i am harold ryan, her husband. i have killed perhaps two hundred men in wars of various sorts--as a professional soldier. i have killed thousands of other animals as well--for sport.
ooops.
gentlemen--that's nice.
the door ws unlocked. is it always unlocked?
but here you are inside, aren't you?
we tried to be. we tried to be.
dead! such a final word. dead! did you hear that?
hello, mother.
oh dear.
we'll miss you so.
oh, oh, oh--i thought it was your apartment. you seemed at home here.
ahh--then she's still alive.
and still mrs. harold ryan?
she still has just the one child-- the boy?
and what, exactly, is your relationship to mrs. ryan?
and you come into mrs. ryan's apartment as often as you please, looking into various health matters?
just her neighbor and doctor? that's all?
and her fianc! how nice. i hope you'll be very happy--or is that what one says to the woman?
you wish the woman good luck, and you tell the man how fortunate he is. that's how it goes.
i won't try to keep up with you. i'm not as fast on my feet as i once was.
miss me, baby?
hm?
a bitch.
we've never met.
i hope the men do. i would rather the women didn't.
home, sweet home.
we'll see.
it appears that we're going to have to wait awhile for any more action here, colonel. why don't you run on home while the evening's young.
home is important to a man.
no.
um.
i suppose.
home.
oh, shit.
looseleaf--will you get the hell home?
at least!
it's enough that you've brought yourself home!
tell them yourself!
after eight years in the jungle with you, i know mrs. wheeler better than i know anybody in the universe!
the time we were in a tree for fourteen days, you certainly tried to tell me everything about mrs. wheeler.
this room is full of ghosts.
go home!
the hell with the diamonds!
go home! show them how rich you are for a change!
take the cadillac and drive it off a cliff, for all i care.
i'll buy a hundred more cadillacs. go home!
go home!
go home.
that's the point! walk in there and find whatever there is to find--before alice can cover it up.
so long, colonel.
let's talk about it some other time.
good night, colonel. it's been beautiful.
hell!
leave me alone! after eight years of horrendously close association, the time has come to part! i crave solitude and time for reflection-- and then a reunion in privacy with my own flesh and blood. you and i may not meet again for months!
i'm certainly not going to come horning back into your life tomorrow, and i will not welcome your horning back into mine. a chapter has ended. we are old comrades--at a parting of the ways.
the moon. the new heroism--put a village idiot into a pressure cooker, seal it up tight, and shoot him at the moon. hello there, young man. in case you're wondering, i could beat the shit out of you. and any woman choosing between us--sorry, kid, she'd choose me. i must say, this room is very much as i left it. what's this? a cake? "happy birthday, wanda june"? who the hell is wanda june?
the night i met penelope, i had no beard--so imagine me, if you can, without a beard. actually, i wasn't as good-looking then as i am now. and, if anything, me health has improved. at any rate--i had just come home from kenya--to discover that my third wife, mildred, like the two before her, had become a drunken bum. in my experience, alcoholism is far more prevalent among women than men. so i got into my automobile--
i drive through the night, until i was attracted by a sign which said--
"hamburger heaven."
i think so, daughter. how old are you?
a springbok, an oryx, a gemsbok--a gazelle.
raw hamburger, please--and a whole onion. i want to eat the onion like an apple. do you understand?
what time do you get off work, my child?
did you ever daydream that you would one day meet a friendly millionaire?
daughter--i love you very much.
you are woman. i know woman well.
destiny often seems that way. you're going to marry me.
my parents died in an automobile accident when i was sixteen years old. they left me a brewery and a baseball team--and other things. i live for a living. i've just come back from kenya--in africa. i've been hunting mau mau there.
the pelt is black. it's a kind of man.
as a matter of fact--
as a matter of fact--i am home.
hello.
you were about to ask a question?
ask it!
life has denied me that thrill.
mind? god, yes, i mind. i'm your father's friend. a man claiming to be the family physician let me in a while ago.
dr. woodly. i should make a little list.
the doctor was called away on an emergency. i think it was birth.
you don't know where your mother is? does she put on a short skirt and go drinking all night?
you think you could find me a pencil and paper?
and you've been roaming the streets while your mother is god-knows-where?
man and boy.
even this--"herb shuttle", you said?
ah! and what sort of man is this worshiper?
i see. and he came into the apartment one day, to demonstrate his wares, and your mother, as it happened, was charmingly en deshabille--
college!
college?
what a pity! educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine swiss watch. everything stops. and the doctor? he worships your father, too?
excellent!
it makes life spicy.
no.
what does he do--of an athletic nature?
aha! he has a brilliant military record, i'm sure.
big ones, little ones, teeny-weeny ones--just and otherwise.
"dad?" dad. the boy wants tales of derring-do. name a country.
oh hell.
behind a desk for a little while. a desk! they had him planning air raids. a city can't flee like a coward or fight like a man, and the choice between fleeing and fighting was at the core of the life of harold ryan. there was only one thing he enjoyed more than watching someone make that choice, and that was making the choice himself. ask about spain, where he was the youngest soldier in the abraham lincoln brigade. he was a famous sniper. they called him "la picadura"--"the sting."
as in "death, where is thy sting?" he killed at least fifty men, wounded hundreds more.
ask about the time he and i were parachuted into yugoslavia to join a guerrilla band--in the war against the nazis.
i saw your father fight major siegfried von konigswald, the beast of yugoslavia, hand to hand.
hid by day--fought by night. at sunset one day, your father and i, peering through field glasses, saw a black mercedes draw up to a village inn. it was escorted by two motorcyclists and an armored car. out of the mercedes stepped one of the most hateful men in all of history--the beast of yugoslavia.
we blacked our hands and faces. at midnight we crept out of the forest and into the village. the name of the village was mhravitch. remember that name!
we came up behind a sentry, and your father slit his throat before he could utter a sound.
don't care for cold steel? a knife is worse than a bullet?
the story gets hairier. should i stop?
we caught another kraut alone in a back lane. your father choked him to death with a length of piano wire. your father was quite a virtuoso with piano wire. that's nicer than a knife, isn't it--as long as you don't look at the face afterwards. the face turns a curious shade of avocado. i must ask the doctor why that is. at any rate, we stole into the back of the inn, and, with the permission of the management, we poisoned the wine of six krauts who were carousing there.
we carried cyanide capsules. we were supposed to swallow them in case we were captured. it was your father's opinion that the krauts needed them more than we did at the time.
the beast was upstairs, and he came running downstairs, for his men were making loud farewells and last wills and testaments--editorializing about the hospitality they had received. and your father said to him in perfect german, which he had learned in the spanish civil war, "major, something tragic seems to have happened to your bodyguard. i am harold ryan, of the united states of america. you, i believe, are the beast of yugoslavia."
mhravitch. remember that name.
the name will live forever. it was there that harold ryan slew the beast of yugoslavia. mhravitch.
it's rather a disappointment these days. it isn't there any more.
the germans shot everybody who lived there, then leveled it, plowed it, planted turnips and cabbages in the fertile ground. they wished revenge for the slaying of the beast of yugoslavia. to their twisted way of thinking, your father had butchered an eagle scout. play lots of contact sports?
you're supposed to get hurt!
does it bother you to have your mother engaged to a man like that?
he seems to think they are. he told me that were.
you're a very good boy to respond that way.
i'd like to use the sanitary facilities, if i may.
how do you do, mrs. ryan? i'd heard you were beautiful, and so you are. am i intruding here?
i couldn't help overhearing that you were about to get married again.
yes, wife, it is. come here, boy. your father is home.
wife, wife, wife.
wife, wife, wife.
what's the matter?
like hugging a lamp post.
you were well adjusted to my being dead?
what sort of time period do you have in mind? half an hour? an hour?
disease?
this reunion isn't what i imagined it would be.
seemed the most honest way to begin life together again--natural, unrehearsed.
you feel that you're behaving as a woman should?
i came back.
how was the emergency, doctor? profitable, i hope.
tough luck. you'll have to split the fee.
she's crying because she's so happy.
what next? you leave promptly, of course. there is no question as to whose home this is--
whose son this is, whose wife that is. a fianc is the most ridiculous appurtenance this household could have at this time. good night.
penelope! god damn it! penelope!
wants to fix up her makeup, no doubt.
alive and hale. he's throwing a little surprise party for his own family. is your mother often this unstable? penelope!
why don't you go to bed--son.
tomorrow's another day.
can't it keep till morning?
that's nice. you thank her for me. go to bed and get lots of sleep, and then you thank her in the morning.
penelope!
penelope!
will you go to bed?
scat!
penelope--darling--can you hear me? wife--you know what kept me alive all these fevered, swampy, nightmare years? your heavenly face, penelope, my wife--shimmering before me, coaxing me up from my knees, begging me to stagger one step closer to home. has love ever reached so far? has love ever overcome more hardships than mine? has love ever asked more manliness of a man, more womanliness of a woman? has ever a man done more for a woman's reward?
end of act one.
damn.
bluh.
what's that all about?
your old beau?
i don't want that chancre mechanic in here.
we all are.
when i'm dead-- or fucking.
i was, i was. it never lasts long.
the indians call it "zamba- keetya"--the little cloudburst.
what a brilliant diagnosis!
nothing would please me more.
i know malaria. malaria isn't caused by the bites of bats.
colonel harper and i once shared a treetop with a family of bats. there was a flash flood. there were piranha fish in the water. that's how colonel harper lost his little toe.
chills, fevers, sweats. you can describe it and name it after yourself: "the woodly galloping crud."
you can also describe its cure. i'm eating its cure.
pacqualinincheewa root.
pacqualinincheewa root. means "cougar fang." cures anything but a yellow streak down the back.
congratulations. by crossing twenty-eight feet of cockroach- infested carpet, you've become the third white man ever to hear of it.
hundreds.
have some.
wasn't that sweet of me?
we have, have we?
everything about you is the editorial we. take that away from you, and you'd disappear.
i could carve a better man out of a banana!
you and your damned bedside manner and your damned little black bag full of miracles. you know who filled that bag for you? not alice-sit-by-the-fires like yourself. men with guts filled it, by god--men with guts enough to pay the price for miracles--suffering, ingratitude, loneliness, death--
i can just hear the editorial wee- wee-weeing when looseleaf and i start flying in pacqualinincheewa root. i can hear the alice-sit-by- the-fires now: "we discovered it in the amazon rain forest. now we cure you with it. now we lower our eyes with becoming modesty as we receive heartfelt thanks."
oh, bless you, doctor, bless you-- oh healer, oh protector, oh giver of life.
he thought he could take my place. it is now my privilege to give an unambiguous account of why i don't think he's man enough to do that.
you were wrong, you quack!
say hello to your mother.
what for?
now that's what i call fun.
you'll get so you enjoy twitting weaklings again. you used to eat it up.
we were one hell of a pair--and we'll be one again. what we need is a honeymoon. let's start right now.
i had a trip. we'll honeymoon here. go out and play.
your mother and i do not wish to be disturbed for three full hours.
buy yourself breakfast. there we go.
the smallest thing i've got.
make it fast.
honeymoon! honeymoon! say it: honeymoon!
you used to like it stark!
i'm not going to strike you. i am going to be as gentle as pie--as lemon meringue pie. you mustn't run away now. this is your loving husband approaching. i'm your husband. society approves!
good! you held your ground.
now--turn around, if you would.
i'm not about to introduce to you a jungle novelty. what i have in mind is massage--a perfectly decent massage. turn around, turn around.
i'm going to touch your shoulders very gently now. you mustn't scream. so tense, so tense.
you're thinking with your brain instead of your body. that's why you're so tense! forget norbert. relax. it's body time.
we all do. but now it's body time. relax. ideally, the body of a woman should feel like a hot water bottle filled with devonshire cream. you feel like a paper bag crammed with curtain rods. think of your muscles one by one. let them go slack. relax. let the brain go blank. relax. that's the idea-- that's my girl. now the small of the back. let those knots over those kidneys unsnarl.
couldn't you have vanished quietly out the back door?
leave a tip.
ram it up your ass!
i do beg your pardon. those words were illy chosen. there is tension in all of us here. something you must both understand, however, is that the head of this household is home, and he is harold ryan, and people do what he says when he says it. that's the way this particular clock is constructed.
sometimes even i hate that thing.
go home!
you're right! we'll take a trip. a trip is what we'll take. i don't want to talk about motorcycles. i don't want to talk about tits. go home!
and how were things?
otherwise, how are things?
could have happened to anybody.
how about breakfast, wife?
scrambled eggs, kippered herring, fried potatoes--and a whole onion. i want to eat the onion like an apple. do you understand?
and lots of orange juice--oceans of orange juice.
all right--bring me a side order of mrs. wheeler. oh, hell--sit down, colonel. penelope will bring you some chow.
which one?
she's up in heaven now. she didn't hear. she is experiencing nothing but pure happiness. there's nothing nicer than that. chow! harold ryan wants chow!
honeymoon temporarily canceled. the boy should still go out and exercise. i have the impression he never gets any exercise. he simply bloats himself with fig newtons and bakes his brains over steam radiators.
then let me see him go out and get some exercise. right now!
beat the shit out of someone who hates you.
chow, chow, chow! god damn it-- nutriment!
you're a woman, aren't you?
then we have a cook.
cook, by god! cook! you're the nigger now.
don't lecture me on race relations. i don't have a molecule of prejudice. i've been in battle with every kind of man there is. i've been in bed with every kind of woman there is--from a laplander to a tierra del fuegian. if i'd ever been to the south pole, there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who looked like me. cook!
people now have dignity when frying eggs?
then go now--and fry with dignity-- sunnyside up.
the educational process.
she was about to get married again. she locked me out of the bedroom last night.
what's funny about that?
i should have torn that door off its hinges. should have scrogged her ears off. should have broken the bed. what do you want? well?
i could eat a raw baby crocodile. the way to get your wife back is in bed. do such a job on her that she'll be lucky if she can crawl around on all fours. we're starving. do you mind?
she had two lovers, by the way.
one of them is the doctor, whose weapons are compassion, unselfishness, peacefulness-- maudlin concern.
he and his love are like a retiarius. do you know what a retiarius is?
how do you know that?
when?
oh. i'd forgotten.
really?
sorry.
let me guess--breakfast is served?
what then?
that's what you're supposed to say.
you don't know you want. that's the way god built you!
it couldn't!
fish can't feel.
such as?.
tell me about its sexual roots.
i like the truth. i wouldn't be alive today if i weren't one of the biggest fans truth ever had.
go on.
you learned this in some college course?
the doctor.
and what is his most cherished possession?
and he keeps it in his apartment?
and no one's there now?
that's too bad. i would rather have him at home--to see what i'm going to do.
he did his best to destroy my most precious possession, which is the high opinion women have of me. i'm now going to even that score. i'm going to break in his door and i'm going to smash his violin.
why not?
goodbye.
of course! not only go to it but go to it in full uniform! rent a uniform!
wear your uniform and every decoration, and let them despise you, if they dare.
when i was a naive young recruit in spain, i used to wonder why soldiers bayoneted oil paintings, shot the noses off of statues and defecated into grand pianos. i now understand: it was to teach civilians the deepest sort of respect for men in uniform-- uncontrollable fear. to our women.
the world is teeming with women-- ours to enjoy.
this could be my next wife.
how are you, honeybunch?
the posies are for her?
you've come to the right man.
i forget mine for years on end.
it's what i've dreamed of all my life, looseleaf! to have a grown man realize who i was--and faint! end of act two.
it helped more than you know. down deep, people were deeply affected.
our pleasure.
for seven and a half of those years we were heavily drugged--or we would have been home long before now, believe me. we were saved from starvation by the lupi-loopo indians, who fed us a strange blue soup.
it sapped our will--made us peaceful and unenterprising. it was a form of chemical castration. we became two more sleepy indians.
he's a man. tell him you're a man.
we've got to do something to make this boy's voice change. i wonder if we couldn't get bull balls somewhere, and fry 'em up. still miss your mother?
you're free to go to her, if you want. if you'd rather be a woman and run with the women, just say the word.
i'd rather go to viet nam.
what you say is, "pass the fucking catsup."
of course you'll go! you're going to fly the helicopter.
you're so low! look at that beautiful red meat. you haven't touched it.
all the more reason to go to africa.
you know her for what she is now-- garbage.
she was always a rotten wife! she was against everything manly you ever wanted to do. he was the most daring test pilot in the country at one time, and his wife made him quit. she made him become a life insurance salesman instead.
insurance!
get used to it. back door, paul.
it's possible, of course, that you'll die in africa.
selling vacuum cleaners isn't the best preparation you could have.
that can be arranged.
who was it?
shut up, you ninny! you were never to come here again-- for any reason whatsoever!
sneaking in the back door.
your clothes are at the city dump by now. perhaps you can get a map from the department of sanitation.
if he wants to go.
he'd never seen a corpse. he's seen a dozen now.
it's a big and busy funeral home.
it isn't a matter of liking. it's a matter of getting used to death-- as a perfectly natural thing. would you mind leaving? no woman ever walks out on harold ryan, and then comes back--for anything.
more nerve than the doctor, i must admit. he hasn't been home for two days. has he suddenly lost interest in sleep and color television--and the violin?
i'm dying to hear of his reaction. the thrill of smashing something isn't in the smashing, but in the owner's reactions.
about a broomstick and a cigar box--and the attenuated intestines of an alley cat.
he feels awful loss--which was precisely my intention.
hope.
do you hope with all your heart that someone will be using this vacuum cleaner two hundred years from now?
fifty years?
i'm interested in long-term expectations.
things. oh--you silly people and your things. things, things, things.
things.
never mind the condition of your body and your spirit! look after your things, your things!
go live in a safe-deposit box--with your things.
what's this?
in what way, pray tell?
tit for tat--as simple as that.
you did?
maybe it's time you got out.
you.
you're an imbecile.
everybody thinks that.
the one direct, decisive, intelligent act of your life!
if what?
they were enemies. we were at war.
goodbye, looseleaf.
what?
for what?
do you really think that harold ryan would go to africa with a vacuum cleaner salesman?
to make an ass of yourself.
we're ahead of schedule, that's all. you're finding out here what you would have found out in africa-- that you are a rabbit, born to be eaten alive.
it would have been fun to see you drop your rifle and run the first time an elephant charged us.
you're hollow, like a woman.
he can shoot! he can hold his ground! he can attack! you're in your proper profession right now-- sucking up dirt for frumpish housewives, closet drunkards every one.
look how you're acting now! this is a moment of truth, and you're almost crying. slug me!
out! out!
out!
thank god!
well--what have we here? a family.
goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
money? there's plenty of that. mildred got the brewery. you'll probably get the baseball team.
testimonials of that sort are--are beyond my range. i don't do them well. that's a failing, i know.
see how you've upset him. he was so merry and hale before you came home.
he'll play with his rifle, i expect. that will cheer him up.
i bought him a twenty-two yesterday--on the way home from hamburger heaven. and where is the good doctor? have you two feathered a love nest somewhere?
last i heard, his mother was going alone.
and you, a supposedly healthy woman, do not detest him for his cowardice?
what kind of a country has this become? the men wear beads and refuse to fight--and the woman adore them. america's days of greatness are over. it has drunk the blue soup.
an indian narcotic we were forced to drink. it put us in a haze--a honey-colored haze which was lavender around the edge. we laughed, we sang, we snoozed. when a bird called, we answered back. every living thing was our brother or our sister, we thought. looseleaf stepped on a cockroach six inches long, and we cried. we had a funeral that went on for five days--for the cockroach! i sang "oh promise me." can you imagine? where the hell did i ever learn the words to "oh promise me"? looseleaf delivered a lecture on maintenance procedures for the hydraulic system of a b-36. all the time we were drinking more blue soup, more blue soup! never stopped drinking blue soup. blue soup all the time. we'd go out after food in that honey-colored haze, and everything that was edible had a penumbra of lavender.
beautiful, you say? it wasn't life, it wasn't death--it wasn't anything! beautiful? seven years gone-- like that, like that! seven years of silliness and random dreams! seven years of nothingness, when there could have been so much!
action! interaction! give and take! challenge and response!
what's this?
what's this?
that's a rifle you have?
of course it is. is it loaded?
open the bolt!
that's a cartridge, if i'm not mistaken. gunpowder, bullet, cartridge case, and fulminate of mercury percussion cap--all set to go.
pick up that cartridge and slip it back into the chamber--where it belongs.
welcome to manhood, you little sparrowfart! load that gun!
too late! it's man to man now. protecting your mother from me, are you? protect her!`
with an iron penis three feet long. load it, boy.
if he thinks he's man enough.
i'm teaching my son to be a man.
i plan to live one hundred years!
if that's the case--what's to prevent my killing myself?
what a handsome word.
if you've lived a good life, fought well--
may i continue with the rearing of my son? load that gun!
load it!
then speak, by god! can you fight with words?
get mad! tell me you don't like the way i treat your mother! tell me you wish i'd never come home!
everybody simply evaporates! there are guest issues to be fought out here--or to be argued, at least. the enemy, the champion of all who oppose me, is in east st. louis with his mother and his aunt! i have so far done battle with a woman and a child and a violin.
i feel mocked, insulted, with no sort of satisfaction in prospect. we don't have to fight with steel. i can fight with words. i'm not an inarticulate ape, you know, who grabs a rock for want of a vocabulary. call him up in east st. louis, penelope. tell him to come here.
no.
and my son, the only son of harold ryan--he's going to grow up to be a vanisher, too?
you hope this, too?
i'm talking to you gently now.
there won't be anybody out there. that's the new style: nobody anywhere.
it died for your sins.
there's a certain amount of information there.
don't!
this is man to man.
what brought you back?
he's a champion after all.
stop!
there's going to be no bloodshed here. i know how he'll fight--the only way he can fight: with words. the truth. am i correct?
i can defeat him with anything from flavored toothpicks to siege howitzers. but he got it into his little head that he could come here and demolish harold ryan with words. the truth! correct?
what an hallucination! oh, dear, dear, dear, dear. oh dearie me.
you intend to crack my eardrums with your voice? will i bleed from my every orifice? who will clean up this awful mess?
there has to be a threat of some sort, nobility of some sort, glamour of some sort, sport of some sort. these elements are lacking.
oooooo. that hurt.
now who's being cruel?
we do survive, don't we? you're going to have to apologize, of course, for calling me a bastard. that's a matter of form--not allowing you or anybody to call me a bastard. no rush about that. just remember to apologize sometime soon.
yes--well--uh--that's another one of those statements which more or less automatically requires an apology. whenever you feel like it. it's sort of like turning off an alarm clock that's ringing loudly. your apology turns off the alarm.
ah! the lady is armed.
whoever has the gun, you see, gets to tell everybody else exactly what to do. it's the american way.
then you'd better fix your bayonet, because there aren't any bullets in the gun.
help your mother find the bullet.
load it for her.
cock it, too.
give it to her.
the national safety council would be appalled.
she's right, norbert--go home.
comical?
give me that goddamn thing! now get out of here, or i might kill you. who knows?
seventeen of them--eleven by accident. march! move! you, too!
of course he can go--if he'll just go down on his hands and knees for a moment--and promise me that he does not find me comical in the least degree.
and terror, if you don't mind.
goodbye! goodbye!
get the police! no time to lose!
you're in one hell of a jam. you realize that?
glands. you're supposed to be happy when you die. call me comical again.
i love you! have a cigar!
i'm to be left behind--in primordial ooze?
this is going to become very physical. are you prepared for that?
i'm an honorable clown?
you hope.
no quarter asked. no quarter given.
cut me open. find out.
with spittle?
lucretia borgia? something i drank or touched? you refused a cigar. that's it! potassium cyanide in the humidor! treacherous lover of peace!
poison.
i--i really must congratulate you. something is happening in there.
no.
i see.
don quixote.
something seems to have happened to my self-respect.
the new hero is you.
you're too modest.
was i ever of use?
here. finish the job.
you're making a mistake. obsolete old carnivores like me are most dangerous when wounded. you've wounded me.
we never quit fighting until we're dead.
i'm going to shoot you now.
my self-respect is gone--and my soldier's honor with it. it is now very easy for me to shoot an unarmed man.
like the saber-toothed tiger.
it won't hurt as much as the sting of a bumblebee. heaven is very much like paradise, they say. you'll like it there.
if you want to be found that way.
man, as man was meant to be--a vengeful ape who murders. he will soon be extinct. it's time, it's time.
i've enjoyed being man.
get up.
have it your way. we'd both be better off dead now.
can't do it.
crawl home.
it's trash now, like mine.
somewhere in this city. not here, not here. tell penelope i loved her--in my clownish way. and paul. tell him to be a healer, by all means.
use the sanitary facilities, if i may.
i'll put it in paul's room, where it belongs.
for what it's worth now, harold ryan, the clown, gives his sacred word.
i missed.
The end.