Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile

by Derek Walcott

  MARYLIN / CLEOPATRA

  “Well, get thee gone; farewell.”

  GAVIN / CLOWN

  “I gone in truth. I wish you joy of the worm.”

  [Exits. IRAS reenters, with a robe, crown, etc.]

  MARYLIN / CLEOPATRA

  “Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have

  Immortal longings in me: now no more

  The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.

  Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear

  Antony call…”

  [Disaster begins. WILFRED, a stagehand, in black sweatshirt and jeans, enters, and by mistake rolls on a cutout of bananas or fig trees, luridly painted, on rubber casters, and places it behind CLEOPATRA during her speech. Bewildered, at first, MARYLIN’s anger increases and she directs her rage on him, until he notices]

  MARYLIN / CLEOPATRA

  “I see him rouse himself

  To praise my noble act; I hear him mock

  The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men

  To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:

  Now to that name my courage prove my title!”

  HARVEY’S VOICE

  Wilfred! Wilfred! Move the figs!

  [WILFRED goes to the sphinx]

  Not the F.E.G., not the effigy,

  the figs! Move the fucking bananas!

  [WILFRED backs off rapidly, bowing, as if he were part of the action. Then he returns for the banana cutout, changes his mind, grins, exits. Laughter, applause]

  SCENE 2

  A lectern-pulpit is onstage, with flowers. A banner: LET US COME INTO HIS PRESENCE WITH THANKSGIVING AND INTO HIS COURTS WITH PRAISE. SHEILA, plainly dressed, and BROTHER JOHN are seated under the banner.

  CONGREGATION

  Amen.

  [SHEILA rises, moves to the small pulpit]

  SHEILA

  I am glad to see our church filled, brothers and sisters.

  Brother John has asked me to pronounce the benediction.

  I saw William Blake in the fields this late afternoon.

  It was a playing field, the grass was bright green

  and very well kept. The light was in it.

  The light is blessing and it goes all over the world.

  At the back of a playing field in Barataria.

  The light says nothing but simplicity.

  We are a simple people, and a simple church.

  But I heard the voice of William Blake in the fields,

  and William’s voice was the colour of bright grass,

  and the light is inside me, and I feel like a bright field.

  And that is about all that I can testify.

  What was Blake’s voice doing in Barataria,

  over the empty ditches, over the galvanize roofs?

  Who calls us? Why are we given our gifts?

  Only the ignorant are left with God.

  [Closes her eyes]

  Lord, lettest now Thy servant depart in peace, according to

  Thy Word, for mine eyes have seen the salvation which Thou

  hast prepared before the face of all people: a light to lighten

  the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people, Israel. Amen.

  BROTHER JOHN

  Hold on! Just one last word before all you go home, please. I posted the notices about contributions to the roof repair and the Harvest Committee meeting by the blackboard outside, and some of all you sort of laggard in coming up with contributions to keep His work going. I know is hard times, but when was it ever not hard times for poor people? So, pinch your pennies, band your jaw, but give with a cheerful spirit. We ha’ to deal with Caesar, He Himself said, and you know that Caesar is taxes, making sure the harvest do better than last year’s pitiful tithes, and the roof repair and the mortgage. Finally, and you know my finally does take forever, I glad to see that when you render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, you ain’t rendering as Cleopatra, that lecherous serpent of Egypt, rendered. But with love higher than the flesh. To those visitors from town, from Port of Spain, who have been coming here as our guests, I say welcome. But to hear any other voice but His is to desecrate this place a little bit, because this is a temple, not a theatre, and while we appreciate your coming, we don’t give no performances here. And is Sister Sheila sheself who ask me to remind you that. She got the call, but she don’t need no following, thank you.

  SCENE 3

  Bare stage. Two days later. GAVIN and MARYLIN sit onstage, GAVIN reading newspaper. HARVEY enters.

  HARVEY

  Don’t mind that ape. He’d give the creation a bad review.

  He uses both hands to hold a pencil.

  GAVIN

  [Puts away the newspaper]

  I saw him at the supermarket. He said he thought the whole

  experience was like pissing in church.

  HARVEY

  At the supermarket? Buying arsenic? Chat with him?

  GAVIN

  Sure, why not?

  HARVEY

  Fucking ape. Did you buy him a banana?

  GAVIN

  He was in the wine department, actually.

  HARVEY

  Darwin’s delight, the gourmet gorilla. Checking out the Chablis, was he?

  GAVIN

  He can’t help his looks. He said you should be shot for desecrating the Bard. He said rewriting the clown’s speech in local dialect had him fooled for a while; then he caught on and he was incensed.

  HARVEY

  Incensed, was he?

  GAVIN

  Right.

  HARVEY

  Right there down among the muscatel and the cooking sherry, your chimp chum was incensed. Had he read the play?

  GAVIN

  Course he has.

  HARVEY

  Moving his lips and all. He’s got two thumbs on his feet, you

  know. He turns the pages with them.

  GAVIN

  Said he knew you’d hide behind Plutarch.

  HARVEY

  Plutarch! Did he actually mention Plutarch? What a viver you two had! Did you collect a crowd? Was he wearing his Cambridge scarf? Was his tutor with him, or his keeper? You see, I told the fucker what I was after, that I felt since the Bard had swiped a prose hunk off old Plutarch, and since in old Willy’s day the clowns spoke dialect, and since our dialect is so Jacobean, I felt quite justified. Plutarch, eh? There’s hope for our people.

  MARYLIN

  Read what he said. I can’t understand what language you talking, Harvey. Harvey, shut up.

  GAVIN

  Headline. BARD GOES BANANAS.

  HARVEY

  Ah, I was right!

  GAVIN

  [Reads] “Since his return home to Trinidad from several years of working with prestigious British companies, in a capacity that is still unclear to most of us, Mr. Harvey St. Just has been working with a small group of local actors to raise the standard of local theatre…”

  HARVEY

  That’s two locals …

  GAVIN

  [Reads] “Mr. St. Just’s intention, over gruelling rehearsals, was to make them both excellent and, without mimicry, indigenous. Today I am deeply pained to report that the only indigenous thing onstage last night, in Mr. St. Just’s abbreviated, aborted, and abominable mounting of Antony and Cleopatra, was a bunch of bananas inadvertently trundled onstage during the farewell speech of Cleopatra, about whom more later. Certain things remain sacred, or else our civilization is threatened…”

  HARVEY

  Oh, Jesus Christ, I’ve wrecked that baboon’s culture! The King is dead, long live the Kong. Enough, enough, mon vieux, I know the gist, I’ll send him a crate of peanuts as an apology.

  MARYLIN

  Your tongue is worse than his pen, Harvey. Well, what did we expect? You said ignore the reviews, and here you are getting upset. You go wind up in that hospital again. I made up my mind not to read them.

  GAVIN

  Ah, but you do beautifully, my dear.

 
; MARYLIN

  I don’t want to hear.

  HARVEY

  Let’s hear it. No, let’s hear it, let’s hear him thump his chest in a mating dance. I’ll tell you, I know the lecherous bitch. He’s going to praise her voice when he’s thinking about her boobs, he’s going to find her promising when he hopes that she’ll drop round by his office so he can take her out to lunch. I’ll improvise: “However, Miss LaLune” (I hope he knows it’s old Marylin here he’s talking about) “is the one ray of promise in…”

  GAVIN

  [Reads] “But enough about Mr. St. Just’s travesty. Terribly embarrassing as this production is, it was worth it for one thing that has nothing to do with Mr. St. Just’s pretentiousness. We have for some time…”

  MARYLIN

  [Her hands lightly over her ears] Hear no evil, speak no evil …

  GAVIN

  [Stands close to her, shouting] “We have for some time watched the careful, studied progress of one of our better actresses, Marylin Lewis, who now works under the strange pseudonym of Mary LaLune. The professional name at first provokes a cynical smile … [SHEILA enters the theatre, a small hat on her head, wearing a plain dress, no makeup. She stays to the side of the stage, unnoticed. Then MARYLIN sees her. GAVIN and HARVEY do not] But that smile soon changes to gasp after gasp of astonishment at Miss LaLune’s potential. LaLune indeed, for here is an actress who has suddenly found herself, and who, in the role of Egypt’s dimming, dying, and yet radiant queen, has said to herself, I shine, I shine for the future of our theatre, I shine for all women, black, white; and shine she does, she illuminates our tawdry stage like the moon herself, despite that bunch of Best Village bananas at her back.”

  MARYLIN

  [Grabbing the paper]

  Let me see it? He said that? Oh, Father, I can’t believe it! True?

  [Moves away, reading it, stops]

  Who gave him this picture of me?

  [Shows the page]

  My mouth all twisted up, my eyes look cokey, and half my chest out …

  HARVEY

  I told you he was a tits man.

  MARYLIN

  And Gavin look so good next to me. You ain’t find you look good, Gavin? Harvey, you should consult us about the publicity pictures, man.

  [Absorbs herself in reading]

  HARVEY

  Marylin …

  MARYLIN

  What? Wait, wait, just now.

  [Both men wait. She finishes reading]

  Well, my father, yes …

  [Returns the newspaper]

  GAVIN

  You keep it. Unless you can remember it by heart.

  MARYLIN

  You’re vexed that he didn’t mention you?

  GAVIN

  You don’t know me, sugar. Besides, I don’t have your boobs.

  MARYLIN

  What’re you saying? That he reviewed my chest? I don’t act with my body only, thank you. I’m surprised to see you envy that little mention. As far as I’m concerned, he didn’t say enough. He just raves on and on, without any analysis of why I was great. That’s not criticism, not to me, so don’t let it bother you. Don’t be jealous. Who am I?

  GAVIN

  Mary LaLune …

  MARYLIN

  Mary LaLune, just a girl from a small island.

  GAVIN

  But whose stupidity is oceanic.

  MARYLIN

  Envy is not an enjoyable sin, Gavin. It’s the only sin that has no fun in it. Gluttony, pride, lust, all them so you can enjoy, but there’s no peace in jealousy, take it from me.

  GAVIN

  I never take what doesn’t belong to me. And I don’t think you can afford to give it away, since it’s the thing that keeps you going. Where would you be without it, Miss LaLune? [Crosses, kisses her] Of course it hurt me to be ignored. I’m not a dog that’s just there, or a chair. I’m a dependable actor, and I’m taken for granted. But even a dog needs a little pat sometimes. But don’t get this wrong, that’s all. Envy isn’t in my nature. I wish I had some serious deadly sin. I’d probably be better. We came here to touch up a scene Harvey doesn’t like. We’re going fine. And Harvey’s view is that we keep changing, and changing, and improving. We’ve lost Sheila, we’ve lost Chris. It’s up to the two of us to hang in there. So let’s forget the review and press on. There’s a matinee. Today’s Saturday.

  MARYLIN

  And Sheila? What vice did Sheila have?

  [SHEILA comes forward]

  SHEILA

  Pride.

  GAVIN

  Sheila, how the hell could you walk out on us?

  SHEILA

  Can I come in? I broke down, Gavin. Forgive me.

  [HARVEY rushes over to SHEILA embraces her, then GAVIN does]

  Hello, Marylin.

  HARVEY

  How you been? Sit down.

  MARYLIN

  Hello. Sit down. We not working?

  SHEILA

  Don’t let me interrupt.

  MARYLIN

  Harvey, we rehearsing?

  HARVEY

  Ah, hold on, Marylin! Yes, yes.

  MARYLIN

  Then get your friend out of my theatre, please.

  She left us high and dry with no good reason.

  HARVEY

  We’ll start when I say so, Marylin.

  [Silence. Then GAVIN and HARVEY laugh]

  MARYLIN

  I’m serious. I came here to work.

  [Silence. SHEILA turns to go]

  GAVIN

  Wait! Watch this!

  [Crouch-backed, fingers clawed, arm high]

  “See how my arm

  Is like a blasted sapling, wither’d up!”

  [Hobbling towards MARYLIN]

  Your theatre? Come, talk to Richard, baby! Your theatre?

  MARYLIN

  Look, Gavin!

  GAVIN

  I go choke your arse.

  I go beat your head out on this floor! Your theatre?

  You dumb, fat, redskin bitch from back of Belmont.

  [MARYLIN runs off]

  I go kill her. I swear to God, I go cripple the whore!

  MARYLIN

  [Returns with scissors]

  Try it.

  [She tosses the scissors down]

  You all go learn who you dealing with.

  And you, Sheila, you not God, you hear?

  Is not your privilege to dispense His gifts,

  or to come and watch some star of His catch fire

  because the spark gone dead in you! I know what brings you!

  The same damned thing that made Phil’s mind go dark,

  because you’re in eclipse, because this astonishment

  of people that I outsoared all of you—read it, it’s here

  in black and white, for the whole world to agree—

  drew you here like a magnet! Where else were you

  for the last three weeks, when I had to cram your part,

  and working with a bunch of tie-tongued morons

  that Harvey here has backing up my work? But you see,

  dear, you had your moment, you arched over this stage

  like a meteor, but you knew meteors fall,

  and when you tasted the ashes in your mouth,

  when you sat here, trembling, knowing the light was gone,

  you went through this act of passing your gift to me?

  Know what it was like? Like a dress that didn’t fit you,

  that you got tired of. A hand-me-down.

  Well, thank you, Sheila, but I don’t wear hand-me-downs,

  and anyway, heaven isn’t a wholesale store

  to reach me off the rack.

  SHEILA

  I love you, Marylin.

  I love all of you so hard, I had to hide.

  GAVIN

  We understand, baby. We left you to work it out.

  MARYLIN

  Love? Then you’d have left me alone to work in peace, and not come here, pretending you
ain’t checking me out.

  GAVIN

  Look, two years ago, you tangerine bitch, I’d have happily ripped you apart, woman or not. But I learnt to cool my temper. So don’t go waving a scissors at me again, ever! You don’t know me, hear? Fucking scissors in my face? You crazy?

  HARVEY

  Christ, what’s going on? We’re getting on like animals, man!

  MARYLIN

  Crazy? Look at her face and you tell me who’s mad.

  SHEILA

  He will judge that, Marylin. We are all equal in His sight.

  MARYLIN

  “We are all equal in His…” Look at her, look at her!

  That’s what I can’t stand with all you hypocrites.

  As soon as you feel you saved, the world is rotten.

  [SHEILA opens her handbag]

  What she got there now? What you got there, Sheila?

  I see you get a new part. But you still on the Book.

  Well, “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”

  When you reach that, learn it. I don’t want no programme.

  [SHEILA hands out pamphlets]

  SHEILA

  Don’t mock, Marylin! My ears are deaf from love,

  my eyes must see only the best in others.

  My love for you is incorruptible. Read these.

  MARYLIN

  Look, throw this madwoman out this theatre, please!

  This is a rehearsal, not a revival meeting.

  SHEILA

  Throw away that filth all you wallow in! Believe!

  Prepare for the Judgment. Bathe in His light.

  What we committed here, the things we did here,

  that was the work of harlots and sodomites.

  MARYLIN

  Harlot? Who the arse you calling harlot, Sheila?

  Put this hypocrite out, I tell you, or I’m gone!

  SHEILA

  Fight your demon. I will always love you.

  But it’s my duty to save us all from filth.

  [Screaming]

  I have seen it! He has guided me, listen to me!

  [Controlling herself]

  This life is not life. This is vanity. Shame!

  [To MARYLIN]

  This work is an abomination, sister!

  MARYLIN

  [Screaming, dancing]

  You wasting your time, you wasting your time!

  Go round the sidewalks like Phil and the Rockets!

  SHEILA

  I don’t care how much you hate me, I still love you.

  MARYLIN

  I hear you go around telling people that. Watch it, hear?

  I ain’t like woman. I ain’t want my name in that.

  As far as I’m concerned, the scene is perfect.