Excerpt from MURUGAN UN-TELLS

CAST:

TIME

Anytime

PLACE

Near an ocean. A shanty built from shipwreck.

A shack just off the beach. Far north. Cold. Hatby, Clark, and Murugan sit around the fire, eating out of soup-cans. Hatby is bound with ropes, but one hand is free to hold the soup can. Murugan addresses us, out of time.

MURUGAN

(to us)

The story of it is so simple as to be utterly confusing. The facts line up. You look at them. There was a ship. There was sharp black rock. There was a strong west wind. There were splinters. There was wet sand under our feet. There were three men walking up the beach. Alive. But then the facts start to shift around a little. They stand up on their tip-toes. They pirouette. Then you’re confused again. Looking for the right word to fix all of it.

HATBY

I’m not.

MURUGAN

(to us)

February the 25th. I think. Bleak and windy. Hatby sits in our shelter, eats our soup, and refuses to participate in group activities.

HATBY

(in the moment)

I’m not. That’s not who I am. A calisthenics kind of person. That’s not part of my identity.

CLARK

So change.

HATBY

I spent too long discovering who I am to want to change it now.

MURUGAN

(to us)

We are all getting frustrated with Hatby.

(in the moment, to Hatby)

Calisthenics is very calming.

HATBY

I’m already calm.

CLARK

(to Murugan)

Can we kill him now?

MURUGAN

Now what did I tell you last time.

CLARK

I don’t remember.

MURUGAN

I said: Not yet.

Beat. Clark spits in the fire, frustrated.

MURUGAN

(to us)

Once winter comes everything freezes over. The body of the ocean remains fast and liquid and cruel, but everything it touches freezes, slows. Language comes slower. Clark gets impatient. When Clark needs to know things, he needs to know them fast. He has problems with his memory. He forgets so quickly. He’s always afraid, right after he asks a question, that you won’t answer fast enough for him to keep both the question and the answer in his head. And I still can’t find the right words.

(beat)

Hatby knows that. Hatby likes to fuck with him. You might think, being the one tied up, Hatby’s got reason to shut up. Hatby doesn’t seem to think so.

HATBY

Maybe you should do some calisthenics. Seeing as it’s got such a calming effect.

CLARK

I bit a man’s throat out once. You keep talking and see what happens to you.

HATBY

No you didn’t.

CLARK

I did.

HATBY

No you’ve just heard that story so many times now you misremember it was you. Everybody knows it was Murugan.

CLARK

(looks to Murugan uncertainly)

It was me, wasn’t it?

MURUGAN

(to us)

It was me. His blood tasted dirty.

(to Clark)

It was you.

CLARK

(to Hatby)

See it was me.

HATBY

(playing him)

What was you?

Clark is frozen, confused. He can’t remember.

CLARK

What we were talking about.

(to Murugan)

What were we talking about?

MURUGAN

(to us)

When the right word fails to come, I think: Calisthenics. I think: heat energy.

(to them)

Somebody better start jumping around, create some heat before we all freeze to death.

HATBY

I’m tied up.

CLARK

You can still fuckin jump.

Hatby (awkwardly) and Clark jump up and down to create body heat.
They jump until they’re sweating.
As they do, Murugan talks to us.

MURUGAN

Sometimes these days I pretend I’m telling this whole strange story to a pretty girl. I think it’ll help me find the Word, the one I’m looking for. I picture somebody young and real stupid, who’ll think I’m a hero. I tell the story to her boobs, she doesn’t even notice where my eyes are pointing because she just wants to hear what comes next. I tell her how the ship hit the rocks, the sound of the boards cracking. I tell her what it sounds like, a ship running aground, how it’s the loudest sound in the world and the sea just swallows it like it was nothing. She says Ooooh. Sometimes she says Oh Noooo. She’s sympathetic and so beautifully stupid.

Clark has stopped jumping.

CLARK

Why are we jumping?

HATBY

There was a rat.

CLARK

A rat!

HATBY

It ran under your feet. You jumped on it. You jumped it to death.

CLARK

I did?

(looks under his feet)

Where’s the rat?

HATBY

Then you ate it.

CLARK

I did?

HATBY

You were hungry.

CLARK

Murugan?

MURUGAN

(to us)

Sometimes I forget how to tell the story and in my mind the facts all line up so they look like a row of breasts. Just breasts. The breasts of young and stupid girls.

CLARK

Murugan, did I eat a rat and then jump on it?

HATBY

And then Murugan said to untie me.

MURUGAN

(without turning)

No I didn’t.

CLARK

No he didn’t.

MURUGAN

(to us)

Sometimes I forget that we’re waiting for rescue. It just all gets lost in a row of breasts.

HATBY

All right but it’s almost time for the signal fire. So you better untie me.

CLARK

I’ll do it. Murugan taught me how to do it.

HATBY

You’ll burn the whole place down.

CLARK

I won’t. I didn’t last time.

HATBY

That’s because you untied me and I did it last time.

CLARK

I didn’t.

(helpless, to Murugan again)

Murugan?

MURUGAN

(to Hatby)

You eat more than your fair share of the food when we untie you.

(to Clark)

Untie him but keep the hatchet on him the whole time.

HATBY

(appealing to Murugan)

You can’t intend to trust him with a hatchet again.

MURUGAN

Why not? It’s the only time you get nervous. I like seeing you nervous.

HATBY

Because he’s clearly a retard, Murugan, obviously and distinctly a retard, that’s why not.

CLARK

(to Murugan)

Let me kill him. Then he won’t eat all the food anymore.

MURUGAN

(to us)

These days when I find myself searching for words to explain things to Clark, words that will help me find the Right Word, I find myself with an image instead. It’s an image of a great ship coming to rest on a sharp edge of rock. Its belly slit open in one great clean slice. Splinters and planks and rope spilling all over the wet rock like intestines. It comes to me with a great clarity, as if I’m standing on the beach watching from afar. As if I’m not even a body at all, just a great pair of eyes. And then I realize that the word I’m searching for is the one that will make everything rewind. Take the ship off the rock. Seal its belly back up. Send it back into the water. The word that will satisfy Clark, silence Hatby, and for me, the thing it will do for me—

HATBY

You kill me and what’re you gonna say when rescue comes and: Where’s Hatby? they’ll ask. And you’ll say—what?

MURUGAN

(to us)

Breasts. Lots and lots of breasts. Maybe.

CLARK

I won’t even remember you by then. I won’t remember that you ever existed at all.

MURUGAN

(to us)

What’s the word? I look for it. Slowly. And it slips away. Slowly. Without the right words, there’s no talking. Just untalking. There’s no telling. Just untelling.

HATBY

(to Murugan)

It’s stopped raining, one of us has to light the signal fire.

Murugan unties Hatby, hands the hatchet to Clark.

MURUGAN

Don’t hatchet him unless he deserves it.

HATBY

(nervously)

You know our friend has a faulty memory.

MURUGAN

Then let’s hope you light that fire before he forgets what I told him.

Hatby climbs up a ladder leading to the roof. Clark follows with the hatchet.
Left alone, Murugan stares out the window at the sea.

MURUGAN

(calling)

See anything?

HATBY

(calling off-stage)

It’s dark.

MURUGAN

That’s it?

CLARK

There’s a ship!!

(Murugan sighs, Clark comes bounding down the ladder, without the hatchet)

Murugan, there’s a ship down on the beach, it’s run ashore on the rocks!

(a beat—off Murugan’s expression, hesitantly)

You already know that?

MURUGAN

Yes.

CLARK

Did I already know that?

MURUGAN

Yes.

CLARK

Oh.

A beat. Murugan gestures up the ladder. Clark climbs the ladder.

MURUGAN

(to us)

Abracadabra. SOS. Open sesame. But none of these are the right words. Not for what I want from them. Not for the kind of power I want to unlock.

From offstage, Clark lets out a sudden sharp cry. Then silence.
Beat. Hatby comes back down the ladder, carrying the hatchet.

HATBY

He’s dead.

MURUGAN

Did you hatchet him?

HATBY

The roof was slippery.

MURUGAN

He slipped?

HATBY

I pushed him.

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