BLUE RUBIES
One Act in Four Scenes

by Sandra Gail Teichmann

In memory of Leon Karpa 1911-2001

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

UNA: an artist, forty years old

RAFEL SABIN: UNA's husband, chess player, sixty-five years old

ANDREI: RAFEL's friend, a barber, has been RAFEL's chess rival on Tuesday and Saturday evenings for years. He is dead at seventy-five years old and throughout the play disembodied, interacting in spirit with UNA and RAFEL. He sits on a cube stage left, does not move around.

Time: 1992.

Staging: An intimate theatre setting.

Set: A large open room that serves as studio and library on the second floor of a large house where UNA and RAFEL live at 928 Mockernut Street. Furniture is represented by black two-foot cubes. Lights are stark white spots on the three characters with the exception of the garden scene which has a warmer light like sunlight.

Costumes: ANDREI and RAFEL are dressed in black. UNA wears black pants and a colorful painting smock, lots of blues, to reflect and be the painting she works on, which the audience cannot see.

Sound: Before the performance, as audience is being seated, a tape of bird song is played.

Property List:
Chess set (RAFEL)
Painting of flowers on large canvas (UNA)
Paint Brushes in jar (UNA)
Wine decanter, three glasses (UNA)
Live flowers in pots (UNA)
Garden tools, watering can (UNA)
Binoculars (UNA)
Ear Plugs (UNA)
Newspaper (RAFEL)

SCENE 1

Setting: Evening. RAFEL sits at a table stage right playing chess with himself, talking to Andrei, his imaginary opponent, throughout. A large canvas for UNA's painting is set up horizontally center stage.

At Rise: UNA enters with a vase of flowers. She sets it down, leaves, and returns with a tray of glasses, a bottle of port, a plate of sliced nut bread. She pours a glass for RAFEL and for herself and then sits in a chair near RAFEL.

UNA
Winning?

RAFEL
Ummmm . . .

UNA
Hear the dogs, Andrei?

ANDREI
Oh, yes, Una, the dogs. The dogs that have you wearing ear plugs, is it? (Both men laugh.)

UNA
Yes, but it isn't funny. I can't stand the barking.

RAFEL
We know, Una.

UNA
Andrei, you haven't been to the garden for weeks. I want you to come, come see the chicory. Delicate and blue. And the four o'clocks ...you must see the four o'clocks.

RAFEL
On the surface Andrei, you are nice, but a little deeper you are full of evil. Just earlier I determined you would kill if you could for an advantage. For an advantage you would kill, Andrei.

UNA
Yes Andrei, come Saturday, come at four. The lavender is lovely in the afternoon light, and the scent—you won't believe the perfume! 

RAFEL
You take?

UNA
A lace, Andrei, a fine fabric of lace, and it changes with the light as if I were shaking a weave of blue threads in the breeze.

ANDREI
Yes, Una, I'll come.

UNA
Yes? Oh, Andrei, the garden. I do love the garden. And I have a secret to show you.

ANDREI
A secret?

UNA
Yes, a circle of holly where in the center I've laid, guess what? Blue tiles. Oh, there, I've told you. Shiny blue tiles reflecting light in the midst of the green, and they're so very lovely, Andrei, and silent.

ANDREI
It's my move?

RAFEL
No, it's my move. (Makes his move.) Now it's your move.

ANDREI
I don't like that.

RAFEL
It's okay. Now you can come back with the knight.

ANDREI
Oh, no. I don't think so.

RAFEL
You want to castle?!

UNA
Except, of course, the garden isn't silent. Even if the dogs aren't barking, there are shadows teasing the grass and the flowers, whispering a warning that the sun will go down.

ANDREI
You think I shouldn't castle? You castled at the beginning.

RAFEL
Yes, yes I know. There's nothing illegal about castling.

ANDREI
There's nothing illegal, but you say to me like it's a big surprise.

RAFEL
But it is a surprise. Usually you don't castle.

ANDREI
Please, won't you make a move Rafel?

RAFEL
Could go here.

ANDREI
What do you paint, Una?

UNA
I'm trying, Andrei, to know the disorder, know what's inside the curve beyond the light, beyond our present, beyond time.

ANDREI
Disorder? What do you mean?

UNA
It's the flowers. The centers I can't see into, the blue end of the spectrum, the highest frequency. I need the detail the light never gets to.

RAFEL
You have something in mind. You want to take my pawn, Andrei. Good thing I saw it.

ANDREI
Each mistake you make is a big help for me.

RAFEL
Maybe this ...why not? Not very good… could do that. I'm thinking.

UNA
I need the dogs to stop so I can hear the disorder.

ANDREI
Could you paint the centers black, Una?

UNA
No! I have to get inside where the light doesn't go. Black won't do, won't take me there. Won't take you either.

ANDREI
What for?

UNA
If we look and if we see, we'll be looking in from beyond, a mixing of memory and possibility with the present.

RAFEL
I let you have it.

UNA
It could be a personal measure of time, don't you think?

ANDREI
Why you do that?

RAFEL
Why not? Why not?

ANDREI
Because you want to take this one and then… Oh no. You got something in mind?

RAFEL
Sure. I want you to take the pawn. I give you a present.

ANDREI
Then I take the pawn, and I'm in trouble. Not too bad.

UNA
What I paint on the canvas, the colors come back, spill back as if I've turned a sock full of marbles inside out, marbles red and blue, red like rubies and blue as the blood under our skin. That's what I mean, Andrei.

ANDREI
I don't know. I look at a flower, the petals. I see the pink, maybe yellow. What do you see, Rafel?

RAFEL
I see flowers, petunias, lilies, whatever comes.

UNA
Words won't do. Naming the flowers, the colors won't do. It's not petunias and lilies, not pink and yellow, not even blue. It's beyond color and line.

RAFEL
I see purple, scarlet, white, a blur of color, and then I forget it. In our garden I see blue. We have a lot of blue. That's what you'll see on Saturday, Andrei.

ANDREI
Okay, I take it. (To the audience) He take it, right. I take it. He take it. I take it. Very dangerous situation. Yes, yes, I see… I get it.

RAFEL
Yah, that is true. That is very true.

ANDREI
Sure, sure that's a goody. That's a goody.

UNA
Life as a reflection of art or art as an echo of nature? Either way we're caught within the pull of gravity, the collapse of life in on itself.

ANDREI
And to get to that silence, you need silence, Una?

UNA
Yes…

ANDREI
Maybe Una's got something, Rafel. All that is left of us in the end is ash, fragile mounds of ash, ash from the core of our evenings, our talk and our chess, dinner and wine, and how we are and how we aren't to each other. You win. I win. The flowers bloom, and Una struggles to paint it, to save it, or to understand. We're alive and then nothing. Mounds of ash. Sad, the loss of all this. Nubs of ourselves, of our chess games, nubs of what we were and might have yet been.

UNA
Maybe it's the ash I can't get, the blue ash of the shadows, the depth of the blue where the light won't go.

ANDREI
Of course, Una, I'll come to your garden. Saturday.

(Blackout)

END OF SCENE 1

SCENE 2

Setting: Saturday afternoon in the summer garden. Garden furniture and flowers are arranged near the audience. A tape of bird song plays throughout scene.

At Rise: RAFEL sits playing chess. UNA rises from tending her flowers.

UNA
Did you stop to see your mother today, Rafel?

RAFEL
I stopped. Sat with her.

ANDREI
How is she, your mother?

RAFEL
She's there for good. Doesn't want to go anywhere. Doesn't want to come here, and I don't understand.

ANDREI
Well?

RAFEL
It smells terrible there, medicine and urine and food. I can't stand it. When I go to sit with her, I take her outside, but today she didn't even want that. Says the light hurts her eyes.

UNA
She has sunglasses and a hat. I wove Violets— 

RAFEL
She says they're no good, the sunglasses and the hat. She wants it darker. Won't open her drapes.

UNA
If there's no light, there are no reflections… No reflections, no shadows.

ANDREI
Terrible. We should all die before that. We live too long.

RAFEL
Look at you, Andrei. You're healthy. You live a long time.

ANDREI
I do, I live too long… I live too long.

RAFEL
We're lucky we have our health, Andrei.

ANDREI
We can't let them put us in the nursing home. You won't let them will you, Una?

UNA
I won't. I promise. I wish we could help Rafel's mother too.

ANDREI
Difficult, this life.

UNA
Yes, but she can't come here. She can hardly hear, and now she doesn't want to see. You know how she complains about the food.

RAFEL
Yes, Una.

UNA
She tells us her mouth is dry. She has to run to the bathroom all the time to pee.

RAFEL
Not so bad, your knight there.

UNA
We'd need a new house, one where she'd have her own bath, a room for a nurse. But what would become of the garden? I don't want to leave the garden.

RAFEL
Yes, Una.

UNA
She'd want to dine in her own room, want to ring a crystal bell.

RAFEL
You take. I take.

UNA
She'd tell me new peas aren't for our finest taste. It'd be an ambulance she'd want at six PM…

RAFEL
I think I got out. Let's see if there's something better. There are two ways of playing this. The check first and then take the pawn, or I can take a knight out here. Bishop takes. Knight takes. You run away. I run away. Or you take, and I take. So that's even… But here I win a pawn.

UNA
She'd want you, Rafel, to dial the phone at six AM, but she'd have no one to call.

RAFEL
We know, Una.

UNA
Why didn't she learn this country's language from the tutor? Join in this or that, in a bridge game? She could have read a romance, started a new life, taken a train farther than any of us know.

RAFEL
Yes, she could have.

UNA
Instead, we turn her blinds, pull her drapes. She tells us to. We do.

RAFEL
Ah, the pawn that bothered me, and I have a threat of checkmate.

UNA
We block the light.

(The lights begin to fade, the dark of evening comes. Una looks around lovingly at her garden.)

She insists, and we take her to the hospital, her pain timing itself for Saturday, as if knowing office hours this week are over. She wants nurses and doctors to rub her feet, bring her blankets.

RAFEL
Yes.

UNA
Then, Andrei, remember the doctors in curiosity cut her belly open, only to find no reason for her torment.

ANDREI
I remember.

RAFEL
Check.

UNA
So then she lay tied to her bed, and she talked of white hot coals, talked of grilling liver, kidney, the heart of new-born calf.

RAFEL
Yes, well the piece I won—not here—I won it here. Remember? You didn't get it back, Andrei.

UNA
She discussed with me the plates for serving chocolate torte.

RAFEL
The game is over.

UNA
Then she had you and me, Rafel, under her bed and in the closet looking for a gun. Remember?

RAFEL
I remember.

UNA
Times like that we liked her, didn't we? Laughed at her, though we knew it was us she was wanting to shoot.

RAFEL
The game is over.

UNA
She taught me how to make a proper torte.

ANDREI
You do make a torte, Una.

(Blackout)

END OF SCENE 2

SCENE 3

Setting: Next morning in the studio.

At Rise: RAFEL reads the paper sitting on the cube previously occupied by Andrei, stage left. UNA stands looking over and past the garden. She's peering through binoculars into the backyard of the neighbor behind the garden.

UNA
Rafel, I think the dog… the dog in the yard next to the barking dogs— 

RAFEL
I didn't know there were dogs there too.

UNA
Yes, you did. I told you. The house where the red dog is chained, has no place to get out of the rain or the sun. I told you. The house where the man beats the dog. A length of hose. The dog cries out and then whimpers, and the dogs in other yards answer with their fear.

RAFEL
Yes, Una.

UNA
We've heard him in the night, Rafel, and in the morning. And after the dog's beaten, after the dog has cried, we hear the thrust of sex, hear the man who has struck the dog, hear the woman who hasn't wanted the dog. I know you hear, Rafel.

RAFEL
(Absorbed in his paper.) Okay Una. I hear them.

UNA
Can you believe the man got another dog? Another dog to beat, to chain and unchain?

RAFEL
The forecast has changed, Una. Storm maybe on Thursday.

UNA
I think there may be puppies.

RAFEL
Puppies?

UNA
There must be puppies in there… Rafel, are you listening to me?

RAFEL
I hear you, Una.

UNA
The dog must be chained because the man thinks she will run away from her puppies. Would a mother do that, Rafel?

RAFEL
Hum?

UNA
Run away from her new puppies?

RAFEL
No, Una. Of course not. Una, you really shouldn't be looking into that yard with the binoculars.

UNA
I see them. I think I see them, Rafel. I see a fluff, red and golden. They're moving. Little gems in the light. Light like rubies.

RAFEL
Rubies?

UNA
Rafel! I think I see Joaquim, our cat. Rafel, could that be Joaquim? Our cat in there with the puppies?

RAFEL
Our cat?

UNA
It looks like her. She's in there, Rafel! She must be waiting for the mother dog to come and let her suckle. That's why she's there. Rafel, our cat is in that dog house with those new puppies! 

RAFEL
I don't believe it. Let me see.

(UNA hands the binoculars to RAFEL, who has moved to stand beside UNA.)

Where is the mother?

UNA
I don't know. I can't see her.

RAFEL
That does look like Joaquim in there. Una, do you really think she would be there?

(RAFEL hands the binoculars back to UNA.)

UNA
That's her. Isn't she funny?

RAFEL
This is unusual.

UNA
There's the mother dog. She's come from behind the dog house. Oh, Rafel, she's on a chain. She's crying. Do you hear her?

RAFEL
I hear her.

UNA
She's trying to get inside the house… she can't. The chain's tangled. She can't get to her babies. Barking, whining... she's clawing at the dog house. There's no one to come and help. What shall I do, Rafel?

RAFEL
Do?

UNA
Rafel, call the police!

RAFEL
Oh, Una. Really. You're taking this too far.

(RAFEL gets up and leaves the room.)

UNA
(To RAFEL'S back, indignantly) My mother always felt sorry for a dog tied up. Said people shouldn't have a dog if they have to chain it.

(Turning to the garden, to the audience) I don't understand. There's a fence, and the dogs don't dig under or climb over when they're off their chains.

(Turning to the door Rafel left through, raising her voice.) Rafel, could you come back?

(To the audience again.) The dogs are peaceful and happy when they're loose. When they're tied they're thoughtful, and then nervous, then desperate to be free until they're too tired to protest. Broken, broken to the man's will. But they haven't been defying his will. That's what I don't understand. The male dog wants everything—food, water, attention, to give love, to take love, wants petting or yelling, anything will do. He comes to be hit, lies down and takes it. Wants to be with the man, no matter what.

(UNA looks at the desperate mother through her binoculars.)

(Blackout)

END OF SCENE 3

SCENE 4

Setting: Two weeks later in the studio.

At Rise: RAFEL in the studio at the chess table. Andrei is on the cube, stage left.

ANDREI
Where is UNA?

RAFEL
She's gone for a walk. She'll be back.

ANDREI
Not the same here without her. Is that dogs I hear? Those barking dogs that were bothering Una last week?

RAFEL
Your move, Andrei... Dogs, yes, but not the barking dogs. They're gone. Moved away. What you hear are dogs in the next yard, crying dogs, Una's new obsession.

ANDREI
What's the matter with those dogs? It sounds awful. Something must be wrong.

RAFEL
Yes, but since this morning, Una's been saying the dogs are happy.

ANDREI
Don't sound happy to me.

RAFEL
Una says the dogs have joy. Wait until she comes back. She'll tell you about it.

ANDREI
Maybe you should do something, Rafel.

RAFEL
What can I do? They're not my dogs.

ANDREI
Silence would be good.

RAFEL
Our cat is out there in the dog house with a mother dog and new puppies. She's in there for the milk.

ANDREI
But she's a cat.

RAFEL
Yes. Can you imagine? Una calls the puppies red rubies, says our cat's there among the jewels.

ANDREI
Seems unlikely.

RAFEL
It's your move, Andrei. I'm not interested in puppies, in dogs. Not my concern.

ANDREI
Okay, I move here.

(UNA enters the room a bit breathless from her walk.)

RAFEL
You're back. Enjoy your walk?

UNA
It is a lovely evening. Hello, Andrei.

ANDREI
Good evening, Una. You're looking fit. I told Rafel how things aren't the same without you.

UNA
Oh, Andrei, you are a love.

ANDREI
Where did you walk?

UNA
I walked along Mockernut Street until it gave way to the country. Cows in a pasture there walked west with me along the fence line. Just getting dark, forms and color muted, and you know what I thought as I walked with them, Rafel?

RAFEL
What, Una?

UNA
I thought of steak.

RAFEL
(Laughing) Steak?

UNA
Why do you laugh, Rafel?

RAFEL
It's not like you, Una.

UNA
I could only think of steak. I moved into the night with the cows, and I didn't feel sorry. I thought of steak.

RAFEL
Hum.

UNA
I wish I could think of steak when I look out the window at the dogs.

ANDREI
Is it my move?

UNA
I can't think of any reason for the situation in that yard behind us. There's no purpose for existence there, not for the dogs, not for the man.

RAFEL
Una…

UNA
No reason for my existence.

ANDREI
I don't think that's right, Una.

UNA
It's true, Andrei. From the cows we get steak, from the dogs and ourselves, nothing.

ANDREI
I hear the crying, Una.

UNA
The dogs believe in, rely on the man in that house for their well being. That's the horror of it. And then there's me. I know their situation, their suffering, and I do nothing.

ANDREI
I take this pawn.

UNA
I could have peace if only the dogs were loose.

ANDREI
It is a shame to restrict the movement of any living thing.

UNA
If the dogs didn't have to live out that window, if they could live just three or four houses over, I wouldn't hear them. I wouldn't know.

ANDREI
You could call the authorities, Una.

UNA
I have! I've called the humane society. I've called the police.

RAFEL
Ah, a threat there you're making, Andrei?

ANDREI
No one does anything?

RAFEL
I tell Una to ignore it, tell her to close the window.

UNA
No one does anything. It's up to me. I have to quiet the dogs, but I can't get the color.

ANDREI
The color, Una?

UNA
I'm painting them. I'm painting the dogs into silence.

ANDREI
It is awful listening to this, Una.

UNA
It is. The mother dog cries through the night and through the day.

ANDREI
Rafel, isn't there something you could do?

UNA
He can't. He won't.

RAFEL
Left your knight exposed there, Andrei.

UNA
I wear ear plugs, yet I hear the dogs through to my heart. And my dreams, Andrei, are of the mother, the male dog, the puppies and me all tangled on our chains, so badly tangled we choke, and then we have to tear at each other for our lives because no one will come. No one will help us.

ANDREI
Terrible. I take back.

UNA
It's bad enough to be a dog and be fenced in.

RAFEL
Sure, sure. You take back.

UNA
To be confined to a chain, half-domestic, half-wild for no purpose seems insanity, don't you think?

ANDREI
Yes, Una. Insanity.

UNA
I'm tired, Andrei.

RAFEL
Maybe you should lie down, Una.

UNA
So many dogs, and the days so long… The yard is complicated. The dogs confuse me. The people shame me. I'm like one of them. I become from my watching, the same as the tall dark man there—erect, wonderful posture.

RAFEL
That's an interesting possibility.

UNA
Yesterday when I was driving on the street, the man waved at me.

RAFEL
He did? You didn't tell me, Una.

UNA

He did. Can you imagine? I didn't wave back, would have felt as if I were waving to myself. I don't think he knows me, knows that I could be, that I am him.

RAFEL
It's your move again, Andrei.

UNA
(Listening.) The dogs hear that. The train whistle. Listen, Andrei. The whistle is a comfort.

RAFEL
Una, we're about to finish this game. Will you join us for a glass of wine, a little supper?

UNA
Oh, of course. I forget myself.

(UNA leaves the room and returns with three glasses and a bottle of wine. She uncorks the bottle and pours. The three lift their glasses.)

UNA (continued)
To our friendship.

RAFEL AND ANDREI (in unison)
To Una.

ANDREI
Who did you walk with, Una. Not by yourself?

UNA
Oh, Joaquim followed me. You know, our cat, Joaquim.

ANDREI
Oh, yes, the cat that God will judge.

UNA
The cat who suckles a dog. The cat who lies with rubies, and yes, Andrei, the cat that God will judge.

ANDREI
Rafel told me. Extraordinary.

UNA
Yes, Andrei, isn't it?

ANDREI
So just you and Joaquim walking?

UNA
Yes, but… why, Andrei, do I take on the burden of dogs? Maybe I need the complications, the weight of chains?

ANDREI
Terrible.

RAFEL
Checkmate.

UNA
Listen. Hear them out there. I'm the man, but I'm also the dogs. I'm tied, chained to a wire of a clothesline I can run up and down, but never away from.

RAFEL
Una, you're not chained up. Don't be silly.

UNA
I want to say this, Rafel. I want Andrei to know.

ANDREI
Una, go on. I move here, Rafel.

UNA
I'm bored with the suffering, Andrei. Last week I watched the man move the dog house to a pallet, lift it out of the mud.

ANDREI
The mud? It hasn't rained that much, has it?

UNA
It isn't the rain, Andrei, it's the man spraying the dogs with water, beating them, then spraying them as if he can wash away what he's done.

RAFEL
My God, Una.

UNA
Please. Let me finish.

ANDREI
Let her continue, Rafel.

UNA
The dog house is on a slant, so the puppies, Joaquim, the mother, all have to lie on an incline. Slide into each other. The ones on the outside crushing those on the inside.

ANDREI
Yes.

UNA
And the mother cried all last night, tied and tangled.

ANDREI
Rafel, this is terrible. You should do something.

UNA
There were so many dogs to worry about, and I was so helpless… I couldn't go into that yard.

RAFEL
No, Una, you're not to go into that yard.

UNA
I know. Too many in there, so I started thinking they'll die, and you know, Andrei, I thought that would be okay.

ANDREI
Okay if the dogs die?

UNA
If they don't die, they'll only make more of themselves, reproduce more suffering, more barking, more whining.

ANDREI
Oh, Una.

UNA
Too many dogs, Andrei, and they wouldn't know freedom from the chain if they were given it. If the mother were loose, she'd not run away. She'd stay to nurture the puppies for more cruelty, more production of puppies, more life in a dog house precariously half-off a pallet.

ANDREI
You may be right, Una.

UNA
And somehow, in all the chaos, Andrei, the tall dark man is light.

ANDREI
The man is light?

UNA
Yes. He is the light, source of all color—color in the garden, color on the canvas. Light that we adore, light that we applaud, just as we cheer for a matador because the bull is so dumb…

ANDREI
Yes, but— 

UNA
No, Andrei, it's the same. It's the sport, the entertainment, the competition, the power, and it's all okay. The dogs are beyond the ideal of freedom, beyond life without pain. The crying and the chain and the tangle of separation is their life, their joy.

ANDREI
The chain is their joy?

UNA
If turned loose, they would crave the piles of their own excrement as evidence of the food the man has given them.

ANDREI
I'm not so sure, Una.

UNA
And the man in that house, he too is chained. Chained to custom, to the past, to what his father did with dogs— throwing puppies into the air, letting them fall, listening to the terrible cries that go on and on after the dull thud of a puppy hitting the ground.

ANDREI
Hmm. That's what they say, sins of the father…

UNA
Well, of course, what else? The injustice is that we have no choice, no freedom. We're swept along. It's reality. It's what happens, Andrei. It's the truth. The man is helpless to help the dogs. I am too, Andrei. We accept it, give ourselves—the man and I—we give our lives splendor through this control of wretched dog life. You could say that the garden would not have beauty if the dogs were not to suffer.

RAFEL
To suffer…

UNA
It's a matter of who will outlast the other, man or dog, but then it really doesn't matter, does it?

ANDREI
Let me think a moment here, Rafel.

UNA
Doesn't matter. Copernicus, remember, said the earth is not the center of the universe. Dog is not, man is not. Nothing special here. Blue. Blue is as ordinary on this planet as the spread of morning glories. Blue the sky, blue the cosmos, blue the ash of ourselves.

ANDREI
Yes, I see.

UNA
The chain's unfair, but death? Would death be unfair?

ANDREI
But the garden, Una.

UNA
The garden's nice. Beautiful, yet sometimes, Andrei, the flowers seem to bear too much weight.

RAFEL
Oh, Una. Sit down with us. Play a game of chess with Andrei if you like.

(To ANDREI.) Nice wine this evening, don't you think, Andrei?

ANDREI
Yes, the wine is fine.

UNA
I'll bring supper.

(Lights dim to a blackout and immediately rise. UNA sits at the table with RAFEL.)

UNA
You liked the paella?

RAFEL
It was delicious, Una.

ANDREI
Wonderful.

UNA
Will you have more, Andrei?

ANDREI
No thank you, Una.

UNA
You didn't like the rice?

ANDREI
Rice is okay.

UNA
Oh Andrei, I forgot.

ANDREI
Sure, sure. It's okay. You remember. I told you.

UNA
I remember. Can you tell me again, tell me why?

ANDREI
Okay. I tell you… Rice, white rice. Rice in Graz, in a factory making airplanes, everybody hungry. Come lunch time, they put rice in a jar. Everybody look at the rice: white and moving, white worms. Russian doctor with us says close our eyes. Eat it. So now I was looking at this plate, and you ask if I didn't like the rice. You already know… you paint it, Una. I see it on that canvas, and I say okay, sure. Okay, sure paint it. I told you before about the rice. Not nice. I told you before. And I tell you again about rice.

UNA
How did you get away?

ANDREI
I crawl under the barb wire and run away, run toward the bombing, toward the U.S. Army.

UNA
And your wife? (Turns her gaze to her unfinished canvas.)

ANDREI
I lost the wife. Bombing, run to the ditches. Yell for the wife.

RAFEL
More wine, Andrei?

ANDREI
Una, I change my name four times.

(UNA gets up from the table, puts the ear plugs in her ears and stands staring at the canvas. RAFEL continues making chess moves.)

UNA
(Speaking loudly to herself because of the ear plugs.) I understand… I do understand, and I know the color. The blue, the blue of disorder, the blue of shadow, the blue of being. Blue as if rubies were blue. Blue rubies are precious but expendable, like pawns in service to the king, pawns moving forward, only forward. I understand blue rubies. Formed and necessary for the maintenance of power, the power of the kingdom.

(Turning to speak to the audience.) Morning glories: this morning blue, blue as if rubies could be blue, blue climbing the fence, radiating blue beyond the spread of the petals.

(To ANDREI.) Andrei, you must come to the garden. Come in the morning.

(Back to the audience.) Color, loud and vibrating, as if I were yelling through the chains of despair out there. It's too dark to see now. Morning glories folded in on themselves. Too late…

(To RAFEL.) Open the window, Rafel.

(Turning to speak to the audience again.) I have it. I have the blue.

(Turning back to RAFEL.) Please open the window, Rafel.

(UNA is becoming excited, yet RAFEL ignores her.)

I've got a perfect stillness of blue, and it's red enough to calm the air, settle this canvas, mute our street, Rafel. The houses, the shadows… Blue rubies, Rafel, my force of blue equal to what those puppies might have been, a blue like rubies might be, a blue that can be heard through chains.

(Quieter and to the audience.) I knew it all along. I can't speak beyond this. We're passing, passing into silence.

END