Goodness Page 3
STEPHEN: Well done, Mathias. Alzheimer’s! Good choice.
ALTHEA: They delayed the beginning of the trial.
STEPHEN: Good morning.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Good morning, sir. How are you?
STEPHEN: Excellent.
Julia, Todd’s daughter, comes down the stairs behind. She is in her early thirties.
JULIA: I don’t think you’re supposed to be down here.
STEPHEN: I think I can go wherever I like.
MICHAEL: (of Julia) Who’s this?
Althea, now drawn into the story she’s telling, comes to join Michael in the past.
ALTHEA: That’s Todd’s daughter.
MICHAEL: (a reverie) Look at her.
STEPHEN: Yeah, I know.
MICHAEL: What’s her name? (Althea is about to answer) Wait … Julia.
TODD: Margaret.
JULIA: Mum’s not here right now, Dad. But I am. Julia.
TODD: Yes.
JULIA: You’re in the courthouse, but I’m going to take you home soon.
STEPHEN: Oh, this is priceless.
ALTHEA: And that’s Stephen Part. The lead prosecutor. A national hero.
STEPHEN: I was better looking than this.
ALTHEA: He brought Todd in.
She turns to look at Stephen and Julia, and they take this as a cue.
JULIA: (to Stephen) Do you really think my father would fake an illness rather than take the opportunity to clear his name?
STEPHEN: Miss Todd, if I were responsible for the deaths of five hundred thousand people, I’d fake an illness, too.
JULIA: That’s NOT what he’s charged with, Mr. Part, and you know it.
STEPHEN: This country will understand what it means to find him guilty here, Miss Todd. Even for one murder.
JULIA: How do I get you to understand the problem with your whole approach?
STEPHEN: Oh, I don’t know – make me one of you?
MICHAEL: (interrupting) Sorry: ‘five hundred thousand’? I thought it was two.
STEPHEN: It was five.
TODD: Do you know where I bought this ring?
STEPHEN: In a Bedouin market, in Syria, in 1960.
TODD: The man wanted 2000 dinar! I said to him, ‘That is not twenty-four karat gold, those are not real rubies. I will not pay more than 500 dinar.’
JULIA: I know, Dad. Real rubies.
TODD: Ha! Your mother always said this ring was gaudy, Jules. It’s not gaudy.
JULIA: (delighted to hear her name) No, Dad. It’s beautiful!
STEPHEN: (not surprised) He just said your name.
JULIA: He knows who I am!
STEPHEN: You have to be careful, Mathias.
TODD: She loves me.
STEPHEN: (to Althea) Guard, call up and see if they’re ready for us.
Althea goes nearly offstage to call upstairs.
JULIA: You’re not supposed to be down here without our lawyer present.
STEPHEN: So, go get your lawyer. Take a look at this, Mathias.
Stephen takes out a coroner’s report and holds it up against the bars.
JULIA: (to Young Althea) Excuse me?
TODD: Ah, Margaret!
STEPHEN: No, no, try again.
JULIA: Can you come back here, please?
TODD: Julia?
STEPHEN: Helena Sonnen! Is this Helena Sonnen, Mathias? (suddenly yelling) Surely you remember her!
TODD: (Beat.) Helena.
A low drone begins, accompanied by the distant voice of a woman singing – Todd is remembering Helena.
STEPHEN: Yes.
JULIA: He’s only repeating you.
STEPHEN: No, we’re having a conversation, Miss Todd. (continuing, to Mathias) Tell your daughter what you did with – I mean to – Helena Sonnen, Mathias.
Michael takes the report from Stephen and looks at it.
MICHAEL: So, this is the woman.
ALTHEA: This is the woman he killed.
MICHAEL: (partly to himself) She probably betrayed him.
The drone ends abruptly. Suddenly the characters all back off, like an image fading. Althea is watching Michael’s reaction.
MICHAEL: What?
ALTHEA: Did I say that?
MICHAEL: No, no. I’m sorry – please keep going.
ALTHEA: Why don’t you take some notes.
MICHAEL: Can I?
ALTHEA: Put this down. (He opens the book.) Mathias Todd was married to Margaret. His neighbour was named Helena.
MICHAEL: The woman he had the affair with. Helena Sonnen. Right. And she was of your, uh –
ALTHEA: ‘Kind’? Yes, Michael. But Mathias got her pregnant. Her uncles found out and decided to teach him a lesson. So they killed his wife.
MICHAEL: Uh – What?
ALTHEA: First they forced him to confess his infidelity to Margaret, then they shot her in the head, in front of him. After that, Mathias walked over to Helena’s and ran her through with a haying fork.
MICHAEL: Jesus. But she was –
ALTHEA: Pregnant with his child.
STEPHEN: Two lives on its points.
JULIA: He was innocent.
TODD: Write down that I was never convicted of anything.
ALTHEA: He had friends.
MICHAEL: (to Todd) How could you have done that?
TODD: Exactly! Horrible. She lived next door with her family, the poor thing. I saw them from time to time. We got along. (to Althea) I didn’t even know she was pregnant.
ALTHEA: Her body was exhumed after he left the country. They ran the child’s DNA. (directed at Todd) It was his.
TODD: Cut out the disease.
Michael begins to slip the report into his notebook.
JULIA: Give me that. Give me that!
Julia rips the report out of Michael’s hand and tears it to shreds. But Stephen is holding an identical report as he did before, up against the bars.
STEPHEN: Speared them like animals. Is that how you remember it, Mathias? No sacrifice too great for the cause.
JULIA: This is a lie. (She seizes the report from Stephen and tears it up.)
STEPHEN: That’s evidence!
JULIA: Evidence for your little inquisition.
STEPHEN: Something happened in this place, Miss Todd. Or do you have Alzheimer’s too?
JULIA: How many people did your family lose? Tell me. TELL ME.
STEPHEN: I don’t keep score the way you people do.
JULIA: I know how many. None. Your family had money and connections, unlike the poor countrymen you so identify with. Your people simply left, then you came back to go to law school, on scholarship, while I was in exile. The purges were the best thing that ever happened to you!
STEPHEN: Spoken like a true Todd. Maybe you’ll inherit the family business.
JULIA: THE PURGES WERE NOT MY FATHER’S FAULT. (Pause.) You must be the only person in the whole world who thinks what happened in this country was caused by one person’s thoughts.
MICHAEL: Well, that is a good point.
JULIA: Thank you.
MICHAEL: I’m just saying.
ALTHEA: You’re just saying what?
MICHAEL: People should be held responsible for their actions, not their thoughts.
ALTHEA: And where do you think actions come from, Michael?
Young Althea returns.
YOUNG ALTHEA: They just called down, sir.
STEPHEN: Excellent. (He begins to leave.)
YOUNG ALTHEA: Sir.
Stephen is stopped by her tone.
They’re still in chambers.
STEPHEN: (surprised by this) What? Really. Well, they can’t be much longer. (to Julia) See you upstairs.
JULIA: On our way out.
STEPHEN: Right.
He begins to leave, thinks of something else.
STEPHEN: You know, you won’t defend him once you’ve heard all the evidence.
JULIA: He doesn’t need to be defended.
STEPHEN: (quietly to her) You think no one’s tried
this before? I’ve put eight years into this case. But when the people upstairs finally declare him fit to stand, his little act down here will convict him better than anything I can say.
JULIA: How are you going to feel when you realize you’ve been torturing a sick man?
STEPHEN: It doesn’t worry me.
JULIA: The only thing my father ever did was make a private mistake.
STEPHEN: A private mistake?
JULIA: His affair. That’s the only thing he’s guilty of. The only thing he ever hid from us, from anyone.
STEPHEN: (Musing – no longer really talking to her, he’s constructing something he can use against them.) The only thing he ever hid from us. (Beat.) He lied to you. He lied then, he lies now. He’s a liar. Isn’t he? Thank you, Miss Todd. See you upstairs.
He leaves. After a beat:
JULIA: Shit. Wait! Hold on a second!
She follows him out.
TODD: Margaret?
MICHAEL: And?
TODD: Margaret?
MICHAEL: What happened next?
ALTHEA: They went upstairs. I have no idea what was said after that.
MICHAEL: But I want to know about her.
ALTHEA: Obviously.
TODD: MARGARET!
MICHAEL: BE QUIET! God, you must have wanted to kill him.
ALTHEA: (Beat.) I tried not to pay any attention to him.
YOUNG ALTHEA: (Suddenly turns on her older self.) Please. You were like mother and child. Whenever you were alone with him, it was like he belonged to you. Him and whatever was inside of him, all yours.
ALTHEA: You wanted to destroy him.
YOUNG ALTHEA: No. No, I didn’t. I wanted justice. For my dead. Didn’t I?
ALTHEA: Yes. Of course you did. (to Michael, covering an emotion that has suddenly welled up) I was a lovely young woman. You would have liked me. Will you have a soda?
MICHAEL: No, it’s –
She goes off anyway. Todd and Michael are alone onstage.
MICHAEL: What the hell is – ? (to the audience, waving notebook) I’m sorry, this thing isn’t coming together. I feel like I’m painting a room and the old wallpaper keeps leaking through. I don’t even know if I’m describing this right. You have to imagine this apartment. (He gets up to demonstrate the things he saw.) There were curtains here, over the two windows, so it was dark even though it was the middle of the day. Dark. Airless. Claustrophobic. You can see this, right? I’m trying to describe … Althea. I don’t want to make her look like she was unkind to me. I mean, she was the only person I met on that side of the ocean who was willing to talk! About anything. Although she was lonely. Her loneliness was all over the place, like a stain on everything.
TODD: Why don’t you shut up? (He has Michael’s attention.) You talk a lot, but you don’t say anything.
MICHAEL: At least I remember what I’ve done.
TODD: Do you?
MICHAEL: Yes.
TODD: What do you think of this: all the evil in the world is due to love. An excess of love.
MICHAEL: If you love too much you hate? That’s your big conclusion about human nature.
TODD: When I killed Helena Sonnen, I came.
MICHAEL: You’ll do it again when they hang you. (calling off) Althea, can we – ?
TODD: You loved your wife.
MICHAEL: Of course I did.
TODD: (with mock empathy) But now you hate her.
MICHAEL: I don’t hate anyone.
TODD: How did you feel reading her diary? That was nice, wasn’t it? Being inside her, inside her head. Listening to her private thoughts. Think of owning something like that. When I spoke to the stupid, terrified people of my country, it was as if my tongue slithered into their skulls and spat ‘murder.’ I think you’d like that power.
MICHAEL: (off, getting worried) Althea?
TODD: Where do those who nourish this chaos think it will lead?
Althea re-enters, hands Michael a very small glass of water.
ALTHEA: I don’t have any soda.
MICHAEL: Oh, that’s –
ALTHEA: I wanted justice. For my dead.
MICHAEL: (taken aback) Okay …
Young Althea walks past Todd’s cell.
TODD: Margaret?
YOUNG ALTHEA: Do I look like your wife?
MICHAEL: Did you look like her?
ALTHEA: We were almost the same age. About the age Margaret was when she was killed. He mixed us up.
MICHAEL: You were alone with him a lot.
ALTHEA: I lived down there.
TODD: Margaret?
Young Althea looks at him.
TODD: Margaret?
YOUNG ALTHEA: (angry) What is it? (Beat. Then, seeing her opportunity, says softly) What is it, dear?
TODD: Have we eaten?
YOUNG ALTHEA: No. No, not yet. Did you … did you happen see the paper this morning?
TODD: Bring it in if you’re done with it, love.
YOUNG ALTHEA: They say they caught that man they were looking for. That professor … what was his name?
TODD: It must be lunchtime.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Are you listening to me?
TODD: Sorry, Margaret. A professor?
YOUNG ALTHEA: Yes! They captured him. Do you know what he did?
TODD: Yes.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Do you?
TODD: (delighted) I shall have a coddled egg for lunch!
YOUNG ALTHEA: Listen to me. He, his men, put a gun in the mouth of a little boy and shot him in front of his parents and his aunt!
TODD: No, no.
YOUNG ALTHEA: How could that happen? How could a man do that?
TODD: (A beat. He seems to be considering her.) He should die.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Who should?
TODD: (He looks at his ring.) Will you look at this? Do you know where I got this ri–
YOUNG ALTHEA: You are a murderer. Do you understand? A murderer … (struggling for control) They’re going to figure you out, they’re going to open you up and find you wherever you are in there, and then you will say, to all of us, to the world, ‘I am Mathias Ernesti Todd, I am the BUTCHER, I sit at the right hand of DEATH!!’
Young Althea thrusts her arms into the cell, as if to strangle Todd. He grasps her arms, but instead of defending himself, he comforts her.
TODD: Now, now … be calm. There is nothing to be done.
She lets herself be held by him.
YOUNG ALTHEA: I want you to die.
TODD: … nothing to be done …
YOUNG ALTHEA: I know.
Todd begins to sing tenderly to her, a folk song.
SONG: ‘Zasp’o Janko’ (Croatian)
Zasp’o Janko pod jablanom
(Zaspo slept beneath a poplar tree)
Svoje mile drage
(Belonging to his sweetheart)
Young Althea and Todd will slowly begin to dance. As they do, the song fills the space.
Refrain:
Lepe moje crne ovci,
(My lovely dark eyes)
Pogledajte ne me.
(Look up at me)
Pod jablanom zlatnom granom
(Under the golden poplar branch)
Svoje mile drage
(Belonging to his sweetheart)
Young Althea are now dancing.
ALTHEA: It was a strange relationship.
The dance continues. Althea stares at her younger self bound together with Todd.
ALTHEA: You would never have been able to tell the difference between our peoples. We looked the same, our religions were practically identical, we spoke the same language. Why was there hate between us? (Beat.) Because their bread was raised and ours was fermented? Because our songs sounded like theirs, but with different words?
MICHAEL: It must have been more than that.
ALTHEA: Why? Maybe there was something in themselves that they hated, and they saw it in us.
MICHAEL: Familiarity breeding.
ALTHEA: Yes. ‘Salaam’ and ‘Shalom.’
ALTHEA: To you.
SONG: ‘Di Saposhkelech’ (Jewish)
Julia appears, humming an old Jewish song about a man who would sacrifice anything for his love: ‘I’d sell my boots, and ride in open carriages, just to be with you … ’
As Althea speaks, Julia goes into the cell to visit with her father.
ALTHEA: Todd was everywhere in those days. The university gave him fame. He spoke on everything that happened in the country. Tradition and pride. He spoke of peace, but we heard him say, ‘Hide or we’ll find you and kill you,’ and they heard him say, ‘Find them and kill them.’
JULIA: No, Dad, it’s Julia.
MICHAEL: I don’t know what to think of her. She was all I had.
ALTHEA: What?
MICHAEL: Sorry, you were saying about Julia –
JULIA: Your daughter. You’re at the courthouse. They’re going to let us go soon.
TODD: Yes.
ALTHEA: She was very loving with him. A good daughter.
TODD: Where’s Margaret?
YOUNG ALTHEA: It’s five o’clock. You need to go soon.
JULIA: I want to shave him.
YOUNG ALTHEA: A nurse will do it when it’s necessary.
JULIA: I don’t want a nurse to do it. If you were in my shoes, would you allow a stranger in here with a razor?
YOUNG ALTHEA: That’s why you’re not coming in here with one. And I’m not in your shoes.
JULIA: Your people have blood on their hands as well.
YOUNG ALTHEA: We fought back.
JULIA: Is that what you call it? (She comes out of the cell.) I want a guarantee that Mr. Part is never left alone with my father.
YOUNG ALTHEA: You can trust us, Miss Todd, to ensure your father is safe and secure at all times. You have nothing to fear.
JULIA: (Pause. Chooses not to respond.) In the morning, when I come for his breakfast, I’m going to bring a razor. I’ll hide it in my bag if you like.
YOUNG ALTHEA: A safety razor.
JULIA: I’ll need some hot water and some towels as well.
She begins to leave.
JULIA: Let’s remember the laws of this country still have a presumption of innocence.
YOUNG ALTHEA: Which laws are you talking about? The ones that you people wrote? Because I don’t recall that presumption being granted to anyone I knew.