November 30, 2002
Biology
In the darkness we hear the single word — Dripsophilia — repeated and distorted, until the distorted repetitons begin to resemble the drone of the fruit fly itself.
Then light from a slide projected on the back wall. The slide, clearly labelled, depicts (greatly enlarged) giant chromosones from the salivary gland of the fruit fly.
As the slide fades, lights up slowly upon Anna Ophelia, a college student in her mid-twenties. Standing stiffly, she faces the audience.
A black chair swivels toward us. In it is Dr. Avery Mabeus, a stern gentleman in lab coat. He is in his early 60’s. He carries a long pointer-stick.
Dr. Mabeus
Anna Ophelia, are we ready to begin?
Anna
Yes, Doctor. I ran straight from Confession to here.
Dr. Mabeus
Multiple Choice. Just like the Ten Commandments.
A slide appears showing the choices. Dr. Mabeus points to each choice in turn.
Dr. Mabeus
A. The audience is ready for this play to begin.
B. The audience believes we are ready to begin, but we really are not ready to begin.
C. We have begun.
D. We could be almost ready not to begin.
E. The audience wants something to happen but does not know what. Therefore, they are entirely dependent upon us and we are not at all dependent upon them.
Anna
D. The answer is D.
Dr. Mabeus
The answer is always D. Why is that I wonder? It is a question worth investigating. Perhaps we wish to avoid extremes.
Anna takes out some gum and begins to chew it.
Dr. Mabeus (stands up)
Well, let it be D then. As you are aware, or as every man, woman, and child upon this planet should be aware, today we leave behind the giant chromosomes from the salivary gland of the fruit fly dropsophila. Parting is such sweet sorrow, and, as we bid a fond farewell to that salivary gland, and as the giant chromosome sinks forlornly in the west, leaving behind a vast sea of pleasant memories, we shall sail forward into more complex worlds. We are prepared to graph the characteristics of all living things. After mastering a few preliminary definitions, we shall abandon the abstract to embrace the concrete.
Take up your tool box, Anna. Take up your scissors and scapels and let us enter that nirvana of the Freshman biology student — the dissection of a lobster.
Anna takes up a giant pair of scissors.
Dr. Mabeus
There is no need to remind you, Anna, that we are living in a complex age. It is difficult for the both the initiated and the uninitiated to fathom the meaning of a dying universe. One that will die in trillions of years. In that respect is the universe itself that much different from the fruit fly or the soon-to-be-dissected lobster?
Of course, there are a host of wheeler-dealers, shufflers of metaphysical cards in which we all hold the dead man’s hand, tossers of religious dice that always come up snake-eyes, reminding us of Eden — misologists who believe that to ask meaning from the universe is a waste of valuable time. Why, they insist, you might as well expect compassion from your bank statement for all the good it does you.
Usually it is the beginners, outright amateurs, who tackle all the large questions before they have mastered the preliminaries, before they have examined the fruit fly or dissected the lobster, so to speak.
And so to speak, and so I do.
Whatever stance we take, we soon realize that we live in a world teeming with life — life in all forms and shapes, several in disguises. From plant to animal, from sponge to ameoba, fruit fly to gorilla, rose to camel, cell to tissue — the kingdom of the living teems with a million dramas simultaneously.
(He takes a piece of chalk and draws a very tiny 0 on the wall.)
Suppose, by way of example, I draw a very tiny 0 on this wall. It would require over 50,000 human cells to fill up that space inside the tiny circle. That O. That zero. That ziltch. Such is the astounding nature of microscopic life. Anna, I hope you are taking notes on all this.
The sound of rain.
Anna
Yes. I came into this world to listen, but the sound of my heart drowns out so many sounds.
Dr. Mabeus
Did you ever see a movie called The Fly? A man builds a teleportation machine and then a fly flies into it by mistake. The man ends up with head of the fly and the fly ends up with the head of the man. These soon become emblems of our two major political parties… Of course, it was a good thing that a lobster didn’t crawl in there. That would be too grotesque.
Anna
The human heart is a far cry from knowing.
Dr. Mabeus
True enough. The human heart is a far cry from knowing… So you insist, but in science we insist upon elegance. If two theories explain the same phenomenon, then the simplest explanation is the true one. This rule does not apply to modern drama.
Anna
If this were a drama.
Dr. Mabeus
If this were a drama. But so few things are. Life just rushes on without any plot. Without any cohesion. No sense of destiny, except to die. Multiple choices where the answer is always D. No wonder so many students are going into business. An MBA. Now that’s the ticket. Pile up money so high that you can no longer see fear scrawled large across the face of the universe… You’re a business major, correct.
Anna
I wish to major in biology.
Dr. Mabeus
Correct. Biology is where the real action is. Everybody wants to see naked animals We’re just voyeurs at heart… Please, take a seat. And please take out your gum . Just because the human jaw moves up and down there’s no need to turn it into a saliva-making elevator.
Anna takes a seat, locates her text, removes her green gum. The rain stops. Cause and effect.
Dr. Mabeus
And read the first lesson in our biology text.
Anna opens it to chapter one, and reads aloud.
Anna
”All living things have structure…”
Dr. Mabeus
Have structure… like a well-wrought urn. A sonata. A baseball game. Structure is the key.
And Consciousness. Once we map the structure of consciousness we are half-way home.
I think about myself. What do you think about? What do any of us think about but ourselves? Our puny whining reactions to change.
Anna
”All living things have structure, experience metabolism, engage in regulation and control, reproduce and develop…
Dr. Mabeus
Read that again, please.
Anna
What?
Dr. Mabeus
Reproduce and develop. I love it when we get to the sexy parts.
Anna
”…reproduce and develop, inherit from their forebears and adapt to their surroundings.”
Dr. Mabeus
Any questions?
Anna
Yes. What is the meaning of life?
Dr. Mabeus
Well, you certainly cut to the chase, don’t you? What good is meaning? Meaning doesn’t suck eggs. The arrow goes through the apple. The Arrow is Time. The Apple is Being. Perhaps philosophy is what you are after? An easy three credits as it were. Any idiot can go around whining “What’s the meaning of life?” It takes genius to explain the sex life of the oyster. Or my sex life even.
Anna
What is the meaning of all this respiration, excretion, and reproduction?
Dr. Mabeus
Keep talkiing dirty. It reminds me why I majored in Biology… How, I can deal with . Not Why. Why is not in my syllabus. Remember, Anna, what I tell all my students. The universe has constructed a bomb called Life. That bomb is dropped every second. We — you and I and all of us — must be prepared to dismantle it before it blows up in our faces. Thus, we are on a dangerous mission. Taxonomy, metabolism, and structure.
Anna
I once had a blind date with a man who had no structure. He seemed to be primordial ooze. Heinrich was his name and he had a little suckers under his arms like an octopus. He’d slide under the door and leap on my bones.
Dr. Mabeus (starts to boil soup on his bunsen burner)
Please. No confessions. No talk of love. The softer affections we leave to the economics department. Nothing is more sentimental than a person’s involvement with money. In this part of the campus, we don’t inspire romance. We are concerned with hypothesis and repeatability. Form follows function in a lobster as well as in an art museum. But I am digressing. The universe is in a state of rampant digression. Not evolution, not expansion, but digression… Let’s skip over the preliminaries and begin with the dissection of a lobster.
(Pulls down a chart showing a large lobster.)
Dr. Mabeus
You do have a lobster, don’t you?
Anna
No. Was I suppose to bring a lobster with me?
Dr. Mabeus
Well, the first step is to catch a lobster. After you catch a lobster, then you dissect it. Dissection prepares you for life. Especially if you wish a career in politics. When a student dissects a lobster, we refer to that action as science. When a savage says a prayer to that very same lobster we call that action religion. But remember the underlying principle of all biology is that you cannot dissect what you can’t get your hands on first. Go forth and bring back a lobster. That was going to be the motto of our university — Go Forth and Bring Back a Lobster — but the board of Trustees favored Philosophy Leads to Low Income.
Anna
I’m frightened.
Dr. Mabeus
If you’re frightened, think how the lobster must feel… But it is unusual for a plant to be frightened.
Anna
But I am not a plant.
Dr. Mabeus
We’ll see. We’ll see. It’s something you have to decide. You must choose whether you are a plant or an animal. So many living things in this world never make that choice. Which are you? Animal, vegetable, or mineral? I threw the third category in just to fill out the rhythm. Don’t rush your answer. There is a lot at stake. Fifteen points.
Anna
Plant. Today is a bad animal day. I feel I am a plant.
Dr. Mabeus
Correct. You are doing very well on our little pop quiz. I thought I’d catch you off-guard.
Anna
I was being ironic.
Dr. Mabeus
Then you fail.
Anna
Fail?
Dr. Mabeus
F for Furniture. Don’t embrace irony too closely, my dear. Irony carries all kinds of social diseases. The Universe has no use for irony. It merely hits us over the head with a sledge-hammer and is done with our consciousness forever. Our atoms. Of course, go back into the soup. If there are subtleties in Nature, I doubt if they will be ironic ones. Or perhaps the ultimate irony in all the universe is that Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Who made up that rumor?
Anna
I was only kidding.
Dr. Mabeus
But I am not. Biologists as a separate species are not easily amused. We have witnessed too much failure, investigated too many extinctions, fondled too many skeletal systems, juggled far too many carboxyl groups. We ask ourselves: where would evolution be if the first ameoba laughed or the first paramecium had chuckled, giggled, snickered. Actually we don’t ask ourselves that. We ask students like you. It will be on the final. The Effect of Humor on Evolution. When Evolution hits a brick wall, God stands up on the head of a pin and laughs…
(He removes his glasses and wipes the lenses.)
Now, Anna, that we have established you are a plant…
Anna
But we haven’t…
Dr. Mabeus
Don’t get a burr up your girdle. You’re a People Plant. Your roots go deeper than the geranium’s, more far reaching than the Eucalyptus plant. Your roots reach out beyond a few billion acres of Earth.
Anna
Don’t plants make chlorophyll?
Dr. Mabeus
What kind of gum were you chewing? It looked green to me.
Anna
Chlorophyll.
Dr. Mabeus
Chalk up five more points to science. Science 5. Art History 0.
Anna
It’s only gum.
Dr. Mabeus
Only gum, you say? You might as well contend that all matter is merely atoms falling through a void. Tell that a college freshman staring at Playboy pin-up. You are producing chlorophyll. Therefore, you are a plant.
Anna
You’re leaping to conclusions!
Dr. Mabeus
Conclusions are such slimy little bastards, you have to leap at them to catch them. For a plant, you appear particularly argumentative.
Anna
I am not a plant!
Dr. Mabeus
Very well. Just don’t engage in photosynthesis before marriage!
Anna
Why are you playing with me like this? I signed up for Biology in good faith. And you don’t take me seriously. Why? Because I am a woman?
Dr. Mabeus
I don’t take God seriously, so why should I take Freshmen seriously?
Anna
Why drag God into this?
Dr. Mabeus
Because I am a government funded scientist who wants investigators to know I am an equal opportunity employer. Faith cometh before a Fall. Or a Fail. When applying for a government grant, there are no atheists.
Anna
You can’t fail me just because I made one little joke about being a plant.
Dr. Mabeus
I am advising you not to panic. Panic is most unbecoming in a plant. One hates to see a lilac run amuck, disorder in the rose, insomnia among the grapes, A host of golden daffodils running this way and that, trampling sensitive human beings… Oh hell, stop being so sensitive. We have a Republican president, so Go will make a comeback… Go forth. Bring back a lobster. A live one. And I’ll get the champagne and candlelight.
Anna
I am having second thoughts about biology.
Dr. Mabeus
Everyone does. So much of life is our having second thoughts about everything. Mostly second thoughts about biology. But consider the lobster. It doesn’t think the way humans do.
Dr. Mabeus exits. A pane of glass is lowered. On it the title — Anna Courts the Lobster — is flashed. Anna removes her clothing to reveal a black bathing suit. She dons flippers and an underwater mask. She straps on a knife.
Ocean sounds dominate. Images of the ocean on and through the pane of glass.
A giant lobster appears upon the bottom of the ocean.
Voice Over
The Lobster. Scientific name: Homarus vulgaris. A species of Crustacean, belonging to the order Decapoda, sub-order Macrura. Let us consider its anatomy. Let’s see… the leg bone is connected to the knee-bone. The knee-bone is connected to the thigh bone. The thigh-bone is connected to the… Sorry, the wind blew the pages of my notes. I was reading from my singing lesson.
The lobster is playing the violin. Did I mention that? Anna circles the lobster. She draws her knife. She hears the violin music. She drops her knife. She and the lobster embrace. Lights out.
Lights up. A priest appears holding a sign. The sign says: Anna Recites the Catechism of the Lobster.
Anna enters. She is a long white dress. Flowers in her hair. She kneels. She is clearly pregnant.
Priest
My child, how long has it been since your last confession.
Anna
Eight and a half months.
Priest
Have you sinned in all that time?
Anna
I was underwater most of the time.
Priest
Being underwater is no excuse. Ask the Egyptians covered by the Red Sea. Ask Esther Williams and Buster Crabbe. I try to keep up with the latest fads, but because of television, religion is getting too complicated. Too much virtual reality. Besides, sin happens in every environment. Adam and Eve were in Paradise…at least in a high-priced exclusive park, fenced to keep the riff-raff out… and they sinned. Why? Because they were greedy. They wanted more than God wished to offer. Take, take, take… that is the underlying principle of sin… I’m sorry, Anna. I get distracted so easily. Distraction is the central state of being in our age.
Anna
I forgive you, Father.
Priest
No, Anna. I am here to forgive you. Let’s not get confused on that point. What would my calling me if I could not forgive? Forgiveness is to the church what melody is to music. Love, Hope, and whatever the third one is… Let’s see Parsley, Rosemary and Thyme. Love. Hope and Time. I think therefore I sin… But once again I digress. Kneel, my child. We must recite the catechism of the lobster.
Liturgical music. Incense. Anna kneels. The Priest paces.
Priest
Now, tell me, Anna, have you considered the principal ways the lobster differs from the crayfish?
Anna
Yes, Father. In a lobster, the last ring of the thorax is not moveable.
Priest
And?
Anna
There are twenty brachiae on each side.
Priest
And?
Anna
One claw is more thick than the other. Usually the left claw.
Priest
Never forget the claws, Anna. The Devil reaches out with his large claw and shreds our souls.
Anna
The biting edges are furnished with blunt tubercles of different sizes.
Priest
For your penance, you are to read five pages of Darwin and dissect a lobster.
Anna
I can’t.
Priest
Well, forget the Darwin. You may substitute The Scarlet Letter, if you so wish. One of those books deals with survival of the fittest, but I forget which one.
Anna
It’s not the reading, it’s the dissection.
Priest
Yes. I understand.. You must be careful of the blood. The worse part of biology is the blood. Blood. Actually, it’s the worse part of any subject.
Anna
But the lobster and I are going to have a baby.
Priest
What are you talking about?
Anna
While I was swimming underwater, a giant lobster seduced me with its sensitive accordion playing.
Priest
Sensitive accordion playing is an oxymoron. You must not have heard the music.
Anna
I couldn’t hear it clearly over the waves, but it sounded like The Gregorian Chant.
Priest
No, Anna. No one has ever been seduced while listening to The Gregorian Chant. Oh sure A few impressionable nuns, but they don’t count. What’s eroticism to them? But you are not a nun… Perhaps it was Rachmaninoff. It had to be Rachmaninoff. And the rest you are making up too. Right? Something to shock an old priest? You naughty girl.
Anna
I’m telling you the truth. His claws were so sensitive.
Priest
You might as well ask me to believe in Virgin Birth…Actually, I do believe in Virgin Birth. Believing in the impossible and keeping it impossible is the essence of Faith; believing in the impossible and finally explaining why it is more than likely probable is the essence of science.
Dr. Mabeus enters. He carries folders and papers.
Dr. Mabeus
Anna, I’ve thought it over. I’m going to change your grade. You don’t deserve an F.
Priest
Professor Mabeus, please tell your student that she can’t have a child by a lobster.
Dr. Mabeus
I warned her about photosynthesis before marriage
Priest
That’s not enough! You’re a biologist. Tell her that there is no mating between different species.
Dr. Mabeus
Unfortunately, men have done things with goats we should not drag into the open… Tell me what happened, Anna.
Anna
Well, when you told me to bring back a lobster to dissect, I found one who seduced me with his sensitive accordion playing and now I am going to have his baby.
Dr. Mabeus
If that’s what you want…
Priest
”If that’s what you want”! That’s the trouble with Science these days It’s far too permissive.
(To Anna.)
You can’t mate with lobsters. Do you know the trouble this is going to cause?
Dr. Mabeus
A large female lobster say eighteen inches long can produce 75,000 eggs. Just think what a full-grown woman can produce.
Priest
You can’t have 75,000 lobster children at a clip. Do you have any idea what your college bills will be?
Anna
I am only having one lobster child.
Priest
Impossible! I may not much about sex. Just what I have read in our church bulletin’s personal ads, but I do know that human women cannot mate with male lobsters. I will stay up tonight reading the Bible cover to cover to find scripture to back up the church’s position on this. Certainly St. Paul must have commented on it.
Dr. Mabeus
But it’s all right for God to mate with an unsuspecting female.
Priest
She wasn’t unsuspecting! Mary was warned in advance. What do you think The Annunciation was? Besides gods and goddesses mate with human beings all the time. That’s because they created us, so that’s their prerogative. All day long people ask themselves, “Why was I created? Why was I brought into this world?” So you can be a sex toy of the gods, that’s why. That’s the answer. But mating with lobsters throws theology, science, and deep sea fishing into confusion.
Dr. Mabeus (to anna)
This lobster seduced you. Is that correct?
Anna
I didn’t want to do it, but he made me do it.. The way he removed his shell.
Dr. Mabeus
It’d called molting.
Anna
It was the best sex I ever had. He kept crying out tomalley.
Priest
It is not proper for me to listen to this!
Dr. Mabeus
Where is the father?
Anna
He was caught by a Maine fishing boat, sold to a Chinese restaurant in New York. I tried to reach the restaurant in time so I could buy him and bring him home
Dr. Mabeus
But you arrived too late?
Anna
No, I arrived in time, but as we were walking back to my dorm room, a giant fruit fly jumped out of the shadows and attempted to rape me.
Priest
Please stop! Before the three of us end up in Hell.
We see Anna’s story enacted. A giant fruit fly grabs Anna. The giant lobster intervenes.
Anna
But my husband tried to save me. Unfortunately the Fruit fly took out a large wooden mallet and crushed him.. Then he grabbed my pocket book and ran. It had our marriage license in it. I gathered up the bits of shattered shell that had encased my husband, tried to reassemble him the best I could, and had him mounted on a board. It hangs over my bed next to the picture of Christ on black velvet. You know with the big eyes.
Priest
Maybe it is all for the best.
Anna
Why do you say that?
Priest
Because that’s what priests are taught to say in situations like this.
Dr. Mabeus
Situations like this ? I would venture there are few situations like this one.
Priest
It may be unique, but at least my conscience is clear. I didn’t put her up to it. Is the Dean of your college aware of your syllabus?
Dr. Mabeus
I did not put Anna up to it. I asked her to bring back a lobster for dissection. I didn’t ask her to dissect her husband.
Anna
Our child will be a comfort to me.
Priest
Do you know what your child is going to look like?
Anna
No. Do you?
Lights out.
Lights up on Anna. Two reporters with flash cameras are making pictures and are shouting questions at her. This we call journalism.
Reporter #1
Could you tell us something about the actual mechanics of mating with a lobster. I mean exactly what goes where?
Reporter #2
Have you chosen a name for your baby?
Reporter #1
When you were living with your husband did he give you any secret recipes for cooking seafood?
Reporter #2
Is it true that lobsters are more sensitive than television repairmen?
Reporter #1
Is it true that one of the major networks has offered you two million dollars if they can televise the birth of the world’s first Lobster Child?
Reporter #2
People around the world are not eating lobsters any more. Do you hold yourself responsible for the collapse of the lobster industry?
Reporter #1
What does its left hand look like?
Anna
Oh please… Please leave me alone. All of you…
She flees the reporters. More flashbulbs go off.
Lights out. Headline flashed on pane of glass: Lobster Industry in Crisis. Lights up on the Priest and Dr. Mabeus.
They are with Reporter #1.
Reporter
What is the church’s stand on humans mating with crustaceans?
Priest
At the moment the church is speechless. The Pope is trying to ascertain if the Lobster was Catholic… Still, as usual, we blame Science for this mess.
Dr. Mabeus
How is it possible for Science to be the blame?
Priest
Because scientists encourage people to mess around in the laboratory. That leads to messing around in the bedroom. Then messing around in the ocean. Then under the ocean. Once you start messing around, there is no end to the messes that are created. And who is left to clean up afterwards? Only the innocent.
Reporter #1
And Dr. Mabeus, what are your feelings about this?
Dr. Mabeus
Father Daly is confusing Science with finger painting. We don’t mess, we explore. We don’t mess, we experiment. We are out to discover the laws that govern the universe.
If we can understand those laws, those laws which cannot be broken by God or man, then we shall experience the ultimate Mysteries of creation. God is at the end of string theory that unifies all knowledge.
Priest
Anna has broken God’s Laws. She should be punished. She will be punished.
Dr. Mabeus
She is punished all ready… but I don’t want to know God’s Laws. Like you, I want to know God. If there is a God. We have God’s Laws, and Man’s laws, and Natural Law. Perhaps if some pioneer, say someone like Anna, can break all these laws at once we can drag God out of hiding. Break His silence.
Priest
You have been watching too many Igmar Bergman movies. God is not in hiding. He grants us knowledge of all his Laws, including Natural Law, to allow us to sense His presence, to sense a Being behind all this creation. Anna is adding to the chaos. Not to the clarity. Her child will be a Beast. Maybe the Beast. 666. This birth must not be allowed to take place.
Reporter #1
Well, there are rumors that Anna’s pregnancy is just a publicity stunt to get the public to eat more beef.
Reporter #2
Or so she can land a chance to compete on a virtual reality television show.
Lights out.
Lights up on Anna seated in a rocking chair. She is sewing a red A on her white night gown. Next to her is a cradle endlessly rocking. Standing upstage of Anna are the Priest and the Scientist.
Dr. Mabeus
Let’s consider Nature the way Arthur O. Lovejoy does in his essay called “Nature as Aesthetic Work.” What do we look for in Nature? The cosmical order as a whole. What do we seek in Nature. We seek uniformity. All human beings have certain qualities in common that allow us to be differentiated from French fries and starfish. We seek simplicity. Economy of means. Regularity. Irregularity or wilderness. Fullness, Abundance — Go Forth and Multiply. How the world has become so filled! We see variety in Nature. Fertility/. And progressive diversification of types in the order of time, which we call continuous evolution.
Priest
Would you call a child that is half lobster and half human an example of evolution?
Dr. Mabeus
It does seem like a step backward, but we must not leap to conclusions. When gods mate with humans, they produced heroes. When men mated with animals, they produced monsters. Centaurs , half-horse, half men. Man-Scorpions guarding primeval forests.
Priest
Well, we have a monster here. No doubt.
(Peers into the cradle.)
A cheap sideshow exhibition… What are you sewing Anna? An elaborate letter A as punishments for your sins?
Dr. Mabeus
Anna didn’t commit adultery.
Priest
So what does the red letter A stand for? Anna? Absolution? Albatross?
Anna
Attitude.
Lights out.
Lights up on the Priest and Dr. Mabeus.
Priest
Have you heard from Anna?
Dr. Mabeus
I thought you might have.
Priest
No. She has stopped coming to church. I think it’s my personality The harder I work the more I seem to drive people away from God. I am becoming too much like you, Overbearing.
Dr. Mabeus
Talking about overbearing, I have heard rumors Anna is living with a giant fruit fly.
Priest
Living in sin?
Dr. Mabeus
Living in squalor.
Priest
Same thing. Sin is a soul in squalor.
In the darkness we hear the single word — Dripsophilia — repeated and distorted, until the distorted repetitons begin to resemble the drone of the fruit fly itself.
Then light from a slide projected on the back wall. The slide, clearly labelled, depicts (greatly enlarged) giant chromosones from the salivary gland of the fruit fly.
As the slide fades, lights up slowly upon Anna. We see Anna now in her apartment with the giant fruit fly. The Fruit Fly is drinking from a bottle of formaldehyde.
Priest
Can it be the same fruit fly that crushed her husband with a mallet?
Dr. Mabeus
It’s difficult to know. Fruit flies look so much alike.
Priest
That would be perverse, to live with your husband’s murderer.
Dr. Mabeus
Perverse, but it does increase your chances of getting on daytime television.
Priest
Well, we mustn’t be sentimental. Living is a harsh business, where there is great room for tears.
Dr. Mabeus
But not the tears of sentimentality.
Priest
But not the tears of sentimentality. We come into the world and quickly learn I will suffer, you will suffer, he and she will suffer.
Dr. Mabeus
We shall suffer. Other animals are in pain, but man suffers because he can envision a planet without suffering.
Priest
We take what we can get.
Dr. Mabeus
We take what we can get. That may be the philosophy governing day to day living, but no good scientist would be content with that idea. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and one road was acceptance and the other was doubt.
Anna (to the giant fruit fly)
Please! Haven’t you drunk enough formaldehyde for one evening?
Fruit Fly
I don’t have a long time to live. I’m not like humans. The ordinary fly lives less than four weeks. A lobster can live 50 years if he’s lucky. Life is not fair. I want to live as long as humans and lobsters. What did I do wrong? Was I conceived in original sin? They claim anatomy is destiny, but they should say is the belonging to a particular species is our real destiny. To be born a fish or a walrus. Then male or female…No, keep your hands off my formaldehyde! I am going to drink myself into a stupor.
Anna
But you can’t go to work in your condition.
Fruit Fly
Work? Scientists abuse me for their pleasure. All I want to do is fly around and contaminate oranges, but I am taxed to a fare-thee-well. Is there any fit work for an insect of my talents? I could have played the accordion. Isn’t that what the red A on your breast stands for? Accordion? How you taunt me with my failure.
Anna
Accordion or no accordion, we need to pay the rent or we’re going to be evicted.
Fruit Fly
When did our relationship evolve into a 19th century melodrama?
Anna
If you don’t away that bottle I’m taking little Drips Ophilia with me.
Fruit Fly
Who is Drips Ophilia?
Anna
My child…
Fruit Fly
You can’t give a lobster child the scientific name for a Fruit Fly. The kid already has an identity crisis. All he does all day is crawl around the bathtub.
Anna
I changed his name to make you feel better about raising someone else’s child.
Maybe if you would pay a little more attention to what is going on around you.
Fruit Fly
You don’t know what it’s like to be me!
Anna
You don’t know what it’s like to be me either. No one on this planet knows what it’s like to be somebody else. I don’t even know what it’s like to be myself.
Fruit Fly
And this is what passes for dialogue these days? No wonder humans are reaching the end of the evolutionary trail. Humans would be so much better off if they would just rub their legs together.
Anna
What evolutionary trail?
Fruit Fly
It’s the same as the Santa Fe Trail, but instead of cattle, the fields are littered with Consciousness… Don’t wait up for me. I’m out of here.
Anna
Where are you going?
Fruit Fly
I want to walk on some expensive ceilings before I die.
Anna
Don’t leave us! I beg you.
Fruit Fly
Then take the baby out of its cradle endlessly rocking and put him in the freak show, Sell him to television. Make some real money off his shell and allow us to travel first class.
Anna
Never! No one is going to gawk at my child. He was conceived in love and seaweed.
Fruit Fly
Then Hasta La Vista, Baby. Call me when you come to your senses. I’ll be down at Dr. Mabeus’ s lab wallowing in pina coladas and pissing on the Bunsen burners.
The Fruit Fly exits, slamming the door to the cold water flat. The lobster baby starts to cry. Anna crosses to the cradle and kicks it.
Above the cradle hangs a mobile featuring the letters A, B, C, D, and E.
Anna
Shut up, you little… little semi-Crustacean! I can’t stand it any more. Living like a prisoner. Never going out, hounded by the tabloids… All my money goes for salt to make your bath.
She goes to the bureau, opens a drawer, and produces a revolver.
Anna
What did I do that was so wrong? I tried to bring different animal species closer together.
But everything in this universe has to be separate. Soul separate from body. Fish separate from cat. Movie stars separate from every other living creature. No. I won’t have you grow up in a world where no one understands just how special you are. A poet writes “I should have been a pair of ragged claws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas, ” and they award him the Nobel Prize. I bring a pair of ragged claws into reality and we are scorned, mocked, ridiculed. Let’s face it, my darling, you are never going to get into an Ivy League College! Not unless they open a midway with a sideshow. Three credits for being a freak.
Lights out. In the dark we hear a shot. As the lights come up we see Anna standing over the cradle. The gun smoking.
Anna
Oh God, forgive me.
The reporters rush in and take photos of Anna by the cradle.
Reporter #1
You’re going to fry.
Reporter #2
Steam.
Reporter #1
Bake.
Reporter #2
Broil.
Reporter #1
Be stuffed with crab meat.
Reporters (in unison)
Sizzled. Burned. Grilled.
As they have been reciting, the reporters have been changing into the garb of policemen.
Voice From Offstage
Extra! Extra! Read all about it: Mother kills Lobster Child.
Anna
How can they charge me with murder when physicists insist that matter cannot be created or destroyed. You can’t have it both ways. If matter cannot be destroyed, then how can any of us be charged with destruction?…
(Reporter #1, now dressed as a policeman, claps handcuffs on Anna.)
Anna
Why doesn’t someone answer me?
Dr. Mabeus (entering)
Is it A, B, C, D, or E.
Anna
D. It’s always D, isn’t it?
Dr. Mabeus
Not this time. This is the final exam, All the answers have been changed. All the questions have been changed. Everything has been changed. We live for change and fear it at every turn.
The police drag the handcuffed Anna across the stage.
Anna
”Gericht Gottes! Dir hab’ ich mich ubergeben!”… What am I saying?
Dr. Mabeus
It is as if all of us have made a bargain with the devil to keep ourselves from becoming truly human.
The Priest enters.
Priest
Anna, I am here to hear your last confession.
Reporter #1
She is condemned.
Voice From Above
She is saved!
Dr. Mabeus
F. The audience is ready for this play to end.
G. The audience believes we are ready to end, but we really are not ready to end.
H. We have ended long ago but nobody noticed.
I. It’s too much like Faust and Hamlet all rolled into one.
J. The audience wants something to happen but does not know what.
Priest
My child, how long has it been since your last confession?
Anna
It seems as if three lifetimes have passed. My child’s life. My husband’s life. My own life. I won’t even count the Fruit Fly.
Reporter #1
”Stimm liegt die Welt wie das Grab!”
Reporter #2
Yes. The world with all its various lives lies silent as the grave.
Priest
And what do you have to confess, my child?
Reporter #1
She’s going to be drawn and quartered.
Reporter #2
Served with melted butter to the cause of Justice.
Reporter #1
Brought forth on a silver platter.
Reporters
Made an example of.
Anna (breaks away)
No. I have changed my mind. I have nothing to confess.
Priest
Don’t be afraid. God will forgive every sin. All you have to do is ask.
Anna
No. God is the one who must ask for forgiveness. He has created a universe that is going to end. Created a sun that will burn out. In Ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years the universe itself will die. What will God say then? I was only kidding. It was trial and error and error won out. It renders every human action meaningless. When the universe finally goes kaput, I shall shine as brightly as the greatest saint.
Priest
Not everything has to be measured by eternity. What is wrong with the day to day, Anna? The celebration of what must be.
Anna
Who makes up all the rules of what must be? God is a sado-masochist who delights in turning us all into freaks. My Lobster-Child was better than all of you!
Priest
Take her away. She is in no condition to listen to reason.
Anna
Reason? There is no reason for anything.
Priest
Later, Anna. I’ll come to you later when you have had time to weigh the seriousness of your sins.
Dr. Mabeus (enters)
We don’t make up the rules. We try to discover them.
Anna is dragged away.
Anna (from within, dying away)
Heinrich! Heinrich!
The Priest and Dr. Mabeus sit down in easy chairs facing one another.
Dr. Mabeus
Near the end of the 20th Century, that terrible, terrifying century, a frozen corpse was discovered in the Similaun glacier in the Alps, near the Austrian-Italian Border. He was from the Stone Age and his age has estimated at 5,300 years. Although some Egyptian mummies are older, the Iceman (as he became to known) is the oldest human being whose organs are intact. Scientists were amazed at his clothing, his weapons — a dozen arrows carved from virburnum and dogwood, his tattoos. If his sperm had been preserved, there were some women who would have his child. He is now stored away at — 6 degrees centigrade. We do not know much about his final hours on this planet, but some scientists have speculated that the Iceman might have been murdered. Animals kill each other, but Man invented murder.
Priest
You are fond of questions, Doctor, so here is a question for you.
Dr. Mabeus
I hope it’s multiple choice.
Priest
It isn’t. It’s a scientific question. What is the longest distance a human being has to travel throughout the known universe.
Dr. Mabeus
Trillions and trillions of miles?
Priest
No. It is the distance required to understand another’s pain.
Lights out.
Copyright © 2002 by Louis Phillips.