Excerpt from a short play by Ariella Van Luyn
Cast
Maria, a librarian
Joshua, a telemarketer
A corpse
SCENE: A Room
In the centre of the room is a telephone sitting on a table. Offstage, there is the sound of splashing and humming; someone is having a bath. The telephone rings shrilly. The humming stops. MARIA enters, wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown, a towel perched on her head. She answers the phone.
MARIA: Hello?
There is silence from the other end of the phone. MARIA rolls her eyes. Suddenly a woman screams, and then we hear a dull thud. There is the beep, beep, beep of the phone being hung up on the other end. MARIA looks shocked, holding the phone away from her ear and staring at the mouthpiece. She hangs up.
After a moment she shrugs her shoulders and begins to turn away. The phone rings again. MARIA jumps. She stares at it for a while before answering it.
MARIA: Hello?
We hear the voice, but can’t see who is speaking. (They are in a darkened section of the stage). It is a man’s voice, and belongs to JOSHUA.
JOSHUA: Hello there. I’m Joshua Mattison ringing on behalf of Access Marketing and PR. Can I ask you a few questions about travelling?
MARIA: Oh thank God, you’re a telemarketer.
JOSHUA: That’s not something I hear everyday.
MARIA laughs nervously.
MARIA: I just had this really strange call, that’s all. I thought I heard…but I can’t have.
JOSHUA: What’d you hear?
MARIA: It sounded like an accident. Someone was falling, banging into something, I don’t know. I heard a scream. It must have been a wrong number.
JOSHUA: Did you hear anything else?
MARIA: They hung up.
JOSHUA: Will you call anyone about it?
MARIA: Maybe it was joke.
JOSHUA: What else could it have been?
MARIA: You’re right. It’s probably just some bored kid. I bet they a kick out of it if I ring the police. Just want to hear the sirens.
JOSHUA: Yeah, I remember pranking the cops a few times. Never got caught though.
MARIA: I hope you don’t think I’m crazy. That scream sounded so real. I think I’m still a bit shocked. It’s been a long day.
JOSHUA: Don’t worry. It actually happens more than you think. People often talk to me because they’re lonely.
MARIA: (Laughs). I’m not lonely. I’ve got Xavier.
JOSHUA: Is Xavier your husband?
MARIA: Oh no, my cat.
JOSHUA: Oh right. (pause) Can I ask you a few questions for a survey my company is conducting about the habits of travellers?
MARIA: I don’t travel. I get sick if I’m on a moving vehicle for more than an hour or so.
JOSHUA: You know Horatio Nelson used to suffer from terrible seasickness. All his life, waging those battles on the seas, he’d constantly be violently ill. He defeated Napoleon, spewing his guts up. Would you ever consider travel?
MARIA: Only within a one hour radius of Brisbane.
JOSHUA: So you’re from Brisbane then?
MARIA: Yes.
JOSHUA: Can I ask which part?
MARIA: Is this part of the survey?
JOSHUA: Yes.
MARIA: I’m from Toowong.
JOSHUA: Really? Me too.
MARIA: What a coincidence.
JOSHUA: I know.
MARIA: We could walk past each other everyday and never know.
MARIA begins to dry her hair with the towel. She leans on the table, relaxing for the first time, settling in to the conversation.
MARIA: I went there the other day with this most gorgeous man. I meet him at work. But, to be honest with you, he just wanted S-E-X.
JOSHUA: Where do you work?
MARIA: Is that a question for the survey?
JOSHUA: I just want to get a sense of your demographic. How old are you?
MARIA examines the end of her hair, making sure it is dry.
MARIA: You know what Oscar Wilde said, never trust a lady who tells you her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.
JOSHUA: You seem to know your Wilde pretty well.
MARIA: That I do. I do a lot of reading. I work in the archives of the state library.
JOSHUA: Really? What’s that like?
MARIA: No one’s really asked me that before.
MARIA stops and thinks for a moment.
MARIA: A lot of the time I’m alone all day. There’s nothing between me and all those books. I mean, for example, today I came across a book about the paintings of J. M. Turner. A page fell open randomly, and it was a picture of a storm. The sea was churning; it was made up of all these dirty colours: grey and pale blue and brown. The sky was the same colours as the water, and tumbling around too, so you couldn’t tell where the sky stopped and the sea began. And it was all swirling around a white boat, trapped in the very middle of the vortex.
And then I read that the artist, Turner, tied himself to the mast of a ship to watch that storm, so that if he ever survived, he could paint it.
JOSHUA: Wow. And I think I see what you mean. When you’re alone with all the books, and no one else to talk to, it gets a bit overwhelming?
MARIA: Yeah. Something like that. In the archives, I feel, I don’t really know how to describe it, like all these things, all these words and facts, pressing into me, moving all over the place, scuttling. ‘Idiosyncratic’ staring at me from a dark corner; ‘syncopation’ beating like a heart; ‘clinch’ tightening around me; ‘divine’ lifting me up and carrying me away. I don’t need to travel, you see, when I can wander in books.
JOSHUA: I don’t even know what half those words mean.
MARIA: I’m not sure I do either.
They laugh. MARIA sits down on the table and looks at her nails.
JOSHUA: Yes, well, to get back to the survey, have you ever travelled before?
MARIA: Yes, once I went to the coast, and it rained and rained and rained. We never saw the sea because of all the mist.
JOSHUA: Are you telling me you’ve really never been anywhere else except Brisbane and the Coast?
MARIA: Yes. What’s wrong with that?
JOSHUA: Not even to see friends or family?
MARIA: My family all live here.
MARIA lies down on the floor and begins doing exercises.
JOSHUA: That’s truly amazing. I’m always travelling. I was from Perth originally—that’s where my family is—and then I moved to Sydney for a while. I spent a bit of time in Alice as well.
MARIA: Why do you feel the need to travel so much? Are you running away from something?
JOSHUA: I don’t know really. After I while I get itchy feet. And for work as well. I travelled a lot for work.
MARIA: What was your work?
JOSHUA: I was a painter.
MARIA: Not anymore?
JOSHUA: No.
MARIA: Why not?
JOSHUA: I had an accident.
MARIA: What happened?
JOSHUA: I was in a car crash. My hand, my painting hand, got horribly mangled. They had to amputate it.
MARIA stops doing her exercises and lies still on the floor, her attention arrested.
MARIA: Oh no. That’s awful.
JOSHUA: I would have been there with Turner, tying myself to the mast. But I can only watch now. I can’t express what I see, or what I feel.
MARIA: You know, Odysseus tied himself to a mast too, so he could hear the Sirens. He made all the other men in the boat plug their ears up so they could keep on rowing. I always thought that was unfair. They never got to hear the Siren’s singing. But the siren’s song, it drove Odysseys mad. He could never share it with anyone, because everyone else who had ever heard it was drowned. No one could understand him when he talked about it; they didn’t have anything to compare it with.
JOSHUA: Do you really think those sailors drowned? I always imagined them living on the rocks with the Sirens, having a fine old time.
MARIA: When the men were driven mad with the Siren’s singing they leapt from their ships and the Sirens pulled them under. The Sirens were beautiful, but fatal.
JOSHUA: Aren’t all women? Aren’t you all vaginas with teeth?
MARIA sits up, angry.
MARIA: No.
JOSHUA: But you are…
MARIA: (interrupting him). Now hang on, on what evidence are you basing this outrageous claim?
JOSHUA: On the evidence of every book ever written and every movie ever made.
MARIA: Only the ones made by men!
JOSHUA: Just listen for a moment.
MARIA looks exasperated.
MARIA: Look, I’m not swallowing any chauvinist bullshit. I’ll just hang up.
JOSHUA: No, no. Please, I didn’t mean to offend you. I love women, I really do. But that’s just the problem.
MARIA: What do you mean?
JOSHUA: Think about it. At the heart of every hero’s problem, there’s always a woman.
MARIA makes a sound as though she is going to protest. JOSHUA talks over top of her objections. After trying to unsuccessfully drown him out, she is silent.
JOSHUA: Whether she means to or not, the heroine always makes things inextricably complicated by loving the hero. When a man’s in love, he’s vulnerable. He does stupid, dumb things he would never think of doing ordinarily. Look at James Bond, at any superhero you care to name…
MARIA: (interrupts). That’s not the woman’s fault.
JOSHUA: Maybe not.
MARIA: And since when have the movies been like real life? You can’t base an argument on bloody James Bond.
JOSHUA: Ok, ok. It was a bad example. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. I don’t have the words to explain it. I think what I mean is that love is fatal.
MARIA: You mean like ‘each man kills the thing he loves?’ That’s Wilde again. I never really understood what that meant.
JOSHUA: Maybe I mean that to be in a relationship is to die slowly, to lose yourself piece by piece. You’re not the same person when you fall in love.
MARIA: Only if you’re in a relationship that’s rotten.
JOSHUA: Have you ever been in one that doesn’t end up stinking after a while?
MARIA: That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
JOSHUA: My parents were married for fifty years. When Dad died, my Mum became a different person.
MARIA: So? Everybody changes, all the time. We can’t help but be shaped by our experiences. From one moment to the next, we’re different people.
JOSHUA: Doesn’t that scare you?
MARIA: Why should it? I would hate to be the same forever. I’d get bored.
JOSHUA: What if you knew something about yourself that would never change?
MARIA: Like what?
JOSHUA: Like you’d done something inescapable.
MARIA: I don’t understand.
JOSHUA: Can I ask you another question?
MARIA: I suppose so.
JOSHUA: What do you think happens to you when you die?
MARIA: We’re not doing the survey anymore are we? That’s not a question you’re supposed to ask.
JOSHUA: No. No, it’s not on the survey. Do you still want to talk? I’d understand if you hung up.
MARIA: I want to keep talking. You got me out of the bath, after all.
JOSHUA: Can I ask you your name?
MARIA: Maria. What did you say yours was again?
JOSHUA: Joshua.
MARIA: Uh-huh.
JOSHUA: I used to be proud of it when I was younger, because my mother told me it was another name for God.
MARIA: You’re not proud anymore?
JOSHUA: No. I couldn’t bear to be responsible for this, this whole fucked up planet. I don’t want to be associated with a Being who created it.
MARIA: You think He does exist then?
JOSHUA: I don’t know. I catch myself praying sometimes, believing almost despite myself that there is someone out there controlling us. Sometimes it’s the only explanation that makes sense. Do you believe in God?
MARIA: No. I physically can not. In a way, I envy people who can. I read once that humans have a part of their brain hardwired for religion, and those who have it are more happy than those that don’t.
JOSHUA: Money’s a religion now.
MARIA: Ah, but, you know, people who win the lottery are more likely to suffer from depression than your average middle class citizen.
JOSHUA: That just proves it then.
MARIA: Proves what?
JOSHUA: Money is our purpose. When we have more than enough money we have no purpose, no direction. We’re empty.
MARIA: I don’t think that’s that reason.
JOSHUA: No? Why do you think people get depressed when they win a million bucks?
MARIA: I don’t know. Maybe their friends started treating them differently. Maybe they felt guilty. Maybe they had been told all their lives that money would make them happy and suddenly when they got it, after the first wild euphoria, and the fifth house and tenth car and the third plasma screen TV they felt exactly the same as they had felt when they were poor. And they start to worry that if money couldn’t make them happy then maybe nothing could.
JOSHUA: Pills can make you happy.
MARIA: Pills just make you numb.
JOSHUA: My arms have started tingling.
MARIA: Arms? I thought you said you lost one in a car crash?
JOSHUA: I did. I did. But sometimes it starts tingling, and I can feel it. You know how after you’ve gone on a roller coaster, when you get off, even though your eyes are telling you your feet are safely on the ground, you can still feel yourself moving? It’s like that. I can feel the hand I lost moving.
MARIA: I don’t go on roller coasters.
JOSHUA; Don’t you?
MARIA: I get sick.
JOSHUA: Use your imagination.
MARIA: Ok.
JOSHUA: Imagine that you had your leg cut off, that you knew it was gone, but at night you dreamt you were walking. Not just walking, climbing mountains, dancing, ice skating. I can feel my hand painting the most beautiful pictures. My best work.
MARIA: I read something about that. In a book. Except the other way around. Instead of people imagining they had phantom limbs, they couldn’t recognise their own. A man fell out of bed, and when the doctor asked him why, he said, it’s so strange, I just found myself on the floor. And what happened before that? the doctor asked. Well, said the patient, these bloody nurses played a practical joke—in pretty poor taste—they put a leg, I guess belonging to some poor amputee they’d got out of the freezer. And they put it in my bed! he said. When he tried to throw it out he fell down with it. Because it was his leg! He’d thrown himself out of bed. He didn’t recognise his own leg. How bizarre.
JOSHUA: Sometimes I don’t recognise myself. You know if I’m in a shop or a café and I don’t expect a mirror to be there. I catch myself looking at a person, thinking who’s that? Who’s there? Why are they familiar? And then I see it’s me.
MARIA: I’d like to take down all the mirrors in my house, but I can’t. I can’t go out without looking at myself.
To be continued…
