Sergio De La Pava - Personae

CLARISSA: It only remains because you’re giving it life now with your thoughts. Every time you animate it in that manner it grows stronger. Be grateful for this matter of the highest urgency that now confronts us. Revel in the intensity of a moment like this. Not because intensity is salutary in and of itself but for the way it forecloses the kind of idle rumination regret thrives on.

LINDA: I can’t.

CLARISSA: You must. You have a potential other lifetime or two to live. Forfeit that potentiality and the one you’ve lived hardens into stone.

LINDA: Who’s forfeiting?

CLARISSA: Inaction here is a forfeiture. Right now we need to forge steel out of our wills. You say the cruelty that approaches is great? Then I say only greatness can oppose it.

LINDA: Opposition on behalf of whom? If you say my own I’ll respond that I choose to enter only a vocal demurrer. That a lifetime of opposing has worn me down to the nub and left me incapable of more. I’d further respond that acting as the sole stakeholder in the matter I’d be acting in a manner that’s unassailably proper.

CLARISSA: No, I assail it! I startle at your attempt to confine the matter to your likes and wishes. Can you similarly choose not to pedal on a two-person bike or fail to dip your oars as the clock ticks on you and your crewmates?

Do you deny we’re bound together if only by the fact that we’ve breathed this same air lo these many years? We are one now, even Nestor, and I can no more watch you concede than I can dispassionately watch my arm wither and die with confidence that it will not affect the rest of my body. I command you then, as I would that arm, to clench your hand into a fist that we might better fulfill the obligation of every living thing that draws breath and fight .

( silence )

LINDA: Okay.

CLARISSA: Nestor? What do you see?

NESTOR: I see him, he’s doing fine.

LINDA: You see him?

NESTOR: I see him. Well, I see the image that’s formed on my retinas when the relevant light encounters his body’s mass, if you want to call that him .

LINDA: Yeah I’m going to go ahead and do that.

NESTOR: Then that’s him all right. Come see.

LINDA: No, but he’s safe?

NESTOR: So far.

CLARISSA: And you’re sure it’s him?

NESTOR: Yup that’s good old Adam. ( pauses ) The man who created and operates this room.

LINDA: I’m sorry, the what?

NESTOR: No actually I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken with such certitude. I forget sometimes to account for the uncommon way my mind works and I realize to you two it will seem like a theory only.

LINDA: Let’s hear it.

CLARISSA: Let’s not.

NESTOR: Which then?

LINDA: I insist.

NESTOR: In that case, Clarissa, I apologize in advance for any incidental overhearing. Addressing myself only to you Linda, I had my suspicions from the outset. I fault myself, however, because it appears I let my affections for the man dull my sensitivities to his wanton machinations.

CLARISSA: What in hell are you talking about?

NESTOR: In hell I’m talking about many things that standing alone would fail to budge an eyebrow but that taken together form an ironclad indictment.

LINDA: Enough preamble then. Let’s, pray tell, hear the charges as you see them. The bill of particulars please.

NESTOR: Fair enough. Who of us was the last to arrive? And at a time when what seemed to be the ceaseless agony of this place had actually subsided and our surroundings were threatening to become habitable.

LINDA: So what?

NESTOR: So what did he do on arrival but start posing all sorts of unanswerable questions the indulging of which has led us to this woeful place?

CLARISSA: No. Questioning is good.

NESTOR: Really? Is violence good too? Because, I ask, who’s the only person here to have demonstrated any violence toward another?

( Linda and Clarissa look at each other. )

CLARISSA: We were all freaked out, Ludwig was suddenly Linda.

NESTOR: Where did the sword come from then?

LINDA: That was strange.

CLARISSA: So what it was strange? That was a long time ago and I’d say you two more than made up.

NESTOR: That’s for sure, he certainly threw everything he had into mending that fence. That is, until it no longer suited him.

LINDA: Wrong, I broke it off.

NESTOR: I’m sure it seemed that way to you and I won’t pretend to be privy to everything that transpired between you two but I was here when you offered to go with him and he declined.

LINDA: And?

NESTOR: And have you looked in a mirror lately? What uncalculating male would decline your company? Yet I’ve rarely seen a quicker cooling of an ardor.

CLARISSA: Except your hasty indictment leaves out all kinds of exculpatory material.

NESTOR: Like?

CLARISSA: Like fine he was last but since then he’s been with us every step of the way, experiencing everything we’ve experienced, subject to the same privations and penalties.

NESTOR: Has he? Because when Charles showed true courage and ventured out for our benefit he was partially returned within seconds. Adam on the other hand showed the lack of concern of a puppeteer and everything I see from that lens shows he was justified and knew it.

LINDA: So you’re saying he’s not coming back?

NESTOR: I wish. The king always returns, ask any pawn. The three of us will move our square at a time but understand that we are here primarily for sacrificing, like Charles, when the king deems it appropriate.

CLARISSA: For what reason though?

NESTOR: Because the last shall be first and the time fast approaches when the last to arrive will be the first to move everything forward. Adam indeed.

LINDA: What?

NESTOR: We’re being cleared like thistle and brush that a new form of vegetation may flourish. I suppose we can take some solace in the fact that we nurtured this being, albeit unwittingly, from unable-to-walk cripple to lordly first progenitor.

( The Drums return, loudest they’ve ever been .)

CLARISSA: Are you done?

NESTOR: Yes.

CLARISSA: Then I don’t buy it.

NESTOR: That’s okay, I’m very comfortable in the company of none. Or is it one?

( They look at Linda. )

LINDA: I don’t know Clarissa. If Nestor’s right we’re going to be like a still life of sitting ducks when Adam returns.

CLARISSA: Listen excuse my bluntness because I esteemed Adam greatly but he’s not coming back and on some level we all know that.

LINDA: If that’s true then the decision evaporates. Question is what if he does return? Because if that happens I must say that everything Nestor just said is going to be at least in the back of my mind if not the front. At that point we could be like sheep welcoming back the wolf.

NESTOR: Even though the shepherd warned you.

CLARISSA: No excessive disrespect intended here Nestor, but you’ve got a long way to go to establish yourself as some kind of shepherd.

( more Drums )

LINDA: Let’s just be wary is what I’m saying.

NESTOR: That’s all I’m saying.

CLARISSA: Believe you’ve said quite a bit more than that but okay I’ll be weary.

LINDA: No wary .

CLARISSA: That too.

( The power goes out plunging our three into grievous black. A few seconds later it returns .)

LINDA: That was fun. Does anybody else almost enjoy electrifying terror?

NESTOR: You’re only enjoying it after the fact.

CLARISSA: Is it me or has this room gotten smaller?

( it has )

LINDA: What’s going on out there?

( Nestor goes to the telescope, the Drums kick up again but with a slightly different, more urgent pattern. )