MIRANDA A drama in two Acts by Stephen Sewell c Stephen Sewell C/- Hilary Linstead & Associates Level 18 Plaza II 500 Oxford St., Bondi Jn NSW 2026 AUSTRALIA Ph. (61) (2) 9389 6400 Fax.(61) (2) 9387 8731 CHARACTERS Frank: War Correspondent, mid thirties. Madaline Academic, late twenties. Waiter. SETTING A luxury hotel room in hell ACT 1 1 FRANK. 1 Floating to the surface of the inky darkness, Frank, a mature, physically competent man in a casual suit and tie - a traveler of some sort with the smell of airport lounges and waiting oozing from his crumpled shirt - looks oddly transfixed as he tries to describe something which has transformed his life - some sort of epiphany which has left him forever changed: FRANK I could see him; I could see him on the hill. He was so beautiful, so clear, I even knew his name. He was just standing there in the smoke, about eight years old - The smoke drifting across him like mist - like tattered flags - He wasn't crying; he didn't have his hands out to me - He was just standing there at the top of the hill overlooking it all, looking at me... Light Change: 2 INT. HOTEL SUITE. NIGHT. 2 A door opens, and a young, uniformed hotel American PORTER enters cheerfully, carrying a suitcase: PORTER Well, this is it - You were lucky to get the Ambassador Suite - Normally it's booked up months ahead - Frank enters after him, glancing around: FRANK What happen? Was there an unscheduled assassination? Where's the booze? An elegantly dressed woman with an expensive handbag slung over her shoulder, MADALINE, has also entered and is coolly taking in the surroundings, including the full-length mirror on a stand in one corner. There is something vaguely Egyptian about the place - Pharaonic - It's a room of light and shadows and history. As the two men continue to chat she takes off her gloves: PORTER You'll find the bar fridge is well stocked, and we have twenty four hour room service. Frank goes to get himself a beer, commenting to the woman: FRANK I wanted a room with booze - That's one thing you miss in these moslem joints. She barely smiles as she turns, noting a bust of Nefertiti on the coffee table; as the Porter continues his patter: PORTER This is the bedroom, of course - Television - FRANK CNN? PORTER The bathroom's through that door, where you'll find the complimentary bath robes and hair dryer; as well as a "His" and "Hers" bath kit with all those little nic-nacs you might have left behind - I'm sure Mrs. Said will appreciate what I mean - Frank corrects his pronunciation: FRANK Say-id. PORTER I beg your pardon, Say-id - It's funny: you don't look middle-eastern to me. FRANK That's the thing about the Middle-East: It's a world of constant surprises. Letting that pass, the Porter turns toward the view, indicating: PORTER And then, of course, there's the city - Frank turns and looks at the sparkling night-scape: FRANK Ah, yes - The City... PORTER City of a thousand dreams and a million dreamers, where you can get anything you want if you're prepared to pay for it - Are you expecting any calls? Some of the other delegates have made arrangements for special security phones and faxs - FRANK I've got all the security I need right here with me - PORTER The hotel certainly is jumping - Taking some money from her purse, the woman suddenly speaks: MADALINE You're American, aren't you... PORTER Yes, Ma'am, Californian to the tips of my toes. She hands him the money: MADALINE You know what I like best about Americans? The Porter takes the money - a larger amount than expected: PORTER Why, thankyou, Ma'am - No, what's that? MADALINE You never shut up. PORTER Why would you, Ma'am, when life's as wonderful as it is - And beginning to exit, he continues: PORTER So if there's anything else I can get you folks, don't hesitate to call - FRANK I'll keep that in mind - And noting a second door, Frank asks: FRANK Where's the other door lead to? But glancing about the room, Madaline observes: MADALINE Strange... PORTER Shall I put your suitcase on the bed? FRANK No, thanks - That's fine - So where's the second door lead to? MADALINE I wonder what Nefertiti's doing here? PORTER Well I'll just leave you folks alone now - Don't forget: just dial 9 for anything you want. FRANK Alright - Thanks - The Porter exits, and Frank looks at her: FRANK I didn't realise you tipped in hell. MADALINE Well I don't know what you're used to, but I wouldn't exactly describe it as hell. FRANK You want a drink? MADALINE What is there? Frank re-opens the fridge: FRANK Scotch, Bourbon, Vodka - Japanese Beer - My, they cater to all tastes - MADALINE Scotch - Is there any ice? FRANK If there's not, I bet they could fly in the North Pole if you wanted. MADALINE Better hurry before it melts - And taking the room in, she continues: MADALINE It's nice, isn't it... Frank prepares her drink: FRANK You know, I can remember when you'd be lucky to get half a dozen VBs in the fridge... Madaline is still looking at the room: MADALINE Understated... FRANK That's when the idea of room service was a packet of chips at three o'clock in the morning. She turns toward the view: MADALINE And the lights...It is beautiful... Frank brings her drink: FRANK And the porters were running call-girls up and down the corridors... She takes the glass: MADALINE You've led such an interesting life. The two of them are looking into each other's eyes: FRANK What's your name again? MADALINE Madaline - And yours? FRANK Frank... She clicks his beer-bottle: MADALINE It's nice meeting you, Frank... FRANK You, too... The moment is charged with sexual tension: MADALINE Are you married? FRANK No. She turns away: MADALINE I don't believe you. Frank sips his beer: FRANK I'm not - Are you? MADALINE Yes. FRANK I don't believe you, either. MADALINE That's good - I like meeting people for the first time; I like discovering their secrets. FRANK There aren't any secrets. MADALINE Aren't there? FRANK I'd really like to see your body. MADALINE Would you? FRANK I'd like to touch you - Be part of you. MADALINE Why? FRANK Why what? MADALINE Why of all the people in that room did you want to talk to me? FRANK I've got a nose for trouble. MADALINE I don't even understand what you were doing there, Frank - You came straight from the airport, didn't you - You were already drunk when you arrived at the reception - FRANK Is this where I get my dressing-down? You're part of the Secret Service, are you? MADALINE You force your way in, and then proceed to make a complete ass of yourself in front of some of the most powerful people in the country - And all the time, I was wondering why... FRANK And that's why you agreed to come back with me here? MADALINE No - I don't know why I agreed to come with you here. FRANK It's not too late to change your mind... MADALINE I wish I was much harder than I am. FRANK I don't actually want to talk. MADALINE Neither do I - Do you want to fuck me? FRANK Yes. MADALINE Then let's do it. Light Change: The sound of birds screeching is heard, and the Nefertiti bust is illuminated. Spot-lit in a low light much further back, so that she's quite small and indistinct, Madaline slowly undresses - It's a private, thoughtful, almost ritualistic act like something taking place in a dream. As the haunting sound of the screeching birds ebbs into the sound of a shower, Frank is heard coughing and gagging in the bathroom, and the lights shift from her to him, finally plunging her into complete darkness as he is illuminated in a white hotel bathrobe, brushing his teeth. Throwing the tooth- brush aside, and wiping his mouth, Frank enters, drying his hair with a hotel towel: FRANK That's better... Madaline is discovered sitting on the floor, wrapped in her thoughts and her bathrobe: MADALINE What is? FRANK I haven't had a shower in four days - Come to think of it, I haven't had a decent shower in four years - She stands and moves toward the bathroom: FRANK Did you say you had some coke? MADALINE It's in my purse - There should be a mirror and a razor in there, too. Frank goes to pick up her purse: FRANK Just in case you ever feel like slitting your wrists, right? Madaline calls from the bathroom: MADALINE Yeah, and I want to watch myself do it at the same time. Frank pulls a passport from her purse: FRANK What do you carry your passport around with you for? MADALINE You never know when the urge might possess you to head for Oklahoma. FRANK And join the militias - Right - He holds her photo at arm's-length: FRANK Not a very good likeness - I wouldn't let you into my country if I was in passport- control. MADALINE I don't think your country was ever part of my itinerary. Frank puts the passport back: FRANK Oh, come on - I wasn't that bad was I? Madaline sticks her head through the doorway: MADALINE I didn't mean that. She seems quite serious, and unsettled, Frank answers: FRANK It was just a joke... MADALINE What do you want me to do? Give you a score out of ten? FRANK Hey, listen - It was just a joke, alright? MADALINE I don't like jokes like that. FRANK Why not? A joke's a joke - What's the problem? Of course I know you didn't mean that: that was the best performance I've put in for years - Where's the coke? MADALINE Can we NOT talk about it like that? Frank is now getting narky: FRANK I'm sorry, Madaline - Have I said something? MADALINE I just don't want to talk about sex like that, alright? It's not a joke. FRANK So now we're married? Boy, you're going to be in trouble when you get home. MADALINE I think I should go - Let's just forget about it, ay? FRANK What is it? What's your problem? MADALINE Alright, I don't know you from a bar of soap; but I'd like to think there was something special about what we just did; and if all you're doing is ticking off your performance sheet, well then - Welcome home and have a good life. FRANK Oh, Jesus - I'm sorry, alright? That's not what I meant, but I can see why that's what you think - Fucking hell, let's just have the coke and be done with it. MADALINE Let's just get one thing straight, Frank: I'm not here to fall in love with you - That's not what I meant about it being special - But I think when two people do something like that together, it's got to be worth more than sharing a cab into the city - FRANK I haven't got time for this shit, Madaline - MADALINE A fuck's a fuck and a feed's a feed, right? FRANK Wait - Stop - Let's just stop right there for a minute, can we? - I don't want to fight with you about where our relationship is going, or has been; after only knowing you for four hours - Let's just give it another couple of hours before we start planning the rest of our lives, ay? Mollified, she nods, and turning to the problem at hand, he continues: FRANK Boy, you're one heavy-duty babe - Re-igniting the conflagration: MADALINE I AM NOT - FRANK Alright, alright - I know the word "babe" has been expunged from the English language, and the only thing that possessed me to use it was the evil desire to gloat over having won one extremely minor point in the battle between the sexes; but let's just imagine that such a tasteless moment hasn't passed between us, and try to get down to some serious drug- taking, ay? After a slight moment, Madaline reveals her amusement: MADALINE You're good - You're very good - You must give good copy. FRANK That I do - If nothing else - I give good copy. MADALINE Where were you? Frank is preparing the cocaine: FRANK When? MADALINE Four days ago. FRANK Four days ago, I was flying out of Damascus for the last time. MADALINE Why? Did you set a small nuclear device ticking in the lockers? Referring to the cocaine, Frank comments: FRANK This looks top stuff - You must have good connections. MADALINE What were you doing in Damascus? FRANK Well I wasn't looking for a conversion, I can tell you that much - How many lines do you want? Two each? MADALINE You must have good connections yourself to be traveling through Syria - Bump into anyone interesting? FRANK Yeah, I've got a special message for Ollie North from El Jabril. MADALINE So what is it? Frank moves away from the cocaine: FRANK ASIS - Just my luck - ASIS or MOSSAD, which is it? There I was thinking it was my scintillating personality that won you over; but really all you wanted to know is what the Arab world's up to - Well, let me tell you, darlin', they're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore - Which is it? Who are you working for? MADALINE (SLIGHT PAUSE) You've been let go feral for too long... Frank pulls a gun from inside his bath-robe and points it directly at her: FRANK Tell me, you bitch! Who are you?! MADALINE Get that fucking thing out of my face. Frank goes to her purse, and empties the contents onto the bed. Flicking through it, he keeps the gun trained on her: FRANK Consulate party - What a dope - Who else do you think you're going to pick up at a Consulate party but some Mata Hari tart straight out of spy-school - MADALINE If you don't put down the gun, I'm going to start screaming, and you're going to have a lot of explaining to do to the night watchman. He moves away from her purse: FRANK There's nothing there... MADALINE I'm warning you - I have a particularly piercing and provocative scream that can chill the blood at a mile and a half. FRANK It is Mossad, isn't it? She begins to count: MADALINE One. FRANK I know you're working for someone - There's a special tone of voice they get - MADALINE Two. FRANK It was that question about interesting people - I was asked exactly - MADALINE Three. You've had it - Frank throws the gun on the bed and puts his hands up: FRANK Fine - Fine - It was an honest mistake anyone could've made - You look Jewish. MADALINE I am Jewish - He looks at the gun: MADALINE One move, and you're dead - This brings him to a standstill, and she moves across and picks up the gun to inspect it: MADALINE I am Jewish, but I am not with MOSSAD, and I am not with ASIS; and if you're one more freak wandering 'round the world with a gun in his pocket and claiming to be with the CIA, I really will scream - Who are you? FRANK I told you - I'm a foreign correspondent with the International Herald Tribune: that's what I am. MADALINE Well I think their Personnel Officer needs a good talking to. FRANK And you're a... MADALINE Lecturer in Politics with a Doctorate in Soviet-American relations; so as it happens, I have a very good reason to be interested in Syria. FRANK You'll notice I didn't flick the safety. MADALINE Thank God I'm as attractive as I am. FRANK It's just one of those things about getting to know each other - There's bound to be other little misunderstandings... MADALINE Why? What else have you got in your luggage? FRANK For all I know, you could have been with MOSSAD - Every time I turn around, there seems to be one of them there. MADALINE So what's wrong with MOSSAD? FRANK Nothing - I love the Jewish State... She slaps him hard across the face: MADALINE Don't you ever point a gun at me again; because the next time you do, I'll kill you. Frank rubs his face: FRANK I think you would... MADALINE I would - Don't try me, Frank - I would. Light Change: 3 INT. SOFA, HOTEL SUITE. NIGHT. 3 Frank and Madaline are now settled on the sofa beside the coffee table, sniffing the cocaine through a hundred dollar bill: FRANK Times were...you had a hundred dollar bill in your pocket...you were a rich man... He passes the bill to her and sniffs back the remnants of the coke: FRANK Now all it's good for is sticking up your nose. She begins snorting the coke: MADALINE You spend an awful lot of time reminiscing on the theme of "time's were..." FRANK Well, time's were... MADALINE What? FRANK Time's were good. MADALINE When? FRANK Time's were good when you used to hang around the school yard playing marbles...Times were good when the afternoon sunlight'd catch the leaves of the Moreton Bay Fig at just the right angle that it'd dazzle you into something else...Time's were good when you could lean on a brick wall and feel the heat emanating all around you - MADALINE "Emanating" - That's a nice word... FRANK Emanating like a fog, like a cloud around you... MADALINE God emanates; God's love emanates through the world... FRANK ...When the smells, the colours, the texture of things had a pungency, a presence, a mystery that you didn't understand before you started to get lost in wavelengths and equations and explanations that didn't explain anything; causes and effects and the empty rattling of billiard balls around a cosmic pool-table - MADALINE What are you talking about? FRANK Looking for freedom in the weirdest places - In the Uncertainty Principle - In the bizarre little spaces left by Quantum Mechanics - Trying to find some place to break out from the prisons we'd built for ourselves - From the Enlightenment, from Rationality; from the iron grip of Reason that seemed to leave us with no Reason at all but Death and Decay and Loss and Failure - A world of failure - MADALINE This is a world of failure... FRANK Of broken stones and falling mountains and time - Time, time - The mystery of time - Time that doesn't exist - Time that's just one more dimension that didn't wrap up inside the Planck length when the Universe cooled from the Big Bang, but kept on expanding like the other three dimensions of Length and Breadth and Depth till one day even it will just dissolve into the emptiness of absolute nothing or else contract again back into the fire-ball, back into the black- hole of existence where everything - all memory, all recollection, all triumphs and defeats, all lives and catastrophes and horrors and joys will be erased totally and finally for reasons that Reason will never plumb because there is no reason and we made a mistake when we first imagined there was because all there is is mystery and heartbeats and longing and sadness... MADALINE My mother was sad, that's what I most recall about her; sad, mad; sitting down there in a Canberra kitchen with the ghosts of Buchenwald elbowing each other out of the way to be remembered, standing in front of the kettle, the stove, stopping your hands from opening the cupboards as each of them cried "Me - Remember me" - "Remember Uncle Leo, lost in Treblinka", "Remember Great Aunty Christina; baptised at three, but with no Christ to save her", "Remember us, the Rosten twins - We were so pretty in our party-dresses" - "Remember all of us" - "No, me; remember me" ; till you didn't want to remember any of them at all; you just wanted them to die and be gone - Go away - Leave me alone, leave my mother alone - Look at what you're doing to her - Look at her sunken eyes as she stares through the steam rising from the mug of tea in front of her - Look at her skinny arms, the flesh sagging from her, dripping from her toward the grave - pouring from her, pouring her life away - My mother who couldn't love, my mother who saw only cemeteries and smoke-stacks, a ghost herself who saw only the dead in me so that I felt I wanted to kill her, wanted to get her bony grip off me, throw it aside, leave me - Let me breathe for one moment clean air, not air choked with the black stench of human fat - Air like others breathe - I wanted to breathe that air and never remember a thing about the past or the future, just be, and laugh and smile and stand in sunlight - "These things were written", she'd say, and I'd scream at her, "Then tear up the book! Throw it away! Piss on it!", these vile words, these poisonous lies that say all's been said and done, no more truths lie to be discovered; we have the final answer to all life's meaning, and its name is Auschwitz. FRANK If only Auschwitz was its name, and not Sarajevo, or Grozny or Kampuchea or Rwanda; if only we had the luxury to look back at the past and wonder at what barbarities were committed by those long dead and not by men and women alive now, our own age or younger - Men and women whose faces you can see on television screens or street corners anywhere in the world; men and women begging, laughing, haggling, who can suddenly become a screaming mass of murderous rage jeering as someone is beaten or hacked to death and a burning tyre draped around their shuddering bodies numb with terror and disbelief that such a fate could befall them at the hands of their friends and neighbours. If only it wasn't we who had to see the slayer's glint in our own eyes. Are we murderers, too? Do we have that trip-wire inside us, ready to plunge us into the nightmare of blood-lust and revenge? Could we, like they, walk into a barn and rape ten year olds in front of their parents and brothers and sisters, and then video their murder and then sell it through retail pornography chains across the world so others like us but without the opportunity could enjoy the pleasures of watching the total annihilation of an innocent other? Could we, like they, defend all our grotesqueries with a language from the past as if that past had never happened, as if there was no past - Is there a past where humans marched fellow humans into churches and barns and ditches and ovens and laid them body upon body like the foundations of some wondrous building - some Cathedral to the truth of the human spirit - Is there such a past, or is it now? The eternal, unchanging now; and I am God witnessing my debauchery, and you are God, and all of us, with each of these slivers of lives and memories just fragments of a shattered mirror that will one day be made whole again and on that day we'll see the truly terrifying picture of the abomination we actually are. Is that day close? Is that day now also? MADALINE On that day, I was at university. It was years after, and many things had happened; many things, to my mother and father, to me - I grew my hair long, I cut it short again, I shaved it off and wore a scarf - I wore jeans and denim - I'd let boys put their hands up my skirts - I'd sat in cars and been wild and studied books and constructed arguments; I'd felt what I thought was love and anger, been betrayed in the way you are in small provincial cities, lied and rationalised my own betrayals; but on that day none of those things mattered at all; on that day all of those things - the feel and the texture, the smell of my life - seemed to suddenly disappear; or rather, shimmer in front of me like a translucent curtain, a kind of stage curtain lifting in front of me to reveal the true drama of my life; for on that day, at a quarter past two as I was about to go into a lecture and rub legs with a boy who would die in a car accident the year after I was taken aside and told to go to a friend of my father's, a dentist with a practice in town where I leaned against the sterilising dish as this man - almost a stranger to me - told me my mother was dead of suicide gas with her head in the oven where her heart had always been - That she was no more, or rather had entered that world of ghosts, and by entering it, had released them all to wander the world with their sad laments, with she herself now one, except her cry was not like theirs, for instead of "Remember me", her cry would ever be, "Forget, forget - Forget I ever existed" - Her cry would be the cry of mud returning to mud - the sigh of matter returning to its true state and leaving me like an abandoned after-thought on the shore-line of a retreating tide - He told me these things, but I didn't understand; he said them in many different ways, calmly and with humanity, but I still didn't understand; or rather, I did understand, but where this was something I'd always half-expected, even on occasions hoped for and craved, now that it was done a new mystery was opening before me, the mystery of choice, and the chooser; the mystery of how someone you thought you knew so intimately could do such an impossible thing. The mystery of how a person could calmly go about things, locking all the doors, stuffing rags in the gaps, paying off the milkman with a smile and then laying a pillow in the oven, kneeling down and placing your head on it, and turning on the gas - The impossible choice that Will makes possible - What was she thinking? Was she thinking anything? Was it for a higher good she did this thing? A sacrifice that would make the world better? Was she thinking, "Now she puts the pillow in the oven - See how she puts her head on it - Her hair is brushed and clean" - Was she thinking about who would discover it - It - Her - Her body - Was she thinking, wondering, what it means to a daughter when the mother says "This life is so unbearable I will not tolerate it any more" - Was she thinking anything at all - Was the act so full of contradiction that that explains her inability even to compose a note? To leave one last message that might provide a clue to the enigma she'd finally become? Or perhaps she'd just blanked all those things out from her mind altogether - erased love, obligation, commitment, friendship, tenderness from her mind and turned herself into a machine, and became a thing even before she was one - Was there one last flicker of revolt, at recognition of what she was doing, just before the end; or did she simply slip into sleep, into unconsciousness, into death, a mistake amidst a world of mistakes all plodding the same lonely road. My mother died, disappearing like smoke. I didn't believe it; I don't believe it now; but I never saw her again. FRANK I don't believe it, this miasma of change and movement and drama before me; I don't believe the repetition of the same mistakes, the same words, the same gestures, this veil of busyness cloaking everything; I don't believe in progress, in development, in evolution; in ever greater sophistication of already complex and sophisticated creatures; I don't believe we're going anywhere or have learnt anything; that the world makes any more sense to us now than it did to others ten thousand or a million years ago. I think a May-fly who lives through one afternoon of light knows as much about what it means as we do now, at the end of a history of massacre and self- aggrandizement; at the end of a history - of what? Self- delusion and justification, a yearning to understand and therefore be released, to be released from this treadmill of pointlessness that is not either the movement of eternal resignation Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith makes, nor the leap into the absurd he commands us to take - That is not anything but what it is and what it is is a slow and laborious tracing not only of the mask of death, but of the skull itself; a painfully detailed accounting of all death's facets and contours, its breaks and its smooth surfaces; its lines and its hidden crevices; a tracing that goes 'round and 'round, circling with ever more precision the black empty socket that sees nothing, reflects nothing, gives nothing away because there was nothing ever to give; just emptiness, hollowness, a nothing, a void... Light Change: Madaline stands to get herself a drink: MADALINE Have you ever used heroin? FRANK No. Have you? MADALINE A few times... FRANK What? Shot up? MADALINE Shot-up, sniffed it - It's good. FRANK I smoked opium once, in Vietnam. MADALINE You were in Vietnam? FRANK That's where I started - I covered the Vietnam-Kampuchean War for the Observer - It made me sick. MADALINE What? The War? FRANK No, the opium - I threw up so much I didn't realise I'd had that many Christmas dinners. MADALINE What sort of dreams did you have? FRANK I don't dream. MADALINE Not even after the opium? FRANK I didn't like it very much. MADALINE But you must have dreamt - "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree..." FRANK There was another mass-murderer with a good PR Team behind him. MADALINE Not too good... FRANK Ah, well, there's always the scribblers that come afterwards aren't there; all those busy little beavers who want to prove how inevitable it all was - the unfolding of unstoppable forces - the economic and historical imperatives that meant that that particular baby had to have its brains bashed out against the side of that door-post - Come to think of it, you're one of them, aren't you: must be an odd experience to be an expert in a subject that no longer exists. MADALINE Soviet-American relations you mean? Oh, well, these things have a way of merging into one another, don't they - I don't think I need to plan on an early retirement just yet. FRANK No, I'm sure you could wind it out for a few more decades - A biography of Gorbachev, a history of the interpenetration of the KGB and the Chechen Mafia; a grand overview of Russian history from Ivan the Terrible through to Yeltsin proving that Soviet Communism was just another face of a fundamental slavic hysteria - I'm sure you could retire a grand old dame of International Politics being called upon to make all sorts of interesting observations about life and art. MADALINE While you're writing your memoirs, "Wars I Have Covered and Venereal Diseases I Have Carried." FRANK Why do you use heroin? MADALINE I didn't say I used it; I said I'd taken it a few times. FRANK Why? MADALINE Why did you? FRANK Someone was just handing it around the camp-fire one night, and there wasn't much on the TV. MADALINE There you go. FRANK I just didn't think... MADALINE What? FRANK Well you look like a bright- spark to me - Not one of those glue-sniffing dip-sticks you see slumped in doorways wherever you go now. MADALINE You have a strong sense of the responsibility of the individual, don't you. FRANK What? MADALINE Well, suddenly there's glue- sniffing dip-sticks all over the place because they've all just got it into their dip- sticky minds that glue-sniffing might be a good idea. FRANK No - They've all suddenly got the opportunity to get the shit because a bunch of extremely ruthless criminals have found ways of corrupting every major international institution to get it home delivered to them. MADALINE So if people weren't given the choice, they wouldn't become drug-addicts? That's a real endorsement of human dignity, isn't it: don't give it to them and they won't do it. FRANK But that's the truth, isn't it: if people can't get it, they don't want it. MADALINE So, more police, more surveillance, more prisons and more deaths and disease - Is that what you're saying? FRANK I'm not saying anything - I'm actually asking why you used it? MADALINE Why did we just snort two lines of coke each? Because it was there! Give us a break, Frank: you're not my father - FRANK It just strikes me as strange - MADALINE And even if you were my father, I'd tell you what I told him: Get fucked and get out of my life. FRANK If I were your father, I don't think we'd be meeting in quite these circumstances. MADALINE I don't like this, Frank - I don't like the way this has so quickly slipped into one of those "You're like this - You're not like that" kinds of conversations: you don't know what I'm like because you've never laid eyes on me before, so don't try to wrap me up in a past I don't have with you and a relationship I don't want - We're here now: that's all there is, and that's all I'm here for - I don't really want to know anything about you at all. FRANK How old are you? MADALINE Don't you patronise me. FRANK Boy, someone really dropped you on your head, didn't they. Madaline undoes her bath-robe: MADALINE Get over here. FRANK What? Are we going to engage in harsh and brutal sex now? MADALINE Get over here, I said. He moves toward her: MADALINE Lean back - On your arms - Put your weight on your arms. He obeys, and she straddles him, gripping his head to her crutch, and rocking and rubbing herself against him, she breathes: MADALINE Do it...Do it to me...Do it... Light Change: 4 INT. SEX. NIGHT. 4 As the sexual encounter continues, their voice-overs interweave like whispers in a forest: MADALINE (VO) I want you in me, your hardness in me, I want your fingers touching - Pushing through me - FRANK (VO) Love me... MADALINE (VO) Hold me, hold me in the darkness with your cock straining inside me - Hold me against the night as all things are held - I want you, I want you there - I want you within me, on top of me - There's a softness, a gentleness, a light like the gleam of light on black silk - In that place there are all things - FRANK (VO) Your breasts - I can't tell you what if feels like to be with a woman - The sweetness of your smell, the touch of your skin, your hair in my face, that ear - so beautiful - to reach down into your - MADALINE (VO) Hold me...Hold me... FRANK (VO) To reach down into your groin, to rub my arm against your thigh... MADALINE (VO) Put it in me - Hold me down - Hurt me, I want you to hurt me... FRANK (VO) Open up - Let me in - I need your breasts, your tongue - I want your tongue in my mouth... MADALINE (VO) Suck me, suck me into the stillness, draw me into that place - I'M DROWNING! FRANK (VO) I want you... MADALINE (VO) There is nowhere but here - Here is the only place. FRANK (VO) Here is the place forgotten, but recovered... MADALINE (VO) Don't come - Not yet... FRANK (VO) Here are the words unspoken, but said... MADALINE (VO) I'm falling - Let me see you - Let me see you again... FRANK (VO) Here are the whispers abandoned, now collected... MADALINE (VO) DON'T LET ME DIE! FRANK (VO) Here are the sorrows I've brought to your bed. Madaline curls up inside herself: MADALINE Help me...Help me...Help me...Help me... Frank is standing, forlorn and alone on the other side of the room, and composing herself, Madaline wipes her eyes: MADALINE It's nothing - I'm alright... FRANK Don't say that... Standing, she moves away: MADALINE Would you like a cup of tea? FRANK Yes - That'd be good... MADALINE Are you married? FRANK No - I told you before - I've never been married. MADALINE That's a pity. FRANK Why? You prefer sleeping with married men? MADALINE Who said anything about sleeping together? FRANK So why is it a pity? MADALINE I just hoped that you would have been happy. Light Change: 5 INT. RUG. NIGHT. 5 Madaline stirs the tea-pot as Frank tries to fashion a bong from a wine bottle and a rolled-up piece of paper: FRANK I saw this done once... MADALINE I read a survey awhile ago - It was one of the first polls of aboriginal attitudes - And something like sixty eight percent of those people interviewed believed that in the end the whites will just get back on their ships and leave... FRANK Maybe they will... Madaline reaches across: MADALINE What do you mean "they", white man - Let me do that... Frank lets her take over, and pulls out a cigarette packet: FRANK Maybe we will - How long have we been here? Two hundred years - The British were in India for four hundred before they were thrown out - The Tamils have been in Sri Lanka for a thousand, and the Sri Lankans are still trying to get rid of them - He offers her the pack: FRANK Do you want a cigarette? MADALINE No, thanks - I don't smoke. FRANK So there is something you don't do. MADALINE Cheap crack, Frank - FRANK That's what I'm good at: cheap cracks, glib headlines - "Here, in the most remote part of the world, Kurdish guerrillas are fighting one of the most repressive regimes in the whole of the Middle East" - I like making grand generalisations: it makes me feel as if I've got a grip on what's going on - "All humour is based on cruelty"; "All art is a form of nostalgia." - MADALINE All men are dick-heads. FRANK No woman can escape her biological destiny. Madaline reaches for her purse and takes out a foil package of hash: MADALINE Why did you become a foreign correspondent? FRANK Someone asked me if I wanted a job a long way from Head Office...I wanted to get away... MADALINE Anything in particular, or just the normal angst that affects all mankind? FRANK No, nothing in particular - Nothing that I can remember - It sounded exotic, interesting. MADALINE And Asian girls are so compliant. FRANK That's not true - That's absolutely not true, as all those poor dicks who took on Filipino brides are no doubt finding out right now. MADALINE Some of those poor dicks have responded by killing them... FRANK Well, in the end, a dick's just a dick, no matter who they're married to. Referring to the hash: MADALINE This is strong hash - You don't get freaked by hallucinations? FRANK I don't think I know what an hallucination is anymore. MADALINE Is that a studied world- weariness, or do you just naturally come across as insincere? FRANK You're a real ball-buster, aren't you... MADALINE Come on - So tell me: why did you want to become a foreign correspondent? FRANK The adventure - the travel - the prestige - I was a cadet - Straight out of school - when Greg Shakelton and his mates were gunned down in Timor - Neil Davis was my hero. MADALINE Death. FRANK Yes - Death - Extremes - MADALINE I bet you hiked around the place with a well-thumbed copy of Ernest Hemingway in your bag... FRANK It was different, you know, a different world, where things mattered - People doing things, fighting for things they believed - MADALINE It doesn't sound like that's what you believe anymore... FRANK No, I don't - Now all I see are the gun-runners and the pay- offs and the deals - Funny little men in funny little cafes passing each other briefcases with the blue-prints of who's going to get it this week - But the thing is, on the ground, people do believe - That's one of the weirdest things I can't get my head around - You know, you meet some of these guys - Some of these DEA guys, CIA - and they're good people - They're good people, Madaline; they believe in good things: they're intelligent, they're humane, they're courageous; but somewhere along the line they've been plugged into something completely off its head. MADALINE What do you mean? FRANK Oh, you know the shit - I don't have to run it past you - The drug deals the DEA organises - The terrorist schools the CIA runs - Who armed Saddam Hussein in the first place? Who's helping the Serbs buy a nuclear device? You know, your head gets twisted around so much, it's not a question of who you believe anymore, but what you believe. MADALINE Wasn't that always the question? FRANK No, you don't understand what I'm saying - What I'm saying is that sometimes you find yourself sitting in front of someone who strikes you in every conceivable way as being an honest, decent and honourable person; but what you know is that they're a murdering liar who's just pulled the pin on three hundred and twenty people - and these guys have the souls of saints - I'm not kidding, Madaline - I'm not talking about the hit-men and the goons - I'm talking about something very special - MADALINE Evil that knows itself. FRANK Is it Evil? Is it evil to find yourself in a world of Evil, and being required to act? How do you act when every action is going to have some disastrous consequence for someone somewhere along the line? What do you do? How do you make those calculations and still remain human? MADALINE I don't want to listen to this. FRANK Show me I'm wrong - How am I wrong? MADALINE I've heard this - read this before - "Every man here has stood upon a pile of bodies; and it is a measure of the greatness of the Aryan nation that we have all remained civilised" - Isn't that Himmler's speech to his SS officers - Isn't what you're saying just Nazi bullshit? FRANK Is it? MADALINE God, Frank - If even someone like you is mouthing crap like that, the world's really in trouble. FRANK You don't have to listen to me to know that much. MADALINE It's the temptation to play God that's got you twisted around in this shit - "What are we going to do? How are we going to sort out the Balkans?" FRANK How are we? MADALINE We aren't - They will. FRANK They who? They, the arms manufacturers? They the plastic-explosives experts? Which they? Some poor little fifteen year old huddled in a basement in Tuzla, or some fat ex-KGB prick making a call on his mobile phone from a resort on the the Black Sea? They who, Madaline?? MADALINE You're wrong, Frank: this is not a world of rampant evil, and if you think these saints of yours have any power at all, then you've been hanging around in hotel bars philosophising with devils for too long: these people are powerless hoons who'll wind up in exactly the same holes the Nazis were bulldozed into - They lost, Frank: the Nazis lost, and they haven't got anything to teach anyone anymore except how to make a complete prat of yourself - This is a world of Good if it's any kind of world at all, and the only thing that Evil does is disappear up its own arsehole. FRANK Then why are things the way they are? PAUSE FRANK Why are the seas rising, and the deserts expanding? Why is every city you go to turning into an armed camp? Why are arms-selling and drug- trafficking the two biggest industries in the world? Why are mass-graves being dug from one end of the planet to the other? Why, Madaline? MADALINE Why have you got a gun? FRANK I picked it up as a souvenir. MADALINE It puts the "mori" back into "memento", doesn't it. FRANK Don't close your doors to me - I need to talk. MADALINE Not about these things - These things are too hard - I wish I could put a moratorium on these sorts of discussions forever. FRANK People are having them all over the world. MADALINE What does that mean, Frank? That the human race has finally run out of puff and is just letting itself slip into despair? FRANK No: that we can't put it off anymore. We've got to figure out who we are, because we're dying. MADALINE I'm not dying. FRANK Then what are you doing? MADALINE I don't know, Frank; but I'm not dying. Light Change: 6 INT. THE SECOND DOOR. NIGHT. 6 Madaline is standing just to the side of the second door, her gaze turned inward. The ancient Egyptian motifs in the room are again highlighted. Stepping toward her, Frank asks: FRANK Do you think love is possible between two human beings? MADALINE People use the word a lot... FRANK But not you. MADALINE No. Not me. FRANK Neither do I. MADALINE You use it all the time - That's what I find attractive about you. FRANK I feel...in you...some deep hurt I wish I could cure... MADALINE You've hardly ever stopped to think about anything, have you? FRANK Something happened to me, Madaline... MADALINE I know: you think you saw the truth. FRANK I saw something... MADALINE I'd like to know what it was, because all I think you saw was what everyone's always known anyway... FRANK Maybe it was, but it's always a shock to see it for yourself. MADALINE It's time to come back, Frank: time to stop trying to save everyone in the world whose hurt you feel. FRANK I'm only trying to save myself, Madaline. MADALINE That's a good idea. That's probably the best idea you've ever had. FRANK How do you think I should go about it? MADALINE Stop being such an arrogant prick, and start waking up to what's going on around you. FRANK Where? Here? There's nothing going on around here; that's why I did come back: to give everyone a wake-up call about what's going on in the real world. MADALINE With your gun, and your bitterness and your mind full of wild thoughts stitched together with testosterone and snatches of Nietzsche. What are you going to do, Frank? How many people are you going to kill to make us all understand that yes, this is indeed the real world? FRANK Just one. MADALINE Really? Just one? And that'll save the planet from imminent disaster? Sounds a bargain - God-speed, Frank Whoever-You- Are - The hopes of the world go with you. FRANK You don't believe me, do you. MADALINE I'd be a fool not to - So who's the lucky recipient of this latest dispatch from the frontline, or is it meant for all of us? FRANK You'll find out - Or maybe you won't - Actually, I'd prefer if you didn't; and you could go on believing the things that you do. MADALINE But the things I believe are killing you. FRANK They're not the things killing me... And glancing up, he continues: FRANK I wonder what's behind the second door... She moves away: MADALINE Another door. FRANK And behind that? MADALINE Another...and then another...and then another...An infinity of doors leading to an infinity of questions, but with the heart of each question being exactly the same: who are you, and what do you want from me? FRANK Who are you, and what do you want from me? MADALINE But it's the wrong question; and even if it was right, no- one can answer it anymore. FRANK I can. MADALINE But you're mad, Frank. FRANK I can still answer the question. MADALINE It doesn't matter; nobody wants to hear the answer; because you're mad. Blackout. End Act 1. ACT 2 1 INT. COFFEE TABLE. NIGHT. 1 As the Porter enters and begins to set the table for a meal, Frank strolls in putting on a bow-tie: FRANK You've really impressed me: the Jamaican coffee-beans with the coffee-grinder was good, and the electrically heated toilet seat was interesting, if a little gimmicky; but a four course meal at four in the morning is exactly the sort of thing you want after a hard day kicking shit up hill. PORTER (CHEERFUL) Listen, sir: if you've got the money, we've got the service. FRANK Who told you I had the money? PORTER Pardon? Oh, right - That's another example of the famous Australian sense of humour, right? FRANK No - It's just another example of the famous Australian standard of Business Practice. PORTER So, you're here for the World Bank Conference, are you? FRANK Yes; I'll be delivering a short dissertation on the efficacy of grabbing small nation states by the balls and shaking them till their eyes pop out - I expect the question and answer session afterwards will be particularly interesting. PORTER Not as interesting as some of those broads they've got trailing around after them - Man, those women are GORGEOUS - Have you got an eyeful of any of them yet? FRANK Nearly had 'em both poked out. PORTER Not that your wife's not a looker - No, sirree - If you don't mind me saying so, she's a stunner - But some of these women are just drop-dead beautiful - And hot - Man, are they hot: I tell you, this is the best job in the world sometimes. FRANK So you do more than shine shoes, ay? PORTER Look, if I told you, your cuff- links'd melt - You look at some of these guys: they're forty - maybe fifty years old; and here they are with these twenty five - thirty year old women - There's just no match - They get you up in the bedroom to fix their TVs, or something while hubby's down doing whatever they're doing - Making money, I guess - And you'd better make sure you've got a pig-skin with you, because let me tell you, man, it's anything goes. FRANK So you play football together? PORTER What? Oh, right - That good old Aussie humour again. FRANK So tell me - You run into Jack Cassidy's wife in your travels? PORTER Jack Cassidy? No, can't say that I have... FRANK Maybe he didn't bring his wife - Big fella - Tall - Only drinks Heinekin. PORTER There's a big fella like that on the twelfth, but his name's not Cassidy - American. FRANK What's his name? PORTER Burgess, I think - Yeah, Burgess - Pretty abrupt sort of fella. FRANK Not the sort of guy whose wife you'd want to be caught fooling around with. PORTER No, I wouldn't say so. FRANK Must be someone else... PORTER What about you, sir? You don't strike me as someone of arabic extraction - How did you wind up with a name like Say-id. FRANK Accident of history - Madaline waltzes in wearing a stunning blue dress with a middle- eastern flavour, and announces in a twangy American accent: MADALINE Well, what do you think?? Frank is not pleased to see the display, but the Porter is impressed: PORTER It's beautiful, ma'am... MADALINE Beautiful? It's gorgeous! And it fits exactly! She throws her arms around Frank's neck: MADALINE Thankyou, darlin'! FRANK So you found it... MADALINE Yes, I found it. You weren't planning on wearing it yourself, was you? That little old trip to the Lebanon didn't twist your head around that much, did it? And taking in the finely laid-out table, she bubbles happily: MADALINE Well isn't this purrty! And all for me! You know, my husband just loves me to death! What's your name, boy? The Porter isn't quite sure what to make of the accent: PORTER Sam, Ma'am. MADALINE You can call me Rosalie, Sam. Well isn't this the nicest surprise! Where do you come from, Sam? Let me guess: Tennessee, ain't that right? PORTER No, Ma'am; Long Beach, actually. MADALINE Oh, go on, pull the other one! You're Tennessee if I ever did see one. Don't ya reckon he's a Tennessee boy, Hank? Lookit those eyes! As sparklin' clear as the Confederate flag on a crystal blue mornin'! Falling in step with the joke, Frank enthuses: FRANK Well I don't rightly know, Jezebel - MADALINE "Rosalie", Hank, please - We's in company. FRANK I seen eyes like them up North before, but I think they was Southern boys for sure - I really do. PORTER Oh, I get it - It's a joke, right? FRANK No joke, son - It's no joke to be a citizen of the YOUnited States, is it, Miss Honey-Pie. MADALINE Hell no - You just ask old lipstick-and-face-cream Gaddafi if he thinks its a joke or not! PORTER But...Aren't you folks Australians? FRANK Why sure, but that's only in this life - PORTER This life? FRANK Heck, yes - But in our last life, we were Americans, true and blue. PORTER Your last life? MADALINE What's wrong with you? Ain't you got religion? You don't think this is the only life you got, do ya? FRANK Haven't you read Shirley Maclaine? I can remember six lives at least! How far back do you go, Rosalie? MADALINE Let's see - There was Rameses the Second - I got chucked in the alligator pond in that one. FRANK Then we met up again in Mexico. MADALINE That's right - You were a Conquistador and I was an Incan Princess... FRANK Prettiest little thing you ever did see - Raped and murdered her in that one. MADALINE Not a very good way to start a relationship, if you don't mind me sayin'... FRANK But we soldiered on - Caught up again in the Inquisition. MADALINE I got my own back in that one - Had him burnt at the stake as a devil worshiper. FRANK Till finally we were born again in America. MADALINE That was the sweetest life of all, wasn't it, Precious. FRANK I was an insurance salesman and she was a tycoon's sugar-baby - Plugged her through the heart with a Colt 45 when she tried to fiddle with some of my clauses. Went to the electric chair for that. MADALINE So now we're here. What about you, boy? Where you been? The Porter stares at them for a moment longer: PORTER I might just serve the meal now. He begins to exit: MADALINE Careful if you're using a knife! FRANK That's right! One slip and you don't know where you might end up! The Porter has exited, and Madaline turns to Frank: MADALINE So where do you think he's been? FRANK I don't know, but I think he'll be glad to get back there... Light Change: 2 EXT. BALCONY. NIGHT, LATER. 2 Frank and Madaline are sitting beside the remnants of their meal as Frank offers her a cigarette, which she declines: FRANK Sorry, I forgot - So why shouldn't a young kid like that kick up his high-heels with a bunch of rich bastards' wives? MADALINE I just didn't like that boyo nudge-nudge, wink-wink stuff that was going on - You didn't strike me as the locker-room type. FRANK Well you didn't strike me as the type to go flicking through someone else's luggage, either - MADALINE That's a bit rich coming from someone who poured the contents of my life out onto the bed- spread at gun-point - Anyhow, if you're not married, who's the dress for? FRANK My sister. MADALINE Sure - That's just the sort of thing a loving brother does, isn't it - So where's your sister live? FRANK Here. MADALINE If she's living here, why aren't you staying with her? FRANK I'm not sure she'd appreciate the two of us banging away in the front room whole night. MADALINE Does she know you're here? FRANK Not yet. MADALINE When are you going to call her? FRANK I don't know. MADALINE You didn't put any thought into this at all, did you - You just got on the plane and went - Why? FRANK That's the way I do things. MADALINE But you took time out to buy a dress for your sister. FRANK I had a couple of hours to spend in the markets. MADALINE In Beirut. FRANK That's right. In Beirut. MADALINE Because this is a Lebanese dress, isn't it. FRANK I changed planes in Beirut. MADALINE So you took off from Damascus, and changed planes in Beirut. FRANK Why am I getting the impression this is an interrogation? MADALINE Listen, Frank; if I get you into the interrogation room, you'll know it - And what's the kuffiyah with the bullet hole doing in there? FRANK 'Kuffiyah'? You have been around - You had a good look, didn't you. MADALINE If you're going to be a snoop, there's no point being half- arsed about it. FRANK It's just something I picked up. MADALINE Another souvenir, ay? You know, I'm worried about you, Frank - You turn up here with a gun in your luggage - By the way, how did you get it through Customs? FRANK When you're used to crossing borders, you find ways. MADALINE I'd hate to think what. Be a bit uncomfortable, wouldn't it? FRANK I don't want to talk about it, Madaline... MADALINE A gun in your luggage, an arab head-dress with a bullet hole through it and a dress for your sister who'd have to be at least fifteen years younger than you are if she's going to fit into it. FRANK How old do you think I am? MADALINE Forty two. FRANK Did you check my passport, too? MADALINE Let's just say it was a good guess. FRANK So how old are you? MADALINE That's a question ladies aren't required to answer - So what's all this adding up to, Frank? A man with a lot of problems, I'd say. FRANK I thought you weren't interested in knowing anything about me. MADALINE Maybe I've changed my mind. FRANK Why? MADALINE Well you've been sticking your dick into me the whole night - Maybe I want to know where it's been. Frank stands: FRANK I think you should lay off the jungle-juice - I can feel things turning nasty. MADALINE Who's the dress for? FRANK My sister. MADALINE You don't have a sister, do you; or if you do, you haven't spoken to her for ten years. FRANK There was this girl - MADALINE Who? FRANK This girl I used to go out with - I wanted to ask her to marry me - I got it in my mind - I got it in my mind - I don't know, I saw the dress and I got it in my mind she might want to marry me. MADALINE Except she's already married with two kids, and she's put on as much weight as you have. FRANK I don't know - I didn't get that far... MADALINE How far did you get? FRANK I rang her old number, and no- one had heard of her - Her parents have shifted, or died - I don't know - She's gone. She's gone, Madaline: that's what happens when you leave things too late. Madaline glances away: MADALINE Why did you? FRANK Why did I? Why did I? Why do we? Sometimes you just get caught up - You don't pay attention - Sometimes you don't even realise till years later what was really going on - Like this, now - I don't know what I'm doing here - I gate-crashed that consulate party to kick shit - MADALINE You did that... FRANK I was really pissed off - And instead I find you - MADALINE What were you pissed off about? FRANK The fucking world - What do you think? - The fucking mess they've made of it - Look at this shit in Bosnia now: you couldn't have made it worse if you'd set out to do it, but there they all are parading around in their tight little dinner jackets and their fat Armani wallets - I don't mean to be so petty about it - Suddenly overwhelmed, Frank breaks: FRANK AND PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE DYING!! THEY'RE HURTING, AND THEY'RE DYING! PAUSE FRANK I'm sorry...It's just hard sometimes - You cover this shit; you don't know what you're doing it for. Everyone's the same - we're all the same, I know we are - People don't know what to do, so they turn it off. We're turning off Africa, we're turning off the Middle-East - Russia's going down the plug-hole, and we're turning that off - Everyone's headed for cyber-space, that's where we're going - Cyber- space, where anything can happen - Where you can fuck Madonna if that's what you want - Where you can just zap the monsters with your ray-gun: that's where the whole world's headed - But sometimes, you know, you're walking down some smelly back-alley in some shitty little hell-hole somewhere, and you're picking through the blood and guts trying not to step on the results of the latest victory against communism or Islamic Fundamentalism or whatever the latest fucking bogey-man we're supposed to be waging a war to the death with is - And you think to yourself, "Where's the soul of man in this? Is it there, in what's left of that kid's foot? What about there, in that half a baby that's hangin' off that fence? Where's the soul of man here? In that scream? That silent scream coming from that guy over there they're working on with a pair of broken scissors and a roll of filthy gauze: is that it? Is that where it is? Or up that woman's arse-hole? Where the shrapnel's cut her so deep you can see what she had for dinner last night? Is that where it is? WHERE'S THE SOUL OF MAN IN ANY OF THIS??!!"...And you can't see it, you know...All you can see is the pain and the misery; and sometimes if you're laying awake at night listening to them all yahooing down in the bar, you might get a mental picture of a bunch of monkeys bellowing in a tree - Maybe that's the soul of man. Maybe that's where it's always been. PAUSE MADALINE Is that what you're looking for? The soul of man? FRANK Not any more... MADALINE Because you think you've found it? FRANK Because I've stopped believing in it. There is no soul of man, no immortal part that'll live on after us. It's just flesh and shit and bone: the kind of stuff you put on the garden to make the roses grow - That's all there is. MADALINE And the music? The dreams? The pictures we've been painting on cave walls since time began? FRANK What do you want me to say, Madaline? I'm not trying to convince you; I'm just telling you what I've seen. MADALINE You saw something else. FRANK I've seen lots of things... MADALINE No - Some particular thing... FRANK Yes, I saw one particular thing. MADALINE What? FRANK You wouldn't understand it if I told you. MADALINE You don't have the right...You don't have the right! You don't have the right! What have you seen? What, Frank? Traipsing around the world from one trouble-spot to another like some ghoulish tourist! Trying to find the most telling literary phrase to convey your tortured sensibility! We lived it! Lived it, Frank - Lived inside the beast - Hid in shit, ate shit - Survived, Frank! Survived! We Jews survived; and if anyone's in a position to bring down a Judgment on the world, it's us - And what our Judgment is is that this world is Good, and Holy and Sacred and that God's mystery shines in every creature, in every rock, in every pool even if it be the most fetid, stagnant pool in the darkest, deepest crevice of the most fetid, stagnant hole on the face of the earth! You don't have the right to say these things, no matter what you've seen! PAUSE FRANK How dare you tell another human being there is a privileged position from which their experience can be determined as valid or not. I don't believe in your god - In your god, their god, anyone's fucking god! You can keep your fucking fairy-tales, Madaline; because if they're the only things keeping you alive, you're in a worst state than I am! MADALINE With one thing on your mind, Frank: death; the contemplation of death, the unraveling of death - What's to contemplate; what's to unravel; if it's just pus and shit at the end of it all?! FRANK The same things human beings have been contemplating as long as they've been around to wonder about it: what does it mean to come into existence and then cease once more to be? What does hope mean when all things die, when the earth itself will one day fade and die - What does it mean to be good? How can I be good? What leap of imagination do I have to make to treat my fellow humans with respect and dignity knowing that a death sentence has been passed on me? All the ordinary fears and concerns that should shake a life awake but that get anaesthetised in the mad rush to deny it all and claim against all evidence, "No, we don't die! The human spirit, the soul, the Atman - Whatever you want to call it - lives forever!" - Are you such a fool, with your cocaine and your sexual encounters with strangers, that you think its somehow absolved by some belief in a Universal Good? PAUSE MADALINE What is it absolved by? FRANK I wanted something from you - I don't know what - To be with a woman one more time - To enjoy another person's company - To stand here in a room like this and feel the simple pleasures of touch and taste just to remind me that they existed. I wanted to hear another person's voice speaking the same language as me; wanted to be somewhere I didn't feel like an alien - wanted to touch someone, something, to wash this shit out of me; to forget the terror for a few minutes - That's all I wanted, Madaline; and if what all that comes down to is that I wanted to use you, then I probably did, and I'm sorry, but I guess I figured it was a two way street, and you had your own reasons, too - I'm sorry. MADALINE Don't be... FRANK I'm sorry this is all we've got to offer one another. After a moment, Madaline shakes her head, and then takes a few steps away: MADALINE What more do you want? He looks at her, standing in the dress, and then turns away: MADALINE To marry me, Frank? To get on your knees with a bunch of roses in your hands, and say "Marry me"? Is that... She tries to compose herself: MADALINE Is that where these thoughts lead you? To put your hands out for a life-line? To ask any stranger you might meet to marry you? FRANK Sometimes you surprise yourself... MADALINE You do - You do surprise yourself - You find yourself...You find yourself living a life that makes no sense - You find yourself skating along some thin surface of cynicism...and hopelessness - My father was an academic, too, you know - Sociology - He and my mother; they met here - He didn't realise what she was like - He used to have affairs, with colleagues, students - I thought he was too good for my mother. He was smart and attractive, she was just my mother. Whenever I'd see him at parties talking to a younger woman, I'd think "She's nice. Why don't you go with her?" - I came home early from school one day - My mother was out visiting some friends - And I found him, with someone - I never told my mother - Sometimes I wonder if that was the real reason...Secrets make you feel lonely - And that was the secret he and I shared...because I knew she was mad, and I wanted him for myself. Sounds a shocking thing to say, doesn't it; but I can see now that's what I wanted. Do you think I killed my mother? PAUSE FRANK I don't know... MADALINE Power is an interesting thing, and in some sense I've always felt powerful - That's how my relations with men have been conducted; that's what I enjoy. Maybe it was a mistake... PAUSE FRANK I might have a shower... MADALINE My husband's dead, Frank... FRANK Why did you tell me you were married? MADALINE I was...I was lots of things... Considering her, Frank nods and moves toward the bathroom. The Porter steps from nowhere, and pushing the full-length mirror, begins to spin it, so that the lights and images flash dazzlingly about. As Madaline moves toward the coffee table, her voice over continues: MADALINE (VO) ...I was a liar, a cheat, a fraud... While Frank strips and takes his shower, Madaline takes the cocaine out and begins to move toward the coffee table. Noticing the gun, she picks it up and puts it into her robe pocket. Settling down, she begins to chop the cocaine up on the glass surface: MADALINE (VO) ...a thousand things I'd prefer not to say - Perhaps that's just me; perhaps it's all of us. I can't say that I'm proud, but I don't feel particularly guilty either; that's just the way it happened. And things do happen that way: you think you're one thing, and then one day you wake up, and you realise you're something very different - That all those things you'd done, the emotions you felt, the memories you have are somehow deeply wrong - false - and what you've done and remembered and felt belong to someone else - Not you - Because the you that did them did them for quite different reasons; and then you realise that you're just a construct, that there is no "You" at all, or a "You" that remains a mystery - Some unfathomable mystery - shuffling its cards through the pack of your life, showing here "The Joker", and there "The Queen of Hearts", and then again the black King of Spades - Your life a jumble of randomly chosen cards and snatch phrases and emotional postures - Positions that felt good at the time, and then somehow get frozen - Your life a mosaic of constantly shifting images; and the more you pull back to try to get an overall view, the less sense it actually makes; or maybe the more sense, but the more sense it makes is of a life so corrupted by hypocrisy and deceit and evasion and dishonesty that you catch your breath in horror at what you've become - You recoil from that image back into the details and it just becomes a wash of sensation and sadness; and so you carry on in that limbo world, not quite alive, but not quite dead, either; just present, passionless, focused within the narrow range you've set yourself, able to get up in the morning and conduct a civilised conversation; able to thrive and receive accolades, even able to fool other people that you love them, and care - Do I care?...Do I really care?...Is this any kind of life at all...? Blowing the cocaine off the table, Madaline sends a cloud of strangely sparkling dust into the air: it's a dream, and both people have now entered the world of dreams. Frank stands in the doorway, watching her as he dries himself: PAUSE FRANK I'm sorry - I didn't mean to shout at you. MADALINE It's alright... FRANK It's strange - This meeting - You... MADALINE Meeting another person is always strange... PAUSE FRANK It is... MADALINE And now trying to find the words to separate again. FRANK I don't want to separate - I don't want to leave you. MADALINE Don't you? FRANK No - I don't know what I want - To be with you. MADALINE You've been with me. FRANK To be with you forever... MADALINE How long is forever...? FRANK The forever we human beings are allowed to be with one another - I don't know what I'm saying, Madaline - I don't want you to go. MADALINE Maybe this is forever, Frank - Maybe we've always been with each other. FRANK What do you mean? MADALINE Forever, here - Maybe this is it - Maybe we've always been here; and sometimes we dream, and whole lives go by, and then we wake up again, and we're here with each other once more Perhaps this is the bottom of a Pharaoh's tomb - Nefertiti's maybe - Does anything ever really happen by accident? - Or an Incan Princesses' sepulcher where she was laid to rest by a dying civilisation after being raped and murdered by a Spanish Conquistador who still haunts her through the rooms and corridors of her grave; maybe that's it, Frank; maybe we've been chasing and struggling with one another through all of history - You with your demand for individual responsibility, me with my belief in God and silence and fate - maybe there is no history at all - No time, no change, no movement - Just us, forever us, as we grapple together, embracing one another. FRANK (SLIGHT PAUSE) I want to know you better. MADALINE Then tell me what you saw. Light Change: 3 FRANK. 3 Frank prowls through a low light, and only gradually do we become aware that Madaline is sitting, listening to him: FRANK It was in Registan, in the south. It was desert; just desert; and these mountains - I can't tell you how desolate it was. I was there on some pissy little story with a crew I'd picked up in Islamabad. As we were coming over a saddle of rock on the fourth day, we heard gunfire. The guide - this jack-ass prick that had been giving me a hard time about money since the day we left - took off in the opposite direction, with most of the crew after him. The sound recordist stayed, so I picked up the camera and we walked forward - Don't get me wrong: I'd seen action before - We were all going to get it; I knew that - I'd seen death - But this was different - You know, sometimes you can see the same thing a hundred times, and it not worry; but then you see it that once more - and maybe the light's different, or something - and it can tear your world apart... MADALINE What? FRANK I want to tell you something about myself, Madaline - This isn't the way I am - You can ask anyone, and they'll tell you I'm just a selfish, conceited prick that never gave anyone the time of day - I've never cared about anyone or anything in my life - I fucked up every relationship I've ever had for no good reason, sometimes for no reasons at all - I didn't want...I wanted something else... MADALINE What was it, Frank? FRANK When I saw you tonight - You want to know what the first thing that flashed though my mind was? "Here's some rich bitch I can fuck" - That's what I thought - That's all it was - I wanted to take it out on you - But you can't, can you... MADALINE I could see that's what you were thinking - That's why I came back with you... FRANK No, you can't - Because every person is different - You can't treat people like that - Just take 'em and use 'em - They won't let you, and in any case, you can't do it - I'm a hard man, Madaline - MADALINE I know what you are... FRANK I'm a hard man - I've done things I'd be ashamed to tell anyone - Things I'll regret to the end of my days - All that stuff I was talking about - That crap about what it all means, and pain and all the rest of it - I don't believe that - You know, I'd be just as happy sitting next to that ex- KGB guy dishing it all out over the blower as what I would be anywhere - Those guys don't bug me: at least they've got it sorted out for themselves - They don't feel anything, Madaline; they don't care: it's fucking money, that's all! MADALINE Tell me what you saw. FRANK It was this kid. Just this kid. I had the camera slung over my shoulder, but there was something about him - You know, I couldn't see him properly through the eye-piece, so I kept looking - Like pulling away and just looking - I could still hear the guide yelling out behind me in that whiny, whingy voice they've all got, "Yukhfee! Yukhfee!" - "Hide, hide!" and the sound recordist took off after a stray bullet slammed into his Nagra; but I was, like, paralysed or something - No, invulnerable, that's what it was - I felt like I was invulnerable - And this kid just standing there at the top of the hill in front of me. This kid; this beautiful kid - A little boy of maybe eight or nine just standing there - I even knew his name. There was smoke all around him, like mist rising from the valley behind, and I could see his face; his beautiful shining face; the curls of his hair falling out over his forehead from under his kuffiyah; and I suddenly realised he was like every kid I'd ever seen - Every innocent that had ever been brought to this earth, with eyes gleaming with wonder; all his senses alive to everything around him and I wanted to take him, and I wanted to hold him; and I wanted to stop the bad things from happening to him; I wanted there to be no more war and no more fear and the book to be closed on horror forever, for him, for all of us - I wanted it to stop - I just wanted it to stop - And as I dropped the camera and started to run toward him, he suddenly saw me - And he must have thought I was with them, or something, because he started running back the other way, back towards - And I was shouting out, "No, no - Come back - This way! Ishab men rua!" But he didn't understand or he couldn't hear me, and as he got to the crest, he slipped on some shale - I could see him standing up, you know - his little hands...and then there was this burst of machine-gun fire, and he sort of just exploded in front of me - Exploded, that's the word - He was cut in half, Madaline, just like a chain saw was going through him; and I'd done it: I'd hunted him into it - If I hadn't been there with my fucking camera, and my fucking curiosity, and my fucking need to see everything for myself - If we hadn't been there sticking our noses in where they didn't belong - If we just left them alone - if we just fucking left them alone! - he would've been alright; he would've gotten away; it wouldn't have happened; he would have been alright!...And then it was over. They were just finishing off the family. He was the last one. He was the last one, Madaline; and there was nothing else left I ever wanted to see again as long as I lived. PAUSE MADALINE Is that what you dream about? FRANK I don't dream; I can't dream. All I want to do is kill. He begins to trash the place, and rising, she cries back at him: MADALINE And be like them? FRANK Why not like them?! They're the ones who won, aren't they?! He picks up a lamp and smashes it: FRANK Look at this - How much do you think this is worth? A hundred dollars or a nation's heart?! MADALINE The more we give into them, the worse it's going to get. FRANK How much worse can it get? Before it starts affecting you, you mean?! MADALINE It's affecting me! It's affecting all of us! He grabs something else: FRANK What about this one? Look at this! How much is this worth? It's lives, Madaline, lives! As he throws it down, cutting himself, she begins to join in the trashing: MADALINE Then smash it, Frank! Smash it! Smash the world! If this is all it's worth, kill it! FRANK Kill the fucks! Kill 'em! Kill every last fucking one of them! MADALINE Hunt them! Smash them! The murderers; the rapists; the torturers - FRANK The drug-lords and arms- merchants! Kill 'em! Fuck 'em! MADALINE The pornographers and corrupters - FRANK Every evil-hearted bastard that's ever walked the earth! MADALINE What about the thieves, Frank? What'll we do with the thieves? Chop their hands off?! FRANK Yes! Kill them! - I don't know... MADALINE And the liars? Tear they're tongues out, Frank? FRANK No - I don't know... MADALINE And their families, Frank? And their children? Yes, kill the lot! Wipe out the entire human race! FRANK I don't know...Stop it!...I don't know... MADALINE Kill them all, Frank: isn't that right? Kill them all, because every last fucking one of us is guilty... Frank sinks to his knees, covered in blood: FRANK I don't know...I don't know...I don't know...I'm naked, Madaline...Naked... Madaline kneels to comfort him: MADALINE Shush...Shush... FRANK It was part of a Special-Op one of my buddies had organised with a bunch of cut-throats running drugs through the mountains - "Collateral-damage" I think it's called - Not even worth a paragraph in Reuters. MADALINE Shush...It doesn't help, Frank...Shush...One time - Listen to me, Frank - One time I tried to commit suicide - I couldn't stand it anymore than you can - I'm not here because I haven't thought about these things: I understand what you're saying: love in the face of atrocities is absurd; hope in the face of genocide is absurd - all life is absurd, but we live, Frank; that's where we live; we live in the absurd. PAUSE FRANK Sure... Frank rises, looking at his bloody hands: FRANK Cut myself... He stands and moves toward the bathroom: FRANK I used to be in a rock band - We used to do this sort of shit all the time... Looking at the blood on her own hands, she also rises and moves toward the bag on the bed: MADALINE ...So you didn't need to go anywhere at all because you've been carrying this luggage with you since the day you left... FRANK You say you believe in God, Madaline - By God, you're going to need it when this city looks like every other broken-toothed city on the planet...I'm frightened; I'm so frightened; I don't think I've ever been more frightened in my life... Opening the suitcase, she takes out the kuffiyah: MADALINE What's left to be frightened of? Uncertain, Frank looks at her: FRANK What do you mean? She puts on the kuffiyah and picks up the gun: MADALINE It's strange, isn't it: the Middle-East, Iran-Iraq; it's the land of the Bible: that's where civilized life began. It's funny to think that's where it might end. FRANK What are you doing, Madaline? MADALINE Isn't this the way you wanted me, Frank? Isn't this what you were really after? FRANK Just because I told you that story doesn't mean you understand - She begins to move toward him: MADALINE Why did you book us in under the name of Said, Frank? FRANK What's going on, Madaline? MADALINE Why this hotel? Why tonight? FRANK Wait a minute - What is this? MADALINE Why did you book us in under the name of Said? FRANK It was the kid's name - MADALINE I thought you said he was killed in front of you - FRANK It was the kid's name - I just know it was! MADALINE You don't know anything, Frank - You don't know who I am - You don't even know where you are. FRANK What are you talking about? Of course I know who you are. MADALINE Then who am I? Who am I, Frank? PAUSE FRANK You are a murderer... MADALINE (SLIGHT PAUSE) Yes, a murderer - And so are you, because that's what you saw, wasn't it: all of us murderers looking for someone to blame - For our buddies in the CIA to blame - FRANK What do you know about it? MADALINE The Jack Cassidys of the world to blame - FRANK It was him - He was the one behind it! Is that the sort of crap you want to defend? She throws the gun to him: MADALINE The mothers and fathers who never loved us to blame - FRANK What are you doing? What is this? MADALINE All of us murderers, Frank; circling one another till finally we find what we're looking for and fall in love - FRANK No - Stop - This is crazy - What I feel for you is love. MADALINE Then kill me, Frank: kill me like everything else you've ever loved; because a minute ago, I thought you were prepared to kill the world; so here it is: kill me. FRANK Miranda. MADALINE What? FRANK It's a moon on the other side of the Solar System: this must be what it's like. It's this damned, smashed, lifeless chunk of rock orbiting another damned lifeless chunk of rock in the middle of blackness. We send these space-probes up looking for life in outer space when we can't even face each other in our own rooms. What are we looking for, Madaline? MADALINE You know as well as me. FRANK This isn't the reason I brought you here. MADALINE Look at me, Frank: there are no secrets. He raises the gun and points it at her: FRANK Who are you? MADALINE I love you. He pulls the trigger. Blackout. 4 EXT. STREET. DAY. 4 The sound of birds rises about us, and then street noise followed by the quick, business-like clip of a woman's high-heels on a pavement. Madaline is seen walking forward, as the Porter rushes on, calling: PORTER Ma'am!...Ma'am!... She looks, and sees him rush up with: PORTER Your gloves! She takes them diffidently: MADALINE Oh, thankyou... PORTER Would you like me to hail you a cab? I expect you'll be on your way to the airport now. She slips the gloves on: MADALINE No - I'd like to walk by myself for awhile. The Porter looks about: PORTER It's a beautiful day... She looks up and notices it: MADALINE Yes, it is... PORTER Will your husband be joining you later? MADALINE No - No, I don't think so... The Porter begins to back away, returning to work: PORTER Well - Remember me... MADALINE Yes, I will - And suddenly realising something, she calls: MADALINE That man wasn't my husband - The man continues backing away: PORTER He wasn't? Then who was he? She looks away: MADALINE I don't know. I'd never seen him before in my life. The Porter has now gone, and a tight spot has been brought up on Madaline. Taking a cigarette from her purse, she lights it. The sound of traffic noise increases, mixing finally with the sound of battle. Madaline staring straight ahead, smoking: an ordinary woman on an ordinary street anywhere in the world. Blackout. End.