The Turquoise Elephant Read online

  VISI: I’m not political.

  BASRA: But you’re alive. Living in this time and place.

  A silence.

  An awkward exchange of smiles.

  BASRA gestures towards a seat. VISI remains standing.

  So. The house is huge, but there are only three bedrooms. Mine, Grandma’s—Augusta, that is. You can call her that, by the way.

  VISI: Isn’t it ‘Your Excellency’? The agency said—

  BASRA: She hasn’t been Governor-General for ten years. Call her Augusta. For me. The other room is the guest room. The Serengeti Suite. Oh. My. God. You should lock yourself in there sometime. Surround sound—storms rolling in across the plains. The vents actually pump negative ions into the room. You can experience the world. Without ever having to leave this house.

  VISI: Right.

  BASRA: Mostly it’s Aunt Olympia who stays there. She’s arriving tomorrow. And I’m sorry, but this needs to be said. The cleaning can get a little … rococo after she’s been here.

  Beat.

  Are you sure you want to take us on?

  VISI: Don’t you want to see my papers?

  BASRA: The agency sent you, didn’t they?

  VISI: Yes.

  BASRA: So they’ve screened you.

  VISI: Sure.

  BASRA: They’re meticulous. They’ve weeded out a paedophile and two voluntary euthanasia advocates already. Do you have a visa?

  VISI: To where?

  BASRA: Here.

  VISI: This is where I live.

  BASRA: Of course, I just meant are you here permanently? The last … um …

  VISI: It’s okay. You can say it.

  BASRA: … employee we had here—

  VISI: Servant.

  BASRA: —the last worker left to head back to the Philippines.

  VISI: What’s left of it.

  BASRA: Yeah, right. Is your island …

  VISI: What?

  BASRA: Is it … above …

  VISI: Average?

  BASRA: Water.

  VISI: If it wasn’t above water it wouldn’t be an island.

  BASRA: Sure. But is it okay? Your home?

  VISI crosses to window.

  VISI: Everything looks okay. Well, aside from it being forty-eight degrees outside. And Melbourne flooding. And coming tenth at our own Olympics. In Brisbane. That was awkward. But on the whole I’d say yes, everything’s fine on my island.

  Pause.

  BASRA: I’m sorry.

  VISI: What for?

  BASRA: I’ve made a completely racist assumption.

  VISI: That I wouldn’t care about the Olympics?

  BASRA: I totally assumed you were here on an environmental resettlement visa. Oh, God. This is so embarrassing.

  Silence.

  VISI: My parents came here when their island drowned. They were environmental refugees. One of the first ones.

  BASRA: I’m sorry.

  Beat.

  You want the job?

  VISI: Are you offering it to me?

  BASRA: Yes.

  VISI: Yes.

  I would like the job.

  Thank you.

  They shake hands.

  TRANSITION SEQUENCE:

  MASKED FIGURE: We’re back. Still no action from our assembled world leaders. Mass evacuations from Melbourne; rising panic in the streets of our other capital cities; but still no action from the coal-stained fingers holding the global purse strings. What a surprise.

  Oh, well, let’s see if this image speaks loudly enough for you to hear.

  We’ve just blown up the Environment Minister’s car in the Sofitel lobby. Pity—it was a Prius.

  We filled it with paint and called the spattered wreckage ‘Melting Poles’. We like to think Pollock would have approved.

  This is the final ‘wake-up’ call.

  This morning’s positive protest action was timed to avoid injury. But the time is coming, if peaceful, artistic protest is not listened to, when we will be forced to create works of art painted in human blood, not red paint.

  Be warned. The Planet Murderers must be stopped.

  SCENE TWO

  VISI and BASRA in the lounge room. VISI at a video recorder, while BASRA grandstands.

  BASRA: Tell me when you’re ready.

  VISI: Go.

  BASRA: [reading] ‘In the face of overwhelming global events, it’s always difficult to ask what it is that the individual can do to change things. I refer specifically here to the catastrophic events taking place in our world as a result of human impact upon the environment—’

  She breaks for a moment from her prepared speech.

  Yes, I’m talking about climate change, and yes, I’m saying that we are responsible for what’s happening in Melbourne. All of us.

  Back to her notes.

  [Reading] ‘I hereby publicly announce that I am withdrawing my inheritance from all investment in fossil fuels and am reinvesting it in clean and renewable energy. Upon the death of my grandmother and great aunt, I will do the same with the remainder of our fortune. That sum will eventually represent a ten-billion-dollar redirection of resources—

  VISI: [breaking from the videoing] Holy fuck!

  BASRA: What?

  VISI: You’re worth ten billion?! You?!

  BASRA: Well, my family has investments somewhere in that—

  VISI: Ten billion?!

  BASRA: I know. It’s obscene.

  VISI: You could fucking buy Melbourne.

  BASRA: At the moment you could buy Melbourne.

  VISI: And you get all that when they die? What about your parents?

  BASRA: My parents are dead. Journalists. Long story. I was supposed to get the money when I was eighteen. Then twenty-one. Then twenty-five. She keeps pushing it back and back, but—I’m going to make her give it to me. Now. Today.

  VISI: You don’t think it’s too late?

  BASRA: What do you mean?

  VISI: Is investing in renewables going to do what you want it to do?

  BASRA: What?

  VISI: Stop global warming.

  BASRA: It’s better than doing nothing, surely.

  VISI: Okay.

  BASRA: What?

  VISI: Nothing.

  BASRA: What?

  VISI: Not to piss on your parade or anything. But. You know …

  BASRA: What?

  VISI: It doesn’t matter.

  Beat.

  BASRA: No.

  I don’t think it’s too late.

  VISI: Okay.

  Beat.

  BASRA: For someone who says they’re not political you seem to have some strong opinions about the timing of the planet’s demise.

  Beat.

  VISI: Sorry.

  Beat.

  So what do you do?

  BASRA: About what?

  VISI: For a job.

  BASRA: Well, I … I’m an activist, actually.

  VISI: What do you mean?

  BASRA: I know. Conversation killer, right?

  VISI: That’s a job?

  BASRA: I’m a freelance writer. I submit articles. To magazines. About the environment.

  VISI: So, you’re a journalist too.

  BASRA: An activist.

  VISI: They don’t get published?

  BASRA: Mostly I blog. I have ten thousand followers.

  VISI: So it’s like a boutique thing?

  BASRA: Well—

  VISI: Do they pay you?

  BASRA: I—That’s not the point.

  VISI: What’s it about?

  BASRA: It’s hard to explain.

  VISI: But your readers get it.

  BASRA: I hope so.

  VISI: So why wouldn’t I?

  BASRA: Right. Of course. It’s called The Turquoise Elephant.

  VISI: Why turquoise?

  BASRA: It’s the colour for the post-Green movement. The ones who want to return to Eden. Turquoise, like pristine waters. It’s aspirational.

  VISI: So give me an exampl
e.

  BASRA: Of a turquoise elephant?

  VISI: —

  BASRA: Really?

  Beat.

  Well … I posted this photo essay. Of deckchairs and banana lounges. Floating in the Indian Ocean. They’d washed up on Christmas Island. Crashed against the rocks there. They were from the Maldives. The hotel insignia was on the back of the … the headrest of one of the cabana lounges. It’s like, the Maldives have gone, and this symbol of luxury and Western tourist consumption … decadence, if you like … has washed up on this other island that is synonymous with human sea wrack …

  Silence.

  That’s not offensive, is it? To you?

  Beat.

  VISI: That’s clever.

  The intercom buzzer blares.

  OLYMPIA: [off] Augusta!

  BASRA: Oh, Jesus.

  OLYMPIA: [off] Augusta, let me in!

  BASRA: Brace yourself.

  OLYMPIA: [off, regally, blaring like a foghorn] Open the drawbridge!

  VISI: You’ve got a drawbridge?

  OLYMPIA: [off] Hurry up! If I don’t urinate immediately I’m going to unleash the sort of deluge that hasn’t been seen since Noah.

  BASRA: [to OLYMPIA] Hang on!

  OLYMPIA: [off] It will be biblical!

  BASRA: Okay, it’s open.

  OLYMPIA: [off] Species will be extinguished.

  BASRA: I said it’s open.

  OLYMPIA: [off] Starting with the ground-dwelling rodentia.

  BASRA: Aunt Olympia—

  OLYMPIA: [off] The dunnart, the dalgyte, the quokka, the quenda …

  VISI: What’s a ‘quenda’?

  BASRA: I don’t know.

  OLYMPIA: [off] Flushed from their warrens—

  BASRA: Aunt Olympia—

  OLYMPIA: [off] —by a warm nitric torrent—

  BASRA: —the fucking door is open!

  Beat.

  OLYMPIA: [off] Thank you!

  VISI: Wow.

  BASRA: I know, right?

  VISI: What was the word you used before? For the cleaning?

  BASRA: Rococo?

  VISI: I think I get it now.

  OLYMPIA enters to a blast of hot wind. Quite possibly wrapped in something endangered. An ocelot, or a hat made out of some rare bird. Staggers in with leaves etc. blowing. She plonks a large, dripping plastic bag on the bench.

  OLYMPIA: Fridge.

  Beat.

  I’m ready to burst my banks. Nearly had to relieve myself in the car. How on earth Gregor got me through that traffic … Apparently some extremists blew up Jackson Pollock at a hotel. Where are we? Palmyra? And then before we knew it, we were swamped with itinerants! People, leaving the city in droves! Horns tooting! Tempers flaring!

  BASRA: We were just looking at the footage.

  OLYMPIA: Packing up their lives and strapping it to the top of their cars. You’d think there was a meteor coming.

  BASRA: There is.

  OLYMPIA: Who’s this?

  VISI: I’m Visi.

  OLYMPIA: Do I know you?

  VISI: No.

  OLYMPIA: Help or hindrance?

  VISI: What?

  OLYMPIA: Are you the help or just one of her friends?

  BASRA: Visi’s working for us now.

  OLYMPIA: Right, then. Point me straight to the nearest commode.

  BASRA: You know where it is.

  OLYMPIA: Where’s Augusta?

  BASRA: In her bunker. Writing a Nazi war speech.

  OLYMPIA: Where am I bivouacked?

  BASRA: The Serengeti …

  OLYMPIA: If I don’t expire from dehydration along the way. It’s forty-eight degrees outside. [To VISI] Cart the portmanteau, will you?

  She heads down the hall.

  Forty-eight degrees! Honestly. It’s worse than Bombay.

  VISI: Is that where she’s been?

  BASRA: Just now? No. Greenland. To see the last of the permafrost melting. She’s part of this group. These vampires who tour the world to witness environmental collapse. Like storm chasers or whatnot. Those tornado freaks? They try to chase these moments of cataclysm. The exact moment the ice shelf falls into the sea. Or the last fucking polar bear drowns or whatever. Ghoulish, right?

  VISI: What’s in the bag?

  They peer in.

  BASRA: Oh, God, it’s dripping blood.

  VISI: Meat.

  BASRA: It’s defrosted in the—

  VISI: There’s half a cow in there.

  BASRA: [starting to laugh hysterically] You must think we’re this … Chamber of Horrors.

  VISI lugs the port off. AUGUSTA enters.

  AUGUSTA: Was that racket Olympia arriving?

  BASRA: Yes.

  AUGUSTA: Have Visi make some tea. Call me when it’s ready. This speech won’t write itself.

  BASRA: You’re serious about this? You’re really going ahead with it?

  AUGUSTA: Of course.

  BASRA: So, you make this keynote telling the world to go back to fossil fuels—killing off thirty years of advancements in renewables—and then what?

  AUGUSTA: And then we follow through.

  BASRA: How?

  AUGUSTA: We make a resolution, as a peak global body—a treaty—and then we take it to parliament the next time it sits. We ask our government to be the first in the world to ratify the treaty. Then the world follows suit. It all begins with us. Actions, you see. Words first, and then action.

  BASRA: I want my inheritance.

  AUGUSTA: What for?

  BASRA: I’m channelling it into renewables.

  AUGUSTA: Oh, no. No, no, no, no.

  BASRA: Just my share of it!

  VISI re-enters and stands silently.

  AUGUSTA: Never.

  BASRA: It’s my money!

  AUGUSTA: It’s family money. As fast as I can invest it, Olympia fritters it away on expensive indulgences and fripperies. I’m not letting you waste it too.

  BASRA: It’s as much mine as yours.

  AUGUSTA: You can’t be trusted.

  BASRA: Daddy would want me to have it.

  AUGUSTA: Then he should have died with a will. Gallivanting from war zone to war zone. Pouring money into lost causes. Can you imagine? You would have been as bad as him. No-one under forty should be entrusted with inherited wealth.

  BASRA: But—

  AUGUSTA: I’ve said no, and I mean no. Don’t ask me again. And don’t ever use Duncan as emotional leverage. He is off limits.

  She exits imperiously.

  A humiliated silence.

  VISI: Should I—

  Indicates the recording equipment.

  BASRA: Pack it up.

  VISI: Do you want me to download the—

  BASRA: Delete it.

  Trash it.

  Burn it.

  I don’t care.

  Throw the fucking thing away.

  VISI quietly packs it up and puts it away.

  VISI: You shouldn’t be disheartened.

  The blog.

  It’s good.

  It’s doing something.

  BASRA: Something inconsequential.

  VISI: You write well.

  Beat.

  BASRA: Thank you.

  AUGUSTA and OLYMPIA swan in together, washed and toileted.

  OLYMPIA: Sweet relief!

  AUGUSTA: I need a drink.

  OLYMPIA: A tea party!

  AUGUSTA: Yes, a cleansing tisane.

  VISI: [to BASRA] What’s a tisane?

  OLYMPIA: Clean cups!

  AUGUSTA: Visi, do you have that tea made?

  OLYMPIA: Clean plates!

  AUGUSTA: Be quiet, Olympia.

  VISI: What tea?

  AUGUSTA: Excuse me?

  BASRA: I didn’t ask her to do it.

  OLYMPIA: Are there biscuits?

  AUGUSTA: Well, do it now.

  OLYMPIA: I said, ‘Are there biscuits?!’

  AUGUSTA: Stop shouting, Olympia!

  OLYMPIA: What?

  AUGUSTA:
[gesturing] Turn. On. Your. Cochlear.

  VISI: I’m sorry. I’ll just—

  OLYMPIA: Oh! There we are.

  BASRA: Don’t lift a finger.

  OLYMPIA: Flick of a switch.

  BASRA: I’ll make it.

  VISI: No, I’ll do it.

  AUGUSTA: Honestly, girl, it should be automatic. We shouldn’t have to ask. Have you worked for a family like ours before?

  VISI stares blankly at her.

  Government service, I mean.

  VISI: I cleaned for a High Court judge.

  AUGUSTA: Oh, well. Near enough. You should know better.

  VISI: Yes, Augus—Your Excellency.

  BASRA and VISI attend to the tea and biscuits together.

  OLYMPIA: This is the cochlear you got me for Christmas, Augusta. For the theatre. The one that edits out vulgarisms. You got it so I didn’t have to listen to all the swear words in the new plays, remember? I only go to the classics now. Just in case. I mean, really, why bother? It’s all been said before, hasn’t it? I think probably there’s nothing original left to say.

  BASRA: [to VISI] One of them doesn’t hear anything she doesn’t want to, the other one doesn’t see it.

  AUGUSTA: What does that make you? The one that doesn’t say anything original?

  OLYMPIA: Hear no evil, see no evil …

  BASRA: Oh, that’s me. The family mute.

  OLYMPIA: We’re all monkeys. You’ve arrived at feeding time, Cissy.

  OLYMPIA screeches like a monkey.

  A buzzer goes off. Like one of those contraptions at restaurants that tell you your meal’s ready.

  AUGUSTA: What’s on earth’s that din?

  OLYMPIA: I’m a macaque!

  AUGUSTA: Not that—the buzzing.

  OLYMPIA: Oh! It’s me!

  She reads the contraption.

  It’s Kilimanjaro!

  AUGUSTA: What about it?

  OLYMPIA: The last of the snow is melting.

  AUGUSTA: Right now?

  OLYMPIA: Forever. Oh, that would be fabulous to see.

  AUGUSTA: Then go.

  OLYMPIA: But I only just got back. I think I’ll click ‘no’. Although Jeff might be going …

  AUGUSTA: Oh, for God’s sake, make up your mind, woman.

  OLYMPIA: Do I stay or do I go?

  AUGUSTA: You’re becoming existential, Olympia.

  OLYMPIA: I think I’ll stay.

  Clicks the button.

  BASRA: Seen one snow melt, seen them all.

  OLYMPIA: Mind you, I’m quite annoyed about missing Melbourne.

  BASRA: Rude of them not to schedule that for your entertainment.

  OLYMPIA: Yes. Oh, well. New Orleans was better. Now! Let me tell you about Greenland. I saw it, you know!

  AUGUSTA: What?