by LEE OLDS
The set was two storied and enclosed the stage, which protruded into the audience who, all several hundred of them, sat on folding chairs. Somewhat primitive, no doubt, but with surrounding pennants flapping high above in the breeze, a pen filled with live animals inside, several cows and a goat and a pig just outside with young kids in costume playing baroque on their flutes and an adult jester banging on a kettle drum to lure you inside, the setup provided a reasonable replica. All that was missing was the bear baiting and the cockfights.
“Which, of course,” said Hammond, “nowadays are illegal.”
“Yes, but still clandestinely practiced,” I remarked. “Times have changed. Or at least one likes to think so. It’s just human nature that hasn’t changed, and though it seems possible, perhaps it never will.”
There was a booth for beer, a booth for dogs, barbecued meat, whatever else one likes to consume at those sorts of affairs. It wasn’t so unlike the fare at a baseball game though the entertainment was far different. The San Francisco Giants weren’t Shakespeare and no matter how popular the former become, they never will be.
Led by Marcus in his first role (courier) costume, Hartwig, Sandy and the rest of them walked from the beach house to the enclosure on the highway that was filling up like a tank of water. Cars lined up, people got out and marveled at the beautiful surroundings, the beach in the foreground, the sloping wooded hillside, which ended in the high ridge with its many defiles, all towered over by the illustrious mountain that reached into a clear sky.
This time Jennifer, June’s touched daughter, who had become quite close to Marcus since he’d moved there, had chosen to accompany her mother. Along with the artists, the Adamses, they completed the group. The Stiches, from Salinas, the large contractor and his wife Julia, Sarah’s daughter who’d been adopted by June, along with their infant, Tod, met them there and they all sat together. Benji, Sandy’s son, who had little penchant for art had chosen to go off on his motorcycle to a meet in which he was already competing. Some people like that sort of thing. They just want to get into action.
With people running about in Elizabethan costumes it was hard to tell who was who, actor from audience, but finally everyone got settled in his seat, the stage was prepared and the drama begun. The actors could pop in and out of their respective holes in which they changed costumes or simply rested, like so many mice, as the different scenes required.
Barney was there with Sarah, the beautiful. You couldn’t miss her evidently for in her garish peasant costume, her hair in two long braids and her cheeks properly rouged she stood out thoroughly. Moreover, she wasn’t tipsy. Neither her she nor her boyfriend was, for, among his ostensible reforms, Barney’d cut down on his drinking and he’d demanded Sarah follow suit.
“You’re kidding,” said Hammond. “The two biggest alcoholics out there. Non puritanical teetotalers?”
“No, I’m not,” I said. “At least that’s what happened at the time.” Sometimes people do the right thing and they’re happy. Whether the time’s long or short depends on them and circumstances, mainly circumstances. I didn’t say Barney and Hartwig exchanged pleasant looks though in that small audience they undoubtedly saw one another. Each knew he’d broken a bone in the other’s face and he’d have to settle for it. A jaw compared to a nose at that point washes into the same level of hurt administered. Both could feel victorious. To say nothing of the glances of disrespect and hatred that proceeded to and from June and Sarah, the natural mother of June’s adopted daughter that in the end result Sarah couldn’t raise at the time.
Marcus too had no love for the ex con and he had to look from the stage down upon the tall Goose, who sat with his mother, for even on a chair Barney was tall. He had a very long torso as well as legs. But people tend to forget themselves before a play for that simple reason that that’s what plays were designed for. They provide a little relief to the inevitable futility in their audience’s lives that they unconsciously don’t change at the same time as they show you how you really are, even it means to imitate life or God’s so called work. Why do you think the puritans condemned plays? They considered them sinful, a sort of mockery of God’s will under which things were as they should be. They thought acting or make believe at life a danger to life itself while all the people wanted was a little break from the very hardships it proffered with no other way to escape. And wasn’t it escapism at its very best? In watching a play all can be something they want, even the criminal who sees himself in his role. Does he appreciate it or deny it? Probably a little bit of both. Let’s face it, our escapes from this world are few and far between. We take them where we can get them. Watching a good play or movie gives us that, whether it imparts any moral value to our day-to-day living or not. Think of a meeting of the UN, where all the players sit down to discuss their own particular nonsense. They know nothing’ll be resolved for they intend to preserve their own interests at any cost, but they must appear indulgent. Go through the movie. And they are temporarily until the session breaks and they once more slip back into their own prohibitive niches of day to day living and non-cooperation, which really means sacrifice.
You know the play, the tragedy, so I don’t have to give you that. Marcus came on first as messenger to the Duke of Venice to inform him that the Turkish fleet had gathered at Cyprus and was about to attack, and later, as the play progressed, appeared in another costume as a lieutenant to announce to the Duke that the Turkish fleet had been destroyed in a wild tempest and was no more. While this was good news for the Duke, his star general, Othello, who becomes embroiled in a domestic affair, reaches a tragic end in the play – which is to take his own life over his own ignorant mistake, a distrust for his honest wife whom he then murders. What, my friend, in the history of tragedies can be more painful than that? Not mankind, I can assure you. One stands out in my mind, Oedipus by Sophocles, but there are others by the same playwright and several operas that rival the unremitting circumstances wherein people aren’t able to help themselves and therefore succumb like frightened puppets to the vagaries of life.
The afternoon wore on. People left their seats at intermission to indulge in more food and drink in their already heightened states of emotion, having witnessed Othello as he was driven by the evil but believable treachery of the villain Iago. After a little time in which to think and reflect upon what they’d just witnessed they sat once again to watch the performance out to its bitter conclusion as seagulls and crows in their separate groups alighted on the fences. They too, it seems, had an interest in this gathering. They’d witnessed many performances. Not, of course, to watch them but because they knew once the people left the area there’d be morsels of wasted food on the ground where the wistful audience had dropped them which they could then swoop down upon and gobble up.
Marcus, of course, after the conclusion of his second showing, still in his last costume had joined the audience where he sat between Hartwig and Sandy while the admiring neighbors could acknowledge him. The smallness of his contribution seemed unimportant since he was one of them. And how many of them could act or even dared.
The mother noticed, so did Barney. While it made neither of them happy, apparently they were content to leave the grounds without hostile glances or words towards the foreign group they felt estranged from. A very odd feeling for those two, I’d say, despite their better behavior. One that only love could be behind, for how else could a mother watch her son perform in a play without once speaking to him; rather only to look aside as if the boy didn’t exist. She, apparently, was willing to give him up. Hadn’t she put another of hers out for adoption? And, remember, the kid was an actor. He could do the same thing. But could he?
“The circuitous antics one goes through to deny one another,” Hammond remarked.
“Maybe,” I said, “but remember, that’s acting; good acting.”
The one who didn’t do so well that afternoon put on her display after the drama. This, of course, was June who while not as personab
le as the Moor, was just like him in her own self-doubt and willingness to torture herself. Luckily she had her daughter and Marcus along to help her home, however little good that support did to change her. Once she sobered up, said Hartwig, she was the same old hard-hearted realtor, selfish, dictatorial and angry at herself and the world. Was change ever meant for her, one wondered? She could obviously only be defeated at her own game. And even if she was, would that do anyone else any good?
It was late afternoon when the wasted crowd filed out of the makeshift theater and dispersed to their own homes or a bar or restaurant, or if they weren’t local, hopped into their cars and most likely drove back over the mountain from whence they’d come. Hartwig, sided by June and Sandy followed by the artists, June’s daughter and her roommate Marcus and the Stiches, walked the dirt road back to the beach house where it was decided they’d have a barbecue which, of course, never materialized.
“Never materialized?” Said Hammond., “And why the hell not?”
“How could it?” I said, “with June and her one track mind which appeared to be to use that event or reunion with her girlfriend, so to speak, as a last ditch effort to make a play for Hartwig.”
“Really? I thought she’d given that up, accepted it as a good sport.”
Are you kidding, old Ironsides as they used to call her. Not on your life. She was a very disagreeable individual who, it seemed, became more so when she’d been drinking. Which, I must admit wasn’t often, for normally she watched herself carefully in that regard. And, believe me, she had the discipline and knew when to stop most of the time. Here she really cut loose.
The Stiches, of course, sensing some unrest in the air, excused themselves and left.
“Got to get home. The kid needs to be fed,” the contractor told the host, and they departed.
Then, like an assembly line worker pulls certain items from the belt, June tried to separate Hartwig from the remaining guests. For what purpose, who knew? Perhaps it was to drag him off into the woods and offer herself. Remember, she didn’t know why he really rejected her. That was something she could only guess at and it must’ve irked her something terrible, gnawed on her very innards. But who in his right mind really is going to tell himself he’s really a repulsive piece of ass if he hears it, even if it’s true. That’s the last thing we want to admit to ourselves because the institution, sex, is so important and sacred in our lives. Rather than that we just go on to find someone who accepts us that way if we can.
On the way back to the beach house, June took Hartwig’s arm in hers, a familiarity Sandy wouldn’t entertain in a crowd for even she, despite her puerility in so many ways, tried – sometimes – not to act adolescent. With Hartwig’s dark blue eyes reflected in June’s lighter orbs she began talking about the play which, though Sandy’d seen and enjoyed, she understood little of. That is, of the underlying elements that propelled the drama’s efficacy.
“Can you imagine,” June emphatically stuttered to Hartwig, “how that play might’ve ended if when she’d found Othello’s handkerchief, Emilia had given it straight back to Desdemona instead of to her revengeful husband?”
“Of course,” answered Hartwig whose attention was always pricked by a suggestive hypothetical question, “then there’d’ve been no play at all. At least not unless another plot element was introduced. Shakespeare was stressing how circumstances can or cannot make man what he is.”
“Oh, really,” June caught him. “Hasn’t it been said ten thousand monkeys typing randomly for ten thousand years could have written all his plays. How’d that make any of us like we are? It’d be like astrology, nonsense.”
“But,” said Hartwig, “that’s just the point. The Elizabethans believed in the stars. Shakespeare was just bringing them closer to us as represented in the daily activities of our earthly struggle.”
June then turned to Sandy, who, dumb creature that she was, would look off into the woods or at a neighbor’s house. She’d been excluded and she knew it, and although the issue of June and her boyfriend had been settled between them, this sort of rapport still bothered her. It brought up once more the very real possibility that what Hartwig had claimed about June hadn’t been true. That there was something going on between them. And this was all the more distressing to her. She … she just felt inferior to June in that respect and it was then a question over whether the slight hold she did have on Hartwig would be strong enough to override the other.
When the party arrived at the beach house they found Benji who’d returned from his meet. His brand new BMW motorcycle now covered with dirt and mud stood in the driveway. June, of course, immediately directed Jennifer to retrieve the case of her favorite Scotch she’d brought along with her in the trunk of her car. This she’d been saving for that special moment at the beach.
“Look, look,” said the starry eyed blond, “what I brought for the occasion.”
And when she deposited the Dewar’s Select on Sandy’s dining room table no one seemed to object or saw the connection if there was one. But all were glad to make the initiation over ice even the four younger kids. Marcus’d been joined by his girlfriend, Kathleen, from his school where she was studying to be a nurse. She’d driven over in time to catch the end of the play and had just parked her car in front of the house. She was a very nice girl from a middle class family who loved Marcus and was saddened that he was going away but nonetheless felt it was in his best interests and, since he had the opportunity, it was something he had to do.
The cocktail glasses were broken out of the cupboard, the ice bucket filled and John, the artist, was given the honor of pouring. And pour he did mind you, though Jennifer, June’s touched daughter who was brooding constantly about something, would only take a small sip from her glass, which she nonetheless held up like the others until her warm hand melted the ice and she poured her drink over the railing into the sand. Needless to say, in a short while she was the only sober one in the group and that turned out to be just as well for they’d needed a designated driver to take everyone home and, although June rarely let her drive, Jennifer did have her license.
The steaks’d been moved from freezer to cooler that afternoon so they might thaw. Marcus and Benji’d fired up the brick barbecue on the deck, fanning the coals to a bright red while Sandy’d placed the large Idaho potatoes wrapped in tinfoil onto the coals of the on deck barbecue only to return to the kitchen to help Kathleen toss the green salad that was then capped delicately by anchovies. So there you had it, potatoes, salad, steak, the traditional American barbecue fare to say nothing of the spicy loaves of garlic bread that were also thrust onto the coals. Sounds pretty tasty, doesn’t it?
“Yet, just a minute ago you said there was no barbecue. It never happened.”
“I did, didn’t I,” I said, “and it would have too if it hadn’t been for three hungry dogs and a very irate mistress of the house.”
You see, before this cooking transpired there was the drinking and while it was transpiring, more drinking. The sun had set, dusk upon the ocean and night fallen. The conversations turned wild and somewhat heated. June’s daughter, Jennifer, who played piano and had majored in art had become embroiled in an argument of style with the artist’s wife as the two’d stood toe to toe before one of her portraits that hung in Sandy’s living room. She, the young girl, quite frankly didn’t appreciate the strict figurative approach she observed in the local subject.
“Now Chagall,” she went on, “although he used figures, he put them in strange places suggestive of surreal emotions that were noticeable in the eyes of his characters. These …” She gesticulated at the seated figure in the frame, “say nothing like that.”
“Dearie,” said Annie, the artist’s wife, “I’m not Chagall.” And, of course, she wasn’t and she knew it. She was merely an everyday portrait painter who could do likenesses well enough to sell them. Some people appreciated her work and that satisfied her. Jennifer, however, had other ideas as to what interesting painting wa
s and what to her all painting should be. She wanted her to be Chagall. Again, she sang with the exuberance of youth and a little touched at that.
Then June, who’d been attempting to preoccupy Hartwig with her intellectual sorties by following him around all afternoon, had changed her tactics. She cozied up to him, leaned her head on his shoulder and tried to mug him. When that didn’t work and he broke away she waited until he’d retreated inside where the boys had a blaze going in the tall rock fireplace. There she grabbed him suddenly and attempted to pull him into the guest room where he threw her onto the bed, walked out and slammed the door after him. He then announced to the guests,
“Someone can’t hold their Scotch.” But it couldn’t’ve been June could it, for several minutes later she staggered back into the living room for another, which the acting host with a doubtful look towards the daughter poured.
“Don’t … don’t you think you’ve had enough mother?” Jennifer approached her.
“What, your mother had enough? Don’t talk to your mother that way.” June’s eyes rolled. “Don’t tell her what to do?” She turned on her own daughter once more, this time before guests. Then she did a solo dance in the living room, falling down a couple of times before settling herself.
Sandy, who’d been making the preparations with Kathleen had observed June’s antics and hadn’t liked them. She’d wanted to go up and clunk her one with a piece of firewood, even though she’d only been making a fool out of herself. She didn’t like them because she felt they were real, that Hartwig’d been egging June on and that if she, the hostess, hadn’t been there indeed the bedroom door’d been not only slammed but locked from inside by her boyfriend.
As she peeled her potatoes and chopped her chives and onions I’m sure she was thinking of a better use to which she might’ve put the knife. But her son was there, she had guests and, quite frankly, she just wasn’t quite that angry yet, although she was nearing the point of walking out on her own party –propelled both by anger and sadness that things were turning out like they were on such an eventful and special day. And, moreover, that they always seemed to have to. Leave it to the dogs to solve everything.
