Remembrance and Pantomime (9 page)

     
it’s called: Robinson Crusoe.

     
We’re awfully glad that you’ve shown up,

     
it’s for kiddies as well as for grown-ups.

     
Our purpose is to please:

     
so now with our magic wand …

(
Dissatisfied with the routine, he switches off the machine. Rehearses his dance. Then presses the machine again
)

     
Just picture a lonely island

     
and a beach with its golden sand.

     
There walks a single man

     
in the beautiful West Indies!

(
He turns off the machine. Stands, staring out to sea. Then exits with the tape recorder. Stage empty for a few beats, then
JACKSON
,
in an open, white waiter’s jacket and black trousers, but barefoot, enters with a breakfast tray. He puts the tray down, looks around
)

JACKSON

     Mr. Trewe?

(
English accent
)

     Mr. Trewe, your scramble eggs is here!
are
here!

(
Creole accent
)

     You hear, Mr. Trewe? I here wid your eggs!

(
English accent
)

     Are you in there?

(
To himself
)

     And when his eggs get cold, is I to catch.

(
He fans the eggs with one hand
)

     What the hell I doing? That ain’t go heat them. It go make them more cold. Well, he must be leap off the ledge. At long last. Well, if he ain’t dead, he could call.

(
He exits with tray. Stage bare.
HARRY
returns, carrying a hat made of goatskin and a goatskin parasol. He puts on the hat, shoulders the parasol, and circles the table. Then he recoils, looking down at the floor
)

HARRY

(
Sings and dances
)

     
Is this the footprint of a naked man,

     
or is it the naked footprint of a man,

     
that startles me this morning on this bright and golden sand.

(
To audience
)

     
There’s no one here but I,

     
just the sea and lonely sky …

(
Pauses
)

     Yes … and how the hell did it go on?

(
JACKSON
enters, without the tray. Studies
HARRY
)

JACKSON

     Morning, Mr. Trewe. Your breakfast ready.

HARRY

     So how’re you this morning, Jackson?

JACKSON

     Oh, fair to fine, with seas moderate, with waves three to four feet in open water, and you, sir?

HARRY

     Overcast with sunny periods, with the possibility of heavy showers by mid-afternoon, I’d say, Jackson.

JACKSON

     Heavy showers, Mr. Trewe?

HARRY

     Heavy showers. I’m so bloody bored I could burst into tears.

JACKSON

     I bringing in breakfast.

HARRY

     You do that, Friday.

JACKSON

     Friday? It ain’t go keep.

HARRY

(
Gesturing
)

     Friday, you, bring Crusoe, me, breakfast now. Crusoe hungry.

JACKSON

     Mr. Trewe, you come back with that same rake again? I tell you, I ain’t no actor, and I ain’t walking in front a set of tourists naked playing cannibal. Carnival, but not canni-bal.

HARRY

     What tourists? We’re closed for repairs. We’re the only ones in the guest house. Apart from the carpenter, if he ever shows up.

JACKSON

     Well, you ain’t seeing him today, because he was out on a heavy lime last night … Saturday, you know? And with the peanuts you does pay him for overtime.

HARRY

     All right, then. It’s goodbye!

(
He climbs onto the ledge between the uprights, teetering, walking slowly
)

JACKSON

     Get offa that ledge, Mr. Trewe! Is a straight drop to them rocks!

(
HARRY
kneels, arms extended, Jolson-style
)

HARRY

     Hold on below there, sonny boooy! Daddy’s a-coming. Your papa’s a-coming, Sonnnnneee Boooooooy!

(
To
JACKSON
)

     You’re watching the great Harry Trewe and his high-wire act.

JACKSON

     You watching Jackson Phillip and his disappearing act.

(
Turning to leave
)

HARRY

(
Jumping down
)

     I’m not a suicide, Jackson. It’s a good act, but you never read the reviews. It would be too exasperating, anyway.

JACKSON

     What, sir?

HARRY

     Attempted suicide in a Third World country. You can’t leave a note because the pencils break, you can’t cut your wrist with the local blades …

JACKSON

     We trying we best, sir, since all you gone.

HARRY

     Doesn’t matter if we’re a minority group. Suicides are taxpayers, too, you know, Jackson.

JACKSON

     Except it ain’t going be suicide. They go say I push you. So, now the fun and dance done, sir, breakfast now?

HARRY

     I’m rotting from insomnia, Jackson. I’ve been up since three, hearing imaginary guests arriving in the rooms, and I haven’t slept since. I nearly came around the back to have a little talk. I started thinking about the same bloody problem, which is, What entertainment can we give the guests?

JACKSON

     They ain’t guests, Mr. Trewe. They’s casualties.

HARRY

     How do you mean?

JACKSON

     This hotel like a hospital. The toilet catch asthma, the air-condition got ague, the front-balcony rail missing four teet’, and every minute the fridge like it dancing the Shango … brrgudup … jukjuk … brrugudup. Is no wonder that the carpenter collapse. Termites jumping like steel band in the foundations.

HARRY

     For fifty dollars a day they want Acapulco?

JACKSON

     Try giving them the basics: Food. Water. Shelter. They ain’t shipwrecked, they pay in advance for their vacation.

HARRY

     Very funny. But the ad says, “Tours” and “Nightly Entertainment.” Well, Christ, after they’ve seen the molting parrot in the lobby and the faded sea fans, they’ll be pretty livid if there’s no “nightly entertainment,” and so would you, right? So, Mr. Jackson, it’s your neck and mine. We open next Friday.

JACKSON

     Breakfast, sir. Or else is overtime.

HARRY

     I kept thinking about this panto I co-authored, man.
Robinson Crusoe,
and I picked up this old script. I can bring it all down to your level, with just two characters. Crusoe, Man Friday, maybe even the parrot, if that horny old bugger will remember his lines …

JACKSON

     Since we on the subject, Mr. Trewe, I am compelled to report that parrot again.

HARRY

     No, not again, Jackson?

JACKSON

     Yes.

HARRY

(
Imitating parrot
)

     Heinegger, Heinegger.

(
In his own voice
)

     Correct?

JACKSON

     Wait, wait! I know your explanation: that a old German called Herr Heinegger used to own this place, and that when that maquereau of a macaw keep cracking: “Heinegger, Heinegger,” he remembering the Nazi and not heckling me, but it playing a little havoc with me nerves. This is my fifth report. I am marking them down. Language is ideas, Mr. Trewe. And I think that this pre-colonial parrot have the wrong idea.

HARRY

     It’s his accent, Jackson. He’s a Creole parrot. What can I do?

JACKSON

     Well, I am not saying not to give the bird a fair trial, but I see nothing wrong in taking him out the cage at dawn, blindfolding the bitch, giving him a last cigarette if he want it, lining him up against the garden wall, and perforating his arse by firing squad.

HARRY

     The war’s over, Jackson! And how can a bloody parrot be prejudiced?

JACKSON

     The same damn way they corrupt a child. By their upbringing. That parrot survive from a pre-colonial epoch, Mr. Trewe, and if it want to last in Trinidad and Tobago, then it go have to adjust.

(
Long pause
)

HARRY

(
Leaping up
)

     Do you think we could work him into the panto? Give him something to do? Crusoe had a parrot, didn’t he? You’re right, Jackson, let’s drop him from the show.

JACKSON

     Mr. Trewe, you are a truly, truly stubborn man. I am
not
putting that old goatskin hat on my head and making an ass of myself for a million dollars, and I have said so already.

HARRY

     You got it wrong. I put the hat on, I’m … Wait, wait a minute.
Cut! Cut!
You know what would be a heavy twist, heavy with irony?

JACKSON

     What, Mr. Trewe?

HARRY

     We reverse it.

(
Pause
)

JACKSON

     You mean you prepared to walk round naked as your mother make you, in your jockstrap, playing a white cannibal in front of your own people? You’re a real actor! And you got balls, too, excuse me, Mr. Trewe, to even consider doing a thing like that! Good. Joke finish. Breakfast now, eh? Because I ha’ to fix the sun deck since the carpenter ain’t reach.

HARRY

     All right, breakfast. Just heat it a little.

JACKSON

     Right, sir. The coffee must be warm still. But I best do some brand-new scramble eggs.

HARRY

     Never mind the eggs, then. Slip in some toast, butter, and jam.

JACKSON

     How long you in this hotel business, sir? No butter. Marge. No sugar. Big strike. Island-wide shortage. We down to half a bag.

HARRY

     Don’t forget I’ve heard you sing calypsos, Jackson. Right back there in the kitchen.

JACKSON

     Mr. Trewe, every day I keep begging you to stop trying to make a entertainer out of me. I finish with show business. I finish with Trinidad. I come to Tobago for peace and quiet. I quite satisfy. If you ain’t want me to resign, best drop the topic.

(
Exits.
HARRY
sits at the table, staring out to sea. He is reciting softly to himself, then more audibly
)

HARRY

     “Alone, alone, all, all alone,

       Alone on a wide wide sea …

       I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,

       And cried, A sail! a sail!”

(
He removes the hat, then his shirt, rolls up his trousers, removes them, puts them back on, removes them again
)

     Mastah … Mastah … Friday sorry. Friday never do it again. Master.

(
JACKSON
enters with breakfast tray, groans, turns to leave. Returns
)

JACKSON

     Mr. Trewe, what it is going on on this blessed Sunday morning, if I may ask?

HARRY

     I was feeling what it was like to be Friday.

JACKSON

     Well, Mr. Trewe, you ain’t mind putting back on your pants?

HARRY

     Why can’t I eat breakfast like this?

JACKSON

     Because I am here. I happen to be here. I am the one serving you, Mr. Trewe.

HARRY

     There’s nobody here.

JACKSON

     Mr. Harry, you putting on back your pants?

HARRY

     You’re frightened of something?

JACKSON

     You putting on back your pants?

HARRY

     What’re you afraid of? Think I’m bent? That’s such a corny interpretation of the Crusoe-Friday relationship, boy. My son’s been dead three years, Jackson, and I’vn’t had much interest in women since, but I haven’t gone queer, either. And to be a flasher, you need an audience.

JACKSON

     Mr. Trewe, I am trying to explain that I myself feel like a ass holding this tray in my hand while you standing up there naked, and that if anybody should happen to pass, my name is immediately mud. So, when you put back on your pants, I will serve your breakfast.

HARRY

     Actors do this sort of thing. I’m getting into a part.

JACKSON

     Don’t bother getting into the part, get into the pants. Please.

HARRY

     Why? You’ve got me worried now, Jackson.

JACKSON

(
Exploding
)

     
Put on your blasted pants, man! You like a blasted child, you know!

(
Silence.
HARRY
puts on his pants
)

HARRY

     Shirt, too?

(
JACKSON
sucks his teeth
)

     There.

(
HARRY
puts on his shirt
)

     You people are such prudes, you know that? What’s it in you, Jackson, that gets so Victorian about a man in his own hotel deciding to have breakfast in his own underwear, on a totally deserted Sunday morning?