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1. PLAY IN WITH `Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2'.
WHEN THIS HUMAN MUSIC IS ESTABLISHED, BRING UP DOLPHINS SINGING INSIDE IT. THEN FADE AWAY HUMAN MUSIC, LEAVING THE DOLPHINS ALL AROUND US, AND SWIMMING BETWEEN OUR EARS. THEY ARE ANXIOUS, THEN FRIGHTENED. SLOWLY BRING UP THE SOUND OF WAVES CRASHING ONTO A BEACH. THE MANY DOLPHINS DIE AWAY UNTIL THERE IS ONLY ONE, CLOSE. THIS STOPS ALSO. JUST THE WAVES, SOFTLY LAPPING.
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2. SUDDENLY:
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| RADIO NEWSREADER | The death has been announced in Copenhagen of the great Danish mountaineer and explorer, Henning Bleeze. He was sixty-four years old and had been ill for some time. Dolphins all over the world........(RADIO IS TWIDDLED OFF STATION)
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| COCKNEY NEWSVENDOR | Henning Bleeze snuffs it! Read awl abart it! Henning Bleeze is a gonna!
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| `March of Time' MUSIC FROM `CITIZEN KANE'.
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| AMERICAN REPORTER | Today, as it comes to all men, death came to Henning Bleeze. Mountaineer. Explorer. Ecologist. Hero...
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TIXOVER SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO US. A SPLASHING OF WATER AROUND HIM, BUT WE MUST NOT KNOW EXACTLY WHY UNTIL THE END OF THE PLAY.
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| TIX | Who would believe it, me, Hartley Tixover, with only a few weeks of his life left to go, there I was, being interviewed yet again by that shifty bastard, Duncan Macnab. (LAUGHS) No, I don't hate him any more.
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3. A RADIO INTERVIEW
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| TIX | For God's sake, shuttup about Henning Bleeze! Tell them about the dolphins. That's what I'm here to talk about! We've just found out, you see, they're all dying...Sod Henning Bleeze!
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| MACNAB | (A GAMESHOW HOST USING THE VOICE OF A SUBTLE SCOTS PSYCHIATRIST, VERY CLOSE AND INTIMATE) He was like a father to you, wasn't he, Tixover?
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| TIX | Don't you put that headshrinking voice on with me, Macnab! You old ginger fraud! You just want to make me cry on your bloody radio programme! (HIS VOICE BREAKING WITH EMOTION) And I won't! Oh, God!
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| MACNAB | (MORE SLY YET) He took you under his wing when you were just a wee boy, didn't he?
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| TIX | (WIPING AWAY TEARS, ANGRY) Yes, yes, yes! Me and Gary Wopfner and Jiddu Dutt, the giant Indian.
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| MACNAB | Six foot eight.
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| TIX | (HIS RELUCTANCE GIVING WAY TO NOSTALGIA) Wot? No. he wasn't full grown then. We were all seventeen, our first shave, our first girl, all that year, three proud d'Artagnans. Winter of nineteen sixty...nine. It's all in my book - (SHOUTS FURIOUSLY) Why don't you just get some bugger to read out my book! We were climbing a frozen waterfall in the Dolomites. Racing up, and Gary was already way ahead. (LAUGHS) I looked down, and way, way below I saw a tiny figure eating chicken-legs. It was Henning Bleeze. I'd never set eyes on him before. I just knew it was him. `Bugger me!' I shouted, `it's Henning Bleeze!' He climbed up after us.
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| 4. | |||
| BLEEZE | (THICKLY DANISH) You are all very good climbers. I was watching you. Young and strong, like Vikings.
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| YOUNG TIX | I'm Hartley Tixover, these are my pals, Gary and Jiddu.
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HELLOS AND HANDSHAKES. SUDDENLY:
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| BLEEZE | Oooops!
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| JIDDU | Please, do be careful!
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| BLEEZE | I nearly went back down the quick way! (LAUGHS) Look boys, you know who I am?
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| YOUNG TIX | You are Henning Bleeze.
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| BLEEZE | I am Henning Bleeze. I'm putting together a little expedition to K2 ..and I wondered if maybe, perhaps...you make a good team, I have seen so today...would you like to come?
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| WOPFNER | The Himalayas!
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| YOUNG TIX | You don't mean it! Jiddu, did you hear? K2
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| JIDDU | (LIKE AN OFFICIAL COMMUNIQUÉ) Mr. Bleeze, my friends and I would be most honoured...
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THE WHISTLE OF THE WIND. A FEW BLEEPS OF DOLPHIN.
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5. NOW WE'RE IN THE LAKE DISTRICT. A JOURNALIST IS KNOCKING ON A DOOR. DOOR OPENS.
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| TIX | (VEXED) What is it?
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| JOURNALIST | Excuse me, sir, are you perhaps Sir Hartley Tixover, the famous mountaineer?
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| TIX | Yes, yes. Yes!
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| JOURNALIST | I'm from the Sun.
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| TIX | I'm from Basingstoke. GOODBYE!
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HE SLAMS THE DOOR. CREAK OF LETTERBOX.
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| JOURNALIST | (BENDING DOWN) Excuse me, sir, I don't mean to letterbox you, but could I have a few words? About the death of Henning Bleeze. I believe he was a close associate of yours. When you were young.
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DOOR IS PULLED OPEN AGAIN.
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| TIX | (BREATHLESS, ANXIOUS) What did you say?
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| JOURNALIST | Henning Bleeze, sir. Hadn't you heard? Oh, I am sorry. He's rumoured to have killed hisself. Any comment?
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| CONSTANZA | (APPROACHING FROM INSIDE. ANXIOUS) Tixover, darling. Tix.
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| TIX | (ABJECT) Cossy, this creature...he says...it's Henning Bleeze.
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| CONSTANZA | I just heard on the radio.
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| JOURNALIST | Any comment, Mrs Tixover? Hey - ain't your brother the Prime Minister of Italy?
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| CONSTANZA | (LIKE AN ITALIAN POLITICIAN) No comment.
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SHE SLAMS THE DOOR. A BIG SLAM. IN THE DISTANCE, A PLAINTIVE BLEEP OF A DOLPHIN.
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6. THE SPLASH OF DOLPHINS SWIMMING FAST IN WATER. TIX SPEAKS AS IF RUNNING.
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| TIX | That was how I heard about the death of the greatest human being I ever knew. Next thing I was on your TV show in London. Good publicity for my mountaineering books. That's my excuse. And I'd already said, you see, that I'd do a six-part series on the life of Henning Bleeze for the Beeb. Bloody bastard that I was. Since I died, of course, I've been quite wonderful...
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START FADING HIM.
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| ...in every way, every day, better and better.
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7. JINGLE FOR `The Duncan Macnab Show'. TV STUDIO, WITH AUDIENCE.
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| BLAND MIDATLANTIC ANNOUNCER | And here's your host, the one and only...Duncan Macnab!
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CLAPS AND WHISTLES, AMERICAN-STYLE. CROSS-FADE TO MID-INTERVIEW.
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| MACNAB | And what will this six-part series be called?
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| TIX | (HORRIBLY POMPOUS) Well, Duncan, I'm thinking of calling it: Henning Bleeze, the Man and his Mountains.
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| MACNAB | But I understand, do I not, that the Great Dane (CHUCKLES) is to be buried at the South Pole, among the wee penguins.
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| TIX | In Antarctica, yes. On the summit of Mount Erebus, overlooking McMurdo Sound.
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| MACNAB | An owrie place for such an ebullient spirit.
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| TIX | Ah, but when you see my documentary, and I believe there's a photo of Mount Erebus in my last book but one, you'll see how beautiful it is there. And no people. He hated people.
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| MACNAB | And did he hate you?
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| TIX | (IGNORING THE QUESTION) We walked across Antarctica several times together. In fact, whenever he lost one of his toes he put it under a stone on that same mountain. So now we're just reuniting him with his tootsies. (LAUGHS, THEN COLDLY GRAVE) Myself and some of the other climbers who revere the man, we're flying in from all over the world for a very, very private ceremony....It'll be in the documentary, of course.
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| MACNAB | (SCOTS IRONY) Of course. Oh, yes.
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8. A WINDY MOUNTAIN TOP.
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| BLEEZE | (FURIOUS) Vad heter den har platsen? Jag forstar inte. TIXOVER!!!! Jag hata Tixover!!! I hate you, English bastard!!
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9. LAP OF WAVES.
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| TIX | (CLOSE, INTIMATE) You were right, when you asked. He did hate me. But only towards the end.
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| MACNAB | (SOUND OF SCOTS SUPERSTITION)
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| TIX | Several times, camped on some mountain or other, I woke up with his hands at my throat. He pushed me off Annapurna. Jiddu saved me.
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10. CUT TO WINDY MOUNTAIN-TOP.
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| BLEEZE | I hate you! I hate you! Nothing is what it should be but I am HENNING BLEEZE! (MAD LAUGHTER)
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| JIDDU | Please, sir, stop, you are crazy.
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11.
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| TIX | Of course, I understand now. It was the dolphins that were doing it. When they started dying, it affected everyone - him too. The things he said to poor Bobby - his girlfriend! Far too young for him, of course. Father complex, you see. Poor Bobby, so pretty, so full of the joys of Spring.
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| MACNAB | (A KNOWLEDGEABLE SCOTS NOISE)
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| TIX | Funnily enough, when Jiddu found her, to tell her about Henning Bleeze, she was with dolphins, some of the very last. Swimming with them beside her father's boat. California. My wife, she's joined the new Italian government, have you heard?
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| MACNAB | Ayeeeeeeeeeeeee.
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12. A MILLIONAIRE'S MOTOR-YACHT CHUGGING IN CALM SEAS OFF CALIFORNIA.
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| BOBBY | (CALLS OVER THE RAILS) They're coming! Look, Daddy! Three...no, four bottlenose dolphins. I'm stripping off and getting straight in!
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SHE COMMENCES DOING JUST THIS. THE CLICKING APPROACH OF FOUR DOLPHINS)
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| SENATOR MULDOON | Hey! Not in front of Mr Takashita, hon.
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SPEEDBOAT APPROACHES ON PORT SIDE.
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| TAKASHITA | I don't mind naked girls, Not a bit. Oah! - excuse please, a boat is coming.
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| BOBBY | (CALLING) Go away! Keep back! Aw, it's frightening them off.
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| MULDOON | (THROUGH LOUDHAILER)Ahoy there, approach on starboard side, Goddammitt!!!
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A SPLASH AS BOBBY JUMPS IN. BOAT PULLS ROUND & DRAWS UP.
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| (ASIDE TO TAKASHITA) Where's Bobby? Aw, she ain't...
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| TAKASHITA | She is in the water. Be unconcerned, I am watching her closely.
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| MULDOON | I'll bet.
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13. JIDDU CLAMBERING ABOARD.
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| MULDOON | What the Sam Hill - look at the size of that sonofabitch!
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| TAKASHITA | (A SLOW SOUND OF JAPANESE AMAZEMENT)
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| JIDDU | Good morning to you! Senator Muldoon, is it not? Though I loathe your politics, I am very pleased to be making your acquaintance. Like yourself, in a previous incarnation - before, in short, I was who I am now: a bold adventurer - I was a lawyer, in my home town of Agra in India. Unfortunately, all my clients were convicted, I am ashamed to say. But, already, many of them are enjoying new lives...
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| MULDOON | What the hell are you talking about, mister?
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| JIDDU | Excuse me. I am Jiddu Dutt. Jiddu Dutt. JIDDU DUTT.
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| MULDOON | You better be here for a good reason, Mr. Jiddudutt.
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| JIDDU | I have come to see Miss Bobby Muldoon. She is here?
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| MULDOON | (RELIEVED) Shucks, you're one of her mountaineerizing friends. Of course! The big Indian! (HOMEY NOSTALGIA) We got a picture of you in the den at home.
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| JIDDU | I have news of a sensitive nature to relate to your daughter, Senator.
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| MULDOON | She's in the water with the dolphins.
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| JIDDU | I see her!
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JIDDU'S SHOES CLUNKING ON DECK AS HE UNDRESSES. |
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| MULDOON | Erm...she's ermmmm...buck nekkid. I think you'd better get your ass down below and wait till she...
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| JIDDU | (MOVING TO RAIL OF BOAT) Do not worry, senator. This is not an occasion for sexual arousal.
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BIG SPLASH AS HE DIVES IN, A BIGGER SPLASH THAN BOBBY'S.
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| MULDOON | (AT THE RAIL, TO TAKASHITA) I don't like that guy. He's not respectful, is he, Mr Takashita?
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| TAKASHITA | He lacks respect, Senator. We will put a stop to all such behaviour.
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| MULDOON | (HUSHED) You got the poisoned fish to feed the dolphins?
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| TAKASHITA | Hai.
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| MULDOON | Take care now. We don't want Bobby to cotton on what we're up to. (LAUGHS) I reckon there'll be no more than a dozen dolphins left in the whole of the Pacific seaboard. Gahhd!
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| TAKASHITA | Soon, it will be as I predicted.
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| MULDOON | Will I need another of those goddamned dolphi-brain injections of yours in my ass?
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| TAKASHITA | Oh, yes. Yes. Most certainly.
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14. AT WATER LEVEL WITH BOBBY, SWIMMING AND SPLISHING. SPLASH AND CLICK OF DOLPHINS. |
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| JIDDU | (APPROACHING) Bobby! Bobby! It is Jiddu.
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| BOBBY | Jiddu! Ha! Ha! Where did you drop from? Ain't they beautiful? (ALMOST IN TEARS OF JOY) Can't you feel their spirits? Ain't it transcendant? Huh? Huh? Oh God, there's nothing like this (TO DOLPHINS) Bobby found you, didn't she. Huh? It's okay, Bobby loves you! (LAUGHS)
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| JIDDU | Bobby, I was giving one of my foolish lectures in Berkeley when I heard. I was delegated to come immediately to tell you in person of a most dreadful calamity. (SUDDEN PANIC) Please, this dolphin is drowning me.
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| BOBBY | I reckon they've never seen a human being as humungous as you!
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| JIDDU | Bobby...my mentor, your lover, he has died. Henning Bleeze is dead.
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| BOBBY | No! No! Oh, God! NO! Jiddu!
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| JIDDU | By his own hand. Do not weep for him...already, is new life has begun.
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| BOBBY | (SOBBING) Don't talk shit, Jiddu!
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| JIDDU | (AMAZED AT THE ACCUSATION) Shit? Shit?
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| BOBBY | (SOBS)
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SPLASHING. CONCERNED CLICKS AND WHOOPS OF DOLPHINS.
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15.
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| TIX | (DIRECTLY TO US) When we were climbing, Bobby was often slipping off by herself, speaking into her tape-machine. It was her diary. She spoke to it, Macnab, the way I speak to you when you're not there. Her private thoughts. After she died they sent a box of her tapes to me. That's them there. I'll put one in.
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HE PUTS A CASSETTE INTO PLAYER, PRESSES PLAY...
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16.
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| BOBBY | (ON TAPE)One moment they were fine, taking fish from Mr. Takashita. A little while later I came out on deck with a plate of something for Daddy and they were dying in the water, holding each other up and making the most awful goddamned sound you ever heard.
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PAINED CRY OF A DYING DOLPHIN.
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| That night, with Daddy and Mr Takashita asleep in their bunks, I made love with Jiddu, a man I hardly knew. We made it slow, holding our breaths so as not to make a noise, like we were under the sea. There was no comfort in it at all, should have been, but what the hell. I first went with Henning Bleeze when I was fourteen years old, beside a lake in Austria. Jiddu was my only other man, ever. In a few hours that day in Daddy's boat, I felt everything - the love, despair, grief and confusion of ten lifetimes. That was my life, those few hours. Everything I wanted or needed to experience in this world. (THINKS IT OVER FOR A MOMENT) Yeah, everything. I can still hear these dolphins, deep in my head, feel them on my bare body, and their clicks leap in my heart every other moment. My four faithful bottlenosed friends.
Daddy thinks the world is a place where the dollar lives, factories and shops and cogs and wheels. Maybe it is, now. But for thousands of years it was also a dolphinarium.
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17. THE OPENING OF VAUGHAN WILLIAMS' `Sinfonia Antarctica'. BRING UP THE FREEZING POLAR WIND.
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| TIX | (STARTING THE SERVICE FOR THE DEAD) Lord, accept this poor sinner, Henning Bleeze. (SUDDENLY, ASIDE) Look, I'm not the man for this! It sounds daft coming out of me. We should have brought a bishop or something.
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| BOBBY | (VERY UPSET) Please, Tix, speak your heart.
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| TIX | But it's like burying a dog. I...oh...ermmm....OH GOD! But after all his adventures...to end in this ridiculous scene! (SUDDENLY ANGRY) Wopfner should have been here! Blasted Hun! I'll not forgive him! We were his sons, the three. Can't come! Important research to do, he says! What's going wrong with everybody these days, I don't know! |
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| JIDDU | I would feel better about this occasion if we could have found his toes.
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| TIX | (LAUGHS) I'll never forget the sound...when he dropped them into the biscuit tin. Plink! Plink! Plink! HA-haa! Oh, Bleeze!
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THEY ALL LAUGH, EXCEPT BOBBY....
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| BOBBY | (SUDDENLY BURSTS WITH FURIOUS EMOTION) SHUTUP! SHUTUP! All of you! This should have been beautiful, wonderful, transcendent! (WALKING AWAY OVER THE ROCKS) You've spoiled it all! It's gross. You're all gross...
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| JIDDU | Bobby, please...
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| CONSTANZA | Leave her alone, Jiddu. She'll walk among the penguins for a while.
We don't need that bloody camera crew either!
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| TIX | But darling one! The documentary!
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| CONSTANZA | (A LOUD SOUND OF ITALIAN CONTEMPT) PAH!
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| JIDDU | When my guru's guru died he said some words over him. If I can remember...
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| TIX | Say anything, we can dub over it later.
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18. A DUBBING STUDIO.
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| DIRECTOR | Try to keep your lips synchronised, Mr...erm, Dutt.
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| JIDDU | Yes, yes. (CLEARS HIS THROAT) The yellow leaves have fallen from your tree of life. The messengers of death are your companions now. You are going to travel further by far than we travelled together. Have you made provision for your journey? Dear friend, I do not know.
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| DIRECTOR | Ooooh, very good, very good.
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19. BACK TO ANTARCTICA. THE SQUABBLE OF MILLIONS OF PENGUINS ON A BEACH. JIDDU'S FOOTSTEPS ARE APPROACHING, RUNNING OVER STONES.
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| JIDDU | (CALLING) Bobby! Bobby!
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| BOBBY | Let me be, Jiddu, huh?
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A PAINED PENGUIN SQUAWK.
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| JIDDU | Oh, I fear I have trodden most mortally on a penguin!
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| BOBBY | (LOOKING DOWN) Aw, hell, Jiddu! (ANGRY) You big sonofabitch. You've killed it.
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| JIDDU | It was unintentional, therefore the karma is bad, but not so bad. Look here, Bobby: Tixover and I had an idea. Some years ago, with Henning Bleeze upon his third or fourth trans-Antarctic expedition, I forget which, we found something most interesting in a glacier, only a few days' walk from where we now stand. Let us go, all of us. We shall feel our spirits restored. Please let us go.
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| BOBBY | I wish I was dead.
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| JIDDU | We shall be seeing dolphins.
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| BOBBY | Dolphins? In a glacier?
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| JIDDU | Trapped in the ice. In the wall of a glacier. A dozen or more. Frozen there for half of history perhaps. A most amazing phenomenon.
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| BOBBY | (CHEERED) Yeah, okay, I'd like to see them. You're not joshing me?
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| JIDDU | Oooooh, no! You will see!
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SPLASH OF WATER.
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| MACNAB | And you went, of course, to see the deep-frozen dolphins?
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| TIX | Bloody good job we did. You know, the whole future of the world...if we hadn't...well! It was the dolphins, you see. It was because they were dying, that everyone...
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| MACNAB | Aye, I know.
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| TIX | Of course, you do! You all know now. Well, in fact, the last dolphins in all the world were washed up in Australia while we were in Antarctica burying Henning Bleeze. For the first time in all humanity's lives, no dolphins. Not even in a fishtank somewhere. Not one left alive. I'll play you some more tape - poor Bobby, she suffered so much.
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| MACNAB | I find other people's suffering faintly comforting...
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| HE SWITCHES THE CASSETTE PLAYER ON.
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20.
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| BOBBY | (ON TAPE) What did I feel? Everything and nothing. Looking down into the dark blue ice. The striped dolphins. Their eyes closed. Like pilchards in aspic. It was so ...funny!
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21. IN ANTARCTICA. BOBBY IS LAUGHING HER HEAD OFF.
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| JIDDU | Bobby, are you quite well?
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| TIX | She's flipped, poor girl. I said she would, didn't I say?
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HER LAUGHTER CONTINUES.
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22. FADE LAUGHTER.
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| BOBBY | (ON TAPE)Then I stopped laughing. I could feel them. As if I was swimming with them. Their song, their click-language...
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| WE HEAR IT.
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| ...It's as if I were stuck in a dream with them, frozen in a dream that I couldn't wake from, like I was lying in bed on a winter day in Vermont and the window open and the blanket fallen on the floor, but I can't wake, I'm linked with them, poor kids stuck in the ice...and alive. I didn't realize then. But I do now, when it's too late to do anything to help them, because I'm about to do away with myself. But they're safe, aren't you, huh? A little school forever on vacation in the ice, talking to each other in your heads. I'd like to be like that. (CHEERFUL) But I think I'll like nothingness better. (ALL HER THINKING EXPRESSED IN ONE WORD) Yeah.
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23.
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| TIX | I felt it too. Oaf that I was. Corrupted fool that I was. I felt it. The dolphin's dream or whatever it was, passed through Bobby and into me - and into Jiddu and Constanza too. That's how come we remained ourselves when the rest of the world went ga-ga-zombie.
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| MACNAB | Would you like a strawberry-jam sandwich, laddie?
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| TIX | You can't offer me a sandwich, you Scots nit! You're not there. I'm just talking to you, the way I do, it's the never-ending interview we have together, when I was Tixover and now also, (LAUGHS) even now, when I'm not even Tixover any more.
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| MACNAB | Ayeeeeee.
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| TIX | Mind you, just because I can't break the habit of talking to you, doesn't mean that I don't detest you! Do you remember when I came on your TV show that time, just after I got back from burying Henning Bleeze? You were worse than any of them! The biggest monster of the New Thinking!
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| MACNAB | (HUGE SCOTS OUTRAGE) I was not!
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| TIX | Were!
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| MACNAB | I was not!
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24. SUDDENLY THE GRATING THEME-TUNE OF A TALK SHOW. APPLAUSE OF AUDIENCE. UNDER THE MUSIC THE DELIGHTED ANNOUNCER: |
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| ANNOUNCER | It's London! It's eight o'clock! THE Duncan MACNAB SHOW!!!!!!!!
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| MACNAB | (MORE IRRITATING THAN POSSIBLE) Thankyou-thankyou-thankyou. It's a pleasure for you to see me again, I'm sure.
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AUDIENCE LAUGHS. |
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| My first guest tonight is an old-fashioned English hero...Gentlemen and Ladies, put your legs together please...for SIR HARTLEY TIXOVER...
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WHOOPS AND APPLAUSE FROM AUDIENCE. FADE. FADE BACK UP INTO INTERVIEW IN PROGRESS.
|
|||
| MACNAB | The last time we spoke, did we not, you were about to leave on a sad duty to the snowy wastes with the earthly remains of one Henning Bleeze.
|
||
| TIX | (SOUNDING ARCH AND PHONEY) That's right, Duncan. Although in fact I've spoken to you many times since. Whenever I've a problem to think through I just conjure you up in my mind and we have a little interview.
|
||
| MACNAB | I'm glad tae be a comfort to you, Tixover, I really am.
|
||
| TIX | It was a very emotional journey for me, a chance to review my whole life, my early climbing days, the genuine achievements, and latterly of course, my documentary work.
|
||
| MACNAB | Documentaries which, correct me if I'm wrong, are shown in fifty-three countries in the world.
|
||
| TIX | But this new one, the first part of which will be shown shortly, is my very best. Oh, yes. A tribute to Henning Bleeze. A monument to his maverick soul in search of its ultimate fulfilment, and his cold grave halfway up Mount Erebus, obscure, yes, but a monument to the triumph of the individual will and ambition. That's what really matters, isn't it, Duncan?
|
||
|
A VEXED MURMUR IN THE AUDIENCE.
|
|||
| MACNAB | But surely, Sir Hartley, it is the community as a whole that is important in this world. The individual is the enemy of the collective harmony.
|
||
| TIX | (LOST) Sorry?
|
||
| MACNAB | (BECOMING MORE SCOTS IN HIS ANGER) The cult of the individual, which I'm sorry to say you, with your futile expeditions, represent to us ordinary wee folk, is nothing but a cult of selfishness. Worse still, it is ego run riot. (RESPONDING TO AUDIENCE'S APPLAUSE) Ego! Ego! Ego! Surely you agree, (HIS VOICE RISING HUGELY) do you not, that it must be eradicated?
|
||
|
THE AUDIENCE STAMP IN UNISON AND CLAP IN UNISON. THEY GROW INCREASINGLY FURIOUS UNDER NEXT SPEECH, SHOUTING WILDLY AS IT GOES ON.
|
|||
| TIX | (UNSURE, VOICE RAISED OVER THE DIN) Well, no, actually. The individual, me, you, whoever, I mean, that's what life is. You're not just a part of what other people think you are, or think you should be. Never mind people. Never mind the world. You are yourself, Duncan. You! Unique! That's all that matters. In episode three of my documentary series you will...(CONFUSED) Duncan, what the hell's going on? (LAUGHS) Is this a joke?
|
||
| MACNAB | (CLOSE) You'd better skedaddle, laddie.
|
||
|
THE AUDIENCE CHANTS IN UNISON: `Off! Off! Off!'.
|
|||
| TIX | What did I say?
|
||
| MACNAB | (VEXED) Away-yeeeeeeee.
|
||
| TIX | (PLAINTIVE) Duncan?
|
||
|
|
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|
25. CHANTING OF BUDDHIST MONKS. IT CONTINUES AS JIDDU WALKS BAREFOOT THROUGH TEMPLE GROUNDS IN INDIA. |
|||
| JIDDU | Upon leaving Henning Bleeze to his rest in Antarctica, Bobby and myself kissed goodbye in New Zealand, promising to meet again very soon to climb in the Karakoram together. She flew home to her America and I to my India.
|
||
|
A FEW PLUCKINGS OF THE SITAR WAY IN THE BACKGROUND.
|
|||
| When I abandoned my brilliant legal career, to the dismay of my clients, the majority of whom were already languishing eternally in jails...I retired to a ruined temple near Simla. And here I am again, returning to the ruins, always so full of gurus and the shadows of gurus. But today the monks do not chant like the beating of a heart. Is it possible they have all abandoned their spiritual home?
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
26. A LARGE ROOM IN THE MONASTERY. WIND-CHIMES IN THE BACKGROUND THROUGHOUT. JIDDU'S FEET ON THE STONE. MASTER RAO IS BUSILY COLLECTING AND TEARING UP PAPERS, MUTTERING TO HIMSELF.
|
|||
| JIDDU | (BREATHLESS, EXCITED) Master. Master Rao.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | Go away, please. I am very busy.
|
||
| JIDDU | (DELIGHTED TO SEE HIM) You are looking as young and healthy as on the first day I saw you, a lifetime ago.
|
||
|
MASTER RAO STOPS EVERYTHING HE IS DOING. A PAUSE.
|
|||
| MASTER RAO | Jiddu? Jiddu Dutt? Where have you been? You weren't at breakfast this morning.
|
||
| JIDDU | (A SHADE CONFUSED) Are you quite yourself Master? I have been away for twelve years, until this moment. I have returned from my adventures, as you said I would.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | Oh! Oh! Help me with these papers, Jiddu.
|
||
|
HE DOES SO.
|
|||
| JIDDU | In my head as I climbed the mountain to arrive here, I heard the chanting of the monks, but now I am here and there is no chanting, no monks. Only you.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | (IRRITATED) What are you talking about? Take these outside and put them on the bonfire.
|
||
| JIDDU | I have returned only briefly, to meditate upon my past and future lives. A friend, a most intrepid lady and I, intend to go climbing in the Karakoram very soon...I am trying to love her, I am trying to reach God through loving her, and I most humbly hope that you may be able to help me on the right path...
|
||
| MASTER RAO | What are you talking about, Jiddu?
|
||
| JIDDU | Master, I...(SUDDENLY LOST AND CONFUSED) Excuse me, but these papers you have requested me to put upon the bonfire...They are commentaries, written by yourself over many years. They are holy texts.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | Useless! All useless when we have attained Nirvana. When our egos have died within us. When everyone in the teeming cities is at one with us. Hurry, we must join the others.
|
||
| JIDDU | I do not understand.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | (RATTLES THROUGH, CLAPPING HIS HANDS FOR EMPHASIS) The eightfold path, Jiddu. Right understanding. Right motives. Right speech. Right action. Right means of livelihood. Right effort. Right concentration. Right meditation. We have arrived at our destination, all of us. This kind of life, in monasteries, has fulfilled its purpose and is now over. We must return to the world. Of course you understand! It is the same everywhere. Wherever you have come from, of course it is the same there.
|
||
| JIDDU | I would like to stay here for a while if I may, Master.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | (PERTURBED) Stay? Here? Why?
|
||
| JIDDU | For my soul's sake.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | (VERY WORRIED) Soul? There is only one soul. Our soul. Everyone's soul. The one soul.
|
||
| JIDDU | I have a soul, unless I am deceiving myself, all my very own.
|
||
| MASTER RAO | (DROPPING PAPERS, GASPS IN HORROR) You are mad! Keep away! KEEP AWAY! POLICE! POLICE!
|
||
| JIDDU | (TOTALLY CONFUSED) Master.
|
||
|
MASTER RAO RUNS AWAY. WE HEAR HIS FOOTSTEPS AND HIS SCREAM IN THE STONE CORRIDORS.
|
|||
| JIDDU | (HURRYING AFTER HIM, SHOUTING IN CONFUSION) Master! Master! Help me! The world is mad and sick and I am a foolish giant opening his heart to God! Master!
|
||
|
SHOUT OF MASTER RAO AS HE RUNS INTO DISTANCE. CLOSER, CROWS CAW AND ELEPHANTS TRUMPET.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
27.
|
|||
| JIDDU | Now I, Jiddu, am alone in this spiritual world, as big as the stones, praying, flies orbiting my foolish head. In the heat of this day, I am shivering with fear. Fear not for me. But for Bobby. Dear vital Bobby! (YELLS ECHOINGLY) Bobby! Bobby! Nooooooo!!!!!!! NooooOOOOO!!!!
|
||
|
|
|||
|
28. THE MULDOON RESIDENCE, U.S.A. SEN.MULDOON IS SHOWING OFF HIS HOUSE TO A CHURCH LADY.
|
|||
| MRS. CARTHAVERBOURNE | What a lovely home you have, Senator Muldoon.
|
||
| MULDOON | Thank you, Mrs Carthaverbourne.
|
||
| MRS. C | What is this room through here?
|
||
| MULDOON | My den, Mrs Carthaverbourne. Please, go right in.
|
||
|
DOOR PUSHED OPEN, WE MOVE INTO DEN UNDER FOLLOWING. MR.TAKASHITA IS TALKING IN JAPANESE ON THE PHONE.
|
|||
| MRS. C | What a gorgeous room! Is that Abraham Lincoln?
|
||
| MULDOON | Erm, no, that's Mr Takashita...
|
||
| MRS. C | No, in the portrait between the flags.
|
||
| MULDOON | That, Mrs Carthaverbourne, is my late father, painted after he was shot. An excellent likeness.
|
||
| TAKASHITA | (WHISPERS CLOSE) Time please for another injection.
|
||
| BOBBY | (FAR AWAY IN THE HOUSE SOMEWHERE) Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!
|
||
| MULDOON | Yeah, okay. Mrs Carthaverbourne, excuse us, Mr Takashita and I have some urgent business.
|
||
| MRS. C | Of course, Senator. But you'll not be running for President now, will you? What with the New Thinking, shucks, it doesn't matter who's President.
|
||
| MULDOON | (A VOICE HURTING BEHIND A SICKLY SMILE) That's right Mrs Carthaverbourne.
|
||
| BOBBY | (STORMING IN) Daddy! Daddy! I've been in the basement! I've seen what's in the freezers! I wanna know! I wanna know why!
|
||
| MULDOON | Mrs Carthaverbourne, this is my daughter, Roberta. (THROUGH GRITTED TEETH) Bobby, please.
|
||
| MRS. C | Delighted to...
|
||
| BOBBY | Butt out, church lady! (YELLS AT HER FATHER) Dolphins' heads. Dozens and dozens of them. Six freezers full. What for, Daddy?
|
||
| MULDOON | Erm, Mr Takashita, show Mrs Carthaverbourne the Picassos.
|
||
| TAKASHITA | (MOVING HER AWAY TO DOOR) Hai. This way, please.
|
||
| MRS. C | (MIFFED, MOVING OFF) Senator.
|
||
| BOBBY | Dolphins' heads. It's the horriblest thing I ever saw.
|
||
| MULDOON | (EMBRACING HER) Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. It's okay. Everything's okay now. Do ya know, there ain't been a single murder in this state in over a month? The New Thinking, Bobby. Everyone's got it.
|
||
| BOBBY | Yeah, I've seen their stupid smiling faces, like they got religion for real. What's that got to do with dolphins' heads in our basement?
|
||
| MULDOON | I need them for my injections, hon. Dolphins' brains.
|
||
| BOBBY | (REVOLTED) Ooooo!
|
||
| MULDOON | I need six shots a day, to keep my ego awake. The New Thinking, sweet pea. Someone has to be outside of it, awake, to organize, to do God's work, to fix up the world. Wait a mo - how come you're still you? I mean - you're awake, like me, but no shots!
|
||
| BOBBY | Since I flew back from Antarctica everyone's acting weird. I don't get it!
|
||
| MULDOON | Look, honey, I'm gonna tell you, and if you hate me for it so..be...it..! You're grown up. Bobby. Well, it's yersee...(SUDDENLY SPITS IT OUT PLAINLY) Mr Takashita and I, the Zabadak Institute, we killed the dolphins, all the dolphin in the world.
|
||
| BOBBY | YOU WHAT!!!!
|
||
| MULDOON | Hell, they were dying anyhow, we just quickened it up, that's all. A virus in the water. Not so easy to get every last one. We needed them all, see, for it to work properly.
|
||
| BOBBY | (DOESN'T KNOW WHETHER TO BELIEVE OR NOT) You're crazy. Don't say such crazy things.
|
||
| MULDOON | Human consciousness, Bobby, was dependent upon dolphin consciousness. When there were no more dolphins going razzle-dazzle in the sea, no more at all, well, people just sorta went quiet inside. Mr Takashita can explain it better than I can. Now, when I am elected President, I can solve all the world's problems in my first term. No-one's gonna argue with me. You understand, don't you, sweet pea?
|
||
| BOBBY | (BLANKNESS IN HER VOICE) Yes, yes I do. I think I understand what's been going on now.
|
||
| MULDOON | A world without irrelevant passions, Bobby. People don't think. They just live, close to God. They make things, they sell things, they do business honestly, quietly. It's the way it was meant to be, hon. That little voice folks used to have in their heads: it was the source of all suffering. Now everyone lives in a living dream of contentment. No drugs. No crime. It's my American dream. I made it happen.
|
||
| BOBBY | (NUMB WITH THE SHOCK OF IT) You, you made it happen.
|
||
| MULDOON | (PROUD) Yeah, yeah! Me and Mr Takashita, of course. Bobby? BOBBY?
|
||
|
SHE WALKS OUT.
|
|||
| MULDOON | (SHOUTING FURIOUSLY) Hey, come back here! I WAS TALKING TO YOU, GIRL! (DESPERATE, MORE TO HIMSELF) I'VE NO-ONE ELSE TO TELL!!!
|
||
|
|
|||
|
29. WE'RE IN AN AMERICAN STATION-WAGON, ROARING TO A HALT ON GRAVEL. BOBBY IS DRIVING. |
|||
| BOBBY | (CHEERFUL AS CAN BE) Mr Takashita! Get in the station-wagon, I'll take you for a drive.
|
||
| TAKASHITA | (THROUGH WINDOW) I have my gardening to do, most pleasant, and must give your father another injection soon.
|
||
| BOBBY | I'll let you change gears. Maybe, if your hand slips you'll put it on my knee. What'ya think of that, Mr Takashita?
|
||
| TAKASHITA | (A SOUND OF JAPANESE DELIGHT) Oah!
|
||
| BOBBY | Hop on in!
|
||
| TAKASHITA | Okey-dokey, I'm your man!
|
||
|
THE DOOR SLAMS AND THE STATION-WAGON ZOOMS OFF. |
|||
|
|
|||
|
30. WHILE DRIVING FAST ALONG AMERICAN ROADS: |
|||
| TAKASHITA | Your father was suggestive that I might explain to you the philosophy behind the New Thinking.
|
||
| BOBBY | Or maybe I could tell you all I know about how Henning Bleeze and I used to have sex while ski-ing.
|
||
| TAKASHITA | (GETTING HOT) Can I change gear now?
|
||
| BOBBY | Uh-huh.
|
||
| TAKASHITA | (DOES SO, WITH A SOUND APPROACHING ECSTASY)
|
||
| BOBBY | What's your favourite movie, Mr Takashita? Mine's `Thelma and Louise'. You ever seen `Thelma and Louise'?
|
||
| TAKASHITA | I don't think so.
|
||
| BOBBY | Then you don't know what happens at the end, huh, Mr Takashita? It's a great movie. I always wanted a friend like Geena Davis. Do you like her? Do you think she's pretty?
|
||
| TAKASHITA | Very pretty. Pretty. Pretty.
|
||
| BOBBY | Just the knee. Mr Takashita.
|
||
|
SUDDENLY THE STATION WAGON LURCHES ONTO BUMPY GROUND.
|
|||
| TAKASHITA | What are you doing? You have left the road! (PANICS) Where are you taking me?
|
||
| BOBBY | (WITH SUDDEN GRIT) If you look in the back, Mr Takashita, you'll see I'm loaded up with dolphin heads. I'm taking them back to the ocean, Mr Takashita. Just over that next ridge. Swell view from there, so high up, you can see blue for ever, Mr Takashita, almost as far as Japan, Mr Takashita...and the waves kinda dreamy, way down below.
|
||
|
THE BLEEPS OF A MOBILE PHONE BEING DIALED.
|
|||
| TAKASHITA | Senator! Help! Your daughter has abducted me! Senator! Moshi-moshi! Senator!
|
||
| MULDOON | (DOWN THE LINE) Takashita, what the hell?
|
||
| BOBBY | (TEARFULLY) Goodbye, Daddy! I love you!
|
||
|
A SUDDEN SPIN OF WHEELS. THE RUMBLE OF WHEELS OVER BUMPY GROUND STOPS DEAD. THEY FLY OVER THE CLIFFS.
|
|||
| TAKASHITA | (HUGE JAPANESE SCREAM) OurRRRRrrrgggHHHHhrrrraAAAAAAAaaa...
|
||
| BOBBY | (LAUGHS)
|
||
|
SILENCE. THE DISTANT CALL OF A GULL. THEN: A HUGE CRASH AND SPLASH. AN EXPLOSION.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
31. FADE CRASH DOWN QUICKLY. BRING UP THE SINGING OF DOLPHINS. BOBBY CHEERFULLY READING A LETTER. |
|||
| BOBBY | Dear Jiddu, I'm going outside now and I may be some time. Hope this reaches you okay. But you won't understand a word, I guess, being brain-dead like everyone else. I'm writing this to you anyhow, just to say that you're a monster and that I love you. Think of me swimming with the dolphins. Of course, you can't think of me or anything, poor thing. But if you ever do, this is just to say that it don't matter, I've had my best moments, and some with you. This is your fishy lover, Bobby, signing off. Clickety-click, trala.
|
||
|
A SUDDEN BURST OF DOLPHIN LAUGHTER.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
32. |
|||
| MACNAB | The world woke up one morning and wasn't itself any more. From Maine to Cornwall. From Mexico to Kawangtung it was the same. Everyone had caught a new disease that had cured them of all the old ones. A strange, dull peace flowed through us all, a happiness such as some men must feel when their life's work is over, and well done, but not important to them any more. My friend Tixover and his fiery Italian wife, thiers were the only tormented hearts in our new world - they'd gone to visit their climbing pal, Gary Wopfner, dying of cancer in his house in the Austrian TIrol.
|
||
|
|
|||
|
33. HANS HAIDER'S `Woodcutter's Polka', BRIGHT AND CLOS. THEN SUDDENLY: THE SILENCE OF THE SICKROOM. WOPFNER'S STEADY BREATHING. LOUD TICKS FROM A CUCKOO CLOCK. CLUNKING FEET IN THE WOODEN ROOM. |
|||
| ZISKA | (CHEERFUL) Gary! Gary! Your old friends are here. Tix and Constanza. They are here. Speak to him, please. I am sure he can hear.
|
||
| TIX | (CLOMPING IN EBULLIENTLY) You really should have come to Antarctica, Gary - we, erm....Gary? (SUDDENLY STILL, THEN NERVOUS LAUGHTER) Funniest thing, Gary old sport - all along the Stubai valley we saw them, they're making snowmen, but without faces. No faces! (A GUFFAW) Snowmen without faces! (SUDDENLY FRAUGHT) Why's that, I wonder? Hm? Families of snowmen: no faces. (PANICS) - Ziska, dear, please - this isn't him. (TO HIMSELF) No, it's not him. Not Gary Wopfner.
|
||
| COSTANZA | (LIKE DEATH) That's him, Tix.
|
||
| TIX | (BREAKING DOWN) Ziska, come here, girl. (EMBRACING HER) It's all right. It's all right.
|
||
| COSTANZA | She's not crying. You are.
|
||
| TIX | Sorry. (PULLING HIMSELF TOGETHER WITH A DEEP BREATH, FIGHTING BACK THE TEARS) You know, the first time I saw this man he was sitting on the top of the Matterhorn. My first time up. Fifteen and a half, I was. There he was sitting on the summit like the Archangel Gabriel. Before or since I've never seen a man more alive. Now, look at him.
|
||
| COSTANZA | Stop prattling, Tixover. You're upsetting Ziska.
|
||
| TIX | (HALF WHISPERS) No, I'm not. Look at her. She's got that same dippy expression everyone else has got!
|
||
| ZISKA | Your behaviour is very strange. The New Thinking is perhaps not so much in England?
|
||
| TIX | Oh, yes, they've all go it.
|
||
| ZISKA | (LAUGHING AS SHE WALKS ACROSS THE ROOM) It's good, very good that you are here. All these papers, boxes full, they are yours. Take them away, please.
|
||
| COSTANZA | Could I....hold Gary's hand?
|
||
| ZISKA | (COULDN'T CARE LESS) Ja, if you want.
|
||
| TIX | What is all this useless bumph?
|
||
| ZISKA | (STILL AS CHEERFUL AS EVER) Nonsense. All nonsense. Not part of the New Thinking. But Gary was wishing you to be having it. Every now and again he is becoming awake and saying that I must give you his papers and that is what I am doing. He was busy with them all last year. No work, nothing, just this...(HESITATES OVER A NEWLY-LEARNED WORD)...bumph.
|
||
| TIX | (SHUFFLES IN A BOX OF PAPERS) So there really was some research. Hey, look at this, Cossy...Dolphins, lots and lots of drawings of dolphins, and...wot's this... a diagram of a dolphin's brain covered in Hun writing. I didn't know Gary was interested in this kind of thing. Cossy, look.
|
||
| COSTANZA | (BY THE BED) He's stopped breathing.
|
||
| ZISKA | (HAPPILY) It was not possible for him to be part of the New Thinking. Much better this instead.
|
||
| TIX | (BLANK) I'm sure you're right.
|
||
|
|
|||
|
34. |
|||
| COSTANZA | (CLOSE, CONFESSIONAL) A day in Rome twenty years ago. The day my father was killed. A hot summer day. Tixover and I had just made love. We were walking along the Corso, hand in hand. The shops were closing. The pretty boys and girls were kissing each other beside the fountains. Then my brother running down the Spanish Steps, weeping, calling my name. He told us. Mafiosi had shot our father a thousand times. In the heart. In the eyes. What I cannot make Tixover understand is that now, with the New thinking everywhere, Italy also, there is no more mafiosi. Such things need never happen again. Everything is peaceful. Everything is fine. I tell Tixover over and over: it's the best thing that ever happened to the world! Yeah-yeah, so the new American President, Muldoon, poor Bobby's father, is a scary so-and-so, but in his his heart, he is okay, I'm sure. Of course, the BBC cancelled Tix's documentary series, but so what! My brother, of course, is very busy in Italy. Every night he talks to me on the phone about the New Thinking. He asks me again and again to go to him, help in his work. I think I must. There is no place for Tixover in this new world. But for me, there is much hope, much to do. I think I must go. You are the New thinking personified, Mr Macnab...should I go?
|
||
| MACNAB | Errr...Sorry, lassie, I wasnae listening.
|
||
|
|
|||
|
35. `The British Grenadier' PLAYS BRASHLY. ONE THOUSAND WOMEN DOING EXERCISES ON A QUAD.
|
|||
| TIX | (SHOUTING ORDERS) Right legs, up - that's it, ladies! Now the left - now the right! Keep them high! Hold them up there for a moment. Imagine you're climbing a high wall. Right leg! Left leg! All right, at ease.
|
||
|
SHUFFLE OF WOMEN.
|
|||
| Now, we'll try some chest expansion. One...two...
|
|||
| SERGEANT BERNACCA | (APPROACHING) Excuse me, Sir, there's a man at the gate, not in uniform, sir, brown gentleman, sir, excessively tall, sir. Says he knows you.
|
||
| TIX | Tall? Brown? (ECSTATICALLY, MOVING OFF) Jiddu! (YELLS BACK) You take over the lesson, Sergeant.
|
||
| SGT. BERNACCA | (TERRIFIED) Me, sir?
|
||
|
|
|||
|
36. IN DISTANCE THE EXERCISES CONTINUE. TIXOVER RUNNING TOWARDS THE GATE.
|
|||
| GUARD | (STAMPS HIS FEET) SIR!!!
|
||
| TIX | Jiddu! It is you! I can't believe it!
|
||
| JIDDU | What is this shitty uniform in aid of?
|
||
| TIX | (HIGHLY EMOTIONAL) I'm a Brigadier. I'm in charge of Basingstoke. Show no emotion! No emotion! Haaaa-haaaaaa!
|
||
| JIDDU | I am showing no emotion.
|
||
| TIX | It is you, eh? You're not ONE OF THEM? No! (IN IMMENSE RELIEF) Oh, Jiddu!
|
||
| JIDDU | The absence of self is in many ways the object of my religion, but upon seeing the odiousness of its reality, I find myself driven to drink. I have obtained two bottles of whiskey. Perhaps we can go somewhere and pour them over our heads.
|
||
| TIX | Shhh, drinking's non-New Thinking! (TO GUARD) He's only joking, you know. He hasn't really got any whiskey. Have you?
|
||
| JIDDU | Yes.
|
||
| GUARD | (STAMPS HIS FEET) SIR!!!
|
||
|
|
|||
|
37. A CHICKEN-SHED. CLUCKING OF HENS. CLINK OF GLASSES & WHISKEY BEING POURED. TIX AND JIDDU GET INCREASINGLY DRUNK DURING THE SCENE.
|
|||
| TIX | (GIGGLES) They'll never find us here. It's like hiding in a chicken sandwich. Nice and smelly and dark. (SOBS) Oh, Jiddu. I went to see Chelsea play Man United last Saturday. A three-all draw. It's always a three-all draw now, whoever plays who. But the crowd, you see, they didn't cheer. They just applauded politely. Sitting there in their shitty uniforms smiling the way they do. (AFTER A GULP OF WHISKEY, SUDDENLY, IN A THIN, TRAGIC VOICE) Look, I'm sorry about Bobby. You got my letter.
|
||
| JIDDU | I know you do not share my foolish religious beliefs, but the worst thing is, about everything that has happened, is that children are now born without souls. So Bobby's soul cannot be reborn. It cannot return to earth and continue its journey here. She will be wandering, lost and frightened in the darkness.
|
||
| TIX | (WITH DRUNKEN FLIPPANCY) Maybe she'll come back as something else - a horse or an octopus.
|
||
| JIDDU | (LAUGHS) I hope so.
|
||
| TIX | Poor Bob.
|
||
|
A RICKETY DOOR OPENS. LOUDER WORRIED CLUCKS.
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| SGT. BERNACCA | (AT DOOR) The exercises are completed, sir. Shall I dismiss the ladies, Sir?
|
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| TIX | (YELLS, VERY DRUNK) Have them... (STARTS AGAIN, TRYING TO REMOVE THE DRINK FROM HIS VOICE) Have them do the bloody lot again. Go on, bugger off and get to it!
|
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| SGT. BERNACCA | SIR!
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THE DOOR CLOSES. THE CHICKENS SETTLE. |
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| TIX | Never thought they'd find us in here. They're releasing these chickens tomorrow, you know. Oh, yes. The Lord Protector says everyone must be a vegetarian. Bloody Scots git! Oh, you know who he is, the Lord Protector? Macnab. Him! (DOING AN ANNOUNCER'S VOICE) 'The Duncan Macnab Show'. He's grown a ginger moustache. Bloody scandal!
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| JIDDU | (SERIOUSLY) You say in your letter you have certain documents, Gary's researches about dolphins.
|
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| TIX | Gary's bumph. Yes, I've read some of it, until my German gives out. Dolphins are to blame for all this. The sods! Sods! Their minds and ours, connected, you see, part of the same thing. With them dead...it's well, it's as you see. Didn't you know that?
|
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| JIDDU | (SLOWLY) I did not...know that.
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| TIX | I thought you did. Ooops, I'm going. Ha! Ha! Ha! Going. Going.
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| JIDDU | Gone.
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A WHUMP AS TIX COLLAPSES. CHICKENS BUK IN SQUASHED TERROR.
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38. TIX'S DEN. THE RADIO IS ON.
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| ANNOUNCER | (ON RADIO. A GLUM CONTRAST TO WHEN WE FIRST HEARD HIM) Citizens. This is London. It is eight o'clock. We shall now hear an address by the Lord Protector, Citizen Duncan Macnab.
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| MACNAB | (ON RADIO) Citizens, I address you this evening, as I do every evening, to congratulate you on your achievements on this day. Every day, in every way, the New Thinking is permeating into every pore of our lives. There were no crimes in Great Britain today, only hope, only quiet joy. And the only indiscretion was two boobies found in a state of intoxification in a chicken-house. Tomorrow, I shall be meeting with President Muldoon and discussing with him the future of the New Thinking, international solidarity...
|
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| TIX | (YELLS) For God's sake, turn him OFF!
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THE RADIO IS TURNED OFF.
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| God, I HATE THAT MAN!!! Does any of this bumph makes sense to you?
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| JIDDU | (RUSTLING OF PAPERS)It is all here. In the most tedious details. Our friend Gary made the connection that human consciousness had been gradually dying due to the fewer and fewer number of dolphins. He suggests most strongly... (PICKING OUT A SHEET)
...here...that this process had been in operation for some time, and was the reason for the decline in our culture, our books, films and so on, during the past twenty years. Most fascinating. But here...this is the important stuff. (DROPS A HEAVY TOME ON THE TABLE)
Gary had a plan.
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| TIX | (EXCITED) A plan? What?
|
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| JIDDU | A plan which the vigour of his cancer prevented him from completing. It involves the dolphins we visited in Antarctica, frozen in the ice.
|
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| TIX | (IN NOSTALGIC AWE) It was Gary who first saw them, wasn't it? - On Bleeze's expedition, a lifetime ago. I remember his pointing finger.
|
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| JIDDU | He points again! His plan is simple. Go to Antarctica. Cut the dolphins from the ice. Defrost them. Bring them back to life and send them off into the sea, to thrive and multiply. Gradually, thereforeto, humanity will recover its sense. A most audacious scheme indeed.
|
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| TIX | And will it work, do you think?
|
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| JIDDU | Ooooo, not a monkey's chance in hell.
|
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| TIX | Damn!
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| JIDDU | Worth a try though, I should say.
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| TIX | An expedition! The greatest ever, of all time. (BACK-SLAPPING JIDDU) The future of the world, every thought to come, depends on you and me, Jiddu. Exciting, wot?
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| JIDDU | Better than being slapped in the face by a dead dolphin.
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39. SLOSH OF WAVES.
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| TIX | (CONFESSIONAL, GETTING FASTER AS HE GOES) Do you know, Macnab, I always wondered about that. How the old telly programmes seemed so much better. The songs they used to write back when I was a lad. Nothing nearly as good later on, and worse all the time. Everyone was desperately copying things that had gone before. All of life was a rehash. Telly, music, books, people, politicians, every idea spoken or unsaid, from the seventies through the eighties into the nineties, got more and more sheer bloody mediocre. Dolphins were dying off, see. Simple answer. No ideas of our own cos our minds were melting away, like six billion bars of soap left in bathwater. Me too, of course - how thoughtless I became! If only I'd known! If only we'd all known!
|
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| MACNAB | Och, shutup about bliddie dolphins, man! I'd much rather hear one of your dirty stories.
|
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| TIX | (FINGERWAGGINGLY VEXED) And you, MacNab - you're as much to blame as anybody! MORE! (LAUGHS) Do you remember the day Jiddu and I came to see you in Buckingham Palace? One little ginger Scotsman in that huge golden room.
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40. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. TIX AND JIDDU WALKING ACROSS THE CLIP-CLOPPY FLOOR OF A LARGE ROOM.
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| TIX | (CLEARS HIS THROAT)
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| JIDDU | Tixover and Dutt. (PROUDLY) I am Dutt. To see you about a most anxious matter, your Lordship.
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| MACNAB | (SLOW AND SINISTER) Ah, Citizen Tixover, of course. Erm, it says here you are a Brigadier.
|
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| TIX | Was, Sir. Caught drinking. (AN EMBARRASSED LAUGH) Demoted.
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| MACNAB | I see. Well, out wi'it, I'm a busy man.
|
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| TIX | Of course. - Jiddu, go on.
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| JIDDU | We are wishing to mount an expedition to Antarctica, O Great One.
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| MACNAB | Out of the question. I am about to sign a decree forbidding all foreign travel, all travel in fact father than five miles from one's domicile. So wherever anyone is at this moment, they stay put there forever.(A SCRATCH OF A PEN)There, I've done it. It's signed. Antarctica is unnecessary to the New Thinking, Citizens. I'm sure you agree.
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| TIX | We do. Don't we.
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| JIDDU | Do we?
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| TIX | Oh, we do. It's to protect the New Thinking that we wish to go to Antarctica. It's really quite urgent.
|
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| MACNAB | Please say your piece, Citizen.
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| TIX | It is the absence of dolphins from the world that has allowed this great peace to descend upon us.
|
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| MACNAB | Aye, I've heard words tae that effect.
|
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| TIX | Well, as it happens, there are some dolphins in Antarctica. Frozen in the ice. Jiddu, the pictures.
|
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| MACNAB | (A SOUND OF DULL SCOTS INTEREST AS HE LOOKS AT THE PICTURES)
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| TIX | They are in a glacier, and glaciers as you know move closer to the sea every day.
|
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| JIDDU | Two inches a day in this case, your Highness.
|
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| TIX | If they get back into the sea and revive, it could...
|
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| MACNAB | Say no more, Citizen. You are reappointed Brigadier. You shall lead an expedition to destroy these frozen dolphins. I will issue the permits myself. Really, for a thing like this, President Muldoon should be consulted. But the red phone has gone silent. He has disappeared.
|
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| TIX & JIDDU | Oh, dear. Most unfortunate.
|
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| MACNAB | It is a matter of no importance.
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41.
|
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| COSTANZA | I never saw Tixover again. We had the most terrible row in all our lives. And all the while, Jiddu sitting outside, squashed into a little car, his big knees in his face. I knew they were going to Antarctica to FREE the dolphins, not to destroy them. When they were gone, I picked up the phone right away. I was sobbing like a little girl, like I sobbed on the Spanish Steps that day. I denounced Tixover to the Lord Protector's office. I couldn't let him do it. The world was BETTER! The New Thinking was a good thing. The army didn't come around till that evening. They did an on-the-spot blood test on me. Then I was arrested for being emotional.
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42. CONSTANZA IN PRISON, RATTLING THE BARS.
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| COSTANZA | My brother is the Prime Minister of Italy! I am on your side! Let me out! Ehi, burino! Idioti!
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43. ANTARCTICA! LEGRAND'S THEME FROM `Ice Station Zebra', FULL & LUSH. ONE LONE DOLPHIN SOMEWHERE IN IT. THE TRUNDLE OF A SNO-CAT. WIND HOWLS.
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| SGT. BERNACCA | An Antarctic blizzard on the way if I'm not mistaken, sir.
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| TIX | Blizzard! Blizzard! I remember the first time I came down here. In our tents we were and Henning Bleeze says to me, `strip your togs off, Tixover and go for a run in the blizzard for ten minutes.'
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SWEEPING APPROACH OF JIDDU ON SKIS.
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| JIDDU | Get out of that lazy Sno-Cat and come with me!
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| TIX | Sod off, Jiddu! It's warmer in here.
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| JIDDU | There is an establishment on the glacier, beside the dolphins.
|
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| TIX | An establishment! What, a wine bar?
|
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| JIDDU | Foolish man! A permanent establishment! A silvermetal caravan-thing. The American flag.
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| TIX | Sergeant Bernacca, my skis.
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| SGT. BERNACCA | SIR!
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44. INSIDE THE SILVER CARAVAN-THING.
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| MULDOON | Mrs Carthaverbourne?
|
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| MRS. C | Yes, Mr President.
|
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| MULDOON | Would you like to have sex, Mrs Carthaverbourne?
|
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| MRS. C | No, Mr President. The New Thinking, of which we are all part, can see no reason for sexual union except for the creation of new people.
|
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| MULDOON | Goddammit!
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A CURTAIN IS PULLED BACK.
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| MRS. C | There is a Sno-Cat coming over the ridge, Mr President. And two skiers approaching, Mr President.
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| MULDOON | Sonsofbitches have found me!
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THE LOADING OF A RIFLE.
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| MRS. C | What are you doing, Mr President?
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| MULDOON | (MOVING TO DOOR) I'm going to get their ass.
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MULDOON RIPS THE DOOR OPEN. THE SOUND OF WIND INCREASES. HE RUSHES OUT AND STARTS SHOOTING.
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| (WHILE SHOOTING, RUNNING AWAY FROM US) Goddamn sonsofbitches! Sonsofbitches! (LAUGHS)
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45. ON THE GLACIER.
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| JIDDU | (GROANING AND FALLING) Tixover! Oh, dear me!
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| TIX | Jiddu!
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| JIDDU | (AMAZED) My leg! I have been shot!
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| TIX | Keep down, lad. (SHOUTS) STOP SHOOTING, YOU BLOODY MANIAC.
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| JIDDU | It is President Muldoon.
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| TIX | Never! It is, you know. Stone me. (SHOUTS) STOP SHOOTING. (TO JIDDU) You're not dying, are you?
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| JIDDU | I most sincerely hope not.
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| MULDOON | (RUNNING UP, BREATHLESS) Sonsofbitches, I got yer. Over to the crevasse. Go on. They won't take me back, not to make me like them. Commie bastards! I give them everything the world ever dreamed of and they go an turn into Commie bastards. I figured the world was clean of that sort of thing, then who brings it back?! I DO! ME! COMMIE BASTARDS!
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| TIX | Look, stop waving your shooter - Erm, my wife's brother is the Italian Prime Minister, you know.
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| MULDOON | I'm gonna put your asses in the crevasse. And their asses. And everybody's asses that comes here. I'm safe here, see. I'm safe here. I can think here. GET ON YOUR FEET!
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|
HE SHOOTS INTO THE AIR.
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| TIX | Yes, all right, do calm down. Jiddu.
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HE HELPS JIDDU TO HIS FEET.
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| JIDDU | (GROANS) Thank you.
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| TIX | Excuse me, Mr President, but I've just realised something. If you're soo rootin'-tootin'-shootin and passionately screaming your bonce off - you're one of us!
|
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| MULDOON | Huh?
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| JIDDU | (THROUGH HIS PAIN) Mr President, under these various balaclavas, if you were to look most carefully, you would find Jiddu Dutt, failed lawyer, bold adventurer.
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| MULDOON | Mr Jiddudutt? Hell, I didn't mean to shoot you, Mr Jiddudutt. (YELLS) Mrs CARTHAVERBOURNE! THE MEDICAL KIT! (HUSHED TO TIX) She's as frigid as hell. They all are. (SUDDENLY TEARFUL) You mean, you're like me, real life thinking sentient beings, who feel and suffer, and love God, and daydream...AND HATE COMMIE BASTARDS!
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| TIX | That's us!
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|
THE TRUNDLE OF THE APPROACHING SNO-CAT.
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| SGT. BERNACCA | (CALLS FROM THE SNO-CAT)Brigadier, are you all right, sir?
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| MULDOON | (IN PANIC) Who's that in the Sno-Cat? Is he one of us?
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| TIX | Sergeant Bernacca. Not exactly.
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A SHOT. A CRY FROM BERNACCA.
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| MULDOON | I hate the sonsofbitches!!!
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46. INSIDE MULDOON'S ESTABLISHMENT. JIDDU GROANS. MRS CARTHAVERBOURNE SHAKES ANTISEPTIC IN A BOTTLE. SHE DABS JIDDU'S WOUND.
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| TIX | That hole in your leg looks bloody enormous, big fella.
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| JIDDU | I am altogether too big a target, unfortunately.
|
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| MRS. C | (WHILE BUSY) I just don't understand President Muldoon. He's personally, entirely responsible, along with the late Mr Takashita, for the New Thinking - there's statues of them shaking hands with each other going up everywhere. But he's not the man he was. Everything he says and does is entirely contrary to the New Thinking.
|
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|
SHOTS FROM OUTSIDE.
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| What's he shooting at out there?
|
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| TIX | Himself, I hope.
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| MRS. C | I'm going to pull the bandage very tight now.
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| JIDDU | Please do. (GROANS IN PAIN)
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| MRS. C | You gentlemen were sent by the authorities to arrest him, weren't you?
|
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| TIX | That's right, Mrs Carthaverbourne. We were sent by the protectors of the New Thinking.
|
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| JIDDU | Just before the first whirls of snow, I saw them. Did you see them, Tix? The dolphins.
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| TIX | No, I was wearing myself out dragging you.
|
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| MRS. C | That's another thing, gentlemen. The dolphins. He's out there are all hours, standing by the edge of the crevasse, talking to them, singing country-and-western songs to them. It's terrible. The strain of his responsibilities has deranged him.
|
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| TIX | Poor bugger.
|
||
|
THE DOOR BURSTS OPEN. IN COMES A CHUCKLING MULDOON.
|
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| MULDOON | That goddamned Sno-Cat of yours. When I shot your sergeant it didn't stop going. It went on trundlin around out there, making circles in the snow. One helluva game, fellas, huh? It was coming at me in the blizzard but I couldn't see it. Like a white buffalo, huh? So I shot and shot. Maybe I got its ass. Shhhh. Naw, I can still hear it. Can you hear it?
|
||
|
THEY LISTEN, BUT ONLY HEAR THE STORM.
|
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| Is he gonna make it?
|
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| MRS. C | He should be hospitalized. He's lost a lot of blood.
|
||
| JIDDU | (SICKLY) Could you please tell a certain Mr Iqbal - one of my old clients in Delhi - that I am sorry, and that if I survive I shall devote my life to proving his innocence. (GROANS SLEEPILY)
|
||
| MULDOON | Great God, but this is an awful place. And, know something, fellas. This is it for me. Home. Forever. I can't ever leave. No yellow brick road leading to no Emerald City, not for me, no sir. To keep my right mind awake, see, I needed regular shots of dolphins' brains. But then Bobby drove over that goddamn cliff with my entire stock. We tried to synthesize some but it didn't work. I could see that smile coming on my face. You know, that smile. Smile, Mrs Carthaverbourne...See!
|
||
| TIX | Oh, THAT smile.
|
||
| MULDOON | I have to stay here, beside my dolphins. They're not dead in there, you know. No, sirree. Their minds are ticking over in the freeze. Being near them keeps me awake. When the storm has finished tormenting us, we'll go out and see them. D'you know, since I came here, I've felt kinda different. I make up country songs, little poems, I draw kittens in the snow. I never did nuttin like that before. My mind, it's sorta, growing. (FIERCE) The sonsofbitches won't take me back! (SAD AND GENTLE) I've just started loving Bobby, just started being her father. Mr Jiddudutt, why did she do it, huh? Can you tell me? Mr Jiddudutt?
|
||
| TIX | He's passed out.
|
||
|
SUDDENLY WE HEAR THE SNO-CAT'S ENGINE OUTSIDE, AND THE CREAKING OF THE CARAVAN WALLS.
|
|||
| MULDOON | What the hell?
|
||
| TIX | It's the Sno-Cat. It's outside, pushing on the wall.
|
||
| MULDOON | (GETTING WORRIED) Go and pull its plug, Goddammit! It's pushing this place off its pins.
|
||
|
TIX PUSHES AND RATTLES THE STUCK DOOR.
|
|||
| TIX | The door won't budge, the Cat's right on the other side.
|
||
| MULDOON | Goddammit, man, do something! We're moving! It's sliding us on the ice.
|
||
|
A SUDDEN LURCH. THINGS FALL OFF SHELVES. EVERYONE FALLS OVER.
|
|||
| TIX | Bloody hell!
|
||
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|
47. TIXOVER SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO US, WHILE IN THE BACKGROUND THE SNO-CAT PUSHES THE CARAVAN ABOUT ON THE ICE.
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| TIX | I've never had an experience like it. the Sno-Cat pushed us around on the ice, going in circles, always that much closer to the crevasse with each circle, and it packed with all the explosives we'd brought to break up the glacier and free the dolphins. I was about to die, I knew. But it was like in a dream when you're in some terrible danger, sliding down into a pit or something, but you realize that it's a dream, so you just let it happen, all blasé. I tried to get up at first, but fell on my arse so many times, and with all sorts of things sticking in my arse, that after a bit I just sat cradling Jiddu. He woke up just before we went over the edge. Like a railway carriage sliding off the edge of the world landing on a hell that has frozen over.
|
||
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48. INSIDE CARAVAN, CREAKS AND CRACKS. THE SNO-CAT'S ENGINE OUTSIDE.
|
|||
| JIDDU | Did you tell Mr Iqubal?
|
||
| TIX | They've let him out. He asked me to tell you he's very happy.
|
||
| JIDDU | Oh, isn't life wonderful!
|
||
| MULDOON | (SCREAMS) Sonsofbitches! They're doing this! They're out there! God help me. I'm sorry! I'M SORRY!
|
||
|
THE CARAVAN AND THE SNO-CAT FALL CLASHINGLY INTO THE CREVASSE. SCREAMS FROM TIX, MULDOON AND MRS CARTHAVERBOURNE. THE CRACKING AND BREAKING OF ICE. SHOSTAKOVICH'S ORGAN MUSIC `Passacaglia' JOINS IN THE NOISE. TINKLES OF ICE ROLLING DOWN THE CREVASSE. THEN: A HUGE EXPLOSION. |
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49. THE ORGAN MUSIC GRINDS TO A HALT. THEN... THE CARIBBEAN SEA. AFTER A RESPECTFUL SILENCE, THE SONG OF DOLPHINS. THEN CALYPSO MUSIC SOFTLY. THE LAP OF WAVES. THEN BRING IN THE CLICKING SPLASHING PRESENCE OF DOLPHINS.
|
|||
| TIX | (DIRECTLY TO US) I'm sorry, Macnab, there's no way to reach you any more. Where are you? I'm sure you're very sad these days. But we're not. Are we Bobby?!
|
||
| BOBBY | (GLEEFUL) Hell, nooooooo! Watch out, Tix, I'm gonna flip right over you. Weeee! Clickety-click-trala!
|
||
| JIDDU | (APPROACHING FAST AND GOING PAST US) Master Rao, everything you taught me, it is true!
|
||
| TIX | (SWIMMING TO AND FRO, TO AND AWAY) Cossy, my love, apart from at the summit of certain mountains, I've never been happier. Jiddu has filled me in on the science of it.
|
||
| JIDDU | He is without beginning, middle or end; the One pervading, the blessed, the supreme lord, he is Brahma, he is Siva, he is Indra, he is Vishnu, breath, spirit, eternal...
|
||
| BOBBY | The transmigration of souls.
|
||
| TIX | The glacier broke off and the dolphins that weren't smashed like glasses in a Greek fireplace, they floated off in the current and thawed out. Somewhere off the coast of Brazil I fell, splash, out of the darkness I'd been crawling about in. When I woke up I was a new-born dolphin. President Muldoon is with us. He's instigated a breeding programme. Jiddu has Bobby. Muldoon and I share Mrs Carthaverbourne. What a life!
|
||
| BOBBY | Let's swim down real deep! It's neat down there, real cold!
|
||
| TIX | In your next life, whoever you are, make bloody damn sure you come back as a dolphin. Meanwhile, spend whatever life you've got left up there to make the seas safe for us. Here comes Tixover...Weeeeeeeeeeee.
|
||
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|
50. SONG OF DOLPHIN, SAD AND ALONE.
|
|||
| MACNAB | After the New Thinking collapsed all around me, I resigned my responsibilities and decided after much thought not to resume my television career. I returned to Arbroath, which is where I was born and went to school. My life long, I have hated Arbroath. But I had a need of it, and it was THERE. I live in my mother's old hoose. It's still full of her things, her smell. I spend most of my time in the old room of my boyhood. Och, it's such a mess! I play my records. Every night in the wee owrie hours, my favourite time, I sit on my bed and conduct interviews, sometimes with my poor friend Tixover, about his adventures, or wi' people from outta history or books, sometimes just wi' myself, where I'm living a totally different life every time. There's nobody there but me in these interviews, I do know that. I'm not mad, even though I chat away wi' myself like a loony.
|
||
|
A LONE BAGPIPE PLAYS FAR AWAY.
|
|||
| (CLOSE, SECRETIVE, INTIMATE) Last night I had a strange dream - a great ugly fish in deep black water, very very deep, and I couldnae see, I just knew that the whole world was covered in black water, no bar of land. And way above, shiploads of old-fashioned Scotsmen were going under in a storm, crying out for the Hebrides to save them. (LAUGHS) I woke up in a dry sweat. But I was laughing my head off, because I knew that if my mind could make up such a wonderful thing as that dream, I knew I was a better man for it.
Have ye heard tell, they say there's dolphins in the sea again. Some golfers off Carnoustie saw one last Saturday. Just for now, I'm frightened tae leave the house. But, in the name of all that's holy, that's a sight I'd love to see.
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|
THE SINGING OF DOLPHINS. MORE AND MORE AND MORE OF THEM, COMING FROM ALL DIRECTIONS. MINGLE HUMAN LAUGHTER IN WITH THIS. A DISTANT PIPER. THEN BRING DOWN. JUST WAVES ON A BEACH. DOG BARKS IN THE DISTANCE.
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