Angels in America (35 page)

(He walks toward Roy.)

JOE
: I'm not blind, not . . . blind as I tried to be. I've always seen,
known
what you are. And, and I'm not like that. Not like you. But I've lied and lied and lied . . .

(Joe is facing Roy. He puts his head against Roy's chest, lost. Roy's surprised, pleased, moved. He puts his arms around Joe, a tender, careful embrace. Joe raises his head. They look at one another.)

ROY
(Gently)
: Show me a little of what you've learned, baby Joe. Out in the world.

(They kiss, intimate, uncertain, as affectionate as it is sexual.)

ROY
: Damn.

     
I gotta shuffle off this mortal coil.

     
(Looking up at the ceiling, warning the Powers Above:)
I hope they have something for me to do in the Great Hereafter, I get bored easy.

     
(To Joe)
You'll find, my friend, that what you love will take you places you never dreamed you'd go.

(Roy vanishes. Joe doesn't move, eyes closed
.

     
He opens them when Harper enters. They stare at one another.)

HARPER
: Hope you didn't worry.

JOE
: Harper?

     
Where . . . Were you—

HARPER
: A trip to the moon on gossamer wings.

JOE
: What?

HARPER
: You ought to get your hearing checked, you say that a lot.

     
I was out. With a friend. In Paradise.

Scene 5

Heaven: in the Council Room of the Hall of the Continental Principalities. As the scene is being set, a Voice proclaims:

A VOICE
: In the Hall of the Continental Principalities; Heaven, a City Much Like San Francisco. Six of Seven Myriad Infinite Aggregate Angelic Entities in Attendance, May
Their Glorious Names Be Praised Forever and Ever, Hallelujah. Permanent Emergency Council is now in Session.

(Power for the great chamber is supplied by an unseen immense generator, the rhythmic pulsing as well as the occasional surges and wavers of which are visible in the unsteady lights, and audible continuously underneath the scene until its cessation [indicated in the text]
.

     
At the center of the room is a very large round table covered with a heavy tapestry on which is woven a seventeenth-century map of the world. The tabletop is covered with ancient and broken astronomical, astrological, mathematical and nautical objects of measurement and calculation, cracked clay tablets, dulled styli, dried inkpots, split quill pens, disintegrating piles of parchment, and old derelict typewriters. On the table and all around the room are heaps and heaps and heaps of books, bundles of yellowing newspapers and dusty teetery stacks of neglected and abandoned files
.

     
On one side of the table, a single bulky radio, a 1940s model in very poor repair, is switched on, its dial and tubes glowing. The six present Continental Principalities are gathered about it, sitting and standing. The Angel of Asiatica is seated nearest to the radio; the Angel of Antarctica is farthest away
.

     
The Principalities are dressed uniformly in elegant, flowing, severely black robes that look like what justices, judges, magistrates wear in court
.

     
All six sound very much alike, as if speaking with a single voice. Their speech is always careful, a little slow, and soft, like mild old people; in everything they say there's a distinct tone of quiet, enduring desolation and perplexity. This tone doesn't vary; even when they argue they sound tentative, careful, broken
.

     
They're almost completely still, but as they listen they turn slightly, slowly, looking to one another for comfort. Asiatica and Africanii intermittenly hold hands
.

     
The Principalities are aghast, frightened and grief-stricken at the news they're hearing on the radio
—
which they're not supposed to be using. They listen intently to the dim, crackly signal.)

RADIO
(In a British accent)
: . . . one week following the explosion at the number four reactor, the fires are still burning and an estimated . . .
(Static)
. . . releasing into the atmosphere fifty million curies of radioactive iodine, six million curies of caesium and strontium rising in a plume over eight kilometers high, carried by the winds over an area stretching from the Urals to thousands of kilometers beyond Soviet borders, it . . .
(Static)

ANTARCTICA
: When?

OCEANIA
: April 26th. Three months from today.

ASIATICA
: Where is this place? This reactor?

EUROPA
: Chernobyl. In Belarus.

(The static intensifies.)

ASIATICA
: We are losing the signal.

(The Angels make mystic gestures. The signal returns.)

RADIO
: . . . falling like toxic snow into the Dnieper River, which provides drinking water for thirty-five million—
(Static, then)
. . . is a direct consequence of the lack of safety culture caused by Cold War isolation—
(Static, then)
. . . Radioactive debris contaminating over three hundred thousand hectares of topsoil for a minimum
of thirty years, and . . .
(Static)
. . . now hearing of thousands of workers who have absorbed fifty times the lethal dose of . . .
(Static)
. . . BBC Radio, reporting live from Chernobyl, on the eighth day of the . . .

(The radio signal is engulfed in white noise and fades out.)

EUROPA
: Hundreds, thousands will die.

OCEANIA
: Horribly. Hundreds of thousands.

AFRICANII
: Millions.

ANTARCTICA
: Let them. Uncountable multitudes. Horrible. It is by their own hands. I I I will rejoice to see it.

AUSTRALIA
: That is forbidden us.

     
Silence in Heaven.

ASIATICA
: This radio is a terrible radio.

AUSTRALIA
: The reception is too weak.

AFRICANII
: A vacuum tube has died.

ASIATICA
: Can it be fixed?

AUSTRALIA
: It Is Beyond Us.

ASIATICA
: However, I I I I I I I would like to know. What is a vacuum tube?

OCEANIA
: It is a simple diode.

ASIATICA
: Aha.

AFRICANII
: Within are an anode and a cathode. The positive electrons travel from the cathode across voltage fields—

OCEANIA
: The cathode is, in fact, negatively charged.

AFRICANII
: No, positive, I I I I—
(She begins carefully to examine the works in the back of the radio)

EUROPA
: This device ought never to have been brought here. It is a Pandemonium.

AUSTRALIA
: I I I I agree. In diodes we see manifest the selfsame Divided Human Consciousness which has engendered
the multifarious catastrophes to which We are impotent witness. But—

AFRICANII
(Having concluded her examination, to Oceania)
: You are correct, it is negative. Regardless of the charge, it is the absence of resistance in a vacuum which—

ANTARCTICA
: I I I do not weep for them, I I I weep for the vexation of the Blank Spaces, I I I weep for the Dancing Light, for the irremediable wastage of Fossil Fuels, Old Blood of the Globe spilled wantonly or burned and jettisoned into the Crystal Air—

AUSTRALIA
: But it is a Conundrum, and We cannot solve Conundrums. If only He would return. I I I I do not know whether We have erred in transporting these dubious Inventions, but . . .

     
(Opening a huge dusty Book)
If We refer to His Codex of Procedure, I I I I cannot recall which page but—

(There is an enormous peal of thunder and a blaze of lightning
.

     
The Angel of America ushers Prior into the chamber. Terrified and determined, he stands before the council table
.

     
The Principalities stare at Prior.)

ANGEL
: Most August Fellow Principalities, Angels Most High: I regret my absence at this session, I was detained.

(Pause.)

AUSTRALIA
: Ah, this is . . .?

ANGEL
: The Prophet. Yes.

AUSTRALIA
: Ah.

(Exchanging brief, concerned glances with one another, the Angels bow to Prior.)

EUROPA
: We were working.

AFRICANII
: Making Progress.

(Thunderclap. Prior's startled. Then, realizing they're waiting for him to speak, he musters his courage and says in a small, uncertain voice:)

PRIOR
: I . . . I want to return this.

(He holds out the Book. No one takes it from him.)

AUSTRALIA
: What is the matter with it?

PRIOR
: It just . . . It just . . .

(They wait, anxious to hear his explanation. A beat, then:)

PRIOR
: We can't just stop. We're not rocks. Progress, migration, motion is . . . modernity. It's
animate
, it's what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it's still
desire for. (On “for” he makes a motion with his hand: starting one place, moving forward)
Even if we go faster than we should. We can't
wait
. And wait for what? God—

(Thunderclap.)

PRIOR
: God—

(Thunderclap.)

PRIOR
: He isn't coming back.

     
And even if He did . . .

     
If He ever did come back, if He ever
dared
to show His face, or his Glyph or whatever in the Garden again. If after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of
this terrible century He returned to see . . . how much suffering His abandonment had created, if all He has to offer is death . . .

     
You should
sue
the bastard. That's my only contribution to all this
Theology
. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He. He oughta pay.

(All stand, frozen, then the Angels exchange glances. Then:)

ANGEL
: Thus spake the Prophet.

PRIOR
(Holding out the Book)
: So thank you . . . for sharing this with me, but I don't want to keep it.

OCEANIA
: He wants to live.

PRIOR
(Grief breaking through): Yes! (Pushing the sorrow back, determined to stay composed)
I'm thirty years old, for God-sake—

(A softer rumble of thunder.)

PRIOR
: I haven't
done
anything yet, I—I want to be healthy again! And this plague, it should stop. In me and everywhere. Make it go away.

AUSTRALIA
: Oh We have tried.

     
We suffer with You but

     
We do not know. We

     
Do not know how.

(Prior and Australia look at each other.)

EUROPA
: This is the Tome of Immobility, of respite, of cessation.

     
Drink of its bitter water once, Prophet, and never thirst again.

PRIOR
: I . . . can't.

(Prior puts the Book on the table. He removes his prophet robes, revealing the hospital gown underneath. He places the robe by the Book.)

PRIOR
: I still want . . . My blessing. Even sick. I want to be alive.

ANGEL
: You only think you do.

              
Life is a habit with you.

              
You have not
seen
what is to come:

              
We
have:

              
What will the grim Unfolding of these Latter Days bring