Penelope and Ulysses (9 page)

ULYSSES
stands
looking
towards
the
entrance,
waiting
for
AGAMEMNON.
AGAMEMNON
enters.
Stage
lighting
red
.]

ULYSSES: I welcome you into my home, Agamemnon.

AGAMEMNON: My good friend, Ulysses,

what a glorious day to renew

our old alliance and friendship.

We have been through so much

together, killed so much together,

profited so much together.

We have taken so many adventures together:

you with your clever manoeuvring,

and I with the might and power

of thousands that follow us without question.

Well, if they question we brand them as traitor.

All the glory has been given to me

by others, you and the gods.

I am blessed.

In life you have to take what you want.

It is no good wishing for it

or hoping for it.

You have to take it,

either by persuasion or force.

A real man will never surrender

to obscurity and notoriety.

We both are political animals

and we both know the weakness

of common man,

the need for common man to be told what to do

and when to it.

They can’t manage without us,

and therefore they are there for us to use

as we use our horses and cattle and sheep.

Common man is there for us to exploit

and reap the rewards of our conquest of them.

Of course we practice civilised methods.

We have debates and lectures and we pretend to listen

as we portray ourselves as open

to the opinion and welfare of common man,

but to put into practise what they say

would remove us from our privilege and power.

Ulysses, you and I do not know hard labour,

nor do we follow or obey the laws

that confine and bind common man.

Therefore we harvest from their toil and sacrifices,

many things

for our elite way of life

that common man only dreams about.

ULYSSES: Agamemnon, we plan and organise methods

on how to strip the common man, the ordinary man—

the field hand,

the foot soldier,

the servant—

from his human right to live in peace,

to harvest the seeds of his labour,

to watch his family grow,

to stay home

instead of going into wars for you and me.

Profits the collective man will not see.

To die in a foreign shore

with strangers and enemies,

never to see their sons or daughters again.

AGAMEMNON: Oh dear! My friend, you have lost your senses—

this sentimentality for common man.

We make history and therefore the demands

and expectations on us are great.

What a burden I have to carry.

Don’t you see the weight upon me,

carrying all these people?

What would they do without me?

But I would gladly carry this burden

for the power and glory that my decisions bring to our nation.

No more talk about this, Ulysses.

I feel particularly good today.

The gods have blessed this mission,

although I had to offer my daughter to them

to appease them.

ULYSSES: So it is true! You have sacrificed your daughter, Iphigenia,

for this war on Troy.

AGAMEMNON: It had to be done.

I have other children.

What would you have me do—

not follow my destiny, Ulysses?

She was such a beautiful girl.

It had to be done, and I did it.

Now that takes courage.

ULYSSES: I am truly sorry.

AGAMEMNON: What are you sorry for?

She wasn’t your daughter.

Enough of this!

Let’s speak about today.

ULYSSES: Today has not unfolded

and the past is long gone and buried,

as some of our friends

and many of our enemies.

Why have you come to Ithaca?

What business do you have

among the forgotten?

I have changed, Agamemnon.

I am no longer the clever fox

that stole the eggs of future generations.

AGAMEMNON: What is this? Future generations? Eggs?

Have you been in the henhouse too long?

Or have you been under Penelope for too long?

ULYSSES: The spilling of so much blood,

it has driven me mad.

I have nightmares

and am not the man I was.

AGAMEMNON: Too much blood. Too little blood.

Does it really matter?

ULYSSES: This is the life force of a man

that we speak about

and we are pouring it into the ground

where nothing will grow for it.

And we do it

with indifference and contempt.

Have we been in so many battles

that we have become indifferent to death?

Or are we only indifferent

because it is not our death

and therefore it does not affect

our scheme and order of things?

So I ask you again:

what business do you have with me?

AGAMEMNON: My good friend,

you have become philosophical and womanly

about life and our past together.

Philosophers and poets and women

are no good at making decisions about life and death.

They only talk about things after someone else

has taken action to improve things.

They do not have the lust to conquer

and keep conquering others.

Philosophers and poets and women lack the might

to cut away the life from another.

They have a problem with spilling a little human blood.

They are cowards and pathetic in life.

If we all sat around contemplating life

like that poor Socrates,

then I would insist that he drank the hemlock sooner.

Such weakness in the spirit

gives off the stench of apathy and melancholy.

What is the matter with you, Ulysses?

How else are we to take

our civilisation to other worlds?

How are we to educate these barbarians?

How are we meant to bring enlightenment to others?

How are we to liberate people from their oppressors?

Therefore we must go where others fear.

Isn’t it our responsibility,

our duty as educated and civilised Greeks,

to take our civilisation to others

who are still barbarians?

The Trojans are barbarians.

I hear King Priam still sleeps with the goats.

ULYSSES: This madness has taken a hold of me, Agamemnon,

and it is this madness that makes me reply as I do.

AGAMEMNON: What madness? This also is a weakness in man.

ULYSSES: I have become slow and cannot think as I used to.

Are you saying that we bring progress and liberation

to a group of people that we invade,

murdering their families

and stealing their land?

AGAMEMNON: What happened to my friend?

What madness has possessed you?

Don’t you remember our discussions in the past,

about our duty and responsibility

to civilise and educate so that we can bring our way of life

to these oppressed people?

I want you to come with me, my loyal friend.

You have skills that have proven useful to me in the past

and your skills will prove useful

in the spread of our civilisation to Troy.

We have fought in previous battles

and you have proven yourself clever and shrewd.

I have many men that can fight

and I can use them as fodder in battle.

As soon as they fall I can replace them.

They mean nothing to me.

I do not know them or their mother:

one soldier resembles the other.

They do not question

and they are happy in their ignorance.

Common man does not think.

The ordinary man does not see beyond his backyard.

His nature is cowardly and weak.

That is why he obeys and is told what to do,

told how to think

and told who to kill.

The common man obeys and follows!

Offer them

the gods’ approval,

the force of an army,

and the miracle and promise of a better life,

to be sealed with the promise

that the gods will bless them

with an afterlife,

if they die for our cause.

They wear the yoke of service and obedience

like the dumb ox.

They don’t think.

They are content to be rewarded with a little food,

little ambition, little houses,

and a little sex.

Could you imagine having a little of anything,

especially a little sex?

What is the matter, Ulysses?

Do you disapprove?

Has wifely sex made you impotent in ambition and war?

I have not known you to be a common man, an ordinary man.

I have seen you disobey and rage, plan,

and murder children in front of their fathers

and women in front of their husbands.

You had a heart of stone.

ULYSSES: I am lost, Agamemnon.

Did I really do those things?

Did my hands murder children and women?

AGAMEMNON: This must be a strange humour

that has fallen upon you.

It must be because you have stayed

with the same woman for too long.

You are vital to me in this war against Troy.

You think, question, and probe,

as you are aware. Your intellect and craft

in manipulating human nature is rare,

and that is why you are my most important advisor.

I do not have clever advisors.

I need your intellectual planning,

your precision in measuring danger

and working with it, to achieve our victory,

at any cost

to our men, to our enemy.

You have always in the past

proven yourself to be clever.

We call you “The Fox” in war.

You know how to read human nature

and outwit all of them.

You plan and organise,

and you know the weakness of the enemy.

You know the weakness in the strongest enemy.

You set traps in persuasion or gifts

and they fall onto your sword,

thinking you are different from me!

That always makes me laugh—

when I see the dying eyes of those you have tricked

into believing your sophistry or accepting your dangerous gifts.

I do enjoy that moment.

It has a triple climax for me:

they realise they are dying

and there is nothing they can do,

they realise they have been betrayed,

and finally, in their dying breath,

they are aware that all their family will also die.

ULYSSES: You fascinate me and disturb me

and you think too much

of my clever ways.

When you and I were in battles together

I was younger and did not measure danger.

Instead I took it on,

and by chance and luck

I managed to remain alive,

and by manipulation and cunning

I managed to slaughter many.

By chance and luck

the enemy made the mistake of believing me.

It wasn’t because I can read human nature;

it was chance and luck.

Fear makes men believe in the devil.

If they believe they will be spared;

there was no great strategy there—

only deception.

AGAMEMNON: You have grown humble in your old age, my old friend.

ULYSSES: Winning a war or losing it

depends on arriving in the night,

pretending to be someone you are not,

gaining their confidence,

infiltrating and causing conflict within the community,

and attacking a country that does not have

the military might we have.

And if we can’t do it that way?

We will offer them gifts

and in the night we will murder all that sleep,

thinking that the danger has passed.

AGAMEMNON: I have won all my wars.

ULYSSES: We have always won

because we are always planning wars.

Even in peace we are planning against our neighbours.

We lived all the diplomatic displays of peace

while we planned legally,

ways to net and occupy the lands of others.

This takes a certain type of methodical

and organised cleverness,

a certain corruptive banal evil.

It doesn’t look evil, but it is,

for it destroys the lives of many

for the profit of a few.

We managed to catch the enemy sleeping,

unguarded and unprotected,

and his women and children sleeping—

so warm, so fresh, so sweet.

They never woke up

with our swords piercing their hearts,

and in that sleep

they must have thought

they were having a nightmare,

with death,

a nightmare they never woke up from.

AGAMEMNON: I remember how I cut them from their lives,

both women and children as they slept.

We murdered all the “pretty ones.”
28

ULYSSES: War is about killing.

How smart do you have to be to kill?

AGAMEMNON: You don’t have to be smart to kill,

but you do have to be smart

to get a whole country to follow your orders to kill,

to kill men that they have not met,

men who have never harmed them,

men just like them, with children and families.

Now you will have to agree

that getting a whole country to kill for you

is a task that requires a man

who has surpassed the needs and appetites of the ordinary man.

It takes a certain type of will