Irrefutable facts established, nerves strained, wills broken
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
Prosecution – an unnamed male figure (Prosecution; Pros)
Defense Counsel Welsh Losser (DC Losser)
The Dishonorable Judge William Bill Publowsky (Publowsky; Pub)
Seth Sundance (Sun)
A wisecracking, telegram-delivering pimply-faced kid with a scooter and a red jacket (Kid)
Courtroom Crowd
Prosecution: Okay, Sundance – first question: Are you now, or have you ever been… a Jew?!
Defense Counsel Welsh Losser: Objection, Your Dishonor! Relevance?!
Judge Publowsky: Well, Counsel, what do you have to say for yourself? I don’t want my courtroom turning into an anti-Semitic circus.
Prosecution: Your Dishonor, just because something is irrelevant doesn’t make it any less true.
Publowsky: Point taken, Counsel. Your logic is irrefutable. Like a steel trap. You may proceed.
Prosecution: Hey, thanks, Bill.
Pub: Yeah, don’t mention it.
DC Losser: Aaaaahhh – nyug-nyaaa!!!
Pub: Silence! Counsel, please proceed.
Pros: Okay, Sundance, you heard His Dishonor. Now answer the question. Are you a Jew, or not?
Sun: Yes, I am a Jew.
This answer elicits an explosion of beehive talk in the courtroom, with spectators suddenly discussing amongst themselves, in a positive, good-natured, involved and interested head-nodding way, all the things they know about the Jews – some being correct, others not.
Publowsky impatiently hammers his mallet on the gavel.
Silence! I’ll have order and silence in my courtroom!
And there it was – order and silence.
Pros: Very good, Sundance. Now we’re getting somewhere. All right, so you’re a Jew. And as a Jew, do you feel you are one of The Chosen People?
Sun: I don’t feel it; I know it.
Pros: Oh, really, Sundance? And why is that?
Sun: God said so.
Pros: Your Dishonor! I submit to the court that there is no authority higher than God!!!
Gasps and deferential head-bowing are accompanied by all-around signs of the cross made by the largely Ukrainian Greek Orthodox spectators crowding the courtroom.
But just then, a red-jacketed pimply-faced kid bursts into the court on a scooter.
Kid: Telegram for His Dishonor, Judge W.B. Publowsky.
Pub: I’ll take that. It’s posted from Trukhaniv Island. What’s it say?
Kid: Why don’t you read it?
Pub: Good idea (kid scoots out). It says, er-um, “There is no god;” signed, Andrzej Plumka, who has spelled God with a small g.
A dedushka keels over into the aisle, dead drunk. Babushkas in kerchiefs (which, in English, are also known as babushkas, giving us babushkas in babushkas – ha, ha, ha!!!) raise a proverbial hue and cry, crossing themselves frantically.
Needless to say, Publowsky is beating his mallet on his gavel furiously: Order, order, order!!! he shouts, then throwing his mallet down and his hands up amid the uproar, he reaches under his bench and lifts up a liter-pitcher of beer to his eager and impatient lips, which he drinks down in one gulp. He then rises magisterially, his judge’s robe billowing nobly behind him with sonic, super-smelly beer farts, and roars: SILENCE!!!
But this doesn’t work. The people are not subdued by the partly synthesized beer stench that fills the courtroom from Publowsky’s gut – coming out either end of his lard-laden physiognomy.
Meanwhile, a competing, and far worse stench overwhelms the room, like rotten eggs percolating in the Black Sea, coming from another direction, and slowly and oppressively subdues the crowd into nose-holding silence and mouth-stopping nausea with the strength of its potency.
Luckily, the perspicacious Judge locates the source, saying:
Defense Counsel Losser, did you shit your pants at the mention of Plumka?
DC Losser: I, ah, no, I, nyu-u-u-u-u, ah, ngo-ah-uh-uuu, you see, I have this gout from time to time, and it tends to nogi-i-i-grafluxofrupplnaaahh…
Pub: And who has gout these days? Henry VIII?! HA HA HAAAAA…!!! Counsel, if you can be called such, I think you will please the court a great deal if you go home and change your suit. Until then, this court is adjourned.
Courtroom Crowd – collectively sighs, disappointed: Aaaaawww…
Losser exits the court, walking funny – followed closely by his Plumka-inspired fright-born stink.
Just then, the red-jacketed pimply-faced kid on his scooter bursts into the court again.
Kid: Telegram for Judge W –
Pub: Over here!
Kid: Here you go, fat man. Sign this. Thanks. See ya!
The kid scoots out.
Courtroom Crowd: What’s it say, Judge, what’s it say?!
Pub: Oh, uh, it says: “If there is no God, then everything’s allowed.” Signed F. Dostoevsky.
Disoriented confusion is raised in the courtroom. The people don’t understand. They start to jostle each other, with push coming to shove and now they’re pushing each other down, choking and kicking, and slapping and punching one another in the face.
Pub – to the Prosecution – voice booming: Counsel – is everything allowed?
Prosecution: No, Your Dishonor. A lot of things are allowed, but many things aren’t.
Pub: Well, then that settles it. First, Fyodor Dostoevsky trumps Andrzej Plumka. And second, since not everything is allowed, there must be a God. Andrzej Plumka is overruled!!!
The crowd disciplines itself back into order and spontaneously raises a good, old-fashioned village cheer. The women start harmonizing in a choral fieldwork song of joy. An old man with a shock of thick white hair, with wisps of blond still in it, combed straight back to reveal the kind of face no one around here has anymore, wearing war medals on his jacket, pops out into the aisle to accompany them on an accordion. Other men join in the singing. The dead drunk has revived and is drinking again, chasing homemade hooch with onions, garlic, radishes, marinated tomatoes, peppers, and pickles. Everybody joins him.
But then Welsh Losser again enters the courtroom and suddenly everyone grows sad, quiet, and glum.
Pub: Well, Losser, that was fast.
DC Losser: Nyug-nyag-nya-nyaaahhhggg…
Pub to Prosecution: Counsel, you may proceed.
Pros: No shit. Okay, Sundance…
Continued in Part 3
Filed by Jack Step, April 21, 2013