Faustina

by
Robin Gordon

Part II


 

Auksford 2017

©
Copyright Robin Gordon, 2017






Women’s Lib HQ

MEPHISTA:
The show went well, the sisters are delighted.
You and I should both be damed, or knighted.
Yes knighted, that’ll do.
I think it has a pretty ring, don’t you?
Sir Faustina and sweet Sir Mephista –
or better still: you’d make a lordly sister.
Our money for the hi-fi was spent well.
Your genius as a showperson through Hell
and Heaven spreads, and o’er the Earth,
and I’m the little sister gave it birth.

FAUSTINA:
It’s true I’ve talent for producing shows,
but now I’ve reached my limit.  Heaven knows
what next they will require of me
as exemplars of women being free.

Enter the Leader of the Women’s Movement
 
LEADER:
Faustina, dearest sister!
Embrace me too, Mephista.
The Women’s Movement is on fire.
You grant our each desire.
Long may you serve our cause
to overthrow men’s laws
and raise up in their place
pure Woman’s holy race.
I fervently request
to see more of your best.
.
MEPHISTA:
To help the cause of women’s liberation
our shows are every one a great sensation.
Whate’er you will, we’ll do it,
and men alone will rue it.
We’ll drag ’em up on stage and there upbraid ’em.
spit on ’em, humiliate, degrade ’em.
If you like, we’ll find their greatest heroes
and bring ’em down to naught, to little zeros.
Our rule they’ll find shall be much worse than Nero’s.
 
LEADER:
Mephista, you, don’t understand.
Men’s enslavement’s not what’s planned.
The chains we plan to break,
not forge anew.

MEPHISTA:
I say: Let ’em quake!

LEADER:
It will not do.

MEPHISTA:
Oppression’s gone on long enough!
Conciliation and such stuff
is out:    we’re in control
and men can take the lesser role.
We’ll make ’em wish they’d not been born,
And then, one day – oh come bright morn –

LEADER:
Enough!  Your chauvinistic hash
will cause a violent male backlash,
so I’ll not hear a word you say.

MEPHISTA:
I’m working for the glorious day
when women in trousers whistle and goose
men with their whatnots hanging loose
in diaphanous skirts of tulle or lace,
with well-permed hair and made-up face.
That’s what I am hoping to see.

LEADER:
That’s not the kind of world for me!
We’re working not towards enslaving
men, or sexually depraving
women, as you seem to think.
Freedom for all’s the spring we drink.
Faustina, let me turn to you
and tell you what is now to do.
Find me a man, a paragon,
whose virtue we’ll feast our eyes upon:
a man who bears his full, fair part,
with love for woman in his heart.

MEPHISTA:
There’s no such creature!
It’s not in their nature!

LEADER:
Some of our movement’s heroines
have access to data-bank machines.

============

Women’s Lib HQ, later

MEPHISTA:
 Back are we, with our doom?
What news from the computer room?

FAUSTINA:
This envelope contains the name
of him who’s earned eternal fame.

MEPHISTA:
Who then is this paragon?

FAUSTINA opening the envelope:
It is … ah me! … my husband, John!
See, here’s his picture, here is written
all he’s done since I’ve been bitten
by this liberation folly.

MEPHISTA:
Ye gods!

FAUSTINA:
             Alas!  Alas!

LEADER:
                               Oh golly!

============

Faustina’s kitchen

FAUSTINA:
 Cobwebs hanging, dark and drear,
floors unswept, and no-one’s here.
The children all have grown and gone,
but what’s become of my dear John?

MEPHISTA:
Ah, that’s the rub.
He’s at the pub,
ogling topless dancing girls,
drinking, gambling, social whirls.
Forget him – he’s a bore!

FAUSTINA:
I’ll ask next door –
but, right on cue, here comes my friend.

Enter Mrs Wagner

MRS WAGNER:
I think I’m going round the bend!
I’ll sit in dear Faustina’s kitchen
until my brain will stop its itchin’.
Ah!  Who’s there?

FAUSTINA:
                            Me!

MEPHISTA:
                                   And me.

MRS WAGNER:
My heart o’er-runs with joyful glee!
Faustina, you have come in time
to see my experiment come to fruition –
ring out, wild bells, in merry chime –
it must have been your woman’s intuition.

FAUSTINA:
But what experiment d’you mean?

MRS WAGNER:
Faustina, dear, where have you been?
Haven’t you heard of the Wagner Effects
for creating children without any sex?
No more need women suffer travail.
We do it now without the male.
My first is here in a bottle of ink – you’ll a-
gree she’s a beauty.   She’s called Feminincula.
 

MEPHISTA:
The hour is come!  At last it’s struck!
Men are finished, not worth a damn:
Women at last have all the luck,
the bread with butter and with jam!
Insignificant little men
will be our toys for a while and then
we’ll toss ’em aside like a worn-out glove
and hear no more twaddle of lasting love.

Feminincula in her bottle escapes from Mrs Wagner’s hands and floats up to the ceiling

FEMININCULA:
One parent alone,
one single cell.
I’m a clone, just a clone.
I might as well
lose flesh and bone
and leave my shell.

MRS WAGNER:
No, my daughter!
No!  No!  No!
You. didn’t oughter
g-g-go
so precipitately out of life!

FAUSTINA:
Taste its joys and taste its strife.


FEMININCULA:
I’m strictly a female female
without any hint of he-male
in my being.  I’m incomplete.

MRS WAGNER:
But you’re so sweet!

FEMININCULA:
I need the manly side of human nature
if I’m to be a fully human creature.
Faustina, you alone can understand
and sympathise with what I’ve planned.
I’m going to find where men foregather
to find in them my missing father.

FAUSTINA:
I’m coming too, I need to find
my husband and my peace of mind.
 
MEPHISTA:
Mephista too will join your quest.
(Aside) Though as you must by now have guessed,
this adulation of the male
I find a rather sorry tale.
But I think I’ll have some fun
when I see what they have done
out of the sight of their poor sweet wives,
having, they think, the time of their lives.

MRS WAGNER:
I’ll stay.  My experiment is quite a failure.
I should have been a better jailer.
Feminincula’s glory I’ll never see.
I fear she won’t come back to me.

============

The Classical Walpurgisnacht,  a pub
 
FAUSTINA:
What is it that roareth thus?
Can it be a motor bus?

MEPHISTA:
In such a sweating, scrambling scrum
you will not find motorem bum.
A party from the rugby club
is drinking in the local pub.
Their songs are neither sweet nor low,
and rarely de motore bo.
The rugby club, high-cockalorum,
with no thought of motorum borum,

RUGBY CLUB:
Hi ho Cathusalem,
Cathusalem, Cathusalem,
hi ho Cathusalem,
the harlot of Jerusalem.

BRIDEGROOM:
I’m getting married in the morning

RUGBY CLUB:
Ding dong, the bells are gonna chime.

GROOM’S FRIEND:
The morning’s far away, it’s not yet dawning.
Drink up, we’ll get you there on time

RUGBY CLUB:
Have whisky!  Have gin!

BRIDEGROOM:
My head’s in a spin.

RUGBY CLUB:
Have brandy!  Have beer!

BRIDEGROOM:
I feel rather queer.

RUGBY CLUB:
 He’s a queer, but getting wed.
We’ll have to carry him to bed!

BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND:
We’ve been too slow, too long we’ve lagged.
It’s time the bridegroom was debagged!

RUGBY CLUB:
Haul him down, you Zulu warriors!
Haul him down, you Zulu chiefs!

BRIDEGROOM:
I’m feeling sadder, sicker, sorrier...
 
MEPHISTA:
Don’t stop there!  Off with his briefs!

RUGBY CLUB:
Now we’ve got his trousers down
we’ll take him off around the town.
paint his buttocks blue and green,
the prettiest sight that ever was seen.

BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND:
I know    place where topless whores
do things forbidden by the laws.
We’ll take him for initiation.

MEPHISTA:
This sounds my sort of dissipation.
We’ll go too and have some fun
before the rising of the sun.

FAUSTINA:
I do not think my husband, John …

MEPHISTA:
Forget that squeamish paragon.
Sights there’ll be for us to treasure
of guilty men caught at their pleasure.

FEMININCULA:
This sweaty smell extends the range
of my new knowledge.   Men are strange
to me.  Let’s follow their wild chase,
and learn to know the human race
in both its wisdom and its folly.

FAUSTINA:
I do not know …

MEPHISTA:
                      You’ll find it “jolly”.

============

Strip show

BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND:
Look at that one!  Scan her tits,
and all her other juicy bits.

BRIDEGROOM:
From each tit she swings a tassel.

BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND:
How’d you like with her to wrassle?

RUGBY CLUB:
Get him up upon the stage!

BRIDEGROOM:
My bride awaits me.  She will rage
if she finds out what we’ve done.

BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND:
Forget her!  Now’s the time for fun.

STRIPPER:
What does this invasion mean?
You’re interrupting my big scene.

RUGBY CLUB:
He’s getting married in the morning,
ding dong the bells are gonna chime.

MANAGER:
I’m giving you lot just this one last warning.
I’ll call the cops if you’re not out in time.

FAUSTINA:
I’ve never seen a more unpleasant crew.
They ought to be locked up inside the zoo.

MEPHISTA:
Then we could watch their maddened rages
all on view in public cages.

FAUSTINA:
The manager now is stripped to his skin.

MEPHISTA:
The stripper won’t let the bridegroom in.
They’re rolling about in a frightful scrum.

FAUSTINA:
If only the local cops would come.

Enter Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler

FREUD:
You see, dear Alfred, I was right.
The driving urge, both day and night,
is nothing but sex, and sex, and sex.
You can see I was right by these effects.

ADLER:
Nonsense!  It’s all a matter of power.
Every bee and every flower
measures its greatness, breadth, height, length,
by nothing else than by its strength
in forcing others to submit.
.
FREUD:
That’s nothing but a load of …

ADLER:
                                             It
is nothing but the plainest truth
that every maid every youth …

FREUD:
… have nothing on their minds but sex!

ADLER:
… are trying their strength for its effects!
Sex is merely a means to their ends
to force submission from their friends.

FREUD:
What good is power?
Your final hour
will strike before you know.
You need seduction
for reproduction.
In children on you go.

ADLER:
You’re seeking power
beyond your hour.
This you must admit.

FREUD:
This confusion …

ADLER:
This illusion …

FREUD:
You skunk!

ADLER:
                You bugger!

FREUD:
                                    Shit!

MEPHISTA:
These fools are right in front of me.
Out of the way!  I cannot see!
The rugger club without their jeans
are prancing bare-legged, full of beans.
The gin and beer are flowing free.
The stripper has been    loved by three
at least, and now she’s fled offstage
leaving them all in a towering rage.
Perhaps they’ll turn to pleasures bent.

BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND:
There’s women there.

MEPHISTA:
                              It’s time we went.

RUGBY CLUB:
After ’em, lads.  Ne’mind your kecks!
Catch those women!  Let’s have sex!

============

House

FAUSTINA:
Forgive me bursting in thus unannounced.
I feared I might be beaten up or trounced,
or suffer to my person kicks and blows
from hooligans who run without their hose,
for I’ve been chased around the streets and houses
by rugby players, all without their trousers.

JOHN (an old man):
Faustina?  Can it be?  Upon my life!
You haven’t changed a bit, my darling wife!

FAUSTINA:
Don’t give me that, you beast!  Don’t try it on!
How dare you claim to be my husband John?
You crabbed old man!  You wrinkled little worm!
Your boldness sets my very flesh asquirm.
You men are all the same.  I’ll have no truck
with you, deceivers all.  You’re out of luck.

FEMININCULA:
Faustina, if you cannot hear your heart,
then listen now to me, your better part.
Start not, dear Faustina, you’re my mother.
The cell from which I cloned came from no other.
And this man would have been my father, if
you and he’d together stayed to live.
He is your husband John, now bent and old,
the way that humans get, as I’ve been told.
You, by some enchantment, mother dear,
have been preserved from wasting, but I fear
your time, when it shall some, won’t be deferred
for ever, so I hope that you’ve not erred
too steeply down the slippery slopes of sin,
lest devils, hot from Hell, might drag you in.
But, Father, now I beg you tell your daughter
who wants to be, where life began.

JOHN:
                                                 In water.

FEMININCULA:    
Well then, I’ll find my way back to the sea,
and when I’m whole again, I shall be free.
 
FAUSTINA:
Stop her!  Quick!  Too late!
I hope that she will find her fate,
but all that’s left of her’s a trace of ink
around the plughole down there in the sink.
Ah, what will Mrs Wagner think?

Feminincula’s baby chuckle echoes round the room  

Enter Mephista

MEPHISTA:
Faustina, quick!  Before it is too late!

FAUSTINA:
What’s wrong?

MEPHISTA:
                      We’re in a dreadful state.
The women’s building’s now besieged by men.
The rugby players chased us both and then,
losing us, made straight for Libbers’ Lair.
The Leader is in tears of black despair.
They’re all around the windows,
breaking down the doors.
They haven’t yet got in though.
They’re calling us all whores.
Not one of them’s in trousers.
They’re climbing up the walls.
They claim they’re going to rouse us
and drag us from our halls.
They’re threatening to rape us,
a fate that’s worse than any.
They say we can’t escape as
the besiegers are too many.

FAUSTINA:
How can we get in?

MEPHISTA:
                              I know
an alleyway that’s dark and low,
a secret way, that cannot be revealed,
for by a cloak of magic it’s concealed.

============

Libbers’ Lair

LEADER:
Faustina!  Dearest sister!
You’re here too, Mephista.
Oh help us in our woeful plight.
We’ve been besieged throughout the night
by chauvinistic rapist swine,
besotted with themselves and wine.

MEPHISTA:
You’d think that lads in just their shirts
would find the light of morning hurts
their pride and makes ’em laughing stocks.
Just look at ’em and see the shocks
we’ll give ’em if you now agree
to give full powers to her and me.

LEADER:
What e’er you say, both now and evermore,
shall be for Women’s Lib our dearest lore.
Whate’er you do, we’ll strive to emulate.
Just save us from this mass of seething hate!

MEPHISTA:
Stand back, you dogs!
You foul-mouthed hogs!
You lecherous band of brawling brothers!
Put away your toys,
you naughty boys,
for now I summon up – your mothers!

MOTHERS:
 Where’ve you been?  Out all    night!
We can’t let you out of sight!
And why’re you running round the street
with nothing on your legs and feet?
You’ll get a cold.  Well don’t blame us.
You’ll cough and sneeze and make a fuss,
and we will have to bring you pills
and care for you throughout your ills.
Suppose you think it quite a dare
prancing trouserlessly bare.
Just wait until we get you home,
we’ll warm you up.  No more you’ll roam
like savages around the town.
We are so cross that we’d take down
your trousers, if you had ’em on,
and beat you on your sit-upon!

RUGBY CLUB:
Please forgive us, Mums.

MOTHERS:
Get home!  We’ll tan your bums!

MEPHISTA:
We’ve seen the last of those poor fools.
Now Women’s Lib shall take my rules,
obey them to the letter.

LEADER:
The mothers came. How did you do it?

FAUSTINA:
How did you cause those louts to rue it?

MEPHISTA:
From now on you’d better
do as I say.
It’s the only way.

============

Street outside Libbers’ Lair

Enter Philemon and Baucis.  Philemon is old and blind.
He walks leaning on a stick and on his wife Baucis,
who is equally old.

MEPHISTA:
Look at that old parasite!
He preys on his wife both day and night.
She’s as old and weak as he,
yet he leans on her. It’s plain to see
she’d be better off without her load.
Sisters, he’s come to the end of his road.

FAUSTINA:
The sight of this old man who clings
for his life
to his wife
is one that brings
to me a pain I can’t define.
The glory’s tarnished that was mine.

MEPHISTA:
I knew you’d see it my way.
Sisters, to the highway!
Tear him sisters!  Do not spare him!
Tear him sisters!  Tear him!  Tear him!

The women swarm out of Libber's Lair and tear Philemon to pieces


BAUCIS:
 What?  Where?  What’s going on?
I cannot see!  Where’s Philemon?

MEPHISTA:
You’re free of that encumbrance now.
Enjoy life!  I will tell you how.
Women’s Lib will make your days
one glorious glow of golden haze.
The evening of your life will be …

BAUCIS:
Where’s Philemon?

MEPHISTA:
            He’s right where he
should have been for many years.
He’s dead!  Why do you shed these tears?
He leaned on you throughout his life.

BAUCIS:
And I on him.  I was his wife.
We always walked together,
we couldn’t walk alone.
We leaned upon each other,
and now I’m left alone.
If he cannot return, then I
must follow him.  I too must die.

Baucis dies.

FAUSTINA:
What have you done?!

MEPHISTA:
            What you requested.
Of tarnish you have been divested!

FAUSTINA:
I never meant …

LEADER:
        Our hands are red
with blood!

FAUSTINA:    
        I never wished him dead!

MEPHISTA:
This was your will, this was your deed,
and from pretence at last I’m freed.

FAUSTINA:
Who are you?

MEPHISTA:
My name’s Mephista,
as I said, but not your sister.
I’m sister to a darker power,
and now I’ll take you to my bower.
Come devils and fiends
from Hell’s dark depth
and carry my friend
to her cruel death.

VOICE FROM ABOVE:
Wait!  Judgement must take place.
 
MEPHISTA:
You deny us all the human race.
But not her.  She’s in the bag.

VOICE FROM ABOVE:
Burglarious fiend, you’ll lose your swag.
The murderous evil that you’ve done
will fall on you, and you alone.
’Twas you encompassèd the death
of this old man, whose dying breath
condemns you to the pit of Hell.
This woman wished the whole world well.

MEPHISTA:
She’s abandoned kith and kin,
wallowed in the depths of sin.
There’s none will speak for her, not one.

Enter Feminincula, now a phosphorescent glowing light.

FEMININCULA:
Yes there is: her husband John.

JOHN:
Faustina was my own dear wife,
the soul of goodness all her life
until she fell under Mephista’s
influence and joined the sisters.

LEADER:
Where she long resisted evil ways,
inspiring us to love with all her plays.

BOY’S MOTHER:
She calls it love, I call it lust.
My heart she trampled in the dust.

ADLER:
Lust or love, it’s all the same:
the strategy by which you tame
the world, subdue it to your will.

FREUD:
Are you still here?

ADLER:
                Yes, shout your fill.
You’ll never prove that I am wrong

BRIDEGROOM’S FRIEND:
Come on lads, another song.
 
RUGBY CLUB:
There was a young lady of Leith
who sat on a pair of false teeth.
She was down on her uppers
then rubbing her cruppers –
She’d bitten herself underneath:

MOTHERS:
You idle creatures, get you home.

MRS. WAGNER:
Perhaps a little holiday in Rome
is what I need, yes somewhere warm.

MEPHISTA:
Enough!  I summon up a storm!
Faustina’s soul is mine
No matter how she whine.

FAUSTINA:
It’s all a dream.

FEMININCULA:
             Hold on to that!

FAUSTINA:
I shall wake up.

MEPHISTA:
           That’s idle chat.
Your soul is mine.

FAUSTINA:
            I’ll speak in prose.
I’ll break the scansion, heaven knows,
oh dear.

MEPHISTA:
      You’re mine, all mine, my sweet!

FEMININCULA:
You must abandon iambic feet.

FAUSTINA:
Whereas I heretofore did speak in verse
I pledge my very soul – oh no that’s worse.

MEPHISTA:
It’s mine, it’s mine, and evil now has won.

FEMININCULA:
Pray, do not count your chicks or jump the gun.

FAUSTINA:
If I change the metre I can break it.
Bursting forth from sleep I shall awake.

MEPHISTA:
Verse is flexible enough to take it.
Your pretty little soul my thirst shall slake.

FAUSTINA:
Most horrible fiend, away!

MEPHISTA:
I think I shall win the day!

FAUSTINA:
Let me go, foul fiend.

MEPHISTA:
                                 It’s too late
for it’s time that you met your fate.
Come to me, pretty one, let’s descend
through the depths down below without end.

FAUSTINA:
Am I flying?
Am I falling?
It’s appalling!

MEPHISTA:
You are dying
What a scream!

FAUSTINA:
It’s a dream.
I’ll awake
in my bed.

MEPHISTA:
You are dead.

FAUSTINA:
Let me take
full control,
change my role.
Dreams must all
obey me.

MEPHISTA:
We shall see.

FAUSTINA:
I can’t fall,
I am free.

MEPHISTA:
Bound to me!
Come my little punks and bring your spades,
dig a little grave, you undead shades
Faustina little knew how true she spoke
in calling you the walking dead in joke.
Now dig a little grave. In just a minute
Faustina, though she’s dreaming, will fall in it.

Punks hasten to obey her commands.

FAUSTINA:
Resist, resist.  I’ll pinch myself awake.

LEADER:
Oh golly, what a frightful mess to make.

FEMININCULA:
Fly, Faustina, fly!

FAUSTINA:
I’ll try.

BOY'S MOTHER:
Die, Faustina, die!

MRS. WAGNER:
Oh my!

MEPHISTA:
From the eternal glades
I call the shades
Of those whom you have harmed!

FEMININCULA:
Don’t be alarmed.

MEPHISTA:
Those you have left,
Those you have willed
should be bereft,
or should be killed.
Yes every one
from husband John
to Philemon.

FEMININCULA:
Speak, oh speak in her defence!

MEPHISTA:
Little spirit, get you hence,
or I will break you.
Now I feel the violent thrust
of thirsting throbbing lust
and I shall take you.

Mephista lunges towards Feminincula who flies up out of reach.

FAUSTINA:
No! No! No! No! No!

Feminincula flies upwards. Mephista pursues her. Faustina falls.  Her fall ends in a violent crash.  She sits up.

FAUSTINA:
No!  Leave her!

She is seized and held, unaware that she is in her own bed.

FAUSTINA:
Help.

VOICE:
What’s wrong?


FAUSTINA:
John? Is that you?

VOICE (JOHN):
Yes, of course it is.  You’re all right.

FAUSTINA:
But she’s trying to … oh I’ve had such a peculiar dream … I don’t know.  Oh sometimes I think maybe … it’s time we had another baby.

JOHN:
Nmmh.

Gradual foreplay leads to heights of passion:
man and woman love in sexual fashion.

FAUSTINA:
It’s a girl, and I think you’ll agree
She’s a beauty

JOHN (sleepily):
           She’ll take after me.

Feminincula’s baby chuckle echoes round the room.

JOHN (sleepily):
What was that?
 
FAUSTINA:
                      A fragment from a dream
Don’t worry, dear.
The newest member of our family team,
who’ll soon be here.

=====
END
=====

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