© Septembet 2016
Katrin Arefy
(From Scene I)
The Bald Man
What is a ten-letter word for empathy?
THE ELDERLY MAN
Empathy?
THE BALD MAN
Yes, it starts with C, O, M, P. Comp.
THE ELDERLY MAN
Comp?
THE YOUNG WOMAN
-
-
A, N, I…No that is nine letters.
The Woman
Commercial!
The Bald Man
For empathy?
The Tall Man
Compressor? Ten letters!
-
Woman
Commercial also has ten!
The Tall Man
Nine.
The Woman
C, O, M, M, E, R, C, I, A, L, ten!
(Counts loudly as she jots down the word on the back of an envelope.)
The Bald Man
It cannot be both commercial and compressor.
(Looking at the paper. Pauses)
This crossword must be wrong!
(Looks at The Elderly Man who has been holding the letter towards him and waiting.)
What’s that?
The Elderly Man
A client, a new order.
(The Bald Man takes the letter and throws it on the pile of letters on his desk. The Young Woman walks to each character, checking their work and making notes. She doesn’t pause but continues going from character to character. She sometimes walks on the corpses without noticing them until she trips over a corpse’s leg and falls down.)
THE YOUNG WOMAN
Aah! Aah!
The Tall Man
Are you okay?
(Cold and indifferent)
The Bald Man
You are ok.
(He speaks without looking up from his paper.)
The Young Woman
(She sits on a corpse, and as she recovers her composure, she gets up. She looks down to see what caused her fall and screams.)
Ahhh!
(THE BALD MAN takes earplugs from his pocket to put to his ears but notices the corpse and takes the earplugs out. Puts earplugs back to his pocket and out of excitement takes his feet off the table.)
The Bald Man
A massacre? Here in my office?
(THE TALL MAN walks to center stage.)
The Tall Man
Wait a minute. This is not a massacre.
The Woman
What is it then? Holy…Thank God it happened before we got here! Thank God it didn’t happen to us!
(She speaks calmly.)
The Young Woman
But it could have…
(Clearly scared and shocked.)
The Tall Man
A massacre needs to have at least eight victims. This is only four or five people.
(Interrupting THE YOUNG WOMAN. Sounds logical and unexcited.)
The Woman
Four or five people? That is called homicide then, not a massacre, a homicide. That is brutal.
(With an indifferent voice)
The Tall Man
The bodies are wet. They are soaked as if they were taken out of the ocean!
(Looking more closely at the bodies.)
The Young Woman
That’s impossible! We are not close to any ocean!
The Tall Man
Maybe a…river.
The Woman
We don’t have a river in our town. We only have a creek. That’s all.
The Tall Man
Well, it could be a lake, or I don’t know…a…
The Young Woman
But we don’t have a lake nearby either!
The Tall Man
A pool! They committed suicide in a pool and then walked here.
The Bald Man
Suicide? Three people together at the same time? Couldn’t one of them have stopped the other two?
(The ELDERLY MAN has been staring at the scene so far, now hesitantly gets back to his routine work emptying the garbage bins.)
The Tall Man
There are not three bodies. There are four or five.
The Young Woman
But, why should they have committed suicide?
The Bald Man
Yes, why should they? It makes no sense.
The Woman
It makes no sense.
(Pausing.)
The Yong Woman
Unless, they had been really, really…really depressed!
The Woman
You are too sensitive.