The Gardener: (to the first container) So, Josephine! What’s happening to you today? You’re not happy? You got up out of the wrong side of the bed? You wanted to stay in bed, lazy-bones! Bed… bed… that’s not everything in life. Come on, come away for a little ride around the back. You must see the world. There, behave! And you, Germain, don’t you play jokes on her. Understand! She isn’t quite awake so don’t get her angry. Wait. She’ll pop her head out soon. If you aren’t rough with her, she’ll be nice. You’ll see, she’ll be nice. Eh, Josephine, you’ll be nice?
(Second container) Now, what’s this! Whathave those ones been up to now? Hey there! Woa! Get back! My impatient ones, my perennials, you better calm down or I’llget angry. OK? Leopold stop that! Stop! And first of all, get back on yourside, you oaf. And you, Marguerite, bow your head! Are you going to bow yourhead? Good. And don’t you start up again or I’ll put you in the corner beside Sebastien.Look, that one’s picking up! And I thought he was doomed to die. You OK Sebastien.You’re choosing life, my friend. You see that I was right to make you a tutor.So stop twisting yourself about. It’s time to stand up straight. You’rethirsty? Wait! Wait! Don’t be impatient. I’m going to give you a drink. (Hegives a drink with a dropper) That’s enough, you don’t want to bloat.
(Third container) Ah! You guys. That’sanother thing entirely! Claude, Joseph, Armand, Colette – the whole family. TheFleury gang. Bad seed. Accursed breed. I no longer know what to do with you. I’vetried everything, and gotten nothing. You just can’t live like everyone else.Don’t even know if you want to live? Hey, you bastards. You want to live? Well,answer! You want to live? Ok, then shit! Go fuck yourselves! I don’t even care.Do what you want, I don’t care. But can’t say afterwards that I did take careof you.
(Fourth container) Angelique . . . You, you are beautiful. Don’t bother with the others, they are all jealous. You make them ashamed, you are so beautiful. Look! You have two more leaves today! Sweet, tender, green. Looks like you’re juiced from the bottom up. Continue on your own my dear. Have confidence. You are the most beautiful.
(Fifth container) You, I have nothing to say to you! I don’t like you.
(Sixth and seventh containers) You neither, I don’t like you. Yet you never make trouble. Always clean, orderly, straight and stiff like old boys. (He smacks his cheek) Filthy flies! They are sticky this the morning. I know that they’re doing their job but they are fucking sticky. Eh, gentlemen, you already know what to expect. It is written. No problem. There’s nothing that scares you, nothing that surprises you. Damn they’re tedious.
(Eighth container) Now there’s there’s gonna be problems … With you there are always problems, but it comes later, mid-season. Liars, tricksters! Knock off your antics. Oh! Then again, it might be better like that. Who can tell how everything should turn out? So do what you feel like. Today we are good together, right? We’re having fun. Let’s enjoy it, it’s better than nothing. Tomorrow is another day. Demain c’est une autre affaire.
(Ninth and tenth containers) Now me, I don’t understand you at all! Same soil, same seeds, same sun… And you guys on the left are very strong. But the rest of you “les demoiselles coiffees” it looks like you’ve been through the oven. Where does that come from? What does that mean? Are you sulking? Don’t want anything to do with me? Want to punish me? What for? I’m going to switch you places. You on the right and you guys to the left. And we’ll see what that’ll give us. But don’t change your mood. Otherwise it’s all the same.
(Eleventh container) Nothing. Still nothing. What’s wrong in there. What are you missing? The seed is there. The earth is properly warmed. It’s humid, it’s sticky. It sticks to the finger when you push it in and at the same time it’s full of recesses to catch the seed in. But there’s nothing happening. It’s not coming. It doesn’t want to come. Yet I talk to you. I call to you every day. I’ll try again. Claire, Violette, Marie, Garance, Jacinthe, Marjolaine, Louis, Narcisse, Valerie, Achille, Pierrot, Rosanna! What are you waiting for? Come on now! Come on quick! Soon it will be too late. Time never goes backwards, it’s spring. Don’t miss it!
(Twelfth container) Now there’s the last of you. You, I don’t even know what’s the use talking to you. An independent bunch, that’s what you are. You plot with your little things all on your own. You spread out your calixes. You send out your stamens. You cum in your teeming pistils, stripping your petals, your downy palate. Each time it starts the same and you have learned nothing from no one. You don’t want to know nothing. You already know it all. Eh Francois? Eh Lucille. You always got the devil in you. The devil…
OK, that’ll do. My job is done. Everything is in place. See you tomorrow, my beauties. I hear fanfares. It’s the procession of Catherine Ragone, the Queen mother. I’ve nothing more to do here. I’m going back home. My wife’s waiting there for me. Butter cup. That’s what I call her. (He slaps) Damned flies!

Catherine: Finally, the uncomfortable winter ends. Galoshes, hoods and mittens are buried in the linen closet. Buds appear at the end of branches and under colourful tee-shirts. A warm saliva moistens all lips and each evening, under the verandas, the exasperating waiting calls, swollen with sighs and exaggerated sniggering settles in.
And we women, we single women, we dominate all of that from the height of our balcony. Is it that we are excluded? The men are elsewhere. At war. In the fields. On new construction projects. Soon, when they return, they will crash into their chairs and rock their beer-bellies, before staggering to the bed where they will snore too loud. But the season is still young. The nights are fresh and allow for rest. A few weeks of respite before the furnace of July.

Madam Roberge: Are you finished, Ragone, with your history of temperature? Why did you summon us here?

Catherine: To inform you of my decisions.

Lou Birkanian: Speak, my beauty!

Catherine: Since the death of Francois Premier, my husband, I have lived an existence… ah! ah! an existence. Yes, the existence of a mammalian mother, breast-feeding, wiping, the washer of diapers, cook, guardian of the nest. My hibernation! I endured the length of time, the rape of storms, the heavy snow. I suffered day after day, week after week, the stabs of the dagger that you know how to give, Madame Roberge, your hate for the Ragone’s, beginning with my father, called the Cretin. You blamed him for the death of your sister Angela, my mother: “Filippo Ragone killed my sister.” You shouted that throughout the court…

Madame Roberge: Filippo Ragone killed my sister Angela!

Catherine: Stop it Aunt! Right now. I am talking.

Madame Roberge: Finish your sermon, but don’t spit on me! My Niece!

Lou Birkanian: Ach! Karakravoy. Don’t start up again! Say what you have to say, Catherine, and everyone will go their way. It gets you nowhere to shout names at people like this.

Catherine: I suffered in silence…

Madame Roberge: In silence! Well that would astonish me!

Catherine: Yes, in silence… In the face of your screams, your endless nagging, your insults, Madame Roberge, your witchy laughter and invocations, Lou Birkanian, the little voice of Catherine Ragone was the sigh of a life that di not wish to die frozen.

Madame Roberge: Finish your fairy-tale and do it quickly! You’re going to make me bawl.

Lou Birkanian: Go on, my Catherine, tell us your matter!

Catherine: I say that times have changed, that the winter of Catherine Ragone is over, done with, fini. Alcide Premier, the son of my Francois and of Augustine Labelle dead in childbirth has disappeared in Azerbaijan. We will not wear out all our life waiting for his return. Absents are at fault. Life continues. Today I appoint as Lord Protector of the realm, my cousin Robert Houle. The hurricane of Catherine joins itself to the howl of Robert in order to chase the odours of death that you carry. He will have access to me on the balcony, at the table…

Madame Roberge: In the bed?

Catherine: Absolutely, to my bed! I proclaim it loudly so that you will not waste your spittle, secretly, in the alley corners: “What’s happening at Rogone’s house? Why are the lights on at four o’clock in the morning? Why does she close her door right in the middle of the afternoon? Where do these moans like a cat in heat come from.” Don’t bother yourself anymore with those questions! Say simply: Catherine Ragone has a man in her bed. She exhausts herself exhausting him. She took it stiff and strong, she will not stop crawling on him, under him, everywhere, until their two skins cry thank you and they plunge into the blackness of sleep.

Lou Birkanian: And your son, your Richard?

Catherine: He never heard but one half of my voice. He must learn to know the other. What is this thing that he calls his mother? A feeder body? A holy image? Protection? The respectable bearing of a schoolmistress? Royal dignity? I have been all of that, I have dressed myself in all of these virtues. But now it’s the debacle. Watch out, the big tanks are coming. The part of me that lay smoldering under the snow now claims force and appearance. I is time that my son finds his own way, that he encircles his mother to discover her true circumference instead of sticking her on the wall, a flat and pale icon, prizing his adorations.

Lou Birkanian: Catherine, you are beautiful when you let it out like a lioness, but…

Catherine: Stop, Lou Birkanian. Don’t go any further. Add not that “but” which carries renunciation. Like a maimed right hand that cuts off, annuls and mutilates what the left so magnificently gave.

Madame Roberge: The Queen mother, her son’s whore!

Catherine: Not the whore but the Bitch! I will not sell him anything. I want him to have me whole, freely, and at his fingertips, that he sees and hears me, that he sniffs out my spring odors, and caresses my skin…

Madame Roberge: Go ahead, then, say it: that he’ll fuck you!

Catherine: And why not? Does that scare you, Roberge? Not me!

Madame Roberge: The vice, the Ragone vice! It’s in your breed, it’s in your blood. The vice that Filippo Ragone, known as the Cretin, shoved into your guts the day that he deflowered you, the vice that killed my sister Angela, your mother!

Catherine: I did not like my mother!

Madame Roberge: The sweetness, the calmness of Angela…

Catherine: The resigned weariness of my mother.

Madame Roberge: The tireless dedication of Angela…

Catherine: The dry body of my mother.

Madame Roberge: The virtue – yes the virtue, you can sneer – the faithfulness, the flawless honesty d’Angela.

Catherine: Howl! Howl all you red wolves of my life, howl to death the sadness, sighs, heartaches and despair of my mother!

Madame Roberge: That’s what I do to all your family of degenerates! That’s what I do to your son, the cripple.

Catherine: Out of my court, you filth! Out of my garden, you pisser of shit!

Judith: He wasn’t even twenty. He was beautiful. He had eyes that laughed even when his mouth was grim. His mouth ran across my body. He bit my breasts. He licked my belly. He searched my mound. His seed caressed my button. The sap rose up to my lips. (She stumbles on an over-turned container.)

Catherine: Oh! Oh! Behold the Roberge clan at its best! Why don’t you help your sister, Emma, instead of prying into others business.

Judith: What’s that? Christ, what the fuck is that? Why have you wrecked my garden? Cursed race of ne’er-do-wells! You better hurry up! This is collection day, the last hour. The guys from the city will pass by. Bring out the garbage cans. I hear their trucks in the alley. They’re turning the corner at the Larose’s. Quick, pick it all up, pick up everything that’s lying on the ground…

Judith: This is the Amazon swamp that ate my prince. The savages arrive, they are all naked. They are covered in mud. Their cocks stiff as horses’.

Judith: Oh, make me cum you son of a bitch! Wait, don’t go too fast! Deeper. Deeper I say. No not there, Christ! There! Yes, there you are… Rub, turn, slide… Harder! Faster! Faster, s’blood! A bit lower! No, come back! Aie!

Lou Birkanian: Emma, do something!

Madame Roberge: Come away, Judith! Come on home. I will make you a nice orange juice with ice cubes.

Judith: You can’t escape. Moses will come back one day, by God! He will land here with his Afro-Asian women and his elephants. He will pull down the columns of the temple. He will crush all the slaves of the café Spartacus. And I will sing, sing like I did before.

Judith:
Ah, the gulls of my country
I see your crazy dance
It makes me speak
Of my distant Gaspé…sie
(She shouts:)
I will sing like I did before!

Catherine: Come Robert. You will now enter my house. It is time.

Robert Houle: I love you Madame Premier.

Catherine: What did you say? Never say that, understand! Never say that…

Robert Houle: I love you Catherine.

Catherine: Never say that!

Roy: Hello Freddy, you have the money?

Freddy: There is no money. You know that Roy. But I have two cats, a rabbit and three pigeons from Viger Square.

Roy: Dead?

Freddy: Yes.

Roy: I don’t like that. I’d like it better if when they’re alive.

Freddy: It’s the same thing.

Roy: I like it better when they’re alive.

Freddy: So you can kill them yourself?

Roy: Yes.

Freddy: It’ll do anyway?

Roy: I want two more pigeons.

Freddy: Roy, you know that we don’t have time.

Roy: Two pigeons or I drop the whole thing.

Freddy: O.K. you got it. When?

Roy: Tomorrow night at ten. The mother will have taken her pills. She’s out like a log until three o’clock in the morning. After that, she wakes up and does her housework. Everything has to be finished by then.

Freddy: Where?

Roy: In the Larose garden behind your place.

Freddy: You’ll bring the stuff?

Roy: I’ll bring everything that’s needed. Two more pigeons.

Freddy: O.K. Roy. Tomorrow night. At ten.

Nelson: Don’t hold my hand. It’ll be noticed and they’ll bug us.

Sandy: What can they do?

Nelson: I’ve seen how people look at us. They start talking behind our backs. Yesterday I heard Emma Roberge say to Madame Larose: “The twins, it looks like they are not unhappy together.” And when I went close to them they looked embarrassed and stopped talking.

Sandy: We are not unhappy together?

Nelson: No.

Sandy: I’m happy, Nelson.

Nelson: Me too.

Sandy: Nelson, do you think that will last a long time?

Nelson: It never started it will never finish.

Sandy: There are a lot of people who say that it shouldn’t be.

Nelson: It shouldn’t, but it’s there. I don’t want to know anything else.

Nelson: Sandy?

Sandy: Granny, do you think she knows?

Nelson: Sure.

Sandy: Why doesn’t she say anything to us?

Nelson: She’s not against it I guess.

Sandy: Do you think she knew before?

Nelson: Lou Birkanian knows everything before it happens… She sees everything in her cards. She feels everything that’s going to happen with the tip of her fingers.

Sandy: So why didn’t she do anything to stop us?

Nelson: She knew it had to happen.

Sandy: I knew it too.

Nelson: Me too.

Sandy: I love you little sister.

Nelson: I love you big brother. You are old, you were born one hour before me. You were all alone for one long hour.

Sandy: I want to die one hour before you.

Nelson: I don’t want you to die.

Sandy: Come under the trees. We’ll kiss.

Nelson: We’re going to make love.

Sandy: I can’t go without it.

Richard: Grandfather!

Filippo Ragone: Yeh.

Richard: First of all, you don’t need to play the moron with me! I know your secret.

Filippo Ragone: Yeh.

Richard: Grandfather, what exactly are women? How’s a women mad? Your wife, Angela, what was she like?

Filippo Ragone: She was magnificent.

Richard: What does that mean?

Filippo Ragone: Magnificent.

Richard: Why did she kill herself?

Filippo Ragone: I don’t know. I don’t know anymore. It was too long ago. Leave it alone, it’s none of your business.

Richard: Grandfather!

Filippo Ragone: Yeh.

Richard: When a man goes with a woman. Both together, you know, alone, all naked like in the pictures, they struggle, they get exhausted, they bellow, they look like runners at the end of the race. But who wins?

Filippo Ragone: Why do you ask me that?

Richard: I have never been with a woman. (Filippo bursts into laughter.) Stop laughing! Stop laughing! I’ll kill you, understand. I’ll kill you, the cretin, if you keep on laughing. They all laugh at me. They laugh behind my back. They say I can’t do it. They play tricks on me. On Saturday morning, they sent me to Germaine Dubois’ place with her order of groceries. When I got to her place, she was sitting there waxing the hair off her legs. Then when she gave me my change she grabbed me like this with her red-painted nails and forced my nose between her two tits. I nearly suffocated. I got out of there. I even left my tip on the kitchen table. (Filippo bursts into laughter.) Stop laughing, goddamit.

Filippo Ragone: And you, stop playing the clown, for Christ’s sake. When the time has come to wield the bat, you got to be fucking stupid to keep on making sand pies. Smarten up, damn it! Just jump in and swim.

Richard: I don’t know how to swim.

Filippo Ragone: So what? You don’t drown in that water. And, in any case, everyone has to go through with it, so you better get it over with, the sooner the better.

Richard: Why did fat Germaine Dubois stuff my nose between her two tits?

Filippo Ragone: Out of Christian charity!

Richard: I don’t like it. I don’t want to have red painted nails take me by the back of the neck. They’re like a garden rake. They’re like an ice pick.

Filippo Ragone: Richard!

Richard: Yeah!

Filippo Ragone: It’s time. It’s spring. You can’t do anything to stop it. Learn from it instead of scratching ‘til you bleed.

Richard: Time is not my boss, it’s not my king. I am not time’s slave. I am Richard Premier. My father had his palace in the hanging gardens of Babylon. Where are the courtesans with transparent veils?

Filippo Ragone: Shut up, you brat! Pack up, real quick, all your comic book stories. Don’t spend your coins on the Erotic Sensual Theatre of Bourbonnais Street. King or no king, courtesans or no courtesans, one day you have to go through it and don’t worry, on that day there ain’t no one smarter than anyone else. It’s the first time. And on your first time, no matter what, you’ll always fee; like the king of clutz’s. Now I’m tired, so let me look at the flowers, they’re less annoying than you are!

Richard: Tell me…

Filippo Ragone: Yeh…

Richard: Talk to me!

Filippo Ragone: Yeh!

Richard: Don’t leave so fast!

Filippo Ragone: Yeh! (He leaves).

Richard: Well then, it has to be decided. They’re swarming all around me like black flies in May in the swamps of Varincourt. And their buzzing never stops: the first time, the first time. No! For me it will be the last, the last humiliation. I will not bear for one more day the big tits of Germaine Dubois, nor the morganatic marriage of Marie-Jeanne Larose and Alcide Premier, my half-brother, my rival. I hate the incestuous coupling of the twins, they smell of raspberries, cut hay, apple juice. I hate that, it makes me sick.  I see my mother, I hear the moans of my mother through the howls of spring. For the last time. Freddy! Freddy, answer when I call you!

Freddy: What is it?

Richard: Is it tonight?

Freddy: Yes.

Richard: Listen carefully. It’s me who decides, OK? I am in command. I am the boss and you will execute my wishes.

Freddy: Yes, Richard.

Richard: Get going?

Lou Birkanian: Let go of me! Let go of me for once and for all. I told you I don’t want to.

Marie-Jeanne: Every time you say that you don’t want to, at the end of the day you always do. You like it that I beg you.

Lou Birkanian: Marie-Jeanne Larose! I have been very clear. Don’t stick to me like this, I have nothing to say about Alcide Premier.

Marie-Jeanne: Why?

Lou Birkanian: Because it doesn’t concern you. Or me either.

Marie-Jeanne: He’s my husband.

Lou Birkanian: Your husband, your husband! By that account, I’m married to the Caliph of Samarkand, to the Ayatollah Khalkali, to Jesus Christ on the Cross.

Marie-Jeanne: You were a witness at my marriage.

Lou Birkanian: Stop that. Stop that right now. Children’s games are children’s games and nothing more.

Marie-Jeanne: A marriage is a marriage and nothing less.

Lou Birkanian: Obstinate, evil, camel headed, arkounian, Bralitek semagronioulcrach!

Marie-Jeanne: Oh, Lou Birkanian, I am sure that you are swearing in your own language. What does it mean?

Lou Birkanian: It means “may demon Brali will rip out your womb and make you a hat out of it”. You see what you make me say?

Marie-Jeanne: I love it when you speak your language.

Lou Birkanian: I think I have forgotten it all except for the oaths.

Marie-Jeanne: How do you say eyes?

Lou Birkanian: Oratoun.

Marie-Jeanne: And lips?

Lou Birkanian: Botel.

Marie-Jeanne: And breasts?

Lou Birkanian: Asimian.

Marie-Jeanne: And… this?

Lou Birkanian: There are lots of words.

Marie-Jeanne: Tell me!

Lou Birkanian: Albokly, Stomilaz, Pek, Choulin, Tilissi, Tchemackka, Ordiniezjakidze, Karsou. And there are a lot of others less appropriate.

Marie-Jeanne: Lou Birkanian, the first time, how was it for you.

Lou Birkanian: You still want to make me talk?

Lou Birkanian: You always make me tell everything.

Marie-Jeanne: Isn’t that why you’re hear?

Lou Birkanian: Perhaps…

Marie-Jeanne: Tell me!

Lo Birkanian: In that time, in my country, the girls were very different from what you are, you girls of today. We never knew a man before the wedding, but we knew everything. Women gossip, you know, in the courtyards of the houses and the girls listen while shelling peas. And what did those women talk about? About that, and about that, always about that. Hey, my little girl, the women of the Caucasus, we never see their faces uncovered in the street, they brush against the walls, they walk quickly, they double-lock their doors. Outside, they are fierce, virtuous, modest, but if you only knew what they said to each other inside! Between themselves, while the men were in the fields. And they don’t just talk. They show each other their bodies, they scrutinize, they compare. They explain where it goes, how it is done and how long it takes. They share positions, they take up challenges, the give advice on pleasure, they talk of their experiences of past nights, and they laugh, they laugh without end. O the laughter of the women of my country! Do you want me to tell you: here I have never heard any laugh like it, the laughter of freedom. Yet women here say that they are freer than we are! You know the game of the goatee. “I hold you, you hold me by our little goatee. The first one of us two who will laugh will get a wee slap.” You have to stay still, serious, frozen, keeping that same expression on your face. You must never flinch. The one that lasts the longest wins. It always ends in bursts of laughter. Of release! We women, my little girl, know very well how to play that game. We have a face for the men and we know how to hold it for a very long time: showing dignity, attention, pleasure and even pain. But when the men aren’t there, when our little show is no longer necessary, well then, it bursts out, it explodes out of our stomach, our lungs, our throat. The laughter, all of us the same laughter. And this purges us of all the dignity, attention, pleasure and pain that we had aped. Oh yes, even the pain! In my country the men had the right to strike us. But we had our revenge by playing tricks on them, magnificent tricks that they didn’t even notice. That’s what was making us laugh. Our tricks and their smugness. Aie, Karakravoy shrabeckmadin! There is no woman who has not laughed at them with that terrifying laugh. At the end of the end, everybody won. Them too.

Marie-Jeanne: You were telling me about your wedding…

Lou Birkanian: Ah! My wedding! That was the best trick that I played on my man.

Marie-Jeanne: How did it go?

Lou Birkanian: The was ending. The ceremony had taken place in the morning on the embankment in front of the house of the groom. A mix of barbaric offerings and orthodox songs. Afterwards, there had been an outdoor feast in the midst of three white bison carcasses that had been butchered according to tradition. During the meal, the groom, now my husband, had taken up the challenges of the twelve shots; twelve shots of arak, which he drank all at once, and after each shot all the assembly rose shouting: “Long live the groom!” At the end of the banquet, night was falling, my man was tight with drink, I mean dead drunk. We headed for home amid cheers, drums, balalaikas, children’s trumpets.  The bridesmaid came with me, while the best man held my husband up. And we exchanged a look over the shoulder of my husband who was being dragged along, his head bowed, towards the decisive ordeal. You know, that out there, you have to prove to the whole assembly that the man has taken you as a virgin. The best man winked at me, as if to say: “Don’t be worry, it’ll be okay.” When we were all alone, my husband and I, in the bedroom, in the bed, I tried everything, everything that I had learned from the women. Nothing worked, he was too drunk. Outside I was hearing the expectant drums and the howling. And I was panicking. I tried again to stir him, to make him hard: impossible. At that very moment, I heard someone tapping at the small window between the bed and the corner icon. It was the best man. He had gone through the backyard without being noticed. He smiled. I opened it. He came in. He pulled the sheet from beneath the body of my husband, who was snoring like a bull. We lay down on the sheet. The best man deflowered me. It hurt a little. It’s normal: the first time, it’s never a great pleasure. It hurts all women, but we mustn’t exaggerate, it’s not torture! Finally the brief procedure was performed correctly. The best man departed through the window. I waited a moment, then I dressed myself in my beautiful wedding dress covered with gilt. I took the sheet stained with blood. Outside the excitement was rising, I had the impression that the drums, dances, had become more coarse, as if demanding their due. I opened the door. Suddenly there was an enormous silence. The people were seized with astonishment. Usually it is the man who wields the sheet like a flag. But I, I was so swollen with amusement and pride that I could mock tradition. I moved towards them. I threw the sheet, making it float in the air, flat, as I had seen the fishermen do when they cast their nets. The sheet spread on the ground and they could see my blood. I ran back in the house, bursting with laughter. My first woman’s laugh. The whole wedding party, in their turn, were unleashed and let out an immense burst of laughter. They rejoiced in my obvious happiness and in the virility of my man. Afterwards I never made love to any man except my husband, until his death, six years later. Ach! Love!

Marie-Jeanne: I will never make love to any man but Alcide Premier.

Lou Birkanian: Don’t be quick to say such things.

Marie-Jeanne: I swear it.

Lou Birkanian: Don’t swear, dammit! You don’t know the future.

Marie-Jeanne: You know something Lou Birkanian. You know something about Alcide. He’s dead and you don’t want to tell me. He died in Azerbaijan and you keep hiding it from me.

Lou Birkanian: Stop that! I know nothing. I know nothing. I know nothing.

Freddy: Richard, what are you doing here?

Richard: Nothing. I’m waiting.

Freddy: Everything is set. We’ll go. You still want to?

Richard: Yes.

Freddy: I have to blindfold you.

Richard: Is that really necessary?

Freddy: It’s planned that way.

Richard: Let’s go.

Freddy: Come on!

Alcide: Sit down! Don’t say a word. Fear not. I’ll settle that. (The young woman crashes to the ground.)

The Woman: Alcide, my man! Come into the house. Immediately. I need you. I have been too long alone and waiting for you. I can’t bear it. I am like a dry garden awaiting for the rain. Come!

Alcide: We have lots of things to talk about.

The Woman: Later! Later, we’ll speak. Later, you can tell me of your exploits. Now it is you that I want, only you. You, naked. Me, naked. Both of us caught into each other like in a net. Your mouth, my mouth, your arms, my belly, your wet skin, your nape, my back, my hairs, your balls, my hand, all my odors, my holes, my mounds, your cries, my vertigo, your cock in me, all my muscles clenched on you to hold you, to take you for a second, a single second, the bow taut to a breaking point and and the free fall with you, my love. After come the words like clothing, jewelry to adorn ourselves, to be seen in the world and also to hide from each other. Come!

Alcide: No!

The Woman cries: Aie!

Alcide: My labours are completed. I leave. I will not return.

The Woman: Aie!

Alcide: Listen to me instead of bawling!

Alcide:
O God who guides my steps
Have no fear of failure
On my path of valour
For I will not stop

Chorus:
O God who guides his steps
Have no fear of failure
On his path of valour
He will not stop.

Alcide:
I have crossed seven seas
Confronted all the darkest storms
Wrestled skillfully with the winds
Approached the most distant shores

Chorus:
O, hiss, and O, ho
Hourrah for our great hero

Alcide:
I slew the beast with seven mouths
From each of them spat vile flames
I tamed the horses running wild
And the bulls of the King of Annam.

Chorus:
O, hiss, and O, ho
Hourrah for our great hero

Alcide:
I built in the wilds of far Asia
A most formidable wall
And added just for fantasy
Three pyramids of stone.

Chorus:
O, hiss, and O, ho
Hourrah for our great hero

Alcide:
Right to the coast of Estramador
I made my Empire stretch
And on the seas that bound us round
Slashed the prows of my navies.

Chorus:
O, hiss, and O, ho
Hourrah for our great hero

Alcide: recitativo
But a hero doesn’t take his rest
Always he goes further to extend his conquests
His desires have no barriers
He must subjugate the earth
And when the earth is at his feet
He raises he eyes and seeks the planets.

Chorus:
‍The Planets!
The Planets!
The Planets!

Alcide: Voila! You’ve heard the whole business.

The Woman: I only heard one word: “I’m leaving.” The rest was the buzzing of mosquitos. It doesn’t interest me.

Alcide: Farewell then! We are leaving right away.

The Woman: “We”? Who is We?

Alcide: Me and this woman.

The Woman: Who? Who is she?

Alcide: My slave, what do you think?

The Woman: Oh! So that’s it. It’s only that? Poor Alcide, naïve Alcide, why did you not say that instead of singing me your opera. Also, you off key. I tell you in passing, my dear, I tell you for the love of music, you know it well, and not to hurt you or belittle you in front of this charming person. (She becomes very hoity-toity) My dear lady, so you are the newest conquest of my old Alcide. Please come inside, I happen to have a samovar of jasmine tea heating in the kitchen. O, you and I will chat about this and that, delectating ourselves on Turkish delight and blinis, while our Hercules takes care of the luggage. You will sleep here tonight, of course. No! No! Don’t apologize. I insist. It’s quite natural. There are two beautiful large rooms: one looks out onto the valley of the Koura river, you will see how charming it is, and the other on the first foothills of the Caucasus. You will chose yourself, of course. We certainly have many little secrets and lots of stories to tell each other, my dear. You come from so far away. By the way, how are they wearing hobnail boots this year in Armenia? With or without bells? Oh, you will teach me so much! I’m so very pleased to have made your acquaintance. Alcide, the luggage!

Francois Premier: I am the shade of Francois Premier. For many long years, which for me have melted down into one ageless block, I hang between heaven and earth between the slopes of Ararat where the wife of my youth, Augustine Labelle, dead in childbirth, one day came seeking me. It is not pleasant being dead, but it is interesting. As the exalted position that I maintain – sometime with difficulty because of the wind – allows me, neglecting the details, to discover the vast world in it’s oneness, the great garden of the earth enclosed within extended oceans with it’s plains, it’s snowfields and forests as well, thus arrested in time, I see all the seasons of man organized and counterbalanced.  I see the young life of Alcide, my first child, come to it’s end on the mountains of Azerbaijan, while in the distance my second, Richard the cripple, son of Catherine Ragone, enters into his springtime. I see the stormy Catherine engulf her sultry July in the April of Robert Houle. I see the All Saint’s chrysanthemums, cherished flowers of that bitch Madame Roberge, striving in vain to stifle the lilies that are held in the hands of the twins, Nelson Trapp and Sandy Sparks. I see Annie Williams in flower, cut and harvested, sold at market with the by her horticulturist and brother, Roy Williams, scion of an eternal September. I see their mother, Judith the mad, sailing back up the river of her ages and sinking into the mangroves fed by the alluvial sediments of March. And I see, finally, in the winter greenhouses, Filippo Ragone, known as the Cretin, strike with his wheelchair the planter wherein grows the budding flower. Everywhere Eros triumphs – sex and ass. Bizarre ascertainment and slightly humiliating to the ethereal philosopher I have become. Everywhere below, this enormous thrust for this negligible purpose, as if the gods in their wisdom had wanted to lodge, even in the very heart of the useful and effective mechanics of the universe, the essential swelling that only pleasure and its ungovernable caprices move to action.
That is why I will not use my thunderous megaphone voice to cry to all these dogs and bitches in heat: Beware of the turmoil that rises out of all your openings. Rather let drop a golden rain on all the germination of the world.
With a little watering can, he waters from on high the containers of flowers, and leaves in his clouds by the same side that he entered from, saying: Well, look at that, the wind has shifted!

Freddy: Roy, I’m here.

Roy: (Offstage) Coming.

Freddy: Hurry up!

Roy: I won’t be long.

Freddy: Hurry up, dammit! We’re gonna get caught What are you waiting for? Fuck, I’m getting nervous.

Roy: Here’s the hardware. You have the ransom?

Freddy: It’s all there.

Roy: Show me!

Freddy: Look.

Roy: Give them to me.

Freddy: No. I’ll give you only one. The other one after.

Roy: O.K. That’s alright.

Freddy: And Mrs. Williams?

Roy: She’s taken her pills. She’s nodding off. We’ve got three good hours ahead of us before she wakes up. My mother never wakes up before three in the morning.

Freddy: Good, you’re going to get Annie?

Roy: Right away, my prince.

Freddy: I have to do it. I have to do it. I promised Richard. I can’t go back on him.

Annie Williams enters blindfolded, led by Roy.

Roy: Hold on tight. Let’s go!

Judith: Roy, you demon. What have you done with your sister? Roy! Roy! Roy! The Indians are coming. What have you done with your sister?

The Wife: Good morning Leila, did you sleep well?

Leila: Yes, thank you.

The Wife: Is Alcide awake?

Leila: Yes.

The Wife: He is always slow in getting out of bed. He’s just a big lazy guy.

Leila: I wouldn’t know.

The Wife: O, I know, Leila, my dear, don’t be so bashful. Between woman we must try to understand each other. Friendship is a beautiful thing. Why should we not be friends? Leila, what’s wrong? You seem upset. Talk to me. Are you afraid?

Leila: Yes.

The Wife: Of losing him?

Leila: Yes.

The Wife: You want him to be attached to you? For ever?  Until the day he dies?

Leila: Yes.

The Wife: Well, I might have the means to do it. Now don’t look at me with those big, frightened, doe eyes. I have secrets. And I can share them with you. Listen:
Many years ago, I left with Alcide – as you will do today – to conquer the world. We walked a long time into the west. It was our goal, to reach the great sea beyond the mountains. After many long weeks of trudging across the steppes and over the bison prairies, we came to the great river. We had to cross it. But it was like an unbreachable barrier. A limit. And you know Alcide, he doesn’t like limits. Me, I wanted to go back and bypass the obstacle by going up to its source in the south as far as was necessary. Whereas he wanted to cross the river immediately. At that very moment we saw on the water a very small rowboat coming towards us. A man was steering it with incredible skill, his boat verily danced amidst the rapids, he knew all the counter currents, he seemed to jump over the rocks, sometimes abandoning himself to a whirlpool then, suddenly, with astonishing speed, shooting like an arrow across the shallows. The man approached. He stared at us. We stared at him. He was a fat, stocky man, with a bestial face, hairy, and a little deformed in the legs. He wore a fur tunic coat made with wild goat skin. Alcide wanted to buy his boat. The man smiled disdainfully, pointing to the river. Only he could pull through because he knew every little eddy. The boat was too small for three. The ferryman would have to make the trip twice. Alcide negotiated the price, and I then embarked with the man. He carried me away with a crazy stroke, splashed with spray. The man screamed like a wild beast before every danger. He burst into enormous laughter each time he escaped death. When we arrived on the other side, he made me get out, pulled his canoe onto the shore, then ran towards me, he ripped off my clothes, he threw me to the ground, he pinned my arms in the sand with colossal force, his chest crushed mine with all its weight, he penetrated me, but at that precise moment, I sensed in his body a shock and a sudden weakening. He rolled off of me to one side; his penis ejaculated its sperm, which spread through the goat hair. That’s when I saw protruding from his chest, in his heart, the point of the arrow that had transfixed him. Alcide, from the other shore, had killed him. As he died, the man said to me: “Take this tunic soaked with my seed, it is a talisman; if a woman cover body of her man with it, she can be certain that he will remain faithful to her his entire life.Here is the fur, Leila, I give it to you. You can still see in the back the hole that Alcide’s arrow made.

Leila: Why don’t you use it against me to keep him with you?

The Wife: I thought about it when I saw you. But I soon after stopped thinking about it. You are beautiful Leila and I am no longer. You are young and I will soon be old. All this is stronger than ourselves. I give you my hand. And leave you dispose of the life and death of Alcide. I’ve had my share. Take that which comes to you. Accept my gift.

Alcide: Now, that’s good, ladies! I see you making buddy-buddy. Well, Bravo! That’s the way we should deal with the matters of the heart. Jealousy, arguments, all that silliness, it’s gone out of style. We’re no longer in the stone age, for god’s sake! So, thanks for your welcome, my dear wife. Thanks for the wonderful night that we have spent together. You always have comfortable mattresses. Good. So now we are going. It’s time to say farewell.

The Wife: Farewell!

Leila: Alcide, look at the gift she gave me. A coat for you. Would like to you put it on?

Alcide: I never give up my lion skin.

Leila: Alcide! Just to please me . . . It’s like a farewell ceremony. A kind of wedding. I beg you.

Alcide: Okay. Pass me the tuxedo.

Leila: It’s a talisman. The woman who covers the body of her man with it, can be certain that he will remain faithful to her his entire life.

Alcide: Stop talking nonsense and give me your nanny-goat skin.

Alcide: Aie, horror! An unbearable fire burns me! My skin is transfixed with white hot irons. The fur sticks to my flesh, the acid eats me, a razor slices up my guts. Where? Where? Where will I find relief from my agony? Whores, witches, you have betrayed me.

The Wife: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi!

Roy: Take off your shoes!

Roy: Your clothes!

Roy: Forward!

Roy: Stretch out your hands!

Roy: The other hand! Flat! Palm upward!

Roy: The great caress!

Roy: The great torment!

Roy: The great pleasuring!

Roy: The ceremony is over. Store all the stuff in the shed.Give me the second bag.

Freddy: It’s done. Now it’s done. I kept my promise.

Annie: I have to go home. My mother is going to wake up. Damn it’s sticky. (She wipes her sticky hands on the muslin veil.) Oh, gosh! It’s everywhere. (They each get dressed away from one another on their own side of the bed.) Are you going to pick me up tomorrow night to go see a movie? Help me out here, we got to clean up. (He helps to place the spaghetti tray on the bed.) There, that’s OK. (She pulls the curtains.) See you tomorrow! (She kisses him on the cheek.) Good night Richard! (She leaves.)

Richard: Freddy! Get rid of it. And you never talk about this ever. You got it! This doesn’t exist. You hear! You know nothing. You saw nothing.

Judith: Roy, Annie! Where did they go? Did you see them?

Freddy: I know nothing, I saw nothing, Mrs. Williams.

Richard: Get rid of it all!

Alcide: No, I will not cry out. One gets used to pain. But I won’t stop talking until you have taken me to the summit of the mountain. There, alone, facing to the sun, I will harangue the gods. Ow, that hurts! No, I didn’t say anything. I am not suffering. I am not suffering. Aie, Aie, stop the procession, it joggles my head.So tell me, comrades, have I failed in my destiny?

The Choir: No.

Alcide: Have I ever forgotten the laws of courage and honour?

The Choir: No.

Alcide: Have I yielded to the softening of the heart and forgotten my labours?

The Choir: No.

Alcide: I discovered all the unexplored lands.

The Choir: Yes.

Alcide: I built cities, founded states. I brought together that which was sundered, and sundered that which was without form.

The Choir: Yes.

Alcide: I gave men the means to survive, I sowed, I irrigated I transformed, organized, directed, developed, instructed.

The Choir: Yes, that’s the truth.

Alcide: The world I leave behind me bears my indelible mark.

The Choir: And how!

Alcide: So why? Aie, I am burning up! Let us speak without passion. Why this punishment? Why this bite that burns my skin, that destroys my life? Why me? Where did I screw up?

Alcide: Aphrodite has beaten me to a pulp. Ah! Women, you daughters of the devil, you plague-carriers, destroyers of the universal order, through what malice do you kill me today, I who has loved you so much, me who has led up to the steps of my palaces? Answer me, my good friends, what do they want, Christ? What more do they want? What else do they want? Damn it, what do they want?

The Choir: That, you’ll have to ask them…

Alcide: Then again, no! Let’s remain among ourselves, comrades. Let’s take a break from stupid question. And resume our forward march. Let’s go! This is the final journey of Alcide to the highest reaches. We must maintain a proud bearing. Aie, let’s move, dammit! And sing loudly to cover the moans that I cannot contain.

The Choir: Oh, the march! Draw, march! Time draws on you. Draw, drawing…

Richard: That which is done is done. The time of the flies is ended. Now comes that of the bees. There will never again be a first time. There is no more virgin forest. The entire earth has ceased to be unknown, matter reveals it’s secrets. It is in this world of geometrical roads, this tangle of trains, of tunnels, of airlines, in this network of radio-waves, holding the earth prisoner, in these alveoli set to gather, multiply and transform, in this overcrowded hive I want to establish myself. My stinger has been drawn out for reaping and for murder. I will not renounce it.

Richard: Come workers. Come hornets. Darken with your swarm-shadow the last afterglow of Richard’s spring. Peck the juice, there where lies. Spare no flower. But all, in inexorable battalions, suck to your satisfaction the nectar of the earth … while Richard accomplishes his works.