Eso’s Chronicles 259/ Act 4
Addend 19—Adam Tsarnovich
Act 4

© Eso A.B.

(Adam, his four wives, High Priest Tiresias, and about a half a dozen guards are gathered in Adam’s family shack, apparently for a meeting.)

Adam: Welcome to my humble home, Tiresias.

Tiresias: We are old acquaintances.

Adam: Yes, though I am not born of Thebes,

you meant to end my life here.
I fought you, when you entered my wood,
and would rather have died defending it.
It was my misfortune to fall into your hands.
If it had not been four these four women,
chosen by you to comfort me,
and if they had not become my lovers instead,
my heart woud be rotting today
beneath Nanautzin’s temple footsteps.
However, Tiresias, you made it so that
our children’s hearts rot there—instead.
You turned the wood into desert.
The yellow rain of its dust falls on you
and your city’s bloody king.

(The guards rise as if to sieze Adam. Tiresias motions them to never mind.)

Tiresias: Adam, don’t take things so seriously.

There are no Gods but Fear.
And I fear. No shame in that.
I fear nothingness.
I rather your children die
Before they know what is what,
chased dead by drones (points at the guards).
Look, how proudly they wear their medals from
campaigns in Iraq, Lybia, and the shores of Tripoli.
As for you, I rather you are fooled by such whores
as these that sit with us.

If you were saved by a lucky chance

(and it surely is a lottery, a matter of odds
of who dies, and who is let live a fool)
so 1% can live like billionaires,
be grateful the odds have chosen you life.

Comfort Woman 1: Priest of Fear,

we hear chainsaws howl every day.

Comfort Woman 2: Priest of Fear,

we hear that your labs are searching for ways
to raise chickens without heads,
let you tell yourself that you are a kindly sort
for not letting them—unable of suicide—
be picked clean and bloody by other birds.

Comfort Woman 3: Priest of Fear, you desire to swallow life in a day,
but not in a million years will you birthe yourself a tiger.

Comfort Woman 4: Priest of Fear, what is the difference between

the state, a slave master, and a pimp?

Tiresias: Relax! Babes, you no longer live in the wood.

A million years of prayer will only make you sorry.
You live in a city now!
That is what your parents asked for instead of saying prayers.
You’re at the centre of civilization.
Our planet has become urbanized.
Progress has come to us on the chains of tanks.
China has desertified as much space in a few years
as it took the English a hundred
and your forebears a thousand.

So, what if an unemployed secretary

must take a job in the sex industry?
What does she fear most?
Is it Fear? Or is it sex?
I believe that she will prefer sex.
Our argument is simple:
“If you don’t take a job as a prostitute,
we can stop your [state] benefits.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1482371/If-you-dont-take-a-job-as-a-prostitute-we-can-stop-your-benefits.html

Adam: Yes. The Chinese governments

have learned their lessons from the Americans well:
they have screwed up their country nicely.
They already prefer to screw the Moon
to screwing Tibet.
Urbanization is the civilized thing to do.
I bet that you will continue to urbanize
until Chinese rabbits overpopulate the moonscape.
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/lunar-rover-12162013162844.html
and land on Mars.

Tiresias: Think what you are saying, Adam Tsarnovich,

Why have I come to visit you?
I know your argument.
You say that I need to sacrifice myself
rather than you, your wives, or children.
But how can that happen if I am of the 1%
powerful enough to tax you dead?

Story Teller: Do you know what happened to horses in World War Two?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-492582/Forgotten-Heroes-A-million-horses-sent-fight-Great-War--62-000-came-back.html If of a million English horses sent into World War 1 only 6% returned, how many horses does that come to when we include all the horses killed in all the wars? I pale to think of the number. I am not guiltless. At the end of World War Two when I was a twelve year old war refugee in Weimar, Germany, living across the valley from Buchenwald, a train was being plundered, and I and my sister, went to see what could be had. By the time we got there, all the wagons were empty, except for some green coffee beans on the floor of one wagon—enough to fill my trouser pockets. However, coming back, I saw a metallic glint from under a sod of a recently plowed field. My sister and I turned up the sod and found ten copper colored unmarked cans. When at home, we opened one, and found  it filled with meat of a reddish color. We did not know what kind of meat it was, but we were hungry and the meat was tasty. Now I think that the meat was that of reddish-brown horses.

Tiresias: You are probably right.

But you think of it only now,
because you like the horse
must share your fate as a slave.
It is your mares who I fuck at will,
or, at best, give them a five lats bill
to buy a loaf of bread before they come to me again.

Adam: I hear you and see your works,

and have thought it through to the end of a million years:
(addresses the women:)
dears, have you brought with you the paste?

(Comfort Woman 1 pulls a jar from under her cloak, opens it, scoops out a good portion of its content with her index finger, and puts the matter on her tongue. Leaving her mouth open and tongue hanging out, she passes the jar to her companion, and so on to all others.)

Tiresias (addressing Adam):

I hear the color of your ‘thing’ is blue,
because gangrene has turned it black.
Like an anxious dog’s cock, your balls are slid of its sack
as they do when you fuck your mother too much.

Adam: You forget that I am castrated.

Still, my dreams seek a way to prolong me
And the revenge most of us seek against you,
my mother including.

Tiresias: All the more reason for me to seize you
and retract the Thebe’s mercies.

Adam: I may suffer my pollen sacks to be other men’s.

But our children are all over the kingdom of Thebes,
and await the day, when your head, mouth first,
is stuck on your cock for the shame of your kind.

Tiresias: Boast all you want, Adam Tsarnovich.

The priests of our nation
will not not suffer death because you wish us to die in your stead.
Our will is to uphold a kingdom,
Not to lead by example as you
a prisoner, a slave and a man of no significance
wish. There is no need of that.
Our leadership is exemplified by the very magnificence of Thebes.
Just see the towers of our temples reach
through the clouds. We serve our tourists to the moon,
moon raised Chinese rabbit stew for lunch.

Adam: The Chinese and people of all the other nations

may wish to pick for themselves a new name.

(A black cloth descends from the stage ceiling to separate Tiresias and the guard from Adam and his four wives, who sit close to the edge of the stage. The five figures turn toward the audience, and pull their extended tongues with the paste on them into their mouths. They gasp and die.)

(Lights out. When the lights return, they project on a large disk a full moon reflecting back to the audience from a mirror drawn across the stage curtain. An oversize paper mache cock with a head stuck on it mouth-first is walked across the front of the curtain.)