Remembrance and Pantomime (5 page)

WAITER

     I hope he reach shortly. Is wartime, you know, and it have blackout and curfew.

JORDAN

     I know. When it tolls, we’ll depart.

WAITER

     Eh? Oh ho!

(
Enter
ESTHER. WAITER
seats her
)

JORDAN

(
Presenting magazines
)

     The hostages. As promised.

(
Pause
)

     I love you, Esther. I love you and I’m afraid.

ESTHER

     Will you stop it?

JORDAN

     All right.

(
WAITER
exits
)

     Once you know it, that’s all.

ESTHER

     I was afraid you were making a fool of me, do you understand? Listen to that,
Les Sylphides.
I used to dance to that. Me, a sylph. I should starve. I’m getting too fat, living off the war.

JORDAN

     You’re a ballet dancer?

ESTHER

     Was. War stopped all that. Glad they’ve turned it off. But somebody here’s very chic, my dear. I came because I thought it was time we had this all out. No more little games. I hate flirtations. We aren’t a very frivolous race, the Brrr … itish. So your little notes were very annoying. Not at all flattering. I thought: Who is this foolish man? I’m younger than you, Albert, but I’ve seen more. Mind my chattering? I think it’s for our good, you see.

JORDAN

     Oh, no, no, go on.

ESTHER

     Everybody’s got sad stories about this war, so I shan’t tell you mine. Just swiftly, British manner. Both parents. I’ve none, shall we say. No, no. It’s our war. It’s just Europe ripping its own guts out again. It did it before, with my dad. So I’ve been alone a lot. Lost a fiancé on the
Ark Royal.
Just a boy, but lost all the same, so I asked to be posted out here. I’ve grown to love it here. You mustn’t make fun of that. Albert, I think you’re a silly, affected, but lovely man. You’ve pestered me relentlessly for three months. It’s been worse than the Blitz. And I’ve thought very carefully about this, all the possible complications, but if you want me to, I’ll marry you.

(
Silence
)

     I see. What’s her name, Albert? Your fiancée?

(
Silence
)

JORDAN

     It doesn’t matter, does it?

ESTHER

     I’d just like to know who I lost you to. I think you should leave the office, don’t you? Either that, or I do.

JORDAN

     Excuse me, love. Men’s room.

(
Exits. He turns and walks toward the armchair, reciting from memory
)

     I went to the men’s room for twenty years. I never saw Esther Trout, I mean Esther Hope, to talk to again. I never went back to the office. Not even for my things, until I heard that she had gone back to England. To their war. A mortal error. To stay within the boundaries of my race and not cross over, even for love. Esther! I’ll never look upon her like again. Since then I have been a mind without a country. From that day onward I have always known my place. The end.
        Well, did you prefer that story, Mr.… I’ve forgotten your name. No, no, it’ll come back. Roberts … R … R … Your face …

INTERVIEWER

     Rogers, sir. You taught my father.

JORDAN

     Ah, yes. There were two Rogerses, about your father’s age; one was rather timid, and one was dim-witted but excellent with his hands. He runs a garage.

INTERVIEWER

     That’s my father, sir.

JORDAN

     Not dim-witted exactly. Just that he hated books. I remember he built us an excellent cabinet. I loved him. I loved them all, you see. Is he doing well?

INTERVIEWER

     Just well enough, sir.

JORDAN

     Rogers’s garage, of course! Tell him One Jacket sends his love and ask him if he recalls making that cabinet.

INTERVIEWER

     I shall, sir.

JORDAN

     He had an amusing cranium.

(
Demonstrates
)

     The others called him Mango Head, and I’d, oh, how, how it all comes back so clearly, I’d stroke … he had a funny dent right here, like a cleft crown, ha ha! And I’d say, “Did you learn so and so, Mango Head,” and give it a little rub, and he’d grit his teeth in rage. Oh, he was a lovely boy. Tell him about that cabinet, you hear, don’t you forget now, and tell him that One Jacket says he’s got a fine son.

INTERVIEWER

     Yes, sir. Shall we continue…?

JORDAN

     Don’t know what happened to the other Rogers. I sent them out into the world, frail, confident things. To have that happen every year. Every year. It broke my heart. You look a little like my son. The longer you stay in this house, the more you resemble him.

INTERVIEWER

     That was one of my questions, sir. Everybody in Trinidad knows what happened. How come you have never written about it?

JORDAN

     Because … It is a subject for thunder, not for me, a mouse with a fountain pen. You must go now. My memory is so strong, Master Rogers, that I confound the living and the dead. Reading those stories had the power of incantation. They sounded real, and now I find reality hard to bear. I’m afraid of the power of the resurrecting word. Go, and come back some other morning, thank you. That machine contains their voices, and it’s strange.

INTERVIEWER

     Goodbye, sir.

JORDAN

     Good morning, Master Rogers.

(
INTERVIEWER
rises, exits.
JORDAN
remains in the living room. The
INTERVIEWER
passes
ANNA HERSCHEL
at the front door; she is carrying a baby.
ANNA
sits on a veranda chair, tired. Then rises, hesitant
)

JORDAN

     He’s left the book behind. How’s he going to do his homework?

(
Acting out young
JORDAN
and young
ROGERS
)

     Where’s your book, Mango Head? How can you do your homework without your book?

(
As young
ROGERS
)

     Ah leave it home, sir. It lose.

(
He laughs. Opens the book, reads
)

     “A mortal error. To stay within the boundaries of my race and not cross over, even for love. Esther! I’ll never look upon her like again.”

(
The front door creaks open wider.
ANNA HERSCHEL
,
a young white woman, stands in the doorway, carrying a sleeping baby on one shoulder, a bag slung over the other.
JORDAN
does not turn
)

ANNA

     Can I come in?

JORDAN

     I’m so glad you came. I’d given up, Trout. Sometimes I say Trout instead of Hope. It’s a little joke of mine. It’s a game you might play sometime. Come in.

(
Fade
)

Act Two

SCENE 1

The same. The drawing room, next morning,
JORDAN
in a floral, tasseled dressing gown,
EZRA PILGRIM
sits on the couch, a bottle of rum and a soda near him. He drinks.
JORDAN
watches patiently.

JORDAN

     Love never dies, it stays the same.

PILGRIM

     I can’t face Monday without at least two of these, boy, as you know. Nah, nah, don’t worry, Al. It ain’t the poem. Right. Read. Read.

(
JORDAN
offers him the bottle
)

     No, no, I done, no more. You could move the bottle.

JORDAN

(
Recites
)

     “Love never dies, it stays the same;

     though lovers die, the more Love grows

     in others with a different name,

     it is their heart’s immortal rose.

     A vision from across the years,

     although sons die, and friends betray,

     waters this rose with joyful tears.

     Ah, Hope, that never went away

     but hid within me all this while,

     when sons have died and friends betray,

     you greet me, at the closing day

     with that forlorn, forgiving smile.

                                      A. P. Jordan”

(
Pause
)

     What’s the verdict, Pilly?

(
Pause
)

     You know I can take it.

(
PILGRIM
pours another drink
)

PILGRIM

     It kinda Christmas-cardish. Or, worse, is like one of them things at the back of the paper with a very dim photo of the deceased, but the author is A. P. Jordan, so I’d be mad to turn it down. What’s the title?

JORDAN

     “Remembrance,” and put for the dedication: To E.T. No, put: To A.H., just under the title; that is, if the measly eight dollars and fifty cents you pay not going break your budget. Christmas card? You know the best Christmas-card writer? William Blake. Take it or leave it, that’s how I feel. Maybe is not modern enough for your little pseudo-radical rag, but that’s the best I can do.

PILGRIM

     I told you, I go print it with pleasure, Albert. Is Monday morning, so don’t give your old pardner a hard time. I am the one who respects your work, especially the short stories, and I told you one day I’ll send a boy around with a tape to take down your reminiscences. Because your eyes. This thing kind of close to the bone, boy. What is this “friends betray” business? Which friends?

JORDAN

     Look, Ezra Pilgrim! You think you’re my one friend? Blasted conceit! All right. You are. Is just a bloody poem.

PILGRIM

     “Sons die.” That ain’t just a bloody poem, Albert.

JORDAN

     Look, Ezra, I know your big ambition was to be a barrister, but I too old for you to practice on, you hear? Friends betray, and that’s it! Sons die, and that’s also it. That’s eight dollars and fifty cents’ worth of truth.

PILGRIM

     You talking about my so-called influence on Junior, right? Because I let him loose in my library? Because I made him read Césaire and Marx and Fanon? That was wrong?

JORDAN

     I am talking about life. Life, man, life!

PILGRIM

     Because I let him write those articles in
The Bugle?

JORDAN

     Ezra …

(
PILGRIM
goes for the bottle
)

PILGRIM

     Life? I’m a confirmed bachelor, Albert. I haven’t had your good luck, so the only family I’ve ever had is this.

JORDAN

     You’re not that unlucky, Ezra, you nearly succeeded in stealing away my son. Put down the damned bottle.

PILGRIM

     Junior?

JORDAN

     Aye.

PILGRIM

     Stealing your son? Ahh … that’s what the poem is all about, then. That “friends betray” business. I best have another one, Albert, because …

JORDAN

     Face the truth, Ezra. It’s time. We avoid it, avoid it, face the truth. That poem is the truth …

PILGRIM

     I tried to steal your son.

JORDAN

     My friend …

PILGRIM

     What is it I was supposed to have done? Help kill that boy? I was Uncle Ezra to him.

JORDAN

     And I was Uncle Tom. I was his father, and I was also Uncle Tom. You printed all his revolutionary stuff in
The Bugle,
because you were scared shitless, Ezra; you recanted on all the culture we had known. Remember what we were, and what principles we considered sacred, friend?

PILGRIM

     I thought I was an editor, but this is news to me, that I’m a murderer, too. Jesus, you’ve called me many things, Albert, but never this one. Jesus.

JORDAN

     Shhh. You’ll wake the child.

PILGRIM

     What child?

JORDAN

     Never mind. Just don’t start shouting. I have a child in there.

PILGRIM

     I hope Mabel don’t hear about it. Is there somebody in there, Albert? You have some girl in there ’cause Mabel’s gone? Well, that is your business, but I’m not going around, I’m not leaving this house carrying that guilt inside me about Junior. I will not. You hear?

JORDAN

     Keep your voice down, please. They shot him, Ezra. They put a hole in that boy’s body, but they’ve ripped out a hole in my own heart that nothing, nothing can fill.

PILGRIM

     A stupid, excited policeman shot him, it wasn’t “they”! The country was under martial law.

JORDAN

     Bad company, bad company. What was the company we kept in our youth, Ezra? The company of great minds, great music. Right, Pilly? So we educated ourselves past ourselves, eh, Pilly boy? While our contemporaries were out chasing woman, drinking grog, and sniffing like dogs round the arse of a pension, we’d be here after work, right here on this veranda, right there by the seed ferns, way past suppertime, reading Macaulay, Carlyle, and Edward Bulwer-Lytton to each other. Yes, friend. A. P. Jordan and young Ezra Pilgrim civilized themselves.

PILGRIM