Remembrance and Pantomime (10 page)

JACKSON

     Manners, sir. Manners.

(
He puts down the tray
)

HARRY

     Sit.

JACKSON

     Sit? Sit where? How you mean, sit?

HARRY

     Sit, and I’ll serve breakfast. You can teach me manners. There’s more manners in serving than in being served.

JACKSON

     I ain’t know what it is eating you this Sunday morning, you hear, Mr. Trewe, but I don’t feel you have any right to mama-guy me, because I is a big man with three children, all outside. Now, being served by a white man ain’t no big deal for me. It happen to me every day in New York, so it’s not going to be any particularly thrilling experience. I would like to get breakfast finish with, wash up, finish my work, and go for my sea bath. Now I have worked here six months and never lost my temper, but it wouldn’t take much more for me to fling this whole fucking tray out in that sea and get somebody more to your sexual taste.

HARRY

(
Laughs
)

     Aha!

JACKSON

     Not aha, oho!

HARRY

(
Drawing out a chair
)

     Mr. Phillips …

JACKSON

     Phillip. What?

HARRY

     Your reservation.

JACKSON

     You want me play this game, eh?

(
He walks around, goes to a corner of the gazebo
)

     I’ll tell you something, you hear, Mr. Trewe? And listen to me good, good. Once and for all. My sense of humor can stretch so far. Then it does snap. You see that sea out there? You know where I born? I born over there. Trinidad. I was a very serious steel-band man, too. And where I come from is a very serious place. I used to get into some serious trouble. A man keep bugging my arse once. A bad john called Boysie. Indian fellow, want to play nigger. Every day in that panyard he would come making joke with nigger boy this, and so on, and I used to just laugh and tell him stop, but he keep laughing and I keep laughing and he going on and I begging him to stop and two of us laughing, until …

(
He turns, goes to the tray, and picks up a fork
)

     one day, just out of the blue, I pick up a ice pick and walk over to where he and two fellers was playing card, and I nail that ice pick through his hand to the table, and I laugh, and I walk away.

HARRY

     Your table, Mr. Phillip.

(
Silence.
JACKSON
shrugs, sits at the table
)

JACKSON

     Okay, then. Until.

HARRY

     You know, if you want to exchange war experiences, lad, I could bore you with a couple of mine. Want to hear?

JACKSON

     My shift is seven-thirty to one.

(
He folds his arms.
HARRY
offers him a cigarette
)

     I don’t smoke on duty.

HARRY

     We put on a show in the army once. Ground crew. RAF. In what used to be Palestine. A Christmas panto. Another one. And yours truly here was the dame. The dame in a panto is played by a man. Well, I got the part. Wrote the music, the book, everything, whatever original music there was.
Aladdin and His Wonderful Vamp.
Very obscene, of course. I was the Wonderful Vamp. Terrific reaction all around. Thanks to me music-hall background. Went down great. Well, there was a party afterward. Then a big sergeant in charge of maintenance started this very boring business of confusing my genius with my life. Kept pinching my arse and so on. It got kind of boring after a while. Well, he was the size of a truck, mate. And there wasn’t much I could do but keep blushing and pretending to be liking it. But the Wonderful Vamp was waiting outside for him, the Wonderful Vamp and a wrench this big, and after that, laddie, it took all of maintenance to put him back again.

JACKSON

     That is white-man fighting. Anyway, Mr. Trewe, I feel the fun finish; I would like, with your permission, to get up now and fix up the sun deck. ’Cause when rain fall …

HARRY

     Forget the sun deck. I’d say, Jackson, that we’ve come closer to a mutual respect, and that things need not get that hostile. Sit, and let me explain what I had in mind.

JACKSON

     I take it that’s an order?

HARRY

     You want it to be an order? Okay, it’s an order.

JACKSON

     It didn’t sound like no order.

HARRY

     Look, I’m a liberal, Jackson. I’ve done the whole routine. Aldermaston, Suez, Ban the Bomb, Burn the Bra, Pity the Poor Pakis, et cetera. I’ve even tried jumping up to the steel band at Notting Hill Gate, and I’d no idea I’d wind up in this ironic position of giving orders, but if the new script I’ve been given says:
HARRY TREWE, HOTEL MANAGER
, then I’m going to play Harry Trewe, Hotel Manager, to the hilt, damnit. So
sit
down! Please. Oh, goddamnit,
sit … down
 …

(
JACKSON
sits. Nods
)

     Good. Relax. Smoke. Have a cup of tepid coffee. I sat up from about three this morning, working out this whole skit in my head.

(
Pause
)

     Mind putting that hat on for a second, it will help my point. Come on. It’ll make things clearer.

(
He gives
JACKSON
the goatskin hat.
JACKSON
,
after a pause, puts it on
)

JACKSON

     I’ll take that cigarette.

(
HARRY
hands over a cigarette
)

HARRY

     They’ve seen that stuff, time after time. Limbo, dancing girls, fire-eating …

JACKSON

     Light.

HARRY

     Oh, sorry.

(
He lights
JACKSON
’s cigarette
)

JACKSON

     I listening.

HARRY

     We could turn this little place right here into a little cabaret, with some very witty acts. Build up the right audience. Get an edge on the others. So, I thought, Suppose I get this material down to two people. Me and … well, me and somebody else. Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. We could work up a good satire, you know, on the master-servant—no offense—relationship. Labor-management, white-black, and so on … Making some trenchant points about topical things, you know. Add that show to the special dinner for the price of one ticket …

JACKSON

     You have to have music.

HARRY

     Pardon?

JACKSON

     A show like that should have music. Just a lot of talk is very boring.

HARRY

     Right. But I’d have to have somebody help me, and that’s where I thought … Want to take the hat off?

JACKSON

     It ain’t bothering me. When you going make your point?

HARRY

     We had that little Carnival contest with the staff and you knocked them out improvising, remember that? You had the bloody guests in stitches …

JACKSON

     You ain’t start to talk money yet, Mr. Harry.

HARRY

     Just improvising with the quatro. And not the usual welcome to Port of Spain, I am glad to see you again, but I’ll tell you, artist to artist, I recognized a real pro, and this is the point of the hat. I want to make a point about the hotel industry, about manners, conduct, to generally improve relations all around. So, whoever it is, you or whoever, plays Crusoe, and I, or whoever it is, get to play Friday, and imagine first of all the humor and then the impact of that. What you think?

JACKSON

     You want my honest, professional opinion?

HARRY

     Fire away.

JACKSON

     I think is shit.

HARRY

     I’ve never been in shit in my life, my boy.

JACKSON

     It sound like shit to me, but I could be wrong.

HARRY

     You could say things in fun about this place, about the whole Caribbean, that would hurt while people laughed. You get half the gate.

JACKSON

     Half?

HARRY

     What do you want?

JACKSON

     I want you to come to your senses, let me fix the sun deck and get down to the beach for my sea bath. So, I put on this hat, I pick up this parasol, and I walk like a mama-poule up and down this stage and you have a black man playing Robinson Crusoe and then a half-naked, white, fish-belly man playing Friday, and you want to tell me it ain’t shit?

HARRY

     It could be hilarious!

JACKSON

     Hilarious, Mr. Trewe? Supposing I wasn’t a waiter, and instead of breakfast I was serving you communion, this Sunday morning on this tropical island, and I turn to you, Friday, to teach you my faith, and I tell you, kneel down and eat this man. Well, kneel, nuh! What you think you would say, eh?

(
Pause
)

     You, this white savage?

HARRY

     No, that’s cannibalism.

JACKSON

     Is no more cannibalism than to eat a god. Suppose I make you tell me: For three hundred years I have made you my servant. For three hundred years …

HARRY

     It’s pantomime, Jackson, just keep it light … Make them laugh.

JACKSON

     Okay.

(
Giggling
)

     For three hundred years I served you. Three hundred years I served you breakfast in … in my white jacket on a white veranda, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib … in that sun that never set on your empire I was your shadow, I did what you did, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib … that was my pantomime. Every movement you made, your shadow copied …

(
Stops giggling
)

     and you smiled at me as a child does smile at his shadow’s helpless obedience, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib, Mr. Crusoe. Now …

HARRY

     Now?

(
JACKSON
’s speech is enacted in a trance-like drone, a zombie
)

JACKSON

     But after a while the child does get frighten of the shadow he make. He say to himself, That is too much obedience, I better hads stop. But the shadow don’t stop, no matter if the child stop playing that pantomime, and the shadow does follow the child everywhere; when he praying, the shadow pray too, when he turn round frighten, the shadow turn round too, when he hide under the sheet, the shadow hiding too. He cannot get rid of it, no matter what, and that is the power and black magic of the shadow, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib, until it is the shadow that start dominating the child, it is the servant that start dominating the master …

(
Laughs maniacally, like The Shadow
)

     and that is the victory of the shadow, boss.

(
Normally
)

     And that is why all them Pakistani and West Indians in England, all them immigrant Fridays driving all you so crazy. And they go keep driving you crazy till you go mad. In that sun that never set, they’s your shadow, you can’t shake them off.

HARRY

     Got really carried away that time, didn’t you? It’s pantomime, Jackson, keep it light. Improvise!

JACKSON

     You mean we making it up as we go along?

HARRY

     Right!

JACKSON

     Right! I in dat!

(
He assumes a stern stance and points stiffly
)

     Robinson obey Thursday now. Speak Thursday language. Obey Thursday gods.

HARRY

     Jesus Christ!

JACKSON

(
Inventing language
)

     Amaka nobo sakamaka khaki pants kamaluma Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ kamalogo!

(
Pause. Then with a violent gesture
)

     Kamalongo kaba!

(
Meaning: Jesus is dead!
)

HARRY

     Sure.

(
Pause. Peers forward. Then speaks to an imaginary projectionist, while
JACKSON
stands, feet apart, arms folded, frowning, in the usual stance of the Noble Savage
)

     Now, could you run it with the subtitles, please?

(
He walks over to
JACKSON
,
who remains rigid. Like a movie director
)

     Let’s have another take, Big Chief.

(
To imaginary camera
)

     Roll it. Sound!

(
JACKSON
shoves
HARRY
aside and strides to the table. He bangs the heel of his palm on the tabletop
)

JACKSON

     Patamba! Patamba! Yes?

HARRY

     You want us to strike the prop? The patamba?

(
To cameraman
)

     
Cut!

JACKSON

(
To cameraman
)

     Rogoongo! Rogoongo!

(
Meaning: Keep it rolling
)

HARRY

     
Cut!

JACKSON

     
Rogoongo, damnit!

(
Defiantly, furiously,
JACKSON
moves around, first signaling the camera to follow him, then pointing out the objects which he rechristens, shaking or hitting them violently. Slams table
)