Always Coming Home
Page 25
Avu says:
There is nothing there.
There’s dirt on your face.
There’s no right answer
to the wrong question.
Now what do we do?
Bodo gropes blindly worshipping in the air and gets hold of Avu. He seizes her with a yell of rage and dances her rape and murder. The Bears hurry forward and dance tearing her to pieces and eating her. She is passive throughout, like a dead person. When the dance is done the music stops. To drums and the Continuing Tone she gets up and goes across to the right-hand stage, where she dances through the Four Houses and off. Bodo stands up weeping and raging and stamping and shouting.
Bodo shouts:
What was I born for?
What am I here for?
Why was I sent here?
What is the meaning?
What is the reason?
Answer me now! Now!
Avu has come around behind the stage. She comes on from the left, just as before, and walks towards Bodo. The Bears crouch behind the Mountain.
Avu says:
I know a secret.
Bodo says:
Tell me the secret!
Avu says:
No secret is told.
It cannot be spoken.
Thought cannot think it.
It cannot be borne.
Come to the valley.
Bodo shouts:
Twisted neck! Unclean!
Vile one! Uncanny!
Your powers are bad.
Your secrets are void.
You are the old dark,
cruel and mindless,
ancient and empty.
Empty inside you,
emptiness, darkness,
hopelessness, evil,
valley of darkness!
He tries to send her away from him, while she clings to and prostrates herself at his feet and follows him on her knees chanting and begging
Avu chants:
Radiance! Brightness!
Full, overflowing,
outpouring brightness!
Use me! Command me!
Holy I worship,
Divine I adore,
Master I obey,
Answer I listen,
Reason I believe,
Shining of the light!
Give me your power!
Give me your power!
Bodo shouts:
Lie down, then, woman!
Here is the power,
I give it to you.
Lie down and eat dirt!
Avu obeys him, lying down on her face, eating dirt. Bodo embraces her to have anal intercourse. She twists around and seizes him and dances breaking his neck, castrating him, and eating him. The Bears come forward and dance eating the bones she throws them.
Avu sings:
The bones of power,
eat this one, eat this.
Shinbone of power,
bladebone of power,
skullbone of power,
eat this, Bears, eat this.
Bodo is passive throughout the dance, like a dead person. When the dance is done the music stops. To drums and the Continuing Tone Bodo gets up and dances through the Four Houses and off right.
Avu crawls on all fours over to join the Bears. They all crouch hind the Mountain. There is no music but the Continuing Tone.
Bodo crawls in from the left on all fours. He crouches and beats his face and weeps.
Avu crawls forward and crouches near him and weeps.
The Bears come and pick up Avu and Bodo carefully and carry them up onto the Mountain. They leave them there and go off on all fours, as animals, to the left.
Avu and Bodo sit on the Mountain. The Continuing Tone sounds.
Avu says:
Is it done, the harm
that we have to do
to one another?
Bodo says:
No, never, never.
It is never done.
Avu says:
Grieving forever
is all my answer.
Bodo says:
Raging forever
is all my question.
Avu says:
Mountain is Valley.
Bodo says:
Valley is Mountain.
Avu says:
What is the way, then?
Bodo says:
There is no way.
The drums begin to beat four and four. The music begins.
Avu says:
This is the way.
Bodo and Avu stand up and begin to dance in place on the Mountain. As they dance they chant.
Bodo and Avu chant:
In ignorance,
unskilfully,
heya, heya,
in the darkness,
in the silence,
heya, heya,
weakly, poorly,
failing, losing,
heya, heya,
sick, you are sick,
you are dying,
heya, heya,
all of the time
you are dying,
so you make soul,
not knowing how,
having no power,
so you have life,
not going on
so you go on
dying you live
all of the time
heya, heya,
heya, heya,
heya, heya,
heya, heya.
As they chant, the Bears come on the stage from the right, crossing the Mountain behind them, walking upright, wearing white, with rainbow masks and headdresses, carrying rain-wands.
Avu and Bodo say:
These are our guides,
the ones we fear.
Heya, heya.
The Bears sing with Avu and Bodo while they dance in place:
Rain is falling
in the rainy
season, in the
rainy season,
in the season
of the rain, rain
falls, falls, rain falls.
Drums beating five and four, and the Ending Tone.
This play was made by Clear of the Obsidian of Telina-na.
Tabetupah
The tabetupah was an oral form, but there was no sanction against writing it down. The tiny story/drama was spoken, usually by two, sometimes by one or three, informal reciters, usually at the outdoor fire at night at the summerhouse, or by the hearth in the rainy season (another name for it was “hearthplay”). The performers did not stand and act out the parts, but simply spoke them: the play was for the ear and mind.
Some tabetupah were classics, spoken word for word at each performance; Jackrabbit is an example. This was performed by two speakers taking the alternate sections, or by one using several voices. The words were never altered, and the last line was proverbial.
JACKRABBIT.
—O Jackrabbit! You aren’t as thoughtful as I am, but you are far more beautiful!
So he and the jackrabbit traded.
—O Husband! How handsome you’ve become! All the women in town will want to sleep in our bed!
He had sex with all the women.
Jackrabbit’s wife ran away from him, he was too ugly. The man’s wife ran away from him, he was too handsome.
—Hey, Man! I want my ears back. Give me back my legs. What’s the good of thinking?
But the man hopped away.
Most tabetupah were improvised on familiar themes, or were impromptu. The following was recited by two middle-aged women presumably the authors, at a hearthfire in Chukulmas:
PURITY.
—What’s the matter?
—The matter is this ugly buzzard. It will eat only carrion. It litters me with bones, it shits bad dreams into my head. I stink of this buzzard soul of mine. Purify me. O Coyote!
—I eat old sheep afterbirths and dog turds, myself.
—You are the wind that blows the world clean.
—Oh, it’s clean you want? That’s no matter! says Coyote, and she blows th
e buzzard clean out of the woman and the woman clean out of all nine Houses into nothing at all. Housecleaning, I love housecleaning! says Coyote. Did I overdo it?
The comical tone is usual in tabetupah, even when the material is serious; many of them were shaggy-dog stories or simple dirty jokes. Two adolescent boys performed the following skit, “he” in a deep and pompous tone, “she” with earnest sweetness:
SHE:
I think I’ll pee in this shady nook. Oh my, oh my, there’s a strange man peeing. Who can he be? He’s not from Ounmalin. Oh my, oh my, what a wonderful penis! How immense! Oh, Man of the Valley, how do you do?
HE:
So you are here, Woman of the Valley. My house is the Red Adobe of Telina-na.
SHE:
Oh, what a pity, what a pity, brother. What a waste. Such a wonderful long one.
HE:
What? This?
SHE:
Yes. That.
HE:
Oh, this isn’t mine. It belongs to my Yellow Adobe friend here, standing behind me, see? I have to help him hold it up to pee.
SHE:
I’m certain I could help too!
The only entirely serious tabetupah collected was partly in prose, partly in five-syllable verse, and gives the climax of a story that may be even older than the previous one. It was performed by Changing of Ounmalin, a man; for the woman’s voice he spoke in a soft whisper. He called the story by his own name, Changing.
CHANGING.
SHE:
Remember, my love,
remember never
to look upon me,
never to see me.
HE:
I will remember.
Stay near me, my love,
Sleep by me, my love,
Sleep in the darkness.
SHE:
Beloved, I sleep.
HE:
She comes in darkness,
leaves before the light.
I have not seen her.
So timid and fearful is she that she will not let me see her beauty. She came to me in the night, when I was in the hills hunting, and brought me here. She will have no lamp or fire light this room of her house where I live all day waiting for her, this beautiful high house. At night she comes, in darkness.
She hides her beauty
but my hands know it,
my body knows it,
and my mind knows it.
My eyes desire it!
This day I sealed the windows; no light can enter. She does not know that dawn has come. So long we loved this night! She sleeps beside me. I rise now, I walk in darkness to the window. I break the seal and let in the light—one instant—now!
SHE:
(almost inaudible): Aho!
HE:
Where are you?—am I?
I see a deer run!
A bed of wet grass.
No walls: hillsides,
sky, the sun rising,
and a deer running!
The Plumed Water
An example of the huravash or “two-speaker” play—a highly formalised dance-play performed only by two companies, one in Wakwaha and one travelling from Kastoha-na to the other towns of the Valley. Huravash plays were performed in the autumn, between the Wine and Grass festivals. In both content and playing-style, they were by far the most formal, ritualised, and impersonal drama of the Valley.
The Plumed Water celebrates the intermittent geyser north of Kastoha, a sacred place. The text is from the Kastoha huravash company; the stage directions have been expanded and clarified by the translator.
The stage is without scenery The Chorus of nine stand in a half circle across the center or hinge of the stage, which is understood to be a pool of water.
Musicians play the Beginning Tone. A drum begins to beat.
The Bath Attendant comes from behind the Chorus to meet the Traveller from Ounmalin, who enters from the left.
ATTENDANT:
So you are here, man of the Valley.
TRAVELLER:
So you are here, man of Kastoha-na.
ATTENDANT:
Have you perhaps missed your way?
TRAVELLER:
Perhaps I have.
ATTENDANT:
If you like, I’ll show you the way back to the road that goes up to Wakwaha on the Mountain.
TRAVELLER:
Well, I wasn’t intending to go up on the Mountain when I came this way. I was looking for a place called the Pool of the Lion, or the Puma’s Well.
ATTENDANT:
In that case you’re on your way. The place they call that is only a little farther on. Do you see those feathered grasses and the red-branched willows? The water is there among them.
TRAVELLER:
Thank you for your guidance!
The Attendant goes directly back and then moves right to stand behind the Chorus, who move forward a step and stand, leaf-crowned, holding the long plumes of pampas grass and cattail or cotton-willow.
The Traveller dance-walks to a travelling music to the edge of the pool, and there dances to salute the pool, and sings:
Heya, heya
nahe heya
no nahe no
heya, heya
The Chorus repeat the song softly in unison.
The Traveller sits down by the pool.
TRAVELLER:
This place is beautiful and desolate. I wonder why no human people seem to have come here recently? The path was over grown, and there were spiders’ threads across it, which I had to break. That man who spoke to me seemed to come out of nowhere, and I don’t know where he went. The tall grasses are like mist, hiding things. Well, I’m glad to be here under the willows at the Lion’s Pool, thinking of the story I heard told about this place.
Two dancers, a man and a woman, enter from the right. A music begins. The dancers dance, always coming closer together, but never touching, while the Chorus sing:
Under this ground, here,
under our roots, here,
there runs in darkness
a river, running
underground, coming
from the Mountain’s roots,
running among rocks,
running beneath stones,
running through the earth
underground, downward,
seaward in darkness.
Under that river
deeper, still deeper,
another river:
a river of fire
moves from the Mountain,
daughter of earthquake,
slowflowing fireflood,
under this ground, here,
under our roots, here,
brightness in darkness.
If they touch, river
of fire and river
of water—Shining!
When the song is done the dancers stand still, listening to the Traveller.
TRAVELLER:
The story I heard was of two people who came down from the Mountain in a time when no other people lived in the Valley but the grasses, the trees, the plumed grass and the willows and the long reeds by the River. It was quiet, very quiet; no quail in the underbrush, no bluejays quarrelling in the branches; not a voice, not a wing; and no footsteps. Only the mist moved in the reeds. Only the fog moved among the willows. Out of the Mountain then they came, those two, coming out from the deep world, from within. They were the quail coming into the world, and the bluejays and flickers coming into the air; they were the wood rat and the wild dog, the moth and the jackrabbit, the treefrog and the kingsnake, the ewe and the bull; they were the breathing people of the Valley coming for the first time, the first people who came, so they were all the people. To the human mind they were human people, a woman and a man. They came here, to this place, a meadow in the foothills of the Mountain, a clearing among willows. They came beautifully, stepping like the deer, carefully, darting like the hummingbird, boldly. They stood here barefoot in the grass and said to each other, “Let us live here, in this plac
e.” But a voice spoke to them. They heard it.
THE PUMA BEHIND THE TREES:
This is my country.
Do you know your souls?
TRAVELLER:
They heard the voice, and they answered, “Who is here? Who spoke? Come out to us!”
The Attendant comes from the right to the end of the semicircle and stands facing the Traveller across the pool. He now wears the mask of the Fog Puma.
THE PUMA:
I spoke. You have come into my country. If you meet, you will be changed. If you touch, you will be changed. All doing here undoes; all meeting parts; all being is transformed.
TRAVELLER:
Who are you?
THE PUMA:
I am the one
who goes between.
THE CHORUS:
He is the one
who goes between.
He is the dream.
Before you came
he was always.
He is your child.
TRAVELLER:
Let him wait, then, to be born, for these two must live.
The Puma stands back outside the circle on the right, while the Traveller tells the story and the two dancers dance and enact it.
TRAVELLER:
They did not know the puma. They were not the puma. They were all beings, all people but the puma. Female they were, fire from the roots of the Mountain far within, and male they were, water from the springs of the Mountain far within. Male and female they were alive, they came together, who shall keep them apart? She lay with him and he with her, she opening to him, he entering in her, and in that instant died. Their death was a shining cloud, a white cloud, a fog that filled the meadow, a fog that filled the Valley. Into his house came the Silent One, returning, into the house of the white silence.
The Puma comes forward and dances, while the Fire and Water dancers lie motionless as if dead within the semicircle of the Chorus.
THE PUMA:
My children, I grieve,
my father, I grieve,
my mother, I grieve,
for your death I grieve!
Live again, come back!
Be transformed! Be changed!
The two dancers rise and, with the Puma, dance and enact the Traveller’s narration.
TRAVELLER:
From the meadow leaped up a jet of steam, of shining vapor. From the mist, out of the fog it leaped, higher than the plumed grasses, higher than the willows, shining in sunlight.
THE CHORUS:
Hwavgepragu,
pragu, pragu.