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NARRATOR: Medea, waiting alone in her chamber. MEDEA: By now my children have delivered the poisoned dress to Jason's bride and she wears it to a sure death. As likely, Creon has fatally touched her. Though it tears me apart, I must give up my children that they will not be hurt as men have hurt me. NARRATOR: On a stage there is a bed and a staircase. Medea leans over the bed. A light is on at the top of the stair. Medea kisses the children sleeping in the bed and raises a sword above her. MEDEA: Goodnight young ones. Narrator: Medea climbs the stairs and switches off the light. Jason enters. He walks to the bed and then to the stair where he looks up. JASON: My children! Where I put them to rest there are now only ashes. What fire has consumed them? What evil? MEDEA: You have no children. I have saved mine from death at your hands. JASON: A killer of children is a savior? How could I harm them when they are here safely in my home? Safe from the world around them, the horror and stench of an uncivilized world. Let me touch them, their gentle flesh, these innocents, one last time. MEDEA: I will not. They are saved from your scorn and ridicule. You would not touch them when alive--those children of your barbarian wife. They will reject you, and they are saved from you. JASON: They are saved by your murderous hand? You who will throw the secret of life and death so easily in my face? These children are saved by your madness? MEDEA: Saved from your lies, your false promises--saved from your blind ignorance. JASON: The fires of heaven have snatched them from me, leaving only ashes that I cannot touch...or bury. I took you in out of your wildness and wandering. I gave you a home and took you to a safe land. I gave you everything, and this is how I am paid? MEDEA: Your false lament will speak to heaven. Your words are wasted. (One toll of the bell) NARRATOR: An electric chair is visible. A sign on the door says "silence." A menorah is placed to the left of the chair. Its candles are dim, but it slowly increases in brightness. A light comes on at the top of the stair and Julius Rosenberg begins to climb it. RABBI: (muttering) He leadeth me beside the still water. He restoreth my soul: he guides me in the paths of righteousness for his names' sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me: thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies... NARRATOR: Sing-Sing prison. June 19, 1953. FEMALE VOICE: (haltingly) This is a grim spectacle. It's kind of a ghastly climax to two and a half years of demonstration by the American system of jurisprudence that we're willing to give any accused person the ultimate in chances to save his or her neck. These people could have saved themselves up to the last few minutes of their lives... Those curious lives that had started out in the poverty of the Lower East Side here in New York and which over time had shown great promise. He was a graduate electrical engineer. She had hoped to become an opera singer. Had a good voice. Became a stenographer, and they were childhood sweethearts. Everything to live for. A couple of children, residence in this great country and with all of its opportunities... MALE VOICE: (extremely haltingly, nervous) They died differently, gave off different sounds, different grotesque manners. Uh...he died quickly, there didn't seem to be too much life left in him when he entered behind the Rabbi. He seemed to be walking in a cadence of steps of just keeping in time with the muttering of the twenty-third Psalm. Never said a word. Never looked like he wanted to say a word... She died a lot harder. She was wearing a prison dress--a little green number. When it appeared that she had received the exact amount that had killed her husband, the doctors went over and placed the stethoscope to her and looked at each other rather dumbfounded and seemed surprised that she was not dead. And she was given more electricity which started again the kind of a ghastly plume of smoke that rose from her head. After two more little jolts, Ethel Rosenberg was dead. She has gone to meet her maker, and she'll have a lot of...uh...explaining...to do. NARRATOR: A light comes on at the top of the stairs. Ethel Rosenberg walks to foot of stairs. She turns toward her children. VOICES: Momma! NARRATOR: The stage is black, with only the light of the menorah, then totally black. VOICE: We are your children. The valley between two mountains, that empty space. The fire that lacking oxygen, goes out. A different angel of death has always hung over us and we have no answers to warm us as we step into the shadows.  |
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