So long, so bloody long!

PETER: Forty-two.

FRANCIS: That’s right. A captain.

PETER: Didn’t do so badly yourself.

There is an awkward pause. FRANCIS makes a sweeping, mocking gesture.

FRANCIS: My home.

PETER: [trying to be light-hearted] Love the bluestone.

FRANCIS: How did you find me?

PETER: Came over from Paris a few days ago. I’m fixing up the final Australian repatriation. Heard about your case this morning. How long have you been here?

FRANCIS: Eight or nine weeks. This is my daily exercise. I’m like a lizard. I follow the sun around the courtyard, trying to warm my blood.

AMERICAN VOICE: [off] Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy! Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

FRANCIS: An American negro. Went mad and killed a whore with his bare hands ’cos she called him a nigger. [Gesturing] Those windows, they’re black marketeers. War criminals stare out of those windows, waiting to be sent to Nuremburg; and those windows, that’s where I am: the rapists and murderers section.

AMERICAN VOICE: Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy! Hoy, hoy, I’m the boy!

FRANCIS: Actually, I’m quite at home; it reminds me of Collingwood. [He walks a little to the left, looking up at the sun, closing his eyes.] The last bit of sun. It’s freezing in the cell.

PETER: I only had time to glance at your file. The Americans think you murdered him.

FRANCIS: I did. The Kraut asked me to do it, so I obliged. Now the Australians want to show off to the Allies that they can be just as tough on their men. [Looking at the sun] It’s going.

PETER: After years in England it was the sun I missed the most and the bright blue skies. [Pause.] Did you know my father died?

FRANCIS: Your mum wrote to me.

PETER: Burnt to death. Most of the rear of the house was destroyed. Mother said you stopped writing to Betsheb.

FRANCIS: What could I write to her about? How could I describe what I was seeing? Civilisations perfecting death. Bombs, fighter planes, slaughtered soldiers, extermination camps, rape, blood lust. I couldn’t pretend the war would end and I would return because every morning I thought I would die that day. I couldn’t write any more gentle letters because I have nothing of that left inside me any more. It’s gone, the little I had. Once I stopped writing to her I knew I couldn’t go home again. This prison perfectly suits my state of mind; I have been bred for it, just as I have been bred to kill. Do you know that people think the war will continue, only it will be between the Americans and Russians? It’s as if this century has imagined a monster, concocted it from the deepest underworld of its brain and now it has escaped and is devouring everything. Nothing makes sense.