The Setting: Consistent with the classical Japanese Noh/Greek tragic feel.
Performance Note: Play around as you wish with the delivery, but most of these lines were meant to be half-chanted, half-sung.
NARRATOR: It is a strange thing, responsibility. It is that thing we all demand but few would acknowledge owing. We all know we have certain duties, but few of us truly understand the ramifications of those duties. We all know that our fathers and mothers, and their fathers and mothers before them, have behaved in ill-considered ways—in fact, at certain times in our lives we glory in their inadequacies, which lead us to believe that we are so much more.
And being so much more, do we pick up the blame they discarded? Do we take it upon ourselves to cure the past and make amends?
Of course not. We may be many things, but we are not responsible.
The events told here happened a long time ago. The parties involved are all dead, as far as I can determine. Certainly it is our right to say such things could not happen in our neighborhood, in our city, in our country.
We have evolved. We are a better race, now.
The bad old times have passed. Huzzah for our brave new age!
I have been a judge for nearly forty years, and am now approaching retirement. This case was before my time. But I could tell you stories. You wouldn’t want to hear them, but they are available if you ever feel the need. Such stories do not go away.
The parents were older. Just how old has gone undocumented. Some have set their age as early sixties, perhaps feeling this would make their story more unsettling, or because it might provide some explanation for what occurred. But some events defy explanation, despite our need for it.
What we do know is that they had waited all of their lives for a child to be born. This child. In fact, they had given up hope, and had adjusted their futures accordingly: their twilight years would be spent in horticulture, and on plane trips to distant cities with other childless couples of their age.
Then pregnancy came like a toe stub in the middle of the night and their child, this child, was born.
But something was terribly wrong with this particular child, her child, his child, this strange little twisted and discolored bit of flesh. Nothing they could have imagined. In fact, if the couple had taken in a movie and this apparition had traversed the screen, they would have gotten up and left.
I must confess that no records have survived describing the specific nature of the child’s deformity, if indeed there ever were such records. All we have are descriptions of other people’s reactions to the child—most importantly, the parents’. In any case, early on the child developed his own solution for his singular facade.
[Lights up on the PARENTS, moving slowly side to side, rocking.]
PARENTS (almost a song): What to do when to do it, how does it happen when you hope and dream, the surprise that comes unasked for, the joke of it, the terrible joke of it, these questions of duty, of life so unexpected, these questions they ask of you, all of them asking so much, so much, and much too soon.
[THE MASK CHILD totters in, draped to the neck. We can see nothing about his body, but he appears to move more like an insect or arachnid than any human child (or is this simply a child’s normal awkwardness magnified?). He wears a small Baby Face mask, perfectly formed, doll-like, but empty of character.]
THE MASK CHILD: Mother, Father, see? Can you see, can you not see? I’m a real boy now. A real boy. [The PARENTS ignore him, so intent are they on their rocking, their swaying. They drift back and forth across the stage—he follows them closely, essentially chasing them.]
PARENTS (chanted/sung softly and monotonously underneath THE MASK CHILD’S speech): What to say, what to do, our duty, just a boy, he cannot understand, cannot know, how people are, how people really are, what to say, what they’ll do, what to do, what to say, just a boy, how could he, how could he know, our duty, our life, our life, what must be, what must be done.
THE MASK CHILD: A boy, a real boy, like the other boys, like so many others. Now we can toss the ball, now you can teach me about bikes, like so many others, Mother, Father, we can go to movies together, we can go to plays, we can, we can, I am so alike, I can be so liked.
[He finally crashes into them. They reel—he stares up at them.]
PARENTS: You cannot know, you cannot understand, how there is no play in this, how there is so much duty, so much to be done, and no one to tell you, no one who understands, what must be done.
THE MASK CHILD: To play, to sing, to dance, to walk outside in sun and snow, hand in hand like so many others, a boy like so many others, in the morning, with the sun on my face, with the sun.
PARENTS (more loudly): We never knew there could be, what’s the duty? We did not understand, the shapes, the package, how a life might arrive, so many, so many, how could it be, in the night, when no one is listening, where no one can hear, in the night, dear child, in the night.
THE MASK CHILD (scrambling back, shouting): But in the sun, so many others, tossing the ball, Father! A real boy, Mother! So real, in the sun, on my face, my face, Mother! In the sun, in the sun.
[Fade out, fade in on the NARRATOR]
NARRATOR: I see it every day. We all make the mistake. We forget what they are. We forget their humanity. The children are so cute, we say. They are so adorable. Like a doll, we say. Just like a monkey. But of course the children are not dolls or monkeys. And they sometimes understand far more than we could ever imagine.
The problem, I would submit, is that our imaginations are so very poor, there are so many things we cannot imagine: how they think, what they feel, the many shapes a life can take, the varied forms still with the power to think, the passion to feel, the imagination to dream such sights and sounds you would be astounded, you would weep from the sheer surprise of it all.
Very little is documented of his adolescent years. But even with our poor imaginations we know. We can see.
[Fade out on the NARRATOR, fade in on a group of adolescent BOYS—all similarly constructed except for their hair colors. As they move about the stage two points beneath their drapery beat rhythmically against the cloth. The motion is somewhat reminiscent of grasshoppers. It becomes clear that these represent knees as their legs are constantly pumping—these boys are all knees and elbows, and their movements about the stage make this kind of awkward, synchronized adolescent dance. In fact these puppets might be constructed ganged two and three together to facilitate control and emphasize this odd, awkward sort of chorus line effect. During their game THE MASK CHILD appears on stage, older now, but still very much out of place. He wears a huge mask, brightly painted, African in style, suggesting some sort of warrior.]