The Iceman Cometh Page #3

everybody who was,

you know, really important,

so I guess they didn't

think about me

till afterwards.

Like you say,

the cops got them.

The Burns d*cks

knew every move before hand.

Somebody in the movement

must have sold out

and tipped them off.

Yeah, it hasn't come out

who it was yet,

it may never come out.

I guess who it was must've made

a bargain with the Burns men

to keep him out of it.

Be God...

I hate to believe

it'd be any of that crowd.

All I know,

they were damned fools!

As stupidly greedy for power

as any capitalist they attacked,

but I'd have sworn there

wasn't a yellow stool pigeon

among 'em.

Yeah, they'd sworn

that, too, Larry.

I hope his soul

rots in hell,

whoever it is.

Yes, so do I.

How did you locate me?

Oh, through mother.

I told her

not to tell anyone.

Oh, uh, no,

she didn't tell me,

but she kept

all your letters.

I found where

she'd hid them,

and I sneaked up there

after she was arrested.

Never would've thought

she was a woman

who kept letters.

No, I wouldn't either.

There's nothing soft

or sentimental about mother.

I haven't written her

for two years,

or anyone else.

You know, it's funny she kept

in touch with you for so long.

When she's finished with someone

she's finished with them.

And you know how she feels

about the Movement.

Anyone that loses

their faith in it

is more than dead to her.

Yet she seemed

to forgive you.

She didn't.

She wrote to denounce me,

and bring the sinner

to repentance.

Well, then what made you leave

the Movement, Larry?

Was it on mother's account?

Who the hell put that idea

in your head?

Well, nothing,

it's just I remember that,

little fight you had with her

just before you left.

Well, if you do I don't,

that was 11 years ago.

You were only

seven years old.

If we quarreled

it was because I told her

I became convinced

that the Movement

was a beautiful

pipe dream.

Oh, I don't remember it

that way.

Well, blame it on

your imagination

and forget it.

You asked me

why I quit the Movement.

I had a lot of good reasons.

One was myself,

another was my comrades.

And the last

was that breed of swine

called "men in general."

As for myself...

I'd become convinced

after 30 years

of devotion to the cause

that I wasn't made for it.

I was born condemned

to see both sides of a question.

And when

you're damned that way...

the questions multiply

until the end,

they're all questions

and no answers.

As history proves,

to be a worldly success

at anything

especially revolution,

you've got to wear

blinders like a horse

and only see

what's straight ahead of you.

As for

my comrades

in the great cause,

I've thought about them as

Horace Walpole did about England

when he said

he could love it,

if it wasn't for

the people in it.

(laughing)

Well, that's why

I quit the cause.

You see, it had nothing

to do with your mother.

Well, but I bet mother

always thought

it was on her account.

I mean, you know her, Larry,

to hear her go on sometimes

you'd think

she was the Movement.

That's a hell of a thing to say

after what happened to her.

Oh, no,

it wasn't sneering.

I said the same thing to her

lots of times,

you know, to kid her.

I know I shouldn't now,

but I keep forgetting

she's jail, she...

seemed so real to me,

she's always been so free.

I don't want to even

wanna think about it.

So what have you been doing

all these years since you le...

ah, you know,

left the coast, Larry?

I've been a

philosophical drunken bum,

and proud of it.

I hope you've deduced

why I answer a lot

of impertinent questions

from a total stranger.

For that's all you are to me.

I have a hunch you came

to get something from me.

Well, I have no answers, no,

not even for myself.

Unless you can call

what Heine wrote in his poem

to Morphine an answer.

"Lo, sleep is good,

"better is death.

"In sooth,

the best of all,

were never to be born."

That's a hell of an answer.

Still, you never may know

when it might come in handy.

I don't suppose

you've had a chance

to get any news of your mother

since she was in jail?

Oh, no, no chance.

Anyway, I don't think

she really wants to talk to me.

See, we got in this fight

just before

that business happened.

She bawled me out because

I was going around with tarts.

I told her, "You always acted

the free woman",

you've never let

anything stop you."

Anyway, she told me that she

didn't give a damn what I did,

except she began to suspect

that I was losing interest

in the Movement.

And where you?

Sure I was.

I couldn't go on forever

believing that gang

was gonna change the world

by shooting off their loud traps

on soap boxes, sneaking around

trying to blow up a bridge

or a lousy building.

And then I finally got wise

that it was all

a crazy pipe dream.

And then this business

of someone selling out,

that's what finished me off.

You can understand

how I feel, can't you, Larry?

"The days grow hot,

O Babylon!

"It's cool

beneath thy willow trees!"

Goddamned stool pigeon!

What,

what do you mean?

You can't call me that!

(laughing)

Hello, little Don!

(laughing)

I didn't recognize you!

You've grown, big boy!

How's your mother?

Don't be a fool!

Loan me a dollar.

Buy me a drink!

Sure, I'll buy you

a drink, Hugo.

I'm sorry, got, uh,

I got sore at you there.

I ought to remember

that when you're sauced,

you call everyone

"stool pigeon," ah?

It's just no damn joke

right at this time.

(snores)

Oh, gee,

he passed out again.

What are you giving me

the hard look for, Larry?

You thought

I was gonna to hit him?

What do you think I am?

I always stood up for him

when everybody in the Movement

panned him for

an old drunken has-been!

He had the guts to serve

10 years in the can

in his own country,

got his eyes ruined

in solitary.

I'd like to see

some of 'em here stick that.

Well, they're gonna

get their chance now tha...

Hey, Larry, tell me

more about this dump.

Who are all these, uh,

these tanks in here?

Who's that guy over there

trying to catch pneumonia?

That's Captain Lewis,

one time hero

in The British Army.

He strips

to display that scar,

which he got from

a native spear,

whenever he's

completely plastered.

The bewhiskered bloke

next to him

is General Wetjoen,

who led a commando

in the war.

They met up when they worked

in The Boer War Spectacle

in the St. Louis Fair,

and they've been

bosom friends ever since.

They dream away the hours

and happy dispute

over the brave days

in South Africa,

when they were trying

to murder each other.

He was in it, too.

Correspondent for some

English paper.

His nickname here

is Jimmy Tomorrow.

But what do they do

for a living?

As little as possible.

(laughs)

Once in a while

one of them makes

a successful touch somewhere,

and some of them get

a few dollars a month

from connections at home,

who pay it on the condition

that they never come back.

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