Rock 'n' Roll (14 page)

ALICE
Oh … you're him.

JAN
‘Born in the USA'.

Alice finds her ease.

ALICE
Yeah, that was me, and don't forget ‘Now That's What I Call Music'—I gave you good stuff, not like Mum dumping her post-punk techno misery-guts-with-drum-machines she'd gone off.

ESME
I thought they were cerebral.

JAN
(
serious
) Oh, yes—Kraftwerk, a modernist angst in a period of reaction.

ESME
You see? How is the, you know, loaves-and-fishes situation?

ALICE
FHB. (
to Jan
) I'll see you later. Have you got ‘Opel'?

JAN
No. What …?

ALICE
There's a new Barrett album—well, not new; outtakes, worth having, though. Mum told me about that night you—

ESME
It's got a different take of ‘Golden Hair'.

ALICE
Yeah. Without the overdubs. You should have it.

Alice leaves.

JAN
Does Syd Barrett live in Cambridge still?

ESME
(
nods
) He's called Roger.

JAN
Roger?

ESME
It's his name.

JAN
It would be wonderful to see him.

ESME
Well, you can't, I'm afraid.

JAN
I know. I meant, if he just … jumped up on the wall. See him.

ESME
Alice knows where he lives but you can't go.

JAN
Okay.

ESME
Don't say I said.

JAN
Okay. The Rolling Stones are in Prague on Saturday. The Rolling Stones at Strahov … Strahov is where the Communists had their big shows. Life has become amazing.

ESME
I didn't tell Alice about … Only about the wall.

JAN
The Great God Pan.

ESME
You remember.

JAN
Oh yes. Of course.

ESME
I saw Syd … Roger … on his bike one day when I was with Alice, and told her … so she bought ‘The Madcap Laughs', I only had the vinyl, and next thing … well, she's, you know, adopted him—(
laughs to herself
)—whether he knows it or not. She protects him.

JAN
From what?

ESME
Just people bothering him, pilgrims mainly, people who think Pink Floyd have been rubbish since 1968 …

Jan laughs.

Max enters, tipped off by Alice.

MAX
Jan!

JAN
Max. On three legs.

MAX
Don't be misled, it's my mind that's gone. Did Esme explain? I forgot we had family—

JAN
I won't eat.

MAX
That's not a problem, pilchards are being inserted into the fish pie.

ESME
(
alarmed
) I hope not! Get Jan a glass of wine.

Esme hurries out to save the lunch.

MAX
Do the wine. I'll have a beer. No glass.

JAN
Beer for me also. Thank you.

Jan deals with the beer.

MAX
We both look all right. Where's Lenka?

JAN
She's coming in half an hour.

Jan delivers the beer bottle.

MAX
You need half an hour?

JAN
(
laughs
) She has a pupil.

MAX
Oh, yes. Skol.

JAN
Skol.

They clink bottles and swig.

MAX
Lenka … She told you?

JAN
Yes.

MAX
A little month or ere those shoes were old, hey? Grief doesn't work the way you'd think. It keeps itself to itself, nothing you do has any meaning for it. Doing something is the same as not doing it—grief sucks value out of the world like a bomb sucks out the oxygen. Take the woman to bed; don't take the woman to bed. What's the difference? Stay in; get out …

Pause.

MAX
(
cont.
) Eleanor always spoke up for her. Maybe that was it. (
lightly
) But I don't improve with age, I don't give fair return, I was rude about astrology and the I Ching … and Lenka wanted a husband, so she could go home with a return ticket that worked …

JAN
Max …

MAX
Yes. What's the trouble?

JAN
There's no trouble.

Jan opens his briefcase and takes out an ancient cardboard file. He gives the file to Max.

MAX
(?)

JAN
It's your secret police file.
Statni Bezpecnost.

MAX
Ah. I did wonder about that. Why have you got it?

JAN
A friend gave it to me. Magda. You met her once. She's a lawyer now, working for the parliamentary commission investigating the STB archive.

Max casually opens the folder and glances at the contents.

MAX
The originals. Some friend. Must be a lot of stuff coming out of the woodwork.

JAN
Yes.

MAX
Well, Jan, I don't read Czech, so you'll have to tell me.

Max gives the folder back.

JAN
It's not much, a few meetings with a contact, Milan, a code name, and two documents, from 1968 and 1977.

MAX
Oh, yes … 1968 (
laughs
) Somebody in the Cabinet Office … dined in Hall one night and got to swanking over the port … told us the Sovs were going to bring the hammer down on Dubcek and no two ways about it—he'd seen the minutes from the Joint Intelligence Committee. That was a few weeks before the invasion. I thought if I told the Czechs, it might bring Dubcek to his senses. And 1977, you said. That'll be my briefing paper on the British Left.

Jan gives him a lengthy document.

MAX
(
cont.
) Is this a translation?

JAN
Not a translation, a full abstract. A study of groupings in the Labour government and the Labour Party … on Europe, on the Special Relationship, the Cold War, the peace movement … Commentary, analysis, predictions … also character sketches of certain politicians, apparently very entertaining.

MAX
Mostly common sense and High Table gossip.

JAN
But good low-grade intelligence, it says.

Max's attention is caught as he turns the pages.

MAX
Why is your name here?

JAN
Because it explains—you traded this in exchange for my freedom. In September '77 I was in prison in Ruzyne, sentenced to one year for being a parasite, which is having no work. One day my name was called and two hours later I am standing outside the prison, a parasite once more, but there's a Tatra with three cops waiting for me. ‘Get in.' I got in. They said nothing. They drove me to the new bakery in Michle and took me into the office there. The policeman who was in charge said to the boss, ‘This man works here now'. Then they drove away, and I worked at the bakery for twelve years.

MAX
So, good. So this friend of yours, she saw this in my file and, what, she stole it?

JAN
Yes. It's a present.

MAX
A present. And what do you expect me to do with it?

JAN
What is that to me?

MAX
I'll tell you what, Jan. Why don't you take this file and fuck off back to Prague.

JAN
(
pause
) Okay.

MAX
(
angry
) I don't need saving.

JAN
Okay. I'm sorry.

MAX
I've done nothing I'm not prepared to defend. So don't expect me to thank you for telling me different. Have we done?

JAN
(
pause
) At Cambridge, being your pupil, invited to the Marxist Philosophers meetings, it was a joy for me … this house, your family. Pretending to be a good Communist was ridiculous, but what did I care? I was at Cambridge! They thought they were using me, but I was using them. Mine was the real reality … And all they wanted in return from me was … a character study, yes, of Max Morrow.

MAX
Why me?

JAN
Hey, Max—an ideological ally and
persona grata
with the ruling class? Sure, why wouldn't they take your measurements? When I read this file I understood how you spoiled my summer vac in '68. How excited they must have been when with no warning you gave them a little plum! I was told not to come home, make myself indispensable …

MAX
What happened when you got home?

JAN
They took my albums.

MAX
Is that all?

JAN
I got them back and in return I told them things they already knew. Who was friends of who, you know. They think they're using you, but really you're using them. But
finally, in '76, they reminded me who was using who. They smashed up my records. Because, in the end, there are two realities, yours and theirs.

MAX
Is there a point to this?

JAN
I ask your forgiveness.

MAX
Ah. All right. Go, and sin no more. Is that it?

Max doesn't unbend. It's unsatisfactory, but Jan nods.

JAN
What should I do with this?

MAX
I don't care what you do with it. (
unkindly
) What did you do with yours?

JAN
The STB burned many files in the last days of Communism. So it seems I have no file.

Max laughs.

MAX
Well, then, you didn't have to tell me, did you?

JAN
No.

Max gets it, but is not going to go into a swoon about it. He sighs, and unbends enough to oblige Jan with an awkward hug. Jan starts to shake, so Max hugs him tighter.

Blackout, and ‘Don't Cry' by Guns ‘n' Roses.

Smash cut to:

Lunch for eight at the debris stage, a success by the sound of the babble, in which there is some laughter.

Two or more mismatching chairs have been added.

Jan is at one end of the table, next to Lenka. Max is facing Jan at the other end, next to Esme.

There are three conversations going on simultaneously with some energy.

Jan is speaking to Lenka in Czech. She is giving him all her attention, leaning in to catch his words, laughing, happy.

The second conversation is between Nigel, Alice and Stephen.

The third conversation is between Candida, Max and, notionally, Esme, who is not contributing.

Little or nothing intelligible emerges from the babble.

Candida is of an age with Nigel, fortyish, self-made, attractive.

Lenka is still sexy in her early forties.

Jan is telling Lenka, in Czech, about his mother singing and when Jan does the song, in English, his words drop into a hole in the hubbub.

JAN
(
in English
) ‘…but I know we'll meet again …'

Lenka laughs.

JAN
(
cont.) (apologising generally
) Sorry. Childhood is a lost country. When I came back it wasn't here.

STEPHEN
When did you come back?

JAN
'
66
to '68.

LENKA
That one is lost, too.

CANDIDA
I can't remember the sixties, so I must have been there.

NIGEL
I thought you weren't born, darling.

MAX
I was embarrassed by the sixties. It was like opening the wrong door in a highly specialised brothel. To this day
there are men in public life who can't look me in the eye because I knew them when they went about dressed like gigantic five-year-olds at a society wedding … exchanging bogus wisdom derived from misunderstood Eastern religions.