6. An home
It is a squat. The air is warm and clutched close to the audience’s cheeks. Baron Sackpig enters.
BARON: If you’ve ever lived in swerves or boxes you’ll know that
London swings
New York’s a grid
On one side of the stage, London rears up on its hind legs, clanging Big Ben and unleashing flocks of pigeons and ravens from Trafalgar and the Tower.
On the other side of the stage, New York sizzles through the wall, loaded with taxi drivers and mosquito repellant and firemen.
London and New York charge at Baron Sackpig like the bad guys in a Power Rangers episode.
LONDON: London swings!
NEW YORK: New York’s a grid!
They fight. The Baron battles them away with his claymore and a butterfly knife. The combatents pause for breath, regaining their strength.
BARON: Bombay’s a grid.
Delhi swings.
From up and downstage, Bombay and Delhi burst into action. A swinging jazz number pops into life, possibly the Royal Crown Revue’s “Hey Pachuco”. All four cities fight Baron Sackpig. He holds them all off. Whenever New York gets too close the music turns into a shitty techno remix.
BARON: Bombay’s a grid
Delhi swings.
One by one the Baron kills the cities. Delhi is last.
BARON: The sun doesn’t rise here in the morning. It just snaps into being at midday directly overhead and it doesn’t move for twelve hours until at midnight it disappears.
DELHI: Delhi swings!
BARON: I never saw a shadow move in
DELHI: Delhi swings!
BARON: Bombay’s a grid. The water out there is flat all the way to the horizon. They cut yellow stone out of the mountain.
The Baron hugs Delhi to him, kisses it gently on the cheek and slits its throat.
BARON: They cut the mountain into a huge maze with high yellow walls and at night they burned the forests that used to grow on it.
The Baron plucks out two of Delhi’s teeth and sprinkles rolling tobacco around them in a circle. He lights the little bushy circle on fire. The two teeth are Martha and Bones. They are talking but they can’t make sense of each other.
MARTHA: I’m Martha Waits. I belong in bus stops
BONES: Circles
MARTHA: Leaves dropping on me
BONES: Ancient floods
MARTHA: Looking at the bum of a cyclist in lycra pants
BONES: Huge crab plugging up the hole in the world
MARTHA: Morning fog and frost in the grass
BONES: so the water floods and makes the ocean
MARTHA: Bus driver staring at my chest
BARON: One day as they were returning from the garden they found a rare medicinal plant.
BONES: One of the gods shot an arrow through the bottom of the clouds
MARTHA: These things make me feel like I belong
BONES: And when she looked through the hole she saw the earth underneath the heavens
MARTHA: So I belong to these things
BARON: When your father-in-law calls you, do not go to him. He plans to kill you, and make you into medicine!
BONES: So she made a rope of birds’ feathers and climbed down through the hole
MARTHA: I know you can take me back to these places
BARON: What have I done that you should make medicine of me?
MARTHA: If I can make you understand what I want then you’ll take me back to the things that I belong to
BONES: When she reached the bottom of the sky she stood waiting for the bus
MARTHA: You can make this place into my place
BONES: She stood waiting with leaves in her hair
MARTHA: If you can understand
BONES: Stood waiting for Bones
MARTHA: That’s what I want. That’s what I want. It’s what I want.
BONES: “We’re not going to make medicine of you,” he cried. “There is medficine in the pot!”
Silence. All three stand staring at each other.
BARON: Who’s your girlfriend, Bones?
BONES: Shut up, dude.
MARTHA: Who’s this guy, Bones?
BONES: He’s just this guy.
BARON: Are your friends not good enough for you now, man?
BONES: Hey shut up, bro, you’re embarrassing me.
BARON: You’ve changed, Bones. Something happened to you.
MARTHA: Shut up shut up shut up! This is not fucking high school!
Silence. All three stand staring at each other.
BARON: Who’s your girlfriend, Bones?
MARTHA: Shut up!
BARON: Sorry. Forgot.
Silence. Hadley and Finig sit in the fridge.
FINIG: Something’s stuck.
HADLEY: Bones’s got to get kidnapped.
FINIG: I don’t want that to happen.
HADLEY: Why not?
FINIG: It’s too easy.
HADLEY: Shall we just finish the play now, then? Twenty five minutes in, Martha’s stranded deep in a strange world with only Bones as her guide, pursued by vicious figments of her imagination, and she’s just getting past the denial stage and twigging that Bones is her way out – in fact this whole play is ready to jack up to the next level. It’s time to apply the squeeze and yank up the pressure, and you’re thinking maybe it’s time to finish up?
FINIG: Not exactly.
HADLEY: No, I think it’s a great idea. Hey, the quicker we get them out of the theatre, the more time they’ll have to sit in the foyer drinking coffee. If we’re lucky, they’ll get let out just in time to get trampled to death by the interval crowd for G-String’s Jesus Christ Superstar in the main theatre. The reason Bones gets kidnapped is because he and Martha need to be separated.
FINIG: I know. I was thinking, though, what if the separation comes from within Bones?
HADLEY: You what?
FINIG: It’s not an external thing of Bones being kidnapped by strange forces – it’s Bones himself feels the stirring of affection for Martha and he runs away.
HADLEY: It doesn’t really follow when you consider how he’s spent the last five scenes doing everything he can to get close to her.
FINIG: Well, yeah, but it might add depth to his, sort of, level of depthness.
HADLEY: You know what else you could do? You could put a really heavy trance beat behind this whole play and add in a sample of a Rastafarian saying “A most curious dream in da HOOOOOUSE!’ at the beginning of the play.
FINIG: Can I just try this?
HADLEY: This could be the first radio play to be broadcast on KIX 106 FM Rock Of The Nineties.
FINIG: Just let me give it a shot.
MARTHA: Bones, you need to make this all make sense to me. I know you remember where you found me and I want you to make me that person again in that place.
BONES: Martha… I have to go now.
Pause.
MARTHA: Why?
BONES: Because I’m a complicated man. And now I need to go.
MARTHA: What did you bring me here for? You wanted something from me.
BONES: That’s right, and I… have levels of deepness that are very depthful.
FINIG: Grab him!
Finig and Hadley leap out of the fridge, grab Bones and tug him back into the fridge with them. After a couple of seconds Hadley runs back out of the fridge with a credit card. He slashes at the Baron’s head with the card until the Baron’s dandruff is in a neat line, then snorts it up. Holding his nose, he runs back into the fridge.
7 - An kitchen
