Remembrance and Pantomime (3 page)

(
BARRLEY
knocks. As
MABEL
opens the door
)

BARRLEY

     Hello.

MABEL

     My God!

(
Shuts door
)

     Come in. Answer the door, Freddie.

(
Exit.
FREDERICK
opens the door
)

BARRLEY

     Can I come in? This your house? I’m here to make a deal.

FREDERICK

     I’ll get the owner.

(
Shouts
)

     
Pa! A white man out here want to sell you something.

JORDAN

(
Shouts
)

     
Tell him I’m asleep!

BARRLEY

     I’m not selling. I’m buying.

FREDERICK

     
He ain’t selling, he buying!

MABEL

(
From inside
)

     
Frederick, ask for an excuse and come in and change, please.

JORDAN

     
And offer him some juice.

FREDERICK

     
Do what?

JORDAN

     
Offer him some—never mind.

MABEL

     
Frederick, come in and change, please.

(
JORDAN
appears
)

FREDERICK

     Morning, Pop.

(
Exits
)

JORDAN

     “Can you help me, sir?” Padmore inquired. “Pardon my deshabille.”

BARRLEY

     I feel a bit overdressed for this weather, too. Are you, do you, is this your house, sir? Is your phone dead?

JORDAN

     I shot it myself. You’re American, are you? Why?

BARRLEY

     My name’s Barrley, with two
r
’s. I’m up at the Hilton. Bird watcher by aversion, stockbroker my business, and my hobby, to put it a little crassly, is art.

JORDAN

     With one
r?
Sit.

BARRLEY

     I phoned, but it was such a short, pleasant walk … I’ll come rapidly to the point. I think I’d like to buy your roof. I was following the flight of a fork-tailed flycatcher when your roof caught my eye.

JORDAN

     Buy my roof? The thing over my head? You Americans think you can buy any blasted thing. Buy my roof? How much? At this point Mrs. Padmore entered.

(
MABEL
enters with a bathrobe for
JORDAN
)

     Mabel. This here is Mr. Barrley. We were discussing art, and he wants to buy the roof.

MABEL

     You could wait till I come back?

BARRLEY

     Sure.

MABEL

     Your robe, Montezuma. Pleased to meet you. I don’t mean to interrupt, but before we start talking art, you ent mind if I read you a lickle poetry I write?

JORDAN

     There you are, you see? We’re a family of artists.

MABEL

     Is just a poetry dealing with everyday life. I will say it by heart, and I will start now. It is called, “Thy Will Be Done, Hi-lo.”

BARRLEY

     “Hi-lo.” That an African deity?

JORDAN

     It’s a supermarket.

MABEL

(
Holding up one hand
)

     THY WILL BE DONE, HI-LO

     Rice ................ Fifty cents

     Sardines ................ One-fifty

     A chicken ................ Two-fifty

     Corned beef ................ One dollar

     Eggs, 2 dozen ................ Two-fifty

     Beef ........

JORDAN

(
Fishing in his pocket
)

     I get the gist, dear. Don’t be extravagant.

BARRLEY

     I’d like to publish that.

MABEL

     It don’t rhyme, but is life. I think it have juice, if Frederick ent drink all, so you may wish to give the gentleman some. Kindly excuse me … May I see you a minute, Wilberforce?

(
JORDAN
draws apart.
MABEL
pretends to dig in her purse, whispering fiercely
)

     You know you, eh? Don’t sell the damn house, eh? I want the same roof over my head tonight. Flag or no flag.

(
Exit
)

JORDAN

     Socrates had his Xantippe, Samson his Delilah, and I have got Mabel. My son Frederick painted the roof. We’d better wait till he comes out to fix a price. Juice?

BARRLEY

     Don’t let me put you out.

JORDAN

     You may be the one who’ll be putting us out. Do sit. So, you collect roofs, do you?

BARRLEY

     I don’t collect art, sir, I collect life, and once I’ve acquired life, it becomes art. I like the unspoiled, the natural, and that roof’s a natural. I’d have to buy the whole house, I suppose?

JORDAN

     I dare say. Why not the island?

BARRLEY

     It’s extra-large. Maybe something smaller.

JORDAN

     How about Nevis?

BARRLEY

     I’ll just take the roof today, thanks.

JORDAN

     Well, Mr. Barrley, we’re here to serve.

(
FREDERICK
enters
)

FREDERICK

     I am not selling it. I heard.

BARRLEY

     I’ve got an open checkbook.

FREDERICK

     I got a closed mind.

BARRLEY

     Goddamn it, that’s integrity!

FREDERICK

     You can blame him.

JORDAN

     The boy is a fool! He’s inherited my principles! Frederick, you may never get an offer like this again!

FREDERICK

     No more juice? Didn’t you tell me last night to wipe it all off? Now you change your tune for some Yankee tourist.

BARRLEY

     I’m not a tourist. I have papers to prove it. I collect. I collect Oldenburgs, Rauschenbergs …

FREDERICK

     Icebergs, hamburgs, no deal.

BARRLEY

     An artist. Your son is a genuine artist.

JORDAN

     Frederick, go now and get the roof. Or a part thereof.

FREDERICK

     Leave me alone, nuh!

BARRLEY

     That’s my boy! Struggle! Fight it! What’re you picking on the kid for? Didn’t you hear what he said? You some kind of Philistine?

JORDAN

     Goddamn you, Barrley! Whose side you on? Frederick, every artist needs backing. Barrley is here to back you. Don’t be a fool like your old man, Fred. You want to know what backing is, Mr. Barrley? Listen, nuh. You see all them big pictures they does make about African and Antarctic explorers, lost in the jungles and snows, pestered by pygmies, buried by avalanches, enduring starvation, privation, all kind of “-ation,” I go tell you one thing, you hear, sir. They have backing. You know. Backing. I ent have no backing. Is me one alone out there. Whether is Byrd, Shackleton, Lindbergh, in the frozen North or the boiling desert, people
invest
in them so they could suffer and discover. Suffer and discover is my motto, too, but I ent have nobody backing me, no government, no foundation, no private interests. Is Albert Perez Jordan out there in the jungle, in the frozen hearts of men, with no gun and no blasted safari! That is called backing! Frederick, sell it. Is my house. Sell it, or I cut off the grant from the Jordan Foundation!

BARRLEY AND FREDERICK

     No!

JORDAN

     Sell it!

FREDERICK

     No!

BARRLEY

     Boy’s got the right attitude. Integrity. Arrogance. With three
r
’s. You got my calling card, right? Here’s my leaving card.

(
He hands out cards to
FREDERICK
and
JORDAN
)

     Got a little jungle jingle there that sums up my own policy.

     Gentlemen, want to read it?

FREDERICK AND JORDAN

(
Read
)

     “When things get rocky and things get rough,

       if the future looks like it might be tough,

       if independence ain’t what you expect,

       just call the United States, collect.”

BARRLEY

     Remember that. Ciao.

(
He exits.
FREDERICK
and
JORDAN
tear up cards
)

JORDAN

     Barrley staggered down the sunny sidewalk in Belmont, stunned with admiration. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but to lose his own roof? The End.

(
Enter
INTERVIEWER.
Pause
)

INTERVIEWER

     One radical critic has written recently: “As amusing as such stories may be, they are perhaps the defense of a man who has avoided the realities of our society and whose only defense of his neglect lies in satire. We know nothing about the real Jordan, and had he himself faced these problems, he might have been a more important writer. He has hidden the truth behind a grinning mask that cares nothing for the sufferings of his black race.” Have you anything to say to that, sir?

JORDAN

     Turn it off, please. If I were to bare my torn and bleeding heart to them, would that find me favor? Do you know, do they know, my boy, what they would see? Let them look, then! All you,
look!

FREDERICK

     Hold on to yourself, Pop. Don’t get desperate. Are you coming with us?

JORDAN

     I’m not going. When I make a promise, I keep it, however painful. I swore, when he died, that on the anniversary of that death I would stay in my house. Tell him hello for me. I don’t want to meet any of those bush-headed niggers who misled your brother standing over his grave. I’ll go on my own.

FREDERICK

     You’ve never gone. Seven years and you’ve never gone.

JORDAN

     I’ve gone! I’ve gone! Think I’m a liar?

(
MABEL
enters from kitchen, bringing black tie for
FREDERICK
)

MABEL

     You should put on a tie, Freddie. You ent no damn revolutionary. I won’t take long to finish dressing.

(
She exits into bedroom
)

FREDERICK

     You were a soldier. Come on! Lieutenant Albert Perez Jordan of the Home Guard. Come on!

JORDAN

     I’ll go by myself. Tell him hello for me. Tell him hello for me, and spit on the rest.

FREDERICK

     Jesus. I’ll go out on the veranda, I can’t take all that venom.

(
Exit, as
MABEL
enters, with hat and gloves
)

MABEL

     Naturally you’re not coming to see Junior. Seven years.

JORDAN

     I tell you never to mention the boy name in this house. Let the dead stay dead! I keep it inside me, seven years, since the blasted funeral, and you swear silence on the Bible to me, but like a damn woman you can’t keep your blasted gob shut!

MABEL

     You say enough. Was my damned son, too. God forgive me for saying damn!
Enough!

JORDAN

     What he dead for, anyway? A slogan on a wall? What he gone and let them shoot him for, for “Fuck You, Whitey” and “Power to the People”? You see the people crying today? You see them going to that young fool’s grave and putting flowers?

MABEL

     Maybe he dead today because you was on the wrong side. Or you wouldn’t take sides. Blinding yourself and believing that paradise would come, like the stupid sweepstake ticket you always buying.

JORDAN

     So is I cause Junior to dead? You saying that? Your tongue is a nest of vipers, woman.

MABEL

     Two o’ we kill him, then. I kill him with hymns and Jesus and me scarf tie round me head like a nigger mammy in pictures, and maybe he was so ashamed of both of us, all the mockery and the way you talk like a black Englishman, that he had to go out and do something. And look how he died, just an accident from a frightened policeman in Woodford Square on the day of the riot. Albert, this country kill our son.

JORDAN

     Amen, Lord, amen. And when he dead, those same two-faced niggers want to make him a martyr. They ask for the body of my son. To do what with? Play carnival and ole mass?

FREDERICK

(
Off
)

     Come on, Ma.

MABEL

     Albert. You give them our son body and you ent go to the funeral. You and your damn pride. Your blasted damned pride. Now you can’t find the courage to go to his grave?

JORDAN

     Because is what Junior might have wanted. Because his own body would have been embarrassed to see me there.

MABEL

     See you there … You want to know what it is we do? What we been doing seven times June? Frederick don’t say anything but sweat in the hot sun and look vex. He on one side …

JORDAN

     I don’t want to hear …