What Puccini would have looked for (Philippa, an opera - blog 13)

Continuing my blog on the development of the opera Philippa, about the Harlem-born concert pianist, Philippa Duke Schuyler who died in Vietnam rescuing schoolchildren in 1967.

Philippa Duke Schuyler, 1959. Photo: Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer. Public Domain.

Giacomo Puccini could judge the operatic suitability of a play even if he saw it in another language. The Italian speaker saw Sardou's La Tosca in French, and Belasco’s Madam Butterfly and Girl of the Golden West in English. The operatic potential of these plays he divined from broad stage action. How might Philippa portray its dramatic concerns in stage pictures?

Act I

Requiem Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, 18 May 1967. A mostly-segregated congregation, but George the African-American father and Jody the white Texan mother sit together. Words of praise from Sammy Davis Jr, Ella Fitzgerald, President Johnson, and others. Cardinal Spellman says they have met to celebrate the life of Philippa Duke Schuyler, pianist, composer, first US woman war correspondent to die in Vietnam. Pianism dominates the liturgical music; “Little girls everywhere who were inspired by Philippa’s example” play the music for her requiem on grand pianos. (They are mostly, however, African-American girls.) Jody wants to know how Philippa can “rest in peace when her potential lies unfulfilled”. She rejects George's attempts at consolation.

Vietnam, September 1966. 35 year-old Philippa arrives in war-torn Vietnam. She is confronted by signs of war – machine-gun emplacements, barbed wire entanglements. She is briefed on the restrictions on her movements and shown where she will play – on a broken-down upright piano in a ramshackle hall. She bristles at the ‘control’ the embassy is trying to exercise – it reminds her of her mother, Jody – and she tries to disguise her disappointment at how far she has fallen “from Carnegie Hall”. Three black servicemen invite her to play with them. She begins with Bach, but they begin to swing it. She should feel comfortable but does not. Once again she feels neither white nor black, even though she was supposed to be "the Answer [to America's racial problem]".

In a Saigon marketplace, Philippa meets a Vietnamese necromancer who says she will “spend some time in the dragon’s mouth, but then find a way out of it”. She tries on an áo dài and is taken for Vietnamese. She realises she can give her embassy chaperone the slip.

The three servicemen take her north and after they have left, she stays overnight in a Vietnamese hamlet controlled by the Viet Cong. Yes she can blend in but she doesn’t belong; this does not pacify her and is not the ‘dragon’s den’ the necromancer was referring to.

Before heading back south she meets a priest who is disturbed by her frantic seeking – (necromancy, Tarot, a new-found catholic faith!) He introduces her to the ‘orphans’, the abandoned children of US servicemen and Vietnamese women. She immediately feels a kinship with these children who are between cultures like her and she wants to stay and help. But the embassy chaperone finds her, and presents her with Jody’s demand to return home to New York.

Act II

Back in Harlem, Jody is plotting Philippa’s future - guaranteeing “continuity” by finding her a Mr Right and mapping out a showcase career. It is as if she is talking to Young Philippa (who is in fact present). But adult Philippa knows she will never play those major venues again – no longer “safely cute”, she is a problem for well-heeled audiences who don't know how to categorize her. In fact she is bitter. She is angry with George who books her concerts with the John Birch Society and believes she must succeed regardless of colour but fails to acknowledge that “colour is held against us”. (She recounts something she experienced with the three black servicemen).

Unwilling to rake over the family argument about Felipa Monterra y Schuyler (Philippa’s proposed new identity from a few years back), Jody buries herself in memories of uncomplicated Young Philippa and Young Philippa plays. In a brief moment of happy reminiscence, adult Philippa joins in. But she stops short when Jody reminds her of the scrapbooks, the books that plotted and predicted her every move. “I was merely a puppet.” concludes adult Philippa “and never stood where I could place myself”. Things are said that would have been better left unsaid, Philippa concluding that Jody controlled her every move.

Vengefully, Philippa has bedded the latest ‘Mr Right’ and he is bemused when the first thing she puts back on when dressing is a large crucifix. He mocks her beliefs and she attempts to defend herself, but a chorus of all her past men come back to back up Mr Right's low opinion of her. One of them, an African politician, mourns the son she aborted because he might prove to be “too obviously black”. Philippa determines to get out of New York.

Act III

For a brief moment, George rekindles in Jody the tenderness which lay at the heart of their little family experiment to prove ‘the American genius of hybridization’. They relive the optimism of their marriage (Downtown in 1928) and their high hopes that Philippa’s birth would undo the hatred between American blacks and whites after hundreds of years of “lynchings and lashings”. But Jody feels Philippa’s mission will stall if she stays in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, Philippa gets to know the orphans (among other things, she teaches them music). A Military Liaison briefs the priest on North Vietnamese Army movements around the city. Philippa determines that, as a journalist and writer, she is in a unique position to promote the orphans’ case to the world and wonders if she has found the answer to her own torments in burying herself in their needs. But gunfire is already being heard in the streets.

9 May 1967 ... the approach of the NVA; closer sounds of rifle fire: there is a desperate need for evacuation. Only one helicopter remains. Philippa has run off to find one unaccounted-for orphan. Time presses. The priest is getting anxious. The sounds of gunfire get louder. Philippa returns. She had thought she would leave her mark in music, but she has left behind her music and notebooks and finally silenced the voices in her head of parents, critics and men-friends. Placing the orphan in her lap, the Soldiers strap her in; the rotors start… Then, as the sound of the rotor blades die down, we hear her voice. Out of the dragon's mouth? She is singing of fulfilment. (Epilogue) Back at St. Patrick's Jody threatens to commit suicide, but the Choir bursts into song (Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi...?)

Hmm, is it gaining a shape?

Other blogs in this series

1. - 16 Sep 2012 - an account of my initial thoughts on Philippa, when I was attempting to convey a more comprehensive trajectory of her life
2. - 18 Sep 2012 - containing Act I of a revised scenario, beginning the action in Vietnam
3. - 25 Sep 2012 - containing my revised scenario
4. - 7 Oct 2012 - one-page synopsis, to make sure such a story can fit into "two hours' traffic on the stage"
5. - Becoming a Harlemite, Vietnamese and Catholic 10 Oct, 2012 - detailing some of the research I'll be doing
6. - A Harlem Tradition? 20 Oct 2012 - detailing Harlem interest in white culture
7. - Sacrifice? 21 Oct 2012 - considering the nature of Philippa's death and whether it was self-sacrifice
8. - Classical aspirations 30 Oct 2012 - looking at Harlem's attitude to classical music in the age of Philippa
9. - Montagnards and Lowlanders 1 Nov 2012 - looking at some of Philippa's writing from Vietnam
10. - A sobering thought, 13 Nov 2012 - recognising the prevalence of lynching in the US until well into the 20th century
11 -  Words, words, words, 11 Dec 2012 - considering whether Latin should be one of the Philippa's languages given services even late into the 1960s would not have been in the vernacular.
12 - End of the rebirth, 20 Dec 2012 - some thoughts on the end of the Harlem Renaissance around the time of Philippa's birth.

For more on Puccini, see:

"Beautiful...sad", Puccini's La boheme, 29 July 2012

End of the rebirth (Philippa, an opera - blog 12)

More on my development of the opera Philippa. Concert pianist Philippa Duke Schuyler was the daughter of Harlem-based African-American journalist George S. Schuyler and white Texan Josephine Cogdell who thought that if they combined their superior genes they could produce a genius - and proved it. Philippa was, indeed, a prodigy. She played her own compositions with the New York Philharmonic when barely in her teens. Only trouble was: when she got older she was no longer safely cute; white audiences drifted away. She died during a concert tour of Vietnam in 1967 when she got involved with rescuing the children of US servicemen and Vietnamese women...

Philippa was born just at the end of the Harlem Renaissance, that great flowering of artistic and literary activity that New York intellectuals in the 1920s hoped would see the acceptance of African-Americans as equals in society. Philippa's story is a parable of how far African-Americans stood indeed from acceptance by the time of her death in 1967.

I have reached that part of David Levering Lewis's When Harlem Was in Vogue where the Renaissance is ending; only the participants don't know it. Among the signs Lewis observes are the bitterness and declining powers of some of the Renaissance's participants, the falling out between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes who has gone home to Cleveland, the backfiring of Jean Toomer's Just Americans, the separation of Essie and Paul Robeson impelled by Essie's biography of her husband ("Paul was lazy...He was not the person to think out what he would do or wanted to do and then go do it.")

"Abruptly", says Lewis, "on Monday, August 17 [1931], Harlem received a shocking prefiguration of its mortality." He reports on the death, just a little over two weeks after Philippa's birth, of the death of A'Lelia Walker Robinson, daughter of Sarah L. Walker who had invented a preparation designed "to remove the kink from Negro hair".

Funny thing is that George Schuyler, Philippa's father, had written a novel earlier that year satirising African-American attempts to look white. Black No More told the story of Dr Junius Crookman, who invents a process whereby "by electrical nutrition and glandular control" dark skin turns light and crinkly hair turns straight. One of Crookman's first clients, Max Disher of Harlem who changes his name to Matthew Fisher, launches a spectacular career on the basis of his sudden whiteness eventually marrying the daughter of the Imperial Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and African-Americans "vanish by the millions" until it is discovered that Black-No-More whites are a shade whiter than the genetic variety. Thus there begins a "new racist equilibrium...among the working classes, in the next few months, there grew up a certain prejudice against all fellow workers who were exceedingly pale."

The novel is one example of what Lewis describes as "the cruel paradox of George Schuyler's fiction: punishment for desertion of the race could be as condign as the retribution for believing in its progress."

And indeed, though George mocked 'the Negro Art Hokum' and brought up a daughter who excelled in the European classics, he himself was aghast when she wanted to change her name to Felipa Monterra y Schuyler and pass herself off as Spanish. I feel that this opera will need to locate a very precise sense of the predicament Philippa was landed in, when she was born in 1931.

On a lighter note, I'm amazed how often music turns up in this history. Lewis says that "[A'Lelia's] parties had become more sumptuous, more tasteful, as she allowed herself to be guided by Clara Novello-Davies, voice teacher and mother of the Welsh actor, composer, and playwright Ivor Novello [who wrote The Dancing Years, my mother's favourite musical]". And Langston Hughes' description of A'Lelia's funeral mentions that, "A night club quartette that had often performed at A'Lelia's parties arose and sang for her. They sang Noel Coward's 'I'll See You Again' [fashionable New Yorkers had moved onto Noel Coward now], and they swung it slighly, as she might have liked it [italics added]."

Paul Robeson lived around the corner to this little historic patch above 160th street, a little north of Harlem. You can see the brownstone in the next photograph. Across the road is the Morris-Jumel Mansion, Washington's 1776 New York headquarters and later home to Aaron Burr, former Vice President and Wanted Man (for murder).

Robeson lived in one of the brownstones up the hill

The Morris-Jumel Mansion on the corner of Jumel Terrace and W160th Street

Other blogs in this series

1. - 16 Sep 2012 - an account of my initial thoughts on Philippa, when I was attempting to convey a more comprehensive trajectory of her life
2. - 18 Sep 2012 - containing Act I of a revised scenario, beginning the action in Vietnam
3. - 25 Sep 2012 - containing my revised scenario
4. - 7 Oct 2012 - one-page synopsis, to make sure such a story can fit into "two hours' traffic on the stage"
5. - Becoming a Harlemite, Vietnamese and Catholic 10 Oct, 2012 - detailing some of the research I'll be doing
6. - A Harlem Tradition? 20 Oct 2012 - detailing Harlem interest in white culture
7. - Sacrifice? 21 Oct 2012 - considering the nature of Philippa's death and whether it was self-sacrifice
8. - Classical aspirations 30 Oct 2012 - looking at Harlem's attitude to classical music in the age of Philippa
9. - Montagnards and Lowlanders 1 Nov 2012 - looking at some of Philippa's writing from Vietnam
10. - A sobering thought, 13 Nov 2012 - recognising the prevalence of lynching in the US until well into the 20th century
11 -  Words, words, words, 11 Dec 2012 - considering whether Latin should be one of the Philippa's languages given services even late into the 1960s would not have been in the vernacular.

Carving up the pie

I'm often fascinated by the 'taxonomical' categories that take us beyond the rational divisions of life.

I thought of this again when we visited the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Sunday.

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/francis-bacon/

You saw Bacon returning time and again to similar themes - Crucifixion, nailing, meat, carcasses, flesh, crumpling (as in crumpled paper)...

In Singing the Land, Signing the Land, a book brought out some years ago by Helen Chambers with the Yolngu community at Yirrkala and David Wade Chambers, the authors pointed out the way varying divisions of life prove the fictional 'constructedness' of our worlds.

 http://singing.indigenousknowledge.org

The Dyirbal people of Queensland, they mentioned, have a category that includes men, kangaroos, most snakes, storms, rainbows and boomerangs, and another which includes women, fire and dangerous things. There are aboriginal people who would disparage our categorization of emus as birds; emus don't fly. How can we even think of dividing up the world this way?

I wonder what the categories of my blogs might say about me - Central Australia, Sydney scenery, Aranda culture, AFL football, Washington, Jefferson, Wagner opera, Philippa Duke Schuyler, Inner West vignettes...

The closest I have to a photo of Gap Road. This is actually Stott Terrace, which crosses. Gap Road runs perpendicularly to this towards the gap in the ranges on the left of the picture.

And what creates these fusions. For example, I have a strong memory dating from 1983 of sitting in my friends the Christians' house in Gap Road Alice Springs; we all ate Toblerone, drank Earl Gray and listened to Side 4 of Solti's recording of Mahler's Eighth Symphony (the bit beginning with René Kollo singing, 'Blicket auf zum Retterblick (Look up to the redeeming sight...)'

love the use of the fish-eye lens to capture the whole cast of Mahler's 'Symphony of a Thousand'

Mahler's Eighth, with its texts of Veni creator Spiritus and the last scene from Goethe's Faust has nothing to do with quickly-melting chocolate, steaming tea and Alice Springs on sweaty summer nights, but its last half hour is forever wedded to these memories of mine.


If you liked this blog, others of mine on Central Australia are:

Life-changing statements, 16 December 2012
Ah, Nathanael, 29 November 2012
Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Opera in a land of Song, 29 July 2012
Considering the aboriginal land of Altjira, 20 May 2012

Life-changing statements

Over the years I've noted down statements that I consider life changing. I ended my previous blog (Words, words, words, 11 December 2012) with one of my favourites: Thomas Jefferson's "Not a blade of grass grows uninteresting to me".

Others have been: "The problem's the problem; the person's not the problem."

Yesterday we were at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In the Yiribana Gallery I saw a painting called Wanka (Spider) by Pitjantjatjara man, Harry Tjutjuna

 http://www.ninukuarts.com.au/harry-tjutjuna.html

I'm pretty sure I met Harry Tjutjuna at Pipalyatjara, in northern South Australia in February 1976.
 
He wasn't painting then. He began painting in his 70s, according to the biography above. I remember one day he was worried. There had been a little bit of rain and therefore the supply plane with frozen meat couldn't get in. What would the community do without meat? In the end, the men went hunting. But he said something one day that I'll never forget. Sitting on a couch in a caravan, one of the three whitefeller structures in what was then a remote outstation, he said, "Aborigine know everything: star, moon, grass..."

I had finished my first year of a Bachelor of Music degree at Melbourne Uni, and I remember thinking, "'Everything' to me is knowing the political layout of the country, how to balance your books and do your taxes, get around town, write an essay...Out here knowing the stars, moon, rocks, grasses is everything!"

It may have been the moment I ceased to be such a city-slicker, and love this sort of country.

If you liked this blog, others of mine on Central Australia are:

Ah, Nathanael, 29 November 2012
Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
Virginia in the Desert, 10 Sep 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Opera in a land of Song, 29 July 2012
Considering the aboriginal land of Altjira, 20 May 2012

For another life-changing observation, see 

How the wheel might turn, 26 June 2012

Words, words, words (Philippa, an opera - blog 11)

...continuing my series of blogs on the development of the opera Philippa, based on the life of Harlem-born concert pianist Philippa Duke Schuyler. Philippa was the daughter of African-American journalist George S. Schuyler and white Texan Josephine Cogdell who thought that if they combined their superior genes they could produce a genius. Philippa was, indeed, a prodigy. She played her own compositions with the New York Philharmonic when barely in her teens. She died in Vietnam in 1967 rescuing 'the orphans', the children of US servicemen and Vietnamese women...

"What languages should Philippa be in?" is one of the questions I've been asking myself during research into this opera. English should be there of course, since she was born in the US; Vietnamese because she died in Vietnam; French because French was still spoken in Vietnam at this time and it would also have been the language of some of her African boyfriends. Should Latin should be included? What language would Catholic services have been conducted in, in 1967, especially in Vietnam? The vernacular wasn't adopted instantly everywhere after Vatican II.

Huế Cathedral, Central Vietnam, photo: Luu Ly, 26 August 2008

We went to a Latin mass last week. I wanted to get a feel for how a Latin mass feels. I couldn't quite catch all the words (and I was listening for those I know from classical music). I was a little disappointed, wondering if the priest was mumbling, but later I figured that perhaps that rapid-fire and merged(?) delivery denoted a kind of familiarity with the text that was in itself moving. I remember reading Peter Brokenshaa's account of a Pitjantjatjara inma in his book, The Pitjantjatjara and Their Crafts and how one of the features that most convinced him of the heartfelt-ness of the ceremony was the casual familiarity with which the men sang their lines, acted their parts, handled their objects...

And there was something 'down-home-y' and casual about the service that was endearing. "Remember," said the priest during the sermon, "how John the Baptist pointed out Christ with the beautiful words, 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world'?" "Remember?" Were we there? He spoke of the childhoods of John the Baptist and Jesus looked after by their mothers St. Elizabeth and 'our Lady' ("Remember?") and told us that, "The pope has talked about this in a beautiful book which hasn't been published but when it's been published you'll be able to buy it" - all one sentence.

We talked to some women afterwards and asked why they made a point of coming to a Latin mass. It's what they grew up with; they like it. They gave me another word to add to my Philippa glossary of words that are not and have never been part of my everyday conversation - 'indult'. Of course, with Philippa the list of words that I don't include in everyday conversation includes military terms like MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) or TAOR (Tactical Area of Responsibility) or addresses like 409 Edgecombe Avenue (the 13-storey apartment block in Harlem which was once home to Julius Bledsoe who sang 'Ol' Man River' in the 1927 premiere of Show Boat and NAACP luminaries such as W.E.G. DuBois or Walter White or Thurgood Marshall), but I had to stop and think how much there is to learn in life when I looked into the term 'indult'.

If I was to sum up 'indult' it's a permitted Latin mass or permitted portions of mass in Latin. According to Wikipedia the word is "a term from Catholic canon law referring to a permission to do something that would otherwise be forbidden".

Then I found that there is such a thing as 'the "Agatha Christie" indult'. Apparently after the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in 1969-70, several British intellectuals wrote to the pope requesting permission for continued use of the Tridentine mass by those who wished to continue using it in England and Wales. The signatories talked of the mass's cultural significance; for many British catholics the Latin mass was also a symbol of the suffering of martyrs during the Reformation. Among the signatories were Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kenneth Clarke, Joan Sutherland, Cecil Day-Lewis, Robert Graves, Yehudi Menuhin...

But the story goes that when the pope was considering the plea, he scanned down the list of names on the petition and came across 'Agatha Christie'. "Ah, Agatha Christie", he apparently said, and signed the indult.

Nice story, lovely character detail. What I love mostly, though, is the knowledge that there is no end to what I can learn.

"Not a blade of grass grows uninteresting to me" - Thomas Jefferson


Other blogs in this series

1. - 16 Sep 2012 - an account of my initial thoughts on Philippa, when I was attempting to convey a more comprehensive trajectory of her life
2. - 18 Sep 2012 - containing Act I of a revised scenario, beginning the action in Vietnam
3. - 25 Sep 2012 - containing my revised scenario
4. - 7 Oct 2012 - one-page synopsis, to make sure such a story can fit into "two hours' traffic on the stage"
5. - Becoming a Harlemite, Vietnamese and Catholic 10 Oct, 2012 - detailing some of the research I'll be doing
6. - A Harlem Tradition? 20 Oct 2012 - detailing Harlem interest in white culture
7. - Sacrifice? 21 Oct 2012 - considering the nature of Philippa's death and whether it was self-sacrifice
8. - Classical aspirations 30 Oct 2012 - looking at Harlem's attitude to classical music in the age of Philippa
9. - Montagnards and Lowlanders 1 Nov 2012 - looking at some of Philippa's writing from Vietnam
10. - A sobering thought, 13 Nov 2012 - recognising the prevalence of lynching in the US until well into the 20th century

Australian flora is the dead give-away

Just a couple of photographs today:

People rave about the Fall colours in the US or complain about the drabness of the Australian bush. Doubtless when they talk of the bush they're talking of the gun-metal greys and off-yellows of a eucalyptus forest, not the rainforest of New South Wales. For, let's face it, how rivetting is this? An Illawarra Flame Tree  (Brachychiton acerifolius), native of the NSW coast, spectacular at this time of year (summer) here in an inner-Sydney street.

Another flame tree from the adjacent street, prior to losing all its leaves. You may also see the dark brown, boat-shaped 10cm-long fruits if you look close enough.

Flame Tree in Hyde Park, CBD

We also saw a tree I'd never noticed before in Randwick yesterday - a Native Hibiscus, endemic to our coast, and I think the Randwick municipality's coast.

There is a certain sameness to Australian cities. I'm not talking of the glass and steel towers which make CBDs and downtowns all over the world 'samey', but that suburban architecture which means an Australian from just about anywhere in the country can recognise the caricatured suburbia of a Howard Arkley painting. But when you look at our flora you see regional difference. The banksias of the West are not like the banksias of the Sydney eastern suburbs. Jarrahs are different from Mountain Ash or Angophorae costatae or Ghost Gums (Eucalyptus papuana). You've got to look to our flora and not our accents or our architecture to really locate yourself in this country.

The Assignation, DRAFT 3

1.INT. KITCHEN. DAY

The kettle is whistling loudly on the stove. LEYLA heavily pregnant, goes to the fridge, but finds no milk. She goes to her purse but it's empty. She turns off the kettle.

LEYLA

(calling out)

          I haven't got any change, hon. Where's your wallet?

2. INT. A BABY'S BEDROOM. DAY

This room is brightly painted on three sides with a feature wall of playful children's wallpaper on one side. It is as yet devoid of furniture, except for a baby's basinette (empty) alongside the wall-papered wall. MITCHELL (in his early 30s) is on a step-ladder hanging a mobile from the ceiling.

MITCHELL

          On the side table.

Humming happily, he steps down to admire his handiwork. Leyla comes in.

LEYLA

(holding a packet of condoms)

          Why would you need these?

MITCHELL

          I... [wouldn't]. Where did you get them?

Leyla rushes at him and starts beating him.

LEYLA

          You bastard. How could you do this to me?

Mitchell skilfully restrains her.

MITCHELL

          Where did you get them?

LEYLA

          From your gym bag, you bastard!

Mitchell runs from the room.

LEYLA

          Don't run away from me!

She collapses in a welter of tears.

3. INT. ADULT BEDROOM. DAY

Mitchell bursts into his and Leyla's room and finds a green gym bag sitting open on the bed. He rummages through it and pulls out gym gear he doesn't recognize.

MITCHELL

          Shit!

4. INT. BABY'S BEDROOM. DAY

Leyla, still on the floor, has the handsfree in her hand.

LEYLA

          Mum? He's cheating on me.

We hear a heavy door slam in the background.

5. EXT. STREET/IN. CAR. DAY

Mitchell drives. As he approaches the gym he sees CHRISTOPHER and BILL walking away. Christopher carries an identical green gym bag. Mitchell speeds up toward them from behind.

6. EXT. STREET DAY

The screech of Mitchell's braking makes Christopher and Bill turn around. Mitchell jumps out of the car. Mitchell has the original green gym bag. He is waving the packet of condoms.

MITCHELL

          Mate, you just got me into a shitload of trouble with my wife.

Christopher barely has time to look down at the green gym bag he is carrying before Mitchell has snatched it out of his hand and swapped his with Christopher's.

MITCHELL

          Didn't you notice it wasn't yours?

BILL

          Didn't you?

Mitchell clenches his fist. Christopher steps between him and Bill, but Mitchell turns instead and storms off.

BILL

(brushing off Christopher's concern)

          Oh, what could he do?

7. EXT. ROAD/INT. CAR. DAY

Mitchell on the phone while driving.

MITCHELL

(anxiously and placatingly)

          No, still on time. I stepped out to get some milk. For Leyla.

8. EXT. STREET. DAY

Mitchell's car momentarily swings out of control, crossing over to the other side of the road, forcing oncoming traffic to slam on brakes and evade, before correcting itself and getting back on the correct side.

9. INT. A BABY'S BEDROOM. DAY

Leyla's face is now muddied with tears and snot. MUM comes into the room.

MUM

(brandishing a photo)

          Who's this?

Leyla immediately stops crying, grabs the photo.

MUM

          We never liked him, Leyla - your father and I.

Mum leaves the room. Leyla jumps up to follow.

10. INT. EMBASSY. DAY

Inside the embassy, an attractive dark-haired YOUNG WOMAN is shaking hands with two suited EXECUTIVES while a number of hangers-on stand around. At back is the final slide of a Powerpoint presentation depicting a giant pipeline through Asia Minor. An INTERPRETER stands to the far side of the Young Woman and the OGLING EXECUTIVE.

OGLING EXECUTIVE

          If only more negotiations were this easy.

As the young woman turns for the translation, the OGLING EXECUTIVE drops his eyes to her breasts.

INTERPRETER

(translating for the young woman)

          "Yalnız daha danışıqlar bu asan olsaydı."

11. EXT. EMBASSY/INT. CAR. DAY

Mitchell pulls into a kerb. Across the road is a modern embassy building with a wide stairway leading up to glassed front doors. He turns off the engine and waits. We can hear what he's been listening to.

VOICE ON TAPE

          ...For generations, Kuşköy villagers have conversed using a unique form of whistled         communication       they call “kuş dili,” or “bird language”...

Mitchell pulls a photo of the young woman out of his gym bag.

VOICE ON TAPE

          The name Kuşköy itself means “bird village.”

MITCHELL

(looking at photo)

          Phoar!

12. EXT. STEPS. DAY

The embassy's glass front doors open. The young woman emerges with her translators and the two executives.

YOUNG WOMAN

          ...iş görmək sonra, unutmaq olacaq.

INTERPRETER

(translating for the executives)

          "And don't worry about the Kuşköy. Once they see the jobs this project will create, they'll forget about      being relocated."

13. EXT. STREET. DAY

Mitchell jumps from his car carrying the green gym bag. As he crosses to the other side of the road, a car speeding toward him, screeches to a halt. Mitchell freezes in its path and sees Leyla and Mum inside the car.

14. EXT. EMBASSY/ INT. CAR. DAY

LEYLA

          Mitch?

15. EXT. STEPS. DAY

YOUNG WOMAN

(Looking at Mitchell's lucky escape, laughing)

          Uğurlu!

Mitchell bounds up the steps toward her, pulls a gun from his gym bag - screaming starts from bystanders - and shoots her. She falls to the ground. The executives try to help, while guards appear from everywhere.

GUARDS

          Dur, qatil!

Mitchell tries to run back down the steps, but is quickly surrounded by guards. Guns have appeared from everywhere and are pointing at Mitchell. He drops his weapon.

16. EXT. STREET. DAY

Mum and Leyla are standing on the footpath back from the embassy watching as more guards surround Mitchell and medics arrive from inside the building to form another cluster around the young woman.

GUARDS

          Qatil!

LEYLA

(To mum)

          They're saying 'assassin'!

They watch as Mitchell is picked up, handcuffed, and led away. Mitchell tries to look back at Leyla as he is hustled away.

MITCHELL

          It wasn't my bag!

Leyla looks at the photograph of the young woman she has held in her hand. It is clear now that it is a surveillance photo taken with a telephoto lens.

Back up the road, even as Mitchell is being led away police cars arrive with flashing lights. We hear an ambulance siren in the distance.

The crowd around the young woman parts slightly and we see medics cutting open her bloodied blouse. The Ogling Executive kneels by her head looking on, powerlessly.

MUM

          Well, perhaps he isn't a cheat.

ROLL CREDITS

17. EXT. CROSS STREET. DAY

At their ambling pace Christopher and Bill have by now reached the cross street where the shooting took place. As they walk and talk, A POLICEMAN approaches them both carrying Mitchell's green gym bag inside a plastic forensic bag. As the policeman goes to his vehicle to stow the evidence, he notices Christopher's green gym bag and, momentarily suspicious, watches them pass.

They stiffen up as he peers at them, and slow down as they approach the scene of pandemonium.

END.

Gordon Kalton Williams, 2012
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