Read Remembrance and Pantomime for Free Online

business. I best have another one, Albert, because …
    JORDAN
         Face the truth, Ezra. It’s time. We avoid it, avoid it, face the truth. That poem is the truth …
    PILGRIM
         I tried to steal your son.
    JORDAN
         My friend …
    PILGRIM
         What is it I was supposed to have done? Help kill that boy? I was Uncle Ezra to him.
    JORDAN
         And I was Uncle Tom. I was his father, and I was also Uncle Tom. You printed all his revolutionary stuff in The Bugle, because you were scared shitless, Ezra; you recanted on all the culture we had known. Remember what we were, and what principles we considered sacred, friend?
    PILGRIM
         I thought I was an editor, but this is news to me, that I’m a murderer, too. Jesus, you’ve called me many things, Albert, but never this one. Jesus.
    JORDAN
         Shhh. You’ll wake the child.
    PILGRIM
         What child?
    JORDAN
         Never mind. Just don’t start shouting. I have a child in there.
    PILGRIM
         I hope Mabel don’t hear about it. Is there somebody in there, Albert? You have some girl in there ’cause Mabel’s gone? Well, that is your business, but I’m not going around, I’m not leaving this house carrying that guilt inside me about Junior. I will not. You hear?
    JORDAN
         Keep your voice down, please. They shot him, Ezra. They put a hole in that boy’s body, but they’ve ripped out a hole in my own heart that nothing, nothing can fill.
    PILGRIM
         A stupid, excited policeman shot him, it wasn’t “they”! The country was under martial law.
    JORDAN
         Bad company, bad company. What was the company we kept in our youth, Ezra? The company of great minds, great music. Right, Pilly? So we educated ourselves past ourselves, eh, Pilly boy? While our contemporaries were out chasing woman, drinking grog, and sniffing like dogs round the arse of a pension, we’d be here after work, right here on this veranda, right there by the seed ferns, way past suppertime, reading Macaulay, Carlyle, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton to each other. Yes, friend. A. P. Jordan and young Ezra Pilgrim civilized themselves.
    PILGRIM
         Belmont is a village, Albert, so think of it this way: that your son, Albert Perez Jordan, was the village Hampden.
    JORDAN
         The boy was wild, Ezra. He called me a Fascist, but the boy was wild. He ran with wild companions, wild ideas. He said I ran this house like a classroom, but discipline was always my weakness since the army. Sometimes I feel I could beat this whole damn country with a strap, ministers and all! Big boys!
    ( Mime )
         “What wrong with the phone, eh?” WHAP ! “Who lock off the water?” WHADDAP ! But the boy was wild. Pilly, I’m sorry.
    ( Pours PILGRIM a drink )
         But I want to show you something.
    ( He is at the record player )
    PILGRIM
         Goddamnit, man, Albert, I can’t stop and listen to no music now.
    JORDAN
         The house quiet, Mabel ain’t here and Frederick’s gone. Every anniversary of Junior’s death, he goes on one of his periodic retreats to the hills, you know that.
    PILGRIM
         Albert, look! I know you’re retired and you want a little company, but Monday is a bitch of a time in the printery, so I’ll pass in after work, so if you ain’t mind, le’ me just take this poem.
    JORDAN
         Not “lemme” just take. Let me just take.
    PILGRIM
         Let me just take. I can’t take the classics before lunch.
    JORDAN
         You printing it just so? Without asking who A.H. is?
    PILGRIM
         Yes, I printing it, Albert. I’m concerned with the part that concerns me, but I’ll print it. So, I gone.
    JORDAN
         Ask me.
    PILGRIM
         Ask you what, man? ’Tain’t my business.
    JORDAN
         Don’t shrug your blasted shoulders at me, Ezra Pilgrim!
    PILGRIM
         Yes, teacher! I unshrug my shoulders. So, who is A.H.? Hitler?
    ( Sings )
         “Run