(Shining of the sun,
shining, shining.)
TRAVELLER:
The jet of fiery water sank down again, dropping into the pool among the grasses, and was still. But again, when the Puma turned, when the Puma breathed, once more they touched, and the white plume stood shining.
CHORUS:
Where the body of water lies on the body of fire within the earth in darkness, there the well rises. This is the pool of the Lion, the silent dancer, the soft walker, the dweller in the house of dream. This is that which falls from the sunlight as it rises from the dark.
TRAVELLER:
Beautiful Keeper of the Seventh House, be praised!
THE PUMA:
Who are you, man of the Valley?
TRAVELLER:
A singer of the Serpentine from Ounmalin. I came to drink from the Pool of the Lion, from the Plumed Water, so that the silence of the lion will be in my songs.
THE PUMA:
All songs are in the silence of the lion. Drink.
The Traveller kneels and drinks from the pool.
TRAVELLER:
It is here, not here.
As it lives, it dies.
It sinks, leaping up.
It shines and passes,
mist in sunlight,
not here, and here.
The Puma dances masked.
THE CHORUS:
Softly he walks
before the first,
shining, shining.
Mist in sunlight,
here, and not here.
The Traveller and the Chorus go off left, the Puma and the Fire Water dancers go off right, to the Ending Tone without drums.
Chandi
Most Valley plays were vehicles for improvisation: a skeleton plot, a framework of a situation, usually very familiar to the audience, on which the performers created the momentary and irreproducible drama.
The text of such a play could be written on a scrap of paper, since it was nothing but a list of the characters and a set of dialogue lines, called “pegs” or “hingebolts,” perhaps ten or twenty in all. These peg lines were invariable both in wording and in the order they were spoken. Everything that was said and done in the intervals between them was up to the players. For the audience, much of the tension and pleasure of the performance was in the build-up towards these key lines, familiar from other performances but always arrived at differently, “from another direction.”
Plot elaboration could be so extreme that the pegs were embedded in a long dramatic performance having only tangential reference to the original plot; or they might be the pivots of a brilliant flow of language, if the troupe was strong on poetic improvisation; or they might provide almost the whole spoken text of a performance by a troupe of actor-dancers playing the piece yedao, “by moving”—that is, principally in mime and dance.
The performance I attempt to describe here was given by a troupe from Telina-na, a young group praised mainly for their music and dancing. The play was put on in a big barn-loft in Sinshan as part of the festivities of the Summer Dance. Lights had been rigged up to spotlight the stage area and were used very effectively creating both space and mood. The audience participated in the y at the beginning, and was entirely silent and intent by the end.
Like most Valley drama, this play Chandi is symbolical or allegorical, generalising life. The resemblance of the plot to one of the at biblical stories is striking; but so are the differences.
The name Chandi means Wood Rat, the native Western rat, a pretty little animal which builds a big, elaborate nest of sticks and grass, in which it may store a collection of objects which it seems to value on purely aesthetic grounds, and in which mice, snakes, and other creatures may reside, sharing the wood rat’s hospitality.
The traditional author of Chandi was Houkai (Kingsnake?) of Chumo, a figure as old and insubstantial as our Homer (and not blind, like Homer, but deaf), to whom about half the peg-line plays were ascribed.
In this attempt to describe the action and present the text, the peg lines are italicised. To see what the actors had to work with, the reader can read only those lines, skipping all the rest.
CHANDI: A PERFORMANCE.
The audience, forty or fifty people, sat on the loft floor on rugs or pillows they had brought with them, or on some old straw-bales that had been arranged as seats or to provide seat-backs.
A man and woman of the Millers Art of Sinshan had rigged up and operated the lights. A strong, large spot formed the left stage area, a weaker one the right stage area, and their oval interlap formed the “Hinge.” The darkness outside and behind these areas was deep enough to make movements offstage undistracting.
The musicians sat behind the stage area, outside the light, just visible. The music was almost continuous throughout the performance.
After the Beginning Tone had been played for some minutes and the audience had quieted down, Chandi entered from the left: a handsome man in the prime of life, tall, magnificently dressed. Over black trousers and a full-sleeved cotton shirt he wore a long ceremonial vest of blue, violet, and green, heavy with embroidery, and over that an incredibly delicate and splendid feather cloak, a treasure of the Serpentine heyimas of Sinshan, lent for the performance. This majestic cloak flowed and swayed from his shoulders as he came striding in, his arms stretched out in an embracing gesture, and turned forward to greet the rising sun.
CHANDI:
Heya hey heya!
Heya heya!
Beautiful you shine upon the Valley!
He looked down from the imagined sunrise at the faces of the audience, with a warm and genial smile. His voice was resonant, pleasant, and full of energy.
CHANDI:
So you are here, people of my town, beautifully walking, kindly of face, speaking gently. This is a good morning!
The audience responded with the customary greeting: “So you are here, Chandi!” They spoke quietly, amused; and one woman added, “May the day go well for you, Chandi!”
CHANDI:
In the evening of this long day I am to dance the Summer; so before I go into the fields I want to practice that dance.
The musicians struck up one of the intricate and stately Heron dances of the Summer wakwa, and Chandi danced alone on the left stage, energetic and graceful, like some gorgeous mythical bird in the iridescent, floating cloak of feathers.
As the dance ended, the First Chorus, five people, came on and took up positions around stage left—townsfolk going to a day’s work in the fields. With a final great gesture which made him seem to fly up in the air for a moment (the audience gasped), Chandi swept off the feather cloak and tossed it to someone waiting outside the lighted area. The dance was over, and Chandi also went off to work. He mimed weeding and hoeing with the Chorus. They talked about the weather, and there was some banter about local doings and personalities, which I could not follow but which got a great response and some backtalk from the audience. Then a peg line was dropped in casually.
CHORUS I (a man):
How fine, Chandi’s corn,
how tall and broadleaved,
already tasselled.
CHORUS II (a woman):
He’s a wise farmer, Chandi is. Knowledgeable and careful.
CHORUS I:
Yes, he seems to go the right way. What a good bit of ground his household works there.
CHORUS III (a man):
That’s not the only good ground in his family. The luck that comes his way! To be married to Dansaiedo! [She Sees the Rainbow] To plow and weed and tend and harvest that bit of ground, in the gardens of the night!
CHORUS IV (a woman):
Shut up, stupid. What kind of dirty talk is that!
CHORUS III:
I’m envious. That’s all. I envy him.
CHORUS V (a woman):
The beautiful children of that marriage—rainbow people indeed! I envy him such children.
CHORUS IV:
Shut up, shut up! High winds fan fo
rest fires.
Chandi now came closer to the other gardeners, and leaned on his hoe as he spoke; it was some time before I realised that there was in fact no hoe.
CHANDI:
Listen, I don’t mind. I couldn’t help but hear what you were saying—the wind was blowing my way. But it’s true, what you were saying. I try to be careful and thoughtful, to do things at the right time in the right way; but other people are just as careful, just as mindful, and they aren’t given so much as I am. I don’t know how it is. My mothers’ house is beautiful and dignified, as is the house of my wife. My parents are generous and kindly people, and the two people who have made me a father are intelligent and notable—my daughter already a singer among the Doctors, and my son, still wearing undyed clothing, a delightful and promising boy. Of Dansaiedo, what praise can I speak? She is the swallow above the pools at evening. She is the first rain of autumn, and the wild almond flower of early spring. Her household is noble, a river of gifts flowing! In this household the ewes bear twin lambs yearly, the cows are wise and strong, the bullocks patient. The earth we plant is richer every year, the trees we gather from drop olives like hailstones. All this is given me! How have I lived that this has been so?
CHORUS II:
All you have been given you have given, Chandi.
CHORUS I:
Yes, Chandi is truly generous.
CHORUS V:
The feather cloak he gave his House!
CHORUS II:
Corn to the granaries, fleeces to the Art!
CHORUS III:
Gold coins to musicians, copper to actors! [This was spoken archly, and got a laugh.]
CHORUS I:
Everything in his house is fine and sound, well-made and well-used, plentiful and impressive, and the doors are always open to his friends and townsfolk.
CHORUS III:
Indeed you are a wealthy man, Chandi!
CHORUS V:
The generous heart is wealth itself—so they say.
[The translation of these two pegs is particularly weak. Ambad means wealth, wealthy; to give; and generosity. The words double on themselves intricately in these lines.]
During this scene the only music was the Continuing Tone, the faint, slightly varied, background note of the great horns, houmbuta. Now the other instruments began to play and continued for the rest of the performance, softly under dialogue, but filling—and creating—pauses with held and percussive notes
CHANDI:
You make me feel foolish, my friends! I want to do something for you, I want to give you what you want, what you like.
CHORUS IV:
Really, he’s such a nice fellow, isn’t he!
CHORUS I:
Yes, nobody could dislike him, our Chandi.
Great Horn
CHANDI:
What can I give you? I hope you’ll share this corn when it ripens. This plot of ground is so easy to work, I wondered if you’d like to use it next season. Oh, House-sister, I meant to tell you that we’ve got a lot of feathers saved again in our household and thought of making another cloak, for the Obsidian, for the Blood Lodge, if you think it would be appropriate! Cousin, Dansaiedo has been spinning that white wool our sheep gave us in the spring shearing, and I remember you spoke of needing white wool. Fine or heavy? You know how well Dansaiedo spins.
He talked on, the music growing loud enough to half-cover his voice, the people of the First Chorus crowding around him as he talked and handed out things, all affectionate, friendly, but a little hectic. While this was going on, the Second Chorus began to enter from the right: four people, barefoot, walking stiffly erect, wearing dark hoods and tight, dark clothes (like those of the Mourners at the World Dance). They came one after the other, slowly, and stood waiting in a line across the right stage. The first one, standing at the right edge of the hinge, spoke in a flat, sexless voice, heralded by a shivering note on the towandou.
SECOND CHORUS I:
Chandi!
Busy with their give-and-take, Chandi and his friends paid no attention. The dark figure spoke the name again. The third time the name was spoken, Chandi looked around over his shoulder, and then came laughing from the group, his arms full of something.
CHANDI:
Here, friend, take it, please! I have too much!
The dark figure remained motionless, hands at its sides. After a loud metallic chord from the musicians, there was a dead pause.
SECOND CHORUS I:
Dansaiedo was measuring oil, fine olive oil from the old trees of her family. A flame leapt up, from where no one knows, blown by what wind? It burned, that oil. It burned. Her hair burned, her clothing—she burned alive, a torch. She ran if flames from the house in flames. It is all burnt. She is dead.
The hooded figure crouched down in the mourning posture and huddled, head down, swaying, at Chandi’s feet, just across the hinge from him. Chandi stood motionless; slowly his arms dropped to his sides. The First Chorus drew away from him, muttering among themselves.
FIRST CHORUS:
Burned?—Dansaiedo?—That great household?—The whole house, everything?—Burned alive?
CHANDI (in a great outburst):
My daughter! My son!
FIRST CHORUS I:
They’re all right—they must be all right, Chandi.
FIRST CHORUS II:
They weren’t in the house. Only Dansaiedo died in the fire. The other people got out.
FIRST CHORUS V:
But the house is gone. Burned to the foundation stones.
FIRST CHORUS III:
Everything in it burned to ash.
Chandi took a bewildered step or two as if to return to the town.
CHANDI:
O Dansaiedo, beautiful woman, kind woman, wife of my heart! Cruel! Cruel! Cruel!
His voice rose to this thrice-repeated word, the “hinge” of the play, in a wild outcry; then he stood again as if bewildered by his own passion of grief. He looked around painfully at the others, and at last said with dignity,
CHANDI:
I will go—I will go now to sing for you, Dansaiedo, to sing with you as you leave me. But I need our children with me now. May they come to me!
Chandi’s Son and Daughter now entered from the left. At the same time, the second dark figure of the Second Chorus began to approach the center of the stage, its right hand stretched forward. Chandi’s Son went to his father and they embraced, but the Daughter walked past him, turning to look at him, but going on past him to meet the dark figure, take its hand, and go with it offstage to the right, into the dark. As she did so, Chandi cried out.
CHANDI:
Where is she? Where is she going? Where has she gone?
SECOND CHORUS I (crouching and swaying as before):
She saw her mother run from the house burning, burning alive, and the sight was beyond her endurance. She took poison in the Doctors Lodge, fearing madness, and is dead.
FIRST CHORUS I (whispering):
She is dead!
FIRST CHORUS IV (whispering):
Look there! She is dead!
The members of the First Chorus, the townspeople, had drawn somewhat away from Chandi, leaving him standing alone with his Son. There was music with a hard, fast drum-beat while Chandi slowly took off the embroidered vest and put it on his Son’s shoulders. When he spoke his voice was shocking in its softness.
CHANDI:
Daughter, little daughter, could you not wait? Patience would have been kinder. There were those who needed you. Come with me now, child, my son. Stay with me. Help me sing for them, with them, your mother, your sister. Come with me now.
But the third of the four dark figures—a child—was coming towards them, inexorable. Chandi’s Son let go his hand, and stood still, gazing; then moved to meet the dark figure and to take its hand and follow it slowly offstage right, into the darkness. The Continuing Tone was very loud.
CHANDI:
Please do not die, my son. Stay with me!
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SECOND CHORUS I (speaking from the crouching posture still):
The illness was always in him, hidden. Now it is becoming his life. In a month he will be dead. In a few days he will be dead. The doctors have no healing for him. This day he will die. He is dying now.
FIRST CHORUS IV:
Chandi’s son is dead.
The five members of the First Chorus drew yet farther away from Chandi. He slowly crouched down till he was facing the dark figure in the same posture. He lowered his head to the ground, rubbed forehead on the ground, and tore at his hair. The music was loud and intense, the drums and towandou drowning out the Continuing Tone, and Chandi’s voice rose and fell in a half-melodic keening howl.
As the music quieted, Chandi crouched motionless, and at last stood up heavily. He took off his shirt and then his shoes, and stood barefoot and half-naked, looking twenty years older.
CHANDI:
I will go back to my mothers’ house, living there as a son, working for the people of that household as best I can.
The fourth of the dark figures was approaching him as he spoke, and now addressed him in the same flat, high, uncanny tone as the first.
SECOND CHORUS IV:
They are all dead now, those people of your mothers’ household, or have gone away to other houses, other towns. Other people live now in those rooms. There is no one of your kinfolk in that place.
CHANDI:
It is true. I must live alone. But I have been ill for a long time now. Would it not be better for me to die?
The fourth dark figure made no reply, but crouched down beside the first one.
CHANDI:
I will live alone, then, as best I can, working for the heyimas. Oh, but my arms are heavy!
He began to mime working in the gardens, as at the beginning of the action, but very laboriously. The members of the First Chorus also went back to work, all towards the left front of the left stage, while Chandi was alone towards the back and near the Hinge. The light had dimmed unobtrusively, and the music had a plangent, yearning quality.
FIRST CHORUS III:
Look at old Chandi digging at that adobe, hard as rooftile!
CHORUS I (now speaking like an old man, while Chorus III’s voice had taken on an adolescent quality):
It used to be good land, a good piece of ground there. He didn’t look after it.
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