SHANNON: Did it stay a gray light?
HANNAH: No, no, it turned white.
SHANNON: Only white, never gold?
HANNAH: No, it stayed only white, but white is a very good light to see at the end of a long black tunnel you thought would be never-ending, that only God or Death could put a stop to, especially when you . . . since I was . . . far from sure about God.
SHANNON: You’re still unsure about him?
HANNAH: Not as unsure as I was. You see, in my profession I have to look hard and close at human faces in order to catch something in them before they get restless and call out, “Waiter, the check, we’re leaving.” Of course sometimes, a few times, I just see blobs of wet dough that pass for human faces, with bits of jelly for eyes. Then I cue in Nonno to give a recitation, because I can’t draw such faces. But those aren’t the usual faces, I don’t think they’re even real. Most times I do see something, and I can catch it—I can, like I caught something in your face when I sketched you this afternoon with your eyes open. Are you still listening to me? [He crouches beside her chair, looking up at her intently.] In Shanghai, Shannon, there is a place that’s called the House for the Dying—the old and penniless dying, whose younger, penniless living children and grandchildren take them there for them to get through with their dying on pallets, on straw mats. The first time I went there it shocked me, I ran away from it. But I came back later and I saw that their children and grandchildren and the custodians of the place had put little comforts beside their death-pallets, little flowers and opium candies and religious emblems. That made me able to stay to draw their dying faces. Sometimes only their eyes were still alive, but, Mr. Shannon, those eyes of the penniless dying with those last little comforts beside them, I tell you, Mr. Shannon, those eyes looked up with their last dim life left in them as clear as the stars in the Southern Cross, Mr. Shannon. And now . . . now I am going to say something to you that will sound like something that only the spinster granddaughter of a minor romantic poet is likely to say. . . . Nothing I’ve ever seen has seemed as beautiful to me, not even the view from this verandah between the sky and the still-water beach, and lately . . . lately my grandfather’s eyes have looked up at me like that. . . . [She rises abruptly and crosses to the front of the verandah.] Tell me, what is that sound I keep hearing down there?
SHANNON: There’s a marimba band at the cantina on the beach.
HANNAH: I don’t mean that, I mean that scraping, scuffling sound that I keep hearing under the verandah.
SHANNON: Oh, that. The Mexican boys that work here have caught an iguana and tied it up under the verandah, hitched it to a post, and naturally of course it’s trying to scramble away. But it’s got to the end of its rope, and get any further it cannot. Ha-ha—that’s it. [He quotes from Nonno’s poem: “And still the orange,” etc.] Do you have any life of your own—besides your water colors and sketches and your travels with Grampa?
HANNAH: We make a home for each other, my grandfather and I. Do you know what I mean by a home? I don’t mean a regular home. I mean I don’t mean what other people mean when they speak of a home, because I don’t regard a home as a . . . well, as a place, a building . . . a house . . . of wood, bricks, stone. I think of a home as being a thing that two people have between them in which each can . . . well, nest—rest—live in, emotionally speaking. Does that make any sense to you, Mr. Shannon?
SHANNON: Yeah, complete. But. . . .
HANNAH: Another incomplete sentence.
SHANNON: We better leave it that way. I might’ve said something to hurt you.
HANNAH: I’m not thin skinned, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: No, well, then, I’ll say it. . . . [He moves to the liquor cart.] When a bird builds a nest to rest in and live in, it doesn’t build it in a . . . a falling-down tree.
HANNAH: I’m not a bird, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: I was making an analogy, Miss Jelkes.
HANNAH: I thought you were making yourself another rum-coco, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: Both. When a bird builds a nest, it builds it with an eye for the . . . the relative permanence of the location, and also for the purpose of mating and propagating its species.
HANNAH: I still say that I’m not a bird, Mr. Shannon, I’m a human being and when a member of that fantastic species builds a nest in the heart of another, the question of permanence isn’t the first or even the last thing that’s considered . . . necessarily? . . . always? Nonno and I have been continually reminded of the impermanence of things lately. We go back to a hotel where we’ve been many times before and it isn’t there any more. It’s been demolished and there’s one of those glassy, brassy new ones. Or if the old one’s still there, the manager or the maître d’ who always welcomed us back so cordially before has been replaced by someone new who looks at us with suspicion.
SHANNON: Yeah, but you still had each other.
HANNAH: Yes. We did.
SHANNON: But when the old gentleman goes?
HANNAH: Yes?
SHANNON: What will you do? Stop?
HANNAH: Stop or go on . . . probably go on.
SHANNON: Alone? Checking into hotels alone, eating alone at tables for one in a corner, the tables waiters call aces.
HANNAH: Thank you for your sympathy, Mr. Shannon, but in my profession I’m obliged to make quick contacts with strangers who turn to friends very quickly.
SHANNON: Customers aren’t friends.
HANNAH: They turn to friends, if they’re friendly.
SHANNON: Yeah, but how will it seem to be traveling alone after so many years of traveling with. . . .
HANNAH: I will know how it feels when I feel it—and don’t say alone as if nobody had ever gone on alone. For instance, you.
SHANNON: I’ve always traveled with trainloads, planeloads and busloads of tourists.
HANNAH: That doesn’t mean you’re still not really alone.
SHANNON: I never fail to make an intimate connection with someone in my parties.
HANNAH: Yes, the youngest young lady, and I was on the verandah this afternoon when the latest of these young ladies gave a demonstration of how lonely the intimate connection has always been for you. The episode in the cold, inhuman hotel room, Mr. Shannon, for which you despise the lady almost as much as you despise yourself. Afterward you are so polite to the lady that I’m sure it must chill her to the bone, the scrupulous little attentions that you pay her in return for your little enjoyment of her. The gentleman-of-Virginia act that you put on for her, your noblesse oblige treatment of her . . . Oh no, Mr. Shannon, don’t kid yourself that you ever travel with someone. You have always traveled alone except for your spook, as you call it. He’s your traveling companion. Nothing, nobody else has traveled with you.
SHANNON: Thank you for your sympathy, Miss Jelkes.
HANNAH: You’re welcome, Mr. Shannon. And now I think I had better warm up the poppy-seed tea for Nonno. Only a good night’s sleep could make it possible for him to go on from here tomorrow.
SHANNON: Yes, well, if the conversation is over—I think I’ll go down for a swim now.
HANNAH: To China?
SHANNON: No, not to China, just to the little island out here with the sleepy bar on it . . . called the Cantina Serena.
HANNAH: Why?
SHANNON: Because I’m not a nice drunk and I was about to ask you a not nice question.
HANNAH: Ask it. There’s no set limit on questions here tonight.
SHANNON: And no set limit on answers?
HANNAH: None I can think of between you and me, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: That I will take you up on.
HANNAH: Do.
SHANNON: It’s a bargain.
HANNAH: Only do lie back down in the hammock and drink a full cup of the poppy-seed tea this time. It’s warmer now and the sugared ginger will make it easier to get down.
SHANNON: All right. The question is this: have you never had in your life any kind of a lovelife? [Hannah stiffens for a moment.] I t
hought you said there was no limit set on questions.
HANNAH: We’ll make a bargain—I will answer your question after you’ve had a full cup of the poppy-seed tea so you’ll be able to get the good night’s sleep you need, too. It’s fairly warm now and the sugared ginger’s made it much more—[She sips the cup.]—palatable.
SHANNON: You think I’m going to drift into dreamland so you can welch on the bargain? [He accepts the cup from her.]
HANNAH: I’m not a welcher on bargains. Drink it all. All. All!
SHANNON [with a disgusted grimace as he drains the cup]: Great Caesar’s ghost. [He tosses the cup off the verandah and falls into the hammock, chuckling.] The Oriental idea of a Mickey Finn, huh? Sit down where I can see you, Miss Jelkes honey. [She sits down in a straight-back chair, some distance from the hammock.] Where I can see you! I don’t have an X-ray eye in the back of my head, Miss Jelkes. [She moves the chair alongside the hammock.] Further, further, up further. [She complies.] There now. Answer the question now, Miss Jelkes honey.
HANNAH: Would you mind repeating the question.
SHANNON [slowly, with emphasis]: Have you never had in all of your life and your travels any experience, any encounter, with what Larry-the-crackpot Shannon thinks of as a lovelife?
HANNAH: There are . . . worse things than chastity, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: Yeah, lunacy and death are both a little worse, maybe! But chastity isn’t a thing that a beautiful woman or an attractive man falls into like a booby trap or an overgrown gopher hole, is it? [There is a pause.] I still think you are welching on the bargain and I. . . . [He starts out of the hammock]
HANNAH: Mr. Shannon, this night is just as hard for me to get through as it is for you to get through. But it’s you that are welching on the bargain, you’re not staying in the hammock. Lie back down in the hammock. Now. Yes. Yes, I have had two experiences, well, encounters, with. . . .
SHANNON: Two, did you say?
HANNAH: Yes, I said two. And I wasn’t exaggerating and don’t you say “fantastic” before I’ve told you both stories. When I was sixteen, your favorite age, Mr. Shannon, each Saturday afternoon my grandfather Nonno would give me thirty cents, my allowance, my pay for my secretarial and housekeeping duties. Twenty-five cents for admission to the Saturday matinee at the Nantucket movie theatre and five cents extra for a bag of popcorn, Mr. Shannon. I’d sit at the almost empty back of the movie theatre so that the popcorn munching wouldn’t disturb the other movie patrons. Well . . . one afternoon a young man sat down beside me and pushed his . . . knee against mine and . . . I moved over two seats but he moved over beside me and continued this . . . pressure! I jumped up and screamed, Mr. Shannon. He was arrested for molesting a minor.
SHANNON: Is he still in the Nantucket jail?
HANNAH: No. I got him out. I told the police that it was a Clara Bow picture—it was a Clara Bow picture—and I was just overexcited.
SHANNON: Fantastic.
HANNAH: Yes, very! The second experience is much more recent, only two years ago, when Nonno and I were operating at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, and doing very well there, making expenses and more. One evening in the Palm Court of the Raffles we met this middle-aged, sort of nondescript Australian salesman. You know—plump, bald-spotted, with a bad attempt at speaking with an upper-class accent and terribly overfriendly. He was alone and looked lonely. Grandfather said him a poem and I did a quick character sketch that was shamelessly flattering of him. He paid me more than my usual asking price and gave my grandfather five Malayan dollars, yes, and he even purchased one of my water colors. Then it was Nonno’s bedtime. The Aussie salesman asked me out in a sampan with him. Well, he’d been so generous . . . I accepted. I did, I accepted. Grandfather went up to bed and I went out in the sampan with this ladies’ underwear salesman. I noticed that he became more and more. . . .
SHANNON: What?
HANNAH: Well . . . agitated . . . as the afterglow of the sunset faded out on the water. [She laughs with a delicate sadness.] Well, finally, eventually, he leaned toward me . . . we were vis-à-vis in the sampan . . . and he looked intensely, passionately into my eyes. [She laughs again.] And he said to me: “Miss Jelkes? Will you do me a favor? Will you do something for me?” “What?” said I. “Well,” said he, “if I turn my back, if I look the other way, will you take off some piece of your clothes and let me hold it, just hold it?”
SHANNON: Fantastic!
HANNAH: Then he said, “It will just take a few seconds.” “Just a few seconds for what?” I asked him. [She gives the same laugh again.] He didn’t say for what, but. . . .
SHANNON: His satisfaction?
HANNAH: Yes.
SHANNON: What did you do—in a situation like that?
HANNAH: I . . . gratified his request, I did! And he kept his promise. He did keep his back turned till I said ready and threw him . . . the part of my clothes.
SHANNON: What did he do with it?
HANNAH: He didn’t move, except to seize the article he’d requested. I looked the other way while his satisfaction took place.
SHANNON: Watch out for commercial travelers in the Far East. Is that the moral, Miss Jelkes honey?
HANNAH: Oh, no, the moral is Oriental. Accept whatever situation you cannot improve.
SHANNON: “When it’s inevitable, lean back and enjoy it—is that it?
HANNAH: He’d bought a water color. The incident was embarrassing, not violent. I left and returned unmolested. Oh, and the funniest part of all is that when we got back to the Raffles Hotel, he took the piece of apparel out of his pocket like a bashful boy producing an apple for his schoolteacher and tried to slip it into my hand in the elevator. I wouldn’t accept it. I whispered, “Oh, please keep it, Mr. Willoughby!” He’d paid the asking price for my water color and somehow the little experience had been rather touching, I mean it was so lonely, out there in the sampan with violet streaks in the sky and this little middle-aged Australian making sounds like he was dying of asthma! And the planet Venus coming serenely out of a fair-weather cloud, over the Strait of Malacca. . . .
SHANNON: And that experience . . . you call that a. . . .
HANNAH: A love experience? Yes. I do call it one.
[He regards her with incredulity, peering into her face so closely that she is embarrassed and becomes defensive.]
SHANNON: That, that . . . sad, dirty little episode, you call it a . . . ?
HANNAH [cutting in sharply]: Sad it certainly was—for the odd little man—but why do you call it “dirty”?
SHANNON: How did you feel when you went into your bedroom?
HANNAH: Confused, I . . . a little confused, I suppose. . . . I’d known about loneliness—but not that degree or . . . depth of it.
SHANNON: You mean it didn’t disgust you?
HANNAH: Nothing human disgusts me unless it’s unkind, violent. And I told you how gentle he was—apologetic, shy, and really very, well, delicate about it. However, I do grant you it was on the rather fantastic level.
SHANNON: You’re. . . .
HANNAH: I am what? “Fantastic”?
[While they have been talking, Nonno’s voice has been heard now and then, mumbling, from his cubicle. Suddenly it becomes loud and clear.]
NONNO:
And finally the broken stem,
The plummeting to earth and then. . . .
[His voice subsides to its mumble. Shannon, standing behind Hannah, places his hand on her throat.]
HANNAH: What is that for? Are you about to strangle me, Mr. Shannon?
SHANNON: You can’t stand to be touched?
HANNAH: Save it for the widow. It isn’t for me.
SHANNON: Yes, you’re right. [He removes his hand.] I could do it with Mrs. Faulk, the inconsolable widow, but I couldn’t with you.
HANNAH [dryly and lightly]: Spinster’s loss, widow’s gain, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: Or widow’s loss, spinster’s gain. Anyhow it sounds like some old parlor game in a Virginia or Nantucke
t Island parlor. But . . . I wonder something. . . .
HANNAH: What do you wonder?
SHANNON: If we couldn’t . . . travel together, I mean just travel together?
HANNAH: Could we? In your opinion?
SHANNON: Why not, I don’t see why not.
HANNAH: I think the impracticality of the idea will appear much clearer to you in the morning, Mr. Shannon. [She folds her dimly gold-lacquered fan and rises from her chair.] Morning can always be counted on to bring us back to a more realistic level. . . . Good night, Mr. Shannon. I have to pack before I’m too tired to.
SHANNON: Don’t leave me out here alone yet.
HANNAH: I have to pack now so I can get up at daybreak and try my luck in the plaza.
SHANNON: You won’t sell a water color or sketch in that blazing hot plaza tomorrow. Miss Jelkes honey, I don’t think you’re operating on the realistic level.
HANNAH: Would I be if I thought we could travel together?
SHANNON: I still don’t see why we couldn’t.
HANNAH: Mr. Shannon, you’re not well enough to travel anywhere with anybody right now. Does that sound cruel of me?
SHANNON: You mean that I’m stuck here for good? Winding up with the . . . inconsolable widow?
HANNAH: We all wind up with something or with someone, and if it’s someone instead of just something, we’re lucky, perhaps . . . unusually lucky. [She starts to enter her cubicle, then turns to him again in the doorway.] Oh, and tomorrow. . . . [She touches her forehead as if a little confused as well as exhausted.]
The Night of the Iguana Page 11
