The Greek Plays by Ellen McLaughlin

Author:Ellen McLaughlin [McLaughlin, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781559366274
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
Published: 2004-07-01T05:00:00+00:00

HELEN

Then what happened?

MENELAUS

She comes up. You can hear the little jingling of the bangles around her ankles. She’s really quiet. But you just knew. There she was. And then she starts stroking the side of the horse and sort of, um, chuckling. I don’t know how to describe it. But it was like she was making love to it, us, all of us. And she was good, you know? These guys, we hadn’t seen our wives for ten years, and you can practically feel her hands stroking, just sooo . . . But that wasn’t the worst of it. Then she starts calling our names, not loud, but like the way you call a lover back to bed, you know, each name of us. And this is the thing—she calls each man using his wife’s voice. I don’t know how she—but it’s worse than that even, she’s calling them by the pet names the wives used. Names they haven’t heard in all this time. It was unbearable. These guys, they are, like, losing it, grown men weeping, trying not to make sound, but tears are just streaming down their faces and everybody’s sort of shaking, clanking a little bit. And then she does this thing. She calls to Antichus, this one kid, sweetest guy in the world, right? He’d left for Troy only a week after getting married. His wife is this skinny girl he’s known since they were kids together and he’s just like totally nuts about her, talks about her all the time, dreams about her every night. He’s just so homesick for her he’s going crazy. Then Helen, she puts her mouth right underneath where Antichus is sitting and she says, “Darling Bear, why did you never come home to me?” How she knew that’s what his wife called him, I have no idea, but he’s just freaking out at this point. Odysseus is sitting behind him and he puts his fist in Antichus’ mouth to try to stifle the sound of his crying and he might have made it but she says, “If you don’t tell me you love me now, I’ll hang myself.” Antichus is making little animal sounds like a dog dying, he can’t help it: “Do you love me? Tell me! Tell me!” And that’s when he tries to throw off Odysseus and call to her. But Odysseus is too quick for that, he can see it coming. So he strangles the guy. Right there. This sweetheart of a kid. We all listen to the air choking out of him and then watch as Odysseus rests the body against his chest, then tips the head back so he can close the eyes, which are popping out of his face. That’s when you could hear the little jingle of her, her bare feet running away across the city square. But that’s not all you could hear. You could also hear her laughing. Then dead quiet. So we came out of the horse like bees swarming out of a hollow oak.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.