Scene 7.11 - Rendezvous
EST: INT. Cell #17, Geronimo Bay - June 3rd, 1803
(MONTY looks miserable and mad; mad like a madman. His hair is unkempt, his face unwashed, his clothes hanging about his chubby body. Yes, chubby. Seems that the jailer has been feeding him the dungeon's allotment of fungi-cake for the past thirty months with a bonus double-helping of white soup and rat meat on every good day that ended with a Y. MONTY sits in a corner, pitiful; morose.)
MONTY
(Pointing lazily:) Sixty-nine-thousand-six-hundred-and-sixty-seven, sixty-nine thousand six-hundred-and-sixty-eight-
(A scratching noise is heard. MONTY is frightened. Something much bigger than a rat is burrowing under the stones.)
MONTY (Cont'd)
Aaaahhh! Ahh!
(Horrified, MONTY shies away from the flagstone in the center of the room, the one moving up from place, being pushed aside.)
MONTY (Cont'd)
The d-devil! (Clawing the rocks, afraid; a waking nightmare reaching completion.) Ahhh! Ahhh!
(A little bald man with white eyes and a killer Fu-Manchu springs from the Earth.)
MONTY (Cont'd)
(Frantic, howling, desperate to push the wall away so he may escape:) Away! Away demon! Away!
MASTER POKE
(Played by JYNX in a remarkable dual role. Again, cheap movie.) My son, do not fear, I am not a daemon-
MONTY
(Picks up an empty, nearby bucket for... a shield/weapon?) A ghost!
MASTER POKE
I am not a ghost -- not yet, anyway. Do not feel apprehension at the sight of me, my good man, the sound of your voice is a delight to my ears. I am not a spectre, nor a daemon, I am an imperfect man; alone -- a prisoner of this horrid castle, like you.
MONTY
How did- why are-
(MONTY calms down, seeing the scene for what it really is.)
MASTER POKE
I am the answer when you stop asking, the question when you begin hoping and the dream when you keep praying.
MONTY
Do not speak of prayer in here, Old Man, God has forsaken me; and for that, I forsake him. (Illustrates by counting stones off with every syllable...) "Father why hast thou forsaken me? Unto thee I commend my spirit!"
MASTER POKE
You should not feel such things or lend mockery to the words spoken by our Holy Saviour; even in a foul, mad jest or through the mind's idleness -- you are alive; you have a good soul! Be thankful and rejoice! That is what is truly important! It's why we live!
MONTY
(Encompasses room:) Rejoice? Thankful? Is this not my fate? Are we all not on a ship of fools with a madman at its helm?
MASTER POKE
Only to a fool. I have tunneled underneath the lowest dungeon and thought I was raiding the guard-shack growing room, but I can tell (sniffs) smell now that I am still seventy yards away -- to the Southeast.
MONTY
Yes, the greenhouse. It's where the guards grow their stash, I can see it from my window if I climb up the third rock - (His chubby body barely negotiates the first rock in the odd stone wall ladder.) Actually, that's the four-thousandth, six-hundred and fifty-fifth rock, which brings me to today's topic, and the room's standing topic for all time - counting the stones of the cell -- Hey! Your eyes are all radioactive-looking and all -- can you see in the dark or can you just not see?
MASTER POKE
I see.
MONTY
(Nods. Maybe he's a foreigner from The Far East. Their eyes look different, they say.) I see.
MASTER POKE
I see a whelp of a wanna-be con man who thought that knowing how to tie a bow-line would keep him from a dungeon like this one, a cell like this one... this ain't the first time I've played the blind prophet, I was Tiresias in Antigone At Dawn in my college d-
MONTY
Yo, my crib; be topical. There's Sixty-nine-thousand-six-hundred-ninety-six stones in this cell, I've counted them all, many times.
MASTER POKE
Yes, yes, my boy; but have you named them yet?
(Both smiling initially, they have a silent sanity-melt-down stare-down that collapses when MONTY groans in pitiful despair; beyond the despairs of childhood; mortal, yet echoes of an immortality of misery -- as if a man watched his entire collection of early-edition-mint copies of Playboy magazine go up in flames via a globally-televised, odd-verdict-divorce-court reality show.)
MASTER POKE (Cont'd)
Do not despair my son, all is darkest before the dawn; I too, was like you, vulnerable and afraid. You must conquer the hardest demon of all: Yourself. I solicit your help in digging these tunnels; in a few years, we could reach the outer greenhouse- a boat-
MONTY
(Exasperated sob:) A few years?
MASTER POKE
I'm sorry, my poor man, was there something else on your agenda? Another pressing engagement within Castille De La Cucaracha? Something more important on your dismal mind than getting the hell outta Dodge?
MONTY
No, no -- escape is a good idea. Division of labor: Two of us together can do more than two men can do individually; we could sail the boat. I was captain of a galleon once; the two of us could sail a small craft -- What do you need me to do, old man?
MASTER POKE
Dig.
MONTY
Okay, I dig; then what?
MASTER POKE
Dig some more.
MONTY
You got this far, I'll give you that; and yet a blind mole is still a mole and blind just the same. Let's hammer this plan out...
MASTER POKE
You think I'm a useless blind old man?
MONTY
Nah-a I didn't say that.
MASTER POKE
Strike me.
MONTY
I'm not gonna strike an old ma-
(POKE slaps MONTY across the face. MONTY starts breathing fast, huffing, immediately serious.)
MASTER POKE
Strike me!
MONTY
You don't want me to hi-
(POKE slaps his other side of his face with his other hand. MONTY'S hot.)
MASTER POKE
Stri- hah! (Between cool displays of old blind dude with Kung-fu mastery schooling chubby wanna-be skater punk mullet-wearing rock-star- THUD! MONTY doesn't get it right away. It takes a few tries.) Ah! Oh! Huh! Hua! Huh! Wah! You don't listen, you don't smell; are you even breathing? You cannot hear the trickle of water across the mossy crevice of your window pane stone, you know nothing of the beautiful aroma of dank from the grass-burner, ignorant as you, wasting his weed carelessly, only seventeen feet below your window, leaning on a rail, rifle at his side -- a rifle just about to fall to the ground, which will strike a stone and will subsequently fire, its bullet hitting the weather vane on top of the barn near the guard shack, which will shock the chickens in the coop below into laying their eggs early, which will rile the rooster, forcing the guard below to wake an extra hour early tomorrow morning to the sounds of a pissed-off rooster with blue-rooster-balls. (Laughs.) Such is the way of Karma. Such is the way of life.
(Pause. We hear exactly what he described occur. Metal on brick scrape, clack of rifle on small stone, gunshot, chickens going ape, rooster getting ticked.)
POV: MONTY
MS: Guard oblivious to all as he spills his weed sack while bending-over to pick-up his fired rifle
(MONTY manages to see the guard, with effort. He wasted most of his energy trying to school the teacher.)
MASTER POKE (Cont'd)
And yet he blames his misfortune on the fates, not his own lack of self-discipline... the cycle will repeat again and again until...
MONTY
Old Man, how is it that you know these things?
MASTER POKE
Young Man, how is it that you do not?
(Climbs down with ease -- gravity is on his side.)
MONTY
I want to know those things; I want to know what others know; I want to be smart; I feel smarter since I got here; I can tie thousands of kinds of cool knots and I'm really good at counting things. Smart people count things, right? ... I'm willin' to learn.
MASTER POKE
That is the smartest thing you've said yet, Young Man. You help me dig, and in return I will give you a gift that is priceless.
MONTY
(Looks back out.) My freedom?
MASTER POKE
No. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. As we know, freedom can be taken away from us; what I offer can never be taken away.
MONTY
What do you offer, old man?
MASTER POKE
Knowledge. My knowledge. All I know; all I've learned. How to capitalize, turning my failures into guide-posts on your path to glory -- Politics, tactics, cryptography. My triumphs - Chemistry, Finance, Martial Arts, Philosophy, Ethics, Communication, Discipline -- Life Science: Medicine to some, Religion to others, Magic to most. We have seventeen hours each day to converse -- and dig. Gain my eighty years of wisdom and dig eight feet past the inner wall in eight short years and you will learn the ways of eight thousand dead men; and all the wisdom from all the lessons of those men; written down to tell -- all while I still have a tongue to teach it. Wickedness goes unchecked while love is regulated with money. Through you, I will tilt the scales to balance. I will first teach you how to learn: To Learn It; You Must Own It. We will accelerate you past many who hold doctorates in dogma. You can make the world right again; wiser than any of your age, yet avoiding the foolish pitfalls of -- my generation.
MONTY
(Truly innocent; truly unsure.) Can you teach me to... to read and write?
MASTER POKE
(Pause.) Of course.
FTB