Vieux Carre (3 page)
Authors: Tennessee Williams
MARY MAUDE
: Oh, Miss Carrie, you better get right to bed. She's having another attack of her awful asthma. Our room gets no sun, and the walls are so damp,
soâ
dark . . .
[
They totter out of the light together
.]
NURSIE
[
averting her face from the bag with a sniff of repugnance
]: They didn't go to no restaurant. They been to the garbage pail on the walk outside, don't bother with it, it's spoiled [
pointing upstage
] just put it over there, I'll throw it out.
JANE
: I wonder if they'd be offended if I bought them a sack of groceries at Solari's tomorrow.
NURSIE
: Offend 'em did you say?
JANE
: I meant their pride.
NURSIE
: Honey, they gone as far past pride as they gone past mistaking a buzzard for a bluebird.
[
She chuckles. Tye appears. Jane pretends not to notice
.]
JANE
: I'm afraid pride's an easy thing to go past sometimes. I am
livingâ
I am sharing my studio with a, an
addictedâ
delinquent, a barker at
aâ
stripshow joint. [
She has pretended to ignore Tye's disheveled, drugged, but vulnerably boyish appearance at the edge of the light
.]
TYE
[
in a slurred voice
]: You wouldn't be tawkin'
aboutânobodyâpresent
. . .
JANE
: Why, hello, Tye. How'd you get back so early? How'd you get back at all, in
thisâ
condition?
TYE
: Honey! If I didn't have my arms full
ofâ
packages.
JANE
: The less you say out loud about the hot merchandise you've been accumulating here . . .
TYE
: Babe, you're asking for
aâ
[
He doubles his fist
.]
JANE
: Which I'd return with a kick in the balls! [
She gasps
.] My Lord, did I say that?
MRS. WIRE
: What's that shoutin' about?
[
Jane breaks into tears. She falls back into the chair and buries her head in her arms
.]
TYE
: Hey, love, come here, I knocked off work early to be with
youâ
do you think I'd really hit you?
JANE
: I don't know . . .
TYE
: Come
toâ
bed . . .
JANE
: Don't lean on me.
[
They cross out of the light. The writer looks after them wistfully as the light dims out
.]
The writer has undressed and is in bed. Nightingale
coughsâ
a fiendish
,
racking cough. He is hacking and spitting up bloody phlegm. He enters his cubicle
.
Then across the makeshift partition in the writer's cubicle, unlighted except by a faint glow in its alcove window, another sound
commencesâ
a sound of dry and desperate sobbing which sounds as though nothing in the world could ever appease the wound from which it comes: loneliness, inborn and inbred to the bone
.
Slowly, as his coughing fit subsides, Nightingale, the quick-sketch artist, turns his head in profile to the sound of the sobbing. Then the writer, across the partition, is dimly lighted, too. He is also sitting up on his cot, staring at the partition between his cell and Nightingale's
.
Nightingale clears his throat loudly and sings hoarsely and softly a pop song of the era such as “If I Didn't Care” or
“Paper Doll.” Slowly the audience of one whom he is serenading succeeds in completely stifling the dry sobbing with a pillow. Nightingale's voice rises a bit as he gets up and lights a cigarette; then he goes toward the upstage limit of the dim stage lighting and makes the gesture of opening a door
.
He moves into the other gable room of the attic and stands, silent, for several beats of the song as the writer slowly, reluctantly, turns on his cot to face him
.
NIGHTINGALE
: . . . I want to ask you something.
WRITER
: Huh?
NIGHTINGALE
: The word “landlady” as applied to Mrs. Wire and to all landladies that I've encountered in my
lifeâ
isn't it the biggest one-word contradiction in the English language? [
The writer is embarrassed by Nightingale's intrusion and steady scrutiny
,] She owns the land, yes, but is the witch a lady? Mind if I switch on your light?
WRITER
: The bulb's burned out.
NIGHTINGALE
[
chuckles and coughs
]: She hasn't replaced a burnt-out light bulb in this attic since I moved here last spring. I have to provide my own light bulbs by unscrewing them from the gentleman's lavatory at the City of the Two Parrots, where I ply my trade. Temporarily, you know. Doing portraits in pastel of the tourist clientele. [
His voice is curiously soft and intimate, more as if he were speaking of personal matters
.]
Of course I . . . [
He coughs and clears his throat
.] . . . have no shame about it, no guilt at all, since what I do there is a travesty of my talent, I mean a prostitution of it, I mean, painting these tourists at the Two Parrots, which are actually two very noisy macaws. Oh, they have a nice patio there, you know, palm trees and azaleas when in season, but the cuisine and the service . . . abominable. The menu sometimes includes cockroaches . . . (There are a lot of great eating places in New Orleans, like Galatoire's, Antoine's, Arnaud's in the Vieux Carré and . . . Commander's Palace and Plantation House in the Garden District . . . lovely old mansions, you know, converted to restaurants with a gracious style . . . haunted by dead residents, of course, but with charm . . .)
[
This monologue is like a soothing incantation, interspersed with hoarseness and coughing
.]
Like many writers, I know you're a writer, you're a young man of very few spoken words, compared to my garrulity.
WRITER
: Yes, I . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: So far, kid, you're practically . . . monosyllabic.
WRITER
: I . . . don't feel well . . . tonight.
NIGHTINGALE
: That's why I intruded. You have a candle on that box beside your cot.
WRITER
: Yes, but no matches.
NIGHTINGALE
: I have matches, I'll light it. Talk is easier . . . [
He strikes the match and advances to the writer's bedside
.] . . . between two people visible to each other, if . . . not too sharply . . . [
He lights the candle
.] Once I put up for a night in a flophouse without doors, and a gentleman entered my cubicle without invitation, came straight to my cot and struck a match, leaned over me peering directly into my face . . . and then said, “No,” and walked out . . . as if he assumed that I would have said, “Yes.” [
He laughs and coughs
.]
[
Pause
]
You're not a man of few words but a boy of no words. I'll just sit on the cot if you don't object.
WRITER
: . . . I, uh . . . do need sleep.
NIGHTINGALE
: You need some company first. I know the sound of loneliness, heard it through the partition. [
He has sat on the cot. The writer huddles away to the wall, acutely embarrassed
.] . . . Trying not to, but crying . . . why try not to? Think it's unmanly? Crying is a release for man or woman . . .
WRITER
: I was taught not to cry because it's . . . humiliating . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: You're a victim of conventional teaching, which you'd better forget. What were you crying about? Some particular sorrow or . . . for the human condition.
WRITER
: Some . . . particular sorrow. My closest relative died last month.
NIGHTINGALE
: Your mother?
WRITER
: The mother of my mother, Grand. She died after a long illness just before I left home, and at night I remember . . .
NIGHTINGALE
[
giving a comforting pat
]: Well, losses must be accepted and survived. How strange it is that we've occupied these adjoining rooms for about three weeks now and have just barely said hello to each other when passing on the stairs. You have interesting eyes.
WRITER
: In what way do you mean?
NIGHTINGALE
: Isn't the pupil of the left one a little bit lighter?
WRITER
: . . . I'm afraid I'm . . . developing
aâ
cataract in that eye.
NIGHTINGALE
: That's not possible for a kid.
WRITER
: I am twenty-eight.
NIGHTINGALE
: What I meant is, your face is still youthful as your vulnerable nature, they
goâ
together. Of course, I'd see an oculist if you suspect there's a cataract.
WRITER
: I plan to when I . . . if I . . . can ever afford to . . . the vision in that eye's getting cloudy.
NIGHTINGALE
: Don't wait till you can afford to. Go straight away and don't receive the bill.
WRITER
: I couldn't do that.
NIGHTINGALE
: Don't be so honest in this dishonest world. [
He pauses and coughs
.] Shit, the witch don't sleep in her bedroom you know.
WRITER
: Yes, I noticed she is sleeping on a cot in the hall now.
NIGHTINGALE
: When I came in now she sprang up and hollered out, “Who?” And I answered her with a hoot owl imitation, “Hoo, Hooo, Hooooo.” Why, the lady is all three furies in one. A single man needs visitors at night. Necessary as bread, as blood in the body. Why, there's a saying, “Better to live with your worst enemy than to live alone.”
WRITER
: Yes, loneliness is
anâ
affliction.
NIGHTINGALE
: Well, now you have a friend here.
WRITER
[
dryly
]: Thanks.
NIGHTINGALE
: Of course we're in a madhouse. I wouldn't tolerate the conditions here if the season wasn't so slow
thatâ
my financial condition is difficult right now. I don't like insults and
la vie
solitaireâ
with bedbugs bleeding me like leeches . . . but now we know each other, the plywood partition between us has been dissolved, no more just hellos. So tonight you were crying in here alone. What of it? Don't we all? Have a cigarette.
WRITER
: Thanks.
[
Nightingale holds the candle out
.]
I won't smoke it now, I'll save it till morning. I like a cigarette when I sit down to work.
[
Nightingale's steady scrutiny embarrasses him. They fall silent. After several beats, the writer resumes
.]
There'
sâ
a lot of human
materialâ
in the Quarter for a writer . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: I used to hear you typing. Where's your typewriter?
WRITER
: I, uh, hocked it.
NIGHTINGALE
: That's what I figured. Wha'd you get for it?
WRITER
: Ten dollars. It was a secondhand Underwood portable. I'm worried about just how I'll redeem it. [
He is increasingly embarrassed
.]
NIGHTINGALE
: Excuse my curiosity, I mean concern. It's sympathetic . . . smoke a cigarette now and have another for mawnin'. You're not managing right. Need advice and . . . company in this sad ole house. I'm happy to give both if accepted.
WRITER
: . . . I appreciate . . . both.
NIGHTINGALE
: You don't seem experienced yet . . . kid, are you . . . excuse my blunt approach . . . but are you . . . ? [
He completes the question by placing a shaky hand on the writer's crumpled, sheet-covered body
.]
WRITER
[
in a stifled voice
]: Oh . . . I'm not sure I know . . . I . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: Ain't come out completely, as we put it?
WRITER
: Completely, no, just
oneâ
experience.
NIGHTINGALE
: Tell me about that one experience.
WRITER
: I'm not sure I want to discuss it.
NIGHTINGALE
: That's no way to begin a confidential friendship.
WRITER
: . . . Well, New Year's Eve, I was entertained by a married couple I had a letter of introduction to when I came down here, the . . . man's a painter, does popular bayou pictures displayed in shop windows in the Quarter, his name is . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: Oh, I know him. He's got a good thing going, commercially speaking, tourists buy them calendar illustrations in dreamy rainbow colors that never existed but in the head of a hack like him.
WRITER
: . . . The, uh, atmosphere is . . . effective.
NIGHTINGALE
: Oh, they sell to people that don't know paint from art. Maybe you've never seen artistic paintings. [
His voice shakes with feverish pride
.] I could do it, in fact I've done good painting, serious work. But I got to live, and you can't live on good painting until you're dead, or nearly. So, I make it, temporarily, as a quick sketch artist. I flatter old bitches by makin' 'em ten pounds lighter and ten years younger and with some touches
ofâ
decent humanity in their eyes that God forgot to put there, or they've decided to dispense with, not always easy. But what is?
Soâ
you had an experience with the bayou painter? I didn't know he was, oh, inclined to boys, this is killing.
WRITER
[
slowly with embarrassment
]: It wasn't with Mr. Block, it was with a . . . paratrooper.
NIGHTINGALE
: Aha, a paratrooper dropped out of the sky for you, huh? You have such nice smooth skin . . . Would you like a bit of white port? I keep a half pint by my bed to wash down my sandman special when this touch of flu and the bedbugs keep me awake. Just a mo'. I'll fetch it, we'll have a
nightcapâ
now that we're acquainted! [
He goes out rapidly, coughing, then rushes back in with the bottle
.]
The witch has removed the glass, we'll have to drink from the bottle. I'll wash my pill down now, the rest is yours. [
He pops a
capsule into his mouth and gulps from the bottle
,
immediately coughing and gagging. He extends the bottle to the writer
.]
[
Pause. The writer half extends his hand toward the bottle
,
then draws it back and shakes his head
.]
Oh yes, flu is contagious, how stupid of me, I'm sorry.
WRITER
: Never mind, I don't care much for liquor.
NIGHTINGALE
: Where you from?
WRITER
: . . . St. Louis.
NIGHTINGALE
: Christ, do people live there?
WRITER
: It has a good art museum and a fine symphony orchestra and . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: No decent gay life at all?
WRITER
: You mean . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: You know what I mean. I mean like the . . . paratrooper.
WRITER
: Oh. No. There could be but . . . living at home . . .
NIGHTINGALE
: Tell me, how did it go with the paratrooper who descended on you at Block's?
WRITER
: Well at midnight we went out on the gallery and he, the paratrooper, was out on the lower gallery with a party of older men, antique dealers, they were all singing “Auld Lang Syne.”
NIGHTINGALE
: How imaginative and
appropriate
to them.
WRITER
: âI noticed him down there and he noticed me.
NIGHTINGALE
: Noticing him?
WRITER
: . . . Yes. He grinned, and hollered to come down; he took me into the lower apartment. It was vacant, the others still on the gallery, you see I . . . couldn't understand his presence among the . . .
