Two Yous Together

I am He, and 

He is Me.

REMARKABLE.

Richard Burton :

Mrs. Strang, have you any idea 

how this could have occurred…? 

Mother :

No, Doctor. It’s all so unbelievable. 

Alan was always such a gentle boy. Always. 

And he loves animals, 

especially horses.

Richard Burton :

Thank You. Especially? 

Yes. He even has 

a picture of one 

up in his bedroom. 

His Father gave it to him 

a few years ago off 

a calendar he printed... 

and The Boy's never 

taken it down. 

And when he was seven or eight... 

I used to have to read 

the same book to him, 

over and over again...

all about a horse.

Richard Burton :

Really? 

Mother :

Yes. It was called ‘Prince’, 

and no one could ride him. 

Richard Burton :

You say he kept the picture 

of the horse in his bedroom? 

Could I see it? 

Mother :

Yes, of course.

Richard Burton :

Thank you. 

Please, it's this way --

I do remember telling him 

one very odd thing :

Did you know that when 

the Christian Cavalry 

first appeared in 

The New World, 

The Pagans thought that 

Horse and Rider 

was one person? 

One person? 

Yes. 

Of course. 

Mother :

Actually, They thought 

it must be A God. 

In here, please. 

This is Alan's room. 

Richard Burton :

Remarkable.

Yes. 

Richard Burton :

Mrs. Strang, is there... 

anything else you can remember 

you told him about horses? 

Anything at all? 

Richard Burton :

Well, they're in The Bible of course.

 ''He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha!'' 

Richard Burton :

''Ha, ha''? 

The Book of Job. 

Such a noble passage. Do you know? 

''Hast Thou given The Horse strength?

Hast thou clothed his neck 

with Thunder? 

The Glory of his nostrils is Terrible. 

He saith among The Trumpets, 

Ha, ha!'' 

Richard Burton :

That's marvelous. 

Yes. There's Mr. Strang now. 

Frank, I’ve got 

The Doctor here. 

We'll come down. 

He's very upset. 

You understand, of course? 

This is Dr. Dysart, Dear. 

Mr. Strang. 

Richard Burton :

How Do You Do? 

I was just telling Dr. Dysart, Dear, 

how Alan always adored horses. 

In fact, we've always been 

a very horsy family. 

Well, my side of it has. 

My Uncle used to ride every morning 

on the Downs behind Brighton. 

All dressed up in a bowler hat and jodhpurs. 

He used to look splendid.

 ''Indulging in Equitation,'' he called it. 

I remember telling Alan how 

that word came from ''equus'.'

 

Richard Burton :

''Equus''? 

The Latin word for ''horse.'' 

Alan was absolutely fascinated 

by that word, I know. 

I suppose because he'd 

never come across one 

with Two U's Together before. 

My Dear, have you offered 

The Doctor a cup of tea? 

No, Dear, I haven't. 

You must be dying for one. 

Excuse me. 

My Wife has romantic ideas, 

if you receive My Meaning. 

About Her Family? 

She thinks she married 

beneath her. 

I dare say, she did. 

I don't understand 

these things myself. 

Would you say that she's closer 

to The Boy than you are? 

They've always been 

as thick as thieves. 

I can't say l entirely approve... 

especially when I hear her reading 

that Bible to him... night after night, 

up there in his room. 

You mean, she's religious? 

Some might say excessively so. 

Mind you, that's her business, but... 

when it comes to dosing 

it down The Boy's throat, 

He’s My Son as well as Her’s. 

Bloody religion. It’s our only problem 

in This House, but it's insuperable. 

I don't mind admitting it. 

You must excuse My Husband, Doctor.

 This one subject is something 

of an obsession with him. 

Isn’t it, Dear? 

You must admit. 

Call it what you like…

All that stuff, to me, 

is just Bad Sex. 

What has that got to do with Alan?

Everything, Dora. 

I don't understand. 

What are You Saying? 

Mr. Strang, exactly how informed 

would you judge your son 

to be, about sex? 

I don't know. 

You didn't actually instruct him yourself? 

Well, not in so many words, no. 

Did you, Mrs. Strang? 

Well, I spoke a little. 

Yes, I had to. 

Let me help you. 

What sort of things did you tell him? 

I’m sorry if this is embarrassing. 

I told him the biological facts. 

But I also told him What I Believe... 

that sex is not just a biological matter, but a spiritual one as well... that if God willed, he would 

fall in love one day. Sugar? 

Thank You. 

That his task was 

to prepare himself 

for the most important happening of his life. 

And after that, if he was lucky, 

he would come to know 

a higher love, still. 

There, now, Dora. it’s all right. 

Come on. 

You always laugh, as usual. 

No one is laughing, Dora. 

He Doesn’t LIKE You.

Dr. Dysart! There's a terrible scene with the Strang boy in the Violence Room. 

His Mother brought him chocolates. 

He threw them at her, hard! 

Manchester Black’s Mother :

Don't you dare! Don't you dare. 

Don't you look at me like that. 

I'm Not A Doctor who'll take anything. 

Don't you give me that stare, Young Man. 

Mrs. Strang. 

I know your stares, they don't work on me... 

Leave here at once! 

What did you say? 

I tell you to leave here at once. 

Goodbye, Alan. 

Wait for me. 

I must ask you never to come here again. 

You think I want to? Do you think I want to? 

What on earth has got into you? 

Into ME? 

Can't you see the boy's highly distressed? 

He's at the most delicate stage of treatment. 

He's totally exposed, ashamed, everything you can imagine. 

And me? What about me? What do you think I am? 

I'm a parent. Of course, that doesn't count. 

Isn't it a dirty word in here, "parent"? 

You know that's not true.

I know it, alright. I've heard it all my life -- It's our fault. 

Whatever happens, WE did it. 

You say to us, 

"Who forbids Television?" 

"Who does what behind whose back?" As if we're criminals. 

Let me tell you something. We're NOT criminals. 

We've done nothing wrong. We loved Alan. 

We gave him the best love we COULD. 

Poor Frank digs into the boy too much, 

but nothing in excess. He's not a bully. 

No, Doctor. 

Whatever has happened... 

has happened because of Alan. 

If you added up everything we did to him, 

from his first day on earth to this... 

you wouldn't find out why 

he did this terrible thing. 

Do you understand what I'm saying? 

I want you to understand... 

because I lie awake, thinking it out. 

And I want you to know 

I deny it absolutely, 

what he's doing now. 

Staring at me, attacking me 

for what he's done... 

for what he is. 

Mrs. Strang! 

You have your words, 

and I have mine. 

But if you knew God, Doctor, 

you would know about The Devil. 

The Devil isn't made by 

What Mummy Says, 

or What Daddy Says. 

The Devil is there. 

It's an old-fashioned word, 

but a True thing. 

I'll go. 

What I did just now was inexcusable. 

I only know that... 

He was My Little Alan... 

and then The Devil came. 

*****

I thought you liked your mother. 

She doesn't know anything. 

I haven't told her what you told me. 

It was lies, anyway. 

What was? 

You and your pencil. 

Just a con-trick, that's all. 

Made me say a lot of lies.

Like what?

All of it. Everything I said. 

A lot of lies. 

I see.

Ought to be locked up. 

Bloody Tricks. 

Thought you liked tricks. 

There'll be the drug next.

What drug?

I've heard. I'm not ignorant. 

I know what you get up to in here... 

shove needles in people and pump them full of truth drugs... 

so they can't help Saying Things. 

That's next, isn't it? 

Do you know why you're here? 

So you can give me Truth Drugs? 

He actually believes they exist. 

Hesther :

Truth Drugs? 

Yes. 

Hesther :

And don't they? 

Of course not. 

The important thing is that 

he wants A Way to Speak... 

Finally tell me what happened in those stables. 

Tape is too isolated... and hypnosis, he pretends, is A Trick, so he can deny it later. 

I'm tempted to 

Play A Real Trick on him. 

Hesther :

Like what? 

Give him an aspirin. 

Tell him it's the strongest truth drug in the world. 

Hesther :

He'd just deny everything again afterwards. 

The same thing all over. 

Superman :

No, because I'd tell him The Truth afterwards... 

that it was simply an aspirin. 

He'll Believe Me. 

Underneath all that glowering, 

The Boy Trusts Me. 

You realize that? I'm sure he does. 

Poor, bloody fool. 

Hesther :

Please, Martin, dear, 

don't start that again. 

Superman :

Can you do anything worse to somebody than to…

Take away Their Worship? 

Hesther :

Worship? 

Superman :

Yes, that word again. 

Hesther :

Isn't that a little extreme? 

Superman :

Extremity — is The Point. 

Hesther :

Worship isn't destructive, Martin —

I know that. 

Superman :

I don't —I only know 

it's the core of his life. 

What else has he got? 

Think about it. 

He can hardly read. 

He knows no physics or engineering 

to make The World real to him... 

No paintings to show him 

how others have enjoyed it... 

No music except television jingles... 

No history except tales from a desperate mother... 

No friends to give him a joke 

or make him know himself 

more moderately. 

He's a modern citizen for whom Society doesn't exist. 

He lives one hour every three weeks, howling in a mist. 

"With My BODY, I Thee Worship." 

Many men are less vital with their wives. 

Hesther :

All the same, they don't BLIND their wives, do they? 

Superman :

Come on. 

Hesther :

Well, do they? 

Superman :

You mean he's a violent, dangerous madman, who'll go round the country doing it again and again? 

Hesther :

I mean he's In PAIN, Martin. 

He's been In Pain for most of His Life. 

Superman :

Yes. 

Hesther :

And you can take it away. 

Superman :

Yes. 

Hesther :

Then that's all you need to know, in the end. 

Superman :

No. 

Hesther :

Why not? 

Superman :

Because — it is HIS. 

Hesther :

His? 

Superman :

HIS Pain. His Own. He made it. 

Hesther :

I don't understand. I don't! 

There's no merit about being In Pain, that's just pure old masochism. 

Superman :

I'm talking about Passion, Hesther. 

You know what that word meant originally? Suffering. 

The way you get Your Own Spirit through Your Own Suffering. 

Self-chosen. Self-made. 

This boy's DONE that. 

He's created his own desperate ceremony... 

just to ignite one flame of original ecstasy 

in the spiritless waste around him. 

Alright... he's destroyed for it, horribly. 

He's virtually been destroyed BY it. 

One thing I know for sure, that boy has known a PASSION... more ferocious than I have known in any second of my life. 

Let me tell you something : 

I envy it. 

Hesther :

You CAN'T. 

Superman :

Don't you see? 

That's what his stare has said all this time :

"At least I galloped. 

When did you?" 

I'm jealous, Hesther. 

Jealous... of Manchester Black. 

Hesther :

That's absurd. 

Superman :

Is it? 

Hesther :

Yes, utterly. Utterly! 

Superman :

I go on about my wife —

Have you thought about the husband? 

The finicky, critical husband, with his art books on mythical Greece? 

What REAL Worship has he known? 

Without worship, you shrink! 

It's brutal. 

I shrank my life. 

No one can do it for you. 

I settled for being pallid and provincial 

out of my eternal timidity. 

The old story of 

bluster, and do bugger-all. 

I didn't even dare to have children... 

didn't dare to bring children into a house and marriage as cold as mine. 

I tell everyone Margaret 

is The Puritan, I'm The Pagan. 

Some Pagan. 

Such wild returns I make 

to the womb of civilisation. 

Three weeks a year 

in the Mediterranean. 

Beds booked in advance, meals paid with vouchers... 

cautious jaunts in hired cars, suitcase crammed with Kaopectate. 

What a FANTASTIC Surrender 

to The Primitive. 

The "Primitive." 

I use that word endlessly. 

"The Primitive World," I say, 

"What Instinctual Truths were lost with it." 

While I sit baiting that poor, 

unimaginative woman with the word... 

That freaky boy is trying 

to conjure The Reality. 

I look at pages of centaurs 

trampling the soil of Argos. 

Outside My Window, that boy 

is trying to BECOME one 

in a Hampshire field. 

Every night I watch that woman knitting, 

a woman I haven't kissed in six years. 

And he stands for an hour in The Dark, 

sucking the sweat off his god's hairy cheek.

In the morning, 

I put away my books 

on the cultural shelf... 

Close up my Kodachrome snaps 

of Mount Olympus... 

Touch my reproduction statue 

of Dionysus for luck... 

and go off to The Hospital 

to treat HIM for Insanity. 

Now do you see? 

Hesther :

The Boy's In Pain, Martin. 

That's all I see. 

I understand, you know. 

I'm not just being Mrs. MacBrisk. 

You haven't made 

that kind of pain. 

So few of us have. 

But you've still made 

OTHER things. 

Your own thoughts. Your own skill. 

Skill absolutely unique to you. 

I've watched you do it, year after year... 

and it's marvelous! 

You can't just sit and say 

"It's all provincial, 

You're just a butcher." 

All that stuff is stupid, hateful. 

Alright, you never galloped. 

Too bad. 

If I have to choose between his galloping 

and your sheer training... 

I'll take The Training every time. 

What's more, 

so will the boy, at this moment. 

That stare of his isn't accusing you, 

it's simply demanding. 

Superman :

What? 

Hesther :

Just that. 

YOUR Power to pull him out of 

The NIGHTMARE he's galloped himself INTO. 

Do you see? 

Do you see?