Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  BERENICE: Ma-ry Littlejohn.

  FRANKIE: I don’t know why you always have to speak her name in a tinged voice like that.

  BERENICE: Have I ever said anything against her? All I said was that she is too lumpy and marshmallow white and it makes me nervous to see her just setting there sucking them pigtails.

  FRANKIE: Braids. Furthermore, it is no use our discussing a certain party. You could never possibly understand it. It’s just not in you.

  (BERENICE looks at her sadly, with faded stillness, then pats and strokes the fox fur.)

  BERENICE: Be that as it may. Less us not fuss and quarrel this last afternoon.

  FRANKIE: I don’t want to fuss either. Anyway, this is not our last afternoon. I will come and see you often.

  BERENICE: No, you won’t, baby. You’ll have other things to do. Your road is already strange to me.

  (FRANKIE goes to BERENICE, pats her on the shoulder, then takes her fox fur and examines it.)

  FRANKIE: You still have the fox fur that Ludie gave you. Somehow this little fur looks so sad—so thin and with a sad little fox-wise face.

  BERENICE (taking the fur back and continuing to stroke it): Got every reason to be sad. With what has happened in these two last months. I just don’t know what I have done to deserve it. (She sits, the fur in her lap, bent over with her forearms on her knees and her hands limply dangling.) Honey gone and John Henry, my little boy gone.

  FRANKIE: You did all you could. You got poor Honey’s body and gave him a Christian funeral and nursed John Henry.

  BERENICE: It’s the way Honey died and the fact that John Henry had to suffer so. Little soul!

  FRANKIE: It’s peculiar—the way it all happened so fast. First Honey caught and hanging himself in the jail. Then later in that same week, John Henry died and then I met Mary. As the irony of fate would have it, we first got to know each other in front of the lipstick and cosmetics counter at Woolworth’s. And it was the week of the fair.

  BERENICE: The most beautiful September I ever seen. Countless white and yellow butterflies flying around them autumn flowers—Honey dead and John Henry suffering like he did and daisies, golden weather, butterflies—such strange death weather.

  FRANKIE: I never believed John Henry would die. (There is a long pause. She looks out the window.) Don’t it seem quiet to you in here? (There is another, longer pause.) When I was a little child I believed that out under the arbor at night there would come three ghosts and one of the ghosts wore a silver ring. (whispering) Occasionally when it gets so quiet like this I have a strange feeling. It’s like John Henry is hovering somewhere in this kitchen—solemn looking and ghost-grey.

  A BOY’S VOICE (from the neighboring yard): Frankie, Frankie.

  FRANKIE (calling to the boy): Yes, Barney. (to BERENICE) Clock stopped. (She shakes the clock.)

  THE BOY’S VOICE: Is Mary there?

  FRANKIE (to BERENICE): It’s Barney MacKean. (to the boy, in a sweet voice) Not yet. I’m meeting her at five. Come on in, Barney, won’t you?

  BARNEY: Just a minute.

  FRANKIE (to BERENICE): Barney puts me in mind of a Greek god.

  BERENICE: What? Barney puts you in mind of a what?

  FRANKIE: Of a Greek god. Mary remarked that Barney reminded her of a Greek god.

  BERENICE: It looks like I can’t understand a thing you say no more.

  FRANKIE: You know, those old-timey Greeks worship those Greek gods.

  BERENICE: But what has that got to do with Barney MacKean?

  FRANKIE: On account of the figure.

  (BARNEY MACKEAN, a boy of thirteen, wearing a football suit, bright sweater and cleated shoes, runs up the back steps into the kitchen.)

  BERENICE: Hi, Greek god Barney. This afternoon I saw your initials chalked down on the front sidewalk. M.L. loves B.M.

  BARNEY: If I could find out who wrote it, I would rub it out with their faces. Did you do it, Frankie?

  FRANKIE (drawing herself up with sudden dignity): I wouldn’t do a kid thing like that. I even resent you asking me. (She repeats the phrase to herself in a pleased undertone.) Resent you asking me.

  BARNEY: Mary can’t stand me anyhow.

  FRANKIE: Yes she can stand you. I am her most intimate friend. I ought to know. As a matter of fact she’s told me several lovely compliments about you. Mary and I are riding on the moving van to our new house. Would you like to go?

  BARNEY: Sure.

  FRANKIE: O.K. You will have to ride back with the furniture ’cause Mary and I are riding on the front seat with the driver. We had a letter from Jarvis and Janice this afternoon. Jarvis is with the Occupation Forces in Germany and they took a vacation trip to Luxembourg. (She repeats in a pleased voice:) Luxembourg. Berenice, don’t you think that’s a lovely name?

  BERENICE: It’s kind of a pretty name, but it reminds me of soapy water.

  FRANKIE: Mary and I will most likely pass through Luxembourg when we—are going around the world together.

  (FRANKIE goes out followed by BARNEY and BERENICE sits in the kitchen alone and motionless. She picks up the doll, looks at it and hums the first two lines of “I Sing Because I’m Happy.” In the next house the piano is heard again, as the curtain falls.)

  THE SOJOURNER

  PEOPLE

  JOHN FERRIS

  A man nearing forty.

  JEANNINE

  We never see her, but her voice is heard in an adjacent room of her Paris apartment. She is a divorcée who sings in a nightclub.

  VALENTIN

  Jeannine’s six-year-old son. He is a frail, precocious boy whose appearance would seem “foreign” to an American audience. His hair is too long and his shorts are well above his knees.

  MOTHER

  An elderly erect woman who is still beautiful.

  ELIZABETH

  Ferris’ ex-wife who is a beautiful woman who is in the first flower of maturity.

  BILL BAILEY

  Her husband, a genial, lumbering man who is a doctor.

  BILLY BAILEY

  Aged five. He is robust, and obviously American.

  SUZETTE

  Aged two, is beautifully but sensibly dressed.

  SCENE I

  Time—November afternoon. JEANNINE’s Paris living room. The French middle class furniture is lightened by a theatrical note. A blackamoor holding a card tray stands in a corner and an abstract drawing is over the mantelpiece. FERRIS is reading a newspaper in an easy chair while VALENTIN is cutting paper dolls.

  VALENTIN: You said you would take me to the Grand Guignol in the Tuileries.

  FERRIS: Can’t make it today, Butch. I’m pooped.

  VALENTIN: Why do you call me Butch, M. Ferris?

  FERRIS: Because you look like Butch.

  VALENTIN: What does Butch look like? (FERRIS does not answer and continues to read.) You promised twice to take me to the Grand Guignol. This is the third time.

  FERRIS: I’ll take you another week. I’m reading.

  VALENTIN: Are there parks in America?

  FERRIS: Of course.

  VALENTIN: Are there dogs and cats and children? (No answer.) Are there fishes? Are there dogs and cats and fishes and trees in America?

  FERRIS: Don’t be silly.

  JEANNINE’S VOICE FROM ADJACENT ROOM: He’s going through this silly stage.

  FERRIS: Today I moved from the Port-Royal Hotel to the Scribe. From a hotel with a bad cable service to another hotel with a worse service. I’m so sick of moving from one place to another. Fed up with the walls of rented rooms and public meals.

  JEANNINE: You don’t have to live that way, Johnny. It’s always been up to you, you know.

  (FERRIS takes in the meaning of her words, looks at VALENTIN, walks around the room.)

  By the way, a cable came this afternoon. Valentin, Nanny put it in her kitchen box. Run fetch it for Mr. Ferris like a good boy.

  (VALENTIN exits to kitchen, chanting:)

  VALENTIN: “Dogs and cats and children and trees.”


  (FERRIS is left alone, looking at fire and there is a silence before we hear his voice in the narration. JOHN FERRIS speaking and we see his face.)

  FERRIS’ VOICE: This autumn, for the first time, I have been troubled by thoughts so elusive that words are fumbling. I cannot word them properly. I am a writer, but only a newspaper guy who races against deadlines. (Sound of a typewriter which continues through narration.) Since World War II I have worked in three cities—New York, Rome, Paris. And in each of these cities I have been in love. New York (camera flickers briefly over N.Y. scenes), Elizabeth, my wife, who divorced me. In Rome (camera on images that flow) there was another love—never mind her name—it is all finished. But this love was mingled with the splash of fountains, Roman streets, the golden, lavish city of blossoms and age-soft stone. And then she two-timed me. Paris now, and a better job (shots of Paris) and Jeannine, a divorcée who sings in a nightclub and has a little son. New York, Rome, Paris. They are as familiar to me as blocks in my hometown in Centerville, New York. (Camera lingers over small town.) (VALENTIN hands wire silently to FERRIS who reads it twice, then stands in JEANNINE’s doorway, shocked and distraught.)

  JEANNINE’S VOICE: What is it, Johnny, bad news?

  FERRIS: My father died yesterday evening. I’ll try to make the eight o’clock plane.

  SCENE II

  We see an aeroplane in sky and hear FERRIS’ words.

  FERRIS: As a boy, I always longed to travel. And now, after so many years of travel, I am fretted by discontent. As a boy, I longed for love—and love has come and changed and come again and I am still unsatisfied. What is wrong with me? This autumn I have been troubled by a sense of transience, hazard, almost of fear. Is it that I realize now that love has no geography? And Time no latitude and longitude? And death—the secret and inexorable—comes toward us day by day.

  SCENE III

  A glimpse of the burial in a small town cemetery. FERRIS is supporting his mother, who wears widow’s weeds. It is a windy, autumnal day. This, too, is a sequence without dialogue.

  SCENE IV

  Time: About noon after the funeral.

  It is after the funeral and FERRIS and his MOTHER enter a small old-fashioned library. The MOTHER takes off her widow’s veil and puts it on the table where it remains throughout scene. It is raining and FERRIS carries an umbrella which he puts in the umbrella stand in the corner of the vestibule.

  FERRIS: Why don’t you lie down, Mother, you are so tired. I can tuck you in upstairs.

  MOTHER (she speaks in a voice that is distracted with grief): The rain has darkened the autumn leaves (she looks out window), the trees will soon be bare.

  FERRIS: I wonder why it always seems to rain at funerals.

  MOTHER (she is on the verge of tears): So many of your father’s old friends were there, customers at the store and people I hardly knew. I do think the 23rd Psalm was the right one, don’t you darling?

  (They sit down on small, old-fashioned sofa.)

  FERRIS: Mother, tell me about Daddy. I had a letter from him just ten days ago. He sounded so well and cheerful.

  MOTHER (she wipes eyes and controls voice): It was Sunday, a lovely autumn day, with a clear green sky and no wind at all. In the afternoon, directly after lunch, he said he was going to prune the rose bushes and put the garden to sleep for the winter.

  FERRIS: I can see him now, working in the garden.

  MOTHER: I went to the kitchen to wash the dishes and then read for a time in this library. About five o’clock it began to grow dark—the dark comes early now—and I went out to him in the garden. (Her voice breaks and she wipes her eyes.)

  FERRIS (he strokes her hand): Don’t speak about it now, Mother, it hurts too much.

  MOTHER: I want you to know, son, about our last hours.

  (Pause—telephone rings. FERRIS answers it and says it must be the office.)

  FERRIS: Yes, John Ferris. Oh, hello, Miss Williams. (Pause.) Mother is doing as well as could be expected. She’s tired, of course, the funeral was this morning. She was very touched about the wreath from the office. Yes, it was a great shock for all of us. (His tone changes.) Say, Miss Williams, am I all set for Saturday? (Pause.) 8 P.M. at LaGuardia, right? I suppose the date still stands with Mr. Bloomquist at 10 A.M. (Pause.) 10 A.M., right. Miss Williams, will you do a favor for me? Will you please make up some appointments for old friends and coordinate them? I haven’t been in New York in so long I would— Do you have a pencil? Here are the friends I would like to see (takes address book out of pocket. Thumbs through it as he lists names). Ted Anderson, he is on the New York Herald Tribune, you have the number, Bob McCoy, Doubleday, Doran, the number is Murray Hill 8-5300 and I would like to see Ralph Jenkins in our office. (Pause.) He’s left, why did he go, Miss Williams? Well, I’m sorry, he was a very able man. Oh, and one more person, John Parker, the number is Plaza 8-3946 and he is at Harcourt Brace—Harcourt Brace, publishers, yes. Thanks a million, Miss Williams, but I haven’t been in New York in so long and I do want—I have a whole day there—I’ll see you in the office about ten o’clock. Well, yes, thank you very much, you’ll coordinate these and call me back, huh? Good-bye. (As FERRIS is talking on telephone, MOTHER is not listening, as she lives in the past.) Excuse me, Mother, for the interruption. You were telling me that Father was working in the garden.

  MOTHER: I’ll tell you, John. (She is reliving the most moving time in her experience and her voice is eloquent and lyrical.) Your father was standing alone in the garden with the pruning shears in his hands. It was a golden ivory sunset and the falling leaves were copper-colored. Will looked tired and I was afraid he had over-strained himself. Then I took the shears and asked him to go in with me (pause), then something happened to make me happy the rest of my days.

  FERRIS: Don’t you want a glass of sherry, darling? Is it still in the cabinet where it used to be? (He goes to cabinet and brings decanter with glass which she accepts without comment, still remembering.)

  MOTHER: We went upstairs together, and I noticed that his steps were faltering. I said, Will, I’m going to draw you a good hot bath and put you to bed. I bathed him myself that evening, one of the few times in our lives together. I even poured a good deal of lilac toilet water in the bath—

  FERRIS: What??

  MOTHER: He always liked lilac toilet water, but I never thought of pouring it in the bath—but I’m so glad—so glad. (She has begun to weep and FERRIS holds sherry to her mouth and she swallows mechanically.)

  FERRIS: Drink, darling.

  MOTHER: I dried him and he suddenly said, Mother, you are the best and most beautiful wife in the world, every day for 41 years, I have thought how blessed I am, and he kissed me.

  FERRIS: You were married 41 years—

  MOTHER: And I said that it was indecent for an elderly couple to be kissing in the bathroom and the man buck-naked.

  FERRIS: Forty-one years and without a quarrel—

  MOTHER: Who said anything about “without a quarrel.” We had many and many a quarrel.

  FERRIS: I never knew it.

  MOTHER: We staged them always when you were out of the way.

  FERRIS: And the end, darling?

  MOTHER: Oh, yes, I put your father to bed and made him a toddy. Will always enjoyed his toddy in the late afternoon. I’d gone downstairs to make supper and while I was in the kitchen I heard a sound. It was a small sound that ordinarily I would have never noticed, but I had a premonition I suppose, because I was apprehensive. I rushed upstairs.

  FERRIS: Had Daddy fallen?

  MOTHER: No, his glass had fallen, and when I looked at him, he was dead. (She is weeping violently.) His eyes were open, glazed and cold. Oh Will, my warm sweet husband.

  (FERRIS tries to comfort her.)

  FERRIS: Don’t cry, Mother, it is better that he should go like that, than suffer.

  MOTHER: I know, I’ve thought of that but it doesn’t— He was so proud of you, John, and he loved you so.

  FERRIS:
I wish I had done something to make him really proud, and I wish I had showed my love for him more.

  MOTHER: He was talking of you that Sunday morning.

  FERRIS: What did he say?

  MOTHER: He was saying he was wondering if you would ever settle down and if you would marry again. (FERRIS stands up and fidgets nervously. He opens scrapbook on secretary.)

  FERRIS: Why here is my old scrapbook.

  MOTHER: Your father was always cutting out clippings and keeping it up to date.

  FERRIS (turning pages): Here’s the old article I wrote when I was at Dartmouth. It was the first thing that was ever printed. And my first newspaper articles.

  MOTHER: We were always so happy about your success.

  FERRIS: And here is the old wedding picture. Elizabeth seems so startled—as though she looked ahead and realized what would happen.

  MOTHER: John, Johnny boy, what did happen?

  (MOTHER looks searchingly at FERRIS, and he goes to cabinet and takes glass, pours some sherry and gulps.)

  FERRIS: I don’t guess anyone ever understands what happens when a marriage fails. With us it was not one thing, but a hundred little things, a hundred little incidents. It’s hard to explain.

  MOTHER: Your father and I never understood—you and Elizabeth always seemed happy when you came to Centerville to visit us, but we realized there is an invisible wall around a marriage that shuts off all outsiders, no matter how dear. You never spoke to me about the divorce, we never wanted to ask. We knew you were unhappy but there was nothing we could do to comfort you.

  FERRIS: Invisible wall—(pause). Elizabeth married the year after we were divorced.

  MOTHER: Is she happy, John?

  FERRIS: I haven’t seen her. Apparently—they have been married quite a time and have two children.

  MOTHER: Your father had always hoped that maybe you would marry again and he could have grandchildren.

  FERRIS: There is something I was meaning to tell you—I’m not married yet, but I’m in love.

  (For the first time the MOTHER’s face lightens.)

  MOTHER: Johnny boy, nothing could make me happier than this—what is she like?