Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile
Page 15
I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think I have enough talent or whatever to let it pass and say it’s improv. I don’t think fu … fuc … whatever …
CHRIS
Whoever …
SHEILA
I don’t think effing me is funny.
GAVIN
It could be necessary …
SHEILA
No, I do fine otherwise, thank you. If it means … If it means that I have to have the courage to grit my teeth and hear my name abused, well, that’s tough, because I don’t think I have the guts. I’m not a fucking queen, I’m not a celebrity; when you turn my name into mud it stays mud, and no magic in any theatre in the world can turn that mud into gold … We’re trying to do more than these little plays I’m tired of getting praised for, but I think you might have had some consideration. You’re a cruel son of a bitch, Harvey, if this foreign Method shit was your idea; it’s bad Method, anyway, and maybe it doesn’t travel. I would like some vestige of my pride left …
HARVEY
Your pride?…
SHEILA
My pride, my self-respect …
HARVEY
There’s no pride in the theatre …
SHEILA
No?
HARVEY
I mean personal pride.
SHEILA
Then tough shit on the theatre. But I have mine, and I hope to keep it. And I am ready. I’m ready, I’m … going to do it … I’m going to do … [She crosses herself] You can’t take my pride from me, whatever happens …
HARVEY
Put her in limbo, Marylin, just the spot …
[Single spot on SHEILA]
Go, sweetheart, go …
Shh … there you are, darling, it’s the visiting moon …
SHEILA
[Softly]
Oh, God, I’ve lost it … Please, God. Make it come …
[Silence]
“O! see, my women,
The crown o’ the earth doth melt. My lord!
O, withered is the garland of the war,
The soldier’s pole is fall’n: young boys and girls
Are level now with men; the odds are gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.”
[Silence. MARYLIN embraces her]
HARVEY
“The odds … is gone…” Singular … Marylin, please …
SHEILA
Two months I’ve suffered. Did I sound like her?
Did it, did it sound like I’d lost the world?
GAVIN
[Fluttering his eyes, hands clasped]
Did it? Did-it, da-dit, you’re flashing signals
from those wet eyes: Save Our Souls, Sheila!
[Embracing her, then strutting with her]
Man, can’t you see this elegant black fox
smothered in furs, up to her throat in sables,
these fingers flashing starlight like hot ice.
Can’t you hear sirens, babe? Now, come on,
turn on a white grin, wide as a marquee,
and blind them screaming fans; come on, man, walk!
Step delicately from that block-long limousine
into the jaws of fame, see them laser searchlights
making an X to mark your entrance, GRIN!
Float down the jewelled river of Manhattan traffic,
while the fans scream till their throats are hoarse as sirens:
“Heah come Sheila! Heah come Sheila!”
Da’ was my Sammy Davis number. You believe me?
Want to see my Mexican? It was great, that’s all.
Take it from a nigger with soul. The spark.
I saw it, babe. We all saw it. Consider us blessed.
SHEILA
That good? No, no! I’m frightened. Marylin?
Now everything I do will look conceited. Harvey?
HARVEY
Don’t come near me, you stupid black bitch.
SHEILA
[Embraces him]
I love you. I love every bloody one of you. I love you separately and together. I will never forget even if it never happens in my life again.
HARVEY
Look, Sheila …
SHEILA
Sheila! Fuck Sheila! My name is Cleopatra!
[Screams with joy]
HARVEY
Back to work.
GAVIN
Gimme time. I need five to recover.
HARVEY
No. Up. That’s how despair begins. Taking five. Up on your feet, up, up. We’re doing the whole damned thing over. Time!
[GAVIN falls to his knees, pleading broadly]
GAVIN
You’se a hard taskmaster, Mistuh Harvey sur, you’se going make this po’ nigger tote your arse across the desert, you’se pitiless as that burning sun, Mistuh Harvey. Why? Why?
HARVEY
[Southern accent]
Whah? Whah? I’se pitiless ’cause I can’t trist you house niggers, ’cause I leave you to polish the silver back in the pantry and you fucked the help, you been inter-fering. And you knows mah punishment for house niggers, boy?
GAVIN
[Whining, pulling at HARVEY’s trousers]
No, Mistuh Harvey, what is it?
HARVEY
They gits to be on television. They gits to be third detectives in a police series. They gits to do serious theatre in a side alley, in Noo Yawk. So git up. Git up!
GAVIN
[Himself, laughing]
Serious jokes, boy. Right! Begin:
“The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.” So do Jim Crow.
HARVEY
All right, then, all right. Perhaps we can start.
[The actors rise, put out cigarettes]
GAVIN
What time we going to, Harvey?
[An incoherent song, very loud, from PHIL on the sidewalk]
PHIL’S VOICE
You wasting your time, you wasting your time! Let’s hear it for Phil and the Rockets. All the way to Madison Square Garden from sunny Tobagaaggo! Let’s have a next round of applause for Phil and the Rockets …
[Voice dies]
HARVEY
That madman still out? When I left here he was still wandering around. Why don’t they lock him up? Phil and the Rockets.
SHEILA
I’d rather lose my life than my mind.
CHRIS
You safe. To lose your mind you have to have one first.
SHEILA
Har-har! You and your jokes. You niggers working?
HARVEY
Who left the bloody tape on all this time?
[Turns off a tape recorder]
You’re keeping very quiet, Marylin. You okay?
MARYLIN
Why pick on me? Gavin is quiet, too.
GAVIN
I can hear.
[To MARYLIN]
Does your majesty mind if I take a lickle rest?
MARYLIN
I’m not your majesty. See, she over there?
CHRIS
[Sitting up slowly]
Put this play on, and the theatre will be as empty as their brains.
HARVEY
Then we’ll do both. Your dialect piece and this. I had no idea what I was trying to teach. We’ve held ourselves together, no matter what. All I can tell you is, even when we’re ready, we’ll keep trying to purge ourselves of fear, of cowardice, envy, self-contempt, conceit, and you yourselves think who I mean by those. If there’s disorder here, in this little world, no trust, no center, no authority, then lunacy is correct, we’re wasting time. What is wrong in here is what’s wrong with this country. Our country. And if, outside, there’s mismanagement and madness, we must not go mad. Dear Sheila, that was the purpose of that obscene exercise, to hose our minds clean of filth, to hate the theatre so we can learn to love it. And the hardest virtue is humility.
CHRIS
We have found
the truth. At least some part of it. And you know what go happen? It go split us up. You doubt me? Talk the truth. Anybody doubt me?
[They watch one another]
SCENE 2
Late afternoon. GAVIN with a towel. He’s just showered. SHEILA sitting.
GAVIN
From now on, girl, you’ll start to have fantasies.
Deal with the fantasy. Don’t dream like me
about the universality of the theatre.
It’s economics, and economics means race.
SHEILA
You know what I admire in you? Survival.
How can you manage on ninety a week?
GAVIN
Yogurt, baby.
I do a little grass, like to unwind, sleep it off,
keep my gut flat, score the odd piece with luck,
but I avoid emotional entanglements,
I hoard myself for my work. Been doing that
for the last twelve years. I’m a one-bed man,
I like waking up alone, so that wherever
the next job is, I’m ready. I don’t know
that that’s any life for you, Sheila.
Living alone is selfish in the end.
SHEILA
You don’t feel committed to the company?
GAVIN
I’m a mercenary. A professional, sweetheart.
I’ll love you all for as long as things work out.
I don’t waste emotion on what’s transient.
[He picks up his belongings. Stops. Looks at her]
SHEILA
Gavin. Don’t go. I want to ask you one question.
You came back so bitter. Can’t you forget all that?
GAVIN
Forgive! Who, me? Woman, I don’t forgive nutten.
SHEILA
That’s not Christian. And I said forget.
GAVIN
Not forget, either. Tough. Forgive, sweetheart,
and they gain ground while you kneeling,
to forgive is forgetting what I saw up there …
SHEILA
Well? What did you see, Gavin?
GAVIN
No. Forget it.
SHEILA
I hate when people do that. What did you see?
GAVIN
At first off, I didn’t see myself in the mirror.
I just plain refused what they wanted me to see,
which was a black man looking back in my face
and muttering: “How you going han’le this, nigger?
How you going leap out of the invisible crowd
and be your charming, dazzling self?” I saw me;
then the mirror changed on me, the way you hate
your passport picture. I saw a number under it
like a prison picture, a mug shot in a post office,
and I began to believe what I saw in the mirror
because that’s how they wanted me to look.
I reduced that reflection to acceptance, babe,
against my mother-fucking will, accept the odds,
accept the definition, accept the roles
if you wanted more than some shit-shrieking,
fist-jerking, suicidal revolutionary protest
in some back alley of the alleged Afro-American
avant-garde, so I gave in to the mirror,
I melted right into it, and I despised myself,
because I gave no trouble, and I got work.
You do the same, and you’ll do fine, you’ll make the top
a secondary role; the best for us is second,
I had an actor friend, black guy in New York.
He was convinced that things would change.
People, once he made it, would love each other.
Know where he is, Miss Sheila? Overdose.
Dead in the conviction that there was no justice,
no opportunity for his genius, which, being black,
was treated as presumption on his part.
He was praised for being the exception.
That’s what brought me back for a while.
To walk the beach, play tennis, do a show like this
for almost nothing, and to reconsider.
Harden my heart a little, then head back.
Drive a cab, push racks up Seventh Avenue.
Remember you all. Sounds callous, eh? But
we’re actors, baby. Rent out our emotions.
That means our devotion is as dependable
as a mercenary’s or a hooker’s. Any more?
SHEILA
I don’t believe that.
GAVIN
So I see. To get her,
to really get her right, you should become,
up here, at least, what Antony calls her,
a great slut with a crown. You have a conflict;
your background, your religion, but that’s her.
The bitch is perpetually in heat.
Everybody needs a drug: sex, money, fame,
religion, the stage. But don’t get too hooked
or it’ll drive you nuts. Share a joint?
So, there I was. In paradise with a visa.
But you, you can go ahead and go there, turn your eyes,
live your own life, forget those Gulags
past a Hundred and Tenth.
SHEILA
A Hundred and Tenth?
GAVIN
It’s where Harlem begins and your chances end.
After all, it’s a black Christian condition.
It’s the bondage in Egypt, you’d recognize it.
’Cept it ain’t Shakespeare.
[Silence]
You asked me, Sheila.
Jesus. I’m sorry about the awful joke.
[He rises, walks away]
SHEILA
It inspired me. Don’t get vex, Gavin.
I’m scared, and I’m thinking of going.
I don’t want to stay here because I’m scared.
GAVIN
I didn’t mean to scare you, but the truth hurts.
We all thought you were playing the role
a bit too decently, like a suburban housewife
having a little something on the side, and not
the sensual serpent you’re supposed to be.
A heat comes off that lady. It made Caesar sweat
and Antony stupid. Shock tactics, Harvey thought.
SHEILA
Marylin is going. I’m sure. I feel that.
GAVIN
You want fame, Sheila? Turn into Marylin.
It’s your only hope. Fuck people’s feelings.
Marylin! If she saw some corpse on the sidewalk,
she’d call sanitation and have the offending
item removed and the sidewalk repainted.
Dead coffee, butts. Why don’t people clean up?
This is Harvey’s garbage, let him clean up.
You poor thing, we really fucked you up, didn’t we?
It’s your fault. You should have stayed
as bitchy and average as we are.
You are not going home? Need company?
SHEILA
No. Thanks, though.
GAVIN
[Kisses her]
You damn lucky Christopher saw you first.
[Exits]
SCENE 3
Two hours later. Dusk at the windows. SHEILA, in a black top, a black skirt, bare feet, exercising, seated. CHRIS enters in jogging outfit. He has a key to the theatre in one hand. He sits on a platform.
CHRIS
You still here?
SHEILA
Yeah. We got rhythm.
CHRIS
Can’t talk Shakespeare, though.
SHEILA
Lips too big.
CHRIS
No. No brains.
SHEILA
Got rhythm, though.
Pass me that towel.
[He carries a towel over to her, drapes her shoulders, returns to the platform. She dries her
sweat]
CHRIS
Water locked off in Maraval.
I came for a shower.
[Shows key]
SHEILA
The shower has a key, too?
CHRIS
People climb over the wall. Use the toilets.
SHEILA
I do all that stuff at home, thank you. Still?
CHRIS
Not since the key. They used to.
[Silence]
Feel liberated? The speech.
SHEILA
No.
How is she?
CHRIS
She’s withdrawn. Totally withdrawn.
[Silence]
SHEILA
She’s not going to die.
CHRIS
She says so.
SHEILA
We’re all going to die.
CHRIS
Not me.
[They stay in their places]
SHEILA
You think Harvey’s gay?
CHRIS
He’s dedicated.
SHEILA
They’re saying that.
CHRIS
We’ve never played Pick Up the Soap.
SHEILA
What’s that?
[CHRIS rises, bends over, gropes, sits]
CHRIS
Pick Up the Soap. Men’s-room joke.
SHEILA
They say that about anybody serious.
CHRIS
It’s not a crime anymore.
SHEILA
Why is he so down, then?
CHRIS
I’m down. I’m not gay.
SHEILA
[Wiping her palms, seated]
You want to rehearse?
CHRIS
You want to?
SHEILA
Up to you.
CHRIS
I should lift my weights. I have them under the stage. Look. [Rises, shows his stomach] It’s up to you.
SHEILA
You pregnant?
CHRIS
You’d be the last to know.
[Sits]
I didn’t think you’d want to.
SHEILA
Because of the Shakespeare?
CHRIS
I am Cleopatra.
SHEILA
All right, all right.
[She towels her hair]
The saddest thing about the theatre is this:
that we all love or fight each other at rehearsal,
then we go home. I like to keep some of that warmth in me.
I can’t just walk out into the street. The shock.
What’s real looks fake. It takes me a good time.
Especially what happened today. That was … I don’t know.
CHRIS
That pride, or humility? I can’t tell.
SHEILA
We find the truth. What do we do with it?
CHRIS
Face it. Endure it.
SHEILA
Put it aside.
CHRIS
[Reaching for a cigarette]
I think that’s what hit old Harve.