LONE: Oooops. Better go see who won.
MA: Hey! C’mon! Help me look!
LONE: If you find them, they are yours.
MA: You serious?
LONE: Yes.
MA: Here.
LONE: Who won?
MA: I didn’t check.
LONE: Well, no matter. Keep the dice. Take them and go play with your friends.
MA: Here.
(He offers them to Lone)
A present.
LONE: A present? This isn’t a present!
MA: They’re mine, aren’t they? You gave them to me, right?
LONE: Well, yes, but—
MA: So now I’m giving them to you.
LONE: You can’t give me a present. I don’t want them.
MA: You wanted them enough to keep them two years.
LONE: I’d forgotten I had them.
MA: See, I know, Lone. You wanna get rid of me. But you can’t. I’m paying for lessons.
LONE: With my dice.
MA: Mine now.
(He offers them again)
Here.
(Pause. Lone runs Ma’s hand across his forehead.)
LONE: Feel this.
MA: Hey!
LONE: Pretty wet, huh?
MA: Big deal.
LONE: Well, it’s not from playing with
die siu.
MA: I know how to sweat. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.
LONE: Yes, but are you willing to sweat after you’ve finished sweating? Are you willing to come up after you’ve spent the whole day chipping half an inch off a rock, and punish your body some more?
MA: Yeah. Even after work, I still—
LONE: No, you don’t. You want to gamble, and tell dirty stories, and dress up like women to do shows.
MA: Hey, I never did that.
LONE: You’ve only been here a month.
(Pause)
And what about “the guys”? They’re not going to treat you so well once you stop playing with them. Are you willing to work all day listening to them whisper, “That one—let’s put spiders in his soup”?
MA: They won’t do that to me. With you, it’s different.
LONE: Is it?
MA: You don’t have to act that way.
LONE: What way?
MA: Like you’re so much better than them.
LONE: No. You haven’t even begun to understand. To practice every day, you must have a fear to force you up here.
MA: A fear? No—it’s ’cause what you’re doing is beautiful.
LONE: No.
MA: I’ve seen it.
LONE: It’s ugly to practice when the mountain has turned your muscles to ice. When my body hurts too much to come here, I look at the other Chinamen and think, “They are dead. Their muscles work only because the white man forces them. I live because I can still force my muscles to work for me.” Say it. “They are dead.”
MA: No. They’re my friends.
LONE: Well, then take your dice down to your friends.
MA: But I want to learn—
LONE: This is your first lesson.
MA: Look, it shouldn’t matter—
LONE: It does.
MA: It shouldn’t matter what I think.
LONE: Attitude is everything.
MA: But as long as I come up, do the exercises—
LONE: I’m not going to waste time on a quitter.
MA: I’m not!
LONE: Then say it—“They are dead men.”
MA: I can’t.
LONE: Then you will never have the dedication.
MA: That doesn’t prove anything.
LONE: I will not teach a dead man.
MA: What?
LONE: If you can’t see it, then you’re dead too.
MA: Don’t start pinning—
LONE: Say it!
MA: All right.
LONE: What?
MA: All right. I’m one of them. I’m a dead man too.
LONE: I thought as much. So, go. You have your friends.
MA: But I don’t have a teacher.
LONE: I don’t think you need both.
MA: Are you sure?
LONE: I’m being questioned by a child.
(Lone returns to practicing. Silence.)
MA: Look, Lone, I’ll come up here every night—after work—I’ll spend my time practicing, okay?
(Pause)
But I’m not gonna say that they’re dead. Look at them. They’re on strike; dead men don’t go on strike, Lone. The white devils—they try and stick us with a ten-hour day. We want a return to eight hours and also a fourteen-dollar-a-month raise. I learned the demon English—listen: “Eight hour a day good for white man, all same good for Chinaman.” These are the demands of live Chinamen, Lone. Dead men don’t complain.
LONE: All right, this is something new. No one can judge the Chinamen ’til after the strike.
MA: They say we’ll hold out for months if we have to. The smart men will live on what we’ve hoarded.
LONE: A Chinaman’s mouth can swallow the earth.
(He takes the dice)
While the strike is on, I’ll teach you.
MA: And afterwards?
LONE: Afterwards—we’ll decide then whether these are dead or live men.
MA: When can we start?
LONE: We’ve already begun. Give me your hand.
Scene Three
Late afternoon, four days later. Lone and Ma are doing physical exercises.
MA: How long will it be before I can play Gwan Gung?
LONE: How long before a dog can play the violin?
MA: Old Ah Hong—have you heard him play the violin?
LONE: Yes. Now, he should take his violin and give it to a dog.
MA: I think he sounds okay.
LONE: I think he caused that avalanche last winter.
MA: He used to play weddings back home.
LONE: Ah Hong?
MA: That’s what he said.
LONE: You probably heard wrong.
MA: No.
LONE: He probably said he played for funerals.
MA: He’s been playing for the guys down at camp.
LONE: He should play for the white devils—that will end this stupid strike.
MA: Yang told me for sure—it’ll be over by tomorrow. L
ONE: Eight days already. And Yang doesn’t know anything.
MA: He said they’re already down to an eight-hour day and five-dollar raise at the bargaining sessions.
LONE: Yang eats too much opium.
MA: That doesn’t mean he’s wrong about this.
LONE: You can’t trust him. One time—last year—he went around camp looking in everybody’s eyes and saying, “Your nails are too long. They’re hurting my eyes.” This went on for a week. Finally, all the men clipped their nails, made a big pile, which they wrapped in leaves and gave to him. Yang used the nails to season his food—he put it in his soup, sprinkled it on his rice, and never said a word about it again. Now tell me—are you going to trust a man who eats other men’s fingernails?
MA: Well, all I know is we won’t go back to work until they meet all our demands. Listen, teach me some Gwan Gung steps.
LONE: I should have expected this. A boy who wants to have twenty wives is the type who demands more than he can handle.
MA: Just a few.
LONE: It takes years before an actor can play Gwan Gung.
MA: I can do it. I spend a lot of time watching the opera when it comes around. Every time I see Gwan Gung, I say, “Yeah. That’s me. The god of fighters. The god of adventurers. We have the same kind of spirit.”
LONE: I tell you, if you work very hard, when you return to China, you can perhaps be the Second Clown.
MA: Second Clown?
LONE: If you work hard.
MA: What’s the Second Clown?
LONE: You can play the
pi pa
, and dance and jump all over.
MA: I’ll buy them.
LONE: Excuse me?
MA: I’m going to be rich, remember? I’ll buy a troupe and force them to let me play Gwan Gung.
LONE: I hope you have enough money, then, to pay audiences to sit through your show.
MA: You mean, I’m going to have to practice here every night—and in return, all I can play is the Second Clown?
LONE: If you work hard.
MA: Am I that bad? Maybe I shouldn’t even try to do this. Maybe I should just go down.
LONE: It’s not you. Everyone must earn the right to play Gwan Gung. I entered opera school when I was ten years old. My parents decided to sell me for ten years to this opera company. I lived with eighty other boys and we slept in bunks four beds high and hid our candy and rice cakes from each other. After eight years, I was studying to play Gwan Gung.
MA: Eight years?
LONE: I was one of the best in my class. One day, I was summoned by my master, who told me I was to go home for two days because my mother had fallen very ill and was dying. When I arrived home, Mother was standing at the door waiting, not sick at all. Her first words to me, the son away for eight years, were, “You’ve been playing while your village has starved. You must go to the Gold Mountain and work.”
MA: And you never returned to school?
LONE: I went from a room with eighty boys to a ship with three hundred men. So, you see, it does not come easily to play Gwan Gung.
MA: Did you want to play Gwan Gung?
LONE: What a foolish question!
MA: Well, you’re better off this way.
LONE: What?
MA: Actors—they don’t make much money. Here, you make a bundle, then go back and be an actor again. Best of both worlds.
LONE: “Best of both worlds.”
MA: Yeah!
(Lone drops to the ground, begins imitating a duck, waddling and quacking.)
Lone? What are you doing?
(Lone quacks.)
You’re a duck?
(Lone quacks.)
I can see that.
(Lone quacks.)
Is this an exercise? Am I supposed to do this?
(Lone quacks.)
This is dumb. I never seen Gwan Gung waddle.
(Lone quacks.)
Okay. All right. I’ll do it.
(Ma and Lone quack and waddle.)
You know, I never realized before how uncomfortable a duck’s life is. And you have to listen to yourself quacking all day. Go crazy!
(Lone stands up straight.)
Now, what was all that about?
LONE: No, no. Stay down there, duck.
MA: What’s the—
LONE
(Prompting)
: Quack, quack, quack.
MA: I don’t—
LONE: Act your species!
MA: I’m not a duck!
LONE: Nothing worse than a duck that doesn’t know his place.
MA: All right.
(Mechanically)
Quack, quack.
LONE: More.
MA: Quack.
LONE: More!
MA: Quack, quack, quack!
(Ma now continues quacking as Lone gives commands.)
LONE: Louder! It’s your mating call! Think of your twenty duck wives! Good! Louder! Project! More! Don’t slow down! Put your tail feathers into it! They can’t hear you!
(Ma is now quacking up a storm. Lone exits, unnoticed by Ma.)