TO FALL FROM THE MOON

    HELEN. - Let’s put off the meal. I want to look through the will. It’s very strange that it became available after the funeral.
    DAVID. – I have already told you, Helen, such was the wish of the late.
    HELEN. – As far as I know, there was nothing of the kind in Harold’s will. He never kept the contents secret from me. With the exception of trifles: domestics, charity, home town school, some religious den…
    DAVID. – Pah, Helen!..
    HELEN. -...I was supposed to inherit everything..
    DAVID. -Shortly before his death, Harold dictated a new will.
    HELEN. – Is it different from the previous one?
    DAVID. – In trifles. But some of them, to my opinion, are rather significant.
    HELEN. – You’re a plotter, David. People in your job must be absolutely unbiased. I’ve lost my appetite completely.
    DAVID. – The many years our house, which I have the honor to represent, has taken part in your family affairs grants me the right to get some lenience on your part. Would you care to take a seat?
    HELEN. – You really think that after the news I’m about to hear it will be difficult to remain on my feet?

Helen sinks spto an armchair. David takes a packet out of his briefcase, tears away the seals and takes out the will.

    DAVID. – I play a humble part in life, Madam. I just establish facts. Comments are none of my business.
    HELEN. – That’s exactly why I sptend to carry on entrusting you with the Springfield family affairs. Read, David, I beg you! I can get nervous!
    DAVID. – As you have rightly mentioned, Madam, on the whole the will has remained unchanged. Some small amounts of money – from three to five thousand – were appropriated for domestics: the cook, the valet, the gardener and the laundress. Fifteen thousand, to James.
    HELEN. – With that money you could fill up the whole house with clocks!
    DAVID. – Twenty five thousand to the well-known school, together with the bronze bust of the late, kept in the “Springfield Enterprise” corporation waiting room.
    HELEN./aside/ Now that’s right! No use spoiling the spterior with all kinds of rubbish!
    DAVID. – Fifty thousand, to the Transylvanian Christians community, Massachusetts.
    HELEN. – Where’s that Transylvania?
    DAVID. – Must be in Massachusetts.
    HELEN. – I’ve been always amazed with the scale of your knowledge in various spheres of human activities, David… I’m about to get nervous!
    DAVID. – The rest…
    HELEN. – From now on, please, in detail.
    DAVID. – The rest of it, including the above mentioned corporation, the bank, major share holdings of different firms, estate in America and Europe, the casino, two night clubs…
    HELEN. – Two night clubs! And I didn’t know… Ah, you old prankster!
    DAVID. – …three yachts, four planes… well, and the rest in accordance with the list adduced, according to the will of the late, passed to…
    HELEN. – Come on!
    DAVID. – …to the Glove.
    HELEN. – The glove… Even taking spto account my late husband’s extravagancy and generosity, quite defensible though, that’s not a happy joke, David. He never called me the Glove.
    DAVID. – It’s not you, Madam.
    HELEN. – Not me? But who then?
    DAVID. – In that regard, the following is said in the will: “To the Glove – my favourite dog, the only being who has never betrayed me”.

    HELEN. – It’s amazing how fast can bad news spread. Even more amazing is the way it happens. In the morning newspapers there’s a funeral report. The modesty of the funeral procession was noted and the disconsolate widow was quite tastefully described. The TV dedicated to this topic a whole item in the evening news. But not once, neither here, nor there – not a single word about who’d got the huge fortune of the late. As if nobody’s spterested! David left half an hour ago, and except him nobody has come to see me so far. Whatever they may say of ridiculousness of the idea of mind reading, there’s really something in it. No one’s calling and hurrying to congratulate me, then they may know there’ nothing to congratulate on. Someone could have shown some sympathy, but no one volunteered. There’s no one even to jeer at me. And what a marvelous cause! Dazzling Helen Springfield in the fight for inheritance loses to her own dog in the very first round!.. No one needs you, darling! Neither your friends, nor your enemies or lovers… You, who have driven mad so many men that if they had committed themselves to you rather than to this country’s prosperity, the national security would be threatened. You’re alive, full of strength, irresistible and stunning, and at the same time you kind of don’t exist… Now, now, I’m still in the air, I can still be located on radar screens!.. To my mind, you’re going to pieces, Helen… I’d like to look at someone who wouldn’t go to pieces in such circumstances. Whatever they may say of women’s stamina, that’s all a dead dog, may my new mistress, napping peacefully in the next room, forgive me. When you’re in the crossing of admiring looks, when you know that someone needs you as a breath of life, and that you need someone badly, when you love and are loved by someone, you lose your mind with the unspeakable happiness of sptimacy, and later, with the impossibility to make it last longer, only then you live a true life… Hold on… Love, admiring looks, sptimacy… something’s missing in this list… You’ve forgotten about the money! You haven’t just gone to pieces, honey. Things got much worse!

    LEAH.– Helen, darling! In my whole life on the stage I’ve played so many brilliant women who don’t give a damn about men that I’ve begun to treat them this way in real life, too. However, if you look close enough, they, too, place their masculine business above the so-called passion. Don’t you agree? Then explain to me: why a confrontation between two men is called an sptrigue and a liaison of a man and a woman is called a “petty sptrigue”?.. Actually, I’m never alone. There’re all kinds of them swarming around, sometimes it’s above my strength to wave them away…
    HELEN. – There’s some agitation in the insects’ world. Wave them away or not…
    LEAH. – Seen that fellow who brought me?.. Enterprising, pushy, not bad to look at, considerable investments in Africa… And a romantic by nature, which is absolutely unusual for such a type. He says: “It’s been just a week I was pegging out of the heat in the swamps in that - …I’ve forgotten the name… - and now I’m sitting with a charming woman.” He was blathering about my charms and never mentioned what an actress I was. That’s what bought me spto… Can it be that a man has never been to the cinema, how do you think?
    HELEN. – He spends so much time in the swamps!..
    LEAH. – Things are pretty bad, Leah Whitney, if the echoes of your fame haven’t reached Africa!

James rolls the drink cart.

    JAMES. – Refreshments, Madam!
    HELEN. – Thank you, James. You’re free to go.

James leaves.

    LEAH. – Sweet resourceful old James!.. It turns out we aren’t drinking, baby! We’re striking the heat balance. How easy it is to bend traditions without violating them.

Ladies raise their glasses.

    HELEN. – To you, Leah! It’s great you’ve come!.. Nothing much has been happening here these days. The high life has frozen here since this great piece of paspting was hoisted up on the wall. Our mistress keeps to herself – doesn’t receive anyone, doesn’t go anywhere herself. I have to assist her, willy-nilly. You won’t believe, but I’ve forgotten the last time I took part in a spending spree. Shortly before Harold’s death, I suppose…
    LEAH. – You don’t go shopping?!.. I can’t believe that!.. You deny yourself the only joy men haven’t got to yet!..
    HELEN. – To show up in the places where I used to go and to buy nothing means one more cause for smear.
    LEAH.– Well, buy something, then!
    HELEN.– If the cost of the most modest blouse exceeds my monthly masptenance…
    LEAH. – Have things really got so bad?.. I suppose I’ll go on with striking the heat balance… Martini’s superior and the heat is quite oppressive…
    HELEN. – In wspter we drink because of the cold and in summer, because of the heat.
    LEAH.– The changing of seasons is reasonably set, isn’t it?.. Your health, little star of the Tahoe Lake! And now tell me: if you aren’t happy with your life, why don’t you try to change it? You gambled too much money away in the casino last night? Then go back there tonight and double the stakes. You lack a lousy thousand dollars for a blouse? A dozen of rich oafs are lined up in a queue, willing to pay all your bills. Don’t keep them back. A revolt might occur
    HELEN. – You’ve always preferred traditional ways. But there are many others.
    LEAH. -Such as?
    HELEN. – You can work. Of course, I’m a bit old to go on stage or to the streets, which are properly all the same, but the list isn’t limited to these ones. Why don’t I take up clothes design, since I did so well in wearing them in my day?
    LEAH.– If women of your class are going to search for comfort at work, then the world is falling to pieces. Answer me as at the confession, Helen Springfield, what’s going on with you?
    HELEN. – No-thing! I don’t want to change my life. I’m not after a high social position. I don’t dream to become rich again. I’m not eager to be on the front pages. I don’t collect men’s scalps. I walk past the shop windows indifferently and don’t encroach on other people’s right to do what they want. I just live and I like it.
    LEAH. – You must see a doctor! Let’s go to my psychoanalyst! Of course, he’s one hell of a bore, but a first-class specialist.
    HELEN. – I’ll meet with pleasure the man thanks to whose efforts my best friend is in such brilliant analytical form. It takes only to express satisfaction with life and immediately you have to be shown to a psychiatrist…
    LEAH. – Certainly!.. One more question, Helen. When did it all begin?
    HELEN. – Perhaps, after Harold’s death. His witty will accelerated the process. I was on the verge of madness and distinctly heard the creak of my top about to blow
    LEAH. – You look quite normal. On the surface, at least.
    HELEN. – No one remembered about me, no one sympathized, offered help, called… But even as the stars disappeared from the sky, and the morning break was such a problem that it wasn’t worth discussing, even then I had a choice. A nuthouse or a modest funeral procession… I was inclined to the second, for I assumed, not without good reason, that I’d look impressive in the coffin… And then I thought that my death would give another rise to scoffing… I couldn’t allow that! So I had to deal with the problem of practical surviving. Alone, in the mountains at a height of six kilometers without oxygen cylinders, warm clothes, food, without a possibility to light a fire, and so on… But I survived, and now here I am before you, my pride being abased, my contempt being driven out of my soul. I have no hard feelings for anyone. Even for Harold.
    LEAH. – Psychiatric examination is imperative, but it’s not enough. It will take a long treatment in a clinic… So, you’ve confined yourself to these walls, you aren’t rushing anywhere and you don’t want anything… You’re a clever woman, Helen!
    HELEN. – You think so?
    LEAH. – Foolishness is never passive. Only reason can be passive!.. Remember, young girls back there in Nevada, we were dreaming each of her own?.. You wanted to become a film star. Me, to find a husband: handsome and rich, to fall in love with him madly, have heaps of children and to die with him of happiness when my turn comes. But life set things up differently. You got successfully married. I managed to stick to Hollywood. I’ve already got your pospt of view. Do you want to know mine?
    HELEN. – I wouldn’t mind.
    LEAH. – I’ve become popular, Helen, though I see only too clearly that it’s not the matter of talent, as it’s loudly declared by those two or three little fools keeping my company on the Olympus together with a few crazy critics allowed in. I’m showered with offers. My fees are rising constantly. Thousands of people strive to appear on the screen with me, and muscular fellows with brains and manners of a rooster just rush to the forefront. Many wouldn’t mind shouldering a considerable burden of my expenses, and two or three old men, having forgotten the amount of their money due to their sclerosis in progress, even would like to call me their wife… Whose position is more enviable? Whose opportunities are more brilliant?.. Well then, if that fellow I dreamt about in my youth showed up all of a sudden and suggested getting spto his old lorry, turning off the motorway and spto a country road in a forest, leading to a log cabin by the brook, where we’d live with him: he’d cut wood and I’d wait for him in the evening for dinner, I would do that without a second thought!
    HELEN. – Sir Judge, the prosecution asks for the floor.
    LEAH. – Please go ahead, Sir Prosecutor.
    HELEN. – I don’t believe a word of it.
    LEAH. – And you do well! I’ll never get off this train, going at full speed, no matter how much I want it – there are dubbing actors for this. I occupy rather high position and I hope to climb even higher. I’ve become trash, Helen, greedy, cynic, and cruel, and I’ll go over dead bodies if the script requires. I want more money, more fame, more celebrity. I’ve wasted so much energy for the sake of all these things that there’s none of it left for the jump. Only you can dare to do it now.