Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile
Page 4
OSWALD
I don’t deny it.
[Silence]
You glad?
Cuss and make back.
That’s his style.
[Long silence. OSWALD sits down]
Oh, God!
[Looks up at VICTOR]
You really believe that, eh, Victor?
AGATHA
Of course he doesn’t.
[Rumples her costume]
I feel like a shit in this thing.
VICTOR
[Indicates AGATHA]
Hear how she swears now? That’s your handiwork.
Every other word is shit or … your handiwork.
You use her soul to … scrawl on your graffiti.
OSWALD
Go on, pardner.
[AGATHA bends, kneels near OSWALD]
AGATHA
Can’t you see he’s crying?
VICTOR
Good. Let him learn to be more sensitive.
Toulouse-Lautrec. The whorehouse Watteau.
AGATHA
No, you arrogant bastard, you learn that!
You learn from him what sacrifices mean;
you look, just look up from your work for a second,
and see the pride he takes in you—not envy.
The … pride … We both did what we did out there,
not to jeer at you, O Great Master, but
to show them our contempt for mocking you.
Oh, but you can’t see that! Oh no! Oh no!
This piece of property, here, and this vandal
whose whole joy is to scrawl obscene graffiti
on your property are … are … I’m going to take this off
and go to bed.
OSWALD
I going to play me Mas …
VICTOR
[Touching him]
Ozzie?…
OSWALD
Don’t touch me, Victor, don’t …
VICTOR
Oswald.
[Holds him harder]
OSWALD
I go take this bottle and … don’t touch.
[Hurls him away]
AGATHA
[Sobbing]
Property?…
OSWALD
See she there? Your handiwork, all your own work, pal.
[He suddenly starts singing and dancing; exits]
VICTOR
Go out there, join him!
The night isn’t over. You can finish it up
somewhere in the bushes, just hise up those skirts!
But not in my costume. It cost me good money.
AGATHA
[She undresses down to her petticoats]
I’m getting my working-class arse out of this place.
There we are, mate, that’s my true character.
Aggie of Gin Lane, A Working-Class Tragedy!
Can’t you hear it being ground out on a barrel organ?
Those dried-up bitches must be laughing out there.
You’re a bloody ball-less failure, Victor!
VICTOR
You foul-mouthed slut! You guttersnipe,
what do you know about my work?
AGATHA
I’m going up to bed. Don’t follow me!
VICTOR
Not till we talk, Miss Willett. I mean it!
AGATHA
I’m going back home, Victor. I’ve decided.
VICTOR
You come from nothing. Go back to nothing!
Go back and live in all that filth and squalor.
But now Miss Willett is a great judge of art!
You came here whimpering to be liked,
and once we took you in, you took over.
“Miss Willett will have some friends to tea.
Miss Willett will have tea served on the lawn,”
when the only blasted lawn Miss Willett knew
was a patch of nettles behind some allotment
of Council Housing! From time to time
you need to remember your origins, Aggie!
You belong with George! The only reason
you ain’t living round the back there in the yard,
like George, is because you white.
AGATHA
Right! Put me down there!
[Exits]
VICTOR
[Returns to the stage. Only his silhouette is seen. Steel-band music stops]
Attention, attention, gentlemen! Messieurs, mesdames.
Inheritors of France, ambassadors of great art!
[Silence]
You cocoa barons, you retail salt-fish merchants,
you who take everything and contribute nothing,
of which I am your elect, your representative,
your artist! You see before you Monsieur Antoine Watteau,
you who swill the vintage of French art
in your fat cheeks and spew it on my works!
My genius! Who can’t stop smiling behind my back.
Your crudities disgust me, do you hear me?
You who came to this paradise, this Cythera,
and with your Calypsoes turn into swine!
This is your last Carnival! You hear me? Music! Music!
This is your last Carnival at Santa Rosa!
[He swirls his jacket in the air. The steel band drowns him out. Applause]
SCENE 6
The applause is held, carried over into: a cricket field, near the estate. Independence Day, 1962. Midafternoon. AGATHA in a deck chair, wearing a large cream hat, a thin white caftan. VICTOR lying at her feet. Distant clapping.
VICTOR
Well, Aggie my luv, today your flag goes down and ours goes up! Independence! We’ve won ours, but you’ve lost your own. Sad! Independence! August 31, 1962, A.D. End of colonialism. And the happy natives are playing a cricket match. Invented in England. So, you’re not losing anything, really, are you, Aggie? Have a glass of white wine to that. Invented in France. How’s Oswald doing? Is he scoring? Oswald. Invented in Trinidad. [He applauds. Distant applause] Ah! Isn’t Ozzie a fine figure there in white against that greensward? Isn’t this, ah, oh, so fête champêtre, so Manet, so Manet! so … You are listening? Give her a boundary, Oswald! Hit him for six!
AGATHA
He’s not batting, silly. He’s at the other end.
VICTOR
So he is, so he is! You can make him out at any distance, can’t you? She can tell my brother better than I. [Applauds] They were slaves. Some of them fought to be free. Then colonials, then independence. But we, we can’t change. Never to be independent. We will remain colonials. You’re condemned to be Miss Willett all of your life. Sometimes my whole body feels like it’s treading through a fever, and I sweat, sweat like a sponge, and everything sweats as if it had malaria. She died of that, you know. Of that, and two-thirds of what was going to be a child. [Touching his groin] So, nothing to run up the old flagpole, Willett.
AGATHA
It’s not important.
[Distant clapping]
VICTOR
[Talking to his groin] You hear that, Dickie old thing? It’s not important. What is important? You know, I have come to realize what’s wrong with my work. I am not an artist but a mortician. I paint all of this, the pasture, the mango trees getting rusty, the church spire, the cricket field, how many times I’ve painted them, and everything I touch with my brush is born dead! Where’re the children? Can you make them out from the crowd?
AGATHA
That’s Clodia horseback-riding round the edge of the meadow.
VICTOR
Meadow? Pardonnez-moi. Pasture. Pastyah! We ain’t have no meadows in Trinidad. We got pastyah. Clodia is dark. She does turn into a little nigger every August. Tony is at the beach. He is not in the pastyah! I looked at you before the match started, walking across that green pastyah in your long white caftan and broad white hat, and I felt you were striding towards me with a sword to cut off my head. To cut off my head. My head which is so full. Which doesn’t stop. [App
lause] People … flatter me for my money. I have no talent. [He suddenly stands next to her, applauding. OSWALD enters in cricket gear. He embraces VICTOR. AGATHA kisses him]
AGATHA
Our hero! Wonderful. The match is over. We won. Santa Rosa won, Victor! [SYDNEY, now aged twenty-four, in white, runs on with a bat] Is that Mr. Oswald’s bat, Sydney? I’ll give it back to him. You were excellent. You should be a professional cricketer, you bowled them out. Santa Rosa. Flags are just cloth, Sydney, so promise me you’ll practise what I taught you. To give in to no one when you’re right, no matter what the odds, or who’s the enemy. It’s yours now, Sydney. All of this. It’s now yours!
[The British anthem soars]
ACT II
SCENE 1
Port of Spain, February 1970. The living room of the town house or castle, with VICTOR’s unfinished copy of Watteau’s Embarkation on a wall. Slanted morning light. BROWN enters, then GEORGE.
GEORGE
Mr. Oswald just phone to say excuse him,
he was up at Santa Rosa this morning.
Could you wait in here? Is Carnival.
The traffic …
BROWN
And Miss Willett?
GEORGE
They went together.
BROWN
What’s your name?
GEORGE
George.
BROWN
Just George?
GEORGE
Just George. Mr. Brown, right? A drink?
BROWN
No.
[Dead silence. Then a clacking noise]
Machine guns. In the hills.
GEORGE
This morning,
a helicopter was hunting them.
BROWN
How you spending Carnival, George?
GEORGE
Quiet. I want to ask you a question, please.
You fellers from the papers does know things first.
Them fellers playing guerrillas in the hills,
think they go win?
BROWN
No, George. They’re going to lose.
But that’s when it’s most dangerous, usually.
GEORGE
Lose? You sure of that? Some people don’t feel so.
BROWN
You worried about your job, your future, George?
GEORGE
My future? My future behind me, sir. But …
I have a nephew in this Black Power business.
I talking to you like two black men together.
The boy drift off from living in the country.
Drift into Port of Spain, start smoking grass,
drifting, gambling, hanging round the savannah
’cause he love horses. Then, from pure idleness,
he take up with all this Black Power stupidness.
I ain’t seen him in years. All I know, Jesus Lord,
is that he somewhere up in the hills with them.
This family suffering enough—don’t tell them—
for them to endure Sydney’s ingratitude.
The boy turn my head white with worry.
They give us independence, and we start fighting.
You promise to forget what I just ask you?
BROWN
That picture is by Mr. De La Fontaine?
GEORGE
Yes. That’s how he waste his life. Doing that.
BROWN
How well you knew him?
GEORGE
Like a son. If any man knows his son.
Don’t ask me why he kill himself. That
is a business between him and his Maker.
I glad he ain’t around to see all this killing, though,
’cause he’d be dead twice.
[CLODIA enters in olive-green T-shirt, camouflage fatigues, red riding cap, dancing. She collapses on a sofa]
CLODIA
Oh, God! Black Power, pang-alangalang! Che Guevara! pang-alangalang!
Go home, honky, pang-alangalang! You didn’t hear them?
Great, great! We passed right in front of here. Invaders Steel Band.
Georgie-Porgie, wha’ goin on?
[Gets up and dances with a tray and spoon]
George, go make some coffee for me, huh?
GEORGE
Go take a shower first, Miss Clodia. All right?
You went horseback riding? You stubborn, girl.
[He exits]
CLODIA
[Sniffing her armpit]
What is that wonderful smell? Hmm. Smell it!
Good strong smell. Love it. Smell of my people.
And who might you be, señor?
BROWN
I’m from the Guardian.
CLODIA
Christ, yes! I forgot. Aggie called you, right?
We’re all going to bare our little boobs to the press.
I read your article about my father’s work.
Where the others?
BROWN
They went up to your estate.
CLODIA
Which one? Santa Rosa? Aggie’d rather die than be late. I smell stink, don’t I?
BROWN
No. You smell fine. You played Jou’vert?
CLODIA
That’s my favorite Mas. What’s yours?
BROWN
I’m not too crazy about Carnival.
CLODIA
’Course not! You’re a serious person.
This castle. You want to know this castle’s history?
It was built on cocoa. My great-grandfather brought it
stone by imported stone, all the way from France.
He had delusions about aristocracy. Bought the title.
We’re a faint, bastard branch of some damned duke,
which justifies the “de,” “De La Fontaine.”
It’s an imitation, a stone fantasy,
but don’t tell that to Miss Willett, she’d deny it.
It was the mirage at the end of Aggie’s road.
She thinks she’s earned it. I’d better go and change.
I heard the car.
BROWN
I’m here about your father.
CLODIA
If you see a ghost with a hole in its damned forehead,
that’s my father, who aren’t in heaven. Tell him
he owes his two children some other apology
apart from his wonderful artistic despair.
People don’t die for art.
BROWN
Many have.
CLODIA
Not for art, buddy. It sounds good.
But for something else. Debt, impotence, alcohol.
I hate the bastard. Spit on his shoes for me.
BROWN
You don’t mean it.
CLODIA
Anyway, his ghost’s not here.
It’s haunting Santa Rosa. Where he did it.
Where Aggie found his body in the studio.
Playing his Carnival all by himself.
Well, I suppose, I guess I could understand that.
BROWN
You remember him that way?
CLODIA
Poor Victor!
How did we get on to the subject? You’re smart!
I remember him dressed in his Watteau costume.
Long after Carnival was over, he would put it on,
and on those days we knew he was quite off, quite off,
as Aggie used to say, and put on this music,
the same damned record, it would drive us crazy,
and paint to it, and sign things “Antoine Watteau.”
Then it’d clear up. You’d see a ray of sun
between the clouds, then the clouds closed again.
And back in costume. Mein Papa.
BROWN
What costume?
CLODIA
That one there.
[Points to a figure in the mural. OSWALD and AGATHA enter, OSWALD in khaki]
OSWALD
Clodia! Go
and bathe! Don’t tell me you went riding?
You don’t listen to any advice, eh, girl?
[CLODIA goes up the steps, laughing]
Jesus Christ, Brown, I sorry. I sorry.
I had to rush up to the estate first thing this morning.
Drink?
BROWN
No, thanks. I understand. It’s Carnival.
OSWALD
You know Miss Willett. You spoke to her on the phone.
BROWN
Miss Willett is very well known in Trinidad.
Pleased to meet you.
[GEORGE enters, serves drinks]
AGATHA
Gin-and-tonic, George.
In twenty-two years here I’ve rarely been unpunctual.
BROWN
I was wondering if you’d picked up West Indian habits.
AGATHA
When I came it was the New World, now it’s the Third.
BROWN
Yes. Apparently we skipped the Second.
OSWALD
So what’s the latest bulletin? You fellers in the press
always get the rake before everybody.
We could hear shooting in the hills this morning.
BROWN
There’re roadblocks coming in and out of the city.
Some of the rebel army officers are in the hills,
but their brigadier offered them amnesty.
That’s mainly why the helicopters are up there.
Not so much for the guerrillas. The Brigadier
loves his officers. He wants them back.
AGATHA
Jean says if the Brigadier changes sides,
the country’s finished. Will he change sides?
How much it’s all changed from fifteen years ago!
The roads are blocked with soldiers, army trucks.
All the police have arms. I don’t understand.
If they’re allowing Carnival to continue,
How can they tell the guerrillas from the soldiers?
OSWALD
Black people don’t know what the arse they want!
Country is a black country, the government black!
But when they start desecrating churches …
AGATHA
Well, Marx said …
OSWALD
I don’t give a shit what Marx said.
Marx wasn’t a Trinidadian. Fuck Marx.
This is a Catholic country, and we go stay so.
BROWN
I don’t think their anger’s aimed at the estates.
It’s mainly an urban anger. They use the word “ghettos”
for what we called “lanes” or “alleys.” The rhetoric
is as imported as their revenge; it lacks direction,
despite the vehemence. I don’t say you aren’t threatened,
but what should have been an economic protest,
a march of the shirtless against urban injustice,
has turned into a Black Power demonstration