[A coffin, seen from the side and cut away so that its interior is visible. It is evident that the coffin is buried, and that both it and the body inside are in a disintegrated state. The uniform of a WW1 airman clearly outlines the shape of the body, but the mortal remains themselves – head, hands, etc. – are obscured in darkness. Far overhead, and at regular intervals, a dull drumming sound builds, fades, then reappears after a silence]
The airman: Knock? If only I could! A century of stillness. No light, no cycle of day into night to count off the time. Just the sound of the farm machines overhead – and that gets weirder as the years pass. [Raising his voice] What are you lot using up there? [Muttering] Whatever it is, it’s a bloody sight bigger than anything I saw before The War. The noises are lower now, but angrier, too. And they reach deep down – six feet of earth’s nothing, they knock knock knock at my little wooden abode. [Raising his voice] Don’t you know you’re shaking what’s left of my bones? [Lowering it again] Maybe it’s those great metal beasts I flew over those last few days at The Front. Terrible things, they threw the whole earth around them into a panic. Is that what they’re using to churn up the soil and seed it?
[Pause as the dull drumming is heard overhead before dying away]
They don’t understand, it’s my land now. I remember my first sight of it, fleeing north in my biplane, over the ragged Delta. Nothing so broken ever seemed so beautiful. It was neutral! Neutral Holland – a whole land – no one tearing it apart clod by clod, strewing it with metal, blood and bone. As my engines died under me and the sky tipped me out, that’s all I wanted. A piece of land – at peace – to land in. In pieces. [Pause] Or not. Whoever buried me, buried me whole. Some kindly farm hand, maybe, who didn’t know or care I was a deserter. I ought be grateful, I suppose…
[Pause as the dull drumming resumes and recedes again]
On the other hand… I wish they’d cremated me and finished the job. [Anguished] Am I a freak? To be lying here, thinking, dead but not gone? Did this happen to all of us poor sods – Germans, French, Tommies? Or is it just me, because I ran? A ‘conscientious objector’, my consciousness leached out into the soil and left a trace, like rust around an old iron sword. I guess the mind’s like everything else, it has to go somewhere, take up space, make up waste, more waste, in the good brown earth…
[Pause for more drumming]
It wasn’t bad, to start with. The land and I were becoming one, the soul was the soil, nothing more. There were bad moments, of course. It could get wet, in the lap of the polders. Half a century ago it got very wet – the sea came up and that’s it, I thought, it’s got us all at last, I can wave my remaining bits and bobs goodbye. But somehow the soil held – I stayed whole – I persisted.
[The drumming returns, fades]
Whatever’s going on above, though – it’s different. Things aren’t looking good for those of us who dwell here, under the sod. The worms that grew fat on my flesh once now wind their sick bodies through the mud, leaving patches of skin behind. The roots peeking through are warped and stunted, misshapen tips. And my bones are breaking up too quick, they’re being eaten away by something unseen, seeping down from above. I thought I’d fled the poisoned earth of The Front, but maybe it’s come for me after all. My lovely neutral soil now dissolves me, corrodes me. It’s indecent. [Raising his voice] You hear that? It’s not decent, I say! But you keep sticking stuff into the ground. Won’t you listen to a poor sod down here?
[The drumming sound returns and fades]
If I could knock back at ‘em, maybe I’d give ‘em a start and they’d hear me out. But no one ever listens to the land. War, peace, it’s all the same. They’ll fight on me, they’ll fight over me, but no one ever fights for me. Because the land has no voice… something has to give and it’s always the land, yes… and I can feel myself giving… feel myself going… I’m giving… I’m going… and going… and going…
[The farm machinery overhead makes a final pass and drowns out his voice. Lights down]
homo monologous 