Read Online Resurrection Blues by Arthur Miller - Free Book Online

some can be deep.
    Â 
    He starts to rise.
    Â 
    HENRI: Please! Go home!
    Â 
    SKIP: I can’t go home until this job is done!
    Â 
    HENRI: You could tell your company there was nothing here to photograph! It was all imaginary, a poem!
    Â 
    SKIP: It’s impossible, I can’t pull out of this.
    Â 
    Starts off.
    Â 
    HENRI: I hope you won’t take offense!
    Â 
    Skip halts, turns, curious.
    Â 
    Our generals are outraged, a cageful of tigers roaring for meat! Somebody may get himself crucified—and not necessarily a man who has done anything. Do you want the responsibility for helping create that injustice!
    Â 
    SKIP: I’ve been trying hard not to resent you, Mr. Schultz, but this I resent.—I am not “creating” anything! I am no more responsible for this situation than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were for Jesus’ torture!
    Â 
    HENRI: But Jesus was already long dead when they wrote about him, he was beyond harm!
    SKIP: Well, I can’t see the difference.
    Â 
    HENRI: But Mr. Cheeseboro, this man is still alive!
    Â 
    SKIP: We are recording a preexisting fact, Mr. Schultz, not creating it—I create nothing!
    Â 
    HENRI: But the fortune you’ve paid the General has locked him into this monstrous thing! Your money is critical in his decision!
    Â 
    SKIP, exploding: You have utterly wasted my time!
    Â 
    He exits.
    Â 
    HENRI: And so the poem continues, written in someone’s blood, and my country sinks one more inch into the grass, into the jungle, into the everlasting sea.
    Â 
    Blackout.

SCENE 5
    Darkness. A moon. A palm tree. Light rises, gradually
revealing a candelabra on a café table, with Felix and
Emily eating lobsters and drinking wine.
    Â 
    At all the dim edges of the stage, riflemen sit crouched,
weapons at the ready, backs to the couple.
    Â 
    Music; very distant strains of a guitar and singers
serenading.
    Â 
    EMILY: I’ve never in my life eaten three lobsters.
    Â 
    FELIX: But they’re very small, no?
    Â 
    EMILY: Even so.
    Â 
    FELIX: Of course, small things can be better than big sometimes.
    Â 
    EMILY: Oh? Catches on . Oh, of course, yes!
    Â 
    FELIX: I beg you to forgive my forwardness.
    EMILY: Not at all—I like it.
    Â 
    FELIX: I can’t help myself, I am desperate for you not to slip away.
    Â 
    They eat in silence, sucking the lobster legs.
    Â 
    EMILY: You’re a contradictory person, aren’t you?
    Â 
    FELIX: I have never thought so; why am I contradictory?
    Â 
    EMILY: Well, you seem so tough, but you’re also very sentimental.
    Â 
    FELIX: Perhaps, yes. But with very few people. This is a hard country to govern.
    Â 
    EMILY:—I must say, your face seems softer than when we met.
    Â 
    FELIX: Possibly because something grips my imagination as we converse.
    Â 
    EMILY: Grips your imagination?
    Â 
    FELIX: Your body.—I beg you to forgive my frankness, it’s because I am sure, Emily, that I could . . . how shall I say . . . function with you.
    Â 
    EMILY, equivocally: Well now . . .
    Â 
    FELIX: How fantastic—you are blushing! She laughs nervously . My god, how your spirit speaks to me! There is something sacred in you, Emily—for for me it’s as though you descended from the air.—I must sound like I have lost my mind, but could you stay on some weeks? Or months? I have everything here for you . . .
    Â 
    EMILY: I’m afraid I have too many obligations at home. And I’m going to have to get busy saving my career. Pointedly . . . . Unless you’d decide to do what I asked.
    Â 
    FELIX: I beg you, my dear, you can’t ask me to call off the search. The General Staff would never stand for it . . .
    Â 
    EMILY: But if you insisted . . .
    Â 
    FELIX: It’s impossible; the honor of the Armed Forces is at stake. This man is trying to make fools of us.
    Â 
    EMILY, reaches out and touches his cheek. Surprised, he instantly grasps her hand