The Slate

by Irving A. Greenfield (PhD)

ACT I

SCENE 1

SETTING: A windowless room with eight chairs set in a circle.

AT THE RISE: Elderly men enter the room singly or in twos and take their accustomed places. Two of them use canes. A young man and a younger woman also take their usual places.

STEVEN
I have two announcements: I won’t be here next week and CYNTHIA will take over the session; and secondly, there’s a good chance that we might be moved to a conference room on the first floor.

JERRY
Does it have windows?

STEVEN
I think so.

IRA
Think doesn’t count. You can think a window but if it’s not there, it’s not there.

STEVEN
I’ll find out about the windows.
(pause)
Any other comments?
(pause)
Let’s get started.

(The men are silent.)

STEVEN
No one?

MARIO
There’s something in the newspaper about a guy pretending he’s someone else.

STEVEN
How does that make you feel?

MARIO
(pause)
I don’t know. It’s a newspaper article. Why would a guy do something like that? I mean, he wasn’t in ‘Nam. So why should he claim –

PAUL
He needs a life.

STEVEN
How do you guys feel about that?

JERRY
I don’t feel anything. If the guy wants to be Napoleon, that’s his problem. Besides, don’t all of us play-act now and then?

PAUL
This is different.

STEVEN
What do you mean, different?

PAUL
By claiming he was there, he’s taking something that isn’t his to take.

SETH
He’s wearing “borrowed robes,” to quote Shakespeare.

CYNTHIA
What do you think those “borrowed robes” give him?

JERRY
(with a laugh)
His jollies.

PAUL
It’s a weird way of getting them.

JERRY
There are jollies, and then there are jollies.

PAUL
Status. He wants to be part of –

IRA
What happened in Nam; what the guys experienced there.

JERRY
That’s just fuckin’ sick. The same with us. Who’d want to claim he was in Korea?
(beat)
The guy would have to be off his rocker.

(General agreement.)

SETH
(moves nervously on his chair)
I was never in Korea.

(Absolute silence.)

SETH
That’s the truth.

STEVEN
Do you want to talk about it?

SETH
(clears his throat)
I lied.

JERRY
Not good enough.

RALPH
(pointing his cane at SETH)
You’re trying something, aren’t you?
(pause)
You want to test us.

STEVEN
(looking at SETH)
Are you joking?

SETH
Sadly, I was never more serious.

JERRY
Then all of your stories about –

SETH
Lies.

PAUL
(nervously rubbing his hands on his knees)
I don’t like this.
(beat)
I’m upset. I’m really very upset.

SETH
So am I.
(pause)
I’m trying desperately hard to control myself. It’s taken me years to come to this moment.

JERRY
(angrily)
You conned us.

STEVEN
What’s the group’s feeling about being conned?

RALPH
Fuck the group’s feelings. I know what my feelings are.

STEVEN
(nodding)
Tell us.

RALPH
(with intense anger)
All the time, he was laughing at us.

SETH
(softly)
Never.

RALPH
(with extreme disgust)
I believe you like I believe pigs have wings.

SETH
(shrugs, and takes a few moments to look at each of the men)
I’ll leave if you want me to.

STEVEN
(to the group)
Do you want him to leave?

(None of the men answer him.)

STEVEN
Then he stays, and maybe we can find out –

RALPH
Who the fuck he really is? Yeah, that’s what I want to know. Who he is? The guy with the fancy college degrees. A Ph.D. to bamboozle us, to cheat us. Yeah, I want him to stay. And like they say in movies, I want him to sing like a fuckin’ canary.

STEVEN
You’re really very angry, aren’t you?

RALPH
I trusted him. All of us trusted him. There was something special about him.
(beat)
Special shit!

MARIO
(softly, while looking at SETH)
Why?

PAUL
Borrowed robes.

MARIO
Let him tell us.

SETH
(with a long drawn out sigh)
At first it was “borrowed robes.” It helped me get my first job. The guy asked me if I was a Korean vet. I said I was. Then he asked, “See any action?” I knew the answer he wanted to hear, and I gave it to him: “Yeah, with the Marines up at the Frozen Chosin.” I got the job. It was with the Edward’s Employment Agency, on Warren Street.

IRA
But you weren’t even a Marine. You were in the Army.

SETH
I’d switch from one to the other, depending upon to whom I was speaking.
(beat)
When I was younger, I had a photographic memory. I read everything I could get my hands on about the Korean War, even the Government Battle Reports. Chapter and verse. I knew where the units were and who commanded them.

RALPH
Yeah, he did. I remember I was on a the bus with him going crosstown and there was this guy sitting across from us with a cap that said “Korea” on it.
(pause)
And Seth and the guy have this conversation about where they were. I swear anyone who heard them would have believed every word.

STEVEN
(looking at SETH)
You didn’t have to do it. You weren’t trying to get a job?

SETH
It became a kind of a game. I was telling a story that someone wanted to hear.

MARIO
But you were lying.

SETH
No. I was telling a story, and the story was real to me.

IRA
But it wasn’t real.

SETH
It became real over time, so real that sometimes I’d get choked up and actually cry.

RALPH
You were acting. It wasn’t fuckin’ real.

SETH
(with emotion)
It was very real to me. It was my story and I felt and lived every part of it in my head.

JERRY
That’s sick.

SETH
All of us have stories. We hear them here. How much of those stories are real, and how much is made up to –

RALPH
It’s not the same.

SETH
You’re right. It’s not the same.

RALPH
Yours was a game, and you held all of the cards. You always won, had a full house. We have nothing, nada, niente. Only the heartache that we barely can speak about.

SETH
(brushing away tears with the back of his hand)
You’re right.
(in a choked voice)
But I never really had anything. Deep down I knew what I was doing.

CYNTHIA
What I’m hearing is that once you started, you couldn’t stop because the story took on a life of its own.

SETH
Something like that.

CYNTHIA
But you knew you were lying.

SETH
It was a story.
(pause)
I almost believed it. The line between truth and fiction became very thin, and sometimes didn’t exist at all.

JERRY
You said you had a dark side. Is this part of it?

SETH
I guess so. I’ve kept it hidden for sixty years.
(pause)
I couldn’t do that anymore, especially here with you guys. I couldn’t continue to take what was yours.
(weeping)
I’m sorry.

RALPH
Why now?

SETH
MARIO mentioned the article in the newspaper.
(pause)
I knew the time had come for me to – –

RALPH
To tell the truth.

SETH
(nods)
Something like that.

RALPH
I’m not buying it. A guy doesn’t fold that easily, not after sixty years of spilling out bullshit.

STEVEN
Does anyone else feel the same way as RALPH?

JERRY
He spilled his guts out. What more –

RALPH
Lots more. Sure, he’s hurting. I’m not deaf and blind. But I’m not fuckin’ softhearted either. There’s more. I know that and so does he.

STEVEN
Is there more, SETH?

SETH
(nodding)
There’s more. But it’s not what RALPH thinks it is.
(pause, ignoring RALPH)
It’s getting toward that time when the slate has to be cleaned. When certain things have to be jettisoned.
(pause)
Not for religious puposes. All of you know I’m an athiest. But when my time come I want to die a clean death, a good death with nothing that I wanted to say left unsaid, and nothing that I wanted to do left undone. So. I began here to clean my slate.

(Lights go to black.)

Irving Greenfield was born and raised in Brooklyn. At college he switched from a Science major to an English major. His time in the military resulted in his novel Fort Bliss. He is now completing a novel about his time in the Army and the HUAC.