OZET

Texts

The Ballad of Koba

SCOTT/AARON:
Someone must have known him
and someone must have killed him
and someone has to find the one who
killed the only stranger.

SCOTT:
We know the tractor drivers

AARON:
We know the council chairman

SCOTT:
We know the engineer who runs the morning tram.

We number fourteen hundred

AARON:
and nobody goes missing
but Botso found a stranger in his kitchen, dead.

SCOTT:
Endzela claimed she saw him
last Tuesday by the river
She thought that it was Mukhran so she called his name

AARON:
But when she saw his profile,
the clothes that he was wearing,
the unfamiliar hat and shoes she gasped and ran.

SCOTT/AARON:
Someone must have known him
and someone must have killed him
and someone has to find the one who
killed the only stranger.

AARON:
The district sent for Koba.
They found him in the tavern.

SCOTT:
“I haven’t had a case in years,” he told his drink.

He went for Botso’s story,
but got complaints and cursing:

AARON:
“I kill my fields to meet these quotas, still you see

“each day my soup gets thinner,
however big the harvest.
Don’t know who’s eating all the food but it’s not me.”

SCOTT:
Koba was sick and cross-eyed
from Kutsna’s cheapest vodka.
He couldn’t find Endzela so he went to bed.

When Koba woke that evening
his bedroom stank of urine.

AARON:
“Got news for you,” said Utscha from the open door.

He came from the resistance.
They live under the city.
“Ain’t that worth twenty rubles, Dick?” the beggar winked.

SCOTT:
Next morning found his body
stuffed in a narrow culvert.
Three farmers had to yank him so the stream could flow.

AARON:
“Get out and find some answers,”
the district chief demanded.
“Those wings weren’t made for sitting on your ass all day.”

SCOTT/AARON:
Someone must have known him
and someone must have killed him
and someone has to find the one who
killed the only stranger.

AARON:
“She may be in the city,”
Endzela’s neighbor told him
“There is a man she sometimes sees, or so I hear.”

“They say he’s in the council,
Can’t tell you why he’d want her.
Her eyes have lost their sparkle… well, I guess you know.”

SCOTT:
The city lights gave Koba
an unrelenting headache.
The council member’s doorman would not let him pass.

“Just let me see the woman
that visits on the weekends.”

AARON:
“I’ll tell her where to find you for a bit of change.”

Ten minutes to last call, the tavern door swung open
Endzela walked in, said “Buy your girl a drink.

“You don’t know what you’re into.
Go back to Village Twenty.
Tell them you couldn’t find me. I’m not coming home.”

SCOTT:
The vodka cured his headache.
The barman closed the tavern.
two blocks away, three men
grabbed Koba from behind

They took him down an alley,
knocked out his teeth with hammers,
left him to wonder why
they had not left him dead.

AARON:
“You piece of shit, how are you?
It’s been a long time, Koba,”
said Nikoloz the Engineer who ran the pipes.

SCOTT:
“How much crap can you handle
before the sewers buckle?
Could more than fourteen hundred souls live on this ship?”

AARON:
“We’ve got the guts to deal with
Upwards of sixteen hundred.
Would not have built that big myself, but there you are.

“The architects of OZET
were from the Earth, remember.
No telling what they had in mind so long ago.

SCOTT/AARON:
Someone must have known him
and someone must have killed him
and someone has to find the one who
killed the only stranger.

TAPE: Koba walked
home.
Broken wings,
broken teeth.
Limped across
fields.
Skinny cows.
Wilting wheat.

Down by the river he
pictured Endzela then
followed the tow path right
into the forest as
evening was falling and
found in a coppice of
hornbeams a shelter, a
blanket inside it, a

pair of pants
fork and knife
radio
playing
a song
playing a song
playing a song
he’d never heard
in his life

AARON:
“Where are you going, Koba?”
the district chief demanded.
“You’re off the case, the council sent it up the line.”

SCOTT:
“I found a little tavern
when I was in the city.
They serve my favorite vodka, you can find me there.”

[SPOKEN PART BY SCOTT]

SCOTT/AARON:
Now Koba runs a tavern
that stocks his favorite vodka.
You’ll find him pouring it for OZET’s hopeless souls.