THE GREAT HOWARD
by Peter Oswald
Note. This is a one-person play. Howard is in solitary confinement and seeking to escape by means of magic.
HOWARD IN HIS PRISON CELL, SURROUNDED BY TOWERS OF BOOKS. BOOKS, LARGE AND SMALL, LIE OPEN ON THE FLOOR.
HOWARD: This is Howard in his prison cell. All around him the world rises and falls. That’s all very well. A fair weather friend to himself. And the very best of days has dawned – the day that is a wind-tunnel, the day that is a crack in the whip of the wall. The day, indeed, that is a magic spell. Of fine weather.
He has been studying. How weird for Howard, here in the How Ward. How? I will show you. Come hither, Hereward, come here-wards, and hear the How-word. In the beginning was the word was. And after-words.
The circling Earth, circular saw, has cut a man-hole. Now only needs to find the words. Man said to God, let there be loot, and there was loot. And behold, it was good! But forget that. Words, here, where time is tomb, are required, to open, to open sesame seeds. Where time is stone, to find, among all the words, the words that are pick and straddle. Pick to pick lock, straddle to saddle and be gone. Not out but into. Right into what it may be is forgotten. What it may be was never said and never known – but even that nothing-tongue can be stung!
There was a man
who bled a deed,
then for a span
his heart did bleed.
It bled black blood
in such a flood,
it was a wall
nine lifetimes tall,
which did impound
unsacred ground,
black heart a green mound
where into bones the flowers were ground.
The walls! Not the cell walls – the walls of forgetting, which can be very much crumbled with rhyme, as in Jericho they did, and the whore hung out her bloodstained underwear. And also Troy, we may be sure, fell to Homer’s poem. The whole of Homer he remembers and can easily with a word crash down her best hero into the dust like a Post Office Tower. Any day of the week. But not what he did or why he is here. Is it part of his punishment? Punishment, punic-meant – wasn’t it – they razed the walls and sowed the soil with salt, and nothing would grow there then, except – crisps.
If he asks the officer, what did he do, she laughs.
(If he remembers, she must open the door.
That is the Law.)
She slots a slit laugh through the slit. A silver laugh she slots through the slit, and he lights up with spinning fruits. Or rather, doesn’t. So he builds these towers of books – towers they are but forests in his blood – very vast – growing vast very fast, you could not outpace the paths, that grow ten leagues with each tread. They enter through his head, a big square book he bashes with hammers in through the holes in his head. Happily they are big holes, bigger than the sky if there was one, bigger than books anyway, bigger than his belly. With hammers he bashes them in, the big sharp pegs of these books – these broaches – the hammers are hours, hours here are hammers, he gets the big stone books and he smashes them into chips with the hours, and he shoves the little blades into his eyes, and blood of ignorance runs out, and black of knowledge floods in, as with Greek Oedipus, if we must broach that subject, he brooch-ed the subject of his eyes – that was too much he knew about his mother’s womb, both from without and within – he knew her too bloody well – he had opened her book, and cover to cover between the covers my God did he ride I mean read her – he found her well written he did, oh fascinating, chapter by chapter did he devour her. She was a page-turner, oh my dear, that was an ill wind riffling her leaves, because she was forbid, she was occult knowledge, shocking to all the gods – they were all standing there, shocked to death in the chamber while he plunged through her episodes. And black then was to him the epilogue. And did his eyes heal, after that blinding ending? Not they did not but yes they did – for in the holy place, of the holy plays – there came a crack in the dark and he slipped out through it.
Child’s play for the great Howard.
If he can find the English rhyme. Oedipus was ancient - since then we have advanced, advanced! We have unriddled all but all riddles and diddles – for example –
Hey diddle diddle
the cat and the fiddle,
the cow jumped over the moon –
They puzzled on that for centuries. In playgrounds the prophecy was repeated, kept warm, over and over again reborn, till at last the day came – yes, the cat! Yes, the fiddle! And then Michael Collins flew her over the moon, the cow, silver and gold, and the word was fulfilled. The word was made good, just as many a word has been made bad, very bad, very bad indeed and dark as that Greek bugger’s permanent eyemask. And everything else will come right.
It is not sweet to be ignorant. It is a prison. Prison is prison but to be ignorant in prison – to have forgotten – the primal fact of – the act that – him here did fetch and originally bring – it must have been something.
And now the day is come! The day of remembering! How it came we know not, how it clawed its way through rock. Ta da da dee dum, ta da da dada - from time to time time has told him – that it will come – and it will be wings. But it does not come right out the last little bit on its own. He has to bring it – by rhymes – and then – that is the beginning of magic. Memory is the beginning of magic and then – who knows what?
HE SUDDENLY SHRINKS IN TERROR.
Dread of the event. Of memory. But he is not to dread the event, he is to murder dread and out of buried dread grows the event and the event is wings, that mock the buried dread, that forget or dis-invent the putrid dread- so that it never was, as soil never was what it was, is soil, never was!
But dread needs wings to catch itself, a beak to peck itself to death. And how can dread grow wings or beak or claws or anything except wings of dread, dreadful beak, claws that dread to shred?
Solomon Grundy,
born on Monday – er -
and that was the end of Solomon Grundy.
The rest I forget.
Come, wings! Come, wings! Come!
HE TRIES TO FLY AND ENDS UP CRUMPLED ON THE FLOOR, GETS UP SLOWLY.
It might be that sometimes she does tell – or remind – him. She presses her lips to the slot and she says it. But each word cuts off his head. And it rolls into the corner and he gropes about, gropes about, gropes about – it rolls away from him – he gropes about, gropes about – for months – it rolls its eyes and rolls away – he catches it! He picks it up, and shakes it, he shakes the words out of it, and then he puts it back on, empty again, his head, and then he sits there, satisfied.
For a golden year
Then a silver season
Then a bronze month
Then an iron week
Then a clay day
Then an hour of mud
Then a shit minute,
a whole minute of pure shit
and then he realises that he can’t stand his blissful ignorance, not for another second, he has got to crack out of it!
Child’s play for the great Howard.
HE TRIES TO REMEMBER, TENTATIVELY FLAPPING HIS ARMS AS WINGS AND MAYBE HOPPING IN A CIRCLE. THEN HE GIVES UP AND SHOUTS AT THE DOOR.
Tell him!
LAUGHTER THROUGH THE DOOR.
Probably nothing!
LAUGHTER
Probably a parking offence!
LAUGHTER
Anyway nothing as criminal as your laughter!
SILENCE
Laugh again if you dare!
SILENCE
Laugh again!
SILENCE
Laugh again!
SILENCE.
Ha. That shut her up. He has only to beg her to laugh and she is silent. She is child’s play for the great Howard, like everything else. For the great Howard will now, before his very own eyes, descend into memory, down the stairs of a rhyme, and, strengthened in that place, find wings for who knows what?
HE DOUBTS HIMSELF AGAIN AND SHOUTS AT THE DOOR.
Tell him!
And yet. What if she does tell him? No matter – his head rolls off, falls into the corner, all that routine – the golden year – ah, the golden year! The shit minute. Dread, oh dread. And if his head stays on – imagine – filled with that thing, that crime which, big or small, used to make it fall off before. And they do not – they do not – treat you like this if – if you have not done something that they really hate – but it might be that what they hate, really really hate, is him laughing at their laughter, him making rhymes, magic rhymes, him just being the great Howard, it might be that they cannot stand – they might be treating him like this, speaking to him nothing but laughter, just because – for nothing, nothing at all, as one might condemn the beaver for its fur or damn the river for flowing. In fact condemning him, for innocence, to ignorance.
Which is child’s play for the great Howard, who has built a Babel of books, who stands perched atop the Babel of books he has built –
and dreads – to take flight. Into the night. Of memory.
Truly it was merciful in the days when they did used to cut off the head. His is stuck to him like a quivering bird, whose feet are tangled in wire –
It is the wire of Dread, it is Dread, he is worse than dead, he is Dread, he is a rabbit who dreads the burrow, a nightingale who dreads the ear – of the poet –
But even this is hopscotch, as he said, to the great – even this is Stuck in the Mud to the –
If he can build a Babel of books but not – learn, from all that – how to change hammers into humbugs – not be able to change anything at all into anything at all, not acquire even a little magic! He who, from word to word, danced across the abyss! If he cannot call up – he who transformed his great walls into China, into whatever, anything, everything! Changed the laughter of his jailer into jailed laughter! If he cannot make out of Dread a big or little bird, dreadful perhaps but still a bird, to send on an errand – if he cannot do that, why then, why then, let him be plastic grass for full backs to lash their studs on!
No need for Dread to be Hector. Let Dread be Dread but – let Dread be a bird! A bird! To fly – migrate – into memory!
HE TRANSFORMS DURING THE FOLLOWING INTO A BIRD
All a-quiver
all a-shiver
in a bush a little bird
heard
the rushing river
of smoke,
the motorway’s joke,
and the great plane,
swift, loud, sane,
here it comes again,
crouch, Jenny Wren!
And the radio ghosts,
speaking fence-posts,
musical bricks,
black magic birthday tricks!
Oh Lord oh Lord
let me flit abroad
far from this Stromboulian horde,
into the – hup –
HE TRIES TO FLY
Into the – hup!
HE TRIES AGAIN
More dread – more dread – more bird – come, Howard, kick away the books, that make the twenty-six clicks and shrieks, when the soft sack spasms in its cavern, into arch and point, the strawberry slug that tastes itself when it bleeds – more dread, more dread, let it be, let it black, spread and spout up, oh, all the dark from the cracks, from the locks, from inside of the fist, the big fears crouching among the little fears, in fear’s black box trapped, pipe up all that black out of the deeps, flocks of cackling black, from the poor pipe it up, from the dead and the worse-than-dead, from the venomous widows, ah from the stupid, gather up all that black let it rise up into the lighthouse, the Duke’s crystal attic where he sits with his binoculars and speaks pure light to the light – come sea, blood-octopus, rise up and swamp and clamp his face, purple-black, unman, dismantle him, so he can be entire bird and fly away, dark and dread, into dread memory!
To whit to woo,
What did he do?
HE STILL CAN’T FLY.
Ah if I cannot be a bird, I can be afraid, and fear is a bird!
Where was I? Crouched, Jenny Wren, by a dual-carriageway, trying to sing, among the flipped fag-packs, the smelly carpets of road-kill –
Oh – ah – oh – I am not a songbird I am the wrong bird – but the most afraid is the most brave – so let it be!
Oh – ah – oh – I fly –
Oh – ah – oh –
HE FLIES.
Little Jenny Wren the best of men,
King of the Birds! - Queen –
how can she – how can I –
such sensible unintelligible things
she sings –
over water – a blur above a blur –
who can follow her?
Oh she goes – as from rainbows
the rain’s arrows,
where no crow – can go –
too slow! Too slow!
Oh!
Or heron or
condor
or shrill
pterodactyl –
or eagle
or seagull
or gale-smashed cloud-skull –
oh! Oh!
Jenny Wren
from now to then,
winged instrument
of strange intent!
The wren flew over and over the water very nearly forever and as she raced, so her busy wings raced beneath her over the cloudy faces of the water –
Wide-world-wide,
And on the other side –
Women made of light, tall as pylons, are walking to and fro along the green of the cliffs. Far below them the white teeth of the sea bite and bite the delicious cliffs, and its mouth froths.
And Jenny Wren will flit among them as a bee among holihocks. Which shall I choose, of all these fragrant giants, who, though made of light, are blind, and weave like columns of searchlights brighter than daylight, as in a slow dance, avoiding collision by means of their resonance, for indeed they are shapely hollow tubes each emitting its note as when children breathe across glass -
But indeed they are gravel-deaf and milk-blind as daisies, and also – undeciphered marks on broken bits of pots behind glass – unreachable meanings -
She gets cats, she can twig bats and twigs but –and semaphore-ing ferns and – but – not this -
But she does not vanish! She will not be crushed by this test!
For she is fear and therefore – cannot be made afraid!
Could not be more brave!
And she comes to a cave!
Ah Jenny big dark vaster than your little black heart that thrusts all around your slight flesh not blood but red dread, ah Jenny your bravery is a pin in the sea, a little silver pin dropped into the sea, it shines but it sinks, it shines but it sinks, Jenny! The deeper and darker it sinks the fiercer its beams! Ah it has pierced the whale heart of the sea!
So she flies into impossible dark – you would not do it – Tommy who jumped at the whistle would not, would rather face the squad – chief who breathed heart into imperilled imperial island, would not, would turn his back on that, just would not whistle that black dog, would not –
But she – oh, she –
she flies into the dark
and she thinks –
light gives me shape but what am I in this?
Am I this?
Dark is my heart in the dark but is there a grain in it, or gold mote, that in this can still exist?
I was wren I remember but now am I bat or worm catapulted, am I cocooned?
Have I by my former deeds guarded any gold or is it all spent on fake diamonds?
If so I am this, and this is – not I – so then, little ex-wren, mighty vast very big tiniest minus – or not even that because a negative value is still a value, it is a negative value, but nought is not negative, could not ever aspire so high as to dream of being a subtraction – is not even a vacuum, is cleaner than the emptiest space-bucket. Therefore I am bat I am ball I am not – I am ship I am shape I am sloop I am slope I am flat I am not –
but the I that is not is still I – a tough knot to untie –
anyway – Jenny-way –
At last she comes to an end. And at the end is a friend. She can feel his flame, though it gives no light, not a gleam. She sings
Hello are you there?
Yes I am here.
Here are you?
Yes here and there.
Now and then?
Yes, yes, Jenny-Wren!
Do you know what he did?
Yes, from me it is not hid.
Will you tell me?
No, no, Jenny-Wren, not thee!
But he?
Yes I will tell he.
Then I must bring him here?
No, no my dear!
Then you must come back with me!
Yes. I must. Over the sea.
Must I carry thee?
No, nor marry me!
What then must I do?
Fly home straight and true.
Only this I say to you:
as you go, pursued by grace,
never must you turn your face,
never must you look to see
who is I and what is me.
If you do, ah, sore blow,
never never will he know!
Trust me, I will follow you
over, under, through and through,
to the crypt where he is kept
like a dunce, in ignorance!
SOUND OF LAUGHTER THROUGH THE DOOR. HOWARD SNAPS OUT OF HIS STORY-TRANCE
Hello!?
INDISTINCT SOUND OF PARTY-ING THROUGH THE DOOR. SOUND OF A RADIO NEWS PROGRAM, THEN MOTORWAY TRAFFIC AND SIRENS, THEN SILENCE. HOWARD ADDRESSES THE DOOR
Hello! What did he do? You can’t speak to him, he knows that! But he can speak to you! Hello! Hello! He loves you! Hey – you know, he knows something you don’t know! (TO AUDIENCE -) He doesn’t. (TO DOOR -)
Haha! You’ll never know! He won’t tell you unless you beg him to!
She isn’t allowed to speak to him. Sometimes she is a he. He isn’t allowed to either. And by this they mean to let him know – to let Howard know that what he did was very bad. So bad he must never be spoken to, must not see anybody. And indeed perhaps what he did was indeed very bad. But by leaving him alone, you see, by not speaking to him, especially by not replying when he speaks to them, when he knows she has heard – by this they have made him forget. They have taken away one half of his head – ie the world – indeed he is in fact dead. It is not just the axe or the rope or the chair or the squad that can make a man dead. No, no, all you have to do is make no reply when he speaks. Let him echo. Echo is a poison gas. In a chamber like this. Hear, oh Israel, hear it hiss!
But they are good. They know what they are at. Because to forget is not to forgive. There is no forgive in forget – remember that. Remember is a Royal Road to the King’s Seat of forgive. But forget, what is that? A bad little alley full of shit – with, oh, a dead cat. Make your petitions to that.
But all this is child’s play to the great Howard, as has been more than demonstrated! Ha! You know - they know everything about their prisoner, everything! But they do not know that he is the great Howard. They could not possibly – they absolutely lack the faculty – having weighed him, and written down everything he ever did, in infallible ink, they absolutely know the names of his grandmothers and they know his name and the name of his name but they do not know – ask them, what is the name of this man? They reply – Howard. And ask them – is he the great Howard? They reply – no, he is Howard. Not – the great? No, Howard. Howard is his name and his name is Howard. Nothing to add to that, except the patrinomic, property of others, of the State. So not – the great? Absolutely not. And are you sure about that? Oh yes we have searched, we have weighed, we have looked. We have re-searched, re-weighed, re-looked. And we have carried out polls and consultations – this is Howard, Howard, Howard and Howard. And what would it take to convince you? Nothing could convince us. But look he changed into a bird and flew across the sea, he encountered tall musical beings and then, as a wren, into the dark he flew where there was no up and no down, no left or right, and at the depth of the depth he found – the friend. With whom he will return and then the answer will be known. No you don’t understand, this is a prisoner who has forgotten his own crime, and to cheer himself up he falsifies his name, putting ‘the great’ in front of it, as if that could change anything! But you made him forget, by refusing to speak to him or allow him to see a single human face over the course of perhaps years. Well yes we did that and the result is that he is not ‘the great.’ He is – at most – Howard. Possibly less. Oh really? When in the face of your facelessness he – perhaps less than Howard – he ventures into the dark wherein his crime is hidden. He goes alone, in the form of feathers, right down, if we may say ‘down,’ into that hiding place, that burial pit, he takes it by the hand, he makes of it a child, he leads it out into the light. Well we are not convinced by any of this. In that case it is you that are not great. You are not ‘the great facelessness,’ you are not ‘the great silence.’ We never made any claims to greatness. Then make them not! Make them not, then! Make no claims to be ‘the great’ but do not deny then to Howard his claims! Do not deny what you cannot imagine! Or steal from others what you yourself have renounced! You tiny, despicable silence! You run-of-the-mill, average lack of a face!
And so now for the proof. Jadies and Lentil-men! Not much of a gospel without the cross. And so it is with the great Howard. He must bring to pass that which he has set forth. Not merely preach. There must be blood.
And so for the sake of – (TO DOOR) You, most professionally unresponsive audience – of a captive actor – audience paid to ignore the performance – voiceless and faceless – but not for you, no – for the sake of TRUTH and JUSTICE – and – GREATNESS! For the mere pitiful sake of greatness –
He must again be Dread but now dread followed, dread that has found, in the depth of the depth, the friend! With whom he – she – Jenny – returns – oh flits back across the cloudy faces of the water, the vaporous masks, with fish-eyes, the changing faces, like ladies exchanging their fans – here give me yours take mine – with flash-eyes, the shifty faces of the water, that deny their own depths – flit, flit, oh bird of dread so brave, over the wash of the wave, no end in sight. And the way back, so much not the way there! Not, not! Because now there is the Follower! Oh,what is he? Is he even there? Nothing seen, nothing heard, by the Jenny-bird! What is he like? Like the weather? And what is that like? Oh is he blown sand, or sauntering water? Is he light? Or a little fish dancing along on its tail? Or an old man in a waistcoat? What colour buttons? Is he far behind, a little dot, trailing toddler, or close, close as the very air rushed by your feathers? Mind your mind, little bird, it will demand – a peek, a keek – and then – oh shriek! Lost! But no she now stirs up all her dread and is sped, she coils and again coils tight her spring of going and going – and going and
going –
She must find again the tiny cell in what is it – Reading – in which she was born of dread and began oh such a long haul flight right out of the light! Little bird, little bird, you were once the great Howard, now you must find him, change back into him, bring to him the unseen friend who knows what he did, who will tell him - and restore to him, thereby, the lost half or maybe more of his being. The hard half, the bitter half, and yet without it he is not! Great, yes, but not!
Oh she flits, she flits, she is lost –
oh where is the coast?
A great wave rears up like a horse –
blots out the sun – which in morse
now flashes back – dot, dash, dot –
is not – is – is not –
oh wren, you are spun,
eyes tight shut not to glimpse that one –
and flung – up – side – down – ah, stars?
No, no! Golden rings and flowing chains of vans and cars!
It is night – ah, in the vast twinkling grid
somewhere the great Howard is hid!
Range, range over dark trees
in between dead chimneys.
Is he following still,
the friend, over field and bristling hill?
Oh fading fragment of a feathered scrap,
range, range the living map.
What you have been, ah, where you began,
the shaking making heart of that great man,
that you must find, your first nest,
where from the egg of his need broke your soft shivering breast.
Oh to that beacon burning black,
Jenny come back,
and bring oh bring the friend,
so ignorance at last may end!
She returns! Oh she sees what and where she was, the little cup of twigs and moss otherwise known as the great Howard, or the great Howard’s dread, and the friend, not far behind, oh so close, almost treading on her tail, here he comes, here he comes! Here he is!
HOWARD TURNS INTO THE FRIEND, A DEMON. HE SQUATS, STARING, FOR A LONG TIME. THEN HE STARTS TO SNIFF, AND TO SEARCH AROUND
Howard! Where is he? Howard? He was here!
I saw him clearly, crouching in this cell,
like a sad panther caged against extinction –
followed the bird into his heart, that hole,
and I am there but he has disappeared!
Howard, where are you? Howard! Oh you fool,
come out! Why drag me by the stretching strings
of my blind eyes across the splitting sea,
so far, and not be here when I arrive?
Do you think that was very easy for me?
Howard, the sea, the less than nothing sea,
that over-salted bowl of soup, so wide –
that is no summer smile of strawberries,
no it is all subtraction, endlessly
it takes, and there is not much left of me!
Why do you think I cowered in a cave,
all clothed in darkness till you came for me –
sent for me – stretched your terror out to me,
your ignorance and emptiness, a sea
crossing the sea, in bird-form, twittering
deluge and chirping deep? So powerfully
nothing clutched nothing to its breast – you see
nothing loves nothing, as the sun the day,
they are so suited, marry easily
and stay together! Nothing may be sundered
from nothing, sadly, but it only needs
the shrieking of a shrill-tongued go-between
and quick as thinking they are one again!
And so I left the clothing of my cave,
whose blackness was my flesh and skeleton,
much like a soldier’s soul, his uniform –
and sacrificed myself to space – to sharp
and star-fall spray – across the wayless way
I went, as eyesight falls into a well –
called by you, Howard, as the rushing day
that the night beckons as it runs away
around the circling world. And do I find
a welcome, Howard? Do I even find
Howard? I find his bones, his empty brain,
that lifts them by electric wires, to wave
a scarecrow hand – to step and stamp and turn,
from wall to wall of his small amphitheatre,
to clap, to jump, to dance, to slap, to see,
through undiscriminating porthole eyes
the repetitious ocean of blue walls
and yellow ceiling. What I do not find,
though I search every inward tent of tissue,
all the great organs, like hot air balloons,
is Howard. Howard is not here, just I –
and even if I had a tale to tell –
and I know nothing, I admit I lied –
who would I tell it to? The man has flown,
there is not room for two of us, it seems,
I pushed him out, with my expansive blankness,
he called me to him but he had no plan
for where to put me, or himself – has gone,
sad bat, into the cave from which I came!
I am a fraud I am afraid. His crime?
Haven’t a clue! But you have got to reckon,
you bleating boys, I come when I am summoned!
I am agape for opportunity,
always, mouth open till the cherry ripens!
Which I regret now – I would rather stay,
having for body my unpainted cave,
than stuck here in an empty cell inside
Howardless Howard! But I had to lie,
nothing tastes sweeter than untruth to me,
I love to claim I am a thing of wisdom!
Which is a twitching bait, a feathered fly,
that gets me hooked! Now salmon-like I dive
only a line’s length, crooked agony
closing me down. He called me from my cave
into his cell, now I can only leave
if he calls me again – but is that likely?
Oh I am lobstered in the creel again,
when will I learn, when will I ever learn?
The lovely carcase dragged me to the gyn,
now I would gladly chew through my own bones,
to stagger off three-legged into freedom!
But where is leg, trap, line, hook, anything?
It is all metaphor and poetry –
nothing exists in actuality
except for Howard’s cell and Howard’s body –
and I can smash the one against the other –
smash! Smash! And I can hate and I can hit
and hurt it! Hurt! Hurt! But it holds me still,
I am just foetus punching out placenta!
I am in hell again ! Oh Fire and Fury!
Howard, I will make trouble for you, lover,
you have to call me out! Ah! Monster! Monster!
I will burn out your nerves with Fury’s fire!
I will sear up your guts with hatred’s lava!
Better call quick, sweet friend, or you will find
not much returning comfort in your mansion!
Vomit and blood graffiti in the bedrooms!
Call me back, Howard! Send your little bird,
or when you come, if ever, back, your tongue
will not speak what your mind thinks, but revolt
in puking jabber! Howard! Howard! Howard!
HE SEES THE BIRD
Oh! Oh! The bird! The little Jenny Wren!
Yes, I will follow – follow back again –
even across that sluicing wash, the slime
of that vast self-disgusted mouth, the ocean,
that gags and gobs! I will flit back again –
follow you, precious bird, winged diadem –
bright opposite of every falling thing –
uprooted flower that blooms in air, undying!
Oh I will follow, I will follow, follow,
as eagle follows eagle, swallow swallow!
Aghhhh!
HOWARD COLLAPSES, LIES STILL. SOUND OF RADIO NEWS THROUGH THE DOOR, MUSIC AND JABBERING. HE SLOWLY COMES BACK TO HIMSELF.
There was a mistake. Which caused a problem.
BIRDSONG. A PLATE OF FOOD COMES THROUGH A HATCH IN THE DOOR. HOWARD STARES AT IT THEN PICKS IT UP.
Oh. I had no idea it was Christmas. Rice and peas. And also she is playing me birdsong. She must be happy. Maybe she is having a baby. Or one of her other prisoners has finally died.
HE EATS.
She sits in her little room. It’s got all the cells on screens. She watches them. Not much to see. She wishes she had better cameras, that could film what goes on in their minds. She can’t see the vast struggles. Oh, if she could have seen little Jenny Wren! Her fight-flight over the ocean! No. Nothing. They might as well be blank, her screens. Just like the mugs of the prisoners. She could tweak the prisoners, by means of interrogation, and out of their mouths, depending on the pressure, then would come vexed impressions that could be typed up and printed out, but – basically they are to her, blank screens. Still, one day the little seed of sorrow sprouts, down in her guts. (There’s flowers on her wallpaper.) Each day she goes home and she sees the little birds sitting on the wires. The wires are sagging and the birds are singing in the tuneless rain. Now deep in her innards there’s already a black tulip. She thinks – they never get to hear the birds. I will find a recording and play it so they can hear it in their cells. I’ll put speakers in the landings. They are not supposed to have any gladness. But who knows, anyway they might hate it. So I win either way – if they like it, I am being kind, if they hate it I am doing my job.
SINGS
Once in Royal David’s city
Stood a lowly cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her baby
With a manger for a bed –
HE STOPS. BIRDSONG.
She is a professional punisher. And so – the worse she is, the better she is. But you know, every postman, once in his life, has got to shred a letter, punt into a canal a parcel, every policeman has got to – just once – break and enter. Every politician must once, just once, get something right. We have all got to break the rules. And so it is with her and the birdsong.
The only worry is – what if it gets out of hand? What if she likes it, she goes home feeling great, she leaves the birds on all night, and she thinks, oh just another sliver of cake, I’ll give them peas with their rice, after all it is the birthday of God. And now she’s getting the taste, she posts us, posts us - (he says ‘us,’ assuming there’s others. Assuming? No, he knows, he does – he can feel them, he can feel you, brothers! You are there, each one exactly the same, as stars to non-astronomers – each with the same fate, each in the same room, some nearer the end, some the beginning, which variously pressures the present, as bathospheres rising and diving – but an identical present, variously pressured, and the same mug, pressed to the glass, seeing the same luminous trailing thing drift past like the tail of a horse. There it goes.)
He was saying – she posts – suppose it gets out of hand – she posts them little pink letters, pink notes, the same for each one – at first with just a little pink heart and then – a heart and a flower – and then – Christ, God’s birthday’s way past, God’s toddling already but they get a pack of salt and vinegar crisps – she has now snapped her moorings, ethically she is a shipwreck, plummeting into unprofessionality – she wants to, to speak to them – and they, in their cells, what are they thinking, they are thinking, crisps, peas, notes, what are we, good people? Is it right to kill, then? Is murder proper, rape to be rewarded, arson a blessing? But she can’t stop, rampant kindness runs riot in her blood like roses on acid – she is on the verge of inviting a harpist – and they, the identical elements, now feel identical pressure – a new pressure, such as helium feels, panicky expectation – horrible – a bit maybe like freedom – what will she do next, how far will she go, how wrong can she get about us?
Love is in the air. Weird weather. Where will it end? That she will tell him what he did? She will come, in person – what does she look like? – a he sometimes – sit down, take his hand in her warm hands, walk him back like through a story, in twelve-league boots, gently, to that day which explains these days? Not just laugh.
Peas – birdsong – could this be just the beginning?
If not, then he, the great Howard, must go it alone. Which has to be an option, in solitary. He has got to keep that up his sleeve, if all else fails – and all else has failed. When all else fails he will have to roll up his sleeves and go it alone. He turns to his left, he turns to his right, he looks up, he looks down – is any there to help, is any present, does any stand by him? No, none, none are there, none, none. Very well then, alone!
BIRDSONG. HE SUDDENLY TURNS FRANTIC.
Stop it! Stop the birdsong! All of them here hate it, stop it! They are evil, they are not capable of birdsong! Or if they are not evil, you are evil for locking them up here in solitary, and your birdsong is evil, it is an evil warbling, let it be stopped!
HE IS SILENT. BIRDSONG CONTINUES AWHILE THEN STOPS.
Yes! Right! There! She has remembered! She thinks to herself, they have no innocence! None! I am the innocent one, as is shown by my wishing to play them birdsong! And as for the great Howard, he makes no claim to innocence, to birdsong, no, none at all, none! Only his mind is scrubbed of what crime he did – that it was bad, he knows, that it condemns him to solitary, to silence, that he accepts! Only what it was is missing. And in this he must go it alone. That is not a void that can be filled up with birdsong!!!!
It is a void which once more now he must cross. The Friend was not a friend, it must be a question of the tall tubular beings, made of light, those that she could not understand, Jenny Wren, so that, in her incomprehension, she fluttered on into the cave where the friend was waiting.
But perhaps she should not have done, perhaps she should have delayed and accepted either that not understanding meant the end of her mission, or that she should have sought in some way to understand. In some way? But she was a bird, not a university student or talented researcher, all that she knew she was given by instinct – fluttering, tweeting – she could not, by means of instinct, enquire, or in any way expand. She could build a nest better than Caesar his empire, but to do different – say, not build a nest – that she could not do. Given an abyss to cross, she could do it, instinct set no edge to her courage and her keeping on, she would have flown till death broke her wings. But, having done that, faced with a question, she could not begin. And so, where a man might have puzzled, or a woman, Jenny simply flew on, into the first abyss she could find, and then home, bringing with her a little piece of the chasm.
Ah, Jenny Wren!
It must be those beings.
And she was just a Bird of Dread, sent from the heart of a criminal ignorant of his own –
BIRDSONG RESUMES. HE SHOUTS.
They do not want your love, it is evil! If it is not evil, they are evil, and so they don’t want your love! Either way they do not!
BIRDSONG STOPS.
She hears him! She hears his cry and she stops the song! He can turn her off and on!
BIRDSONG RESUMES.
If you were kind, as you think you are, as your birdsong implies – if you were kind you would tell him! Not just laugh! You think your birdsong is kinder than your laughter but they are the same thing! You do not know yourself any more than he knows himself! Perhaps you yourself don’t know what he did!
BIRDSONG STOPS.
Child’s play for the great – yes, yes, he is great at this. The very birds obey him! He grows, he grows! And yet in one thing he is still tiny. She probably does know the thing he did, being his Jailer. And she can imply, by means of birdsong, forgiveness. But of what? As sweet as the song is, so sour is his crime – can he assume? Or is there no connection? The sweet birds might even acquit him – and then where would he be? Innocent, in solitary? What then would be the meaning of her laughter? It would destroy him! Dissolve him and fill his cell instead with irrelevance! He would in fact be nothing but a – what would he be? A blue sky crucified with larks. All he is armed with, all that is dark and solid to fight against annihilation is – his crime! Which he has forgotten!
So now, great Howard, you see! Everything is very clear and terrible today suddenly! It is all a question of memory! This is not just an isolation cell. It is an annihilation cell. Say he is a sugar lump. This cell is a glass of clear water. She has dropped him in and slowly she stirs, with birdsong, slowly she stirs and stirs and then – ah, the sweet taste on her tongue!
Child’s play for the – because he has already – he has already made great strides towards that thing – only he sent the wrong helper – but to the right place – surely – and now, on the very day, at the very hour of annihilation, he – will – obviously – find the right one –
The tall tubular beings – they know all things –
who can he send?
Ask them.
And suddenly he was among them, just for a second –
he glimpsed up –
he shall not send a bee or jay or jackal or shooting beam of the moon –
no, no – turn up in person –
but how, in what form?
Child’s play for the –
I stand under them but –
I can’t understand them –
tall uncles and aunts like pylons –
they speak hieroglyphics –
compared to which, the clouds are just an English dialect –
and even gravel
is comprehensible –
HE BECOMES A TUBULAR BEING
See how the great Howard
cannot comprehend us –
we who know his secret –
how can we lift him up
into our language?
HE DROPS TO THE GROUND, TURNS BACK INTO HOWARD, RETCHING AND SPLUTTERING AS IF PUNCHED IN THE STOMACH
Flung back across and forth – forth and back and forth –
he glimpses up – and instantly is swept across the sea like a leaf – and stands beneath the living pylons – looking up – and not understanding – and then –
HE TURNS INTO ONE OF THEM.
This is not child’s play
for the great Howard –
where every word is a seed
that, as soon as heard,
is a new world
in and outside his head –
HE COLLAPSES AGAIN, GETS UP, AS HOWARD.
It was at this point – that little Jenny Wren – could not make anything – of all this – and flew on – into the black, the second best, otherwise known as the worst – and came back with that – but surely the great – Howard, is no fearful bird – or feathered instinct – but able to – capable of – glimpsing up –
Under them he stands, again!
FAINT SOUND OF BIRDSONG
Do you hear that? Do you? She is annihilating him! With evil kindness! This is the very day, the hour of annihilation! If you do not now tell him what he did, he will be nothing! These are his last seconds! In plain language! He is not asking for the secrets of the Universe, but only for his own secret, which he has lost! Speak! Oh speak! Ah, who is this I see, moving among the tall beings – smaller than them – but no less bright – a child! A child!
HE TURNS INTO THE CHILD, MAKING GESTURES AS IF SIGNALLING. HE TURNS BACK INTO HOWARD.
Perhaps Howard – the great Howard – who cannot understand the tall beings, will be able to understand – the smaller one – who, however, beckons in a strange manner, not at first comprehensible – or obviously – significant of anything –
HE TURNS AGAIN INTO THE CHILD, BECKONING AND SIGNALLING, TURNS BACK INTO HOWARD.
So Howard –was forced to call – upon all of his greatness – to summon up – from the depths of the Earth – all of that greatness which, despite the lack of that central fact – was his. Is the Earth an unswept corner full of flies and dust? No it is not, and nor is Howard who stands upon it, even in a solitary cell – greatly he stands upon the great Earth, and calls forth into himself, from her depths – from her diamonds – all of her truth, her trees!
Oh great Earth! Oh Moon! Oh Sun!
He calls not merely upon the Earth but upon the Moon and the Sun – the Moon of Wisdom and the Sun of Love and Action! Greatly he calls, because he cannot understand the gestures of the child, and he must, before the birdsong –
HE TURNS BACK INTO THE CHILD, GESTURES, DANCES. TURNS BACK INTO HOWARD.
Desperately – Howard attempts – by copying the gestures and dances of the child – to understand –
HE COPIES THE GESTURES AND DANCES OF THE CHILD
And now the child itself is laughing – clapping its hands – solemnly laughing and – solemnly clapping its hands. The taller beings bend, they make their musical sounds – all form into a circle, stepping, with the child in the centre –slowly they all move away – they fade – into the light –leaving How – leaving the great How – leaving the great – Howard –
HE STANDS SLUMPED, TWITCHING.
Back in solitary again. Striving to recall – the gestures and movements of the child – to find them – in the nerves of his limbs – to puppeteer himself – to Punch himself and Judy – because surely these movements were moved by a wish to communicate –
he stiffly twitches and –
LAUGHTER FROM THE DOOR.
attempts to remember the dance –
LAUGHTER.
again he tries –
LAUGHTER. HOWARD BREAKS, SHOUTS.
He prefers your laughter! He prefers your laughter to your birdsong! He prefers your disgusting and sarcastic laughter to the inappropriate kindness of your birdsong! Laugh again! Laugh worse! Laugh harder! Clearly you have thought again about the birdsong! Good! He likes it like that! He prefers your laughter!
HE CONTINUES ATTEMPTING TO DANCE. LAUGHTER CONTINUES. BLACKOUT.