(TONY is reclining on the stage. The light is falling on him, showing him as if he were a gnome, or a child.)
TONY: I was sucking her breast when she said: "Do you remember what has brought us to all this? We wanted to have a baby..." I thought, I do not want her to bring all this up again, not now, and I said: "I am your baby! Let me be your baby!" and she said: "Stop it, you ass! Stop being a fool!" I am a Catholic. I believe in nothing at all that you're supposed to believe to be called a Catholic, yet I would still call myself a Catholic... What were we saying? She wanted a child. I wanted a child, too. I wanted to adopt a child. I thought she wanted to. Her prognosis of a recurrence was seventy percent. Becoming pregnant would have made it worse. Throwing off the hormonal balance... I mean, opinions are divided... Clearly, she was not going to have a child by herself, of her own body, and it didn't bother me one bit to have an adopted child, we were doing with an adopted breast, we could do with an adopted child, or with a surrogate mother, or, or... Only, she didn't want to, she kept hoping, and I had this dumb, brilliant idea, I said, look, let's go to Mexico where there are a lot of children, I took her to Mexico on a vacation -
(ISHTAR appears in the back-ground in a summer dress, high-heels, wearing a white lace mantilla, holding a lit candle.)
- no need to take a decision right away, just look at the children, and ask yourself if maybe ours is among them, and the place was teeming with children, maybe that was the mistake, you see, there were too many of them, she found herself exposed to the propaganda of the Catholic church, we should have gone to China... She's a Jew, she bought herself a mantilla to go into all these churches, she looked lovely... Children all around us, it was scary every womb pregnant, every breast swollen, cartloads of babies in the coming, she dragged me to church after church... She wanted to see them all, she was as in a trance, we held hands through mass... We were kneeling, holding hands... crèches, madonas like enormous dolls with gold robes and real hair... children and women singing... birds outside, birds inside.. She was in heaven, she was walking on air... Schoolyards, churchyards, streets full of children... She took to lighting candles... I went along, wondering, what will it feel like, to have a child coming out of a people of candle-lighters... She asked me, what do you think, I said, my mind is all made up... I want what you want... Whatever it is you want... I meant, adopting or not adopting... I could feel the breath of heaven, just being next to her...