Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile
Page 16
SHEILA
You smoke too much.
CHRIS
[Puts away the cigarette] I think he saw that he had found it in you. He brought it out in you. It frightened the shit out of him. He saw it, and there’s nothing he can do with it. Except fame.
SHEILA
Fame? I don’t want fame.
CHRIS
It frightened him. What you did. It deepened his frustration.
SHEILA
Truth?
CHRIS
Yes.
[Silence. He sits on a chair, but close]
I’m going to smoke. I told her the truth.
[He takes out a cigarette, but will not light it]
She said: “I want to know the truth.”
I said: “No, you don’t. You’d prefer to doubt.”
She said: “I’m prepared for anything.”
I said …
SHEILA
You said: “I’m whatever-ing Sheila…”
God, how could you have let them write that?
CHRIS
It was Harvey’s idea. Hamlet. The sentries.
He wanted it diffident. Casual.
Me, in Hamlet. Look at my cross.
Best Village. Not best Hamlet.
I’m a Best Village comic.
I’m glad now. It made you an actress.
I have never seen anything so in my life.
I been in the theatre in Trinidad for twenty years.
I have never seen anything so in my life.
SHEILA
That’s not true.
CHRIS
It’s getting dark. You want the lights on?
SHEILA
No.
CHRIS
Anyway, I said: “All right then…”
Then she said: “I’ll say it for you. You love Sheila.”
And …
And I didn’t answer. And she knew it was the truth.
SHEILA
And so we have the truth, and what?
CHRIS
She has the truth and it is killing her.
SHEILA
And you can’t bear to see her die.
CHRIS
I brought her out here. England’s a different place.
SHEILA
People die there. And divorce there. What’s different?
CHRIS
She’s the mother of my children?
SHEILA
Thank God I’m leaving that kind of dialogue behind. Very true, though. [Silence. She gets up, the towel around her neck. She sits on another chair. Dusk brightens the room]
CHRIS
Immortal.
SHEILA
Immortal?
CHRIS
Immortal truth. What shall we do with it?
SHEILA
Men fall in love. They’re mortal. Women fall in love.
They’re mortal. Love dies. And they
walk around as if they were alive.
CHRIS
You getting hard, boy.
SHEILA
You mean I don’t understand.
CHRIS
I’m not an actor. I’m a husband. A father.
SHEILA
[Rising]
We’re going to begin. Get up.
CHRIS
I’m not going to rehearse.
SHEILA
Just lines. You owe me that, at least.
CHRIS
This thing gone to your head.
SHEILA
No. My whole body. Get up. Be a pro.
CHRIS
It’s a damned stupid West Indian back-yard comedy, not your speed.
SHEILA
Get up.
[In dialect, gesturing]
“Wha’ going on, Steven? You pass by de employment office?”
[Silence]
Please get up.
CHRIS
Piss off, Sheila.
SHEILA
Or I’ll have nothing left in my life.
CHRIS
No.
[Sits]
SHEILA
I’m also dying.
CHRIS
Spoken like a queen. Let’s go for a drive.
SHEILA
Fuck Cleopatra! My name is Sheila Harris and I came here like a shy little mamapoule because you said that I had it, and now I’ve found it. And you’re going back to your wife before it gets too dark, back to your big house and your mad, white, English wife. What am I going back to? Why leave? Sheila Harris is a typist. To leave here to go for a drive with a responsible married man for a surreptitious fuck in the Chagacabana Motel?
CHRIS
Enjoy yourself.
SHEILA
Poor Harvey. I can understand the shame he feels hiding it if it’s the truth.
CHRIS
It’s dark. And you’re changing. I can feel you changing in the dark, you know that.
SHEILA
If I change … If I change and gain enough distance to see you …
CHRIS
Whatever …
SHEILA
To see you from a proper distance …
CHRIS
In the dark.
SHEILA
Right through the dark.
CHRIS
Whoever …
SHEILA
You might look very small.
CHRIS
Whatever. So do it. Make the distance. See through me in the dark.
SHEILA
No.
CHRIS
I’m weak, right?
SHEILA
No. I’m weak. Go pick up your wife. You go. Harvey go. I can’t go. I have no money. I’m black. I’m a West Indian. Who needs a broke, black, West Indian actress over thirty?
CHRIS
You catch fire today, girl.
SHEILA
Yes. God damn it and God forgive me, but yes! There was a cloud. The moon came out and I felt it pouring through me. I felt like a chalice. I was the moon. I gave out a light that didn’t burn but showed everything clearly, you and all. But it’s all in the … what’s the word …
CHRIS
Darkness?
SHEILA
Not darkness. An eclipse. But I’ll shine again. It’s gone, but I’ll shine again. There’s only one moon, and I’ll shine alone, but I won’t be shining for myself; I will shine for you, Christopher, and there’ll be no cloud, because when the spot filled me I shone on my dead father and I shone on all the women who gave it up to become wives and died inside as much as if they had died, and I’ll shine for Harvey, gaily, gaily, because he made me elemental, a white fire.
CHRIS
It’s getting late.
SHEILA
I loved you, Antony. Live with that.
[Silence]
CHRIS
Tomorrow’s Monday? Jesus.
SHEILA
Screw Monday! I’m not a weekend actress anymore.
CHRIS
You still have to type.
SHEILA
I still have to type.
CHRIS
[Rising]
You’ll lock up?
SHEILA
Well, we can’t leave together, can we?
CHRIS
You want this key?
SHEILA
I’ll pull the door shut.
CHRIS
Night. Moonlight tonight.
Things go on as usual. No change, right?
SHEILA
Good night.
CHRIS
You didn’t answer me.
SHEILA
I won’t be able to sleep. I’ll have insomnia. I’ll feel like silver.
CHRIS
Hi-yo, Silver! I’ll drop you.
SHEILA
Chris!
CHRIS
Yes, boss?
SHEILA
Read it.
CHRIS
I can’t read palms. What?
SHEILA
There is this old African woman
, a gardeuse;
she has a little room, dark, with dark curtains,
where she charges people for her prophecies.
She said she saw implicit in my palm
a river with seven branches tracing it.
That my past was connected with that river
and I couldn’t avoid it any more than I could
remove the tributaries in my open palm.
I don’t want to have it! I’m afraid.
CHRIS
Have what?
SHEILA
Her prophecy. I want to give it back.
CHRIS
You can’t. You know why? Because God don’t lend. He does give. [Exits. SHEILA stretches out her right arm. He returns] Put down your arm! [She hides an arm behind her back] Oh, by the way, I don’t think Harvey’s gay. That’s too easy. How I know? I tried. He turned me down. You can put back the arm. [Exits. She stretches her arm out and moonlight floods the stage]
SCENE 4
Two days later. Dusk. A cutout of banana trees onstage. (CHRIS has rolled it on.) MARYLIN and GAVIN in burlesque peasant clothes, soft felt hats, big boots, etc., rehearsing CHRIS’s play, GAVIN facing MARYLIN.
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
“This time so, when I get up, is half past four. Four-thirty. I say to meself, ‘Mosquitoes sleeping.’ Sleeping? Well, Pappy, when you hear them so, the fête going whole night! Zzzz, yeeeeennnh! I thought they kept regular hours, like honest men.”
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
“They do. You must be catch the dawn shift, Dolphus.”
[DOLPHUS rises, looks around the yard]
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
“If you see my arms! More holes than a grater. Them little fellows don’t just bite, nuh. They does drill and bore. I feel like I leaking.”
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
“Good! You go drain out all that bad rum you and Pagnol does cornsume in the Chineeman shop. See? ’Tain’t have no more mosquito now. All of them dead drunk from biting you. What you nosing around in that serasee bush for? You want to wake them up? They does sleep light.”
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
“Is this set o’ high grass they does hide in, in ambush. The more bush, the bigger the ambush. There, in standing water, and by them curdling pools, their element. They does breed there without the sacrament of matrimony. One juck, and ten thousand little stingers and biters born.” [Stops, points at floor] I can’t believe this. Wait. Who put this here? I ain’t tell you t’row ’way the po’? Prop! [Shouts]
[CHRIS runs on, places a chamber pot at GAVIN’s foot, exits]
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
“No!”
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
“No? Is po’ people po’.” [Pause]
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
[Seeing the light]
“Oho! You mean since we win de lottereeeee. We ain’t po’ people no mo’.
[Sings]
WE AIN’T PO’ NO MO’…”
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
[Sings]
“DAHRLIN’…”
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
[Sings]
“WE AIN’T PO’ NO MO’…”
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
[Dancing]
“HONEY-BUNCH…”
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
[Singing]
“PO’-PO’-PO’-PO’-PO’…”
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
[Singing]
“SUGARPLUM.
[Spoken]
Now you take this.”
[Passes the pot. MARYLIN takes it, stops]
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
I bound to hold this thing? I find it so obvious.
[She resumes acting]
“All right, Dolphus, is me.”
GAVIN / DOLPHUS
“Is you? You want two cuff in your cane row or what?” How Harvey?
[HARVEY enters, crosses the stage behind them during the action, gingerly, then sits far off]
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
Hi, Harvey. “Dolphus, I go throw, I mean t’row … I go t’row it ’way, Dolphus, darling, I promise you. I know it’s beneath us now.”
CHRIS
[Entering the scene] No, don’t change accent, don’t change inflection. If you going to go up in inflection, show the social-climbing part, let it be more affected, and not so good. It’s too good, you know what I mean? It’s so good, it sounds like a slip.
MARYLIN / SERAFINA
“I know it’s beneath us now.”
CHRIS
Beneat’! No H! You stubborn bitch! Beneat! She ain’t from England. You see the damage you cause? The girl can’t get back to basics, Harvey.
MARYLIN
Awright, chooks. [Kisses CHRIS] I just have this other metre in my head. Go back and sit down. Sit down by your pardner Harvey. All you making us schizophrenic. We talking Shakespeare like ’rangatang people … And vice versa. [Points to the two directors] Over there you see our split personality.
CHRIS
Stop the bullshit, Marylin.
[Shouts]
Sheila, you ready?
SHEILA
[Behind the bananas]
Yip!
MARYLIN
[Screaming]
“Mistress Vinewell?”
SHEILA
“Yes! I hear you!”
MARYLIN
“Could you come here a second?”
GAVIN
[Humpbacked, limping, hand hooked]
“See how my arm
is like a blasted sapling, withered up!”
[HARVEY applauds]
GAVIN
Sorry. Richard de Turd. Doing Turd World shit.
HARVEY
Richard de Turd. Put him in the chamber pot.
Okay. Sorry I interrupted. Places! Places.
[They return. SHEILA to the wings]
SHEILA
[Behind the bananas]
I going bananas back here. What going on?
GAVIN
Soh … rreeeeeee!
[To CHRIS]
Pardon, boss man.
[SHEILA emerges, felt hat, sloppy dress, large Wellingtons, holding a prop cutlass]
SHEILA
Why we stop?
GAVIN
My fault, my fault, my fault, my fault.
[CHRIS enters the scene]
SHEILA
I wish all you would be serious, yes. I have better things to do.
CHRIS
Don’t go, Sheila.
[Silence. Long. HARVEY gets up]
Don’t go, Harvey …
[HARVEY sits. MARYLIN sits]
SHEILA
You go blame me, right? Look. I haven’t said a damned thing, eh?
GAVIN
Look, the steel band’s playing Mozart, why we doing this shit?
CHRIS
You shut up! Mozart, eh? On Carnival Monday you go jump up to Mozart? [Quietly] Now, let me tell all you somet’ing once and for all, eh! I run a business, you hear me? and I runs it damn good. I have a big white house in Maraval, with double carport, swimming pool, video games, barbecue, the works; all you been there, all you seen my blond English wife in she muumuu serving all you white wine, but you never hear me talk any other kind o’ way than I talkin’ now, ’cause I’se a Trinidadian, and that’s my language …
GAVIN
You’re a fucking coward! You’re ducking your talent.
CHRIS
You go give me a break? Look, I stop reading. Why? Because the books I was reading ain’t had nothing to do with the life I was living. That goes for plays, too; I ain’t care who the arse it is, Shakespeare, Racine, Chekhov, nutten in there had to do with my life, or the life of all them black people out in the hot sun on Frederick Street at twelve o’clock trying to hustle a living. I did it, you know. You want to hear my marks in Queen’s Royal College? You know I has a A in English? You know I taught English literature for one year as an ass, as an ass, an assistant master, with jacket and tie in them hot rooms? You know
I did French? You know what they call this in Racine, Gavin? A tirade. Tirade! Well, I got focking tired of all them Racinian and Corneillian tirades, when I would look outside over the boys’ heads and see the hot sun, the glare, the dust, the traffic, the trees half dead with dust. So I ain’t choopid. The books all you see in my study, that ain’t a false front where you press a button and behind it is a bar. Plenty of them real, and some of them is prizes. Well, Mr. Harvey, that gentleman smiling at me over there, come back, and Mr. Harvey say, gimme a chance with them. All you could do better. All you could stretch more. I warn him. I say, Harvey, this ain’t England. This ain’t New York. You go put shit in people head. You go make them feel they white. You go teach them self-contempt. Well, be Jesus, the prophecy is now fucking fulfilled, and today, all you could look at me like I was a piece of dry dog shit on the pavement. All of you go look at this place and say it too small for me. All of you go start dreaming, and have visions, and hallucinations. Well, I pass that, you hear? Be a major writer for a minority? Why? What’s the fucking point? Write a whole set of guilty liberal shit? Let them laugh. Let them laugh at us till their belly hurt.
HARVEY
Chris. Who’s this for? The audience or the actors?
CHRIS
You know who I write for, Mr. Come-Back Englishman?
I write for that madman screaming in the street.
His language. Not somebody else’s, not how you think
madmen should talk, as if insanity was literature.
Phil is my Lear, my Mad Tom out in the rain,
drenched in the savannah, in real life!
Mind one of you ain’t go as mad as him,
because as sure as coconut make copra,
this high-class work go falsify ambition,
it go make you talk with hot stones in your mouths
and, so help me, God, it go change character.
SHEILA
You talk for yourself, you’re so incorruptible.
CHRIS
You see? It start a’ready. Incorruptible.
MARYLIN
I find it funny. I enjoy doing this nonsense.
But then, I know my limitations. I ain’t great.
CHRIS
Well, I guess we owe all this to Sheila, don’t we?
I must write material equal to her talents.
The moon don’t shine in the day, but so be it.
Perhaps you should get a next fool to play Antony.
GAVIN
Jesus Christ, Christopher, why you being so stubborn?
SHEILA
I wish to God He could take back yesterday.
You all make me feel like I was showing off.
CHRIS
I’m withdrawing the material, you all press on.
GAVIN
[Shouting]
Oh, shit, man, Christopher, that’s not the point!
CHRIS
Look, don’t scream at me. This ain’t the States.
GAVIN
The States, the States, what this got to do with the States?