is not frigid. Only a polar bear would enjoy being in bed with you. Cow. Bitch. Roll on global warming, it’s supposed be melting the icecaps. All the permafrosted cocks in Islington, mine included, will rise up rejoicing and weeping tears of gratitude. (Bangs the door shut and goes over to sofa. Michaela sits beside him. He starts to weep. Long pause)
Scene 2
Michaela: That was awful Michael: Yes I know. Awful. I feel terrible. I didn’t mean those things. Why do I say them? Why do I say them? Michaela: Go and apologize to her Michael: I can’t. Not yet. Not now. It’s as if I have a beast inside me I can’t control. Michaela: Go and do it now Michael: I can’t, I can’t. (pause) Michaela: Do you remember when you first met? Michael: How could I forget? Venice Michaela: Venice, Ah Venice (10)
Michael: The mist on the lagoon. Dissolving. Lovely beautiful mournful city
Michaela: Everything soft, melting, dissolving
Michael: How strange it was. Everything floating
Michaela: How removed, how dreamlike. A city of clouds
Michael: And of all soft and vanishing things. Rosemary. In Venice. She was so beautiful. Then.
Michaela: So mysterious, then Michael: I adored her. She had that wonderful glow of modesty about her
Michaela: So gentle. So thoughtful. So loving
Michael: Yes, I did so love her. Then. Her sad Mona Lisa smile. It was never going to end
Michaela: Yes you so, so loved her
Michael: The pianist playing Cole Porter in the hotel lobby. The pigeons round the duomo. Just like it’s supposed to be
Michaela. The wonderful Venetian light reflected from the canals on the palazzos. Just like it’s supposed to be
Michael: Dolce color d’oriental zaffiro
Michaela: Sweet sapphire of the morning in the east
Michael: lo bel pianete…facere tutto rider l’oriente
Michaela: The beautiful planet making the dawn sky laugh with light
Michael: Venus (30)
Michaela: Yes, Venus, goddess of love
Michael: Venice, Venice, city of Venus
Michaela: Venice, lovely lovely pensive city
Michael: She was so beautiful. Rosemary. In Venice
Michaela: So beautiful. Then
Michael: I opened like a flower in her light. I thought it would always be so.
Michaela: Making the dawn sky laugh with light
Michael: We were so happy, so happy
Michaela: So happy, then
Michael: But it could never have lasted.
Michaela: You loved her. Then
Michael: Yes, I did so love her. Then
Michaela: And still do
Michael: No, not now. I wish I could still live in the illusion. But I cannot. And will not. I was beguiled by Venice.
Michaela: ‘…Men che dramma/ di sangue m’e rimaso che non tremi: conosco I segni de l’antica flamma.’ Not a drop of my blood that was not trembling now, as I felt the onset of the ancient flame. (50)
Michael: No, no. It was an illusion. What we call love is only sex for animals with big brains. It dies. We live in a post-Darwinian world. Facts, facts, facts. Love dies. Like all animals we have to move on. What I will not do is beguile myself with sentiment. This is the real fact, the dismal truth about sex. After the initial rush of love the choice is between jogging comfortably and lovelessly along, blood sluggish and the organ of love limp, or having endlessly discomforting but at least arousing affairs. Nature substitutes repulsion for attraction in order to make us move on. Nature wants to spread genes. That’s all there is to it. But - ah! ah! that first rush of love. Rosemary in Venice. This is the terrible thing. For human beings, it is the illusion of the dream that makes the reality of the facts so cruel. Darwinian animals, we cannot forget our Platonic illusions. To have once dreamt! Venice, how I curse you! Deluding, bewitching, beguiling Venice. Hazy city of dreams, of dissolution and disillusion, of illusion and delusion. Mocking city. Deceiving us. Leading us astray. City of mists and hallucinations, phantasms and mirages. How happy I might have been if I had never known Venice.
Michaela: Not a drop of my blood that was not trembling now, as I felt the onset of the ancient flame.
Michael: No. No. I will not give way to sentiment. I will not be led astray by Venice. The real world is not Venetian, alas, but Darwinian. Facts facts facts. Move on. Move on. The past is past, the illusion over. (70)
Michaela: Apologize
Michael: I can’t, I won’t. Face it. The story of human life, alas, is one of Darwinian disenchantment. The disrobing of Plato. Sex for humans is ecstasy, followed by disappointment, followed by rage, followed by disillusion, ending thankfully at last in impotence. At the moment I’m on the cusp between disappointment and rage. Bad luck on Rosemary, I admit.
Michaela: Come to bed, or rather to sofa.
Michael: This bloody hard sofa. Well at least it’s like life. I will not be sentimental. I will not apologize. (He takes off his coat and shoes and socks and lies down on the sofa. Michaela tenderly tucks his coat around him and stands watching as the lights dim to darkness. Under cover of darkness his socks are removed. An alarm rings. Lights up. Michaela is still behind the sofa watching over him)
Scene 3 (lights up)
Michael: I’m late. I’m late. Where are my socks. Where are my bloody socks?. (Going over to door and opening it).Can you get me a pair of socks……Rosemary, I need socks. (A pair of socks are thrown out). I’ll see you tonight. (sits on sofa and starts putting on socks. The door opens as if a person is coming through it). Look I’m – forget it. Have a nice day. See you tonight. Look I thought - (outer door bangs) oh hell.
Michaela: Come on, come on you’re going to be late.
Michael: Stop nagging me. OK OK I’m coming.
(They rush off stage and we hear the outer door bang. Voice ‘Mind the gap, mind the gap, mind the gap’. They both leap onto a tube train, Michaela still two feet behind. They are holding onto the straps swaying to the movement of the crowded train.) (10)
Michael (as if to fellow passenger, it is clear that he is not speaking to himself but somebody else). Terribly sorry, are you OK? A bit crowded this train isn’t it? (He smiles apologetically. Michaela, from behind, holds up a derisory finger at his interlocutor.)
Michaela: Bloody foreigner, taking up room on our trains.
Michael: Where are you from? Poland you say?. How lovely. A most beautiful country. I went to Cracow once. Charming.
Michaela: Bloody kraut, breathing our oxygen. (There is a longish pause while they sway in silence to the movement of the train)
Michael (to himself as he still sways to the train): And it’s Michael Vaughan. He looks round the field and settles over his bat. He’s in such a tremendous vein of form at the moment, isn’t he Aggers. We could be looking at a big score today Blowers.
Michaela: Oh no! Not the scoring a century for England fantasy again.
Michael (taking guard as if he has a bat in his hands): OK I’m Michael Vaughan. You’re Shane Warne. Come on, bowl me a googly.
Michaela (resentfully): What ‘s a googly?
Michael: Ah, a leg spinner normally spins the ball out of the back of the hand, but to bowl a googly he turns it over even –
Michaela
Michael: What a glorious stroke. That one bisected cover point and mid off like a rocket. Vaughan settles over – no, no he’s asking for the sight screen to be moved
Michaela (Aussie accent): Get on with it and let’s get this over with you wingeing pom (she bowls again) (30)
Michael: And it’s another glorious stroke from Michael Gibson, a most delicate late cut this time that takes him to within four runs of his hundred on his debut for England.
Michaela: I thought you were Michael Vaughan.
Michael: For goodness sake, woman. Haven’t you got any imagination? (going back from centre stage to position in train) And it’s Beckham. What a glorious cross to the roving predatory Michael Gibson - My ticket! Shit! I lost my ticket! I say, I’m terrible sorry, I think I dropped my ticket just where you’re standing
Michaela (tapping him on the shoulder): G’day mate. It’s Shane Warne reporting back from down under.)
Michael: That’s very nice of you. (kneeling to pick up ticket). How stupid of me! Ha ha ha!
Michaela: Bloody Magyar trying to nick my ticket (Silence as they sway to the train. Suddenly Michael moves into centre stage)
Michaela (running after him): Oh no, here we go again.
Michael (saluting): You wanted to see me sir?
(pause)
Michael: A special mission, sir?
(pause)
Michael: Isn’t Dieppe in France, sir?
Michaela : Ooh la la. Accordion players. Strings of onions. Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, mademoiselle?
Michael : Well we’ll do our best, sir. Give Jerry something to think about anyway, sir
Michaela: You great fat lazy bastard behind your desk. Having a good war are you? (50)
Michael: If by any chance I don’t make it back, sir, could you make sure Rosemary gets this, sir (he fumbles in his pocket)
Michaela: That’s your Tesco loyalty card.
Michael (hissing at her over his shoulder): Will you just shut up. (proffering the card and then putting it back into his pocket). Thank you, sir. I’d appreciate that, sir. Wish me luck, sir. (They are in a motor boat roaring into Dieppe harbour. Michael making roaring motor boat noises)
Michaela (hanging onto her tin hat): This is bloody dangerous. Can’t we go home?
Michael: Ratatatatatata. Ratatatatata. Die Englishe schweinhund! Schell! Schnell! Der Englander kommando! Achtung! Ratatatatata. Ratatatatata.
Michaela (shouting above the racket): This is our stop. Old Street.
Michael: So it is. (to Pole) Goodbye then. How nice to meet you. I hope you have a good time in England. We’re all Europeans now, ha, ha, ha.
Michaela: All bloody foreigners now, the whole lot of us. Stands the clock at ten to three and is there honey still for tea. (they get off the train and run on the spot to indicate running up stairs, and then stand with one foot raised as on an escalator. And so out into the street).
Michael: I’ll just go and have a cup of coffee before I have to go in to see the big wig. (they enter a cafe)
Michael: I’ll have a cappuccino please. One shot. (to Michaela) Wow! Pffff! She must look nice without any clothes on. Yes one shot please. (70)
Michaela (singing to tune of Nessun Dorma): I had a dream-a Of a nice ice cream-a With a signorina In Napoli
Michael (he is whiling away the time tapping impatiently on the counter as one awaiting his coffee) : What’s the assignment this time, C? You’re telling me that Blofeld has got the naked signorina imprisoned in the dungeons of his castle and he’s going to torture her to get the secrets of the European nuclear programme out of her? Whoooo! That’s a bit of a corker. (he gives a long whistle). Well you know me. Never say no to a beautiful woman. I’ll get moving . (Michaela is making the hissing and grinding noises of the coffee machine) Got the secret codebook and the death ray laser gun, Moneypenny?
Michaela: Oh James, you will come back won’t you
Michael: Just for you Moneypenny. So we meet again, Blofeld. Still got that white cat, I see
Michaela: The piranna fish are waiting, Meester Bond.
Michael: We’ll see about that, Blofeld. (Michaela still grinding and hissing). And then Henry Blofeld will take over the commentary. My word Blowers, Michael Gibson is in good form to-day. My dear old thing, I couldn’t agree more. So you won’t have your wicked way with the signorina after all, Blofeld. Two pound seventy five? Get some clothes on and we’ll soon have you out of here. No nothing to eat thanks. Then we’ll make long and slow love on the plane home. Could you just stamp my card please. Wow, I’d like to see you with your kit off. Thanks. (90) (He hastily drinks the coffee and they are immediately waiting to go in and see the Head of the Bank)
Scene 4
Michaela: Now just go in and say you’re sorry for what happened and nothing like this will ever happen again
Michael: Don’t be stupid. That would be admitting that I’ve done something wrong
Michaela: Please Michael
Michael: Just shut up. I know what I’m doing. (They go in to see the big wig)
Michael: You wanted to see me, sir
(pause)
Michael: The Z twenty five futures. Oh that. I wondered why you wanted to see me. Yes, we cut a few corners I admit but I think you’ll agree at the end of the day we got a good result. The bank came out of it pretty well, don’t you think?
(Pause. Michaela hisses in his ear ‘Apologize’ Michael hissing back to her over his shoulder ‘I’m not going to apologize. Why the hell should I? ‘)
Michael: Yes, I appreciate the point about the bank’s reputation. Rather enhanced it as a go-getting sharp-as-a-knife city predator in my opinion.
(pause)
Michael: The bank doesn’t take that view?
(pause)
Michael: I’m sorry, I can’t agree. I’m afraid I’m going to have to stick to my point
Michaela: Alright, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb then. Go go go. Take him. Take him. Annihilate him. Imagine him in his underpants.
Michael: I’m afraid that I can’t operate under those conditions. If that’s the case I shall have to take my talents elsewhere
(pause)
Michael: What? You’re going to have to let me go! (he is gobsmacked. Michaela behind him makes rueful I told you so gestures) (20)
(pause)
Michael: Please, please reconsider this. OK OK I’ll be more careful in future
(pause)
Michael: And as a freelance I get no severance package? You can’t do this.
(pause)
Michael: So that’s it then? After my years of service to the bank and all the money I made for you this is all I get? Well thanks a bunch. Thanks for the offer of a recommendation. I’ll use it as toilet paper. Good morning.
(He is weeping. He sits on the sofa with Michaela, distraught, presumably in a kind of lobby outside the head of the bank’s room. He buries his head in his hands. Michaela takes his hand and holds it tenderly)
Michael: Silly old fart
Michaela: Yeah. Silly old fart.
(A voice comes over the loudspeaker system. At first Michael does not realize what it is saying and only gradually begins to pay attention) (30) Radio announcement: Reports are coming in concerning what is thought to be a concerted terrorist attack on the London underground system. It is not known how many attacks have taken place. It could be as many as six but it is certainly three. At first it was thought that the explosions had been caused by a power surge in the underground electrical system but the Home Office has confirmed that they are the work of terrorists. All three known explosions took place at approximately 8.50 a.m. One bomb went off on a westbound Circle line train, number 216, bound from King’s Cross to Paddington
Michael (beginning to take interest): It’s a terrorist attack
Michaela: On London? A terrorist attack?
Radio: A second bomb exploded on the Piccadilly line, train number 311 travelling between King’s Cross and Russell Square. Rescue services are being handicapped in their attempts to reach the scene of devastation by the depth of the tunnel in that stretch of line.
Michaela: Poor souls. Poor souls. Imagine the bewilderment and terror they must be feeling in the darkness. Oh poor souls.
Michael: Phew! It certainly puts Z twenty five futures into perspective
Radio: A news flash is just coming in. Another attack has occurred on a bus in Tavistock Square. The bus was a number 30 travelling from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch. It is not known how many casualties there have been but they certainly include a number of fatalities. By chance, the attack took place near the headquarters of the British Medical Association in Upper Woburn Place and a number of doctors were on hand who are tending as best they can to the injured. (63)
Michael: What about the third known underground attack? What about the third one? . Is Rosemary safe?
Radio: The Prime Minister is flying back to London from the G8 conference at Gleneagles. Now back to the tube bombings. A third explosion took place on a train travelling from Liverpool Street to Aldgate.
Michael: Rosemary! Rosemary! That’s her train. She gets out at Aldgate to arrive at the office by 9 o’clock. I must get down there. Rosemary! Rosemary! (He grabs his coat and he and Michaela go flying from the stage. We hear the outer door banging off stage and they come rushing in again. Michael is shouting Taxi! Taxi!. They leap in. The sofa is imagined to be the back of the taxi)
Scene 5
Michael: Aldgate tube station please, as fast as you can make it. Pause Yes, I think I know somebody who might have been on the train. (They sit. Michael is alert and tense.
Michaela tenderly takes his hand and begins to sing softly: Night and day you are the one Only you beneath the moon or under the sun Whether near to me or far, it’s no matter darling where you are I think of you Day and night night and day Why is it that this longing for you follows me wherever I go In the roaring traffic’s boom, in the silence of my lonely room I think of you Night and day day and night Under the hide of me, there’s an oh such yearning and burning Inside of me And this torment won’t be through If you let me spend my life making love to you Day and night night and day.
Scene 6
Michael pays the taxi –‘Keep the change’ and they rush off stage and then rush on again, awaiting the bodies being brought out of the tube with the greatest trepidation. Their agony and grave concern must be shown here entirely by facial expression. An audio collage is played composed of shrieking voices, tearing metal, drumbeats, gibbons screaming and howler monkeys howling, elephants trumpeting, any noises that suggest disintegration and affliction of mind, interspersed with remembered lines from earlier in the play in Michaela’s voice, further interspersed with live radio commentary as the bodies are brought out.
It is the commentary that directs the audience to understand what Michael is doing as he mimes kneeling down to inspect each dead face. The first five he looks up at Michaela and shakes his head. The sixth is Rosemary. The audio collage stops dead. He gives a great shrieking howl. .’Aaaaaaaaaaaa! Dead! Dead! Rosemary! Rosemary!’ Blackout.
Scene 7
(Michaela is crouched in a corner with her head in her hands) Michael: When it first happened I thought I would die. I felt as if my insides were being scraped with razor blades. Then there was the merciful anaesthetic of aftershock. For many days I could feel almost nothing as if my senses had been turned down with a dimmer switch, a sort of fuzziness, as if I was seeing through muslin, as if I was picking up sounds half heard in another room. But then the waves of uncontrollable rage and the biting despair. It’s the accidental quality of it all I can’t come to terms with. If I hadn’t had to see the Head of the Bank that day I too would have been on the train. Accidental. Meaningless. This one lives, that one dies. That’s it. But most dreadful of all, the remorse. Oh God, God, why don’t you exist you bastard and then at least I could blame you? It’s the having nowhere for rage and despair to go, nobody to blame and dump them on so you can get rid of them and cast them off like ill-fitting clothes. No wonder people invented God. ‘I will pray for you Michael.’ Oh thank you, thank you, you stupid sentimental sanctimonious salt in the wound mare. ‘I’ll get Father O’Reilly to say Mass for you. Won’t do you any harm, might do you some good.’ Oh thank you thank you. Just give me a week or two, I’ll soon bounce back. Right, here I am. Can’t keep a good man down what what? Felt off colour for a week or two but already to go again!. ‘Good boy, good boy. I always say, time is a great healer, life has to go on. Deep deep breathing! One two, One two! To the left! To the right! Breathe in, breathe out!’ But how can I tell them about the despair having nowhere to go, about the pumped up tire feeling and no way to let the air out? It’s the nothing there that is so terrible, only the (20) mocking echo from all those unfeeling atoms and molecules. No, not even mocking, but just no feeling, no feeling out there, no pity or blame, just matter. No wonder people heard the echo of their own cries of anguish coming back to them and imagined it was the voice of God. Now I see it, the terrible thing about matter is that in the end it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but through some freak of evolution we are cursed to imagine that it does. Rosemary, Rosemary, why didn’t I love you while I was still able? While there was still time? Too late, too late. Those terrible words. The massive crash of the iron gates of the past slamming shut never, never to be opened. The ever going forward arrow of time that can never be turned back. . I never thought about remorse. I didn’t know what it was. I never dreamt that I would feel it, that it would turn every morsel of food to ashes, sour every drop of drink Why can’t I be sensible and say well that’s over, move on, move on, life has to go on. ‘Well, we are sorry for your loss but life has to go on’, people say, with another vicious twist of the knife. Yes, I say, smiling bravely, life has to go on. Thank you for telling me that. How kind you are. I wouldn’t have thought of it. ‘Good on yer, good man, that’s the spirit’. How can I tell them that I have these hard stones sticking in my throat that I cannot swallow, retch as I might? Who will dissolve and melt them? Quarks, atoms, chromosomes, molecules, forgive me, forgive me. But they do not answer, they do not speak. If only – Oh! Oh! Oh! If only I could have it over again. No answer, no answer. Rosemary, please die, please die. Release me, let me move on, life has to move on. Eventually, I know, she will die, she will (40) dwindle away, and I will be released, I will look back unable to feel her any more. But then, and this I also now know, worse than regret will be the death of regret. This is the terrible thing, in the end my failure to love her doesn’t matter, because there is nothing else but matter, and this is what with relief I will come to feel, but I will know that I have finally lost what is most precious because I will be no longer able to feel that loss. ‘Well you know, Michael, time is a great healer.’ Thank you, thank you for that thought, how kind you are. ‘Of course, of course, Michael, I want to help you. Just let me tear off with yet another platitude that bit of plaster you at last managed to get onto the wound. Ready? Here we go. Rrrrriiiippp! There, that didn’t hurt too much did it? Don’t forget, if I haven’t said it before, time is a great healer. Well done. Brave boy. Kitchener would have been proud of you.’ Oh what an irony, to be trapped in a bubble of meaning in a meaningless world. I never expected this. Why have I been cursed to love and feel and regret? Venice! Venice! ‘Not a drop of my blood that was not trembling now/ As I felt the onset of the ancient flame.’ Why are we confused by these romantic illusions, why do we not just go to it like rabbits and goats? Oh God, God how I would hate you if only you existed. Where was God at 9/11? At 7/7? At Haiti? At New Orleans? Where was God at Auschwitz? Not there. Not even glowering with angry and vengeful rage, just not there. Do stones feel? Do stars love? Do mountains care? (shouts) Hello out there! (60) Hello out there? Listen! Listen! Anything? Anything? Rosemary died. Are you reading me? This is Z twenty five calling the universe. Rosemary dead. Over. Delta Echo Apple Delta. Dead. Do you hear me? No? No. No-one answers, just billions of stars that do not feel or laugh or weep but meaninglessly burn on. Why cannot I let her go? Rosemary, I banish you, I banish you. But there she is still, mute, accusing, appealing, recriminating, loving me. Why are we thus cursed to love? Sex, we know from science, is nothing but the whiff of pheromones, the itch of instinct whereby nature ensures the mechanical transmission of genes. Why cannot we just accept this? Why has the unfeeling earth given birth to this freak, this performing clown, this inadvertent sport, this monstrous accident, the feeling human? Animals lust, display, perform the act and move on. ‘You must move on Michael. Time is a great healer.’ If for the animals, why not us? What does it matter that the mate dies as long as the genes are transmitted? But for me the skies have fallen in, the stars have been snuffed out. What does it matter? What does it matter? To me it matters. ‘Never mind Michael, life goes on.’ And some day, I know, even to me it will not matter. Because in the end there is nothing but matter. But something precious in me will have died. What matters in me will have died. But then I too will die, and it too will no longer matter. Where was God at Auschwitz?
(Long pause)
Scene 8
Michaela: Michael, my dearest dearest Michael, I’m not going to comfort you with platitudes. Let me take you somewhere else. Not here, not here. Somewhere quite other. Let me take you to a different place. Where can this be? Look hard, look, look.
Michael: I can’t see anything.
Michaela: Look, look What is this place that you see in your mind’s eye? Where is it? Somewhere strangely familiar?
Michael: Good heavens it is Auschwitz. I’ve seen the pictures.
Michaela: Does your heart dip when you see the railway lines running into that squat towered entrance? See, see the trains bearing in their human cargoes, whistling as they slow down, the wheels squealing and the boilers blowing steam as they reach the ramp. Raus! Raus! All out! All out! See the waiting lines of dazed and terrified people numb with bewilderment and fear. How can you take your eyes off the SS doctors methodically selecting in their immaculate uniforms with their spotless white gloves? A glove flicks to the left and death, to the right and life.
Michael: Why are you showing me all this? (15)
Michaela: Flick, flick. Flick, flick. See the columns of naked people shuffling into the gas chambers, beautiful women weeping shamelessly, bitterly crying bewildered children, skinny old men stumbling and shaking with fear. Listen to the Auschwitz orchestra playing The Blue Danube. See them passing between the guards stationed at precise intervals with their guns and whips, hear the shouts urging them on, see the snarling dogs straining at their leashes. Can you feel the hidden current of connection between the perpetrators and the victims, fellow journeyers into this extraordinary realm beyond any other that humans have previously known?
Michael: Stop, stop. Why are you doing this to me? If this is meant to help me more than platitudes give me platitudes. (27)
Michaela: Look look. Don’t avert your gaze. In your mind’s eye. Imagine the faces turned up to the showerheads hopeful in the darkness, but instead the hiss of the capsules of Zyklon B being dropped in from above. The soft hissing. The sudden dreadful thuds of realization, the scalding upsurge of desperation and despair, the very earth sickening, all trust dissolving and hope dying. The choking darkness. The howls and wails, the last precious air foul with the stench of vomit and bowels opening. Feel the terrifying upsurge of triumphant cackling demons from the depths of the soul, the hideous palpable enfleshment of the primitive terrors that lie at the bottom of every heart. Listen to the shrieks, the yells, the gulps, the agonized choking. Does your imagination fail at this point? See the doors being opened again, the corpses packed so tight they are still standing upright, and pink as tulips. Surely these are the very ovens of hell. As humanity ceased to believe in an imaginary hell, so, unable to bear the loss, it created a real one. Where was God at Auschwitz? What do you think? What do you think? (40)
Michael: What I think is that this really happened, and because it really happened all the beauty in the world is undone. Where was God at Auschwitz? Where was God when Rosemary died? How can people prattle on about a merciful God? Think of the horror of the animal world. Beautiful antelopes caught and mauled by lions. Chickens mindlessly slaughtered by foxes. Fish eaten alive by bears, the larva of the ichneumon fly eating its living caterpillar host from the inside, spiders paralyzing flies so that they can consume their still living prey later, snakes slowly swallowing living frogs, cats gratuitously playing with mice before they kill them. What Auschwitz shows us is that man is simply a product of nature in a mindless universe, and for that reason is, when he has to be, as violent and pitiless and cruel as any other animal. That is what I think. (50)
(pause)
Michaela: Do you remember the physics classes that we used to go to at school?
Michael: The physics classes? Yes of course I do. Mr Lewis. Godless Lou. Boys, it is not love that makes the world go round, that is merely an importunate and frequently inconvenient itch between the sexes, it is gravity. Boys, beware my namesake Clive Sinclair Lewis, known to his familiars as Jack. He knows no physics.
Michaela: Do you remember what he taught you? That a subatomic particle is both a visible fragment of matter in a particular time and place, and also an invisible wave that is nowhere, in no particular time and place?
Michael: How could I forget? Boys, it is not as if the physicist goes down to the sea and scoops up a capful of water from a wave. In scooping up his capful the water disappears altogether and he is left with a capful of nothing, but a nothing that is a wave, a wave only, with no water for it to pass through. What do you make of that then?
Michaela: And do you remember that he taught you that if two subatomic particles have become entangled, as the physicists say, they remain in instantaneous communication with each other, even though they might now be on opposite sides of the universe?
Michael: Yes I do. Old Lou was up with all the latest ideas. Weird I grant you. Weird, weird, weird. Why are you asking me all this? What’s this got to do with it? Where are you taking me? (70)
Michaela: Through all our long association together I have never preached to you. But now I’m going to. (She stands up on a bench and addresses him as from a pulpit).
Michael Gibson, my flesh, my body, this is the basic law,
Everything exists in two dimensions, individual particle and universal wave. Think about that. Two dimensions. Here and now and everywhere and nowhere. Yes, there is a struggle for existence as Darwin said. Yes, there is a competition for scarce resources. Yes, we live in a world of accident and hazard, in which some are lucky and some are not. Yes, those with the best genes survive and those with worse don’t. But the condition of evolution is survival into the next generation, and that only happens because of the tender devotion of parents for their offspring. Love, if we can call such tender solicitude that, is at least as important a condition of evolution as competition.
To and fro, to and fro, to and fro go the swallows through the lovely May time
Back and forth, back and forth to their nests, doing their fond duty
The mother hen pretends she has a broken wing, so the predator might take
Her and not her chicks, blackbirds sing for joy, penguins, comically noble, Are so moved by the tender emotion
They stand on guard for months warming their eggs Through searing cold Antarctic Storms, Even the ichneumon fly lays its eggs in the caterpillar with caring devotion
Everywhere we see love spilling out in a million forms
Everywhere we see acts of amazing, incredible beauty and love
Even the attraction of the negative electron to the positive proton
Is a kind of love, on their own simply particles, but in relation To each other, bound to each other by the nuclear force-
And do we call this same force in human beings love? -
They create in the atom a new intelligence, something new, a quite new thing A higher unity of stunning new beauty.
Where was God at Auschwitz? God was in the gas chambers. God was in hell
But all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.
Michael, has it ever occurred to you that if God did exist, his problem would be, being God, that he would be absolutely perfect. But for that very reason he couldn’t be absolutely perfect. Because if you are absolutely perfect you can’t be free and it is better to be perfect and free than just perfect. So God had to enflesh himself in humanity because only humans – not animals, not angels,.not God – only humans can be free because only humans can choose evil. In Christian theology Christ is not God plus man. God is man and man is God.
Where was God at Auschwitz? God was in the gas chambers. God was in hell
But all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.
This is the precious thing about human beings. They are free. And they are only free because they live in a Darwinian world of accident and hazard.
If we are to love God freely we can only do that by making ourselves equal to him, there are no greaters and lesser in love, and we can only do that through our own efforts, otherwise we would be his toys. We have to create moral order by and for ourselves in a world of unpredictable accident and hazard, for it is only in a random and unpredictable world that freedom can happen. . The whole point is that this cannot be a world governed by God. It has to be our world and it has to be a Darwinian one. There has to be evil if human beings are to become good. God had to become human because it is only humans – not animals, not angels, not God – only humans are free because they live in an undetermined Darwinian world.
Where was God at Auschwitz? In the gas chambers. Every act of bravery, every person who even in their last terrible moments did not think only of themselves but of their loved ones, every helpless victim who forgave their persecutors, were, surely, practising virtuous acts that were truly God like, except that on his own, without us, God could not rise to these heights of virtue. We are made in the image of God. Through us God imagines himself into freedom.
We take our free part in the cosmic dance
By practising virtue in a world of Darwinian chance.
On their own are only the electron and proton
But related they form a new thing, the atom
As particles, shut up in the particular, we are only ourselves
We live, breathe, move through the world, die, rot in the grave
But, physics tells us, there is another dimension.
Could death be a resurrection into this other dimension?
A quite new beauty in a higher unity, the annihilation of time and distance
In the instantaneous communion of the universal wave?
Could it? Could it? Has Rosemary even now become truly herself? The everlasting Rosemary who she always was? Could she? Could she? God does not exist, he is us, he is us in love in a further extension
Of all that is, gathered into one, in the higher unity of all higher unities, God does not exist. He is existence. He is all things. In this other dimension.
All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. Do you not think that in a world that is so full of beauty and wonder, so marvellous and so mysterious, in which cosmologists are talking about an infinity of universes and particle physicists are saying that particles can instantaneously communicate with each other even though they are on opposite sides of the universe, do you not think it possible that there is more to it than what we can see immediately around us? In such an amazing world, is it not reasonable to choose the fabulous and astonishing option rather than the sensible and pragmatic one? All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. Good will be even better, on the level of the wave, because, on the level of the particle, there was evil. In the weird, weird world of science is it not possible? Is it not possible? Can you believe? Can you believe?
Michael: I can’t ……(less certainly) I can’t…….(even less certainly) I can’t.
Michaela. If you cannot believe, at least let us dance.
(They dance in solemn and stately fashion to the music of the movement molto adagio (A Thanksgiving to God for Recovery from My Sickness) from Beethoven’s Quartet in A Minor Opus 132.
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