IN EREBUS
By
Troy Riser

A One-Act, Blank Verse Closet Play

For Maggie and Jacob

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ERINNA
AGIAS
TOLMIDES
BASIAS
THIA
CLETUS
SILANUS
CHORUS

CHORUS: The ashen ground glows red in places
But we feel no pain from the heat, not yet,
And the smoke blotting our sight
Bears no burning smell or noxious bite;
Smoke but not smoke, fire but not fire,
This muddy river and we unfortunates
Turned away by raving Charonitis,
A fierce, wild-eyed, wizened immortal
Who beat our shades away from the raft
For lack of lucre, a single Obol
Simply placed in our dead mouth at burial;
A common coin uncommonly valued here
At the bottom of the world, in Erebus.

AGIAS: This is not at all what I expected,
Rejected not for gross immorality
But the parsimony of the Persians
Who will buy but not bury mercenaries
Much less furnish Greek ghosts passage
On hard Charon's infernal ferry.

CHORUS: O Daughter of Tethys and Oceanus,
Mother of Bia, give us Bia's strength;
Mother of Cratos, empower us
To wait for our time, whatever length;
Mother of Nice, Nice is victorious—

AGIAS: --Mother of Zelus, Zelus is zealous
And I am jealous; he will never die,
Would I he and he I.

SILANUS: Watch what you say here!
A profane slip of a soldier's tongue
Could be construed a grievous wrong.

AGIAS: You be silent, Silanus, so adept
Telling others the mind of Providence;
' Go with Cyrus!' this so-called soothsayer said,
Convincing Clearchus and the rest of us
To follow a long-haired star where it led
To Cunaxa, five hundred stadia
From Babylon, far from home, where we died--
His augury missing this crucial line.

SILANUS: Once a religious man, priest of Apollo,
I look to the River: inscrutable
With beauty measured asymmetrically,
Opposite of fertile Euphrates,
Ice cold eddies and whispering current
Running an unswerving, unnatural course
Seven times around this dead kingdom
However far seven times may be
Within the infinite boundary
Enclosing this bower of Persephone
Where our suffering is relentless boredom
And colorless gray monotony.
I was (I am) a visionary
And yes I foretold a Greek victory;
Unmistakable meaning declared itself
In the convolutions of the intestines
And the shapes of the stones in the craw
And I agonize, Agias, wondering
If our misfortune is divinely caused
Or came from me, my too-human blundering.

AGIAS: Though I cannot vouch for these others,
General Clearchus, me, and the rest
Gambled badly in a contest of brothers
And thanks to you thought our efforts blessed;
Two human errors compounded by a third
When we took a Persian at his word,
Attributing to His Royal Person
Nobility of his brother's stature,
Knowing little of Artaxerxes
And his unforgetting, unforgiving nature.

SILANUS: I saw myself a new Zoroaster
In the court of a new Persian ruler,
No longer a ragged diviner
Disclosing hidden underground rivers
With a willow switch in a common field.

AGIAS: Cyrus died
Discontented with a solitary end,
Taking with him a lion's pride
Of Greek officers and Persian countrymen.

TOLMIDES: Enough of this aimless banter, Captain;
Were we not
Are we not honorable men?

BASIAS: Before speaking, Tolmides, look around;
We are not all of us men of honor;
Some of us--like that child yonder--are not men
And some, like you and I, have no honor.
TOLMIDES: And who are you, sir, to address me this way?
(These damnable robes show no distinction.)
As a man of the people I saw people all day
And your features spark no recognition.

BASIAS: Never 'sir,' titles make me nervous;
I am Basias, formerly of Sparta;
My master was General Lysander,
Instrumental to Athenian surrender,
And I remember you, Tolmides, your visits.

TOLMIDES: Lysander was a great man, for a Spartan,
But no one can question my breeding
Forgetting the face of a kitchen slave.

BASIAS: You were a glutton, you think of kitchens.

TOLMIDES: I have never been addressed this way,
That is, by one of your lowly station.

BASIAS: The master complained often of you
And those other fawning Athenians:
'Oily pigs who profit by disaster
Rooting in the ruins of a once great House
Begging slops of the man who burned it.'

TOLMIDES: I must be in Hades already, not the other;
No need to even cross this stinking river.

BASIAS: No Blessed Isle for Tolmides;
This a place suited for one such as him
And maybe for me by the look of things.
In life I kept my disbelief hidden
For the sake of pious Lysander,
Knowing in my heart Olympus a myth
And an afterlife? Hopeful rumor.
I believed in the pure truth of logic
And the bright brief life of humanity
Like any good human story, ended.

SILANUS: Be still, Basias! Do you want them to hear?

BASIAS: And now I find myself in Erebus
Surrounded by dead, would-be masters
On a burning bank heaped with grisly ashes
And suffer the skewed, mocking geometry
The unreality of this dreamlike place
Wondering what manner of mind conceives it?

AGIAS: Quiet, Basias, you talk too long
And I can wait no longer, never forever,
For a way across this frigid river;
I am, though intangible, still a Captain,
Thus we have semblance of organization;
All we need now is a workable plan.

BASIAS: You made me forget for a moment, Captain;
I felt the memory of my spine bending
And the ghost features of my face slacken
From habit to a subservient mask;
It will take long practice, I think,
For me to be free absolutely.

TOLMIDES: Even in death we find certain forms
In this drab, disconsolate hereafter;
Perhaps earthly institutions are mirrored
And dead slaves, though the former, stay the latter.

BASIAS: No, you and I are equals in rank
In this hazy afterlife, this in-between;
Bits of flotsam awash on the riverbank
Indistinguishable, rarely seen.
Besides, contrary proofs are abundant:
We feel no discomfort, no physical pain,
And fear of dying here, redundant;
So without fear of pain or fear of death,
A slave goes free with his dying breath.

ERINNA: Agias, I have your workable plan
If you will consider one not by a man.
This child will pick a number through ten;
Each of us will then take a turn
Naming the figure, the nearest is the one
Elected to explore this gloomy terrain
And return to relate what he has seen.
Speak up, little girl, what is your name?
An empty countenance, dumbstricken by fear,
Her mouth shaping words we cannot hear;
Unlike us, withdrawn, unaware,
But she may not be thus forever;
Insufferable Erebus is to blame;
The soul of this child emanates innocence
While yours, you men, flaccid impotence,
And mine, I suppose, useless indignation
At such arbitrary divinity.

CHORUS: This is no place for children, true,
But the child is here, what can you do?

BASIAS: No need for number games--?

ERINNA: Erinna.

BASIAS: Your plan is hastily built but good.
I nominate myself to go look around,
See what marks this monotonous ground;
I may not be Greek but I am curious.

(Exit BASIAS)

AGIAS: See to the child, Erinna, she awakens
But her crying proves a distraction
And I need to think, a difficult thing
When accustomed to unthinking action.

TOLMIDES: Myself, I prefer silence to a scream
And the company of children never.

ERINNA: There, girl, there, do not shy from my touch
Because human kindness is little known here
And cruel human bitterness, too much.

CHORUS: This is a time for deep reflection,
So pacify the child, good woman,
That we may ponder our situation
And find a way to find redemption.

TOLMIDES: While we men plot unlikely escape
Without the aid of women or slaves.

ERINNA: Any moment, young miss, you will wake and arise
To a room filled with sunlight glowing
Incandescent and you will close your eyes,
Smelling the air, a sea breeze blowing
Away these disquieting dream memories
And go on as most do, knowing-unknowing
Through life.

SILANUS: You have my thanks, gracious Lady;
It is comforting to imagine colors
Other than this smothering, dolorous gray.

CLETUS: She is shamming, Lady; I see no tears.

SILANUS: You see no tears, what are you, dense?

AGIAS: Silanus, you are no judge of competence.

SILANUS: Do shadows weep shadow tears? Breathe shadow breath?
Are even dullards unchanged by Death?

TOLMIDES: Do not goad the yeoman, Silanus!
We know his kind, this free man, this Cletus,
Too long in the fields thinking,
Filling a bottomless reservoir
Of pent-up, misguided opinion
From which we will all soon be drinking.

CLETUS: I come from simple folks with simple ways,
Believing all in its goodly season
Until Zeus Himself, sitting high in the sky,
Struck me dead for some unknown, godly reason;
I was tending my goats on a hill
Thinking nothing specific--

SILANUS: --As you will.

CLETUS: When a terrific wind came up from the south
And the bowl of the sky, once blue, became black,
Dark as Leviathan's all-swallowing mouth;
And then I woke up here like all who die
But like you, my brothers, badly buried,
And for this I blame the woman I married
For not observing the proper rites,
Forgetting the part about money.

TOLMIDES: Call me not your brother, shepard;
The name of my father is known to me.

(Enter BASIAS)

BASIAS: And the name of your mother to all!

TOLMIDES: The slave!

AGIAS: Returned so soon?

SILANUS: Basias, What news?

BASIAS: I am as surprised as you are, Agias;
I set out in the opposite direction,
Keeping close to this grim riverbank
Which runs straight, as you can clearly see
But I come full circle, a contradiction;
Reason fails me.

SILANUS: Perhaps patience is the key.
The best action is sometimes none at all
So we do just that.

CLETUS: I'm with Silanus.
No sense upsetting Dis and Charonitis,
Let's wait and see.

ERINNA: Hold your tongue, Cletus.
You speak ahead of your mind's slow impetus.

AGIAS: Basias, tell me what you saw out there.
Was it the same as this place or better?

BASIAS: I walked but two hundred paces--I counted
But it seemed much longer: time rabbit runs
And turtle crawls in this Greek Conception;
Straight lines curve, become empty circles.

ERINNA: What was it like out there? What did you see?

BASIAS: The way was ambiguous because of smoke
Or because of me.

SILANUS: What do you mean by 'me?'

BASIAS: My eyes can no longer be trusted
Because my body is a memory
And memory is untrustworthy.

AGIAS: Give us the particulars, Basias,
We weary of your cryptic answers.

BASIAS: The smoke is nearly impenetrable
But the gloom parted in places to show
Stark patches of sandy, barren soil.
Seeing little, I relied on my ears
And soon heard hopeful, familiar noises--

ERINNA: A denial of our fears: There are others!

BASIAS: So I quickened my pace, imagining
The frantic beating of my phantom heart
And then I was here at the beginning
Where I started.

TOLMIDES: Too easily defeated,
A Helot weakness often repeated.
To prevent this sort of contretemps
Deviate, Basias, on your next attempt,
From this unnatural River's edge
And strike out for that solitary ridge,
Calling to us when you find a portal
Overlooked by picayune immortals.

BASIAS: Ask yourself, Tolmides, newly dead,
What good are titles or noble blood
On a desolate, smoldering riverbank
In a dead land, on uncommon mud?

ERINNA: Too late, Basias, do you attain stature;
Of these men, you are the most courageous
But you are a man and it is your nature
To impose reason on the outrageous.
As for me, I grow tired of waiting
For a man to decide the common good
(This robe tears easily, it would).
On your next try, Basias, go three:
You, Basias, the girl--?

THIA: Thia.

ERRINA: And me.
We will go tied together, inseparable,
Using twine unraveled from these robes;
We may not find our way out of Erebus
But as the gods are shown to be fallible
So may be the walls of our prison,
Thus our fates, seemingly fixed, are malleable.

BASIAS: If there is escape we will find it,
If not let it be said though dead we tried.

TOLMIDES: A woman, a child, a slave our salvation?

ERINNA: We are not returning, Tolmides;
You may stay here for eternity
Hoping for cruel Charon's pity
Or come with us, tethered together, true,
But unbound by the will of divinity.

AGIAS: I will join you also, Erinna.

TOLMIDES: A man like you, Captain of Greek infantry,
Following the lead of a Lesbian?

AGIAS: Erinna's scheme is better than mine
Since I had none.

CHORUS: Mighty Zeus must have heard
A blasphemy we forgot about
Or saw a secret crime go unrepented;
We belong here in blighted Erebus,
Miserable, bored, discontented,
Resigned to the fate allotted us.
We stay together in painful unity
Faithful to the end to our religion
Even if 'to the end' means eternity
Condemned to this fearful region.

TOLMIDES: I will go with you others, Basias,
If only to hold your tenuous leash.

CHORUS: You too, Tolmides?

CLETUS: Not just him, me.
I may not know much about the gods
But they gave me ears to hear and eyes to see
And brains big enough to know a joke
When the joke is on me.

ERINNA: Too much talk,
Let our feet do our speaking for us
And get away from this off-key chorus.
Better to follow our animal natures
Than endure Erebus as trusting statues.

(Exeunt ERINNA, BASIAS, THIA, CLETUS, and TOLMIDES)

AGIAS: What of you Silanus? Will you join us?
We have been through much together, we two,
And though angry at first, stuck in Erebus,
My resentment, like my corpse, has cooled.

SILANUS: I must stay, good Agias, but not for
The sake of uncertain salvation;
I will wait for years, a thousand or more,
To receive some kind of explanation.

(Enter TOLMIDES)

TOLMIDES: Agias, you must hasten your entreaty!
The others grow impatient and I anxious
For I am in the minority!

(Exit TOLMIDES)

SILANUS: Go on, then, my Arcadian friend,
You are needed but not here in Erebus;
You are a hopeful sort, knowing no end,
While I? I feel the need for penance.

(Exit AGIAS)

CHORUS: We knew you would stay, good Silanus,
Because you are a priest of Apollo
And He would never lead you to leave us.

SILANUS: The others know not truly where they go,
Only knowing they go far from Erebus
To places maybe not so hospitable.

CHORUS: So wait with us, good Silanus, and pray
The gods overlook Erinna's transgression
And notice only our heartfelt piety,
The purity of our intentions,
Our steadfastness, our humility—

SILANUS: Your unmitigated futility.
Penance enough! Erinna, wait for me!
I steeled myself for suffering not
The sufferance of this star-crossed lot.
I would rather wander lost with little hope
Than stay with this hapless chorus of none.

(Exit SILANUS)

FINIS

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