NIGHT CROSSING
                                A Radio Play
                                      
                              C. Scott Ananian
                                      
   
                            January 21-31, 1998
                                      
   
   
   M:
          I belong to the secret cult of Vladmir Nabokov. This explains
          my loneliness, perhaps.
          
          I worship the author, his insane genius. I've grown friendly
          with John Francis Shade and Charles Kinbote. I know the hiding
          place of the Crown Jewels.
          
          Not many share this passion. Few have heard of Nabokov. Fewer
          still of me. This is my cross.
          
          The mind's interior is my jail. The days pass monotonous inside
          the lock; ceaseless pulsing red reminds of time's passage.
          Gazing out through pupil peepholes at the world, longing for
          outside. No one knows the plight, no visitors break the tedium.
          If eyes could be read, the locked man trapped could be seen.
          Framed in the iris. But he is not. Can not, will not.
          
          A shrivelled homoculus drives my body's machinery. Enthroned
          and imprisoned in the skullcap, I turn the wheels that move me
          through the day. People see me passing through: the impassive
          glide of an unsinkable ship. They cannot see the captain. They
          see me but they do not.
          
          My guards allow no escape, no means to signal. I cannot flag
          help. My signal flares detonate in the dark emptiness of my
          skull, seen by no rescuers. I move the levers for speech. I
          wonder if I am heard.
          
          I wonder now if I am heard. I am speaking to a microphone,
          broadcasting my despair, but I hear no response. Words fall
          into the void. Perhaps the sound is not lost. But the words...
          
          How can I tell who listens? My jailers certainly have taken
          precautions, ensured no disruption from the loose words my lips
          dribble. I have no cheering throng before my podium. I am
          denied even hostile auditors: I face Silence. I speak without
          certainty. Does one hear me? One is sufficient. But I cannot
          know.
          
          I listen intently. I am listening now. Pressing my tired ear
          against the speaking-tube, listening for sounds of the outside
          filtering into my skullcap cell. I hear nothing.
          
          Nothing.
          
          I wonder.
          
   W:
          I wonder if anyone sees me.
          
   M:
          If I hear nothing, am I heard?
          
   W:
          Truely sees me. Or does their gaze stop at the surface?
          
   M:
          I am a prisoner in the shell of myself.
          
   W:
          I look at their eyes, and I wonder.
          
   M:
          I wonder.
          
   W:
          I watch their gaze travel across me. I want to cry. Cry out.
          This is not me! What you are seeing is not who I am!
          
   M:
          I sigh and listen on.
          
   W:
          I am a thinking person. A member of societies of honor. A
          dancer. An artist.
          
   M:
          People never see.
          
   W:
          You see only my body. You can't see my self. I know what's
          visible. A woman. Attractive/unattractive as you decide,
          hair/eyes that either match your fancy or do not. You see a
          figure that pleases you. Or you do not. How can I --
          
          Can you read my mind so plainly on sandal-revealed toes? Can
          you hear my thoughts by pressing lips to hand? Can you feel the
          people I love when you embrace me?
          
          You feel straps under fabric.
          
          Why must my frown of concentration be attractive? I am not my
          seeming self. I am not your leer-seeing idol: I am a member of
          the cult of Vladmir Nabokov. Kinbote's queen, Shade's daughter.
          A lonely person, struggling. Alone.
          
          You do not recognize me riding here on the subway. You cannot
          see the paperback in my purse. You cannot hear the sunset in my
          mind, the beauty of my ideals. You see a woman beside you, and
          cease to think.
          
   M:
          I am condemned alone. I commute invisible beneath the ground.
          My eye catches no one, no one wonders, no one hears.
          
   W:
          I dream of my perfect pair, out there lurking. A fellow cult
          member, a friend of Zembla. It is a dream. At open mic I record
          my self, and no other.
          
   M/W:
          [Together] The crown jewels are hidden in Taynik.
          
   W:
          No one else knows.
          
   M:
          No one ever will.
     _________________________________________________________________
   
   
    cananian@alumni.princeton.edu