i am dr. norbert woodly--a physician, a healer. i find it disgusting and frightening that a killer should be a respected member of society. gentleness must replace violence everywhere, or we are doomed.
peace!
peace, everybody--paul, penelope.
you're going out?
take plenty of cigars.
i must take you to an emergency ward sometime--on a saturday night. that's also fun. i came to see selma, as a matter of fact.
oh?
i'm glad somebody finally cried. every time i come in here and see all this unnecessary death, i want to cry. i don't cry, of course. not manly, you know. did she try antihistamines?
throw out all this junk. burn it! this room crawls with tropical disease.
a monument to a man who thought that what the world needed most was more rhinoceros meat.
i apologize. but you didn't know him, and neither did i. how's your asthma?
how's the fungus around your thumbnail?
it's jungle rot! this room is making everybody sick! this is your family doctor speaking now. here--i brought you something else to hang on your wall, for the sake of variety.
no doubt paul thinks it stinks.
i hate that thing.
i'm glad you brought your vacuum cleaner.
that maid just quit. the place is a mess. you can start in the master bedroom.
not true.
that's not true either--or needn't be, unless we make it true.
which we do. but we can stop doing that.
we simply stop doing that--dropping things on each other, eating each other alive.
the late mrs. harold ryan.
it's the planet that's in ghastly trouble now and all our brothers and sisters thereon.
chinese maniacs and russian maniacs and american maniacs and french maniacs and british maniacs have turned this lovely, moist, nourishing blue-green ball into a doomsday device. let a radar set and a computer mistake a hawk or a meteor for a missile, and that's the end of mankind.
maybe it's supposed to end now. maybe god wouldn't have it any other way.
maybe god has let everybody who ever lived be reborn--so he or she can see how it ends. even pithecanthropus erectus and australopithecus and sinanthropus pekensis and the neanderthalers are back on earth--to see how it ends. they're all on times square--making change for peepshows. or recruiting marines.
he died of a massive rupture.
you're preparing him for a career in the slaughterhouses of dubuque? take care of your body, yes! but don't become a bender of horseshoes and railroad spikes. don't become obsessed by your musculature. any one of these poor, dead animals here was a thousand times the athlete you can ever hope to be. their magic was in their muscles. your magic is in your brains!
oh no! wear a coat of cotton--wear a coat of wool.
wear a coat of domestic mink. for the love of god, though, penelope, don't lightheartedly advertise that the last of the jaguars died for you.
it's good. let him go.
don't! let him have all the privacy he wants. let him grieve, let him rage. there has never been a funeral for his father.
tonight's the night.
what a beautiful demonstration this is of the utter necessity of rites of passage.
minors aren't allowed at fights.
this is very good for us.
the wilder paul is tonight, the calmer he'll be tomorrow.
after this explosion, i think, he'll be able to accept the fact that his mother is going to marry again.
we've got to dump shuttle. he brings his vacuum cleaner on dates?
the what?
what kind of a life is that?
if you warned him against it as much as you say, it's almost a certainty.
i wish paul luck.
i'd be dead by now if that were the case.
every night, penelope, for the past two years, i've made it a point to walk through the park at midnight.
to show myself how brave i am. the issue's in doubt, you know--since i'm always for peace--
me, too. i know something not even the police know--what's in the park at midnight. nothing. or, when i'm in there, there's me in there. fear and nobody and me.
they didn't murder me.
he can make the sound of human footsteps--which is a terrifying sound.
if he is in the park, luck is all that can save him now, and there's plenty of that.
no. but he's going to be. if he is in the park and he comes out safely on the other side, i can say to him, "you and i are the only men with balls enough to walk through the park at midnight." on that we can build.
that's been said before.
i hate that thing.
"happy birthday, wanda june!"
ooops.
can i--uh--help you gentlemen?
you startled me.
i thought you might be burglars-- but you're not, i hope.
you do?
it's always locked.
you're--you're old friends of harold ryan?
he's dead, you know.
hello? oh--hello, mother.
who?.  did she say how far apart the pains were?.  when was that?.  oh dear.
call her back--tell her to head for the hospital. tell the hospital to expect her. i'll leave right now.
look--i'm sorry--i have to go.
look--this isn't my apartment, and there isn't anybody else here. mrs. ryan won't be home for a while.
i'm a neighbor. i have the apartment across the hall. i have to go to the hospital now. an emergency.
i mean--i can't leave you here. you'll have to go. i'll tell mrs. ryan you were here. you can come back later.
she's fine. please--
will you please go? an emergency!
yes! yes! the boy! one boy!
neighbor! doctor! i live across the hall.
yes! please! you've got to get out right now!
and her fianc!
i've got to run!
i've literally got to run!
safe and sound, i see. oh--you came back.
we met here earlier this evening.
a policeman delivered the baby in a taxicab.
are--are you crying, penelope?
i didn't get his name. a friend of your father?
he isn't?
no!
i feel the same way. what next?
none.
good night.
ah! you're ambulatory!
well now--what seems to be the trouble with the patient today? a touch of malaria, perhaps?
you've been bitten by bats?
you have chills?
i was going to ask.
would you say that again?
i've never heard of it.
are you've seen it work cures?
thank you. thank you very much.
more and more we find ourselves laying aside false pride and looking into the pharmacopoeias of primitive people. curare, ephedrine--we've found some amazing things.
that's an editorial we, of course. i haven't turned up anything personally.
good lord.
i thought she was a widow.
i'm taking her to the airport a few minutes from now. she's going to east st. louis--to visit an aunt.
thanks.
i'm going to have to report you to the department of health.
quarantine, possibly. you may be suffering from a loathsome disease which the american people could do without. goodbye.
it's really that bad?
oh--look at the poor, crucified violin, would you?
this little corpse is intended as a lesson?
lest we forget how cruel you are.
i agree.
it's healer to killer. is that the same thing?
the same hairy, humorless old gods who move you from hither to yon. "honor, " if you like.
of the corpses and cripples you create for our instruction--when all we can learn from them is this: how cruel you are.
yes.
correct.
you haven't heard me yet.
we'll find out now, won't we?
you're a filthy, rotten bastard.
you're old--so old.
a living fossil! like the cockroaches and the horseshoe crabs.
you're a son of a bitch.
everything's going to be beautiful.
i haven't said all i have to say.
i haven't told you, harold, how comical i think you are.
hands and knees, you say?
goodbye.
i'm high as a kite.
you're a clown. you're a clown who kills--but you're a clown.
evolution has made you a clown-- with a cigar. simple butchers like you are obsolete!
if you're at home in the ooze, and nowhere else.
you're not such a creature of the ooze that you'd hurt an unarmed man.
king arthur.
in any event, i will not beg for mercy.
don't you laugh even inwardly at the heroic balderdash you spew?
i've struck my blow.
i've poisoned you.
i put a poisoned thought in your head. even now that poison is seeping into every lobe of your mind. it's saying, "obsolete, obsolete, obsolete," and, "clown, clown, clown."
you have a very good mind, or i wouldn't have come back. that mind is now asking itself, cleverly and fairly, "is harold ryan really a clown?" and the answer is, "yes."
you can never take yourself seriously again! look at all the creatures you've protected us from! did you shoot them on the elevator, as they were on their way up here to eat us alive?
the magic root you gave me--i had it analyzed. it was discovered by a harvard botanist in 1893! he explored your famous jungle for five years, armed with nothing but kindness, a talent for languages, and a pocketknife.
you aren't going to hurt me. you aren't going to hurt anybody any more. any violent gesture will seem ridiculous--to yourself!
my violin is avenged!
and the hell with it. it was so tragically irrelevant, so preposterously misinformed.
i hate crowds, and i have no charisma--
but the new hero will be a man of science and of peace--like me. he'll disarm you, of course. no more guns, no more guns.
never. for when you began to kill for the fun of it, you became the chief source of agony of mankind.
i'm utterly satisfied.
more clowning! don't you see?
you'd be killing a friend. don't you know how much i like you?
no!
new dignity can be yours--as a merciful man. you can change!
oh god--you're really going to kill me.
can i beg for mercy--on my knees?
what is this thing that kills me?
don't shoot.
no. no.
no.
thank god.
thank you--for my life.
new lives begin!
what are you going to do?
leave the rifle here.
give me your word of honor that that's all you're going to do.
harold?
harold?