Monologue
Tiny Kushner — Geraldine
Tony Kushner
Geraldine: This is what offends! Galls! Grates on the nerves! Americans! You make up these fantastic stories! These idiotic invented lives! My life is the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire! My life is the frustrated dream of the Albanian people of Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, for the establishment of Greater Albania! My life in the terminus-heap of the struggles of the Ottoman Empire to invade the West, the West’s attempts to invade the East, the clash between Islam and Christianity, my life is the Balkans, my life is a mountainous centuries-old tragedy, my life is the story of Fascism’s promise and its betrayal, of the appalling, disastrous European flirtation with democracy, my life is secret armament caches and the perdurable lust-dreams of deposed kings for their stolen patrimonies, my life is hostage to the vain dream of autarky and its twisted diplomacy, one million Albanians and eight hundred million Chinese in league against Soviet aggression, while you — You’re just like MOTHER! Gladys Virginia Stewart, American! All fantasy and pretension so she marries a Count, not bothering to notice HE’S BROKE!! She’d have done better to fly to the moon and marry a French-speaking walnut! AMERICANS! NO SENSE OF HISTORY! NO SENSE OF TRAGEDY! EVERYTHING WILL HAVE ITS HAPPY ENDING! And it’s the daughters who are left to suffer the reality!