Authors: Anne Szumigalski

Tags: #Fiction, #Non-fiction, #Abley, #Szumigalski, #Omnibus, #Governor General's Award, #Poetry, #Collection, #Drama

A Woman Clothed in Words (14 page)

And then she sees him through the dim, stacking books in the pews, those books with slippery green covers full of hymns. Singing is not enough, he has once told her. What God needs is you, not your voice squeaking away. That means you are God, I suppose, she remembers saying over the pillows at him, naked as Jesus on the cross. And she had laughed. But had she really said that or was it simply one of those conversations you make up afterwards? After the event. The words you wish you had once said?

She comes boldly near but he doesn’t look up. He doesn’t turn his head. How can he be unaware when she is suffocating with his presence? Well, he shall be startled, startled enough to drop the pile of books under his arm. Oh, he will say, it’s you. Come away to the island. Come where the dark surrounds us like water.

Ah, she thinks, but the shore is where I have always lived, except for that one excursion, that is. It is the land of Laurence, of Boy whose mind she has invented out of shreds, of little Nan who has invented herself. Most of all it is that other church open to the sky. It is the boxful of bones and the crypt full of stories.

When he looks up all she says is, I’ve come for you. You must bury the found baby. And she opens her jacket to show the small skull grinning from under her left arm.

Why? he asks turning round, seeing her, looking coolly into her eyes. She was in her box and we broke into it, Bryll explains. Laurence found her. We need to hear the proper words. The baby needs to hear them. Bring holy water and a book, we have two candles. Bring matches too. Six o’clock, he says and turns away. She knows he is pretending he’s forgotten the room, the bed, the pillows, the promise of the island. Or he has taken someone else there and was done with her. So he has freed me, and Bryll smiles, knowing whatever he may think, she has him hooked in the mouth like a fish. He will never be quite free of her. She remembers the grandfathers’ fishing lessons. She begins to play him. She begins to bring him in.

At last slowly while years and centuries pass, where continents vary and frogs become snakes and then birds which fly up and are lost in the sky, he lifts up his head and sees her. Lord lift up Thy countenance upon us: she has read this in the torn prayerbook in the crypt. Lift up your head and see me, I am here, she wanted to say Beloved, but not in this cold dark with the smell of dust upon the air.

What are you doing here, he says mildly. Without much interest, it seemed, but she knew she could tell that he was startled beyond startle. He had not expected to see her again. The island he had promised became a ploy, a lie. He was a liar. But she wanted, loved him still. I have come to ask you to ... to what? he couldn’t understand. To bury the baby Laurence found in the grave. The one forgotten in her little box. Did you phone the police, he answered, you must let them know. Did you tell your mother, your father. She knows he doesn’t just mean the baby. About that time when he had taken her into the house through the garden. Into the bed behind the curtain and called the whole thing an island in the dark and it was, but that was gone now, she wondered had he taken other girls there since then. She asked him out loud. Have you? He answered too easily. Of course not. But why are you here? We sinned, he explained, God was angry. Your god, she said, mine doesn’t care but yes the baby, the bone baby the little head, we all care about her, and please will you come and bury her and please don’t tell and we’ll bring flowers and we’ll even plant them, we’ll name her, we have named her Rhiannon, Rhiannon of the birds.

Three Women at the End of the World

Editor’s note:
The five scenes published here are much of what survive from an unfinished play Anne was working on in her last years,
Three Women at the End of the World.
The title was provisional: in a note to herself, she wrote “Perhaps this is the only play – the one woman – perhaps it’s the middle one of three plays. I don’t know yet.” The following scenes were intended to be performed in water – somehow. Anne also noted, “During the whole play distant shelling and bombing can be heard.”

At the suggestion of Tom Bentley (who directed her play Z in 1994 for Twenty Fifth Street Theatre in Saskatoon, and who was working with Anne on this new project) I have chosen not to publish a few other scenes, set in a small house in a bombarded city. She wrote elaborate stage directions to introduce those scenes but the dialogue is, in Bentley’s words, “not far enough along to represent Anne’s skill in a good light.” The scenes in the hut have two main characters, a man named Tek and a woman named Amina. Their relationship to the watery pair of Payly and Mako is uncertain.

The connection between the two adult pairs was probably to be established by other scenes involving Amy, a girl of eleven, and Ronny, her younger brother. They are the children of Tek and Amina, but (like Payly and Mako) they take to the water. One of the scenes printed here is a monologue spoken by Amy in a boat, while Ronny sleeps. The other four scenes are dialogues between Payly and Mako.

One final disclaimer: the scenes appear now in the order Anne left them. This does not necessarily mean they would have been performed in this order.

A stretch of water.

Payly (M) and Mako (F).

It’s dark. Noises of scuffling

Mako
–
No shoving.

Payly – No pinching. We agreed no pinching.

Mako – No shoving.

Payly – No pinching Mako my dear.

Mako – No endearments. Shove off.

Payly –
(bitterly)
Darling darling darling. Give me a break.

Mako – I’m broken already.

Payly – You’re broken? What about me. I’m more broken than you are.

Mako – No one is more broken than I am.

Payly – What makes you think you are so special, so specially broken. You always have to be somebody special. More splendid, more brilliant, more broken. Prove it.

Mako – Your death and mine, that’s the proof. I’m more dead than you are.

Payly – My what.

Mako – Your death. The last one.

Payly – There is never a last death. Only a first one.

Mako – First or last, you are not denying that we are dead.

Payly – Most people are dead.

Mako – That’s not true. The latest statistics show that more people are alive today than all the people who have died since the beginning.

Payly –
(morally)
Statistics are fools. You can torture them just like you can torture people and make them say what you want. And anyway, what beginning.

Mako – The beginning of the Regime. The great Caretaker, whatever you want to call Her.

Payly – Him.

Mako – Her. I think of it as Her.

Payly – Let’s stick with It. Remember how we hated It?

Mako – But we got used to it – It. We got used to torturing people, being tortured.

Payly – Haunting people. Following them to their deaths. What does that mean after all?

Mako – Taking away.

Payly – Giving back.

Mako – Taking away again.

Payly – Nothing new under the moon.

During the foregoing it has gradually become lighter and is now grey.

They take turns jumping up out of the water (or they have found a shell and are using it as an oracle).

Payly – (changes his eye for his mouth, calls out) Who’s there. Yoo hoo. Yoo hoo. (changing his mouth for his ear)

Mako – Hear anything?

Payly – Just a soft rushing sound. Shhhhh ... Could be somebody breathing.

Mako – Breathing? They’ve gone away long ago.

Payly – Long, long ago. Lost, washed up somewhere, stranded.

Payly – As so many are. The State will take care of them of course.

Mako – There are places for them.

Payly – Places? What places?

Mako – Houses. Houses with rooms and tables and chairs and beds and blankets and warps and wefts and bread and cheese and even sometimes pets.

Payly – I had a pet once, a goldfish.

Mako – A goldfish is not a pet. You can’t pet it.

Payly – You can take care of it. Feed it. Change the water.

Mako – You have to be careful with that.

Payly – What do you mean?

Mako – Tapwater can kill a goldfish.

Payly – And a dead goldfish is nothing. It’s not even edible.

Mako – If you were hungry enough. I met a fellow once ate a dead rat. Never mind a goldfish.

Payly – Like the dream I dreamed last night, Mako. I dreamed of you.

Mako – Why would you do that? I’m right here by your side. You don’t have to dream of me. I’m here.

Payly – You’re not. You’re dead. You’ve been dead for some time.

Mako – Like the goldfish. Do goldfish dream, I wonder.

Payly – And if they did, would they dream of us Mako my dear.

Mako – Would they dream of us? They could dream we were goldfish swimming in a bowl being watched by other goldfish swimming in other bowls. Yes that’s what they were dreaming. I’m sure of it. –

Payly – How can anybody be watching us, it’s dark in here.

Mako – Darkness is no protection from prying eyes.

Payly – And ears. Hark, the Caretaker is saying. Hark, I hear the song of the goldfish in his dish.

Mako – Your goldfish lives in a dish.

Payly – On a dish, he’s cooked and served up. Just like a person, just like any of us. Miserable just like you and me.

Mako – We made a mistake.

Payly – We thought it was for the best.

Mako – We were wrong.

Payly – Like with the goldfish, if we had treated him right he’d still be alive

Mako – and swimming

Payly – and swimming around and around and around.

Mako – Spiralling down I saw an eye. A woman’s eye.

Payly – How could you tell it was a woman’s eye. Just from the eye. How could you possibly tell. Fishes have eyes too you know.

Mako – It was blue.

Payly – Haven’t you heard of Mama’s blue-eyed boy?

Mako – It was female. It had that hesitant motherly look that women have when they are afraid.

Payly – So women are afraid?

Mako – Always.

Payly – Always?

Mako – You’ve noticed that. Women are always afraid.

Payly – Crying. Hugging themselves. Complaining that their feet are cold.

Mako – They are.

Payly – What?

Mako – They are cold. My feet are cold.

Payly – Here. I’ll warm them for you.

She takes off her shoe, balances on one foot. Sticks out the other. Payly rubs her foot vigorously. He pulls it up too high. She falls down on her bum.

Payly – Better?

Mako – I fell over.

Payly – So?

Mako – So how can that be better. I hurt myself. You hurt me.

Payly – You didn’t cry.

Mako – Of course not. I’m a woman, not a baby.

Payly – Sorry. Give me the other foot.

She thrusts out her other foot and kicks him in the groin.

Payly –
(lets forth a string of oaths)

Mako – Oh oh ... So that hurt, did it. Diddums?

Payly –
(crying)
It bloody hurts. It bloody hurts.

Mako – You’re crying.