Rock 'n' Roll (9 page)

She slides a book down the table.

LENKA
(
cont.
) Borrow it.

ELEANOR
Is that grass, Lenka?

LENKA
Yes, do you want some?

The child is heard from within. A car is heard tooting.

ELEANOR
No, thank you. And that's Esme. Sorry about the interruptions.

LENKA
Oh, no, it was good.

ELEANOR
I meant Alice.

MAX
(
put out
) I've never let anyone have the last word
yet.

LENKA
(
laughs
) I'm always available.

ELEANOR
Next time we might do a little Greek.

Eleanor goes out.

Noises off and voices, Eleanor answering
ALICE.
Lenka packs her shoulder-bag.

LENKA
That was really, you know, great …

MAX
(
declining her spliff
) Ah, no thanks.

LENKA
I'm at Newnham.

MAX
Maybe I'll see Jan in the summer vac. I've been invited to Prague for a brain-science bunfight.

LENKA
He's in prison, didn't you know?

MAX
No! No, I didn't.

LENKA
Yeah. I heard he was one of the ones arrested.

MAX
One of what ones?

LENKA
With the Plastic People of the Universe and—

MAX
The what? What, you mean the thing I was just—I was asked to sign a letter, along with a select bunch of the usual chest-beaters about some pop group—I had no idea Jan …

LENKA
Did you sign it?

Eleanor comes back.

ELEANOR
It's Esme, whom you don't see enough of—she's not coming in, she has to catch the shops.

MAX
Jan has been arrested.

Max goes out.

LENKA
Yes. That's bad. (
pause
) Well, thanks. I'll see you when I've …

ELEANOR
(
pleasantly
) Good. And, Lenka, don't try to shag my husband till I'm dead, or I'll stick the art of motorcycle maintenance up your rancid cunt, there's a dear.

Eleanor drops the book into Lenka's shoulder-bag. Lenka gives a gasp, a sob, tries to speak, and leaves by the garden.

In the house there are sounds of departure, the door closing.

Eleanor remains still, in an exhaustion which she dissembles when Max returns, but she remains taut.

MAX
I say, I upset Esme … I told her about Jan, and she …

ELEANOR
Tsk, damn …

MAX
… sort of burst into tears. Did I miss something?

ELEANOR
Yes.

MAX
Do you think so? What, because she made me bring him pop music?

ELEANOR
She asked Jan to take her virginity.

MAX
What? When?

ELEANOR
His last night in England.

MAX
Oh. I'm glad I didn't sign that letter now.

ELEANOR
Jan told her not to be silly. He took one of her records instead.

MAX
Ah. How bourgeois of him. Well, all right. And now he's in the jug for some pop group thing, Lenka says. I was asked to sign a protest. Had to suck my pen a bit. Should pop singers be locked up or given lots of money and treated like gods? That's a hard one. Listen, don't laugh but I think Lenka fancies me.

ELEANOR
Never. Do you think there's anything, anything
at all
in what she's saying?

MAX
No. Consciousness is not where it's at. It doesn't determine the social order. It's the other way round.

ELEANOR
I don't mean about the social order.

MAX
To be human is to be joined together. Society! When the revolution was young and I was young, we were all made from a single piece of timber. The struggle was for socialism through organised labour, and that was that. What remains of those bright days of certainty? Where do I belong? The Party is losing confidence in its creed. If capitalism can be destroyed by anti-racism, feminism, gay rights, ecological good practice and every special interest already covered by the Social Democrats, is there a lot of point in being a Communist?—to spend one's life explaining: no, Stalin wasn't it, either? Why do people go on as if there's a danger we might forget Communism's crimes, when the danger is we'll forget its achievements? I've stayed in because they meant so much to me. Now that they seem to mean so little to anyone else, I sometimes think … Nell, what do you think? Do you think I …?

ELEANOR
(
breaks
) I don't care! I don't care about it! Stay in—get out—I don't care, Max!

MAX
What is it? What's happened?

ELEANOR
It's you. My body is telling me I'm nothing without it, and you're telling me the same.

MAX
No …
No.

ELEANOR
You are, Max! It's as if you're in cahoots, you and my cancer.

MAX
Oh, God—Nell.

He tries to hold her. Weeping, she won't be held.

ELEANOR
They've cut, cauterized and zapped away my breasts, my ovaries, my womb, half my bowel, and a nutmeg out of my brain, and I am undiminished, I'm exactly who I've always been.
I am not my body.
My body is nothing without
me,
that's the truth of it.

She tears open her dress.

ELEANOR
(
cont.
) Look at it, what's left of it. It does classics. It does half-arsed feminism, it does love, desire, jealousy and fear—Christ, does it do fear!—so who's the me who's still in one piece?

MAX
I know that—I know your mind is everything.

ELEANOR
(
furious
) Don't you dare, Max—don't you dare reclaim that word
now.
I don't want your ‘mind' which you can make out of beer cans. Don't bring it to my funeral. I want your grieving soul or nothing. I do not want your amazing biological machine—I want what you love me with.

She hits bottom and stays there. Max waits, not comforting her. Then he crouches close to her.

MAX
But that's what I love you with. That's it. There's nothing else.

Her drowned face comes up.

ELEANOR
Oh, Max. Oh, Max. Now that did take some guts.

Max gathers her in and rocks her.

Blackout and ‘Welcome to the Machine' by Pink Floyd, three minutes and fifty seconds in.

Smash cut to:

November 1976. Jan's room.

Summer 1977. Prague exterior.

Jan's records have been smashed and scattered among torn-up album covers. Jan enters, wearing cold-weather clothes. He stands looking at the debris. He takes his top clothes off. He picks up a broken record and looks at the label.

Ferdinand walks in, wearing cold-weather clothes. He has a plastic bag with an album in it. He stands stunned among the vinyl shards.

FERDINAND
Shit.

Jan nods.

FERDINAND
(
cont.
) Bastards.

Jan nods.

FERDINAND
(
cont.
) Shit.

Jan nods.

FERDINAND
(
cont.
) Sorry.

Jan goes abruptly into the bathroom. Ferdinand waits.

Milan enters the exterior, in summer clothes and dark glasses. He sprawls on a bench.

The lavatory flushes. Jan comes in, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrists.

Ferdinand holds up the plastic bag, embarrassed.

FERDINAND
(
cont.
) I borrowed it when you were inside.

Jan grunts a laugh.

FERDINAND
(
cont.
) And then what with everything …

JAN
Yeah. Amazing time. There wasn't one policeman at Jirous's wedding. The concert was a joy. I thought—okay, so eight years of the Plastics living underwater did the trick. Then they arrested
everybody.

He looks at the record in the bag.

JAN
(
cont.
) Beach Boys … You're so sweet, Ferdinand—

FERDINAND
I knew you wouldn't mind.

JAN
I owe you. That was a good letter, that first one.

FERDINAND
I didn't write it.

JAN
Well, I didn't think you'd
write
it, the guy had the Nobel Prize for Literature. But you were great, you and the other tossers—you got us out, nearly all of us. I heard we were on radio and TV in America!

FERDINAND
(
excited
) I'm telling you, the trial stripped the system naked, Jan, and held it up so plain you felt almost sorry for the prosecutor. The absurdity rose and rose till it covered his head and the judge's head … but they were trapped in the ritual. Going away from the court afterwards Havel said to me, ‘Ferda, from now on being careful seems so … petty.'

Ferdinand takes a typed document from his pocket.

FERDINAND
(
cont.
) So I'm collecting signatures.

Ferdinand gives the document to Jan. ‘Charter 77' is a substantial document, about 1,500 words.

FERDINAND
(
cont.
) It's not a dissident thing, it's a charter—there's Party members who've signed it …

Jan gives him a look and sits down to read it to himself.

Exterior—a balloon floats across. There is a leaflet dangling from it.

Milan, suffering in the heat, is waiting for Max.

The exterior scene has its own music, which is cheerful but not loud, like a hurdy-gurdy being played in the street.

A second balloon floats in. Milan grabs hold of the second balloon without difficulty. He detaches the leaflet and glances at it. He casually crumples it.

Max shows up, in summer clothes.

MILAN
Ahoj,
Max.

MAX
Ahoj, ahoj.
It always gets me … As if everyone here's in the navy.

MILAN
The Czech
navy? (pause
) You're not at the … thing?

MAX
I get invited to speak, not to listen to brain science. And you. Big fish now.

MILAN
No, no. Medium size. With a desk.

MAX
What's the balloon?

MILAN
Ha! Ask your friends.

MAX
What friends?

MILAN
Last night—the friends you skipped the dinner for. (
reproachful
) That was ungrateful, Max. The Philosophy Faculty was under pressure to withdraw your invitation to the conference.

MAX
Pressure from you?

MILAN
Tsk, tsk, Max. You don't know who your friends are.

He uncrumples the leaflet.

MILAN
(
cont.
) ‘Release the prisoners of Charter 77.' (
in jest
) I hope you didn't spend your evening blowing up balloons.

He takes his Party pin from his lapel.

MILAN
(
cont.
) Party pin. Balloon.

He pops the balloon.

MILAN
(
cont.
) Symbolism!

He laughs and replaces the pin.

MAX
When I left the Party, I didn't go public, you know.

MILAN
Max, Max …

MAX
There were people in '56 who burned their Party cards in Trafalgar Square. I only told my family. It turned out my son-in-law was sleeping with a woman on his paper, so … Whooh! I'm glad Eleanor missed it. You can't imagine what it's like to be this week's carcass for the British press. Esme and her husband are trying to patch things up for the sake of the child, but I entertain some hope that nothing will come of that.

MILAN
I am so sorry about your wife.