MPW Excess Excerpt

Scene 1: Edmonton; a medical centre lecture theatre. At rise, Lazara completes her lecture. A scarf at her neck all but hides a small bandage.

   LAZARA
These protocols frequently reverse the replication of the protein; hence the interruption of the progress of the disease itself. (sets her papers aside)

Too often, because I am denied the means to prevent it, I watch life slip away from these young bodies. I am a scientist. I am also a humanist. I am asked the great question: why must I die?   The children of Chernobyl, many now in their teens, wish the humanist, not the scientist, to respond. I tell them instead why they must live. Life is a force of nature. From the moment life becomes, it recognizes itself. It flows through everything, constantly. Like light, life may be deflected; but it will not be destroyed.

        I see life struggle in them, not with death, but with another form of life. A dark variation. It angers me to see life turn, and destroy not only itself, but the place where it lives; its host, its home. This is sheer stupidity. Like all stupidity, it is in some way . . . evil.

        They are battered, these young people – teenagers, young adults, children, infants . . . by the disease and the treatment. They are weak, adrift between two shores; sick beyond the edge of tolerance and yet they go on. Death is what remains, I tell them, when life is gone. It is the dry river bed when rain has evaporated, and water flows no more.

        The dying are always surprised: then, and there, life was; suddenly, here, and now, life is not.

       When drugs and radiation fail, I have felt my own love pull a child back from the dry silence. This gives me great joy. It makes me humble.

        Life comes as a gift, unannounced and unexpected. We are never finished with life. Life moves on to someone else, whose existence will be more . . . acute, if in our lives we have been generous and kind. If we live selfishly, we decrease the value of life itself; we threaten the well-being of another. I have no religion to tell me this. I need no religion. I know in my bones that all life is sacred. That is all I need to know.

        It is great sorrow to see life dissolve in the young. Death does not conquer life. Death, the great survivor, simply waits.   I am astonished when I see death recoil from life, aware the time has not come to abandon the child to the great dry silence. I am angered when life speeds away for no apparent reason. Some incomprehensible force simply. . . dislodges it. Sometimes exhaustion. Sometimes despair. Sometimes the malice of a foreign nation.

        Just to the north of this lovely city of Edmonton, Alberta, where we meditate together tonight, a Dene child struggles to overcome a terrible, sixty year old mistake. In Great Slave Lake, this mistake ended the life of her father and her grandfather, who mined Canadian uranium. The uranium, purchased by America, destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and here in Canada. American aggression and Canadian complicity killed – over-killed, and continues to kill – both Japanese and the Dene alike.

        The half life of uranium is 760 million years. What is the half life of hostility?

        Stupidity polluted the hills and meadows of Chernobyl, where radiation still kills and sickens Belarusian children as I speak.

        What is the half life of stupidity?

        In Cuba, we are complicit in our own captivity. Born of rebellion, we no longer seem capable to re-invent ourselves.

        What is the half life of complicity?

     American sanctions kill Cuban children, and children and young adults from the Soviet Union, even though the Soviet Union no longer exists.

        What is the half life of evil?

        Why do I not despair? In our human brilliance, in our human hostility, stupidity, evil, and complicity, in our ability to love, we are one. Love, which is generosity of the human spirit, lifts us above ourselves. In this rarefied air, we are become one. The English poet, Auden, says, ‘We must love one another or die.’ I know this. I have seen this.

        No one owns life. Therefore, no one has the right to diminish it. No one has the right to take life away. The life of a young Russian struggling in Cuba is no different then that of a Cuban child, kidnapped in Miami, struggling with the loss of all he knows. A child starving, or dying of AIDS in Africa, is the same as a child glutted to death with the excess of America; both deserve to live in good health. Both require love.

        I have a dear friend who introduced me to the work of her mentor. (picks up and leafs through Grace’s book) This was a great Canadian, a great Socialist, a great man, this Señor Tommy Douglas. He fought the great plague of the last century: the plague of greed that resulted in the death of generosity in the United States of America, then threatened Canada. In Canada, kindness and generosity survived in the population, then became magnified when rendered constitutional. Why? What distinguishes these two nations, which seem to us in the third world so similar?

        In the third world, all evil comes form the north.

       Why is Canada so different from America? This is what your father of Canadian Social Medicine,   while under assault from the    American pharmaceutical and health insurance industries in the 1950's, wrote and spoke about people looking after – not killing, not exploiting, not hurting – looking after each other:

       “We believe that every man is his brother’s keeper. We believe that those who are strong ought to help bear the burdens of the weak. We believe that any society . . . is measured by what it does for the aged, the sick, the orphans and the less fortunate that live in our midst . . . I believe that love is stronger than hate, that the outstretched hand is more powerful than the clenched fist . . . that in the long run feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and lifting up the fallen will do more to establish peace in the world than all the bombs and guns we can ever make. This is the policy of humanity first . . . ” (She closes the book)

       Your Mr. T. C. Douglas tells us simply and clearly what I tell the children of Chernobyl: the antidote to suffering is love. I tell you this: the antidote to our inhumanity, our cruelty one to the other, is simple generosity; not only the generosity of material things. It is generosity of the human soul. (gathers her materials) Thank you.

        As Lazara leaves the podium, a familiar figure emerges from the wings. She hesitates, as does Art Goldspike.

   LAZARA
Why are you here?

    ART
Good to see you too. How’s your throat?

   LAZARA
A surface wound.

   ART
Will there be a scar?

   LAZARA
Yes. A small one.

   ART
I have a business proposition you might find of interest.

   LAZARA
Business.

   ART
I want tell your story.

   LAZARA
What story?

   ART
The Children of Chernobyl. There’s a movie of the week, maybe a mini-series. There’s certainly a book. I can get you on Oprah. I can make you rich, and your sanatarium richer. I can change the way America sees you.

   LAZARA
You forget. You do not do business with Cubans.

   ART
There are ways. I have another reason . . . a personal reason.

   LAZARA
Ah. The recent past.

   ART
I want to know why you were so hard on me. After what we shared –

   LAZARA
We shared pleasure without promise. I never expected to see you again.

   ART
Being American doesn’t make me a bad man.

   LAZARA
You might have been anyone.

   ART
I am not just anyone.

   LAZARA
You need to be told you are a good man? Alright. You performed well. You were tender when . . . appropriate, forceful when urged. You satisfied me. Then yourself. You did all the right things, including keeping your mouth shut. Until you arrived in Toronto.

   ART
Where I embarrassed you in front of your friend.

   LAZARA
Where you betrayed yourself in front of me. You are no gentleman. How will you get these American dollars to Tararà?

   ART
So you’re interested?

   LAZARA
Of course I am interested. But it is not possible.

   ART
I convert the money into medicine and equipment, here in Canada. Your friends take it from there.

   LAZARA
And how do you explain this scheme to Fidel?

   ART
I don’t. You do.

   LAZARA
Why are you doing this?

   ART
You need help. I need to help you.

   LAZARA
Why?

   ART
I’m tired of being despised.

   Lazara turns to leave. She pauses. Art moves to her side. They exit together.

Scene 2: Pangnirtung, Nunavut; The edge of an icefield. Nell, bundled in fur, and Grant survey the vast landscape. They smoke a joint.

   NELL
Why do you still love me?

   GRANT
You’re beautiful and smart. You loved me once. We had fun.

   NELL
We did have fun.

   GRANT
Yes.

   NELL
Why did you take me here?

   GRANT
I thought it would help. It was a mistake.

   NELL
No. It wasn’t. Listen.

   A long moment of silence. Nell leans against Grant.

   NELL
(eyes closed) Do you hear that?

   GRANT
What, Love?

   NELL
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

   GRANT
Yes.

    NELL
(opens her eyes) Air and sky forever. We used to rise our eyes with hope and think of heaven. Now the sky is the book of Revelations.
   GRANT
Not here.

   GRACE
No. I’ve never felt so exposed. Or safe. It’s so wide open . . . no way evil can creep up and snatch me. How do people live here? What are they called? Not Eskimos anymore.

   GRANT
No. They are Inuit. The People.   I used to think they’d survive if western civilization collapsed. But the ice is thinning. The Northwest Passage will likely open year round. Ships will contaminate these waters, foul the shores. Seals are already declining. Polar bears eating trash. The People hypnotized by satellite TV. Targeted by Taco Bell. Born again Inuit. Charismatic Christian ice hunters. I can’t believe our stupidity. All this. Laid waste.

   Nell moves away.

   NELL
I have to go back.

   GRANT
Yeah. I know.

   NELL
What will you do?

   GRANT
I’ll find something.

   NELL
I envy you. So far from all our madness.

   GRANT
And yet so near.

    NELL
Hey! You could open a string of spas . . . northern healing centres, all across the Arctic, where Americans could come when we’re too fucked up, and need to feel what I feel right now.

   GRANT
I think we’d better keep this to ourselves.

   NELL
Yeah. We’d turn it into Disney World North before you can say Inuktic . .

    GRANT
Inuktitut.

   NELL
Inukitcut.

   GRANT
Inuktitut.

   NELL
Whatever.

   Nell exits.

   GRANT
(to himself)   No, Nell. Not whatever. Inuktitut.

   Grant eats the roach, follows.

Scene 3: Grace’s study, Toronto. Grace, under bed covers, in her night gown, is propped on pil-lows, in the pull-out bed. She notates a manuscript, taking care not to rouse the sleeping figure outlined in the bedding beside her.

Grant, moving gingerly, enters with coffee tray – pot, cups, cream, sugar, etc.

    GRANT
(quietly) What does Lazara take in her coffee?

    GRACE
(quietly) When did you get back? I didn’t hear you . . .

    GRANT
Late last night, just before the storm hit. By the time we left Pang, Nell was actually twitching for Holt’s, credit cards clenched in her fist the whole flight. She was there when the doors opened this morning. She’ll be back in a bit, to say goodbye. Black with sugar, isn’t it?

    GRACE
What do you mean, goodbye?

    GRANT
Pangnirtung was . . . Ah . . . Decisive.

    GRACE
Are you alright?

    GRANT
No. Bereaved and relieved. Neither of us slept much. We had a long, last night of nothing more to say.   There’s no anger. We’ll stay friends.

    GRACE
Good.

    GRANT
I don’t know. Fall in love and it’s love forever. The relationship ends and it’s all “. . . .we can still be friends.” There’s a phone call now and then. Then silence. Then love is a ghost that lives in your suitcase. Slides between the sheets when the moon’s on the wane.

    GRACE
I’m sorry, darling.

     GRANT
I know. Thanks, Mom. What’s Lazara take?

    MALE VOICE
Two sugar, one cream.

    Art Goldspike throws back the bed covers, sits up. Grace is unperturbed. Grant is gob-smacked.

    ART
‘Morning. I thought I’d better make myself known before . . . I’m sorry for your trouble.

    GRANT
Thank you. How was Rome?

    ART
Not great. Turned me down flat. Same old song about American cultural imperialism and objections to ‘enforced liberty’, whatever the hell that means. I’m still a little lagged. (kisses Grace) I’m a two sugar, one cream man myself.

    GRANT
Yeah. Ah . . . Sure thing. One cream, double sugar.

    GRACE
The other way around.

    GRANT
What? Oh, two sugar . . .

    GRACE
How did you sleep, Arthur?

    ART
One cream. Like a lamb –

    GRACE
With odd little bleats. And curious sideways hops.

    ART
I have these lush-pasture, green-meadow dreams lately. I’m all innocent and pure again, wake up feeling brand spanking new . . .

End Excerpt