The Night of the Iguana

  SHANNON [shouting, gently]: I’ve got the same feeling, Grampa.

  [Maxine follows them out of the cubicle.]

  NONNO: I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.

  SHANNON [gently and wryly]: I’ve never been surer of anything in mine either.

  [Herr Fahrenkopf has been listening with an expression of entrancement to his portable radio, held close to his ear, the sound unrealistically low. Now he turns it off and makes an excited speech.]

  HERR FAHRENKOPF: The London fires have spread all the way from the heart of London to the Channel coast! Goering, Field Marshall Goering, calls it “the new phase of conquest!” Super-firebombs! Each night!

  [Nonno catches only the excited tone of this announcement and interprets it as a request for a recitation. He strikes the floor with his cane, throws back his silver-maned head and begins the delivery in a grand, declamatory style.]

  NONNO:

  Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick,

  Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick,

  Youth must be foolish and. . . .

  [Nonno falters on the line, a look of confusion and fear on his face. The Germans are amused. Wolfgang goes up to Nonno and shouts into his face.]

  WOLFGANG: Sir? What is your age? How old?

  [Hannah, who has just returned to the verandah, rushes up to her grandfather and answers for him.]

  HANNAH: He is ninety-seven years young!

  HERR FAHRENKOPF: How old?

  HANNAH: Ninety-seven—almost a century young!

  [Herr Fahrenkopf repeats this information to his beaming wife and Hilda in German.]

  NONNO [cutting in on the Germans]:

  Youth must be foolish and mirthful and blind,

  Gaze not before and glance not behind,

  Mark not. . . .

  [He falters again.]

  HANNAH [prompting him, holding tightly onto his arm]:

  Mark not the shadow that darkens the way—

  [They recite the next lines together.]

  Regret not the glitter of any lost day,

  But laugh with no reason except the red wine,

  For youth must be youthful and foolish and blind!

  [The Germans are loudly amused. Wolfgang applauds directly in the old poet’s face. Nonno makes a little unsteady bow, leaning forward precariously on his cane. Shannon takes a firm hold of his arm as Hannah turns to the Germans, opening her portfolio of sketches and addressing Wolfgang.]

  HANNAH: Am I right in thinking you are on your honeymoon? [There is no response, and she repeats the question in German while Frau Fahrenkopf laughs and nods vehemently.] Habe ich recht dass Sie auf Ihrer Hochzeitsreise sind? Was für eine hübsche junge Braut! Ich mache Pastell-Skizzen . . . darf ich, würden Sie mir erlauben . . . ? Wurden Sie, bitte . . . bitte. . . .

  [Herr Fahrenkopf bursts into a Nazi marching song and leads his party to the champagne bucket on the table at the left. Shannon has steered Nonno to the other table.]

  NONNO [exhilarated]: Hannah! What was the take?

  HANNAH [embarrassed]: Grandfather, sit down, please stop shouting!

  NONNO: Hah? Did they cross your palm with silver or paper, Hannah?

  HANNAH [almost desperately]: Nonno! No more shouting! Sit down at the table. It’s time to eat!

  SHANNON: Chow time, Grampa.

  NONNO [confused but still shouting]: How much did they come across with?

  HANNAH: Nonno! Please!

  NONNO: Did they, did you . . . sell ’em a . . . water color?

  HANNAH: No sale, Grandfather!

  MAXINE: Hah!

  [Hannah turns to Shannon, her usual composure shattered, or nearly so.]

  HANNAH: He won’t sit down or stop shouting.

  NONNO [blinking and beaming with the grotesque suggestion of an old coquette]: Hah? How rich did we strike it, Hannah?

  SHANNON: You sit down, Miss Jelkes. [He says it with gentle authority, to which she yields. He takes hold of the old man’s forearm and places in his hand a crumpled Mexican bill.] Sir? Sir? [He is shouting.] Five! Dollars! I’m putting it in your pocket.

  HANNAH: We can’t accept . . . gratuities, Mr. Shannon.

  SHANNON: Hell, I gave him five pesos.

  NONNO: Mighty good for one poem!

  SHANNON: Sir? Sir? The pecuniary rewards of a poem are grossly inferior to its merits, always!

  [He is being fiercely, almost mockingly tender with the old man—a thing we are when the pathos of the old, the ancient, the dying is such a wound to our own (savagely beleaguered) nerves and sensibilities that this outside demand on us is beyond our collateral, our emotional reserve. This is as true of Hannah as it is of Shannon, of course. They have both overdrawn their reserves at this point of the encounter between them.]

  NONNO: Hah? Yes. . . . [He is worn out now, but still shouting.] We’re going to clean up in this place!

  SHANNON: You bet you’re going to clean up here!

  [Maxine utters her one-note bark of a laugh. Shannon throws a hard roll at her. She wanders amiably back toward the German table.]

  NONNO [tottering, panting, hanging onto Shannonarm, thinking it is Hannah’s]: Is the, the . . . dining room . . . crowded? [He looks blindly about with wild surmise.]

  SHANNON: Yep, it’s filled to capacity! There’s a big crowd at the door! [His voice doesn’t penetrate the old man’s deafness.]

  NONNO: If there’s a cocktail lounge, Hannah, we ought to . . . work that . . . first. Strike while the iron is hot, ho, ho, while it’s hot. . . . [This is like a delirium—only as strong a woman as Hannah could remain outwardly impassive.]

  HANNAH: He thinks you’re me, Mr. Shannon. Help him into a chair. Please stay with him a minute, I. . . .

  [She moves away from the table and breathes as if she has just been dragged up half-drowned from the sea. Shannon eases the old man into a chair. Almost at once Nonno’s feverish vitality collapses and he starts drifting back toward half sleep.]

  SHANNON [crossing to HANNAH]: What’re you breathing like that for?

  HANNAH: Some people take a drink, some take a pill. I just take a few deep breaths.

  SHANNON: You’re making too much out of this. It’s a natural thing in a man as old as Grampa.

  HANNAH: I know, I know. He’s had more than one of these little “cerebral accidents” as you call them, and all in the last few months. He was amazing till lately. I had to show his passport to prove that he was the oldest living and practicing poet on earth. We did well, we made expenses and more! But . . . when I saw he was failing, I tried to persuade him to go back to Nantucket, but he conducts our tours. He said, “No, Mexico!” So here we are on this windy hilltop like a pair of scarecrows. . . . The bus from Mexico City broke down at an altitude of 15,000 feet above sea level. That’s when I think the latest cerebral incident happened. It isn’t so much the loss of hearing and sight but the . . . dimming out of the mind that I can’t bear, because until lately, just lately, his mind was amazingly clear. But yesterday? In Taxco? I spent nearly all we had left on the wheelchair for him and still he insisted that we go on with the trip till we got to the sea, the . . . cradle of life as he calls it. . . . [She suddenly notices Nonno, sunk in his chair as if lifeless. She draws a sharp breath, and goes quietly to him.]

  SHANNON [to the Mexican boys]: Servicio! Aqui! [The force of his order proves effective: they serve the fish course.]

  HANNAH: What a kind man you are. I don’t know how to thank you, Mr. Shannon. I’m going to wake him up now. Nonno! [She claps her hands quietly at his ear. The old man rouses with a confused, breathless chuckle.] Nonno, linen napkins. [She removes a napkin from the pocket of her smock.] I always carry one with me, you see, in case we run into paper napkins as sometimes happens, you see. . . .

  NONNO: Wonderful place here. . . . I hope it is à la carte, Hannah, I want a very light supper so I won’t get sleepy. I’m going to work after supper. I’m going to finish it here.

  HANNAH: Nonno? We’ve
made a friend here. Nonno, this is the Reverend Mr. Shannon.

  NONNO [struggling out of his confusion]: Reverend?

  HANNAH [shouting to him]: Mr. Shannon’s an Episcopal clergyman, Nonno.

  NONNO: A man of God?

  HANNAH: A man of God, on vacation.

  NONNO: Hannah, tell him I’m too old to baptize and too young to bury but on the market for marriage to a rich widow, fat, fair and forty.

  [Nonno is delighted by all of his own little jokes. One can see him exchanging these pleasantries with the rocking-chair brigades of summer hotels at the turn of the century—and with professors’ wives at little colleges in New England. But now it has become somewhat grotesque in a touching way, this desire to please, this playful manner, these venerable jokes. Shannon goes along with it. The old man touches something in him which is outside of his concern with himself. This part of the scene, which is played in a “scherzo” mood, has an accompanying windy obligato on the hilltop—all through it we hear the wind from the sea gradually rising, sweeping up the hill through the rain forest, and there are fitful glimmers of lightning in the sky.]

  NONNO: But very few ladies ever go past forty if you believe ’em, ho, ho! Ask him to . . . give the blessing. Mexican food needs blessing.

  SHANNON: Sir, you give the blessing. I’ll be right with you. [He has broken one of his shoelaces.]

  NONNO: Tell him I will oblige him on one condition.

  SHANNON: What condition, sir?

  NONNO: That you’ll keep my daughter company when I retire after dinner. I go to bed with the chickens and get up with the roosters, ho, ho! So you’re a man of God. A benedict or a bachelor?

  SHANNON: Bachelor, sir. No sane and civilized woman would have me, Mr. Coffin.

  NONNO: What did he say, Hannah?

  HANNAH [embarrassed]: Nonno, give the blessing.

  NONNO [not hearing this]: I call her my daughter, but she’s my daughter’s daughter. We’ve been in charge of each other since she lost both her parents in the very first automobile crash on the island of Nantucket.

  HANNAH: Nonno, give the blessing.

  NONNO: She isn’t a modern flapper, she isn’t modern and she—doesn’t flap, but she was brought up to be a wonderful wife and mother. But . . . I’m a selfish old man so I’ve kept her all to myself.

  HANNAH [shouting into his ear]: Nonno, Nonno, the blessing!

  NONNO [rising with an effort]: Yes, the blessing. Bless this food to our use, and ourselves to Thy service. Amen. [He totters back into his chair.]

  SHANNON: Amen.

  [Nonno’s mind starts drifting, his head drooping forward. He murmurs to himself.]

  SHANNON: How good is the old man’s poetry?

  HANNAH: My grandfather was a fairly well-known minor poet before the First World War and for a little while after.

  SHANNON: In the minor league, huh?

  HANNAH: Yes, a minor league poet with a major league spirit. I’m proud to be his granddaughter. . . . [She draws a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, then replaces it immediately without taking a cigarette.]

  NONNO [very confused]: Hannah, it’s too hot for . . . hot cereals this . . . morning. . . . [He shakes his head several times with a rueful chuckle.]

  HANNAH: He’s not quite back, you see, he thinks it’s morning. [She says this as if making an embarrassing admission, with a quick, frightened smile at Shannon.]

  SHANNON: Fantastic—fantastic.

  HANNAH: That word “fantastic” seems to be your favorite word, Mr. Shannon.

  SHANNON [looking out gloomily from the verandah]: Yeah, well, you know we—live on two levels, Miss Jelkes, the realistic level and the fantastic level, and which is the real one, really. . . .

  HANNAH: I would say both, Mr. Shannon.

  SHANNON: But when you live on the fantastic level as I have lately but have got to operate on the realistic level, that’s when you’re spooked, that’s the spook. . . . [This is said as if it were a private reflection.] I thought I’d shake the spook here but conditions have changed here. I didn’t know the patrona had turned to a widow, a sort of bright widow spider. [He chuckles almost like Nonno.]

  [Maxine has pushed one of those gay little brass-and-glass liquor carts around the corner of the verandah. It is laden with an ice bucket, coconuts and a variety of liquors. She hums gaily to herself as she pushes the cart close to the table.]

  MAXINE: Cocktails, anybody?

  HANNAH: No, thank you, Mrs. Faulk, I don’t think we care for any.

  SHANNON: People don’t drink cocktails between the fish and the entrée, Maxine honey.

  MAXINE: Grampa needs a toddy to wake him up. Old folks need a toddy to pick ’em up. [She shouts into the old man’s ear.] Grampa! How about a toddy? [Her hips are thrust out at Shannon.]

  SHANNON: Maxine, your ass—excuse me, Miss Jelkes—your hips, Maxine, are too fat for this verandah.

  MAXINE: Hah! Mexicans like ’em, if I can judge by the pokes and pinches I get in the buses to town. And so do the Germans. Ev’ry time I go near Herr Fahrenkopf he gives me a pinch or a goose.

  SHANNON: Then go near him again for another goose.

  MAXINE: Hah! I’m mixing Grampa a Manhattan with two cherries in it so he’ll live through dinner.

  SHANNON: Go on back to your Nazis, I’ll mix the Manhattan for him. [He goes to the liquor cart.]

  MAXINE [to Hannah]: How about you, honey, a little soda with lime juice?

  HANNAH: Nothing for me, thank you.

  SHANNON: Don’t make nervous people more nervous, Maxine.

  MAXINE: You better let me mix that toddy for Grampa, you’re making a mess of it, Shannon.

  [With a snort of fury, he thrusts the liquor cart like a battering ram at her belly. Some of the bottles fall off it; she thrusts it right back at him.]

  HANNAH: Mrs. Faulk, Mr. Shannon, this is childish, please stop it!

  [The Germans are attracted by the disturbance. They cluster around, laughing delightedly. Shannon and Maxine seize opposite ends of the rolling liquor cart and thrust it toward each other, both grinning fiercely as gladiators in mortal combat. The Germans shriek with laughter and chatter in German.]

  HANNAH: Mr. Shannon, stop it! [She appeals to the Germans.] Bitte! Nehmen Sie die Spirituosen weg. Bitte, nehmen Sie sie weg.

  [Shannon has wrested the cart from Maxine and pushed it at the Germans. They scream delightedly. The cart crashes into the wall of the verandah. Shannon leaps down the steps and runs into the foliage. Birds scream in the rain forest. Then sudden quiet returns to the verandah as the Germans go back to their own table.]

  MAXINE: Crazy, black Irish Protestant son of a . . . Protestant!

  HANNAH: Mrs. Faulk, he’s putting up a struggle not to drink.

  MAXINE: Don’t interfere. You’re an interfering woman.

  HANNAH: Mr. Shannon is dangerously . . . disturbed.

  MAXINE: I know how to handle him, honey—you just met him today. Here’s Grampa’s Manhattan cocktail with two cherries in it.

  HANNAH: Please don’t call him Grampa.

  MAXINE: Shannon calls him Grampa.

  HANNAH [taking the drink]: He doesn’t make it sound condescending, but you do. My grandfather is a gentleman in the true sense of the word, he is a gentle man.

  MAXINE: What are you?

  HANNAH: I am his granddaughter.

  MAXINE: Is that all you are?

  HANNAH: I think it’s enough to be.

  MAXINE: Yeah, but you’re also a deadbeat, using that dying old man for a front to get in places without the cash to pay even one day in advance. Why, you’re dragging him around with you like Mexican beggars carry around a sick baby to put the touch on the tourists.

  HANNAH: I told you I had no money.

  MAXINE: Yes, and I told you that I was a widow—recent. In such a financial hole they might as well have buried me with my husband.

  [Shannon reappears from the jungle foliage but remains unnoticed by Hannah and Maxine.]

&nbsp
; HANNAH [with forced calm]: Tomorrow morning, at daybreak, I will go in town. I will set up my easel in the plaza and peddle my water colors and sketch tourists. I am not a weak person, my failure here isn’t typical of me.

  MAXINE: I’m not a weak person either.

  HANNAH: No. By no means, no. Your strength is awe-inspiring.

  MAXINE: You’re goddam right about that, but how do you think you’ll get to Acapulco without the cabfare or even the busfare there?

  HANNAH: I will go on shanks’ mare, Mrs. Faulk—islanders are good walkers. And if you doubt my word for it, if you really think I came here as a deadbeat, then I will put my grandfather back in his wheelchair and push him back down this hill to the road and all the way back into town.

  MAXINE: Ten miles, with a storm coming up?

  HANNAH: Yes, I would—I will. [She is dominating Maxine in this exchange. Both stand beside the table. Nonno’s head is drooping back into sleep.]

  MAXINE: I wouldn’t let you.

  HANNAH: But you’ve made it clear that you don’t want us to stay here for one night even.

  MAXINE: The storm would blow that old man out of his wheelchair like a dead leaf.

  HANNAH: He would prefer that to staying where he’s not welcome, and I would prefer it for him, and for myself, Mrs. Faulk. [She turns to the Mexican boys.] Where is his wheelchair? Where is my grandfather’s wheelchair?

  [This exchange has roused the old man. He struggles up from his chair, confused, strikes the floor with his cane and starts declaiming a poem.]

  NONNO:

  Love’s an old remembered song

  A drunken fiddler plays,

  Stumbling crazily along

  Crooked alleyways.

  When his heart is mad with music

  He will play the—

  HANNAH: Nonno, not now, Nonno! He thought someone asked for a poem. [She gets him back into the chair. Hannah and Maxine are still unaware of Shannon.]