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(All of them giggle. Bud faucets David’s arm, motions for them to go. The three descend the boulder. Bud leads Sara off upstage. Earlier than she exits, Sara turns to take a look at David, who seems to be again. Then he’s alone once more within the close to darkness. He thinks a second, then continues downstage, the place Sara enters her kitchen with a tray of dishes from Christmas dinner. David dries dishes on the sink. Sara washes.)
SARA
I used to be afraid you would be listening to from the FBI. The second I learn his article. I am going to name and make an appointment.
DAVID
No. Allow them to name me.
SARA
They may, David. They don’t seem to be going to neglect about it. Why piss them off? It isn’t like there is a vital motion on the market that may rally round you.
DAVID
No matter time I can purchase — give Smith an opportunity to seek out him.
SARA
After which what? What if he’s out to screw you? You suppose you are going to speak to him and persuade him of something? When did that ever occur? Cease residing in a previous that by no means existed.
DAVID
Speaking to him stands out as the solely probability I’ve. The primary notice, I had no concept what he was as much as. Now with that newspaper crap and this cellphone message — appears he thinks I’ve gone astray. Possibly he feels betrayed.
(beat, facetious)
Why would he suppose that?
SARA
You did not betray him, David.
DAVID
How do you suppose I am going to look in shackles? Final prisoner of the lengthy forgotten revolution. Sara Flannery for the protection, your honor?
SARA
Do not joke about it.
(beat)
What in regards to the ethics committee? How is that wanting?
DAVID
Would possibly rely on what he says subsequent. Possibly not. I suppose my ethics are questionable, aren’t they?
SARA
You are a good man, David.
(beat)
Not a sterling husband, however —
DAVID
Oh, thanks, and I suppose that testimony will save my ass, too.
(David leans to look out of the kitchen, stares. Sara watches.)
SARA
I like her. She’s good, fairly —
DAVID
Younger.
SARA
I believed that was what you needed?
(David stares at her.)
SARA
(persevering with)
I mentioned one thing unfaithful?
DAVID
You’ve got grow to be slightly imply since we divorced.
SARA
No, David. Simply direct.
DAVID
I am an expertise to her.
SARA
You actually are nonetheless such an fool.
DAVID
What? You’ve got spent one night together with her and all of the sudden you realize her coronary heart?
SARA
I do know love after I see it. That is one thing you have all the time had slightly problem with.
(beat)
She idolizes you.
(a glance from David)
How may she not? You are an imposing father determine. But one way or the other she desires to nurture you, too. In her eyes, you are able to do no incorrect, but she forgives your each mistake. Am I shut?
DAVID
How did you ever put up with me?
SARA
Ah, expensive coronary heart, I did not.
(Sara transfers espresso and dessert onto a tray.)
SARA
(persevering with)
How are you about Hannah and her buddy?
DAVID
Her buddy? That is a quaint time period. We have been calling her Toni all night time lengthy.
SARA
(shocked at herself)
I suppose I could be quaint at instances. Have to be within the blood.
DAVID
I am okay with it. How about you? You’ve got identified some time, I suppose.
SARA
Just a few months.
DAVID
Months?
SARA
You must speak together with your little one to obtain confidences from her, particularly of that sort. Speak. Not struggle.
DAVID
She could not have thought it might make a distinction.
SARA
There are sufficient individuals to whom it does not make a distinction. Nicely, not sufficient, however sufficient to present her options. That is not the only real foundation for confiding in somebody.
DAVID
(beat, considerate)
Inform me. When precisely did I flip into my father?
SARA
Whenever you weren’t wanting, darling. That is the way it occurs to all of us.
(choosing up the dessert tray)
Anyway, it is what we’re alleged to be about, proper?
DAVID
Sure, Sara, it is what we’re alleged to be about.
(Sara walks to the door of the kitchen, stops and appears into the lounge.)
SARA
What a gathering. My Jewish ex-husband and his barely post-pubescent WASP scholar lover. His adopted daughter, who was the illegitimate product of his ex-wife’s youthful romance along with his one-time finest buddy. And the daughter’s black, lesbian lover. All invited for the vacations by an Irish-Catholic scold.
(glancing again at David)
Merry Christmas, Ozzie.
(She exits.)
DAVID
Joyful Hanukkah, Harriet.
(Upstage Smith leads Charles into an previous cabin in Oregon’s Cascade mountains. David turns as Smith speaks.)
SMITH
I traced him again via resort and bus line information — individuals who remembered him. He went to Salt Lake fairly frequently on enterprise — some type of enterprise. Folks within the surrounding cities right here knew him by sight fairly properly. Nobody recollects seeing him within the final month or so. There isn’t any signal anybody else has lived right here since.
(Charles gazes about.)
SMITH
(persevering with)
It has been fairly properly cleaned out of something significant.
(Charles wanders over to a piece desk, seems to be at some scraps.)
SMITH
(persevering with)
Apart from that.
(David walks over, watches Charles deal with the scraps, which imply nothing to David.)
SMITH
(persevering with, explaining to David)
Copper wire. Insulation tubing. That is an digital chip.
(to Charles)
That bomb in Asheville final month — the man who calls himself “Okay-9”? — was postmarked Salt Lake Metropolis.
(Charles nods.)
DAVID
You do not suppose —
CHARLES
(to Smith)
I need you to maintain me knowledgeable.
DAVID
Maintain you knowledgeable? As I recall you thought-about this no concern of yours.
CHARLES
You known as me to return with you, did not you? As I recall, you felt the necessity to remind me he is my son. It is my accountability.
DAVID
(to Smith)
You are working for me.
CHARLES
I can rent him, too. Away from you if I’ve to.
DAVID
Simply what would the ethics of that be, Mr. Smith?
SMITH
Oh, I feel it might be fascinating to debate the ethics of all this — with the 2 of you. However you employed me, Mr. Wealthy. I give you the results you want. For now.
DAVID
(to Charles)
That is all so little. Scraps. A thoughts like Bud’s — it could possibly be —
CHARLES
A thoughts like Bud’s!
DAVID
We have been looking for a son, a buddy. Now you need to flip him right into a serial bomber?
CHARLES
(to Smith)
When did this “Okay-9” first strike?
SMITH
1979. They suppose.
CHARLES
…Eleven years.
(to David)
And what was it he mentioned to you in that cellphone message? One thing about…a “tradition of struggle”?
SMITH
You are dropping me.
CHARLES
(to David)
Neglect your Shakespeare, Professor?
(to Smith)
Julius Caesar. “Cry havoc and let slip —
DAVID
…the canine of struggle.”
CHARLES
(to Smith)
Simply making connections.
(Quietly surprised, David sinks right into a chair. Charles sees this.)
CHARLES
(persevering with)
Would you be adequate to go away us alone for a couple of minutes, Mr. Smith? I feel David and I want to speak.
(Smith exits.)
CHARLES
(persevering with)
You recognize, there was a time in your life while you took accountability — only one time, actual accountability — once we turned him in — you and I —
DAVID
I did not flip him in. You probably did.
CHARLES
Oh, David. You advised me the place he was. What did you suppose I’d do?… Why do you suppose he did not contact you for almost a yr? He knew what you may do higher than you probably did.
DAVID
Your causes and mine have been so totally different.
CHARLES
We did what we did as a result of we knew, you knew, as you realize now, that he would do it once more. I believed that had made a person of you, no less than.
DAVID
Oh, spare me your notions of manhood. How is it they all the time contain the sacrifice of another person’s life?
CHARLES
And what the hell, precisely, have you learnt about sacrifice?
DAVID
What the hell, precisely, is he to you? Simply one other chilly struggle enemy? You are good at chilly wars, aren’t you, Charles? Freezing individuals out. It is easy to make them expendable that manner, small and expendable earlier than some better design. No matter it’s we have discovered right here —
CHARLES
You suppose I wasn’t prepared to present my very own life? You suppose others did not attempt to take it — for their very own designs?
DAVID
For God’s sake, he did not.
CHARLES
The hell he did not. Who do you suppose he was making an attempt to explode?
(beat)
If he may have painted my face on that constructing. If he may put a bit of me in no matter he was making right here —
DAVID
Oh, Charles.
CHARLES
Oh, Charles.
(beat)
Sure, I understand how to struggle chilly wars. And we gained. I really feel no guilt about that. However you do suppose the sacrifice of life is the worst value that may be paid, do not you? So does he, clearly. And it is due to that — exactly due to it — that you’ve got by no means understood. That on daily basis, all all through the world, there are distinctive people who assume —
DAVID
Ah, the tragic burden of historical past.
CHARLES
Sure! That is proper. And of choice making. The individuals who should make selections when there isn’t any sensible choice to be made — as a result of to do nothing can be worse. They’re known as leaders.
DAVID
Now who’s complicated tyranny with management?
CHARLES
The weak all the time really feel tyrannized by the robust. As a result of the robust have the braveness to do what different persons are too frightened to do.
DAVID
The nice grow to be the weak? Is that the thought you lived by? Is that a type of “higher rationalizations”?
CHARLES
It is higher than wallowing in sentimentality after which praising it as decency — whereas all is misplaced round you. What’s it you’d give the “good” individuals, David? One other alternative to lament the conquest of evil and their abandonment by God?
DAVID
No! No! No! I will not allow you to do that. You and Bud — you are each the identical. You’re taking all that is human and also you flip it into abstractions. You cause life away within the title of what you name actuality. However the second you do this, do not you perceive — the second… We have been speaking about your son, Charles.
CHARLES
No. We weren’t. We have been speaking about you. My son — my son had no conception of the worth — the true value — that was paid to ship as much as him the snug world, freed from concern and need, freed from actual “oppression,” and so uncommon within the historical past of this world, that he was raised in. He did not need to know. Anymore than you, sitting over your cafe burger and micro-brew, need to know the remedy of the poor beast used to offer your tasty little deal with. After which when he found — while you did — a few of what had needed to be accomplished, you threw tantrums and cried out, just like the coddled youngsters you have been, that daddy wasn’t pure.
(glancing across the cabin)
Nicely, this is purity for you.
DAVID
Did you ever surprise what made him what he’s?
CHARLES
Oh, please. Now you spare me.
DAVID
Oh, I do know, it is really easy simply to say he is deranged one way or the other, and not using a regular ethical compass — I do not suppose I may curiosity you in any household counseling — however did it ever happen to you — did it ever happen to you that possibly, as soon as, he had the truest compass of us all? You bear in mind him, do not you, Charles? That advantageous, good, principled younger boy who had a lot promise? After which he came upon that what he’d all the time believed was north was actually south by southwest, and his needle began spinning, and it is by no means stopped spinning since.
CHARLES
That is a really fancy metaphor, Professor Physician. But it surely does not take care of the current state of affairs. As a result of that is what counts now. I do not want you to inform me what I misplaced. And I’ve no have to dribble out a lifetime of painful consideration of it in order that I can appear all heat and fuzzy for you. You need what you have all the time needed — you need me to say I am sorry and confess my errors, all as a part of my “reeducation” to your extra “progressive” and humane imaginative and prescient of human historical past. Nicely, we confronted circumstances for which human historical past — ugly sufficient, already, because it was — may have ready nobody. We made errors. We have been human. However we did the very best we may. From all I survey, it was fairly rattling good. And, God rattling it, I apologize for nothing.
(Charles sits. The emotion has all of the sudden introduced on his age. He seems to be weary. David is weary, too.)
DAVID
That was the issue, wasn’t it? You constructed this elaborate justification for every part you thought “needed to be accomplished.” And to admit, then, that you just’d made any errors, that you just may need betrayed all of your beliefs by purposely sacrificing innocents for the sake of defeating your enemy — that may have introduced the entire home of playing cards down round you. It’s a home of playing cards, you realize — all this certainty that the justness of your objective sanctifies every part you do, even your errors. With out that certainty, oh, you then actually really feel the load of conscience. So that you cut back all of it to impudent youngsters. We have been your youngsters, and also you hated us as a result of we had the impudence to imagine that you just have been incorrect and we have been proper.
CHARLES
You sound very smart, professor. However you are not so smart as you suppose you might be. I did not hate you since you thought you have been proper. All people thinks he is proper. Hell, even a number of the goddamned Soviets really thought they have been proper…. I hated you since you thought you have been higher. Earlier than you ever had to decide on between one thing dangerous and one thing worse, earlier than you even as soon as had misplaced a factor ceaselessly…earlier than the world ever broke your hearts, you thought you have been higher.
(gazing across the room once more)
Nicely, now you have a look round, David. Nonetheless suppose you are higher?
(beat)
You thought what he did was an remoted act…dangerous judgment…an extra. But it surely wasn’t. You have not needed to confess that…to see it. However you virtually see it now, do not you? Do not you? You possibly can’t isolate the issues we do, make them particular instances. They make us who we’re —
(wanting round once more)
— after which we do what we’re.
DAVID
I may say the identical to you.
CHARLES
Oh, I’ve come to phrases with who I’m. Settle for me. Reject me. I do not care. My life is nearly over. So is his. However what about you, David? You like him, I do know. Or the reminiscence of loving him. It is all so secure and certain within the reminiscence of that love, is not it? Easier instances. The world you thought we promised you. However you are going to discover him.
(Smith enters.)
SMITH
(to David)
Sorry. Sara known as. My workplace patched her via, however I misplaced the connection. Your daughter’s delivery out for the Gulf. She’s obtained a twenty-four hour go. I believed you’d need to know straight away.
CHARLES
(pause, gazing at David)
You are going to seek out him, David. After which what? What are you going to do? Who’re you going to be?
(Blackout.)
Finish Act1.
AJA
Homo Vitruvius and American Samizdat function properties for my weekly inventive writing and mental exploration. HV persists as my authentic and first Substack in these pursuits; AS arose in resistance to Trumpism and is devoted to its defeat. From memoir and poetry to fiction and drama, largely in HV, to historical past and political philosophy, predominantly in AS, you will see it right here, built-in throughout the 2 stacks via a inventive and mental sensibility I hope you will see invigorating. The stacks could also be subscribed collectively or singly in Handle Subscription.
