Guildenstern and Rosencrantz are sitting on a park bench. It is a pleasant mid-afternoon in early November. The sun is filtering through the trees. Rosencrantz seems preoccupied. He is rubbing his hands together, as if for warmth.
Guildenstern: Friend, what is the matter? Your hands can’t seem to stop moving over each other. It can’t be warmth; the sun is lovely.
Rosencrantz: I’m sorry Guildenstern, my mind is all over the place and my fingers are equally restless.
Guildenstern: By what? The day is beautiful, and calming.
Rosencrantz: It is not this day, it is what lies on the horizon of days that may come to shore if power goes one way instead of another.
Guildenstern: Ah yes.
Rosencrantz: Something is rotten in this state of affairs when many people see him as a saviour, as a saint. He keeps promising to bestow greatness upon the country and the lives of those who follow him. But what of those who don’t follow him? Will they live in greatness, too? It worries me, Guildenstern. I fluctuate between being unable to sleep at night and unable to rise from my bed because of a malaise of hope. And he is mad. I shall not say his name.
Guildenstern: Ah my friend, I feel for you. You are one of many, myself included. Though I must admit my symptoms do not manifest themselves as do yours. Perhaps foolishly, I trust in the sensible notions of good people.
Rosencrantz: Forgive me saying, but in this you are being blinded by perhaps putting too much faith in commonsense. What state is this when words of nonsense, hate, childishness, vindictiveness and lies, demonstrable lies, seem to have no effect on people? That one may smile and smile and be a villain? Indeed, people don’t seem to care. They don’t even care that he is a criminal, faces even more offences against the state, and shows no remorse, no contrition, at all. For anything! He once boasted he could shoot someone and not lose a single follower. Is that a descent of madness, to say that and for people not to say, enough is enough, I cannot follow you?
Guildenstern: Yes, and he has already tasted power. Now he is back. He is like the stain that one thinks removed from a piece of fabric only for it to reappear. Surely, he cannot be ingrained so thoroughly as to be unremovable. Perhaps what he promises is a vengeance upon the world that his followers feel against the many slights they feel others have bestowed upon them. And it is washing up against a peaceful shore, and it may drown the voices of reason. What a world.
Rosencrantz: Yes, I mean, really wasn’t one time enough? People like to be amused. Well, they were amused, and then enough thought, we’ve had had enough and booted him out.
Guildenstern: Only he didn’t believe them! Nasty rotten scoundrels stole it from him. The system stole it from him! Everyone was to blame but him. And he still goes on and on about it.
Rosencrantz: And this is the part I fear my friend. He carries a strong glow of revenge in his eyes. It is as if this be madness, yet there is method in it.
Guildenstern: The Roman poet Juvenal once said, Revenge was always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.
Rosencrantz: Juvenal also said, and I’m paraphrasing, that when the people abdicate their duties, they hope for just two things: bread and circuses.
Guildenstern: Methinks we are seeing nourishment in the way the madman feeds one part of society against the other with his ranting at the otherness of others. Truly, my friend, it is all divide and conquer.
Rosencrantz: And wearing it as the will of the people, as a patriotism that can invent a reality only one, such as he, can deliver. Do you hear that rustle my friend, it is the wind of fascism in the breeze.
Guildenstern: (sighs), Well who knows, perhaps nothing will come of it. Perhaps the country will walk another path.
Rosencrantz: We can hope. We can hope.
Guildenstern: Shall we hold our breath?
Rosencrantz: Yes, let us do so, while the air is still so sweet.
Warwick McFadyen is an award-winning journalist. He has won two Walkley Awards and four Quill Awards. He has published several books of poetry. The latest is 21+4 Poems. His prose and poems have also appeared in Quadrant, Overland and Dissent.