FREDERICK
If!
JORDAN
Sacrifice, sacrifice, there’s no reward without sacrifice. Give the child the sandwich. I’m so excited. My advice to you, Freddie, is to keep that roof nailed down securely. Don’t leave the house without checking it’s there, and that goes for you, too, Mabel. People are stripping cars in seconds, stealing entire buses; save part of that shark for me, boy, and the thing will be gone. Thank you.
(Accepts a bit of shark and bread)
Harry knows I like pepper. Know what our boy has done, mistress? He has, following the ripples of the galvanized roof, painted what appears to me to be a large American flag. The ripples being the stripes and the holes the stars. It’s a tribute to Uncle Sam. I wish my brother, my twin brother, your twin uncle, Frederick, would come down to see it. Frederick, you have exalted our house. Cheers. I forgive you.
(Pause. Roars)
Boy! You had nothing better to do than to spend the whole damned day on top the blasted house making me a laughing-stock again? And now you compound my embarrassment with that idiotic doodle. An idiotic Yankee Doodle? And then you turn around and calmly consume the one hops and shark that your poor mother goes out into the howling wind and pelting rain to fetch?
MABEL
It ent raining, there ain’t no wind, and I didn’t mind.
JORDAN
(To MABEL)
My mother said it when I married you—I burned out my talent in domesticity. I have wasted my life. I am going to bed.
(Exit. Then pause. Returns)
Buy ten gallons of turpentine and wash out that shit on the roof tomorrow. And find a job!
(Exit, with hat)
MABEL
Don’t mind him, Freddie. These days, your father …
(JORDAN returns without hat)
JORDAN
I’m sorry, boy. I know what you painted. A symbol of distress. Help us, America! A cry from the Third World. Is that right, Frederick?
FREDERICK
Is just a flag on the roof, Pa.
JORDAN
Well, it so happens that it’s my roof and it’s the American flag.
FREDERICK
You want me to make it the Union Jack?
JORDAN
Bravo! It would at least be a monument to your father’s values! It would be something that he could look up to. Today, art! Tomorrow, turpentine!
(Exit)
FREDERICK
You right. I’m worried about him, too.
(JORDAN returns, in singlet and underwear, wearing hat)
JORDAN
Furthermore, suppose they take this place for the American Embassy and bomb it?
(Exit)
MABEL
(Picks at a crumb)
I give up hoping long ago that fool would change. When we was courting, he used to stroll with me by a place where a old coolie named Suraj used to keep ducks. The damn place splattered with duck shit, but he would hold his nose high, and as he throw crumbs to the ducks in that stinking canal, he would say, “We are feeding the swans of Avon.” British from the first to the last crumb. Drunken fool. He thinks is only he who could talk English? I was a teacher, too.
FREDERICK
I know, I know, Ma.
MABEL
Primary school is true. But a teacher all the same. And a plain downright Trinidadian from Arima.
FREDERICK
Dad’s got to stop dreaming.
MABEL
Dad’s got to stop dreaming. You want to kill Dad? Between him and Ezra Pilgrim on Tuesday nights, they does spend sufficient to pay back the mortgage. But he is convinced that some sweepstake ticket out there looking for him.
(Rises)
Frederick, why you paint the man roof?
(Pause)
You was bound to paint God Bless America straight on top his head?
FREDERICK
I am a painter, Ma.
MABEL
Excuse me, I thought you was an artist. But since you turn house painter, you could earn some money. The whole of Port of Spain could do with a second coat. Lord, look, is morning! Go and see how that flag look by the dawn’s early light; then wipe it off, Freddie, before the man get a fit.
FREDERICK
Well, he taught me one thing, Ma: never sell out.
(BARRLEY enters the veranda)
MABEL
Freddie, don’t be like your father, please. Who would want a galvanize flag?
(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 die
d, 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 …
(MABEL opens her Bible)
MABEL
Is just to tell you that you ain’t missing no big ceremony. And I on the next side. I read this same passage that mark here: “The beauty of Israel is slain high places,” and so on. Very short. Very simple. Frederick does lay down the wreath. I does close the book, and then …
JORDAN
Mabel …
MABEL
… and then I does say, very calmly, “Junior, your father promise he will come next year.” Ten, fifteen minutes, that is all. So, wait for you?
JORDAN
Is too much pain, Mrs. Jordan. Too much. Don’t make this a sad house, woman. Life marches on.
(FREDERICK enters)
FREDERICK
Oh, Jesus, two of you stop that bawling! Ma, leave him, come on! All right, I’m going.
JORDAN
Bawling? You find your mother and me always bawling, eh? And you, what do you do? Every year you go with her to the graveside, then you take off like a hermit to the mountains to paint. Paint? You can’t fool me, boy! You run up there and hide because you can’t take that memory any more than me. Than I. So mind your blasted business, that’s all!
(FREDERICK exits)
Lord, just let me get that blasted sweepstake and you go see my smoke!
MABEL
The daydreaming, the daydreaming is worse than when you had malaria! This man delirious in his old age, Lord! Give me the strength to walk out this house while I still have time.
JORDAN
You feel I go miss you? You think I can’t manage?
(Goes to the door, opens it with a flourish)
The door open. The world is yawning wide. Come on, come on. I waiting.
(Pause. MABEL sucks her teeth)
MABEL
Albert, close the door, eh.
Remembrance and Pantomime Page 2