sarah and tony one morning

8/3/2019 Sarah and Tony One Morning

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Sarah and Tony One Morning

A Play

By

U. U. Hilliard

Education-affiliated and/or non-profit theater groups may perform this play as a stage play

without needing permission from the author.


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Cast:

Sarah -- Female, late 50s.

Antonius -- Male, mid 70s.

Costumes: Female and male first century Roman Empire daily attire.

Setting: Long ago destroyed house near the Sea of Galilee. Stage is strewn with large

stones as if from a demolished building.

Time: Morning in early autumn in the Common Era now called AD 90.

Scene: Sarah sits on a strewn stone center stage. Antonius enters with the help of his

walking stick.

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SCENE

Scene opens as Sarah turns her head, sees limping Antonius approaching with aid of a

walking stick, and stands.

SARAH. (uncertain) Oh, Hello.

ANTONIUS. (old-age winded) Hello. May I have a seat?

SARAH. Whatever you can find.

ANTONIUS. Thank you. (sits on a stone) I may know you. You're Sarah. These stoneswere your grandparents' house.

SARAH. (startled) How do you know that? Who are you?

ANTONIUS. You can call me Tony. (points) I live in that villa. And you should be

more careful.

SARAH. How do you know my name? I have not been here for almost fifty years. I live

far across the sea in Gallia Narbonensis. Because my children and I could be killed, I go

by Potita, a Gaulish name.

ANTONIUS. I know, Sarah. I know. You need to be careful. But I will never tell

anyone.

SARAH. Who are you, Tony? I really have to know.

ANTONIUS. Let me explain something. My Roman family is rich and powerful. I was

born into a military duty and rank. But I was born with a bad leg.

SARAH. That explains your villa. I'm sorry about your leg.

ANTONIUS. Because of it they trained me for military intelligence. Later I became a

Senate investigator. I am still highly respected.

SARAH. And it is your job to know about us.

ANTONIUS. Was! They put me out to pasture.

SARAH. But once you know things you can't un-know them.

ANTONIUS. Sadly true. And in my long career I picked up a lot of useless information

and spurious details. This now clutters my old forgetful mind.

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SARAH. What do you intend to do with me?

ANTONIUS. Nothing. You're not my business now.

SARAH. And as far as this meeting goes, you never met me? And no one is going to

follow me?

ANTONIUS. No one will know. No one will follow you.

SARAH. Are you sure?

ANTONIUS. I'll make sure. How did you arrive here?

SARAH. By car.

ANTONIUS. I don't understand.

SARAH. A Roman carpentum. A four-wheeled wagon. When I was a kid here, we

called them cars.

ANTONIUS. Oh. (pause) The carpentum drivers report movements of non-residents

and to try to ascertain purposes of their visits. If they don't cooperate, they may be

punished.

SARAH. Like my father was punished?

ANTONIUS. Nothing that drastic. And if it helps, I was in training in Rome when they

did that to your father.

SARAH. It helps. Is punishing drivers necessary?

ANTONIUS. Sometimes. Better intelligence comes from coins with our Caesar's face.More reliable.

SARAH. And your Caesar gets his face back in taxes.

ANTONIUS. Even your outspoken father did not object.

SARAH. My mother said that was to avoid entrapment.

ANTONIUS. Probably. Did you tell the carpentum driver anything?

SARAH. No. Nothing. I am careful.

ANTONIUS. And you speak our Latin with a pleasant Gaulish accent. But if one were

looking, one could make reasonable connections, you know.

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SARAH. I know. And I know some are looking.

ANTONIUS. What did you say when the driver asked you why you were here?

SARAH. That my Gallic husband is speculating in lakeside real estate.

ANTONIUS. Okay. I'll clean that up after you leave. (pause. sighs) Do you remember

that I met you before, here? Along with your mother, Mary?

SARAH. Here? (gestures) You mean way back when these stones were my

grandparents' house?

ANTONIUS. Yes.

SARAH. I was a child. I don't remember. Was meeting her part of your job?

ANTONIUS. Yes. (pause) You were about ten. It was our Roman year 793. But I like

your new calendar. You would say it was the year 40.

SARAH. It's not "our" calendar. It's ancient. Our years now run from the beginning of

the Age of Pisces.

ANTONIUS. I was not sure whether you'd be offended. Some of your people even

moved your father's birth date to fit the Age of Pisces.

SARAH. They were trying to show how modern and "with it" we were. How the past

was dead.

ANTONIUS. Let the dead bury the dead?

SARAH. Yes. But let's get back to what we were talking about. After my father wasgone, were you spying on my mother?

ANTONIUS. Your father had been a calming influence. Five years later Galileehotheads went to En-gedi and brought back a Zealot weapons cache.

SARAH. You really didn't think my mother would have anything to do with that.

ANTONIUS. We had to check everything. She had no part.

SARAH. If you Romans had not been so demanding

ANTONIUS. Give us a break. In Rome we built a Pantheon to all of the gods.

SARAH. I would rather not argue religion or politics. You must have known that my

mother was finishing her book then.

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ANTONIUS. I knew. I read some of it.

SARAH. You read some of it!

ANTONIUS. She let me. When I saw it was harmless biography it no longerprofessionally interested me.

SARAH. You saw no codes?

ANTONIUS. Something like that. No inflammatory text to incite insurrection. It was

just my job.

SARAH. Some job. Always looking for indications of trouble for your government.

Didn't you ever wonder about life passing you by?

ANTONIUS. Only lately. Maintaining order and keeping the peace rested on myshoulders then. But I have to say I noted talent and skill in your mother's writing,

SARAH. Now that she's gone, they've taken it, rewritten it, changed it. She's reduced to

a mention where they couldn't obliterate her.

ANTONIUS. Who is this John?

SARAH. Do you want to know for intelligence reasons?

ANTONIUS. No. Just wondering.

SARAH. I don't know. And I won't know. For my children's and my safety I separatedfrom all the factions.

ANTONIUS. But you know the reasons.

SARAH. Reasons? I can't understand them. Even before my mother died, the church

was becoming a male chauvinist club. She was the last significant woman.

ANTONIUS. Her faction had been seeking official recognition from your religious

elders in Rome for decades.

SARAH. Yes. And can you imagine my mother was an impediment?

ANTONIUS. They were minimizing females. They made a deal to have your mother'sbook rewritten like a man had authored it. Then that faction was sanctioned.

SARAH. Yes. After my mother was gone.

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ANTONIUS. But you have a copy of your mother's book.

SARAH. No. Not after we went into hiding. Too dangerous to have it.

ANTONIUS. There may be other copies.

SARAH. Of course. But I don't know of any.

ANTONIUS. When I saw you decades ago, you and your mother seemed very close.And you did not seem to play with other children.

SARAH. You noticed that? No I could not play with other children. My mother was

something special. So was I. After she finished her book and became a leader, it waseven more so.

ANTONIUS. But only a leader of your small community.

SARAH. It was larger than it seemed. She had, after all, been married to him. Visitors

came from far away lands.

ANTONIUS. Seeking miracles.

SARAH. Some. And they were disappointed. But most only wanted to meet her, to talkwith her.

ANTONIUS. You used to talk to the birds by the lake.

SARAH. Yes. They were my only friends. I gave them names.

ANTONIUS. And did they talk back?

SARAH. In their own way. Birds are smarter than people think.

ANTONIUS. So you had a lonely childhood?

SARAH. Oh no. When we lived here there was a constant stream of visitors. Theytalked to me.

ANTONIUS. Some of them bowed down to you.

SARAH. I didn't like that.

ANTONIUS. People bowing to you and your mother?

SARAH. Yes. But I liked when they told me about their far away lands. I never thought

then that I would live in a far away land for the rest of my life.

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ANTONIUS. Nor did I think I'd live here when I was young.

SARAH. I guess you could say the world became our home.

ANTONIUS. Yes, that's a nice thought. Do you like Gallia?

SARAH. You're assuming I live in Gaul.

ANTONIUS. You did.

SARAH. As you seem to know, I grew up there.

ANTONIUS. And you married there. And you had children there.

SARAH. How much do you know?

ANTONIUS. Not much. But it's a government bureaucracy. There were other

investigators and there are records.

SARAH. You've seen them?

ANTONIUS. Yes.

SARAH. And they weren't burned in Nero Caesar's fire?

ANTONIUS. Most important government documents were saved.

SARAH. Important? Me?

ANTONIUS. Yes, Sarah. You and your family have been at the center of state security

concerns for decades.

SARAH. My father and mother are gone now. I try to steer clear of that.

ANTONIUS. I suppose that is why you slipped through the cracks. I was very surprisedto meet you this morning. Flabbergasted would be a better word.

SARAH. And now you can re-open my file.

ANTONIUS. I could. But I won't.

SARAH. I hope I can believe you.

ANTONIUS. If word about you gets out now, we get civil unrest. We don't want it.

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SARAH. Like before?

ANTONIUS. Like before. Your Jewish factions were at each other's throats, Sadducees,liberal Hillel Pharisees, conservative Shammai Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, et cetera.

SARAH. My mother told me that my father was with the Hillel Pharisees.

ANTONIUS. Yes.

SARAH. Do you think your governor was a weak man?

ANTONIUS. Our governor Pilatus had 3000 soldiers. The real army was under control

of our Legate of Syria, days or weeks away. Our governor had orders to keep the peacewith all of those Jewish factions, with the Jewish monarch, with the remnants of a dying

Greek empire, and with a population in turmoil in occupied Egypt.

SARAH. He seemed to lack backbone.

ANTONIUS. I can see why it might seem so. He certainly vacillated.

SARAH. Couldn't you say that his lack of backbone led to my father's death?

ANTONIUS. Yes, and to civil unrest. And civil unrest led to insurrection. And that warled to your mother's town of Magdala being destroyed and these scattered stones

(motions around stage).

SARAH. You say it so casually. These stones were my grandparents' house. No one in

Magdala survived. We were living in Gaul then. My mother was heartbroken when she

got the news.

ANTONIUS. I am truly sorry, Sarah. I had no part in that.

SARAH. I don't suppose you did. Especially with your leg. But it keeps happening.

Will there ever be an end to war?

ANTONIUS. I don't know. Can we change human nature?

(long pause)

ANTONIUS. Did your mother tell you how she and your father met?

SARAH. No. She didn't talk about those things.

ANTONIUS. My parents neither.

SARAH. But you know how my parents met?

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ANTONIUS. And where. It was my job to know.

SARAH. How? Where?

ANTONIUS. (points) There.

SARAH. (points) There? Right there?

ANTONIUS. Businessmen were holding a banquet and bought salted lake sardines in

olive oil from your grandparents' fish processing plant. Your mother was carrying the

fish in a covered wicker basket.

(Antonius looks to see if Sarah is listening and sees she is intent)

SARAH. And

ANTONIUS. And some dogs smelled the fish. Not bad dogs, just dogs. As I recall,

there were about seven.

SARAH. And my mother reached into the basket and gave one of them some fish.

ANTONIUS. You know the story?

SARAH. I heard that story in translation. A preposition "on" became a preposition "in."

ANTONIUS. Demons were supposed to be "in" her.

SARAH. That's the new official line. The new leadership has written my mother into adisreputable character and narratively nullified her marriage.

ANTONIUS. And you are now an inconvenient truth.

SARAH. Yes. Very inconvenient. But thank you. I did not realize that was how mother

and father had met. I didn't know it was right there.

ANTONIUS. Her kindness of giving a dog a fish was a mistake. They kept jumping at

your mother, throwing her off balance. A large dog knocked her down. But she held the

precious basket and lid tightly.

SARAH. Did you actually see it?

ANTONIUS. No. I read the reports. Your father saw your mother go down, ran to her,

and began casting off yelping dogs. He pulled her up. They both carried the basket to

the banquet.

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SARAH. Your government must have been watching them closely.

ANTONIUS. Him mostly. He was no threat, but he was lecturing to larger and largercrowds. There was a potential.

SARAH. And her?

ANTONIUS. She is in our records even before they met. She was his secret financial

backer, an awe-struck middle-class girl taken in by a bright charismatic rabbi. Shefollowed him around the lake and went to his lectures. But she was too shy to introduce

herself to him.

SARAH. I think she was pretty bright herself.

ANTONIUS. Oh, no doubt about that. But back then she was a shy teenage girl afraid

of seeming too smart.

SARAH. How many of your people were watching them?

ANTONIUS. An agent or two. But these had their snitches. And the snitches had

people reporting to them. We knew pretty much everything about everything.

SARAH. Were you at their wedding in Cana?

ANTONIUS. Not me personally. But we had sources.

SARAH. So you probably knew about the tax gimmick.

ANTONIUS. The bathtub gin?

SARAH. Yes. You didn't report it.

ANTONIUS. And blow the cover of a snitch? Moonshining was pretty widespread.

We didn't care. I believe the local euphemism was turning water into wine. Wedding

guests staggered home happy not caring what they had drunk.

SARAH. My mother told me that she secretly paid for it. The groom was supposed to,

but he could hardly afford it. She bought one cartload of really good wine. After they

were drunk they ladled out the bathtub gin.

ANTONIUS. A standard trick. Tax collectors kept themselves informed of weddings

and parties. If they left with a few full bottles of good wine and a few jingling coins, theycould claim that they didn't see anything illegal.

SARAH. Matthew told me about that.

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ANTONIUS. He was our tax collector. He would have known.

SARAH. He kept himself on the good side of the law.

ANTONIUS. That he did, and with some skill. Did your mother tell you about the

circumcision and the pigs?

SARAH. A little bit. She was queasy about the surgery and wasn't there herself.

ANTONIUS. A Roman legionnaire wanted to marry a Jewish girl. Her family insisted

that he be circumcised. Conservative rabbis were against bringing in non-Jews. They

finally found a liberal rabbi in another jurisdiction.

SARAH. My father.

ANTONIUS. As it turned out.

SARAH. My mother remembered the lunch that she packed. Lake sardines. Pita bread.

And strong sour retsina wine.

ANTONIUS. The wine was for the patient -- to dull the pain.

SARAH. And for the wound -- to prevent festering. I heard that my father and threelarge strong local fishermen left by sailboat in the early dawn light.

ANTONIUS. The men were needed to hold the legionnaire down during the actualsurgery.

SARAH. My mother said that it was mid-morning by the time the boat arrived. (points)It was just past where the Jordan River leaves the lake.

ANTONIUS. And thus not in the jurisdiction of Galilee.

SARAH. When I was a child and heard it for the first time, that did not make any

difference. It was just one big lake to me.

ANTONIUS. I have gone over there to look at it. The beach is small and the hillside is

steep. There is a path with steps cut into it.

SARAH. Yes. I remember it now. A year before we were forced to flee my mother

took me there. Once you get to the top the land flattens out and there are oak trees. The

ground is scattered with acorns.

ANTONIUS. Which the pigs ate.

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SARAH. Yes. And I heard that the legionnaire and his fiance were waiting there.

They spread a blanket on the ground. And then my father took out his kit and performed

the surgery while the three big strong fishermen held the legionnaire's arms and legs.

ANTONIUS. And then all Hades broke loose.

SARAH. Yes. Your legionnaires are strong men selected for battle. When they poured

the sour retsina wine on the wound it stung. He broke loose and ran around yelling and

screaming, "Owe, that hurts."

ANTONIUS. And scared the pigs.

SARAH. The pigs panicked. They ran in the direction of the lake. My mother said theherdsmen running after them panicked them more.

ANTONIUS. And it's almost a cliff there.

SARAH. Very steep hillside. The panicked pigs raced over the edge and tumbled and

rolled down the steep embankment into the lake. Those pigs that may have been stillalive drowned.

ANTONIUS. And your father was in trouble.

SARAH. The herdsmen ran to get the pig farmer. By the time they found him, my

father, the legionnaire and his fiance, and the others were already at the boat.

ANTONIUS. I saw the police report. A local policeman came with them. Accusations

were flying. But exactly who could be held responsible could not immediately be

determined.

SARAH. That's what my mother said.

ANTONIUS. Legally speaking, no one had actually touched the pigs. The herdsmen

should have kept control of their animals. But the screaming legionnaire had set the

whole costly event in motion. Since the surgery was voluntary, it was decided that your

father could not be held liable.

SARAH. But the issue of liability remained unresolved.

ANTONIUS. And you might be interested to know: remains unresolved to this day.

There are lots of stories and gossip. But no one ever paid the farmer for his pigs.

SARAH. That's interesting. But the poor man could just as well have lost his pigs to

disease or a storm. Farmers take chances.

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ANTONIUS. Here is how the farmer put it: how many farmers have ever lost or will

ever lose their animals due to a wild yelling Roman legionnaire running around holding

his bleeding crotch? He thought that he had a good case.

SARAH. The policeman did not arrest anyone. My father and his assistants came back

here in the boat.

ANTONIUS. The police reports said that the legionnaire and his fiance wanted to get

away from the whole unpleasant fracas and come with them, but there was not enoughroom in the boat.

SARAH. My mother and Matthew both said that, too. Matthew even wrote down that

he did not join my father's followers until after that after that incident -- that he was notone of those assistants.

ANTONIUS. Your father's followers were all smarter than was good for them.

SARAH. Oh, I would not generalize to that degree. I met Simon when I was a girl. He

was hardheaded and not too bright.

ANTONIUS. Your mother and he did not like each other.

SARAH. No, they didn't.

ANTONIUS. Matthew, on the other hand, was a genuine intellectual.

SARAH. When I was little he would spend hours telling me stories that he just made up

as he went along.

ANTONIUS. He could read and write classical Hebrew. He was also fluent in Egyptian,

Greek, and our Latin. But Hebrew set him apart. Only your scholars used that.

SARAH. My mother said that my father also knew Hebrew, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin,

too.

ANTONIUS. And both were educated in Egypt.

SARAH. My grandmother told me about the escape to Egypt, about living in Egypt.

ANTONIUS. Did she tell you why?

SARAH. Not much. She was quiet about those things -- as if being protective by nottelling me dangerous things. You may know more than I do.

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ANTONIUS. Maybe. Maybe not. I have a functional literacy in Egyptian. But I was

more interested in Sumerian cuneiform. I was able to read ancient diplomatic

correspondences because it was everyone's diplomatic language.

SARAH. Like your Latin seems to be becoming.

ANTONIUS. Oh, heaven forbid that ever happens.

SARAH. We speak and read it all over Gaul now. They speak it here now. In far offplaces they understand it and use it. It may already have become the new language of the

world.

ANTONIUS. I've noticed that, too.

SARAH. I taught your Latin to schoolchildren most of my life.

ANTONIUS. In Gaul?

SARAH. Yes. But I learned it here. Right here in this spot. By this pretty lake. Mymother was fluent and taught me.

ANTONIUS. I know. I read records that said she spoke directly to our spineless

military governor in our own language.

SARAH. I would rather forget about that.

ANTONIUS. I understand. Anyway, Neo-Assyrian cuneiform continues to be used by

literary aficionados and cultic sects even in our modern times. I just read an astronomical

text was written in cuneiform fifteen years ago, perhaps the last one, perhaps not. It lastedas the scholarly language for two thousand years.

SARAH. (lightly) What if your crude warrior Latin lasts two thousand years as ascholarly language?

ANTONIUS. Hah! That would be something, wouldn't it?

SARAH. (continued lightness) And after that? What do you imagine might come next?

ANTONIUS. Oh, I can't even imagine two thousand years from now.

SARAH. Oh, come on. Make a guess.

ANTONIUS. (breath, sigh, frown) Something still growing. Perhaps something

growing out of those wild Germanic tribes that give us so much trouble. They have the

spunk that we are losing.

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SARAH. My mother's uncle traded with them. He saw that spunk, too.

ANTONIUS. Somehow I thought it was your father's uncle Joseph. Tin magnate.Lived his last days in Glastonbury in those cold, damp islands. Owned the ship that let

your mother and you escape.

SARAH. Yes that would be him. But my father's father and my father's uncle would not

have had the same names. Wouldn't that be a little confusing?

ANTONIUS. Of course. Uncle he was not. Cousin, I recall. Age tends to make the

mind silly.

SARAH. Yes, I know.

ANTONIUS. I met Arimathea several times.

SARAH. Professionally?

ANTONIUS. Yes. Your father had stirred up some come considerable commotion here.My unit had to track down everyone associated with him and find out about them.

Interesting to hear that we felt the same about those Germanic tribesmen. I didn't know

that.

SARAH. Are you still doing that? It doesn't matter to me. Governments do these

things.

ANTONIUS. No. Too old. Young whippersnappers like I used to be do that work now.

And to calm your concerns, I won't tell them anything about you or what we say here.

SARAH. Thanks.

ANTONIUS. Not so long ago I knew everyone, though.

SARAH. How well did you know my father?

ANTONIUS. Not well. The paradox of surveillance. I had to keep tabs on him andknow all about him. But that forbade me from getting too close to him, alarming him,

and possibly causing him to take counter measures.

SARAH. And blowing your cover.

ANTONIUS. Oh, definitely that. And the covers of my whole coven.

SARAH. So you really didn't know him.

ANTONIUS. No.

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SARAH. There is a part of me that is really angry with him. I had to grow up without a

father because he was so uncompromising about his glorious teachings to the greateveryone out there. He couldn't just back off and let things be.

ANTONIUS. I don't know what to say. He wasn't a fanatic. The country here was fullof them, but he wasn't one. However I get the distinct impression that he could have

saved himself if he had wanted to.

SARAH. You see, that is exactly what I think sometimes. That he was obstinate and a

little selfish.

ANTONIUS. My feelings, too. If he had backed off and come back here to Galilee andlet things cool down, maybe this whole fracas would not have evolved into the grief of

cities destroyed and thousands killed. (motions around) As you see here where your

town of Magdala used to be.

SARAH. You're not saying he was the cause of all this.

ANTONIUS. Not at all. This happened thirty-seven years after. Nationalism. Religion.

Power politics. Empires collapsing. New empires taking their places. End of one age

and beginning of a new one. He may or may not have been just one more spark.

SARAH. Whatever it was, I never had a father. My mother had to raise me as a single

parent. He went and got himself killed.

ANTONIUS. None of us choose our parents. But consider yourself lucky. Your mother

was a wonderful woman.

SARAH. Yes she was.

ANTONIUS. And she loved your father and worked to keep his memory alive.

SARAH. I know.

ANTONIUS. Back to those Germanic tribes. Our propaganda characterizes them aswarlike savages. But they are quite civilized and thoughtful, especially the Angles and

Saxons. That's why I see them in some distant future.

SARAH. They're all business.

ANTONIUS. Yes. But their laws are as good for people as they are for business. TheirGermanic common law is all about fairness.

SARAH. That helps to win them friends.

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ANTONIUS. Works better than swords and armies.

SARAH. Strange to hear a Roman say that.

ANTONIUS. We are not all soldiers. We have our poets, our philosophers, our artists,

our musicians.

SARAH. Like your Nero who played a musical instrument while Rome burned?

ANTONIUS. Greatly exaggerated.

SARAH. Whatever. But no national leader will ever again be so dim-witted as to play a

musical instrument while one of his cities burns down or floods.

ANTONIUS. Never underestimate the crass disregard of national leaders for the

suffering of their people. Surely there will be another.

SARAH. I don't disregard.

ANTONIUS. I always felt sad for your mother after what happened to your father.

SARAH. Me, too. She was so all alone.

ANTONIUS. They were deeply in love and inseparable. She risked censure and harm

and kissed him in public.

SARAH. So I have heard.

ANTONIUS. She was a strong young woman. But she was devastated by it.

SARAH. I suspected that she was. I tried to imagine her feelings sometimes.

ANTONIUS. Your being born helped her enormously.

SARAH. I can see from my own children how that would have helped.

ANTONIUS. Even more, though. You seem to have represented a part of him. She

seems to have clung to the idea.

SARAH. And of course I am a part of him. And that has been my greatest problem all

my life.

ANTONIUS. I know. I know. Oh, I know oh so well.

SARAH. They wanted to kill me for it. They still do. I have had to change my name,

my identity. Cover all my tracks.

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ANTONIUS. Your existence has embarrassed their story.

SARAH. I know. Their pure unsullied deity story.

ANTONIUS. Yes.

SARAH. (laughs) (looks, shakes head at Antonius) (laughs some more)

It's crazy isn't it? I mean, I'm the real thing. I'm his daughter. And they want to kill meand obliterate me from history for the sake of their story.

ANTONIUS. Some live for stories alone. Some said your father was pure light and lots

believed it. Multitudes now believe that kind of story material is true beyond true andhave lived their whole lives for it and it alone.

SARAH. And where do real human beings fit into this?

ANTONIUS. As far as I can see, they don't.

SARAH. People like stories better than reality.

ANTONIUS. Yes. And even nonfiction is story. I found this out when I was writing

intelligence reports. If it was a good story it got attention.

SARAH. I have wondered over and over where all of this is coming to.

ANTONIUS. You mean of stories being more important than people?

SARAH. No, this whole new religion thing. My father becoming a god. People killingpeople over it.

ANTONIUS. (Sighs) I don't know. These things often run their course. It may all dieout in a few years.

SARAH. Or, it could go on for a millennium or two. Don't you wonder what that would

be like?

ANTONIUS. There is something about this new religion that you may not realize. It

owns no territory, but it has become as powerful as a nation. With no geographicalclaim, it has grown to have the influence of an empire.

SARAH. Like your Roman Empire?

ANTONIUS. Yes. Exactly. I can only think of one other example of this. Do you

know about the Buddhists?

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daughter Cleopatra Selene was queen of our Kingdom of Mauritania and a female leader

in her own right.

SARAH. I know about them. Cleopatra Selene died about the time my mother was

born.

ANTONIUS. Yes. And now your mother is gone. It may be centuries, maybe

millennia, before powerful female leadership returns.

SARAH. Maybe more than you I have been aware of everything slipping backward into

our primitive beastly past.

ANTONIUS. Oh, Sarah. It never goes completely back. Every brief enlightened timecontributes to progress.

SARAH. Something to hope for.

ANTONIUS. You may not know this, but a thousand years before Cleopatra there was a

woman ruler of Egypt named Hatshepsut. She paved the way for Cleopatra to rule like atrue queen.

SARAH. You know, it may come as a surprise to you, but I too knew of Hatshepsut.

My father studied Egyptian medicine, but my mother studied Egyptian art and history.

ANTONIUS. Oh, yes! I did know that. It had completely slipped my mind. Old age. I

am getting like that. But now I recall that your mother knew medicine, too.

SARAH. In Gaul she worked as a midwife and a healer.

ANTONIUS. And did quite well for herself.

SARAH. Yes. And we did not live in a cave like they are starting to say now.

ANTONIUS. I know. But she went to the cave often for its healing water.

SARAH. Yes. We lived in a small house near it. It was not that she believed that thewater had any special powers. She needed a source of clean water. When people are ill it

can be fatal to give them dirty water. Water from the cave was clean for them to drink

and my mother mixed her medicines with it.

ANTONIUS. As you know, our Roman governments have gone to great lengths to

provide people with clean water.

SARAH. Yes, I have seen your aqueducts. But in rural Gaul one must use what nature

provides.

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ANTONIUS. Your mother learned much of her healing arts from your father.

SARAH. Yes. She said he taught her. And she helped him when he was alive andlearned from that. But after that she kept on learning wherever she was.

ANTONIUS. She was good. She had a good reputation.

SARAH. People were grateful. They brought food, clothes, even gold. We were never

hungry and always had reasonable clothes.

ANTONIUS. You never revealed your identity I take it.

SARAH. No. At first in Gaul we thought that there might come a time. But it keptgetting worse. So I was always the Egyptian slave.

ANTONIUS. And your dark complexion helped.

SARAH. Yes.

ANTONIUS. Your mother also was dark. But not so obvious.

SARAH. Yes.

ANTONIUS. She claimed to be of the Tribe of Benjamin.

SARAH. I don't know if she ever did. People assumed.

ANTONIUS. From military intelligence reports I understand that only the tribes

Ephraim, Manassah, and Benjamin came out of Egypt with your Moses. The other tribeswere Canaanites who had converted.

SARAH. I don't know. You studied these things.

ANTONIUS. I don't know. But it might explain your Egyptian complexion.

SARAH. Or it might not.

ANTONIUS. Of course. I've always been curious about that supernatural thing.

SARAH. You mean my father returning from the dead?

ANTONIUS. Yes.

SARAH. I don't know. I only asked my mother once. She didn't want to talk about it.

ANTONIUS. And she never said anything about it?

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SARAH. Never.

ANTONIUS. Well, what do you think?

SARAH. What do I think?

ANTONIUS. Yes.

SARAH. I decided it didn't happen. When I was a little girl I sometimes wished that he

could come back and talk to me. Later I realized the implications.

ANTONIUS. Which were?

SARAH. That if my father might have been some kind of unnatural being that could

come back from the dead, that might make me some kind of freak.

ANTONIUS. That's interesting.

SARAH. My life was strange enough without that. Pretending to be my mother's

servant. Knowing people might kill me simply because of who I was.

ANTONIUS. But the deception worked.

SARAH. Yes, I managed to live so long.

ANTONIUS. Did your husband know?

SARAH. He knew. But my children don't.

ANTONIUS. And all those who came to Gaul and knew are now gone.

SARAH. There weren't many. Mary, my grandmother...

ANTONIUS. Mary your grandmother? Your father's mother?

SARAH. Yes.

ANTONIUS. Did she come with you on the boat?

SARAH. They couldn't leave her behind. They were all of her family.

ANTONIUS. That's what I though. But there was confusion.

SARAH. The confusion of several Marys hid her identity. She went north when I was

still a child, and I never saw her again. I heard that she died in civitas Carnotum.

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ANTONIUS. And the others?

SARAH. Arimathea's ship was large. Besides my mother Mary there were Mary wife of

Clopas, Martha of Bethany, Maximin, and Lazarus. And of course there was Arimathea

and some of the crew. We all got off of his boat at the trading settlement of Oppidum-R.Two or three others from Galilee who were in Gaul and came later knew of my mother

and me.

ANTONIUS. And they never told.

SARAH. I'm sure.

ANTONIUS. And the ethnic diversity of southern Gaul was ideal for hiding. Jewish

towns. Egyptian towns. Greek towns. Celtic towns. Our new Roman colonies.

SARAH. Yes. Hiding in plain sight. We blended into the diversity.

ANTONIUS. And what are you going to do now?

SARAH. Now that I have fulfilled my pledge to my mother?

ANTONIUS. Yes.

SARAH. I have a limited healing practice. People need me.

ANTONIUS. (points) Oh, there's your "car."

SARAH. Are you mocking my terminology, Tony?

ANTONIUS. Oh, I would never do that, Sarah.

SARAH. You would. But what if everyone called a carpentum a car? Then it would not

sound strange or funny to you.

ANTONIUS. No it wouldn't, and "cars" would be everywhere.

SARAH. And they would be pulled by moonbeams. Didn't you tell me a story like that

when I was very young?

ANTONIUS. Yes. I remember. I had just come from Alexandria. My friend Hero had

shown me his metal engine self-powered by steam.

SARAH. And you said it could some day pull a carpentum.

ANTONIUS. A "car."

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SARAH. Have it your way. Anyway mine is waiting. I must go.

ANTONIUS. Good bye, uh, Potita. You've given me a morning like no other.

SARAH. Every morning is a morning like no other. Good bye, Tony.(Sarah begins to exit stage, turns, waves)

Stay healthy and happy.

END

Uri Ulysses Hilliard

Rocky River, OhioAugust 2011

sarah and tony one morning

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