by Nick Joaquin
BITOY: Aren’t you being rather silly, Tony?
TONY [grinning at PORTRAIT]: And I know just where it will hurt him!
BITOY: What has the old man done to you?
TONY: Won’t his damn heart break when his loving daughters sell off this picture!
BITOY: Oh, is that why you’re so eager to make them sell?
TONY: Besides, this American has promised to pay me a very handsome commission, you know!
[Enter Candida and Paula. Tony turns away from the PORTRAIT.]
Well, did you ladies catch the rat?
PAULA [proudly]: Oh, of course! My sister never fails!
[She and Candida begin to clear the table.]
TONY: She’s the champion rat-catcher, eh?
CANDIDA [modestly]: Oh no—just an expert.
BITOY: Candida has been the official rat-catcher of the family since she was a little girl.
PAULA: Oh, even at night—even in the middle of the night—if any of us heard a squeak, we would cry out: “Candida, a rat! Come, Candida—a rat!” And Candida always woke up. She would come; we would hear her prowling about, peering here, peering there; and then we would hear a sudden dash, a brief struggle, a faint squeak—and nothing more—only Candida sleepily walking back to her bed. She always got her rat!
BITOY: How do you do it, Candida?
CANDIDA: Oh, I just seem to have a talent for it.
TONY: Yours is a very special talent, Miss Candida.
CANDIDA [thoughtfully]: Yes—but I am planning to—well—develop it, you know—to develop it for more general commercial purposes.
[Tony and Bitoy exchange blank looks.]
After all, what is the point in having talent if you cannot use it to make money?
TONY: What, indeed?
BITOY: Speaking of money, Tony here tells me there is an American who wanted to buy this new painting of your father’s.
TONY: And he still wants to buy it.
CANDIDA: We have told Mr. Javier again and again: the picture is not for sale.
TONY: Two thousand dollars! That’s not chicken-feed.
PAULA: We are sorry, Mr. Javier. Our father painted that picture very especially for us. We will never sell it.
[Sound of knocking downstairs.]
CANDIDA: Who can that be?
BITOY: I think I know.
CANDIDA: Your friends?
BITOY: Shall I tell them to go away?
CANDIDA: You donkey! Tell them to come up.
[Bitoy goes to head of stairway. Tony wanders over to the piano, opens it, and runs his fingers over the keys, standing up.]
BITOY [at stairway]: Hi, folks—come on up.
[Enter PETE, EDDIE, and CORA. Pete looks rather rumpled and disheveled. Eddie is immaculate, very much the man-about-town. Cora wears slacks, looks bored, and is carrying a flash-bulb camera. Pete, Eddie, and Cora are in their middle thirties. Bitoy turns to the sisters.]
Candida, Paula—these are the people i told you about.
[To the visitors]
Miss Candida and Miss Paula Marasigan, daughters of Don Lorenzo.
[Chorus of “Hello’s” and “Good afternoon’s” from the visitors.]
CANDIDA [coming forward]: Won’t you sit down? Bitoy tells us you have all come to see our painting.
EDDIE: And to see the great painter, too, Miss Marasigan—if possible.
BITOY: It’s quite impossible right now, Eddie. Don Lorenzo is taking a nap. He asked me to convey his greetings and his apologies.
CANDIDA: You must excuse my father. He is getting old—and you know how old people are. They just want to sleep and sleep and not be disturbed.
[She glances toward table.]
We were just having merienda. Would any of you care for some chocolate?
[Chorus of “No, thank you’s” from the visitors.]
Then, will you please excuse us? The painting is right over there. Bitoy, you will show it to them?
[She smiles and nods at visitors and goes back to table. Bitoy, Pete, and Eddie move downstage and stand before PORTRAIT. Paula and Candida pick up their trays and go out of the room. Cora parks her camera on the sofa and walks over to the piano where Tony, oblivious of the visitors, has been idly picking out a tune, still standing. The tune is “Vereda Tropical.”]
CORA: Hi, Tony.
TONY [looking around]: Hi, Cora.
CORA [glancing round the room]: Is this where you live now?
TONY: Very elegant, don’t you think?
CORA [fetching out her cigarettes]: It looks rather tired to me. Can I smoke here—or would that old bozo [nodding toward photograph over piano] drop down from the wall?
TONY [sitting down on stool; his back against piano]: Oh, he’s an old friend of mine. Here, give me one too.
[They light cigarettes. Cora sits down on chair beside Tony, facing audience.]
CORA [leaning sideways toward Tony and gesturing with her head toward the group in front of PORTRAIT]: The intelligentsia. Speechless with ecstasy.
[She raises her voice and mockingly declaims:]
“Then felt I like some watcher in the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken . . .
Silent, upon a peak in Darien—”
[After a pause] Well, speak up, boys. Say something. Or should I send out for some aspirin?
TONY: What do you think of that picture, Cora?
CORA: Don’t ask me. I’m allergic to classical stuff. Hey, Pete!
PETE: Yes, Cora?
CORA: Well, what do you say, Pete? Is it Art—or is it baloney?
PETE: Oh, it’s Art all right—but I feel like brushing my teeth.
CORA: Oh, good! Hooray for Art!
BITOY: How do you like it, Eddie?
EDDIE: I don’t like it at all.
PETE: Well, what do you think of it?
EDDIE: My thoughts are unprintable.
CORA: Oh Eddie, I’m just dying to read them!
EDDIE: Ready, Cora?
CORA [fetching out pencil & notebook]: I’m all yours, sweetheart.
EDDIE: Now, let me see . . . What do we say first?
BITOY: We? You’re writing this feature article, Eddie—not us.
EDDIE: But what the devil can anybody say about this picture?
CORA: I’m waiting, genius.
TONY: Just say it ought to be in the garbage can, guy.
CORA: Oh, Tony—don’t you like it either?
TONY: I love it! It’s worth two thousand dollars to me!
CORA: Hear that, Eddie? Now you can say that a member of the proletariat—You are a member of the proletariat, aren’t you, Tony?
TONY: What’s that?
CORA: Oh yes, you are. Hey, fellows—this is Tony Javier, a darned good piano-player. He and I grew up among the slums of Tondo. And there you are, Eddie! You can bring in the slums of Tondo just like that.
EDDIE: Oh no—not again!
PETE: How can you write about Art and not bring in the slums of Tondo?
BITOY: And the Ivory Tower.
CORA: And the proletariat. Like Tony here. And if he says the picture’s worth two thousand dollars to him—
EDDIE: I don’t care what he says. This picture’s not worth two cents to me. I don’t understand all this fuss about it. I don’t think it’s worth writing about at all. Oh, why did I ever learn to write!
CORA: Darling, who said you ever did?
EDDIE: Come on, Pete—help me out.
PETE: It’s easy as pie, Eddie. Just be angry with this picture; just pile on the social-consciousness.
EDDIE: I’m sick of writing about social-consciousness!
CORA: And besides, it’s not fashionable anymore.
PETE: You could begin with a
punchline: “If it’s not Proletarian, it’s not Art.”
EDDIE: Sure . . . Let me see . . . Something like this: “As I always say, Art is not autonomous; Art should not stand aloof from mundane affairs; Art should be socially significant; Art has a function . . .”
BITOY: Like making people brush their teeth?
PETE: Like making people brush their teeth.
BITOY: Then, Don Lorenzo is a highly successful artist.
PETE: He ought to go and work for Kolynos Toothpaste.
CORA: As I always say, the real artists of our time are the advertising men.
BITOY: Michelangelo plus Shakespeare equals a Kolynos ad.
PETE: My dear boy, compared to the functional perfection of a Kolynos ad, Michelangelo and Shakespeare were amateurs.
CORA: Shut up, Pete. Go on, Eddie. “Art has a function.” Now what?
PETE: Now he must emphasize the contrast between the wealth of artistic material lying all about us and the poverty of the local artist’s imagination.
CORA: Oh Christ—must I hear that again!
PETE: Cora, Cora—imagine being a critic and failing to say that!
BITOY [in mock-oratorical manner]: Outside are the slums of Tondo—and the battlefields of China—
PETER [same manner]: And what does the artist do?
CORA [same manner]: He dreams about Aeneas—
BITOY: He dreams about the Trojan War—
PETE: The most hackneyed theme in all Art!
BITOY: And he celebrates with exaggerated defiance values from which all content has vanished!
CORA: He looks back with nostalgic longing to the more perfect world of the Past!
PETE: And he paints this atrocious picture—the sickly product of a decadent imagination!
CORA: Of a decadent bourgeois imagination, Pete.
PETE: Of a decadent bourgeois imagination, Cora!
EDDIE: Will you idiots stop fooling and let me think!
PETE: But we’re not fooling, Eddie, and you don’t have to think! Your article practically writes itself. Just compare this [waving toward PORTRAIT], this piece of tripe with proletarian art as a whole. Proletarian Art—so clean, so wholesome, so vigorous, in spite of the vileness and misery with which it deals, because it is revolutionary, because it is realistic, because it is dynamic—the vanguard of human progress, the expression of forces which can have but one—only one!—inevitable outcome!
CORA: Paradise!
BITOY: Heaven itself!
PETE: No tyrants, no capitalists, no social classes—
BITOY: No halitosis and no B.O.!
CORA: Freedom from Kolynos! Freedom from Life Buoy!
PETE: And there you are, Eddie—you’ve got a fighting article!
EDDIE: Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know . . .
PETE: What’s wrong with it?
EDDIE: Well, as Cora says—it’s old hat; it’s going out of fashion.
BITOY: How can loving your fellowman ever go out of fashion?
PETE: My dear boy, you must distinguish between doing a thing and writing about it. We are all writers here; and it is our privilege to write about things, like loving one’s fellowman, or like organizing the proletariat. But the kind of writing we do—alas!—can go out of fashion. Look at Eddie here. He says he is sick of writing about social consciousness—which does not mean that he’s sick of social consciousness. Or does it?
EDDIE: Oh, no, no. How I love the lower classes!
CORA: If only they would use Kolynos—
BITOY: And take a bath every day—
PETE: And wear a necktie and coat like Eddie here—
EDDIE: And be able to discourse on Marxism and Trotskyism like Pete here—
CORA: Boys, boys—no bickering.
EDDIE: Cora—
CORA: Yes, darling?
EDDIE: Shut up.
CORA: That’s what I like about Eddie. He knows how to deal with common people. And if you love the common people so much, Eddie, we’ve got lots and lots of them right where we work. They’re down among the machines, and they’re there every day—right in the same building with us. They’re small and they smell of sweat and they live on fish. I’m surprised at you fellows. Here’s the proletariat right under your noses, day in and day out, but I never see you fellows going down to organize them—or to fraternize with them. As a matter of fact, I have noticed that you actually avoid going down to them. You always try to send somebody else to deal with them. Now why? Don’t they speak the same language—or are you afraid?
PETE: Cora, Cora, you misjudge us. What you take for fear is not fear at all—merely awe and reverence.
BITOY: Besides, it’s so much easier to love the proletariat from a distance.
PETE: A very safe distance.
CORA: From the smell of sweat and fish.
EDDIE: And that’s what all our social consciousness amounts to. Just yap-yap-yap from a safe literary distance. Just the yap-yap-yap of a literary fashion . . .
CORA: In other words—
CORA AND BITOY [together]: Just yap-yap-yap—
CORA: Period.
EDDIE: Remember when all the world was divided between the Boobs and the Bright Young People? We were the Bright Young People, and the Boobs were all those little hicks and Babbits who weren’t reading Mr. Sinclair Lewis and Mr. Mencken and the beautiful Mr. Cabell.
CORA: And then, suddenly, those little hicks became the Proletariat.
PETE: Yes—and everybody else were just horrid bourgeois and reactionaries.
EDDIE: And of course we were the Champions of the Proletariat, we were the Spearhead of Progress, we were the Revolution! Didn’t we know all about cartels and strikes and dialectics!
CORA: And if we never did go to fight in Spain—well, we did go to the Writers’ Congresses in New York.
EDDIE: And now we’ve divided the world into Fascists and Men of Good Will.
PETE: Ourselves being the Men of Good Will.
CORA: And Pink is no longer the fashionable color. We’re now wearing the patriotic red-white-and-blue. It’s no longer smart to be a fellow-traveler. We’ve all become Fourth-of-July orators.
EDDIE: One thing you can say for us anyway—when it comes to literary fashions, we’re always right out in front—
PETE: Always right out in the field—
CORA: Behaving as the wind behaves.
BITOY: I wonder what the fashion will be tomorrow?
CORA: I hope it won’t be loving those so polite and so heroic Japanese, the champions of Oriental dignity.
BITOY: Oh, impossible!
CORA: Because the marines will keep ’em flying?
BITOY: Because our fashions are always made in America—and imagine the comrades in America starting a fashion to love the Japs! Oh, there’s going to be a war, fellows—there’s going to be a war! And alas for Culture, alas for Art!
EDDIE: To hell with Culture! To hell with Art! I hope the war breaks out tomorrow!
PETE: I hope it breaks out tonight!
EDDIE: A really big, bloody, blasting war that blows up everything!
PETE: The bigger the better!
CORA: You fellows make me laugh.
PETE: Eddie, we make her laugh!
EDDIE [in falsetto]: We’re Pollyanna, the Glad Girl!
PETE AND EDDIE [joining hands and prancing about]: We are the happy, happy boys, who bid your lonely hearts rejoice!
CORA [drily]: Ha-ha-ha.
EDDIE: There, we made her laugh again!
CORA: Oh, you fellows are funny all right. Praying for a war—just so you won’t have to face up to that picture.
PETE: Eddie, don’t we want to face up to this picture?
CORA: No, you’re afraid.
EDDIE [in earnest]: To hell
with that picture! With a big war about to blow us up any moment, who wants to bother about pictures? The times we live in are too tremendous to waste on the pretty visions of poets and artists! Over in Europe, young men are dying by the thousands at this very moment! The future of Democracy and of the human race itself is in peril! And you want us to stand here and wrestle with one little painting by one little man! Think of what’s happening right now in England! Think of what’s happening right now in China! [He pauses.]
CORA: Go on.
EDDIE: Go on what?
CORA: Go on piling up more reasons for not looking at that picture. Go on justifying yourself for running away from it.
PETE: Now wait a minute. Why should we be afraid of this picture?
CORA: Because it is a work of art—and it makes us all feel very bogus and very impotent.
PETE: It doesn’t make me feel anything of the sort!
CORA: Oh no?
[A pause, during which they all look toward PORTRAIT.]
PETE: No . . . No, it doesn’t make me feel anything of the sort! Who is this Don Lorenzo that I should be afraid to face his portrait?
CORA: He is the creator, and we are the counterfeiters. He is the Angel of Judgment come out of the Past.
PETE: Well, I’m the Present—and I refuse to be judged by the Past! It is the Past rather that has to be judged by me! If there’s anything wrong with me, then the Past had something to do with it! Afraid? Who’s afraid? I stand here and I face you, Don Lorenzo, and I ask you: What were you and what did you do that you should have the right to judge me?
BITOY: Pete, Pete—he did what he could! He wrote, he painted, he organized, he fought in the Revolution.
PETE: And so what? How about afterward? Did he have the guts to go on fighting? Did he even go on painting? All his best work was done before the Revolution. What has he produced since then? Just this one picture—and he painted this only recently. How about all the time between? What was he doing during all those years?
[He looks around at his listeners; no one answers; and he smiles.]
You see? But Bitoy here will tell us. Bitoy knows.
BITOY: What do you mean, Pete?