Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound Restored And Updated As Forsyte Up Against It

Aeschylus’s play, Prometheus Bound, is about an incident that occurred soon after Zeus, a leader in a recent revolution and civil war among the gods, deposes the previous godfather, and becomes the new godfather and military dictator over all the other gods, and takes, like a duck to water, to acting like a mob-boss, a gangster.

In particular, it is about a former revolutionary comrade of his, Prometheus (Forsyte in this version of the play), who is now in disgrace, and under torture at the orders of Zeus.

The play is one of a trilogy. The other two have been lost, including the one in which Prometheus is freed. A related skit, a buffoonery, performed with the trilogy has also been lost.

The poet Robert Lowell (1969) re-pronounced the universal opinion when he called Aeschylus’s play undramatic, and tried to make it more dramatic. His version has very little contact with the original.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s version (1833 and later) and Henry David Thoreau’s (1843) are the best translations in poetic form, the one regular, the other in line for line "free verse." Thoreau’s has the power of the best of the "contorted" translations done in the mid-sixteenth century of the plays of Seneca.

Theodore Alois Buckley’s unperformable and almost unreadable but honest prose translation in the Bohn edition of 1849 (not listed in the Loeb 1922 list of translations) was more useful to me than any other that I came on, because nearer to what Aeschylus actually said than, say, the Loeb’s supposedly literal, but in fact terrible and inaccurate translation. The Loeb is a fine example of the lack of skill, so blithely shown by most translators in reading and writing the language native to them, in this case English or American, which is one of the two causes of a translation’s failure. Their way of reading leads them to assume they have translated accurately enough when they haven’t. The other cause of course is that they can’t accept, except where textual corruption justifies them, that what the original says — is what it actually means to say (another reading problem) and that that matters. These reading disabilities make their actual translations, where they naively think they are rendering the original, imply that the great aren’t that great and that the translators know better than the great authors they regularly transfrog-and-mogrify. These strictures do not of course apply to a transformation of an original as in Christopher Logue’s wonderful War Music, where what Homer actually said in the Iliad is not in question.

Prometheus was a figure of fun to the ancient Greeks. Even in the same year as Aeschylus’s Prometheus, another playwright depicted him as funny. It was our great romantics who for the English-speaking world and for their own reasons, made him into a noble humourless heroic figure refusing to give in to the overwhelming force of tyranny. Inheriting this view and applying it blindly, scholars and translators missed out on the abundant humour of several sorts in the original Prometheus Bound. I had to deduce this humour from the humourless translations into English and American that I used almost exclusively. Prometheus has it in him to be a stand-up comic. The misreading and consequent translation of this humour as solemnity, and its consequent invisibility, is what makes the play undramatic, since the humour is often the only binding glue between the parts that make up the speeches, and between speech and speech. Without it, the characters in the play sound like the givers of a series of unrelated sublime speeches laced and disconnected with padding and verbiage. The humour is also the yeast and fertilizer through which (as in Shakespeare’s tragedy of King Lear) the "flour" of the play rises to great heights. Lear is undoubtedly a tragedy despite the massive amount of humour in it. So is the Prometheus.

As with Shakespeare (1564-1616 AD), how he uses humour shows Aeschylus (about 525 to 456 BC) to be a supreme master of stagecraft (though most stagings of both give the opposite impression).

The traits and actions of the Gods in power in this play are typical of the cruel gods (the Stalins, Hitlers, etcetera ) of every era. The emotions of the powerless other gods continue to exist too. The immortal gods who some think dead are, it turns out, immortal after all. Which has let me transpose the play into modern times and keep its character. This transposition was needed to refill with meaning the ancient Greek names, such as Themis, and Tethys, which have lost all or most of their immediate and suggestive meaning for us, but which are of great importance in the play. For these I’ve substituted modern equivalents whose meaning is still apparent. Equivalents were also needed to ground things which must seem rather fanciful to us though not meant to be so in the original, such as Aeschylus’s description of the hundred-headed monster, Typhon, in action. This accounts for what would otherwise seem unpardonable aberrations in this version.

The other liberties I’ve taken with the text all have a possible meaning in mind where the text exhales corruption, whereas most translators corrupt the corruptions by adding maggots of their own. Sometimes I’ve found a phrase to point up the drama where they’ve managed to de-dramatize it. I too must have made numerous mistakes, though always aiming at the intent of Aeschylus in every sentence by repeatedly asking "Why did he say this rather than that?" And I have at times added words to eke out the text to guide the actors when not just anything will do, since Aeschylus is no longer around to add them as obvious oral instructions at rehearsals. I’ve tried not to leave out anything essential, and ninety-nine point nine percent at least is essential. But the modernizing forced me to unwillingly leave out the underlying Velikovskian cosmological strand in the several plied rope of Aeschylus’s myth.

A few expressions in this version are used only in British English, and a few others only in American, and their appearing together here may annoy purists and Canutes of either language, but they were the only pegs I knew of that exactly filled certain peculiar holes in the text. Besides, since both languages tolerate words and phrases from French and German, why not from a nearer relative?

All stage directions are my own, and can be treated with a pinch of salt.

Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound is better than mine.


Where:
Around and about a huge monolith on the nearest of several high peaks between a plain and an ocean.

When:
A composite time made up of elements from the last half of the 19th century through the early 21st century. Whatever the time, it must be choc-a-bloc with anachronisms.

Who:
Forsyte [Prometheus]. Prometheus means foresight.
Major Powers, a supervising officer. Aeschylus calls him Power (Kratos) which he is the embodiment of.
Armed Force, dumb and hulking privates embodying what Aeschylus calls Bia: the force available to power.
Smith, a much decorated Hero of Labor and industrial innovator. He is Aeschylus’s Hephaestus, the blacksmith artificer. The ungainliness, of his limp, highlights the power and beauty of his other movements.
O’Sheen [Oceanus, the god of the ocean before Poseidon took over], a theatrical impresario and manager.
Chorusgirls from the O’Sheen seaside show (the 50 sea-nymph daughters of Oceanus and Tethys). Dressed in seagull masks and costumes, they come on swooping and hovering in the air. No wonder Aeschylus plays won first place thirteen times in his own lifetime. [He must have had good technicians.] Some of the chorusgirls look smaller, some older, as there are lines that fit various ages.
Moon-start [Io], lusted after by Zeus, but transformed into a cow by him, and tortured by his wife.
Zip Cody [Hermes], Godfather’s messengerboy.

[From behind a huge monolith, enter:
MAJOR POWERS, reading from a piece of paper.
SMITH, a civilian, limping, carrying a toolbag.
FORSYTE, a prisoner. [An actor with an expressive head, or a lifelike dummy perhaps eight feet tall.]
ARMED FORCE is the chorus in military guise (but with the exaggerated shoulders of American-style footballers). They have Forsyte under guard, and are ready to back up Major Powers if they have to. They enter carrying a few ladders.

POWERS.
The most distant last frontier of the Siberian steppes, the footprint of a yeti, a desert not yet stepped on. We’re there!

Smith, it’s only right that you should be picked to carry out the orders of your father to "Clamp the cheeky bastard to some rocks on the highest peak — and make sure they’re Everlasting shackles, the ones that can’t be broken" — after all, he stole your technological knowhow and gave it to short-lived savages, along with your prestige. Besides, how else can he pay for betraying the Family; and be stopped from wanting to be Mr. Good Guy to everyone else, and be taught to do what his Godfather tells him to? [Goes to give orders to the Armed Force who subsequently position Forsyte under his supervision].

SMITH.
[Aside]. For you, Major Powers, and for your Armed Force, the end product of the Chairman’s orders is in sight, and it’s all plain sailing from now on. Your part is almost over. But I don’t have the heart to use force to clamp a Team member onto a ravine exposed to the elements. Though somehow or other I’ll have to screw myself up to it, because even to think of ignoring The Great Father’s orders is still more frightening.

[To Prometheus]. Against my will I’ll shackle you to this monolith — and against your will, Highflier out of famous Right Advice — where, you’ll soon see, there’s no sound nor shape of anything mortal; but scorched by the burn of the sun, you’ll slowly lose the bloom of your complexion, and be more than glad when the spangled gown of night veils the light, and be glad again when the sun disperses the frost in the morning, and since no one has ever been born can free you, there’ll be no end to the pain you’ll constantly feel and no end to its wearing you out. That’s what you get for being friendly to those with no future, and for giving them a prestige they’ve no right to.

And you will pay, though you’re a God and even though you’re not afraid of the anger of the Gods — by being forced to stand like a sentry on this bleak rock, ramrod straight, without sleep, and unable even to flex a leg: and you’ll cry out a lot and groan and not one bit of good will it do; because the heart of The Chairman turns into stone at the sound of begging, and because everyone who gets into power by force is harsh at first.

POWERS [to Smith].
Well, well. What are you waiting for, and pointlessly being sorry for? Why don’t you hate the god the gods hate most — because he betrayed the secrets of your monopoly to mere mortals?

SMITH. It’s hard to ignore a relative who’s also a great friend.

POWERS.
[Sarcastically] I can see that.

You’ld be better off using this imagination of yours to put the fear of death into yourself for holding up the implementation of the Godfather’s orders.

SMITH.
Yes sir!

[Aside while Powers goes to look over Forsyte] I’ve no trouble imagining you always without mercy and never thinking twice about it.

POWERS [returned].
Feeling sorry for this miserable thing [indicating Forsyte contemptuously] won’t help. Don’t bother your head with what don’t get you ahead.

SMITH.
God! do I hate my job!

POWERS.
Hate it! Your job can’t be blamed for the trouble he’s in, and that’s the truth! Doesn’t that cheer you up?

SMITH.
[Lugubriously] Oh yes.

But I wish someone else had got the assignment.

POWERS.
Every job has its minuses, even ours, gods though we are. There’s only one of us can be free — The Chairman, right?

SMITH.
I know it. [Opens mouth to speak his mind and then thinks better of it] And I’ve nothing to say against it.

POWERS.
So what are you waiting for? — move it. Clamp this garbage down, and don’t let Godfather catch you dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying.

SMITH.
Yes sir! And for the record, as you can see, the manacles have already been made. [To produce them out of his toolbox, he turns it round, so that it shows the words on it]:

EVERLASTING THE BRAND YOU CAN RELY ON

POWERS [rejecting Smith’s choice and picking out another pair].
Take these, and with all you’ve got, clench them round his wrists. Use this mallet [he picks out the biggest]. Rivet them hard against the crags.

SMITH [Pauses after the first smash of his mallet as Powers moves away.]
[Aside.] Our assignment’s sure ending in a rush.

[Hammering furiously as Powers returns] No sir, no dilly-dallying around here.

POWERS.
Harder, tighter, don’t slow down. This smart-ass could find a way out of any impossible situation.

SMITH.
This arm, at least, will never move again.

POWERS.
Now clamp this one down, as firmly, so he’ll know who’s dumber at figuring things out, him or the Godfather. [Moves away].

SMITH [aside].
Till now, no-one could really blame me for anything much.

POWERS [Returning and examining Smith’s handiwork].
Now put all your strength into driving this unbreakable wedge’s unfeeling spike right through his chest. [ Powers moves away. Forsyte shudders].

SMITH [banging and groaning, banging and groaning. Stops].
Forsyte, I really feel for you.

POWERS [returning].
Are you holding back again and feeling sorry for those against the Leader? You’d be better off making sure you don’t end up having to feel sorry for yourself.

SMITH.
You can see this sight’s hard on the eyes.

POWERS.
I can see this shite’s getting what’s coming to him. Throw these bars round his sides.

SMITH [aside].
I’ve no alternative. You don’t have to keep on telling me to.

POWERS [overhearing].
You have to, and I will tell you to, and make you if I have to. Now get down to it and join his legs together — and do it so they’ll stay that way. [Goes and comes back].

SMITH.
And it didn’t take long to get the job done. Right?

POWERS.
Wrong! Because now, with all you’ve got, I want you to smash the fetters that are already hurting him, in some more; because the one who’s going to inspect this work [pointing at himself] is really picky. [Walks away].

SMITH [aside].
Your talk is horrible, like your looks.

POWERS [returning].
You can give in to soppiness. Admit I’m flawlessly ruthless and hard.

SMITH [looking as if he can’t believe what he’s heard].
Let’s go.

[Excusing what he’s just said] Because he can go nowhere now, not with those shackles on.

POWERS [To Forsyte].
Now try to be insolent, and try to steal the property of the gods, and give it to those who are alive one day and dead the next. See if there’s one thing they can do to make you feel less pain. The gods made a big mistake in calling you Forsyte, because you’ll need more than that to get out of this mess.

[Exeunt all except Forsyte.]

FORSYTE [whose head is fixed so that he can see only what’s ahead of him].
Air, heavenly air; and scudding winds; and beginnings of rivers and of the uncounted dimplings of the waves of the sea; and earth, mothering all; and rondure of the all-seeing sun, you then must help me. Look at me, at the treatment I have to put up with, a god, at the hands of the gods! and see the humiliations, the mangling I’ll have to struggle against throughout the uncountable reaches of time. So that’s the demeaning bondage thought up for me by the new ruler of the gods. [Mocking himself]. Oooooh, oooooh.

[Mocking himself.] Sighing, am I? About the suffering I’m going through now? What about the suffering that’s on its way? Mustn’t the end of these trappings have a starting-point? How? And at what point in — ?

[Pretending to be disgusted with himself]. But what am I saying?

I already know all the future, in detail; and these oncoming sufferings of mine won’t take me by surprise. To survive, I must grin, and bear what I’m doomed to, knowing, as I do, the force of the inevitable can’t be resisted.

But neither is to keep quiet or not to keep quiet, about the situation I’m in for giving help to the mortal, a possibility for me. I am enslaved, unhappy, in big trouble. And I am the one who found out how and where to make the rods of energy which I stole later on, along with the casings enclosing them, and which has led the mortal to all they know and has been a resource of great help —.

[Declaiming theatrically.] Such will be and is now the revenge that I endure for my trespasses, being riveted in fetters under the naked sky —

Hah? What sound of — ? What? Indescribable perfume, wafting by me. Emanating from a god? from a mortal? A blend, of both? Has there come — anyone? — to this remote rock to be — a spectator at my sufferings? Or with what intent to —.

[Challengingly.] Look at me, an unlucky god, a prisoner, the enemy of the Leader and the one every god who courts the Leader loves to hate, and all because I was too friendly to mortals. Oooooh. [Pause.] Oooh [Pause.] What does this whirring — again, and again; so near me — mean? birds? seagulls? It even makes the air whistle a bit.

[Sounding as if he is pretending to be afraid] Whatever comes towards me these days gives me the shivers.

CHORUS [throughout much of the play, each phrase or larger unit of meaning in the chorus, is spoken by a different girl, reacting to the previous phrase and moving in and out of Forsyte’s range of vision].
Don’t you be afraid of us. We’re a friendly bunch. We had a hard time though, getting our manager to let us go. We raced each other, to this rock, the wind rushing by me, because the echo, of the clang of steel, reached right into our dressing-rooms, and dropping my demure looks, and reserve, and without even stopping to put on my stilletto heels, I rushed up here, in my Surf-rider copter equipped with stealth features.

FORSYTE.
Oooooh. [Pauses to test the effect.] Ooo-ooo-ooh. [He has their attention.] Children! Children of a mother famed for being prolific, a goddess of the foetus, in her way, and a longtime champion swimmer too; and daughters, daughters one might say, of O’Sheen, your manager and sugardaddy if ever there was one, and so busy on his tours around the world he has no time for sleep; put your peepers on me, and see in whose jealous arms I shall be sleepless and open-eyed among the highest rocks in this ravine.

CHORUS.
I see it, Forsyte, and a mist, full of tears; caused by fear, for you, pricking my eyes too, as I looked at the T of you withering, on the rocks, in these, fetters [fingering them and reaching the conclusion] galling, unbreakable; because new pilots are now the masters, of the Olympus; and Admiral Zeus, wronging what’s right, lords it, with new laws, and obliterates what was once revered.

FORSYTE.
I wish he’d not only savagely trussed me with unbreakable irons, but sent me under the earth into the unbroken darkness in which the Lord of Hell hides the dead; then no god, no being at all, ever, would have the great pleasure of seeing me suffer. As it is, my bad luck lets my enemies enjoy my pain at their seeing the winds toy with my suffering.

CHORUS.
Is there any god so case-hardened can get some satisfaction, out of all this? And your sufferings! doesn’t everyone sympathize with you? with the exception of Jove. In fact, he’s so rigid and rancorous, he feels he has to oppress even the race of the gods, and that without any let-up; and he won’t stop until he feels sated or someone by some scheme snatches his power away, no easy thing.

FORSYTE.
It so happens that, shackled, suffering, despised and unable to get away, I’ll become The Chairman Of The Immortals’ only hope of being let in on a new plot to take away his power and its trappings, sceptre and all. But he won’t win me over and charm me with persuasive sweet-talking, nor will I ever, though forced to kneel and threatened with the worst, tell him a thing, till he frees me from confinement and cruelty over and above what, etcetera, and is willing to pay what’s coming to me for this outrage.

CHORUS.
You’re so brave, not to let calamities that could embitter you faze you in the least. But you talk so wildly, I feel a prickling all over, out of fear, and I’m worried, dear soul, afraid for your future. How? when? are you destined to reach port? and then "Look, your suffering’s over." Because that son of a cannibal is beyond the reach of appeals, and there’s no stopping his heart’s heartlessness.

FORSYTE.
I know Our One And Only’s harsh, and ruthless to everyone except himself, but all the same, there’ll come a time when his will will weaken, when he’s about to be crushed, and that’s how, keeping a tight lid on his headstrong temper, he will eventually try to be my ally and friend, and I’ll eagerly —.

CHORUS.
Stop. Tell us the whole story, beguining from the beginning. What Jupiter accused you of in order to seize you, and why he’s so disgracefully and bitterly tormenting you. Tell us, if talking about it doesn’t add to your pain.

FORSYTE.
It hurts me to talk about it. Not to complain hurts. Every which way — hurts.

So — the gods began to vehemently disagree with one another, and stir up a feud among themselves — one side wanting to dethrone cannibal Cronus, so that, would you believe it? the Great Leader could become Number One, and the Titans doing what they could to counter that, trying to make sure he would never, never rule over the gods — and as soon as that happened, I offered the best advice but couldn’t convince the Titanic offspring of Cronus’s father and the planet Earth. Their indomitable hearts dismissing and looking down on wily schemes, they fancied that just by the use of their superior force, they could take over with no trouble at all at all. Not once, not twice, but many times, had my mother Earth, and Nature who is never wrong — both the same, a being with many names — warned me of what the future would bring and how it was destined that slyness and not mere strength or superior force would be the winner. But when my turn came and I explained these points, they looked down their noses and wouldn’t pay the least attention to me. So then the best plan I could come up with was to take my mother and go and side with Jupiter who was all forthat. And then through my advice to him, the murky abyss of hell overwhelms that antique — cannibal Cronus,with his allies and all. After being helped in this way by me, the tyrannizer over the gods pays me back — in this foul way. Because somehow or other, to have no trust in one’s friends is a disease tyranny suffers from.

You asked me what he came up with to enable him to commit this outrage on me. I’ll clear that up next. The moment he sits down in his father’s place, he straightaway rewards each of the gods with some position, and starts to put his empire in order, but he doesn’t do a thing to alleviate the misery the mortals are in, intending to wipe out the lot and replace them with a new race. And not only was I the only one to reject this plan, I did more, I dared to give mortals the means to save them from utter destruction and the downward journey to hell. That’s the true reason he’s bent on this sort of suffering, agonizing to go through and pitiful to look at. He thinks my compassion for mortals proves I deserve none myself, and so here I am, coerced without mercy to make me obedient, a sight that doesn’t redound to Jupiter’s glory.

CHORUS.
Only the iron core of a rock wouldn’t melt at what you’re going through, Forsyte. Because now that I’ve seen this, my heart hurts me so much I wish I’d never seen it.

FORSYTE.
There’s music for my ears. No doubt about it, I’m a poor thing for friends to look at.

CHORUS.
If it’s any consolation, you did all you could.

FORSYTE.
I did more! I prevented those mortals from knowing their fates.

CHORUS.
What cure could you possibly give them for that?

FORSYTE.
Blind hope. I implanted it in them.

CHORUS.
That was a great thing for mortals.

FORSYTE.
I did more, something even better. I gave them industrial energy.

CHORUS.
So now these moments-in-time control the brightness of a thousand suns?

FORSYTE.
Yes, and they’ll learn to run many industries with it.

CHORUS.
So that’s the inside dope on why The Greatest disgraced you, and won’t stop hurting you even for a moment, and has set no limit on what you’re to undergo?

FORSYTE.
There’s no other reason, believe me, except that he gets a kick out of it.

CHORUS.
And what’s to stop him from doing that? What hope is there of that? Can’t you see that what you did was wrong? But to say where you went wrong won’t give me any pleasure, and would be painful to you. So let’s drop the subject, and see if you can’t find a way to free yourself from your agony.

FORSYTE.
When your foot’s not caught in a trap, it’s easy to tell someone whose foot is in one, where he went wrong, and what his next step should be. But I can’t say I didn’t know: what to expect and that I wasn’t willing to face it, and that what I was doing wasn’t wrong though I was willing to do it. I knew, I can’t say I didn’t; and that by helping these mortals I’d cause my own suffering. But my expectation of this punishment didn’t lead me to expect I was supposed to wither away among high rocks and meet up with this monolithic exemplifier of desolation. All the same, don’t you go a-wailing over my current sufferings. Instead, land your copters to hear about what the future has in store and get to know its every detail. Roll up, roll up, you too may have a part in "The Most Recent Sufferings of the Famous Sufferer," because, because of this, calamity, always ready to move on, will settle on others in the same way.

CHORUS [having landed behind a distant crag and shouting from there while a leg or two putting on a stilletto appears and disappears from view].
No need to urge us on, we’re willing, Forsyte. And now [Appearing in the distance and quoting and parodying a high-flown play.] "having quit that heavenly air, the superhighway of the feathered genus, and having got up and lightly stepped down off my Fast-flyer copter, I’m going to navigate this rough ground in order to ’draw near you’." I can’t wait to hear the whole story, sufferings and all.

[Exeunt Chorus in the distance. Enter O’Sheen, with perhaps the fourfoooted front half of a crocodile temporarily protruding behind him from a nearby peak.]

O’SHEEN.
Here I am, at last, after a hell of a long journey, specially made, just to see you, Forsyte, and piloting my incredibly-fast Flying-crocodile copter, with no hands, just by putting my will-power on automatic. And you can rest assured, I feel your sorrows as my own. Because ties of blood bind me to you, and even setting kinship aside, it’s not possible for me to care more for anyone else than I do for you. And let me prove to you these words come from my heart. Because I myself wouldn’t be what I am if I didn’t do what my lips say I shall do. So, come, just let me in on what I should know or do so’s I can help you. Because there’ll never come a time when you’ll be able to say, "I have a friend who is more close to me than O’Sheen."

FORSYTE.
[Aside.] Oh? What’s he up to?

[To O’Sheen.] So you’ve come as just another sightseer, to view my pain, have you? How could you bear to leave the oceanstream named after you, and your rock-roofed grotto-esque hotels with their wine-cellars and automatically adjusting temperatures, and come to land in this land of iron and irons? Under the pretence of being sympathetic, haven’t you come to make sure I’m suffering enough? See: the show, me! here! the friend of The Great One, who helped get him into power, and see how he twists me with pain.

O’SHEEN.
Yes, yes, I see, Forsyte, I see, and it’s on you, smart though you are, I want to lay my best advice. You yourself know your behavior should be tailored to fit the new ruler among the gods. But if you insist on speaking such harsh and cutting words of him, there’s a chance The Great One, though far away, will get wind of them, and then the bitter suffering you now feel, will seem like child’s play. But though you’re down on your luck, don’t indulge in the feelings that raises, but look for a way to end your suffering. The maxims I’ve just said may seem old and out-of-date, but those are the wages you deserve for talking so big. Why! even now, you’re still proud, and won’t take your medicine, and don’t care if you’re inviting more troubles, on top of the ones you already have. But if you’ll take me for your guru, you won’t kick against the pricks, because who knows better than you that there’s no way of controlling this ruler who lords it so harshly. And now that I’ve said this, I’ll go, and try to do whatever I can to free you from these pain-makers. Meanwhile, keep quiet, or at least keep your voice down. [Short pause.] What! you’re not going to tell me, smart as you are, that you want to argue about just by how much rash words should be punished?

FORSYTE.
I’m glad no-one’s blamed you for taking part and going along with me in everything that’s passed. But now, leave the Godfather alone, and have nothing more to do with all this: because there’s no way for you to persuade him to change, because he’s not open to persuasion. And be very careful not to get into trouble yourself if you go to him.

O’SHEEN.
Your natural bent is for lecturing whoever’s with you, not yourself. But I draw my conclusions from facts, not from words, so don’t think for a moment of trying to talk me out of trying. Because I am confident, yes, I am confident, that Number One will do me this favour, and free you from this pain of yours.

FORSYTE.
As to that, you’re the greatest, and I will always say so whenever I get the chance, because your enthusiasm for helping me is unlimited. But don’t sweat it, because you’ll work at it and get nowhere, even if you’re allowed to work at it in any way at all. Better still, don’t say anything, and stay out of harm’s way, because though I’m having a bad time, that’s no reason for me to infect as many as possible with it. No, no, I already feel bitter about its disastrous effect on Atlas, my brother who’s now exiled far from Moscow, and to keep a roof over his head does forced labour to keep the load he’s holding from crushing him to the ground, no easy thing to do. I felt sorry too when I saw the special forces’ Typhoon Unit issue out of its underground barracks, a hundred co-ordinated as one, tremendous and prodigious, to get wiped out after holding all the gods at bay, its insatiable gun-maws hissing out death, its searchlights glaring hideously, in itself enough to overthrow the Godfather, but the Godfather’s always-at-the-ready flying flamethrower flamed out and knocked the presumption and bravado and shit out of it. Stricken to the core, it crumbled to cinders, its prowess blasted away to the sound of rolling thunder, and now, helpless and paralysed, its surviving members lie on the edge of a crevasse in an underground prison far below a mountaintop factory where stakhanovite Smith smelts and forges and from which one day raging floods will burst out and eat up the fertile fields below in a rage of hot artillery from a never-glutted breathing firestorm of a reconstituted Typhoon. But this is old news to you. You’re no beginner. You don’t need me to teach you about this sort of thing. Save yourself from a similar fate. You already know the best way to do that. So let me hang on, till this stage of my destiny gets used up, and the Godfather becomes dispirited, and his anger dies down.

O’SHEEN.
So you don’t believe, Forsyte, that reasoning can cure bad feelings?

FORSYTE.
Of course it can. If it’s used on someone at the right time. But not when that someone’s using brute force to put down an ill-used spirit who, it so happens, is getting more and more annoyed about it.

O’SHEEN.
In that case, combining foresight and outspokenness, do you see the trouble inherent in that? Tell me.

FORSYTE.
More trouble than there is already. It’s piffling, and downright stupid.

O’SHEEN.
Then why not let me be as crazy as you are? Since it’s so useful if you’re clever, to seem stupid?

FORSYTE.
Not this time, because any misstep you make will be blamed on me.

O’SHEEN.
Obviously, you’re telling me to go home and stay there.

FORSYTE.
Only so that your crying concern for me won’t get you into a certain someone’s bad books.

O’SHEEN.
What about him who recently sat down on the chair with the gavel that overrules everyone?

FORSYTE.
Be careful to not make him bang it.

O’SHEEN.
Foresight. "Where you at is the teach of dat."

FORSYTE.
Go, go.

[O’Sheen hesitates, so Forsyte explains.] Leave.

[Louder, when O’Sheen is some distance away.] And don’t change your mind.

O’SHEEN [while he’s speaking, the crocodile appears above].
You’re saying that, to me! who can’t wait to start for home, because my flying croc is already flapping his wings over the smooth autobahn of heaven’s air, and won’t be happy till he rests them in his garage at home. [The croc swoops in to let O’Sheen aboard.]

[Exit O’Sheen on the crocodile. Enter chorus.]

CHORUS [dividing into two, each half, or different parts of each half, speaking alternate paragraphs].
A flood of streaming tears has fallen from my helpless eyes, Forsyte, thinking of what you could have been. And my cheek, as you can see, is still wet all over, because the Godfather invented ad hoc laws to place you far beyond the reach of envy, so he can pose with a spear poised threateningly over the defeated gods.

And now there is grumbling everywhere, and regret for the good old ways passing away, and for you and yours, and even the fighting mortal tribes on the far-flung edges of your adoring Asia feel for you andwish you weren’t suffering:

The puritanical virgins of the deep south, unafraid of anything, and the savage tribes on the outskirts of the wetlands, the most remote of earth’s regions, and even the toughest of the fighting Arabian tribes on the heights among the Caucasian whites are chanting slogans and parading weapons in your honour.

As a matter of fact, up to now I’ve only seen one other god in a similar situation: Atlas, titanic under the sky, held in with skin-rasping inescapable chains, bowed and forever groaning under an always excessive weight.

And expressing his pain, the waves of the sea fall in a rhythmic uproar, and the moving masses of the air moan and sigh, and the borborygmus of the dark vault of Hell [these rumblings of the stomach of Hell sound out on cue and nothing is said during their short duration] makes itself heard; and on earth, fountains burst out, streaming pure rivulets down. [The chorus completes its movements in a short oral silence, perhaps to an appropriate bit of music from Schubert’s Rosamund].

FORSYTE.
You mustn’t think I stopped speaking just now out of pride or stubbornness. I’ve been eating my heart out thinking about how badly I’m being treated and that it was through me the new rulers have carte blanche to do so. And I’m still determined not to say a thing about it. No point in confiding to you what you already know, eh? But terrible things were happening to mortals, because their grown ups acted like babies, and here’s how I civilized them and got them thinking. You’re not prejudiced against them, so I can tell you the details, of the favours I did for them, who, for ages before, couldn’t see what was happening in front of their noses, nor hear it either, but put all sorts of things together that didn’t belong to each other, as if they were parts of a dream, and they didn’t know about modern materials and solar-powered houses, or how to manufacture their components. They lived like tiny ants, in the rubble of sunless slums. And they couldn’t accurately forecast wintertime, or flowery spring, or summer’s fruits, but guessed at everything, until, in fact, I showed them through commercials, using rising stars, and cosmetic-covered old favorites hard to see through, how to buy cheap watches to tell them when the weather forecast would be on.

And yes, Forsyte taught them how to use the calculator, and literacy, and the computer and its memory, the greatest invention of all, indispensable for initiating and developing everything else. I gave them machines to do their hardest jobs, that was a first, and I made horsepower in cars the measure of comfort and prestige, and it was Forsyte and none other who invented the supertankers and superjets crossing the ocean. And after inventing all this for them, I, poor thing, have not been able to invent anything to get me out of my present predicament.

CHORUS [its members talking to each other].
All this suffering in public’s been too much for him, and his mind’s been affected. Like some poor doctor who’s become ill himself and lost hope of getting well again, he has given up looking for a way to cure himself.

FORSYTE.
When you hear the rest of my story, you’ll wonder even more at what I’ve done and discovered. Most importantly, if any of them fell ill, there was no cure, no dieting, ointment, or potion, and they used to shrink into skeletons, till I showed them how to make medicines for all their diseases, with no side-effects. I invented many ways of forecasting and was the first to sort out true ESP dreams from ordinary dreams; the same with unusual sounds, such as beeps; also of omens while travelling, such as signposts, pointing the wrong way; and which birds were good to eat, like chicken, and which to avoid, like vultures, and where and when to find them, and where to buy more, and how to tell which were healthy, and the best parts for roasting, and all the finer points of cookery; and the difference between poisonous fumes and woodsmoke, formerly hidden in darkness. Yes, these were all mine, and the metals hidden under the ground: copper, iron, silver, gold, from which mortals would profit, who can claim to have discovered them before me? No one, I know, unless they enjoy talking nonsense. In brief, though I say itmyself, Forsyte is responsible for all the progress made by mortals.

CHORUS [going along, as it thinks, with him].
Well, don’t overdo it by doing more for them; and don’t lose sight of yourself in your own problems, because I’ve now a realistic hope that you’ll be unshackled soon, [pause, and then as a sop to him when he doesn’t reply] and end up as powerful as the Godfather is.

FORSYTE.
That’s not at all the way Fate, which ensures the completion of what’s been begun, is fated to carry out my fate. Only after I’ve survived countless sufferings and calamities will I be unshackled. Nothing that can be done can avoid the inevitable.

CHORUS.
Then, who decides the inevitable?

FORSYTE.
Three Fates who set up your birth, your length of life, and your death; and three Avengers, poisonous, relentless, always beside you in the dark, who know what you’ve done wrong and won’t let you forget it, and in the end punish you.

CHORUS.
Are you saying the Godfather doesn’t have as much power as they do?

FORSYTE.
That’s right. Anyhow, he can’t avoid his fate.

CHORUS.
What? Isn’t he fated to rule forever?

FORSYTE.
You’re not allowed to know for now, so don’t push it.

CHORUS.
It has to be a really important secret if even you won’t speak of it

FORSYTE.
Let’s talk about something else. This is not the appropriate time to make it known. It has to remain a "for your eyes only, destroy after reading" type of secret, because it’s only by keeping it that secret that I’ll be able to get away from these demeaning metal bars and my miserable feelings.

CHORUS [perhaps the last paragraph can be sung].
I hope the Godfather never has a reason to send goons to enforce his opposition to something I’m not supposed to be doing; and I promise I’ll never arrive late on the high holy days, when it’s my turn to be a waitress when the gods banquet on my father’s ocean lot, after the bulls are ritually killed; and I hope I’m not lying; and I hope my feeling this way lasts, and never goes away.

It would be sweet to live a long time, with hopes that come true, making oneself happy and spreading happiness around and having lots of nice fun; but just to look at you, pierced through and through with unimaginable agonies, gives me the shudders. Because not giving a hoot for the Godfather, you, Forsyte, are so bent on having your own way that you overdo your attentions to these non-gods. Come, my friend, fess up you’ve got nothing to show for your help to them. Speak up, perhaps you know how they’re helping you, because I don’t. How can anyone with the lifespan of a May-fly help you? You yourself saw, didn’t you, the helplessness in which the species of mortals are blindly caught up in? tasting power only in dreams. No amount of man-made plans will ever get around the all-embracing web of the Godfather is what I’ve learnt from seeing you destroyed by your fate, Forsyte. [The pun on Forsyte is said sarcastically.]

And this is quite a different tune from the one that memory now brings lilting back to me, of the wedding chant I started on its way round the bathing pools and your wedding bed, when you said "Yes, I do," after your talk and presents had convinced the queen of Asia (my sister) that you loved her, and you led her out to be your bride and share your bed.

[Enter Moon-start, a cow, sashaying sexily along on four hooves. Two horns rise from the iron helmet welded onto her head. An electric current sizzles between them whenever she’s being tortured.]

MOON-START.
Now where am I? Who lives here? And you, in front of me, "Anchored to a rock," or "At the mercy of storms," or do you prefer some other name? It must be quite a crime that called for you to be wiped out in this way! Well, say it, what part of the world have I pointlessly wandered into now?

Oh god. [She suddenly races wildly around, screaming. Her screams are agonized moos].

[Stops.] It’s that electric prod implanted in my brain. Drives me crazy and makes my life a misery. I wish the earth would stop letting that staring ghost wearing cowboy boots come out of it. It’s horrible to see his thousands of argus-eyed surveillance cameras always watching me, and he keeps going on though he’s dead now, and leaves the dead and won’t stay in the earth, to pick on me and chase me about till I couldn’t be more miserable if I tried, and I’m so hungry from his forcing me to wander on the inedible pebbles along the sea-shore; and along with the sound of the sea, his endless monotonous whistling almost sends me asleep.

[Screams and runs. Stops.] God. Oh god, what’s all this, going on, and on, herding me to?

For what? what crime? son of cannibal Chronus, am I welded to this pain?

[A short burst] Oo! Oo! [Stops] Is this the way to wear down a poor timorous beastie, maddened by shock-induced fear?

Burn me to death. Bury me alive. Throw me to the sharks. But do do one of these, Godfather, please. No matter where I go, I suffer more than enough, and I can’t find out what I’m supposed to do to get rid of the pain.

CHORUS [to Forsyte]. Have you been listening to what the heifer with horns and all, has been saying?

FORSYTE.
[Ironically.] How can I avoid hearing the lady when that hornet of a helmet sends her into fits?

[To Moon-start]. You’re the daughter of Judge "Now you see me, now you don’t" Rivers, aren’t you? and you’re Godfather’s former girlfriend, once the warmer of the cockles of his heart with love; and his wife hates you and uses that helmet to jump-start you into careering again and again, till willy-nilly you’ve covered the distance of this or that ad hoc extremely long racetrack.

MOON-START.
How on earth did you find out my father’s name? Tell me, sadness, who are you? [Raises her voice since Forsyte does not reply.] I’m saying, you poor thing, "Who are you?" [Pause, then tries another tack.] Alright, then [speaking the next three words separately] who just now recognized me [speaking the next four words separately] for what I was before I was miserable, and spoke to me, and correctly diagnosed the god-made cause that’s making me into a nervous wreck of skin and bones and driving me mad with shOOOOOck [She’s flung screaming into the air twice by successive shocks.] after shock. I’m here only because these violent convulsions have driven me here, and they shock me everytime I’m about to eat, and I’m the victim of the angry "This is what you should do to her" advice of the Godfather’s wife, and of those of us who’ve nothing but bad luck, could anyone, boo-hoo, be as badly off as I am?

CHORUS.
Aw, go on, tell her, exactly, and with no "I can’t tell you this now" stuff, what she still has to suffer, and how to get over it. What’s the cure for her problem, let her in on that at least, if you know, which I doubt. Go on, tell it to the poor homeless lady, and be clear about it.

FORSYTE.
I’ll tell you everything you want to know, clearly, with no confusing ifs and buts; and simply, without putting even one riddle in; and I’ll say it out loud, and in plain language, as one ought to with friends. You’re looking at — none other than the giver of the secrets of technological knowhow to the mortal, Forsyte’s my name and game.

MOON-START.
The Forsyte who brightened the lives of all mortals? You poor thing, what crime are you expiating with so much suffering?

FORSYTE.
I’ve just stopped complaining about my own worries.

MOON-START.
So you won’t do me the favour of telling me?

FORSYTE.
Tell me exactly what you want to know, so I can stick to the point, because I could go on and on and on and on, without ever stopping, there’s so much I could tell you.

MOON-START.
Then, who clamped you down in this ravine?

FORSYTE.
Godfather’s orders, carried out by Smith.

MOON-START.
And for what crimes are you being punished like this?

FORSYTE.
I’ve told you everything, that I can be clear about.

MOON-START.
Then at least tell me when I’ll be able to stop wandering about, because I’m already worn out.

FORSYTE.
You’re better off not knowing than knowing it.

MOON-START.
All the same, don’t hide it from me. Tell me what I still have to go through?

FORSYTE.
No. But don’t think I don’t want to do you this favour.

MOON-START.
Then why are you stalling? Say all there’s to say.

FORSYTE.
I’m not stalling. I just don’t want to shock you.

MOON-START.
There’s no need to worry about me more than I want you to.

FORSYTE.
Your persistence leaves me no alternative, so listen.

CHORUS [to Forsyte. Moon-start listens in]. No, wait. Let’s double our fun (duty aside). Let’s find out first what’s bothering the lady by letting her tell us her story about her shipwrecked luck, and then you can tell her about what comes after that. [Moon-start baulks. Out of ritual politeness?]

FORSYTE.
Moon-start, you should do what they ask you to, because they’re your aunts, as well as for all the usual other reasons. And because talking of and shaking one’s head over one’s bad luck, when you’re sure to make them cry a tear or two, is a really worth while thing to do.

MOON-START.
Put like that, there’s no way I can say no; and you’ll learn from my simple story all you want to know; but it hurts me even to speak of the storm that broke on me from above, and the complete transformation of my body when the storm suddenly fell on me. Poor thing.

CHORUS [simultaneously with Moon-start without drowning her out].
Poor thing.

MOON-START [using different voices for the dream voices].
Night after night, visionary dreams trooped into my bachelorette room and enticed me with their sweettalking: "Girl, you don’t know how lucky you are! Why you still a long-term virgin when you have what it takes to make it with Il Duce himself? Inflamed by your charms, he’s got the hots for you, and is all shot up, and longs to make love with you. So don’t, dear child, dismiss, with a wave of your hand, the thought of going to bed with Jupiter, but go down to the zoo in the bushy park, and use your father’s membership privileges to get in after hours so that The Supreme Marshall’s eyes can find rest at last." Dreams like this never let me alone at night for a minute and made me unhappy, until I finally took the bull by the horns and told my father about the dreams that haunted my nights. So he consulted the most famous psychics lots of times to find out what he should do or say to satisfy the authorities, but what they came up with were ambiguous answers, unclear and hard to hear even after they were asked to repeat and clarify their mutterings. But finally Zeus’s own psychic gave a clear answer to the Judge, ordering him to throw me out of my home and my country, and let me stray as an exile to the ends of the earth; and stating as clearly that if he didn’t, a fiery-looking Jupiter flamethrower would come and completely wipe out all his family and relatives. Overwhelmed by more messages of this sort, from the same psychic source, he threw me out of the house, although not wanting to, and wouldn’t let me come back in, although he wanted to let me. His arm twisted in this way by Zeus, he had to do it.

And right after this, my body and mind were genetically changed; and stung by the insert, horned as you can see for yourselves, I rushed like a jumping lunatic, to the sweet riverwater of Cerchneia, and the fountain of Lerna; and that pox on earth of a cowboy detective, Sherlock Holmes, bad-tempered all the time, kept following me, checking my every step from beneath bunched brows, till an unexpected and sudden event took the life out of him, though that made no difference to me, lashed from land to land by the electric prod of the god, now as then.

So now you’ve heard what has happened to me, and [to Forsyte] if you can say what is still left for me to suffer, out with it, and don’t, because you’re feeling sorry for me, try to make me feel good by telling me stories that aren’t true, because I call the making of lying fictions an absolutely terrible disease, and —.

CHORUS.
Oh, oh. Stop. Oh dear. Never, never in my life did I expect to hear such an strange story; or of suffering so horrible to see, and to endure; outrages, terrors, with electrical prods; more than enough to make me feel cold all over. Oh dear, oh dear. Fate, that’s what I call it. Fate! Now that I’ve been informed of the state Moon-start is in, I’ve got the shudders.

FORSYTE.
Wait. It’s not time yet, for sighs and feelings of terror. You’ve got to hear the rest first.

CHORUS [ironically].
Fire away, don’t keep anything back. Because if you’re a patient, it’s very satisfying to know about the suffering you’ll have to go through, and to be able to picture it clearly, in the right order, isn’t it?

FORSYTE.
Look. You wanted her to tell you about the problem that’s dogging her, and you wanted to hear that first, and did I raise any objection? No. So now it’s only fair, for you to pay attention to the rest, and the sorts of suffering it’s the fate of this young lady to undergo at the instigation of the Chief Protectress, isn’t it?

[Raising his voice for the first four words at signs of dissension by the chorus] And as for you, daughter of [not said for a laugh] Judge "Now you see me, now you don’t" Rivers, never forget this speech, so you’ll be absolutely sure to recognize the end of your journey when you get there.

First of all, check where north and south are, cross lots of unploughed fields, and go to where the sun rises, and you’ll reach the wandering mobile homes equipped with puncture-proof tyres and long-distance rifles. Don’t go near them. Keep going till you’re out of the area. And then keep on going till you get to a rocky shore with lots of crashing waves.To your left there’ll be the Calibans and Desperate Dans — iron ore miners and smelters. Beware of them. They’re rough and tough and don’t like strangers. Then you’ll come to the Shameless River, called that because of its nude bathing. Don’t try to cross it, because you might get caught. Follow it till you reach the Caucasus itself, the highest of all mountain ridges, from whose top the river spouts out in full spate. Cross it. Watch out — falling stars! Then go southish till you reach a lot of tribe-ads showing off single-breasted suits, and mooning women (who at some future date will create a neighbourhood called Queentuckit Orderlyville, on the banks of the Hotwater, where there’s a rocky salmon sea-gorge, a stepmother, hard on ships, a hostess, hated by seamen) and they’ll help you on your way, and be glad to. Then you’ll come to the Crime Area, a narrow alley next to some shutes into some ponds. Be brave and go through it, and cross the Chaotic Fifth, and there will forever be a famous legend about that crossing, and they’ll call it Oxford, after you in a manner of speaking, and after quitting the ground of Europe you’ll come to the Asian continent.

[To the chorus.] And isn’t all this typical of the indiscriminating violence of the God of Gods in everything he does? Some god! who, thwarted in his lust to enjoy the charms of this beautiful mortal [Moon-start curtsies], decrees all this wandering.

[To Moon-start who has edged up near him.] And a right-one, young lady, have you found to court you, with a rough way of courting. Because I must tell you that what you’ve just heard isn’t even the beginning of it.

MOON-START.
Everything’s against me. Ooo, oo oo oo.

FORSYTE.
If you, also, are already crying and moaning, what will you do when you hear about the rest of your troubles?

CHORUS
What? There are more sufferings to tell her about?

FORSYTE.
Yes. As many and as calamitous as the waves in a raging sea out to drown everything.

MOON-START.
Why should I go on living then? Why not quickly fling myself down from this harsh precipice so that dashed to pieces I won’t be in pain any longer? Better to die now, than suffer unbearably day in and day out, and die in the end anyway.

FORSYTE.
I can see that in my position you would hardly be able to bear my agonies even for a short time. And I’m not allowed to die, because that would be considered "escapism." As of now, there’s no limit set to my suffering, and there won’t be till Zeus will have been deposed from his tyranny.

MOON-START.
What? Is there some hope that Jupiter will ever fall from power?

FORSYTE [like a slow-speaking rube].
Ah reckons the pretty miss would laike to see that happen.

MOON-START.
And why wouldn’t I, when he’s the cause of all my suffering?

FORSYTE.
Well, it’s a security matter, so I can’t tell you, but you can be secure in the knowledge that it’s true.

MOON-START.
But who will take his sceptre and power away from him?

FORSYTE.
He himself, through his own stupid acts.

MOON-START.
In what way? Try to be specific, unless that too is a breach of security.

FORSYTE.
He will take a mistress and regret it later.

MOON-START.
A god or a mortal? If you’re allowed to say, tell me.

FORSYTE.
I’m not. It’s no good asking me personal questions about her.

MOON-START.
Then let me see. [She thinks while a placard is exhibited announcing, HE’S TALKING ABOUT MOON-START ALTHOUGH SHE DOESN’T KNOW IT.]

Is it through a girlfriend that he’ll lose his throne?

FORSYTE. Yes, absolutely. The son she’ll give birth to will be more powerful than his father.

MOON-START.
And won’t the father be saved?

FORSYTE.
No, no way; at least, not before I’m freed from these shackles, and I —.

MOON-START.
Stop. I’ve thought of a good one. Who is it who’ll free you despite Zeus?

FORSYTE.
It’s fated to be one of your own descendants.

MOON-START.
What are you saying? A calf will release you from your troubles?

FORSYTE.
In a manner of speaking, yes. The third generation from you, plus ten. That’s thirteen.

MOON-START.
This prophesying of yours isn’t something I want to play a guessing game about any more.

FORSYTE.
Then don’t try to know more than you should about your future sufferings.

MOON-START.
How dare you, after promisng me that knowledge as a present, keep it from me?

FORSYTE.
[Resignedly.] Alright.

[Brightening] But you can only have one out of two possible disclosures.

MOON-START.
Tell me about them first, and then I’ll make a choice.

FORSYTE.
The choice is obvious. Should I tell you the rest of your troubles, or tell you who will save me?

CHORUS.
Since there are two, be kind enough to make one disclosure to the lady, and the other to me, and don’t dismiss my request just like that. Tell her the rest of her wanderings, and tell me who will free you. I’m dying to hear it.

FORSYTE.
You want it so much, I give in, though I can’t tell you everything about everything you want to hear. So first I’ll tell you, Moon-start, about your wandering all over the place, which, don’t forget, you should engrave in your memory.

When you’ve crossed the river between the continents, go to the reddened morning country where the sun walks when he first gets up, then bear left, then right, up, down, and across, then cross the stormy sea, and go on till you get to the plains of Georgia, and Piglet House, where three very old, swanlike dowagers live, with only an eye and a tooth between them, and who never go out of their darkened rooms, because the light of the sun is too hot for them, and the light of the moon too cold. And right next to them are the three Gorgon-Zolas, with frightful hair, who are always making flying visits, and whom nobody can stand. It’s killing to be around them. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And now get ready for another hideous spectacle: the Baskerville gryphons! the hounds of the Godfather, who never bark a warning. Don’t try to stroke them — they’ll tear you to pieces. And watch out for the pirates with a patch over one eye, always trying to steal past them to the gold in the stream there that bursts out of hell. I wouldn’t go near them. You’ll eventually reach a faraway place, and a people tanned by sun and water, California. Keep going. You’ll reach the waterfall that’s the source of the godlike Nile, then go to its delta, where fate says you’ll build the city of Oz-on-the-Rainbow for you and your children.

Learn this by heart, and make sure you don’t mix any of it up. And if any of this was hard to understand or not clearly explained, feel free to ask me about it, because as the actress said to the bishop, "I’ve got the time, if you’ve got the you-know-what." [Moon-start indicates she has no questions.]

CHORUS.
If you’ve more to say about her terrible travels, or happen to have left something out, keep talking; but if you’re done with them, it’s our turn for the favour we asked for. Just in case you’ve forgotten.

FORSYTE.
She’s heard about how far she’ll travel. And so you’ll know she’s not been listening to me for nothing, I’ll tell her about the troubles she met with before she came here — which will prove to her that I know what I’m talking about.

I’ll skip most of what there is to say, and go straight to the last part of your wanderings, after you came to the plate of molasses and the penthouse of Dodo, Zeus’s own psychic, and where, incredible as it may seem, the houseplants spoke and welcomed you clearly and unambiguously as the future mistress ofthe Godfather — in case any of this has any appeal to you. You rushed madly off from there and ran along the sea-shore and darted into the huge bay of Fundy M’ Earth in a failed suicide attempt, and got driven back to shore by a hurricane, and you should know that in time to come it will be known as the Moon-start Sea, as a reminder to everyone of what happened to you.

This is just a sample of my ability to see beyond what’s in front of my nose.

I’ll tell the remainder to all of you, starting exactly where I left off. At land’s end, where Steer is the name of a city at the mouth of the Nile and its alluvial channels, Jupiter finally brings you to yourself just by touching and stroking you gently with his hand, and you’ll give birth to black-hearted Touch�, named after this lovemaking by Zeus, and he’ll be the Head of Tax Collecting for all the land the wide moving Nile waters. And five generations after his, fifty virgins will return to your shipbuilding hometown, not from choice, but running away from proposed incestuous marriages with their cousins who, like falcons left not far behind by doves with fluttering hearts, shall follow in pursuit of marriages which should not be pursued, but heaven will watch over these virgins, and they’ll find a haven as housemaids in a home for ancient mariners, after their cousins are crushed by a deed done and dared by the hands of women and hidden in night, for each prospective bride will kill her prospective husband, cutting their throats with their sharp two-edged kitchen knives. No end of blood. I wish foam-born Venus would make love like this to my enemies. But a feeling of tenderness blunts the resolve of one girl and stops her from killing herpartner in bed; and of the two alternatives she’ll choose to be called a coward rather than a murderess. She shall give birth to a line of kings. I won’t give you the details which clearly would need a long speech, but you can be sure that from them will come a fearless fighter famed as a marksman, who will free me from this trap. Such predictions my old earthy mother, the famous titaness, used to reveal to me — but how and when require lots of detail in the telling, and even knowing it all wouldn’t leave you any thewiser.

MOON-START.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

[Exit Moon-start, cavorting and mooing in agony.]

HALF CHORUS [following her, but remaining in sight and reporting what they see and hear to the other half].
Once more the spasm and maddening frenzy inflames her, and the sting of the electric prod poisons her brain, and in panic her heart throbs violently against her breast. Her eyes too roll about, and she is carried out of her way by the raging blast of madness, and having lost control of her tongue, her protesting words dash this way and that, useless against the sickening surges of calamity.

OTHER HALF OF CHORUS.
That man was smart, oh yes, really smart, who was the first to figure out this proverb and tell it to others, "Too high or too low, when you marry, means woe." And that someone who works for a living should become wanton and abandoned enough to woo the hand, and more, of opulence, or on the other hand, the hand of those who pride themselves on nobility of birth, never, O destinies, never may that happen in my family.

And I hope you’ll never see me approaching Godfather’s bed as a mistress, nor as a bride to the arms of any of the sons of heaven; because it frightens me to death when I see young Moon-start, not satisfied with a mortal lover, made ugly and tired out with wandering, because that’s what The Great Protectress has handed out to her.

For myself of course, I’m not in the least worried, insofar as being married at the appropriate level leaves one worry-free about that. But I sure hope none of the mightier gods will give me a look of inescapable love. That’s a war one can’t fight, and makes what’s impossible more than possible, and I don’t know what would happen to me, for I don’t see how I could avoid doing what the Godfather would tell me to do.

FORSYTE.
That Godfather, now haughty, a law unto himself, will be humbled. His preference for a mortal mistress will throw him from power and throne, and leave him a washed up forgotten thing. And his cannibal father’s curse, made when he lost his ancient throne, will finally be accomplished, in full. From these disasters I alone and no other god can show him in necessary detail how to escape. I know. I know how. So let him go on presuming, relying on his thundering from on high, and brandishing his flamethrower. That won’t stop him one bit from falling. Dishonour and downfall beyond his endurance! From an enemy he is now busily setting up for himself, portentous, irresistible, who’ll invent a flame and a hellish noise stronger and louder than any the Godfather has at his disposal, and who’ll break the power of that shore-pounding pest, Neptune. And when the One Who Never Puts A Foot Wrong stumbles across his enemy, he’ll learn how big’s the gulf between sovereignty and slavery.

CHORUS.
Your prophecies about the Godfather are just wishful thinking.

FORSYTE.
They’re what will happen and what I want.

CHORUS.
So we should believe someone will overcome Zeus?

FORSYTE.
Yes. And he’ll be in more pain than I’m in.

CHORUS.
How come you’re not worried now you’ve blurted this out.

FORSYTE.
Why — what should I be frightened of? I’m fated to live through it.

CHORUS.
But couldn’t he make you suffer more pain?

FORSYTE.
Then let him. He can’t do anything I don’t know about.

CHORUS.
It would be smarter to welcome the inescapable.

FORSYTE.
You welcome it, beg for its favours, cringe to the ruler of the moment. The Great One is less than nothing to me. Let him do, let him lord it, just as he likes, for his mere blink of time, for the shortness of his rule over the gods is getting shorter by the minute. And speaking of the devil, I’ve just spotted the Great Messenger’s messengerboy. He’ll be here any moment now, the new king’s favorite running dog and lackey. And will he have something special to say to us!

[Enter Zip Cody on a motorbike, panting, his tongue hanging out.]

ZIP.
You schemer, you rancorous and bitter sinner against the gods; loader of mere short-lived mortals with honours that are the rightful prerogative of the gods only — and thiever of technological know-how, this is for you. The Fathermother Of All Fathers commands you to divulge what lovemaking you’re bragging about that’s supposed to throw him from power. and what’s more, you’re to tell it without any mumbo-jumbo, just each thing exactly as it is, and not force me to have to come again, dumbo, because you have already seen that that sort of behaviour doesn’t make the Godfather any sweeter.

FORSYTE.
Ouch, high and mighty and, ouch, hoity-toity too, your words; just what’s to be expected from an errand boy of the gods. You and the gods you serve are hardly more than babies compared to us older gods, and your power’s younger still, and you think you’ll live in your castle happily ever after. But I’ve already seen two kings thrown off the throne of it. And the third, now in power, I shall also see thrown down, more quickly and more horribly. Do I look to you as if I think I ought to be worried, or as if I’m afraid ofthe new gods? I’m a long way from that, beyond it in fact. So why don’t you hurry on back where you came from, because I’m not going to tell you an itty-bitty bit about what you want to know.

ZIP.
That’s just the sort of obstinacy that brought you to beach yourself on this calamity of an anchorage.

FORSYTE.
Oh yes? I wouldn’t swop my calamity for your drudging, slavey. Because I think it better to be the slave of this rock than to be earmarked as the "special emissary" of the Father Of All Fathers. Insult for insult, and [jeering like a child] mine beat yours.

ZIP.
You act as if wildly in love with your present condition.

FORSYTE.
In love! I wish I could see my enemies in love like this. And I consider you one of them.

ZIP.
What! Blaming me also, for what you caused to happen to yourself?

FORSYTE.
Frankly, I hate the lot of you, each and every god who’s benefited from what I’ve done, and now applauds what’s done to me.

ZIP.
I can see by your raving that you are very sick.

FORSYTE.
I’m sick alright, if it’s sick to loathe one’s enemies.

ZIP.
You’d be unbearable, if you weren’t already ground down.

FORSYTE [mockingly].
Poor me!

ZIP.
That phrase isn’t in the Godfather’s vocabulary.

FORSYTE.
Yes, but the older one gets, the more Time teaches.

ZIP.
Yet the truth is you still haven’t learned how to hold your tongue.

FORSYTE.
You’re right about that, or I wouldn’t be bandying words with a nobody like you.

ZIP.
You’re still not showing any sign of saying anything about what the Godfather wants to know.

FORSYTE [Saying one word at a time].
Let me spell it out for you. I owe him so much, I have to pay him back for what he’s done for me.

ZIP [horrified].
You’re treating me as if I were a baby.

FORSYTE.
Oh, you’re not? You’re sillier than one, if you hope to get any information out of me. No outrage or trick the Godfather can come up with will get me to say what he wants me to, not before my torturing shackles are loosened. So let him go blue in the face with shouting "thunder and lightning" from above, and below, and throw in a little snow, and let him say "confound him" and tear up the universe in general;because even if I could bend towards your ear, none of these things would move me to confide one word about who’s fated to depose him from power.

ZIP.
You should think about whether what you’re determined to do will achieve anything.

FORSYTE.
That’s been thought about and decided long ago.

ZIP.
Decide, proud of yourself though you are, decide in the light of your present sufferings to finally come to your senses.

FORSYTE.
Your threats worry me — like they worry some wave of the sea. Never imagine that I can be frightened like a woman at the thought of what the Great Lover is after, and beg for mercy like a woman stretching her hands out. I haven’t got it in me.

ZIP.
Despite all I’ve said I don’t seem to have got through to you. You’ve not given an inch though I’ve begged you to. You’re champing at the bit and struggling against the reins like a newly-broken-in colt. And you’re relying on a plan that’s got a snowball’s hope in hell: with no outside help, obstinacy in someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing can’t do a thing. And let me tell you that if words don’t do the trick, what a tempestuous three-pronged torrent of troubles, with no escape, will envelop you. First the Godfather will split this rocky ravine open with his thundering flamethrower and overthrowing the rock clasping your body will hurl it into the opening, and second, after a long, long time, you’ll, thirdly, come back into the light! and the Godfather’s blood-thirsty chief chef Eagle Hound will fly in as an unannounced and uninvited guest, and cut strips off your spreadeagled lacerated body and eat himself silly all day and gourmandize his fill on the black delicacy of your liver. And don’t expect an end to that sort of thing until some god, ha ha, shall appear and be willing to substitute for you, and undergo your pains, and go to the blind in the dark, to Hades and hell. So pay attention, because this isn’t some boast with nothing behind it: the Divine Spokesman Of The Will Of The Gods hasn’t got it in him to lie. He’ll see to it that every word I’ve said becomes true. So look at it and think it over, and don’t for a moment imagine obstinacy’s better than prudence.

CHORUS.
Zip Cody’s advice seems reasonable to us. He’s saying stop being reckless, think it over, and do the right thing. Go along with that, because it disgraces the wise when they don’t do the right thing.

FORSYTE.
The message this fellow has been urging on me I already know, and for a victim to suffer horribly through the agency of enemies isn’t a disgrace to him. So let the flamethrower flame out at me, and the air be torn to pieces by the noise and spasms of savage blasts, and let them rock what’s rooted and unroot it, and with stormy gusts mingle the deepsea waves with the sky and its stars, and fling my whirling body into the eddying darkness of hell, as severe necessity dictates. But nothing he can possibly do can kill me.

ZIP.
One hears decisions and expressions such as yours from certified lunatics. [Turning to chorus] How does his welcoming of his fate differ at any point from insanity?

It hasn’t made him less mad either. At any rate, you who sympathize with him because of his suffering, leave this spot fast so that the noise wont stun you and turn you into idiots.

CHORUS.
Talk and advise me about something else, and I’ll listen to that as I’ve listened to what you’ve already said. But you ought to know that what you’ve just suggested we should do makes me feel sick. How can you urge me to do something so low? Here I am and here I’ll stay, willing to endure his fate beside him, because my experience of them has made me hate traitors, and there’s nothing worse in my book than betrayal.

ZIP.
Well then, never forget that I warned you about these things, and don’t, when you’re caught in the fall-out of this attack, blame it on your bad luck; and don’t ever, at any time, say that the Godfather attacked you out of the blue; no, no, be stupid, knowing what’s coming and with time to avoid it, and go out of your way, though warned not to, to be caught in the loopholeless net of The Mighty Avenger.

[Exit Zip Cody.]

CHORUS [looking off].
And now, in fact, and no longer in words, the earth heaves, and the roaring echo of thunder rolls by us, and burning intensely, braids of lightning are glaring, and tornadoes whirl the dust, and gale-force winds are coming from every direction, fighting with each other as they come into view, and the sky is at war with the sea.

FORSYTE.
That’s the Generalissimo’s oncoming attack on me. [More than half of the chorus run for safety. At the curtain, one or none remain near him.] A cause for terror.

O dread majesty of my mother, earth; O air that diffuses your light to everyone; you see the wrongs I suffer.

[Curtain.]

© David Kozubei 1998