Oedipus: A New Version

ELLEN MCLAUGHLIN

          (A naked child is lying in the fetal position, his back to the audience.)

VOICE:

Here is the riddle, mortals:

What is this thing?

It moves on four legs in the morning

Two at noon

And three at evening.

The answer is as close as breath.

Tell me or die. One by one.

Tell me and die. One by one.

I eat ignorance.

One, two, four, three, two, three, one, four . . .

(A cry. The Sphinx's? Oedipus'? A singular, piercing cry of woe becomes a muted communal lament as the Chorus enter from different sides and obscure the naked child. Dawn.)

CHORUS

Save us. We suffer.

Save us. We are dying.

Save us. We walk in confusion.

Save us. We are blinded by fear.

Save us. Save us.

(Oedipus appears. Silence.)

OEDIPUS

Citizens! You know me.

My people, my children. I was not sleeping. I cannot sleep.

I close my eyes and the multitudes of the suffering press around me in the darkness. You are always with me. I feel your mingled breath on my cheeks, your uncaught tears on my chest and face. And the smell of the pyres finds me where I lie. I open my eyes and stare into the blackness and think, now, now, now, someone is suffering.

So I have come out alone to meet you in the dark.

Rise up, my friends.

Speak to me. Tell me of your woe.

CHORUS

O, King. We are frightened.

The ship of Thebes is ghosting in alien waters.

She is silent, her sails tattered.

No one is left on the tilted empty deck.

We are dying in the red waves.

We have done all we can:

Sacrificed and prayed.

Atoned for what sins we know.

Even now, hordes of the lost kneel at temples across the city.

We cling to the altars, like sailors to splinters from a wreck.

Blinded by the smoke of our own pyres.

Hands empty, we reach toward nothingness.

We are suppliants to the silence that lies beyond us.

We beg without knowledge of what is killing us.

Beg until our voices close in raw silence.

But still.

But still.

But still.

The plague stalks us, ravaging the city,

And death is everywhere.

The bodies of men, women, and children lie like lumber hastily stacked for burning.

Every day, more die, faster than we have time to mourn them.

And still the pestilence swings wide and blind. Nothing escapes the compass of it. The hills are silent. Birds fall from the sky and lie like so much flyblown fruit. All the animals are downed and rotting, their legs rigid, their eyes open and lightless.

In our fields, the crops curl, heads stooped to the gray earth. Every wind rattles the black stalks. Mothers, in agony, bear corpses. After their labors, they hear only silence, and look upon the curled stones they have delivered in pain.

OEDIPUS

This is what I feared. This is what I knew.

CHORUS

O King. You are the greatest of men.

You are the one who saved us.

It was you who answered, “It is man,” to the Sphinx and freed us from her. We remember how it was before you came to us. Still hear her awful scream of prey as she fell upon us one by one. It was you, the Stranger, who released us from the darkness of that terrible time and led us into the light. It was your courage, it was your brilliant mind, that shifted the stone from the black cave we were trapped in. We know you now. We know your strength and power.

Speak to the darkness once more.

Free us again.

OEDIPUS

My children. I see all.

Each of you stands in the single light of your own catastrophe.

I am the night sky. Every burning star exists in me.

A mass of searing pain, countless shining, spinning torments.

My night mind has wandered over all the paths to find a cure.

And I have already acted.

I sent Creon, my brother-in-law and most trusted statesman.

I sent him in my stead to Delphi

to ask the god Apollo what I must do to save my city.

Every day that has gone by has been torture.

I pace this palace like a limping lion.

Watching the light edge across the floor of my cage.

I shift and turn, waiting, impatient, for action.

And always the smoke curls through the bars to find me,

the smoke of the burning bodies of my own people as they die one by one, day after day.

It is agony.

It is agony.

CHORUS

Here, here, we are released from doubt.

He is coming, King.

At last.

And he smiles, look he smiles.

(Creon enters.)

CREON

Good news! All will be well!

OEDIPUS

What do you mean? How can that be?

CREON

Shall we go inside? You cannot wish to discuss this in the open.

OEDIPUS

Why not? Anything you have to say affects everyone here.

I am not for secrets.

CREON

In the presence of all these people?

OEDIPUS

In the presence of all.

CREON

I had thought to speak to you alone.

OEDIPUS

No, say it to all of us.

I share their suffering. They will share the truth, whatever it is. Mine is not a solitary fate.

CREON

All right. If that is how you want it done.

Apollo has spoken.

He says,

“There is a corruption.

Seek it and drive it out.”

OEDIPUS

But we know this. Corruption. We feel it.

Does the god give us no more help than this?

CREON

It is a man.

OEDIPUS

It is a man?

CREON

It is blood.

It was a murder. A murder long buried in the body of the state. At last, after festering for years, the poison has broken to the surface and it wracks the body. It kills us now.

OEDIPUS

What murder? When? Who was the killer?

CREON

It happened before you came here.

Our late king Laius was murdered.

OEDIPUS

I never knew Laius, never saw him, only knew him dead.

CREON

It is his killer who must be found.

He is the corruption.

OEDIPUS

But that was years ago. Nothing was done at the time? How are those ancient footprints to be traced?

CREON

He is here. In Thebes .

Apollo said it:

“What is neglected lies obscure yet never loses power.

But whatever is sought can be found.”

He is here. Born of this soil, he stands on it still.

OEDIPUS

The man lives? He is among us?

Tell me of this crime. Where did it happen?

CREON

It was the time of the Sphinx. A time of riddling death and confusion. Laius went out from the city to seek Apollo's voice, just as you have had me do. He never returned. Nor did his train of followers.

oedipus

There were no survivors? No one who saw this?

CREON

Only one. A slave. And he was so terrified by what he saw that his only wish was to slip away into obscurity and silence.

OEDIPUS

But he must have been questioned. What did he say?

CREON

His terror destroyed his mind. He could remember nothing.

OEDIPUS

Nothing?

CREON

There was only one thing he said he could be sure of.

OEDIPUS

Anything, even the smallest detail, would be better than nothing.

What was the thing he could remember?

CREON

That there were many. Many killers. They fell upon the king's procession, he said, like a hail storm upon a stand of wheat.

OEDIPUS

But killers, a killer, would never attack a royal train alone. No, there must have been real power, here, compelling the crime. No one works singly. The murder of a king is never uncomplicated by larger designs.

CREON

There was talk of this at the time. But we were sunk in confusion. It was chaos.

OEDIPUS

I don't understand you. Your king had been murdered. No investigation could be more important. How could you let the trail go cold for all these years?

CREON

The Sphinx was on us then. We could see no further than her blinding, killing riddle. Until you came and delivered us. And then we were happy to forget.

OEDIPUS

Then it is for me to bring this thing to light.

A killer lives.

Wherever he is, he is a menace.

He is a shadow lurking in wait.

I will bring him to light.

Not just for my city but for myself as well.

A man who could kill a king and go unpunished

Could kill another.

Laius' blood sings to my own.

I will start at the beginning, all alone.

It is time, long past time, to seek the truth.

This city shall not die of ignorance.

Arise, my people, and pray.

Live in hope.

I am here.

The hunt is on.

Whatever is sought can be found.

(He exits into the palace. Creon exits.)

CHORUS

A killer stalks the desperate city.

A monster, unpunished, lives in our midst.

We must drive him out.

We will do our work. It has been shown to us.

But, oh gods, we are not equal to all.

We are only mortal,

and the darkness of our time has overcome us.

Look down upon us.

See the harrowing woe of all we suffer now.

Death breeding death. Confusion and horror.

Pity us. We can only do so much.

Help us.

O Shining Ones, we call to you:

We sing to the holy siblings,

Athena, Artemis and Apollo

Ringed with light

Ringed with immortality

Holy ones

We beg you.

Save our city.

She is clenched in the black jaws of our savage time.

Those who still live beseech you.

There is a god we cannot honor, though he is

in your number.

He is the god the gods would exile from their midst.

Ares, god of war, Ares, the ruthless, it is Ares who has visited this plague upon us.

We hear his voice in the roar of the funeral pyres.

He screams there.

He is dreadful.

Sower of havoc.

Great is man, able of mind, heroic and subtle.

He comprehends the waking world and orders it.

He can be good, he can be great.

But two things even man cannot outstare.

Pestilence and war.

In these Ares resides.

The god of war breeds chaos and butchery.

Unleashes anarchy in minds and bodies.

He stokes the fires of madness, fans the flames of brutality. He plunders peace, lays waste to joy.

The voice of human reason cannot be heard above his howls for blood.

The mind of man is helpless against him.

It is Ares, the god, Ares, the ravager, who plagues us.

O Shining Ones, he is too much for us.

Unseat him, pluck him from his throne and hurl him sprawling through the depths of air

until his scream dies forever.

Man is staggering under his iron weight of woe.

Drive him out.

Drive him out.

Drive him out.

He is accursed though he is holy.

He is holy but accursed.

He is accursed though he is holy.

Drive him out.

(Oedipus enters.)

OEDIPUS

I hear your prayers and they move me.

And now I've come to ask you to join me in lifting this sickness from our beloved city.

I came as a stranger to this country. I knew nothing of your king's death when I entered this valley for the first time, alone, to meet the Sphinx.

But this I cannot do alone. I will need your help.

Each of you is the vessel of the history of your city.

One of you knows the truth.

Where is the murderer?

Tell me.

(Silence.)

Let him who knows speak.

Who is the murderer?

(Silence.)

I will not harm the one who speaks. Even he who did this.

All he will receive in return for this knowledge is banishment, unharmed. He will go with a king's thanks. Though he has blood on his hands, he will merely leave us.

That is all I ask.

Who is the man?

(Silence.)

Whoever did this thing, whoever lives silent, his crime now poisoning this city, let him know this: He will find no shelter here, nothing will be given to him, no one will pray for him.

He has no recourse here, he is accursed.

I drive him out, comfortless, into eternal exile.

He is the disease. He is the corruption.

I speak for Apollo. I speak for my city. I speak this for myself.

As far as I cast my eye, even on the clearest day, my power is absolute. I will find him out. He can no longer shelter in shameful obscurity.

The light of my eyes is searching and, like an eagle, I will plummet down upon him unsuspecting.

My justice is wide.

Whoever he is, I curse him.

Let his days be cruel, burning in nullity and under the lash of hatred. Let his life be long and terrible, leached of any human happiness. Let him find kindness nowhere.

And if I unwittingly sheltered this man, if I have ever offered him comfort, however unknowingly, let this curse fall on me.

Let me suffer what I demand in justice. The curse is complete and knows no rank or border. The curse is eternal and binding, no matter where it falls. Let it pursue the guilty unto the gates of hell itself.

A king! A king was murdered!

How could a single citizen sleep while this killer slunk free?

I walk that king's very halls, sleep in his bed, share his queen, planted the seed of my children in the same furrow where he could have planted his. I live in his shadow, sleep within the echo of the footsteps of his unquiet ghost. I will fight for him. Fight for him as if he were my own father. I will see all. I will know all.

Nothing will stop me.

CHORUS

O King. May I speak? Your curse has emboldened me.

OEDIPUS

Speak. What do you know?

CHORUS

I know that I was not the murderer. I know that I do not know who was. But Apollo does. He must. Why should we not ask the god to reveal him?

OEDIPUS

The gods have given me my orders. They need not give me anything else. No one can force the gods to say more than they choose.

CHORUS

Might I speak again?

OEDIPUS

Again and again. I am open to all counsel.

CHORUS

If we cannot speak to Apollo himself, might we speak to one who hears him? I'm thinking of Tiresias, whose eyes were blasted blind by the fire of the divine. He withstood that blaze and now he hears the god speaking. Might he be questioned?

OEDIPUS

I have thought of this already and have called for him. Called for him twice. I am not used to being ignored when I command.

CHORUS

Look, King, he comes at last.

See, see, he is ageless, majestic and awesome.

Woman and man both, nothing human is alien to him.

Yet though he is mortal, the divine rings in his ears.

The voice of god hammers in the blackness of his skull and sounds him like a bell.

With his sightless eyes he stares directly into eternity.

(Tiresias has entered. Silence.)

OEDIPUS

O Tiresias. You are master of mysteries.

You alone can untie the dreadful knot of our terrible time.

Your ears are licked by the flames of blazing divinity.

Your eyes, dead to the passing world, are open to the immortal. You see the truth.

You know the agony of your city,

you can feel it singing in your own bones.

We have heard Apollo and he has told us:

Bring the murderers of Laius forward into the light and cast them out.

O Tiresias,

Muster all your mystical gifts.

Let the great work, the noblest work, be yours today.

No undertaking can be more sublime than to help others.

Spare nothing in your city's aid.

We are in your hands.

Do what only you can do.

Rescue your city.

(Silence.)

TIRESIAS

It is a curse. To know too much.

Why did I forget this?

I should never have come.

OEDIPUS

I don't understand you. I called for you.

I have asked you, humbly, for your aid.

What do you mean you should never have come?

TIRESIAS

Let me return to silence.

Let me go home.

I will live on, you will live on.

Leave the truth unspoken.

It would be best.

OEDIPUS

This is a strange cruelty.

This is your answer to a desperate city?

To clench your teeth against the voice of god within you?

(Silence.)

This is an obscenity.

This silence is an offense against the city that gave you birth, the very earth on which you stand.

(Silence.)

What more can you want from us?

Do you want us to kneel to you?

This we do.

(Everyone kneels.)

We kneel to you, mortal prophet, we bow in supplication.

All Thebes crouches at your feet now.

We are shattered by our troubles,

We kneel in the dust of this dying city,

dust washed by the hot torrents of our own tears.

Our hands are open to you.

We beg you.

Do not turn away from us now.

A terrible mystery clutches us in its grip.

Holds us fast in torment.

In the name of the gods,

tell us what you know.

Speak.

(Silence.)

TIRESIAS

You kneel to me in ignorance.

But I will not deliver you into knowledge.

No. Never. I will not speak.

(Oedipus leaps up.)

OEDIPUS

You know and will not speak?

What hateful arrogance fuels you to refuse such frank supplication?

You'd enrage a man of stone!

You are heartless and insolent.

You have betrayed us, the dead and the living.

Speak, damned monster, speak!

TIRESIAS

I withstood the blaze of god, I can withstand this tantrum.

All I say to you, Oedipus, is: look to your own heart,

turn this fury to the source of your present pain.

I am not your scourge.

Put your own house in order before you try to dismantle another's.

OEDIPUS

You are speaking to your king. When you insult me, you insult your country. Beware.

TIRESIAS

I am not your subject, Sir, nor any man's. I belong to god.

I do not speak because there is nothing for me to say.

What will happen will happen. Truth does not need prophets.

OEDIPUS

All the more reason to speak then. If it doesn't matter what you say, what prevents you doing your king's bidding?

(Silence.)

Practice your trade, prophet. Your king commands you.

TIRESIAS

Rage, Oedipus, rage. It is useless. Wind across a wasteland.

I will not speak.

OEDIPUS

Yes, you shall have all my fury, and let the force of it wake your leaden conscience. Let it whip the dust from your buried infamy, lay it open in the air and read it in the noon day sun. This is what your shameful silence has led me to believe: It is guilt that seals your faithless mouth. A king's murder is on your eyeless head. A king's murder. Whether you raised your hand or not, you had a part in it, this I now know.

TIRESIAS

What you know, what you know. Fool. Bloodstained fool.

Ignorant as an animal of your own crime.

OEDIPUS

What? Now you slander me? You're smart enough to know what you're doing. This is outright treason. I could have you killed for that. Where is your fear?

TIRESIAS

Why should I fear you? The truth is all my safety. And I live in the shelter of it.

OEDIPUS

Who are you speaking for? Is it Creon? Whose devices are you working, twisting the truth to suit your master's needs?

TIRESIAS

Blame yourself if you must blame someone for this. I warned you not to force these words to light, but you wouldn't listen. It was you who compelled me to speak, Sir.

OEDIPUS

Then at least be clear, traitor. No more riddles.

Indict yourself and be done with it.

TIRESIAS

All right then. Listen.

This is the truth you bully me to utter, against my will:

You do not know the shame you live in. You are steeped in pollution. You swim in it, wallow in your own filth and know nothing. Nothing.

You are the corruption that has brought a curse down upon your people. Thousands have already died for your ignorance. Yes, the royal hunt is on, but you, Sir, are your own prey. You are the man you're hunting.

OEDIPUS

Say that again.

TIRESIAS

The murderer you seek is here. He is you.

(Silence.)

OEDIPUS

How dare you speak of truth? How dare you claim the protection of your rank? You know nothing of the truth. You are blind. You rattle in blackness inside your unlit skull and lie and lie. I see you for what you are at last. You live in darkness.

TIRESIAS

O, deluded king. I could almost pity you. You who have eyes, but see nothing. You who will be blind, you who will be a beggar, tapping into exile for the rest of your days. It will not be long. It will not be long before your curses shower down upon your own head. Think of me then, as I shall think of you. And smile at your dead ignorance.

OEDIPUS

Designs and deception. My eyes are adjusting to the murk of this high treason. You know nothing of god. Your only allegiance is to Creon. He is behind this, I see it now, only he could have goaded you to spew this grotesque slander. I have been a fool to trust him. He has always envied me my power. How could he not? I finally see him for what he is, with this long brewing conspiracy, his backstreet machinations. And you were always his flunky, weren't you? You stood beside him from the first, mouthing what he bid you to say. When have you ever been a true prophet? When Thebes teetered in crisis in the dark days of the Sphinx, did you come to the aid of your suffering city with all your mummery? No. You two formed a cabal to topple your country entirely with the murder of a king. I was the unexpected savior who wrecked that plan with my arrival. It was left to me, a stranger, to defend your city. I, whom you call ignorant. I alone matched my mind against the mystery. And I did it without any of your hollow sorcery and cant about god. I didn't need to disembowel birds and finger their blue guts to do what was right.

CHORUS

O King, you go too far! This is dangerous insolence!

OEDIPUS

This wanderer, from parts unknown, walked into chaos emptyhanded and defeated it with nothing but a human mind. Now, in your country's second moment of peril, the two of you seek to carry through on your original plan by fanning the flames of fear, you seed your great sorrowing city with the infection of this evil suspicion of a beloved king. But you have underestimated your city and you have underestimated me. This is where the trail of infamy ends.

Of course I have found you out. It was just a matter of time. What did you expect me to do?

TIRESIAS

Just this. What you have done. You cannot help yourself, you are what you are. You have always been a stranger, it's true. But not as you think. A stranger to yourself.

You do not know yourself, Oedipus. Even who you are.

Never having sought this knowledge, I know. You do not.

Whose son are you? Ask yourself that.

OEDIPUS

Whose son am I? What do you mean?

TIRESIAS

Today you will find out.

Today is your birth, your mother and your father.

And today you will finally meet the real stranger.

Today he will kill you.

OEDIPUS

Leave with your life, and never cross my path again. I won't waste my time with you again. I will deal with Creon, your taskmaster. You are not worthy of even the back of my hand.

TIRESIAS

I'll leave you with a riddle, King, and be gone. You're fond of riddles, and you're good at them. No one better. It is your killing gift. As you will see. Let this suffice:

What is that thing which, once born, eats its own father, then climbs back into the womb from which it came and sleeps there in bloody ignorance?

OEDIPUS

No more of your riddles, monster. Leave my sight.

TIRESIAS

I leave your sight forever, King. No, you shall never see me again. Though there will come a time when you will weep for the sight of me. Even me. But I will not come. Even you will not be able to bid me to your sight again. Nor anyone else, King.

Never again.

(He leaves.)

CHORUS

O King. This was not done well. The voice of god has left us in anger. Rage crackles in the raw air, spreading terror through the miserable streets. Now is the time for temperance and reverence. Now, more than ever, we need the tender glance of the divine. Without it we are lost in mortal turmoil and confusion.

OEDIPUS

That blind schemer has nothing to do with god and never did. He has just fooled you with his sanctimonious charades for years. We are well rid of him. It is good he has gone. Now I can think.

Rejoice, my people, your savior has returned to himself. Never again will he seek in others what he need only find in himself.

All you need of the divine is here. The mind of a leader, searching, searching, moving swift as thought, unencumbered by superstition and fear. My whole life has drawn me to this moment.

I am keen as a knife edge now, free in my knowledge.

I will act.

(He leaves.)

CHORUS

Listen to the running footsteps.

A killer runs.

In his head the blood is drumming.

“Seek him out.”

Running, running, he gets nowhere.

Desperate, jagged is his flight.

Still the voice of the god pursues him,

“Seek him out.”

Panting up the slopes, he scrambles.

Printing blood on every rock.

In the aching air he hears it

“Seek him out.”

No one, no one, can outrun the voice of god.

Look up, murderer, look up.

The Fates are circling.

They have found you.

Soon their shadows will rush cool across your shoulders.

And in an instant, they will fall.

Flickering silence, they will fall.

Wind in black feathers, they will fall.

They will cut the thread.

This is what god said.

They will cut the thread.

Welcome to the dead.

No one, no one, can outrun the voice of god.

Under the white shafts of the holy sun

We all dodge and run across a broken land

Under the gaze of god's unblinking eye.

And all that is mortal shall die.

There is no hiding from the fates circling above us.

Every man shall feel the plummeting shadow of his death spread across his back.

For all that is mortal shall die.

I cannot place my faith in prophets,

For even the best of them walk beneath that flickering light.

Just as I do, just as I.

No one can outrace that hovering shadow.

For all that is mortal shall die.

I have a king

and though he too is mortal, he is great.

When he faced that singing terror

When his brilliance drove her from our land

Then we saw our dreams embodied

Then we saw the best of man.

I can't abandon

Won't desert him

Not this king I've come to love.

He's the only hope that's left me

As the Fates hang up above.

There they are hanging

clicking their scissors

one two three

they bide their time

making slow circles

in wait for me

clicking their scissors

they flap and climb

clicking their scissors

watching me running

riding the currents of timeless time.