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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Remembrance
Pantomime
Note
By Derek Walcott
Copyright
Remembrance
For Alix Walcott
and
Ruth and Joe Moore
Characters
ALBERT PEREZ JORDAN, a retired schoolteacher, aged sixty-five
MABEL JORDAN, his wife, late fifties
FREDERICK JORDAN, their son, early thirties
MR. BARRLEY, an American tourist
ESTHER HOPE, an Englishwoman, late twenties
ANNA HERSCHEL, an American (same actress as for Esther Hope)
MR. PILGRIM, editor of The Belmont Bugle, early sixties
AN INTERVIEWER from The Belmont Bugle, early twenties; also A SCHOOLBOY and A WAITER
SET: The living room of the Jordans’ house in the old section of Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the present.
Remembrance was commissioned by the Courtyard Players, St. Croix, and premiered at the Dorsch Centre, St. Croix, on April 22, 1977, directed by the author, with the following cast:
INTERVIEWER
Crispin Peterson
ALBERT PEREZ JORDAN
Wilbert Holder
MABEL JORDAN
Lorraine Joseph
FREDERICK JORDAN
Monsell Laury
ESTHER HOPE/ANNA HERSCHEL
Deborah Merlin Craig
MR. BARRLEY
Frank Erhardt
EZRA PILGRIM
Charles Durant
The play was produced by Joseph Papp, and opened at the New York Shakespeare Festival, New York, on April 24, 1979, directed by Charles Turner, with the following cast:
INTERVIEWER
Lou Ferguson
ALBERT PEREZ JORDAN
Roscoe Lee Browne
MABEL JORDAN
Cynthia Belgrave
FREDERICK JORDAN
Frankie R. Faison
ESTHER HOPE/ANNA HERSCHEL
Laurie Kennedy
MR. BARRLEY
Gil Rogers
EZRA PILGRIM
Earle Hyman
Act One
PROLOGUE
Pre-dawn. The drawing room of ALBERT PEREZ JORDAN’s house in Belmont. Dark wood, a fanlight of stained glass, ferns in a corner, a couch with a fading floral pattern, a fringed standing lamp, and a large antique desk at which JORDAN, in waistcoat, no jacket, slippers, is sitting stiffly, hands clasped in his lap. A grandfather clock strikes four. The INTERVIEWER is sitting in the half dark, some distance away, holding a cassette recorder. A small microphone is in front of JORDAN.
INTERVIEWER
Is Remembrance Day today, Mr. Jordan, seven years after the February revolution to which you lost a son, and tomorrow there will be marching in the streets of Port of Spain, and the marchers will stand with red flags for one commemorative minute outside this house …
JORDAN
Whose windows will be closed … Wait. You going to leave in the sound of the clock?
INTERVIEWER
The clock will strike again, Mr. Jordan. So we have all the time in the world. Ready?
JORDAN
Is like one of them launchings at Cape Canaveral. Boy, I sitting here feeling like a spaceman, except I taking a journey through time.
INTERVIEWER
I had it on that time. Lemme erase.
JORDAN
Not “lemme erase,” boy! Let me erase. You write for Ezra Pilgrim’s paper and is so all you does talk? All you young Trinidadians does so handle machine without reading book.
INTERVIEWER
Mr. Pilgrim instructed me to show you the machine, when you have to use it by yourself. Press both here for Record. Backward. Forward. Your turn.
JORDAN
No. The only machine I ever trusted was my old Raleigh bicycle. It behaved erratically and suddenly died.
INTERVIEWER
Of what, Mr. Jordan?
JORDAN
Rabies. Some rabid pothound snapped at my trouser clip and bit the bike. It’s out there in the back yard, rusty as my Latin. I’m ready.
(INTERVIEWER turns off the machine, as JORDAN exasperatedly paces)
I would have written all this down, but that stubborn red ass, your editor, wouldn’t hear. What about your eyes? he said. Before your memory goes, too, I’ll send a boy over with a tape recorder, and if you can’t write you could talk it out. Talk out what? I said. And he said, The story of your life, and I said, My life is nothing, Ezra, I have been a damn fool, and he said, Nobody’s life is nothing, especially yours, and besides, I said, I cannot write prose, Ezra, I am a poet, and he said, Everybody’s eyes does dim a little as they get old, but as your eyes grow dim so your memories brighten, and if you can’t write prose, at least you could talk it, and I told him, You got that from Molière, because I was a schoolmaster, you know. They called me One Jacket Jordan.
(Long pause)
I was a schoolmaster. I was for a while Acting Principal of Belmont Intermediate. They never appointed me. A schoolmaster.
(Pause)
Who taught the wrong things.
(He crosses to coat rack and puts on schoolmaster’s jacket. He has become a younger man. He crosses to desk, sits down, opens a book, and recites)
“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.
(A cough. He pauses)
Th’ applause of listening senates to command…”
(Hands clapping)
We’ll have none of that, please. To talk in all you dialeck, I ent in the mood for no heckling this Monday morning, so whoever feel he was a listening senator applauding now, mind I ent use this ruler on his same hand for it to really smart, which is a pun in case all you didn’t know. So. The page is page 43, the author is Thomas Gray. My mother, who was also a teacher, used to recite this same passage to me when I was your age, and the poem is an elegy.
(Voices off: Schoolboys, faint, then louder)
VOICES OFF
L-E-G! Leg.
B-E-G! Beg.
JORDAN
You hear those voices? You hear those voices, boy? They grew into a rabble and they fooled my son.
(In the past, confidently)
And Thomas Gray is saying …
VOICES OFF
Gray is ofay, black is beautiful,
Gray is shit,
(Chanting)
Jordan is a honky
Jordan is a honky
Jordan is a honky-donkey white nigger man!
(JORDAN whirls and seizes a ruler from the desk)
JORDAN
Put out your hand, boy!
I say put out your hand!
Good! Good. Now turn it round!
Boy, I said to turn it round!
What color is the palm, eh? Pink.
What color is the back, eh? Black!
Well, you go learn, little nigger,
that, just like your hand,
&nbs
p; what is called poetry, and art,
color don’t matter! Color don’t matter!
(His own palm is extended. He begins to beat it)
So learn! Learn! Learn! Learn!
(Pause. JORDAN stands there with extended palm. Then he rubs his forehead, smiles)
INTERVIEWER
Your two best-known stories, the ones that get into anthologies the most, are, of course: “Barrley and the Roof,” a satire on independence, and “My War Effort,” a romance. How closely did you draw on your own experience; can we say that the work of Albert Perez Jordan was his life?
JORDAN
You could say it, if you prepared for libel. It is fiction. I always added a little truth to my stories. Pepper sauce on the meat.
(Reads. Projection: print)
INTERVIEWER
(Hands JORDAN a small locally printed volume and announces into the mike)
Here then, in A. P. Jordan’s inimitable manner, is his last story … “Barrley on the Roof” … published in The Beacon, May 1971.
JORDAN
“Barrley and the Roof,” boy!
(The INTERVIEWER withdraws. JORDAN in a spotlight, the printed or manuscript page, in fastidious hand, behind him. Reads)
Epigraph from William Blake:
“A Man’s worst enemies are those of his own House and Family.”
(PILGRIM staggers in)
PILGRIM
Correct!
(JORDAN crosses to coat rack, changes jackets, and puts on sash and hat. PILGRIM begins to sing a calypso tune)
“Run your run, Adolf Hitler, run your run. Run your run, Adolf Hitler, run your run.”
(As PILGRIM sings, JORDAN crosses to him, and together they stagger)
JORDAN
(Reads)
“Whenever Wilberforce P. Padmore, part-time poet, returned home with his bosom friend, Roddy Broadwater, from lodge meetings of the Oddfellows Society, in black suits, sashes, and homburgs, whose angle suggested two irresponsible morticians, they were inevitably, indubitably, inebriated.”
PILGRIM
Good night, A.P.
(He begins to exit. Then calls out)
See you Sunday.
JORDAN
“Once they had parted, Padmore stood under the reeling stars and, in a voice whose power ignited the windows of Belmont and the wrath of his wife, announced to the sleeping world:
(Roars)
Mabel!
Maybelle?
I
am
home!”
(Plunges drunk into darkness)
(Blackout)
SCENE 1
JORDAN
Mabel? Mabel? I’m home.
(He flings his hat toward the coat rack, misses, retrieves, wears it)
MABEL
(Offstage)
Is only now you come, you bitch?
JORDAN
His wife replied. Charming! Padmore sneered. I should have stayed. I’m hungry.
MABEL
(Enters, in nightdress, dressing gown, hat, and boots)
Why you ain’t ask Ezra Pilgrim to cook for you? Think I didn’t hear all you out in the street? Don’t bother ravage the fridge, it empty. Your son is home. Half past three, and you expect me to cook? Why you ain’t go and live by Ezra Pilgrim?
JORDAN
Well, I thought since you were up. Where you going? Padmore solicitously inquired.
MABEL
I going shopping, all right?
(Pauses. Returns)
And, Albert, you bound to keep your hat on in the house? You going to sleep so?
JORDAN
Padmore knew very well that he had been losing my hair.
MABEL
A hat on in the house is a bad-luck sign. Take it off, please.
JORDAN
Mrs. Padmore, when there is something or someone in the immediate vicinity I can take off my hat to, I shall. Till then …
MABEL
I warn you. If you come to bed like that, Albert, I sleeping in my shoes. And you can also inform Padmore.
JORDAN
Mabel! Mabel! Suppose a car knock you down dressed like that? Padmore felt a joyful fear.
(MABEL exits. FREDERICK, unnoticed, enters in pajamas)
Thirty-odd years of total misunderstanding.
FREDERICK
What’s up now, Pop?
JORDAN
Frederick, you’re a grown man; how old are you now, thirty-one, thirty-two? People mistake you for a younger brother on those rare occasions when we are together. Now you emerge from your kiddie’s room in the early hours like a kid asking for a glass of milk and a cookie, and crown it all by calling me Pop. No, wait, wait … Frederick, I am Albert Perez Jordan, retired schoolteacher, coasting round sixty-five years, I am bored and fed up. I am particularly fed up with you, Freddie. Fred up with Freddie. Go back to sleep.
FREDERICK
Gee, Pa …
JORDAN
Frederick, Frederick, Frederick, Frederick, Frederick, “Gee, Pa” is only a little worse than “What’s up, Pop?” We are in Trinidad. Normal idiots might venture such exchanges as “Wha’ happening, Daddy?” or “What it is Mammy do you?” but I guess it’s because you’re an artist. Did you paint today?
FREDERICK
Yes, Pappy. Good night.
JORDAN
Come here, son. And kiss your father good night. Don’t be afraid.
FREDERICK
It’s not fear. It’s the after-odor of liquor that makes me upset.
JORDAN
Kiss your father, boy! There, that didn’t hurt, did it? Sit down till your mom, your gee-whiz mom, comes back from riding her tantrum and tell me what you painted, or even better, bring it, that I may proffer a layman’s judgment.
FREDERICK
I can’t, Pop. I mean, “Ah cyant bring it, Pappy.”
JORDAN
God, if there’s one thing I rue, my boy, is the day I taught my children diction. I think I did it to defy your mother’s earthy vulgarity. Diction has made you a misfit, Frederick, an anachronism in these days of independence. I miss colonialism. Why can’t you bring the painting to Papa, Fred my boy?
FREDERICK
It’s on a wall. Is … It’s a … Is a mural.
JORDAN
I know what a mural is. Which wall?
FREDERICK
You ent go get vex?
JORDAN
How can art get anyone vexed? You’re home on a fellowship, Fred, a grant from the Albert Perez Jordan Foundation, I am your sponsor, why should I discourage you from painting the side of the house—that’s-not-where-you-painted-the-damned-thing, is it?
FREDERICK
No. It’s on the roof.
JORDAN
A roof mural! Good! I suppose it’s meant for passing planes? Don’t you think, dear boy, that it may be a danger to aerial navigation?
FREDERICK
I have a flashlight. You want to come and see it?
JORDAN
I understand, Freddie dear, that in the Vatican the visitors lie on their backs to achieve a layman’s view of Michelangelo’s brush; why wouldn’t I accompany you to the roof of our little suburban mansion? Let us proceed. I hope you’ve signed it?
(Exit FREDERICK and JORDAN as MABEL enters with a small brown paper bag, quarreling, expecting JORDAN to be on his usual roost, the couch. She closes the door)
MABEL
Well, I’m telling you it take all my Christian fortitude to go into Harry’s All-Night Bar and Grill at four in the morning. I have to stand up in my alpagartas listening to Harry tell me about his boxing career, cooking with his hat on, asking me in front of all them rum drinkers and street cleaners, “How’s the professor, Mrs. J.?” I don’t call people Mr. H. or Mr. R. I was a teacher, too, and I respect the alphabet.
(Crosses into the living room, removes her hat and dressing gown, talking over her shoulder to the empty couch. Crosses to the kitchen)
Shame have you
silent, nuh?
(Crosses to the empty couch)
You hearing me? Where this man evaporate? Albert. Where the hell he gone?
(Noise overhead. She listens)
JORDAN
Could you come up here a second, Mabel? I think our boy Freddie’s done a masterpiece.
MABEL
(Looking up)
Albert! Somebody walking on the blasted roof.
JORDAN
It is I, it is us. It is we. I’m looking at Freddie’s work. In my layman’s view, and at night by a torch, I pronounce it the greatest thing since Picasso.
MABEL
(Shouting)
So is that Freddie was doing up there all day, when he tell me for the last two days that he repairing the leak?
FREDERICK
I meant to patch the leak, Mother, but I got carried away.
JORDAN
Are you coming up, Mabel?
MABEL
No, I ent coming up, not with my arthritis, and the hops and shark getting cold. I go buy a plane ticket and check it out in the morning. On my way to Tobago. No.
(Talking to herself now)
Not Tobago, either. My sister Inez tired begging me to leave that damned jackanapes and come meet her in Brooklyn.
(Loudly again)
So tell Frederick Mammy will see it on the way to the States.
(Enter JORDAN and FREDERICK, exultant)
JORDAN
Stop the presses, call the newspaper, summon the critics, my faith in the boy is justified. Frederick, your son, has created a masterpiece, from what I could see! I take off my hat to you, son! I hurl it from me in the ultimate bravo! Hip hip, hip hip, hip-hip horray!
(Hurls his hat away)
Mabel! Mabel! Do you know what our boy Frederick has done?
MABEL
Eat your hops and shark. Go back to sleep, Freddie. Your father so bored with retirement he ent know what to do.
JORDAN
Only one hops and shark you buy?
MABEL
How I was to know two of you all would be up on the roof in the middle of the night, with all Belmont sleeping, not to buy one shark and hops?
JORDAN
You hungry, boy?