"And, My Son —
That Idiot Boy!
—You Don't Kill Both of Your Parents.... That's Just Overkill."
— Carrie Fisher/Crown-Princess Leia Organa
of The Royal House of Skywalker
T-Mobile :
[Rap music]
DJ Bluntz is in the building, here to announce that Tom Haverford is in the building.
Oh! 1-2, 1-2! Donatella.
Princess Donatella :
T-Mobile.
T-Mobile :
Three words for you: Treat. Yo. Self.
Treat Yo’Self 2011!
Once a Year, Donna and I spend a day treating ourselves.
What do we treat ourselves to...?
Clothes!
Treat Yo’Self.
Fragrances!
Treat Yo’Self.
Massages!
Treat Yo’Self.
Mimosas!
Treat Yo’Self.
Fine Leather Goods.
Treat Yo’Self! — It's The Best Day of The Year.
Both, Singing :
The Best Day of The Year!
Princess Donatella :
I got a Question.
T-Mobile :
Mm-hmm?
Princess Donatella :
What do you think about inviting Ben to come along with us today?
T-Mobile :
What? Noo! This is Our Thing.
Princess Donatella :
But he really seems like he could use a day off.
T-Mobile :
He's like a skinny little rubber band that's about to snap in half.
Princess Donatella :
Exactly.
He doesn't know how to relax.
T-Mobile :
Donna, You and I are Relaxation Professionals.
There's no way Ben can slow down enough to keep up with us.
My Nubian Princess, this is Our Holy Day.
Princess Donatella :
It's the one day a year I allow myself to be selfish.
Jerry :
Ooh, cupcakes.
Princess Donatella :
Those are all for me, Jerry.
MONTY :
Don't you fuckin' do it!
Don't you raise your hands to me again!
I'm Your Father.
You're Not Supposed to Hate Your Father.
ROBERT DOWNY Jr :
When are you My Father?
When are you My Father?
OUR LADY :
You know, I, uh, I waited around for a year at my window when you left.
I bought California maps.
Any time I heard anything about it, I would think of you.
Embarrassing.
Dumb Little Girl.
Listen, I'm not heartbroken about it, alright?
I'm over that shit.
I was just a Dumb Girl.
We were fuckin' kids.
Whatever.
But you need to take Your Father to the hospital.
I mean, Your Mother-- I'm serious.
I got a little boy.
He's a good kid.
And he's gonna look after me when we're older.
So you look after Your Mother.
You take care of Your Father.
You take care of Your Mother.
It's real simple. 'Cause she's a Good Woman.
It's not a fuckin' stretch.
ROBERT DOWNY Jr :
I know what you're saying.
Alright? Thanks for coming.
I should go.
OUR LADY :
Wow. [ POINTING] Monty's Son.
You know what?
You're Flori's Son as well.
And that's why you're all fucked up.
ROBERT DOWNY Jr :
Yeah, I'm all fucked up.
OUR LADY :
You think you're going? You're gonna fuckin' leave?
Go ahead, fuckin' go. You're not gonna go.
You didn't fuckin' come all the way over so you could leave again.
ROBERT DOWNY Jr :
You don't know.
You don't know what it was like in The House, okay?
OUR LADY :
Listen. You want it straight?
'Cause I'm The Only One Who's Gonna Tell You,
for some fuckin' reason.
You Killed Him.
You Killed Your Father When You Left.
Are you hearing me?
You fuckin' killed him.
You left a Trail of Blood when you left.
So forget me.
Forget all this shit.
Forget it, alright?
You Killed Your Mother
and You Killed Your Father.
And for the past fuckin' 20 years he's been dying,
just waiting for you to come Home.
Say ‘Daddy, you're fucked up. I hate your guts.’
Whatever you need to get out of your angsty little fuckin' head.
ROBERT DOWNY Jr :
Touch my head one more fuckin' time and I'm gonna go nuts.
OUR LADY :
Go ahead.
Go fuckin' nuts.
Go fuckin' nuts.
Let it out!
Stop fuckin' running away.
You think you're a Man?
That's just a fuckin' tail between your legs.
Go Home, and take care of Your Mother.
Go Home, and take care of Your Father.
That's gonna make you a fuckin' Man.
That's All You've Got Left.
'Cause if you don't do that shit, it's too fuckin' late.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed I had murdered my mother?'
'Why did you murder her?' said Julia, almost asleep.
'I didn't murder her. Not physically.'
In the dream he had remembered his last glimpse of his mother, and within a few moments of waking the cluster of small events surrounding it had all come back. It was a memory that he must have deliberately pushed out of his consciousness over many years. He was not certain of the date, but he could not have been less than ten years old, possibly twelve, when it had happened.
His father had disappeared some time earlier, how much earlier he could not remember. He remembered better the rackety, uneasy circumstances of the time: the periodical panics about air-raids and the sheltering in Tube stations, the piles of rubble everywhere, the unintelligible proclamations posted at street corners, the gangs of youths in shirts all the same colour, the enormous queues outside the bakeries, the intermittent machine-gun fire in the distance -- above all, the fact that there was never enough to eat. He remembered long afternoons spent with other boys in scrounging round dustbins and rubbish heaps, picking out the ribs of cabbage leaves, potato peelings, sometimes even scraps of stale breadcrust from which they carefully scraped away the cinders; and also in waiting for the passing of trucks which travelled over a certain route and were known to carry cattle feed, and which, when they jolted over the bad patches in the road, sometimes spilt a few fragments of oil-cake.
When his father disappeared, his mother did not show any surprise or any violent grief, but a sudden change came over her. She seemed to have become completely spiritless. It was evident even to Winston that she was waiting for something that she knew must happen. She did everything that was needed -- cooked, washed, mended, made the bed, swept the floor, dusted the mantelpiece -- always very slowly and with a curious lack of superfluous motion, like an artist's lay-figure moving of its own accord. Her large shapely body seemed to relapse naturally into stillness. For hours at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nursing his young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two or three, with a face made simian by thinness. Very occasionally she would take Winston in her arms and press him against her for a long time without saying anything. He was aware, in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness, that this was somehow connected with the never-mentioned thing that was about to happen.
He remembered the room where they lived, a dark, close-smelling room that seemed half filled by a bed with a white counterpane. There was a gas ring in the fender, and a shelf where food was kept, and on the landing outside there was a brown earthenware sink, common to several rooms. He remembered his mother's statuesque body bending over the gas ring to stir at something in a saucepan. Above all he remembered his continuous hunger, and the fierce sordid battles at meal-times. He would ask his mother naggingly, over and over again, why there was not more food, he would shout and storm at her (he even remembered the tones of his voice, which was beginning to break prematurely and sometimes boomed in a peculiar way), or he would attempt a snivelling note of pathos in his efforts to get more than his share. His mother was quite ready to give him more than his share. She took it for granted that he, 'the boy', should have the biggest portion; but however much she gave him he invariably demanded more. At every meal she would beseech him not to be selfish and to remember that his little sister was sick and also needed food, but it was no use. He would cry out with rage when she stopped ladling, he would try to wrench the saucepan and spoon out of her hands, he would grab bits from his sister's plate. He knew that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt that he had a right to do it. The clamorous hunger in his belly seemed to justify him. Between meals, if his mother did not stand guard, he was constantly pilfering at the wretched store of food on the shelf.
One day a chocolate-ration was issued. There had been no such issue for weeks or months past. He remembered quite clearly that precious little morsel of chocolate. It was a two-ounce slab (they still talked about ounces in those days) between the three of them. It was obvious that it ought to be divided into three equal parts. Suddenly, as though he were listening to somebody else, Winston heard himself demanding in a loud booming voice that he should be given the whole piece. His mother told him not to be greedy. There was a long, nagging argument that went round and round, with shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, bargainings. His tiny sister, clinging to her mother with both hands, exactly like a baby monkey, sat looking over her shoulder at him with large, mournful eyes. In the end his mother broke off three-quarters of the chocolate and gave it to Winston, giving the other quarter to his sister. The little girl took hold of it and looked at it dully, perhaps not knowing what it was. Winston stood watching her for a moment. Then with a sudden swift spring he had snatched the piece of chocolate out of his sister's hand and was fleeing for the door.
'Winston, Winston!' his mother called after him. 'Come back! Give your sister back her chocolate!'
He stopped, but did not come back. His mother's anxious eyes were fixed on his face. Even now he was thinking about the thing, he did not know what it was that was on the point of happening. His sister, conscious of having been robbed of something, had set up a feeble wail. His mother drew her arm round the child and pressed its face against her breast. Something in the gesture told him that his sister was dying. He turned and fled down the stairs' with the chocolate growing sticky in his hand.
He never saw his mother again. After he had devoured the chocolate he felt somewhat ashamed of himself and hung about in the streets for several hours, until hunger drove him home. When he came back his mother had disappeared. This was already becoming normal at that time. Nothing was gone from the room except his mother and his sister. They had not taken any clothes, not even his mother's overcoat. To this day he did not know with any certainty that his mother was dead. It was perfectly possible that she had merely been sent to a forced-labour camp. As for his sister, she might have been removed, like Winston himself, to one of the colonies for homeless children (Reclamation Centres, they were called) which had grown up as a result of the civil war, or she might have been sent to the labour camp along with his mother, or simply left somewhere or other to die.
The dream was still vivid in his mind, especially the enveloping protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole meaning seemed to be contained. His mind went back to another dream of two months ago. Exactly as his mother had sat on the dingy white-quilted bed, with the child clinging to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath him, and drowning deeper every minute, but still looking up at him through the darkening water.
He told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance. Without opening her eyes she rolled over and settled herself into a more comfortable position.
'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days,' she said indistinctly. 'All children are swine.'
'Yes. But the real point of the story -'
From her breathing it was evident that she was going off to sleep again. He would have liked to continue talking about his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could remember of her, that she had been an unusual woman, still less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world. When once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people of only two generations ago this would not have seemed all-important, because they were not attempting to alter history. They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious effort. And in thinking this he remembered, without apparent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.
'The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not human.'
