A stageplay in two acts
HAROLD ROSTOV
90 year-old dapper man, with charm and a jaunty swagger that prevails over unsteady limbs.
ETHEL ROSTOV
85 year-old frail, dying woman with a light-hearted, indomitable spirit.
TERI ROSTOV
50 year-old daughter of Harold and Ethel, youthful and attractive despite a strung-out bearing.
DR. SIDNEY MEISTER
60 year-old estranged husband of Teri, unremarkable looking.
HAROLD
I speak to you in the year nineteen hundred, ninety-two from Florida, where my wife and I retired and will be finishing our days on this planet. I was born in 1901 in a cosmopolitan city in the Ukraine. I recall an early memory in 1905, near the end of the Russo-Japanese War. Our elderly nurse, Katya, was taking me and my brother, Morris, to our father’s tobacco shop when rifle shots broke out in the street. We got safely home, but the incident made us fearful of being alone, so my mother hired Lisa, a 16 year-old peasant girl, to be our companion. I was 6 the day Lisa and I were alone resting. By accident, my hand slipped under her skirt. I felt something warm and fuzzy. It was the first time I realized a girl is different from a boy, and I liked it. She liked it, too. We rested a lot in those days. Later, when I went to school I was given the part of the wolf in a school play. I was an authentic wolf—and I still am. Summers, the family vacationed at our villa in the Crimea on the Black Sea. My father could not leave his business, and I recall my sad goodbye to him— the droshky ride to the railroad station, the aroma of fresh bread and vegetables being loaded onto carts— blending in with the smell of horse droppings—ughhhhhhh an unforgettable smell.
(He takes a sip of Cognac.)
The front door opens and Teri enters with a bag of groceries. She lays the bag on the kitchen counter and plugs in the electric coffee pot.
HAROLD
(Into Microphone)
Russia was a hard life for a poor Jew, but well-to-do, educated Jews like us were allowed to live in large cities and the establishment used our talents to build the industry. At nine, I was accepted into the high school of engineering where I soon decided I’d be an artist.
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