Leon and Art followed Felix
off stage, but Beezly stayed, hoisting himself to a sitting position on top of
the bookcase from where he watched the man and woman who left their desks and
sat down on the couch. "Adam, do you understand the four Edens?"
"Understand? I can identify them;
but understand? No. Do you understand them?"
"No. I only see them; know them.
Do we understand anything?"
"Eve,
I think this is work. Let's rest," said Adam.
"Okay. Let's go down by a river
and watch stars burn in the water."
"I'm too sleepy. I'll have to do
it in my dreams. Lie down with me," he answered as he stretched out on the
couch.
She moved to the couch's
edge accommodating him, but remained sitting, saying, "I'm not sleepy. I haven't
even sorted out my last dreams, as you can see from my entry about four Edens. I
think I'll think a while about what Felix said, then I'll sleep." She brushed
Adam's hair for a few strokes until he fell asleep, and then she got up and
paced the stage for a few steps until she noticed Beezly. "Oh, I didn't know you
were here!"
"At your service!" he
said, jumping down.
"But we're
not supposed to work," she said.
"No?" he asked coyly. "Then we won't. I'll just stand here and look at you. This
is no work. In fact, when I look at you, Eve, I see so many dreams that I feel
rested about five thousand years' worth of sleep... Speaking of dreams, your
dreams, I heard your speech about the four Edens. That was very nice. This play
might get somewhere yet."
"Get
somewhere? Where should it go?"
"Oh, a play must go somewhere. That's the point. There are all sorts of rules
that govern these things. Look, like here in these books," he said, pulling one
off the shelf and offering it to her. "Have you read this one?"
She put out her hand and pushed
the book away. "Felix told us not to read these, or the play would die, we would
die."
Beezly threw back his head
and laughed. "Die? Die? That's silly; these are books. Books never killed
anyone. Felix only told you that so you wouldn't read these and learn how to
really write. He doesn't want you to know as much as he does. He doesn't want
you to know that this really is a dream, this Eden stuff. He doesn't want you to
wake and be like him. Look, this is Plato and this is Aristotle and this is
Sophocles and this is Shakespeare. These are the great books! No wonder you
can't write plays. No wonder this dream is so sweet. You haven't any knowledge,
you don't know what's good or bad, you have no taste."
"Of course we are writing a play.
What else is the catalogue?" Eve defended.
"What you write is well enough,
and sweet enough, and I suppose it's even poetry of a kind. But what good is a
speech about a bear unless the bear is tied to some plot? Some theme? the bears
are the bears and nothing more unless they rip a man apart or are some symbol
for ripping a man's life apart," Beezly said, saliva glistening on his lips.
"Plot? Theme? What do those
name?"
"Plot and theme are parts
of a play. Now here's Aristotle. He understood about this catalogue business. He
was very big on category. But real plays are another matter. Read here what he
said about plot."
"No!" Eve said,
putting up her palms to cover the offered page as she shut her eyes.
"God damn, god damn, god damn..."
And Beezly said this more than a hundred times, stomping his feet, flinging the
book, ripping at some plants, and running in tight little circles. And then he
returned to face Eve who had watched the tantrum of the angel in astonishment.
"Felix controls everything! You know this is no play you write and you are no
actors. This is just a little pastoral playtime for Felix Lord. You and Adam are
his fools, his puppets. Instead of exchanging blows like Punch and Judy, you
bludgeon each others' senses with sweets like candy clubs. Until you know good
and bad, great joy and great sadness, the sweet and the bitter, you won't be
able to steal a chunk of the universe and write a great play full of meaning.
"That's why I was delighted to
hear you talk about the four Edens. That's getting at themes, see, ideas and not
just little embroideries about bears and violets. You and Adam need to use Eden
up, consume it, live it passionately so it can nourish great momentous soaring,
divine speeches that make you like gods. If you're going to write a play, write
greatly. If you're going to act, act great parts greatly.
"Felix should know better than
this how plays should go. I think he's getting senile. A play's no good until
the hero's dead on the stage. I should have directed this play. I should have
made the stars. I would have balanced them better. Their grammar and syntax are
terrible. You can hardly make out what they say. Creation should have rules..."
"But we have rules," Eve broke
in. "We are to rest on the Sabbath, and we aren't to read these props."
"Ah!" said Beezly, coming back to
the point and seeing a new hold on the matter. "Yes, these are props! These
books are props. What are props? They prop up the play! They enhance the notion
of reality! Look, dear Eve," he said, taking her in his arms. "You were born to
play great roles. If you read these books, your eyes will be open, you will know
how to make a great play. Making a great play would please you, right?" Eve
nodded. "Making a great play would please Felix, right?" Eve nodded. "Making a
great play would please Adam, right?"
Eve pushed Beezly away and nodded
and said, "I have been looking for a way to make Adam especially happy. Yes, I
can see this is a good thing. Give me a book." And she started to read. As she
read she walked off stage. "Bring some more books, Beezly. We'll go down by a
river and sit."
"At your
service!" he said, and he followed after her with an armload of books.
In the morning Eve was sitting on
the edge of the couch when Adam woke. She was bending over a book, twisting a
strand of her hair. Adam groaned in waking. He sat and said, "I dreamed Eden
shattered into a million pieces. None of the pieces was an Eden... Eve! What are
you doing!"
"I'm reading. And
look, Adam, I didn't die! It's wonderful how awake I am. You should read this,
too, then you'll know how to write a play. We haven't been writing a play. A
play isn't a catalogue. A catalogue is just a list. Plays have meaning, plot,
theme, character. It's wonderful."
"What are you talking about?
Meaning? What the hell does meaning mean? Doesn't having everything make you
happy? You have to take more?"
"I
haven't taken more. I've just added to abstract knowledge. Now I see the
interrelationship between things. The way dark and light connect, for instance.
They aren't just what they are, they have a symbolic relationship with each
other. See, what we've been doing with the catalogue is nothing. We could have
gone on like that forever, never getting to the heart of matters," Eve told
Adam. "We've just been manipulating words without a purpose."
"Light and dark, huh? So what are
we supposed to do now? Smear the light and dark together until everything is all
one grey thing? Is that what these abstract relationships do? I have to remark
on lapis lazuli, and tangerines, and the red butts of baboons, Eve. I don't see
relationships there. I think your relationships will make me sick."
"Adam, all those things matter
only if they affect people. People are the center of a play. You just can't go
around cataloging the world. The only things that matter are things that
contribute to plot... And anyway, dolphins are grey, and you delight in
dolphins," Eve argued.
"And they
swim in the bright blue sea!" Adam countered.
"Which is sometimes grey when the
sky is grey and the grey rain comes," Eve reminded.
"I will not be sad, Eve."
"Oh? Then greys are delights?"
she said slyly.
"Yes! Greys are
delights! How satisfying!"
"Then
why would you be sad if the whole world were smeared to greys by understanding
interrelationships?" she asked.
"Because I would be sad if it were all the same like some sort of chaos. What if
I knew only enough to let everything blend together, but not enough to sort it
out again? Am I God?"
"But, Adam,
that is what's in these books! That's why Felix didn't want us to know what was
here. He didn't want us to know how to take the universe apart and put it back
together again in a play! He calls this our play; but really it is his. Adam,
read with me. Please." She stroked his cheek and held a book out to him.
He took the book and looked sadly
into her eyes that were full of wild, un-Edenic visions. "I'll read, Eve. But
only because I've been in Eden alone without you before. I can see you're gone
already." He kissed her and he began to read.
They lay on the couch together
reading through the sabbath and through that night. They devoured the bookcase
of classics. Beezly came from time to time and gave little schoolish lectures on
points in the books. At last on the morning the day after the Sabbath, Adam and
Eve fell asleep. Art arrived on stage about the time a wind began to stir in the
dream about Eden. He woke the lovers, telling them that Felix was coming to hear
them read from the play catalogue.
"Oh my god, Adam!" Eve said after
Art left. "What will we do? Felix will see through us."
"You don't think he has to come
here to know, do you? I think he knows we know. We've never gone this long
without his coming before. He left us alone so we could do this," Adam lamented.
"That's terrible! Why'd he let us
do this if he knew? The play's over, the dream's over, Eden is over. We know
better than all of this now. We can't act out all this sappiness. I can't. I
know too much. And I didn't learn enough to know how to hide it. I'm not that
good an actress."
"Still... Come
on. We'll put on a little play, we'll hide behind some role playing, and maybe
we won't have to wake up out of Eden completely. We'll dazzle him." Adam pulled
Eve off stage left.
Felix Lord
entered stage right. "Eve? Adam? Where are you?" he called, though he was
picking up books and putting them in their places on the shelves. Adam and Eve
bounded onstage. Adam wore a Groucho Marx assemblage on his face and a sheathed
sword by his side. Eve wore a Mae West costume. "Oh, Eve, Adam. Think how I have
clothed you! In starlight and dreams! Why these costumes? Who told you about
costumes, roles, identities?"
"We've been thinking about plays, is all, Felix. I'm going to do a play that's a
great dramatic comedy full of bloody battles--but no death, of course. Just
screaming laughs and lots of scarlet blood--blood because it's colorful and
exciting, you know. Does that please you... does it?... no..." He stopped
brandishing his sword he'd unsheathed to punctuate his speech.
Felix was standing unmoved.
"Never mind," Eve said. "I have a better play. See, my play's a drama, a
romance. It's all about love, you see. It's all about what a person does for
love. The trouble she gets into because she loves and she wants to be loved. But
in the end it is okay, all of the rotten things she does. It's okay because love
always wins in the end, right Felix?" But then she sat on the couch suddenly
sobbing. Adam threw down his sword and Groucho mask and sat beside her.
"Who told you you are so naked
that you need to dress up like this? Did you read the books?" Felix asked.
"Eve read and then I read, too,"
Adam said.
"Beezly showed me what
was in the books," Eve said.
"Beezly," Felix whispered. For an instant, the dream fell out of focus for the
entire ensemble. Then it started up again like a faltered engine will. Beezly
stepped on stage. "Beezly, you are a serious snake. Your venom goes with you
wherever you go, inside dreams and out." Felix sighed several times and said,
"Go now. Leave this dream. But everywhere you are, you're an enemy of life."
"Hah!" Beezly said. "So this play
does have an end! It's not just one long silly list of delights, after all! The
dream comes to an end." And then he was gone from the dream.
"Was Beezly death? Now that he's
gone, we don't have to die?" asked Adam. "We've already done the dying part?
Because we read it?"
"Oh, no.
You'll go now where he's gone beyond this little dream play. You'll continue on
to wakefulness; consciousness. It's a layered thing, of course. Eden is a sort
of core of sweetness at the center of consciousness. It is the conceptual
opposite of death. You've heard of conceptual by now? Now that you have
concepts, death is what you have, too. Actual dusty death, and the ever present
pre-memory of it, so damp with your nervous sweat."
"And now we have to go back to
work sorting out concepts, sorting through levels of consciousness, deciding
right from wrong, feeling pain..." Adam mused. And then he grew angry. He sat up
rigid where he had slumped on the couch. "Who in hell are you, Felix Lord? Who
the hell are you to bring us to the core dream, as you put it, and then throw us
out? You invited us, you must have invited Beezly, and you must have known what
he was like. Who the hell are you?" Adam rose and was looking around insanely,
trying to hold the vision of Eden that was slipping away in great swatches of
molecules at a time. He saw his sword laying on the stage. He grabbed it. Leon
and Art stepped on stage, both of them weeping. "Who the hell are you, Felix
Lord, to make the stars for us and then turn away from us?" And Felix turned his
back to Adam. Adam raised the blade above Felix's head and brought it down will
all his might. The sword sliced through Felix like wind through wind. Adam, on
the other hand, was dead on the stage where he had fallen.
"Go get the coats I made for
them, Leon. The world's a cold place outside of Eden." Leon left and returned
with the coats, Art and Eve bent over Adam who was revived by the woman's and
angel's tears. The dream was rapidly decaying now. "Here, put on these coats.
You have to protect yourself outside of Eden." Wind was blowing Eden away.
The man and woman put on the
coats, sadly watching the walls of the dream come down, melting into pools of
dreamless sleep. "Adam, don't pretend that everything you know and everything
you see is all there is. On the other hand, work with what you have. But the
ends of the universe are mine to ravel and knit. Revenge is mine. And it is mine
to make more stuff to make more stuff with. You must create with what you have."
And he kissed the man on the head.
"Leon, take the sword; do the
psychic surgery; cut Eden off from the world. Art, go into the world and be art,
that best and brightest order--but still false."
"Now, Eve, ask your question, but
quickly. This will all be forgotten soon." And he kissed her head so that that
would be done.
"There's no way to
come back to Eden?"
Felix
laughed. He laughed so long and with such great complicated music and such
subatomic industry that the last shreds of Eden were blown off the eyes of all
the dreamers and only his voice remained, saying "How can you come back to where
you never were? Eden isn't a place. Eden isn't even a time. Where or when is the
beginning? Dream on, dreamers. But get on with your work. There are little
sticks and stones and seconds here and there that appear to be relics from Eden.
But don't be fools. It's the sweetness in your own hearts that's Eden. And it's
the world's bitter evil and your own that constantly yanks you from your musing
dream of Eden. But you'll forget what I say, too. It's your job to remember it."
And then even the voice was gone, and with the voice the memory of it.
Angelo McGuire awoke Wednesday
morning planning a book burning for the good of the farm. But first he had to
attend to his morning rituals. He called out for his wife and his favorite
physician. His wife, heavily pregnant, sat at the foot of the bed, knitting a
baby sweater and watching the morning's rituals according to McGuire's
prescription. The physician stood by the side of the bed holding a silver plated
butter dish. Two syringes were on it. One had McGuire's insulin in it, the other
his Demerol and Vistorol. He was a diabetic and a junky. He needed the insulin
to keep his sugar count down, and the narcotics to keep his insanity to a level
where he could manage it and make it useful to further feed his insanity. After
he injected himself in the muscle with the medicine and in the vein with the
drugs, he laid back and the doctor masturbated him. The sperm stuff was caught
in a jar and saves to inseminate virgins with. Most of the children on the farm
younger than four years had been fathered by this means. When the doctor was
done, he laid on his back on the floor of the bedroom. Angelo McGuire got out of
bed and put on his right boot. The doctor raised his knees and spread his legs
when he saw the boot was on. Angelo McGuire raised his booted foot over the
doctor's crotch and brought it down as hard as he could. Though McGuire's
strength was growing diminished by the week, it was not for show that the doctor
crawled to the door and out of it to leave, these rituals being over. McGuire
got weakly back in bed.
McGuire's
wife put her knitting in a bag that she hung from her shoulder, she sighed and
arose and picked up the jar of sperm and the empty syringes, preparing to leave.
McGuire stopped her to tell her a short list of things he wanted accomplished.
The last but most important thing he wanted was for a book gathering and burning
to be planned and scheduled. He told her that he'd have a list of books that
weren't to be burned in a bonfire in the communal area of the farm. But for now
the list wasn't going to include any of the books he had written, of course, the
books the schools on the farm used, nor the books that all the grownups were
supposed to read daily and live by. He dismissed her.
He laid on his bed trying to
think why the night had been so horrible. He thought about the book burning,
enjoying the vision of all the imperfect concepts going up in flames. This was
as near as he would get to seeing the fire; he never left his room any longer;
he could control the commune from here. He had no need to go into the world any
more since he had achieved perfection. The night nagged him. The book burning
delighted him. The two matters came together in his mind. He frantically jumped
out of bed and ran to the safe in the wall. He worked the combination
hysterically. But everything was fine he saw when he got the vault open. There
in the darkness were Adam's plays and the legal papers that Adam had signed
giving McGuire Roses and Horses and Cut and Dried Dreams. And also
in the vault were bars of silver and gold, and a clear plastic bag full of gold
fillings. McGuire was satisfied, euphoric. He closed the safe. He went to a
window feeling a bit of springtime surge through his bones. But when he pulled
back the drape, he remembered in stupid surprise that he had had the windows of
his room bolted over with steel plates. He whimpered and stumbled to his bed. He
sat there blinking in his grey world, wishing that Adam would come back so he
could have someone to talk with.
Julian awoke in California with Beth holding him. It sprang into his mind
immediately and stayed with him all day that he should have custody of his
daughter part time and take a hand in raising her especially now that he was
going to marry. This would please Yvonne, he knew. And he could learn to love
Jillie, he thought. And maybe he did already, he thought.
Jamie woke Wednesday morning with
strep throat. But he knew what it was even though it was an early scratch in the
throat. So he went to the doctor on his way to work and he never got very ill.
He waited on Adam when he could during the remaining few days of the
playwright's more serious illness. And then he waited on him and read for him
and helped him edit for the month the playwright worked on the play after
recovering from strep.
Yvonne
woke Wednesday with the phone ringing. It was a job offer to direct a movie for
cable tv. It only took a month and kept her occupied for that time until Adam
could finish his play. "Working," she philosophized for Felix one Tuesday
afternoon, "is what keeps you from going insane while you wait to work."
Adam woke Wednesday morning, went
to the bathroom, took a pill, drank a few glasses of orange juice, and went back
to bed. He lay all day in a stupor. Grey celled fog danced in his open eyes, and
a buzzing in his ears like tiny bits of cellophane being wadded drove him mildly
mad. He couldn't sleep and he couldn't rise. At last at night he slept and he
slept most of the next three days. Then on Sunday he got out of bed for the day
and watched tv. He watched tv for another three days and Jamie despaired that
Adam was going to fall into his old depression. But Adam was only recuperating.
When Jamie handed him the first act, Adam finished watching Sesame Street and
went to his own apartment and began again where he'd left off on the play.
As for Felix, he continued to
work on the Paradise and to go about his other business.