THE STILL WATER:
A RADIO PLAY
Jim Davis-Rosenthal

 (Five tolls of bell)

NARRATOR: Sing-Sing prison. It is June 19, 1953. Inside the women's wing of the "death-house," Julius Rosenberg talks with his wife through a mesh screen placed in front of her cell. The sun fall slowly toward the west and a little stream of light grows dimmer inside the prison walls. In other parts of the prison, inmates whisper nervously.

ETHEL : (begin in whisper) Eight o'clock. Very few ever know what day they will die, let alone the hour. But there appears to be no hope and they have moved the time up so it will not be at the Sabbath. Julius and I will spend our last hours together talking. Only our fingers will touch at the last, through a wire screen. It is a cruel and unnecessary separation--what danger could we possibly present together? That our embrace would warm a nation gone cold and fearsome. But no matter--it is in separation that I gather my anguished strength. I am separated from my husband, my children, my family. I am very tired, but I feel strong and at peace. Many have come to our defense. The whole world! Someday the truth will be known and my sons will be proud that we did not compromise our principles, and we did not lie.

NARRATOR: On a stage there are two wooden chairs. A woman sits in each and between them there is a dim bulb hanging invisibly from the curtain above. Behind one is a staircase and behind the other an empty bed. The stage is dark but for the single bulb.

MEDEA: My name is Medea. Some of you know the official story, but I never told thereal story, my own. The story of how I died. How did I die? Well, they call it deus ex Machina. When the plot is too complicated, a little too much intrigue, it just ends, noisily, like a bolt of lightning from a cloud above. But, enough of sarcasm--it was a machine.

ETHEL : If you have heard the story, then you heard that I would kill my own brother, that I would dismember him and scatter the secrets, the secrets of the body, over the seas, to escape from my father, my country.

MEDEA: I was known as a witch, a barbarian,

ETHEL : a Jew. I heard those words, and I have no explaining to do. I watched myself die. You might even say twice.

MEDEA: Jason came to my land in search of a secret--it was in some ways a secret, though everyone knew about it--it and its thousand difficulties, the Golden Fleece.

ETHEL : I loved him. So much so that love was all that mattered. I worked for him, and he for me. I did the dishes, cooked. Julius cooked as well. I had no nursemaid. We were poor. He was a sorcerer himself, in his own way--an electrical repairman. I took a job as a stenographer.

MEDEA: My father saw Jason as a fool. He was always trying to trick him. He would tell him how far he might go in pursuit of a dream; Jason would trust him, foolishly. Even if born here, he was a stranger in this land. What it is to have lost one's country. In the story, I kill my own brother and scatter pieces of the body across the sea, so my father, in collecting the body for burial will lose time--and we will escape. This is not my betrayal.

ETHEL : I never knew my pursuers, but I have been chased, yes chased, from the very beginning of my life. That I was "caught," ha!--that was inevitable--but it says nothing about my guilt, nor Julius'. Guilt is in the father's eye; we were young, and we lived.

MEDEA: But father never caught me. I was in a new land, a land to which I never traveled. You are born somewhere, and that becomes your land, though for you, it always be a new land, a foreign one.

ETHEL : I wanted to sing! That was my magic, but for whatever reason, poverty or others, I could not. Did not. I'm told that anything is possible for anyone in this country. So they say.

MEDEA: Even in Iolchus, the new land where we settled--even there we did not have our rights. And in the story, I murder again. I tell Pelias' daughters that I will rejuvenate their father. I tell them to cut him in pieces.

ETHEL : and that if I sing he will become young again. But there is no magic to being young. We were childhood sweethearts

MEDEA: so somehow I leave them with blood on their hands--the daughters'--and therefore mine, but the blood, the blood is not on my hands, it is on theirs.

ETHEL : The blood is on their hands always, not on mine. It is their knife, their illusion--that I would sing for them. It is their knife, their bomb, not mine. I am trapped by myth.

MEDEA: And so there was another exile. This time to Corinth. They said that Jason would have a very promising future there. But Jason took a new bride in Corinth--according to the official story--Creon's daughter. They say I am the dangerous one--but she, she is the cold that blew between us, the fire that waits to burn...if she exists.... And I loved him so deeply

ETHEL : that I felt myself becoming him--in a way that today I can speak for both of us. I lived minutes longer and I watched him die. Well...I did not see the death and for that reason I felt it more. They killed me second so I would not have to walk by his cell. Such trivial mercy is so pathetic. To know that someone is dying and to be separated from him. And my children...

MEDEA: I had two. It is said that I killed them, that I murdered my children.

ETHEL : They are alive. Both of them. Adopted by the gods of the living. But it was not just Julius who did not hold them again. I also did not. Even his brother could not visit him. My brother, of course, would not.

MEDEA: My nurse once said that a wife should never stand away from her husband.

ETHEL : And I will tell you that I felt every bit of his death and more. I stood every bit of the flame that consumed him, and my "punishment" was that of a witch; one day I might happily say that I was one, and say so without fear, or any ounce of guilt.

(Bell tolls four times)

NARRATOR: The two women, Medea and Ethel Rosenberg, are now turned around with their backs to the audience. They face three men in chairs spaced evenly before them. A brilliant light illuminates the screen behind them, and they all appear in silhouette.

MALE VOICE: are you now or have you ever been...

MEDEA: My name is Medea. My trial was conducted hastily and the single judge was Creon, the King. There was no crime of which to accuse me, and my sentence, exile, was made to protect Creon. The townspeople had talked that I was a danger to him but the Corinthian

ETHEL : women gathered in my defense, and men. Hundreds of thousands across the country. The signs urged clemency and spoke of both of us and also of the children. I felt myself becoming him, and in other ways, he became me. At my trial there were three prosecutors: Kaufman, Saypol, and Cohn.

NARRATOR: In her cell it is very dark and quiet, because she is the only female prisoner. A female guard stands at the front of the stage, facing away from Ethel.

ETHEL : Julius and I wrote a joint statement. They wanted more than anything for us to admit guilt, but we were not guilty of any crime. We said this: