Mourning Becomes Electra Page #8

You don't know what I've had

to put up with.

Mother, please.

Please, Mother, don't cry.

Please.

I haven't told you

the most horrible thing of all.

She suspects me

of having poisoned your father.

What?

That's too much.

She ought to be put in an asylum.

She found some medicine I take

to put me to sleep

and, to her crazy brain...

Oh, Orin, I'm so afraid of her.

She might even go to the police and...

There, there, Mother, don't worry.

I'll take care of her.

Orin, you are my boy,

my baby.

Mother!

I could forgive you anything,

anything.

Except that about Brant.

I swear to you...

I know, Mother.

And if I thought different

I'd show you I haven't been taught

to kill for nothing.

Orin!

You sound horrible and cruel.

There, there...

We won't ever think about it again.

We shouldn't be talking of these things

after what you've been through.

You don't look well, Mother.

You have to get some rest.

You need peace and quiet.

Yes, peace.

Not now.

Do you remember the way

I used to sit here?

Poor boy.

You've had a hard time,

haven't you?

I wanted to desert and run home.

Or else get killed.

If you only knew how I longed

to be here with you.

Like this.

Do you remember that book we read?

About the South Sea Islands.

Yes.

All the time I was at the front I kept

thinking of those islands.

They came to me in everything

that wasn't war, everything that was...

peaceful and...

warm and secure.

I'd dream I was there.

Later on...

when I got this...

all the time I was out of my mind...

I actually seemed to be there.

There was no one there but

you and me and...

I was a child again.

And the funny part is that...

I never saw you...

I just felt you all around me.

The breaking of the waves

was your voice...

the sky was your eyes.

The whole island was you.

It was the most beautiful island

in the world.

Oh, if only you had never gone away.

I'll never leave you again.

I don't want Hazel or anyone.

You're my only girl.

Oh, Mother, it's going to be so wonderful

from now on.

We'll get Vinnie to marry Peter and then

we'll be just you and I.

What do you want?

Aren't you going down to see Father,

Orin?

Oh, all right.

I'll go now.

Vinnie!

You can go ahead now

and tell Orin anything you wish.

I told him how you lied

about my trips to New York.

For revenge.

Because you loved Adam Brant yourself.

So hadn't you better leave Orin

out of it?

You can't get him to go

to the police.

And you are afraid to yourself, because

it would all come out.

Everything. Who Adam is and

your knowledge of it.

And your love for him.

Oh, believe me, I'd see to it

if it ever got to a trial.

I'll show you to the world as a daughter

who desired her mother's lover.

And then tried to get her mother

hanged out of hatred and jealousy.

Go on. Try and convince Orin

of my wickedness.

He loves me. He hated his father.

He's glad he's dead.

Who are you? Just another corpse.

You and I have seen fields and hillsides

sown with them.

And they meant nothing.

Nothing but a dirty joke

life plays on life.

Death sits so naturally on you.

Death becomes the Mannons.

You were always like the statue

of some eminent dead man

sitting on a chair in a park or straddling

a horse on a town square.

looking out over the head of life

cutting it dead for the impropriety

of living.

You never cared to know me in life,

old Stick-in-the-Mud.

But I really think we might

be friends now.

Orin.

Don't sneek around like that.

I'm jumpy enough without...

What makes you say such a thing

to Father?

Have you no feeling?

You folks at home take death

so solemnly.

You have to learn to mock

or go crazy.

But the name you called him.

That was his nickname in the army.

Old Stick-in-the-Mud.

Grant himself started it.

Said that Father was no good

on the offensive, but...

he'd trust him to stick in the mud

and hold a position

until the cows come home.

But he was your father and he's dead.

You ought to be proud of him.

He was proud of you when he

came home.

He boasted you'd done one of

the bravest things in the war.

I'll tell you the joke of that

heroic deed.

I was always volunteering for extra danger.

I was so scared that anyone

would guess I was afraid.

Well...

that night there was a thick mist.

I met a Reb crawling toward our lines.

His face drifted out of the mist

toward mine.

I shortened my sword

and let him have the point

just under the ear.

He stared at me with an idiotic look...

as if he'd sat on a tack.

His eyes dimmed and went out.

Don't think about that now.

Before I got back I had to kill another

the same way.

It felt like murdering the same man twice.

I had a queer feeling that war meant

murdering the same man

over and over and...

and that in the end

the man turned out to be myself.

Their faces keep coming back

in dreams.

They change to Father's and...

to mine...

For heaven's sake, forget the war.

It's over now.

Not inside us who've killed.

The rest is all a joke.

Next morning I was in the trenches.

My head was queer.

I thought, what a joke it would be

on the stupid Generals like Father if...

everyone on both sides suddenly saw

the joke war was on them

and laughed and shook hands.

So I began to laugh and walked

towards their lines with my hand out.

Of course the joke was on me.

I got this wound in the head.

Then I went mad, wanted to kill

and ran on yelling.

A lot of our fools went crazy, too

and followed me.

And we captured a part of their lines

we hadn't dared to tackle before.

So, do you wonder I laugh.

But you are brave, and you know it.

I'm proud of you too.

Oh, all right, then.

Be proud.

Well, fire away. Let's get this over.

I know what you're going to say.

How can you think such things of Mother.

What's got into you?

Has she convinced you

I'm out of my mind?

Look at me.

I've never lied to you, have I?

It's not a question of lying.

But if you think I'm going to listen

to a lot of crazy stuff about Mother,

you're mistaken.

If you don't, I'll go to the police.

Do you actually believe...

I accuse her of murder.

You see this?

I found it by her hand right after

Father died.

Don't be a lunatic.

That's just some stuff she takes

to make her sleep.

Father knew she'd poisoned him.

He said to me she's guilty.

That's all your crazy imagination.

Do you realize you're deliberately

accusing your own mother...

I'll have you declared insane by Dr. Blake

and put away in an asylum.

I swear by our dead father that I'm

telling you the truth.

Make Orin believe me, Father.

Don't drag him into this.

He always sided with you against

Mother and me.

Here, give me that.

So you're afraid it's true.

I'm not going to talk to a crazy woman.

You're still a spoiled cry baby

she can twist around her finger.

That's enough from you.

She warned me

you wouldn't believe me.

Are you such a coward you're willing

to let her lover go unpunished?

Who do you mean?

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