Scene 7
Steve: There is no one left, shall we close?
Monsieur: As you wish.
Steve: It's your call (glances to Celeste).
Monsieur: I was agreeing. Of course, close. Steve.
Steve: Yes?
Monsieur: I assume you are planning on returning Monsieur Gil's money?
Steve: Of course. I was just making sure it got to Gil.
Monsieur: Yes. I do not think this Jacob is evil. But that does not mean he would not have taken the money.
Celeste: Why are you coddling him? You've never had any patience for religious zealots before.
Monsieur: Maybe it is because I do not think he is a religious zealot. There is something...oh, he tosses “god” around, but there's no dogma. He has not said anything like “you must do this and then.”
Celeste: He will.
Monsieur (smiles): Maybe Celeste, I am trying to convert him? That would be an irony eh? To swell with conceit now?
Celeste: There are things worth believing in.
Monsieur: Ah, Celeste, this is where we have always differed. You took up the revolutionary cause, not me. I agreed with some of its thinking, yes. But it dreamed of changing, doing. This I do not do. I live Celeste. That is all. It is more than sufficient.
Steve: Monsieur, if I may, who are you? And you Celeste?
Celeste: We should close.
Monsieur: Assis. Celeste bring some wine for all of us. (Celeste crosses to bar and gets a bottle and two more glasses) Bon. Who am I? Who are we? D'accord. We are criminals n'est ce pas?
Celeste: I do not take that name.
Monsieur: But no, but it is the name we were given yes? And I cannot say I did not earn it. (Celeste shrugs) So, Celeste, he was, is, the revolutionary. One such must break many laws n'est ce pas, some big some little. Ultimately they may say treason, oui? But, Celeste, is young and he is not the focus of the prosecution. So he gets the petit crimes, the burglary, the conspiracy, these things. Yes?
Celeste: Yes, you know well. (He looks at Steve) This is 1951, I am among the last ever sent here as a prisoner.
Steve: You were sent to Devil's Island! (Monsieur laughs)
Monsieur: Pardon Steve, Hollywood gave it this name. Non, he was sent to the prison colony of Guiana. Almost everyone here who has been here awhile has a criminal past.
Celeste: It is my story, I will continue. I was almost the last. It was the perfect place for political prisoners. Send us away from the homeland. So, I come and like all I am scared and do not know my way. But I am lucky. A trustee takes me as a friend (he gestures to Monsieur) and keeps me from becoming lost to the system. He teaches me how to live, here, now.
Monsieur: I taught nothing.
Celeste: You taught me everything. Without you, then I would be a criminal.
Monsieur: Or maybe a successful revolutionary?
Celeste: I do not believe in the revolution anymore.
Steve: But, shouldn't you both want to change things? Fight the system?
Monsieur: I am not saying you should not. But, I would say work for the changes, not for or against any system. What is the Gandhi expression you like Celeste?
Steve: Let me guess, be the change you want in the world?
Monsieur: It is famous I guess?
Steve: On the edge of being hackneyed Monsieur.
Monsieur: Vraiment? That is too bad. It is a good statement. You be it, don't create something else to be it.
Steve: But you monsieur? What is your story?
Monsieur: I am a murderer.
Steve (truly shocked): No, who, why?
Monsieur: yes, an Algerian whose name I did not know, and for no reason, because the sun it was too bright.
Steve: I don't understand.
Monsieur: If I. Another person, they would have made it clear it was an accident, that I did not mean to do it. But, I did. I had just felt happy for the first time in a very long time, had even thought of the future, that I might be married and what that could mean, and then there was a gun in my hand and the stabbing sun.
Celeste: Monsieur was convicted of murder because he did not believe in god and was sentenced to the guillotine.
Steve: The guillotine?
Monsieur (nodding): Oui, that terrible invention of mercy. And I had resolved myself to it. I was ready to die. I had come to terms with it. I understood. It did not matter whether one lived 10 years or 40. One came into the world and one left and the world spun on. You could only have lived whatever you got. You must understand and accept that everyday, this is your life. It's all you've got. So, I was ready to walk out before the crowds and let them shout and taunt and hate. It was that that should have told me I had not quite come to terms.
Steve: How so?
Monsieur: I was still imagining the future and their reaction. So imagine my condition when my appeal was heard and my sentence commuted to life, deportation to the devil's island as you say. There is some irony in being deported from one colony to another I think. So here I arrived. And yes, I was on the island not the mainland prison when I first came. Dying would have been much easier. It is much easier for the young to imagine death than it is to imagine a life that goes on and on. No one who is 20 or even 30, maybe not even 40 faces just how long life can be. Some may come to it sooner—people like me who are in jail forever: for life.
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