Even God will have his citizenship income

By Rosario Stefanelli

Theatre. Monologue
Revolution against talent. The talents have been imprisoned to stop the devastating effects of technological development on humanity. Thomas, a former researcher, has offered to watch over them. Denying himself to avoid the infamous fate, he is forced to live with the ghosts created by his own cowardice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rosario
• Release date: Jun 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9791220810616

Book preview

Single Act

Prison. Thomas surveys the cages. He is sitting. He taps his fingers on a table. A woman enters with a newspaper. She leaves it on the table.

THOMAS Thank you Adel. (Adel is about to leave) Wait! The coffee can wait. Do you know what happened to me yesterday? I was at the station. Near the long staircase lined with horizontally homeless people. I noticed a woman who could barely lift her suitcases. No one moved around, no one danced the tango of misery. And yet everyone knew that she was in danger of crumbling. This went on for a while, in a consolidated feeling of embarrassment. Until I broke the tacit agreement and approached her. There and then I felt like a freak, I was betraying the pact of choral indifference. I had the feeling of resembling the skirting boards of the station, the poor people nailed by the neurasthenic society to frame entire city squares with stench and ragged blankets. Cloaked in noble discomfort I picked up the bags. Damn how heavy they were! I walked up three flights of stairs. The furniture was out of order. The poor thing couldn't stop thanking me. 'Give me a hand instead of fumbling two little words'. At the end of Golgotha, a guy approached and extended his hand. He warmly complimented me on my altruism. He kept telling me that the world needs people like me. I told him that's how it was this morning, but how many times I've turned my back on him, you asshole. I don't betray the omertoso pact every morning. It's a bad feeling to feel like an alienated person. Too bad! With a different answer, he would have appeared on TV. I turn on my heel and go. Disappeared in the fog. You know what I thought? That there are a lot of asshole journalists around

Thomas flips through the paper as the woman leaves

The dollar goes down as the Fed closes its caps. What a strange world. It's the expectation that stirs the market bulls. What the heck! IS THE COFFEE READY? The dollar's dozing. You can't understand shit anymore! What's the point of stuffing ourselves with degrees, stuffing ourselves with master's degrees, stuffing ourselves with doctorates if we vent our inability to have a vision beyond five minutes in qualunquism? My grandfather, with the indigestion of a third grade, had the corner of his eye ten years long. And we demand vision from the politician! But we are the politicians. What need is there to vote, if the only thing I catch is the fucking film to watch tonight? The vision is now on a smartphone. Scary.

He throws the newspaper into a corner. He approaches the talent cells

Why am I here? Depressed, deprived of sense, deprived of breath. Why am I not with you, instead of keeping watch? One has to wonder. With passion. Alive, unhinged, now fugitive. The asphyxiating flame has stopped poking me, questioning me, asking me mortifying questions. The proximity condemns me, pushes me, induces me, forces me to a why

For the great refusal I fight every wretched moment the delinquent who aspires to have me by the balls. And how hard it is to plan, to dream, to conceive, and to be so careful not to achieve anything! What a struggle to keep going!

I have been forced to slip into the slammer of the best minds, betraying them, disowning them as companions of long-standing adventures. I have chosen family, Sunday mass and genuflected work, I have opted for a shelving based on cowardice, lukewarmness and consolatory figures. I have severed thoughts, lobotomised, reduced to a minimum any oxygen of genius. I have chosen fear and renunciation. I have raised the demented work that brings rhetorical bread to absolute divinity, I have defended it even though I could give a fuck that it was about to go to hell. I abandoned it to side with the last. Lack of courage and ardour drove me to the depths. And in the underworld of despair I trampled on the endless carpet of poor people, I crushed myself, while I watched you through a keyhole. You looked like a swarm of pretentious bees in that attic. We were scared shitless and huddled in the pit. Our underwear was full of poo and piss. We were one step away from crawling under bridges. The stench of a rotting