Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition (33 page)

PRIOR
: I . . . will not let thee go except thou bless me.

(She tries to pry him off, but he hangs on. Prior and the Angel begin to wrestle. It is a life-and-death struggle, fierce, violent and deadly serious. The Angel at first is far stronger and has a clear upper hand. But she cannot pry Prior loose. As they struggle:)

PRIOR
: Take back . . . your Book. Anti-Migration, that’s . . . so . .
.feeble
, I can’t believe . . . you couldn’t do better than that!

(Prior’s tenacity begins to tire and panic her. She screeches again, then unable to shake him off, she opens her wings wide and begins to beat them, battering Prior. He loses his grip for an instant; she rises immediately into the air. Prior leaps up, grabs her right leg and pulls down with all his might and weight. She beats her wings more furiously, rising higher, lifting him up off the ground, but he won’t let go.)

PRIOR
: Free me! Unfetter me! Bless me or whatever . . . but
I will be let go
.

(The Angel is straining Heavenward but can’t ascend higher; Prior’s weight causes her to lose altitude.)

ANGEL
(Her voice a whole chorus of voices)
: I I I I Am the CONTINENTAL PRINCIPALITY OF AMERICA, I I I I AM THE BIRD OF PREY I Will NOT BE COMPELLED, I—

(They descend. Prior’s feet touch earth first, and he redoubles his grasp, first on her leg and then her torso, wrapping himself tightly around her. Helpless, she stretches her wings to their utmost, screams the eagle-screech again, and stops fighting
.

     
Instantly there is a great blast of music. The fiery letters fade and the room is sunk in blue murk. A second blast of music, even louder, and, from above, a column of incredibly bright white light stabs through the blue. Within the column of light, a ladder of even brighter, purer light appears, reaching up into infinity. At the conjunctions of each rung there are flaming Alephs.)

ANGEL
: Entrance has been gained. Return the Text to Heaven.

PRIOR
(Terrified)
: Can I come back? I don’t want to go unless—

ANGEL
(Very angry)
: You have prevailed, Prophet. You . . .
Choose!

     
Now release me.

     
I have torn a muscle in my thigh.

PRIOR
: Big deal, my leg’s been hurting for months.

(He releases the Angel. He hesitates. He looks at Hannah, asking her: “Should I go?” Frightened as she is, she manages to hold her hand out, bidding him to stay
.

     
Prior, suddenly very sad, shakes his head no, and turns to the ladder. After one last look at the Angel, he puts his hands on the rungs, then one foot, then the other, and begins climbing. The column of bright light intensifies as he ascends, till Prior and the ladder are entirely subsumed within its blinding radiance and can no longer be seen
.

     
Then abruptly the column of light disappears, and the room is drowned in semi-darkness. The ladder and Prior are gone
.

     
The Angel turns to Hannah.)

HANNAH
: What? What? You’ve got no business with me, I didn’t call you, you’re
his
fever dream not mine, and he’s gone now and you should go, too, I’m waking up right . . . NOW!

(Nothing happens. The Angel spreads her wings. The room becomes red hot. The Angel extends her hands toward Hannah. Hannah walks toward her, torn between immense unfamiliar desire and fear. Hannah kneels. The Angel kisses her on the forehead and then the lips
—
a long, hot kiss.)

ANGEL
: The Body is the Garden of the Soul.

(Hannah has an enormous orgasm, as the Angel flies away to the accompanying glissando of a baroque piccolo trumpet.)

Scene 2

Prior Walter is in Heaven. He wears new prophet robes, red, dark brown and white stripes, reminiscent of Charlton Heston’s Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea drag in
The Ten Commandments.
Beneath the robe, Prior’s wearing his flimsy white hospital gown. He’s carrying the Book of the Anti-Migratory Epistle
.

Heaven looks like San Francisco after the Great Quake: deserted streets, beautiful buildings in ruins, toppled telegraph poles, downed electrical cables, rubble strewn everywhere
.

On a nearby street corner, Harper sits on a wooden crate, holding and petting a cat
.

HARPER
: Oh! It’s you! My imaginary friend.

PRIOR
: What are you doing here? Are you dead?

HARPER
: No, I just had sex, I’m not dead! Why? Where are we?

PRIOR
: Heaven.

HARPER
: Heaven? I’m in Heaven?

PRIOR
: That cat! That’s Little Sheba!

HARPER
: She was wandering around. Everyone here wanders. Or they sit on crates, playing card games. Heaven. Holy moly.

PRIOR
: How did Sheba die?

HARPER
: Rat poison, hit by a truck, fight with an alley cat, cancer, another truck, old age, fell in the East River, heartworms and one last truck.

PRIOR
: Then it’s true? Cats really have nine lives?

HARPER
: That was a joke. I don’t know how she died, I don’t talk to cats I’m not that crazy. Just upset. Or . . .

     
We had sex, and then he . . . had to go. I drank an enormous glass of water and two Valiums. Or six. Maybe I overdosed, like Marilyn Monroe.

     
Did you die?

PRIOR
: No, I’m here on business.

     
I can return to the world. If I want to.

HARPER
: Do you?

PRIOR
: I don’t know.

HARPER
: I know. Heaven is depressing, full of dead people and all, but life.

PRIOR
: To face loss. With grace. Is key, I think, but it’s impossible. All you ever do is lose and lose.

HARPER
: But not letting go deforms you so.

PRIOR
: The world’s too hard. Stay here. With me.

HARPER
: I can’t. I feel like shit but I’ve never felt more alive. I’ve finally found the secret of all that Mormon energy. Devastation. That’s what makes people migrate, build things. Devastated people do it, people who have lost love. Because I don’t think God loves His people any better than Joe loved me. The string was cut, and off they went. Ravaged, heartbroken, and free.

     
(Little pause)

     
I have to go home now. I hope you come back.
Look
at this place. Can you imagine spending eternity here?

PRIOR
: It’s supposed to look like San Francisco.

HARPER
(Looking around)
: Ugh.

PRIOR
: Oh but the real San Francisco, on earth, is unspeakably beautiful.

HARPER
: Unspeakable beauty.

     
That’s something I would like to see.

(Harper and Sheba vanish.)

PRIOR
: Oh! She . . . She took the cat. Come back, you took the—

     
(Little pause)

     
Good-bye, Little Sheba. Good-bye.

(The Angel is standing there.)

ANGEL
: Greetings, Prophet. We have been waiting for you.

Scene 3

Two
A.M.
Same night as
Scene 1
. Roy’s hospital room. Roy’s body is on the bed. Ethel is sitting in a chair. Belize enters, then calls off in a whisper:

BELIZE
: Hurry.

(Louis enters wearing an overcoat and dark sunglasses, carrying an empty knapsack.)

LOUIS
: Oh my God, oh my God it’s—oh this is too weird for words, it’s Roy Cohn! It’s . . . so
creepy
here, I hate hospitals, I—

BELIZE
:
Stop whining
. We have to move fast, I’m supposed to call the duty nurse if his condition changes and . . .
(He looks at Roy)
It’s changed.

     
Take off those glasses you look ridiculous.

(Louis takes off the glasses. He has a black eye, with a nasty-looking cut above it.)

BELIZE
: What happened
to you
?

(Belize touches the swelling near Louis’s eye.)

LOUIS
: OW OW!
(He waves Belize’s hand away)
Expiation. For my sins. What am I doing here?

(Belize takes the knapsack from Louis.)

BELIZE
: Expiation for your sins. I can’t take the stuff out myself, I have to tell them he’s dead and fill out all the forms, and I don’t want them confiscating the medicine. I needed a packmule, so I called you.

LOUIS
: Why me? You hate me.

BELIZE
: I needed a Jew. You were the first to come to mind.

LOUIS
: What do you mean you needed—

(Belize has opened Roy’s refrigerator and begins putting all the bottles of AZT into the knapsack.)

BELIZE
: We’re going to thank him. For the pills.

LOUIS
:
Thank him?

BELIZE
: What do you call the Jewish prayer for the dead?

LOUIS
: The Kaddish?

BELIZE
: That’s the one. Hit it.

LOUIS
: Whoah, hold on.

BELIZE
: Do it, do it, they’ll be in here to check and he—

(Belize has filled the knapsack and closed the empty refrigerator.)

LOUIS
: I’m not—Fuck no! For
him
?! No fucking way! The drugs OK, sure, fine, but no fucking way am I praying for
him
. My New Deal Pinko Parents in Schenectady would never forgive me, they’re already so disappointed, “He’s a fag, he’s an office temp, and
now look
, he’s saying Kaddish for Roy Cohn.” I can’t believe you’d actually pray for—

BELIZE
: Louis, I’d even pray for you.

     
He was a terrible person. He died a hard death. So maybe . . . A queen can forgive her vanquished foe. It isn’t
easy, it doesn’t count if it’s easy, it’s the hardest thing. Forgiveness. Which is maybe where love and justice finally meet. Peace, at least. Isn’t that what the Kaddish asks for?

LOUIS
: Oh it’s Hebrew or Aramaic or something, who knows what it’s asking.

(Little pause. Louis and Belize look at each other, and then Louis looks at Roy, staring at him unflinchingly for the first time.)

LOUIS
: I’m thirty-two years old and I’ve never seen a dead body before.

     
It’s . . .

(Louis touches Roy’s forehead.)

LOUIS
: It’s so heavy, and small.

     
(Little pause)

     
I know probably less of the Kaddish than you do, Belize, I’m an intensely secular Jew, I didn’t even Bar Mitzvah.

BELIZE
: Do the best you can.

(Louis hesitates, then puts a Kleenex on his head.)

LOUIS
: Yisgadal ve’yiskadash sh’mey rabo, sh’mey de kidshoh, uh . . . Boray pre hagoffen. No, that’s the Kiddush, not the . . . Um, shema Yisroel adonai . . . This is silly, Belize, I can’t—

ETHEL
(Standing, softly)
: B’olmo deevro chiroosey ve’yamlich malchusey . . .

LOUIS
: B’olmo deevro chiroosey ve’yamlich malchusey . . .

ETHEL
: Bechayeychon uv’yomechechon uvchayey d’chol beys Yisroel . . .

LOUIS
: Bechayeychon uv’yomechechon uvchayey d’chol beys Yisroel . . .

ETHEL
: Ba’agolo uvizman koriv . . .

LOUIS
: Ve’imroo omain.

ETHEL
: Yehey sh’mey rabo m’vorach . . .

LOUIS AND ETHEL
: L’olam ulolmey olmayoh. Yisborach ve’yishtabach ve’yispoar ve’yisroman ve’yisnasey ve’yis’hadar ve’yisalleh ve’yishallol sh’mey dekudsho . . .

ETHEL
: Berich hoo le’eylo min kol birchoso veshiroso . . .

ETHEL AND LOUIS
: Tushbchoso venechemoso, daameeron b’olmo ve’imroo omain. Y’he sh’lomo rabbo min sh’mayo v’chayim olenu v’al kol Yisroel, v’imru omain.