Speeches from the plays 1 From How To Roast A Strasbourg Goose [At the Court of Tir nanOg, Reason is Suspended] Narrator But he did miss it... In goes Packy and what does he see? Middling crowded courtroom. Bert Stump at his table on the left, dragging on the butt of a cigarette - Bert Stump Gauloise, of course! Narrator - Tomes, texts and reports piled around him; energy coiled inside, ready at a touch to zap out forked lightning arguments - Bert Stump Évidemment... puisque... Narrator - exponential expertise - Bert Stump C'est absurde, quoi! What is absurde? Life is absurde! Narrator How do you prove that? Bert Stump 'Ow? On my phenomenological trampoline! Zair you 'ave eet! (Makes loopy gestures, arriving as it were to a perch high above the intellectual circus.) Bert Stump Allez-oup! Q - E - D: et voilà! Narrator And in the benches on the right, the Angelic Delegation, itching in their tweedy britches, propped in front of them a large oblong card, their monogrammed motto - Head Angle Not Angels But Angles! Narrator Colliding with the panelling, knocking the table-legs, joggling each other, all elbows, buckteeth, goofy gossagacity - Head Angle Anyone for tennis? Why not? Narrator What a language! Bumping like jackhammers from emphasis to preposterous emphasis, absolute total conviction of utterly injured innocence! Head Angle Where is this little man Stump? How dare he drag us here! Narrator Chockful cheeks gobbling profuse post-positivist propositions - Head Angle Poppoppoppoppoppoppoppop! Narrator And on the bench, Lord Reason, a study, a face all crags, cross-hatched with the endurance of a thousand fine arguments - set against fraud, pitted against treachery, entrenched against exasperation, adroit luminary, Lord Reason himself; hero of the story as it has been understood so far, but alas about to depart from at any rate our view for the immediate future. Have a good look at him. It was the city that made him. When he speaks it is the voice of all cities, the world-weary voice, the touch-tolerant voice - Lord Reason We know all that! Narrator And now he is about to depart, at the fine Grecian zenith of his career, the peak, the apogee by azimuth and almacantar, with the most death-defying case ever to be scrutinised before him, one that would tax - to the discreet limit - the cool susurrus, the lightly-breathing refinement of his all-Aristotelian resources, one that would put his renowned interpretive faculty to the pin of its succinct, legal cravat. He raises his gavel, ready to enunciate the time-bedraggled phrase: Lord Reason The Court - of Tír na nOg - is now - In - Session! Narrator And what happens? Enter a Messenger. Hurry. Gasping. Last gasp. No, second last. Tripping over himself. Stumbling at the coaming. Battering the panels of the dock. Fetching a quite accidental kick on the ankle of an Angelic Delegate - Atchaa-haa-haa-ha! Messenger Governor! Boss! Judge! You Honour! For you! A note! Narrator He hands it to his Lordship. Who reads; and the gavel descends, slowly Lord Reason Plock! Narrator - three times - Lord Reason Plock! Plock! The Court - of Tír na nOg - is hereby ad-journed - for three - months! Narrator A stunned silence. Then - pandemonium! Flashes - shots - photographers jockeying for position - oaths and imprecations from the plaintiff: Bert Stump Sacre bleu! Merde alors! Narrator The wrangling Angles in their box, jostling contusions and contortions, like a brace of giant squid that'd got mixed up in a school outing; panic-stricken squid that had scoffed the bag of bones intended for the janitor's dog and didn't know how to get rid of them - shake a leg - all gone down the wrong way! ...So how did all that come about? Earlier that morning, in the ante-office of His Reality Ultimate the First and Last - enter backwards: Chancellor Serious, retreating from the presence, fighting it off - His Reality Ultimate the First and Last (off) Buffonaccio! Pazzachione! Chancellor Serious Sì, Realità! No, Realità! Whatever you say, Realità! Narrator - struggling to hold rearguard shreds of order and good discipline - Chancellor Serious Right away Realità! Narrator - closes the door behind him, gingerly but with relief - Chancellor Serious Whew! Narrator Chancellor Serious tiptoes heavily to the phone, dials. Chancellor Serious 'Ello. Number T'ree. Dis is Serious - Chancellor Serious! Me! We got trouble on our hands. He wants a New Illusion. Is what 'e said-a - design a New Illusion. 'E t'inks dey're getting too close-a. I tell you Meaning, I'm serious... yes I know - you're Meaning and I'm Serious, but I'm serious too - blast this name! O o! No blast, OK? No blast... Spot of bother - in a spot of bother, heh? Not just-a one spot! An epidemic! A cageful of ravening leopards with smallpox! Suspensions - that's what he wants. You make 'em out, I sign 'em. First to go Belief - Belief is suspended. I tell you, Meaning, Specific orders from His Reality Ultimate the First and Last! Belief is suspended! Hope stays, but only just. Love? Hasn't been heard from for years except in bad movies. Reason goes too. No I'm deadly serious! Aha. Dead serious. Lethal. R.I.P. Shaddap! You and your Oxford levity! A word in your ear, Meaning. You were nearly for the chop yourself. He wanted you stuffed away in semiology. I didn't mince my words - I told him we can't carry on without Meaning! I said it was unthinkable! O don't thank me! Thank... well, who else?... We are none of us safe! Now - about-a de New Illusion. The guidelines as I seem to remember them were: must be plausible, but not too plausible - explain enough but not everything - allow for the divine... discontent I think it's called. Seventy-thirty split was it or eighty-twenty? Eighty-twenty split between satisfaction and frustration. Lucidity? Yes. Brilliance. The gilded puddle. A pool of light amid the encircling gloom - a clearing in the jungle with trails leading off but they peter out. Ecco! You have the idea get cracking on it... What's 'at? Say that again - you already have - seven - why seven? - philosophical systems made out? Each with its own microphysics, cosmology and ...soul? Auto-levitational bootstraps - spell that out for me... They lift themselves up by their own bootstraps, I see. And they could all - say that again - they could all be true at the same time - could they? Really?! Meaning, you are a genius! You are mee-raculous! You really kept the thinking cap on there, Meaning, you old pen-pusher! Real substance there, boy! Genuine creative abstraction! And you have all this worked out ahead of time? That's grand! We just bring those in to the Boss and... I see. Not to let too many of them out the bag at once, right of course. But about this other business, put the lid on Reason first, will you? Post-haste. Narrator And that is how it came to pass that Lord Reason, with gavel suspended, astride the hearthstone of his career before a blaze of wisdom, read the order to abandon ship and, gravely counting himself out: Lord Reason Knock! Knock! Knock! Narrator retired to the judicial obscurity of a disrobing room backstage under the stairs; where he fell, as will sometimes happen, into not unconvivial company, and where at a later date, we may hope to rediscover him. On his way out he passes the table stacked with manuals, tracts and citations, where a by now disconsolate Bert Stump sits - a hand to his temple; who glances up and with a more than modish angst murmurs his by now immortal bon mot on the rustication of Reason - Bert Stump Ze verdict - Narrator said Bert Stump Bert Stump ze verdict: innocent. Ze sentence: birth. Narrator The ghost of a smile crossed Reason's face. He went out… |
