The Early Ayn Rand

ESTERHAZY: [Laughing harshly] Where? You have no place to go! [She stares at him, wide-eyed, incredulous] After all, what difference does it make, whether it's now or later? Why should we take it so seriously? [She whirls toward the door. He seizes her. She screams, a muffled scream, stopped by his hand on her mouth] Keep still! You can't call for help!... It's a death sentence — or this... [She starts laughing hysterically] Keep still!... Why should I care what you'll think of me afterwards?... Why should I care about tomorrow?

[She tears herself away, runs to the door, and escapes. He stands still. He hears her laughter, loud, reckless, moving away]

CURTAIN

SCENE 3

The letter projected on the screen is written in a sharp, uneven handwriting:

Dear Miss Gonda,

This letter is addressed to you, but I am writing it to myself.

I am writing and thinking that I am speaking to a woman who is the only justification for the existence of this earth, and who has the courage to want to be. A woman who does not assume a glory of greatness for a few hours, then return to the children-dinner-friends-football-and-God reality. A woman who seeks that glory in her every minute and her every step. A woman in whom life is not a curse, nor a bargain, but a hymn. I want nothing except to know that such a woman exists. So I have written this, even though you may not bother to read it, or reading it, may not understand- I do not know what you are. I am writing to what you could have been.

Johnnie Dawes...

Main Street Los Angeles, California

Lights go out, screen disappears, and stage reveals garret

of JOHNNIE DAWES. It is a squalid, miserable room with a low, slanting ceiling, with dark walls showing beams under cracked plaster. The room is so bare that it gives the impression of being uninhabited, a strange, intangible impression of unreality. A narrow iron cot, at wall Right; a broken table, a few boxes for chairs. A narrow door opens diagonally in the Left upstage corner. The entire wall Center is a long window checkered into small panes. It opens high over the skyline of Los Angeles. Behind the black shadows of skyscrapers, there is a first hint of pink in the dark sky. When the curtain rises, the stage is empty, dark. One barely distinguishes the room and sees only the faintly luminous panorama of the window. It dominates the stage, so that one forgets the room, and it seems as if the setting is only the city and the sky. (Throughout the scene, the sky lightens slowly, the pink band of dawn grows, rising)

Steps are heard coming up the stairs. A quivering light shows in the cracks of the door. The door opens to admit KAY GONDA. Behind her, MRS. MONAGHAN, an old landlady, shuffles in, with a lighted candle in hand. She puts the candle down on the table, and stands panting as after a long climb, studying KAY GONDA with a suspicious curiosity.

MRS. MONAGHAN: Here ye are. This is it.

KAY GONDA: [Looking slowly over the room] Thank you. MRS. MONAGHAN: And ye're a relative of him, ye are?

KAY GONDA: No.

MRS. MONAGHAN: [Maliciously] Sure, and I was thinking that.

KAY GONDA: I have never seen him before.

MRS. MONAGHAN: Well, I'm after tellin' ye he's no good, that's what he is, no good. It's a born bum he is. No rent never. He can't keep a job more'n two weeks.