Remembrance and Pantomime
Page 9
(Pause)
Well. What’s wrong? What happen, sir? I said something wrong just now?
HARRY
This place isn’t going to drive me crazy, Jackson. Not if I have to go mad preventing it. Not physically crazy; but you just start to think crazy thoughts, you know? At the beginning it’s fine; there’s the sea, the palm trees, monarch of all I survey and so on, all that postcard stuff. And then it just becomes another back yard. God, is there anything deadlier than Sunday afternoons in the tropics when you can’t sleep? The horror and stillness of the heat, the shining, godforsaken sea, the bored and boring clouds? Especially in an empty boarding house. You sit by the stagnant pool counting the dead leaves drifting to the edge. I daresay the terror of emptiness made me want to act. I wasn’t trying to humiliate you. I meant nothing by it. Now, I don’t usually apologize to people. I don’t do things to apologize for. When I do them, I mean them, but, in your case, I’d like to apologize.
JACKSON
Well, if you find here boring, go back home. Do something else, nuh?
HARRY
It’s not that simple. It’s a little more complicated than that. I mean, everything I own is sunk here, you see? There’s a little matter of a brilliant actress who drank too much, and a car crash at Brighton after a panto … Well. That’s neither here nor there now. Right? But I’m determined to make this place work. I gave up the theater for it.
JACKSON
Why?
HARRY
Why? I wanted to be the best. Well, among other things; oh, well, that’s neither here nor there. Flopped at too many things, though. Including classical and Creole acting. I just want to make this place work, you know. And a desperate man’ll try anything. Even at the cost of his sanity, maybe. I mean, I’d hate to believe that under everything else I was also prejudiced, as well. I wouldn’t have any right here, right?
JACKSON
’Tain’t prejudice that bothering you, Mr. Trewe; you ain’t no parrot to repeat opinion. No, is loneliness that sucking your soul as dry as the sun suck a crab shell. On a Sunday like this, I does watch you. The whole staff does study you. Walking round restless, staring at the sea. You remembering your wife and your son, not right? You ain’t get over that yet?
HARRY
Jackson …
JACKSON
Is none of my business. But it really lonely here out of season. Is summer, and your own people gone, but come winter they go flock like sandpipers all down that beach. So you lonely, but I could make you forget all o’ that. I could make H. Trewe, Esquire, a brand-new man. You come like a challenge.
HARRY
Think I keep to myself too much?
JACKSON
If! You would get your hair cut by phone. You drive so careful you make your car nervous. If you was in charge of the British Empire, you wouldn’ta lose it, you’da misplace it.
HARRY
I see, Jackson.
JACKSON
But all that could change if you do what I tell you.
HARRY
I don’t want a new life, thanks.
JACKSON
Same life. Different man. But that stiff upper lip goin’ have to quiver a little.
HARRY
What’s all this? Obeah? “That old black magic”?
JACKSON
Nothing. I could have the next beer?
HARRY
Go ahead. I’m drinking Scotch.
(JACKSON takes the other beer, swallows deep, smacks his lips, grins at HARRY)
JACKSON
Nothing. We will have to continue from where we stop this morning. You will have to be Thursday.
HARRY
Aha, you bastard! It’s a thrill giving orders, hey? But I’m not going through all that rubbish again.
JACKSON
All right. Stay as you want. But if you say yes, it go have to be man to man, and none of this boss-and-Jackson business, you see, Trewe … I mean, I just call you plain Trewe, for example, and I notice that give you a slight shock. Just a little twitch of the lip, but a shock all the same, eh, Trewe? You see? You twitch again. It would be just me and you, all right? You see, two of we both acting a role here we ain’t really really believe in, you know. I ent think you strong enough to give people orders, and I know I ain’t the kind who like taking them. So both of we doesn’t have to improvise so much as exaggerate. We faking, faking all the time. But, man to man, I mean …
(Pause)
that could be something else. Right, Mr. Trewe?
HARRY
Aren’t we man to man now?
JACKSON
No, no. We having one of them “playing man-to-man” talks, where a feller does look a next feller in the eye and say, “Le’ we settle this thing, man to man,” and this time the feller who smiling and saying it, his whole honest intention is to take that feller by the crotch and rip out he stones, and dig out he eye and leave him for corbeaux to pick.
(Silence)
HARRY
You know, that thing this morning had an effect on me, man to man now. I didn’t think so much about the comedy of Robinson Crusoe, I thought what we were getting into was a little sad. So, when I went back to the room, I tried to rest before lunch, before you began all that vindictive hammering …
JACKSON
Vindictive?
HARRY
Man to man: that vindictive hammering and singing, and I thought, Well, maybe we could do it straight. Make a real straight thing out of it.
JACKSON
You mean like a tradegy. With one joke?
HARRY
Or a codemy, with none. You mispronounce words on purpose, don’t you, Jackson?
(JACKSON smiles)
Don’t think for one second that I’m not up on your game, Jackson. You’re playing the stage nigger with me. I’m an actor, you know. It’s a smile in front and a dagger behind your back, right? Or the smile itself is the bloody dagger. I’m aware, chum. I’m aware.
JACKSON
The smile kinda rusty, sir, but it goes with the job. Just like the water in this hotel:
(Demonstrates)
I turn it on at seven and lock it off at one.
HARRY
Didn’t hire you for the smile; I hired you for your voice. We’ve the same background. Old-time calypso, old-fashioned music hall:
(Sings)
Oh, me wife can’t cook and she looks like a horse
And the way she makes coffee is grounds for divorce …
(Does a few steps)
But when love is at stake she’s my Worcester sauce …
(Stops)
Used to wow them with that. All me own work. Ah, the lost glories of the old music hall, the old provincials, grimy brocade, the old stars faded one by one. The brassy pantomimes! Come from an old music-hall family, you know, Jackson. Me mum had this place she ran for broken-down actors. Had tea with the greats as a tot.
(Sings softly, hums)
Oh, me wife can’t cook …
(Silence)
You married, Jackson?
JACKSON
I not too sure, sir.
HARRY
You’re not sure?
JACKSON
That’s what I said.
HARRY
I know what you mean. I wasn’t sure I was when I was. My wife’s remarried.
JACKSON
You showed me her photo. And the little boy own.
HARRY
But I’m not. Married. So there’s absolutely no hearth for Crusoe to go home to. While you were up there, I rehearsed this thing.
(Presents a folded piece of paper)
Want to read it?
JACKSON
What … er … what is it … a poetry?
HARRY
No, no, not a poetry. A thing I wrote. Just a speech in the play … that if …
JACKSON
Oho, we back in the play again?
HARRY
Almost. You want to read it?
(
He offers the paper)
JACKSON
All right.
HARRY
I thought—no offense, now. Man to man. If you were doing Robinson Crusoe, this is what you’d read.
JACKSON
You want me to read this, right?
HARRY
Yeah.
JACKSON
(Reads slowly)
“O silent sea, O wondrous sunset that I’ve gazed on ten thousand times, who will rescue me from this complete desolation?…”
(Breaking)
All o’ this?
HARRY
If you don’t mind. Don’t act it. Just read it.
(JACKSON looks at him)
No offense.
JACKSON
(Reads)
“Yes, this is paradise, I know. For I see around me the splendors of nature…”
HARRY
Don’t act it …
JACKSON
(Pauses; then continues)
“How I’d like to fuflee this desolate rock.”
(Pauses)
Fuflee? Pardon, but what is a fuflee, Mr. Trewe?
HARRY
A fuflee? I’ve got “fuflee” written there?
JACKSON
(Extends paper, points at word)
So, how you does fuflee, Mr. Harry? Is Anglo-Saxon English?
(HARRY kneels down and peers at the word. He rises)
HARRY
It’s F … then F-L-E-E—flee to express his hesitation. It’s my own note as an actor. He quivers, he hesitates …
JACKSON
He quivers, he hesitates, but he still can’t fuflee?
HARRY
Just leave that line out, Jackson.
JACKSON
I like it.
HARRY
Leave it out!
JACKSON
No fuflee?
HARRY
I said no.
JACKSON
Just because I read it wrong. I know the word “flee,” you know. Like to take off. Flee. Faster than run. Is the extra F you put in there so close to flee that had me saying fuflee like a damn ass, but le’ we leave it in, nuh? One fuflee ain’t go kill anybody. Much less bite them.
(Silence)
Get it?
HARRY
Don’t take this personally …
JACKSON
No fuflees on old Crusoe, boy …
HARRY
But, if you’re going to do professional theater, Jackson, don’t take this personally, more discipline is required. All right?
JACKSON
You write it. Why you don’t read it?
HARRY
I wanted to hear it. Okay, give it back …
JACKSON
(Loudly, defiantly)
“The ferns, the palms like silent sentinels, the wide and silent lagoons that briefly hold my passing, solitary reflection. The volcano…”
(Stops)
“The volcano.” What?
HARRY
… “wreathed” …
JACKSON
Oho, oho … like a wreath? “The volcano wreathed in mist. But what is paradise without a woman? Adam in paradise!”
HARRY
Go ahead.
JACKSON
(Restrained)
“Adam in paradise had his woman to share his loneliness, but I miss the voice of even one consoling creature, the touch of a hand, the look of kind eyes. Where is the wife from whom I vowed never to be sundered? How old is my little son? If he could see his father like this, mad with memories of them … Even Job had his family. But I am alone, alone, I am all alone.”
(Pause)
Oho. You write this?
HARRY
Yeah.
JACKSON
Is good. Very good.
HARRY
Thank you.
JACKSON
Touching. Very sad. But something missing.
HARRY
What?
JACKSON
Goats. You leave out the goats.
HARRY
The goats. So what? What’ve you got with goats, anyway?
JACKSON
Very funny. Very funny, sir.
HARRY
Try calling me Trewe.
JACKSON
Not yet. That will come. Stick to the point. You ask for my opinion and I gave you my opinion. No doubt I don’t have the brains. But my point is that this man ain’t facing reality. There are goats all around him.
HARRY
You’re full of shit.
JACKSON
The man is not facing reality. He is not a practical man shipwrecked.
HARRY
I suppose that’s the difference between classical and Creole acting?
(He pours a drink and downs it furiously)
JACKSON
If he is not practical, he is not Robinson Crusoe. And yes, is Creole acting, yes. Because years afterward his little son could look at the parasol and the hat and look at a picture of Daddy and boast: “My daddy smart, boy. He get shipwreck and first thing he do is he build a hut, then he kill a goat or two and make clothes, a parasol and a hat.” That way Crusoe achieve something, and his son could boast …
HARRY
Only his son is dead.
JACKSON
Whose son dead?
HARRY
Crusoe’s.
JACKSON
No, pardner. Your son dead. Crusoe wife and child waiting for him, and he is a practical man and he know somebody go come and save him …
HARRY
(Almost inaudibly)
“I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
And cried, ‘A sail! a sail!’”
How the hell does he know “somebody go come and save him”? That’s shit. That’s not in his character at that moment. How the hell can he know? You’re a cruel bastard …
JACKSON
(Enraged)
Because, you fucking ass, he has faith!
HARRY
(Laughing)
Faith? What faith?
JACKSON
He not sitting on his shipwrecked arse bawling out … what it is you have here?
(Reads)
“O…” Where is it?
(Reads)
“O silent sea, O wondrous sunset,” and all that shit. No. He shipwrecked. He desperate, he hungry. He look up and he see this fucking goat with its fucking beard watching him and smiling, this goat with its forked fucking beard and square yellow eye just like the fucking devil, standing up there …
(Pantomimes the goat and Crusoe in turn)
smiling at him, and putting out its tongue and letting go one fucking bleeeeeh! And Robbie ent thinking ’bout his wife and son and O silent sea and O wondrous sunset; no, Robbie is the First True Creole, so he watching the goat with his eyes narrow, narrow, and he say: blehhh, eh? You muther-fucker, I go show you blehhh in your goat-ass, and vam, vam, next thing is Robbie and the goat, mano a mano, man to man, man to goat, goat to man, wrestling on the sand, and next thing we know we hearing one last faint, feeble bleeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhh, and Robbie is next seen walking up the beach with a goatskin hat and a goatskin umbrella, feeling like a million dollars because he have faith!
HARRY
(Applauds)
Bravo! You’re the Christian. I am the cannibal. Bravo!
JACKSON
If I does hammer sarcastic, you does clap sarcastic. Now I want to pee.
HARRY
I think I’ll join you.
JACKSON
So because I go and pee, you must pee, too?
HARRY
Subliminal suggestion.
JACKSON
Monkey see, monkey do.
HARRY
You’re the bloody ape, mate. You people just came down from the trees.
JACKSON
Say that again, please.
HARRY
I’m going to keep that line.
JACKSON
Oho! Rehearse you
rehearsing? I thought you was serious.
HARRY
You go have your pee. I’ll run over my monologue.
JACKSON
No, you best do it now, sir. Or it going to be on my mind while we rehearsing that what you really want to do is take a break and pee. We best go together, then.
HARRY
We’ll call it the pee break. Off we go, then. How long will you be, then? You people take forever.
JACKSON
Maybe you should hold up a sign, sir, or give some sort of signal when you serious or when you joking, so I can know not to react. I would say five minutes.
HARRY
Five minutes? What is this, my friend, Niagara Falls?
JACKSON
It will take me … look, you want me to time it? I treat it like a ritual, I don’t just pee for peeing’s sake. It will take me about forty to fifty seconds to walk to the servants’ toilets …
HARRY
Wait a second …
JACKSON
No, you wait, please, sir. That’s almost one minute, take another fifty seconds to walk back, or even more, because after a good pee a man does be in a mood, both ruminative and grateful that the earth has received his libation, so that makes …
HARRY
Hold on, please.
JACKSON
(Voice rising)
Jesus, sir, give me a break, nuh? That is almost two minutes, and in between those two minutes it have such solemn and ruminative behavior as opening the fly, looking upward or downward, the ease and relief, the tender shaking, the solemn tucking in, like you putting a little baby back to sleep, the reverse zipping or buttoning, depending on the pants, then, with the self-congratulating washing of the hands, looking at yourself for at least half a minute in the mirror, then the drying of hands as if you were a master surgeon just finish a major operation, and the walk back …
HARRY
You said that. Any way you look at it, it’s under five minutes, and I interrupted you because …
JACKSON
I could go and you could time me, to see if I on a go-slow, or wasting up my employer’s precious time, but I know it will take at least five, unless, like most white people, you either don’t flush it, a part I forgot, or just wipe your hands fast fast or not at all …
HARRY
Which white people, Jackson?
JACKSON
I was bathroom attendant at the Hilton, and I know men and races from their urinary habits, and most Englishmen …
HARRY
Most Englishmen … Look, I was trying to tell you, instead of going all the way round to the servants’ lavatories, pop into my place, have a quick one, and that’ll be under five bloody minutes in any circumstances and regardless of the capacity. Go on. I’m all right.