Waiting for Gorilla, Act I

A Ugandan hill. A tree. Morning.

Rahul, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before.

Enter Meg.

RAHUL:
(giving up again). Nothing to be done.

MEG:
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Rahul, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (She broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Rahul.) So there you are again.

RAHUL:
Am I?

MEG:
I'm glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.

RAHUL:
Me too.

MEG:
Together again at last! We'll have to celebrate this. But how? (She reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.

RAHUL:
(irritably). Not now, not now.

MEG:
When I think of it . . . all these years . . . but for me . . . where would you be . . . (Decisively.) You'd be nothing more than a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

RAHUL:
And what of it?

MEG:
(gloomily). It's too much for one man. (Pause. Cheerfully.) On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.

RAHUL:
Ah stop blathering and help me off with this bloody thing.

MEG:
There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. (She takes off her hat again, peers inside it, feels about inside it, knocks on the crown, blows into it, puts it on again.) This is getting alarming. (Silence. Meg deep in thought, Rahul pulling at his toes.)

RAHUL:
Do you remember the story of the FAO Schwartz?

MEG:
Yes.

RAHUL:
Shall I tell it to you?

MEG:
No.

RAHUL:
It'll pass the time. (Pause.) I was a small child, I had just seen the Sigourney Weaver movie about Dian Fossey, fell in love with the silverback. One—

MEG:
Silver what?

RAHUL:
Silverback. Name was Digit. Two fingers fused together. King of his family. Only creature hairier than me. Was supposed to have been saved but was.. . (he searches for the contrary of saved) . . . damned.

MEG:
Saved from what?

RAHUL:
Poachers. Hell.

MEG:
I'm going.
(She does not move.)

RAHUL:
And yet . . . (pause) . . . how is it –this is not boring you I hope– I had seen the movie and then was taken to FAO Schwartz, as I had been every year, to choose one toy for Christmas. And when I arrive, in the stuffed animals department, there is Digit, life-size, plush.

MEG:
(with exaggerated enthusiasm). I find this really most extraordinarily interesting.

RAHUL:
I choose him. He costs $500. My parents say no. I am angry. Wailing. Thrashing. Sobbing. I will never take him home. I will be crushed. I was six years old.

MEG:
That movie with Sigourney Weaver. The one you watched. With Digit. That came out in 1988. You were thirteen.

RAHUL:
What?

MEG:
Thirteen. When this toy store meltdown happened. Six months away from high school.

RAHUL:
(Pauses). People are bloody, ignorant apes.

(He rises painfully, goes limping to extreme left, halts, gazes into distance off with his hand screening his eyes, turns, goes to extreme right, gazes into distance. Meg watches him, then goes and picks up the boot, peers into it.)

RAHUL:
Pah!

(He spits. Meg moves to center, halts with her back to audience.)

MEG:
Charming spot. (She turns, advances to front, halts facing audience.) Inspiring prospects. (She turns to Rahul.) Let's go.

RAHUL:
We can't.

MEG:
Why not?

RAHUL:
We're waiting for Gorilla.

--rahul