Frolic of His Own

by William Gaddis

  —Takes care of your copyright then, already protected if it was never published or performed in public anyplace, send it to yourself in a sealed envelope you don’t even have an audience of one if it never circulated out in the . . .

  —I’m coming to that, just be patient. I sent it to some television director I can’t remember his name, that was back when I wrote it when television was still occasionally doing things with some kind of artistic and intellectual content not this rubbish where a man’s rushing around in a simian crouch jamming an enormous pistol at you, mindless action for the sake of action just like everything else out there, no. No, when Hector’s body is dragged around the walls of Troy there’s action, action with some meaning in it because Hector has meaning as a hero, put him up against Achilles and . . .

  —Don’t remember his name?

  —Hector?

  —This television director you sent your play to.

  —No. It was a nice name like Armstrong, Montgomery but, no, I can’t remember.

  —He like it?

  —No. He rejected it, he . . .

  —You have his rejection letter? Did you sign a release? Usually they won’t even read something without a release, won’t even send it back without a postpaid envelope.

  —It’s around here somewhere no, I didn’t sign a release. He probably never read it himself anyhow, probably some twit of a secretary right out of business school who’d ask which side George Washington fought on.

  —Name couldn’t have been this Kiester could it?

  —God no! I said it was a nice name didn’t I? You think I’d have submitted it to somebody named Kiester? That whole gang out there that’s why I was told to call a firm like yours, dealing with a Montgomery or an Armstrong I would have called in Davis Polk or Cravath, but Kiester? you follow me?

  —Can’t say I do, Mister Crease.

  —Go after that gang out there you’d better get a Jewish lawyer, that’s what they told me.

  —Why you were real surprised to see me walk in here.

  —Well I, matter of fact, yes, I . . .

  —Don’t mean anything by it, no. You can send me right back you know, pay the consultation fee and that’s it.

  —Well that’s not, no, no that’s not what I meant at all we, after all Mister Basie we, you’re obviously a civilized man with your theatre experience and the, and Yeats of course yes I think we’re off to a good start here aren’t we?

  —That’s good to know.

  —Getting into slavery here and that whole sentimental myth about the old antebellum South, Thomas is leaving and trying to get his mother up to stay at Quantness while he’s gone and the Major . . .

  —You come to think about it though, it’s those Jews in Hollywood you’re talking about that pretty much gave us that myth, spread it around.

  —That may well be yes, but . . .

  —Butterfly McQueen twittering around and old Hattie McDaniel grousing all loving and faithful, horses and beautiful women and Leslie Howard off to fight the good fight?

  —Just a shame they didn’t win it, two separate countries like we’ve got right now but I mean really separate, borders, passports, import duties, rural economy down there growing God knows what for the mills in the North and religion, God, talk about another country, there’s your nice Baptist lady on election day right behind the local bootlegger both of them voting dry, ever been in the South? Beautiful horses and bad teeth, sit down in a restaurant first thing you’re offered is coffee, then the salad course and you finally get to the meal, getting it backwards like everything else. Ever been there?

  —Been in Texas but that was . . .

  —Well Texas of course. Texas is unspeakable. Here, you’ll see what I mean.

  THE MAJOR

  Your, ah, mother, Thomas? Is she all settled in?

  THOMAS

  (SNAPPING HIS WATCH OPEN NERVOUSLY, LOOKS UP)

  I had to send Henry down in a rig to get her. No one had told me about John Israel.

  THE MAJOR

  Told you what.

  THOMAS

  Why, that he ran off.

  THE MAJOR

  (TRANSFERRING HIS INDIGNATION)

  John Israel, run off? We’ll have them out to hunt him, and fit punishment . . .

  THOMAS

  No, it happened in winter, months ago.

  THE MAJOR

  Well why didn’t . . . they didn’t anyone tell us. William?

  WILLIAM

  (TURNING TO THOMAS SLOWLY, WITH A SMILE OF INNOCENT BUT ALMOST CUNNING INTIMACY)

  ‘The punishment it inflicts on those who refuse to obey it is nothing more than a means of compelling them to be free . . . ’?

  THE MAJOR

  (TO KANE)

  Yes, you might have noticed the staircase out here? This same niggra John Israel built it. I offered Thomas six hundred dollars for John Israel. They’d taught him to read down there at The Bells. Isn’t that the gratitude you bound to expect? Teaching a niggra like that to read, that he’s bound to run off with his head full of nonsense? The newel post out there, it’s carved like a pineapple, and then to go teaching him to read? A niggra that can turn wood like that, filling his head up full of ideas? How do they expect he’s going to turn out?

  KANE

  A black Epictetus?

  THE MAJOR

  Yes, a black . . . what?

  KANE

  The philosopher Epictetus, a Greek slave . . .

  THE MAJOR

  Yes, they had the proper idea of these things now, didn’t they. Aristotle, he was the Greek philosopher, I can show you somewhere what he had to say about natural slaves. That there’s some just naturally meant to be slaves.

  KANE

  Ah . . . but to let a man’s colour decide it, sir? Why, every Greek knew the threat of enslavement. Think, on the day he set off to war, how he must have pondered what the poet meant with ‘The day a man’s enslaved, Zeus robs him of half his virtue.’

  THE MAJOR

  (HEATEDLY)

  Exactly, sir! And who ended up taken prisoner and enslaved? Those with neither the skill to win nor the courage to die, like these niggras out here. What do we get over here from Africa? Not the ones with the courage to fight off the slavers, or smart enough to escape them, no. What we get here is the natural slaves, they’re the ones that are already slaves where they come from, that can’t do a thing but what they’re told, that have to have everything laid out for them right down to the line, that can’t do a thing but follow orders. We don’t get the warrior class, the aristocrats . . .

  (PAUSES, BUT IS PROVOKED BY KANE’S SILENT APPRAISAL OF HIM)

  Yes, I can show you in these same books, sir. The Acropolis there in Athens, Greece, it was built the same way this house was built.

  KANE

  (PROMPTS, AS THOUGH PRIVATELY AMUSED)

  For the same ‘arms-bearing aristocracy . . . ’

  THE MAJOR

  Indeed it is, sir. I can show you in any Southern camp right today, the courtesies between officers and men, if you care to see these . . . arms-bearing aristocrats.

  (TURNING TOWARD THE DOOR)

  If you care to see the stables, Mister Kane?

  (CROSSES TO THE DOOR, STOPS AND TURNS IN THE DOORWAY)

  My own men, sir, have never wanted for my respect.

  THE MAJOR pauses in the hall, looking round as KANE follows him, exiting left.

  WILLIAM

  (EAGERLY)

  Thomas, you’re leaving?

  THOMAS

  (ABRUPT, VEXATIOUS)

  Why, should I wait? Wait and see everything up there taken? What’s mine, the way all this is yours?

  WILLIAM

  (DISCONCERTED, WITHDRAWING A STEP)

  No, you . . . you go. You go, Thomas.

  THOMAS

  Yes, and think what you like. Think what you like of my leaving.

  WILLIAM

  (DISTRESSED)

  Anything I said Thomas, back in the pa
rlour, anything I said there with Papa, Thomas . . .

  THOMAS

  (PAUSES, STUDYING HIM)

  You knew, Will, didn’t you. About John Israel.

  WILLIAM

  (MOCKING, AS THOUGH OF THEIR PAST FRIENDSHIP)

  The ‘noble savage . . . ’

  THOMAS

  (ABRUPTLY TAKING HIS SHOULDER)

  You helped him!

  WILLIAM

  (FALTERING BACK)

  The way we’d talked Thomas . . .

  THOMAS

  You . . . helped him run off, Will?

  WILLIAM

  (DEFENSIVELY DESPERATE)

  Wasn’t he the ‘noble savage’ when we used to talk? That was naturally good, yes, like it was myself, to be free, the ‘natural goodness of man’ and then . . . with the war, and both of us left here and me no better off than him, except I could do what he couldn’t do for me . . .

  THOMAS

  Yes, free him, for what! To be hunted down somewhere and killed?

  Seeing someone offstage left, where he is facing, THOMAS waves, calls out as he descends from the veranda and WILLIAM follows to downstage left.

  (CALLING)

  Here, Henry? You bring me that bay mare round here, saddled.

  WILLIAM

  (APPEALING, HORRIFIED AT THIS INTERPRETATION)

  Thomas . . . no! No, it was if life could be good, the day I saw that if life could be good at all then it had to be good for all men . . .

  THOMAS

  (AS DERISIVE AFTERTHOUGHT)

  Yes, there, why didn’t you set Henry off, your own boy instead of mine?

  WILLIAM

  But . . . Henry, he wouldn’t have understood . . .

  THOMAS

  And my mother, do you think she understood? Left alone down there at The Bells with only old Ambers and Emma to help? And after your father offered to buy him when I brought him up here to work on that staircase, when our barns needed mending at home . . .

  (TAKES OUT HIS WATCH, SNAPS IT OPEN AND LOOKS AT IT IMPATIENTLY)

  WILLIAM

  (WITHDRAWING A STEP, QUIETLY ASSERTIVE)

  You were too proud to sell him Thomas. You only brought him up here to show. A niggra that could read and turn wood, to show what you’d made of him down there. Proud, like you were of me . . .

  —This John Israel now, when does he come in.

  —Into the play? you mean come onstage? He doesn’t.

  —Well then how come they . . .

  —Because that’s the idea, Mister Basie. Thomas’ mother has taught him to read, that was against the law in some of the slave states so here he is suspended, between what he is and what he never can be. I had an experience last year that will give you the idea. I was robbed. On the Fifth Avenue bus. The Second or Third Avenue you could expect it, but the Fifth Avenue bus? I carry my cash in my left trouser pocket and getting off, changing buses, a tall black fellow right in front of me fell, dark suit, nicely dressed, well built like you are, he fell on the step there with his trouser cuff caught on the open door and I came down holding his shoulders so he wouldn’t fall all the way, land on the street. He was twisting and turning, having a hard time freeing his trouser cuff or that’s what I thought, what I was supposed to think, somebody pressing behind me but I was so busy holding him up I hardly noticed till finally he got loose, shook himself off and walked away he didn’t even turn to thank me, have to say I was annoyed but I thought, there you are, that’s New York. Not even that’s a black for you but just that’s New York. The driver wants to speak to you somebody said, they took your wallet the driver told me, you should call the police. No it’s right here I showed him, I carry it in the inside breast pocket like everyone, then a woman standing there said no they did, they robbed you. I was afraid to say anything she said, she was a coloured woman too, they robbed you. They? There were three of them, but here’s my wallet I showed her, thanked her, got on the next bus and rode six blocks reading the paper suddenly thought, suddenly put my hand in my pocket and it was gone. I couldn’t believe it. Why I’d always carried cash in that trouser pocket, nobody’s going to get a hand in there without your knowing it but it was gone. I couldn’t believe it.

  —You mind if I smoke?

  —What? Oh, if you, well no go ahead and smoke if you, you see they all knew what was happening, this coloured woman, the bus driver sitting up there like a tub of pale lard watching it in his rear view mirror now that’s New York. A friend of mine did jury duty on a mugging case, the judge picking the jury asked if any of them had ever been mugged and every hand went up, you come out relieved that you weren’t stabbed. They all knew I was being robbed except me, I was even cooperating.

  —You get the police?

  —No, I just said I got on the next bus. I couldn’t have identified them if I had, probably why he turned away without thanking me so I wouldn’t get a good look at him.

  —All look the same though, don’t we.

  —That’s not, no! That’s not what I meant at all. Of course I was annoyed, not the money but nobody likes to be made a fool of, but I thought about it later and realized I was just giving something back, paying my dues you might call it. All I’ve been given in this world you can just look around but you take these three fellows, they’d probably been given damned little but look what they’d done with it. Probably’d never made it through sixth grade but the skill they pulled this act off with, the sheer artistry, smooth, unhurried, talk about theatre and the willing suspension of disbelief there I am helping the one down on the step while the other one’s going through my pockets with the third one covering him? Didn’t even bother with the wallet, nothing that obvious, no threats, nothing ugly, an elegant piece of theatre and they were gone, didn’t even wait for the applause. They were just doing their best with what they’d been given, la carrière ouverte aux talents as Napoleon had it, you had to admire it. You see what I’m getting at.

  A smoke ring billowed from the chair, growing larger, heavy with purpose. —Afraid I do, Oscar . . . and another pursuing it, careening off at a tangent. —Afraid I do.

  —Yes well, because the whole idea there, what I meant was simply making the best with what we . . .

  —I know what you meant. Take this idea about natural slaves now, you believe all that?

  —I don’t have to be a murderer to write a murder mystery do I? The Major believes it that’s the point, to make the Major believable as a character defending his beliefs and principles here, it’s right here a few pages later he’s talking with Mister Kane again.

  THE MAJOR

  (SENTENTIOUSLY RETURNING TO TOPICS OF CONSEQUENCE)

  That interested me what you had to say earlier, the Greek philosopher that said ‘The man without fear cannot be a slave.’ The exact thing I was saying myself, I believe. Yes, they had an idea of these things, the Greeks did, looking after the natural order of things.

  KANE

  (MASKING HIS AGITATION WITH EFFORT)

  And the slaves who worked in the mines, what of them? Who worked in the mines until they died, because they had no immortal souls, and could die in the darkness, was that it? Was that the natural order?

  THE MAJOR

  Yes, we’ve improved there, as a purely practical question. They are too valuable for such treatment here. When they are sick or injured, who takes care of them? No sir! We cannot afford to throw them aside here, the way men who can’t work any longer are thrown aside by the Yankees. Of course it’s the natural order. Why, hasn’t Lincoln himself let the Southern leaders know that he has no intention or power to interfere with slavery down here?

  —You mean he’s acting on his principles, the Major is? Or he’s digging them up afterwards to justify his whole . . .

  —That’s the whole idea isn’t it? It’s all up there in a book by George Fitzhugh from before the Civil War, Cannibals All! it’s right up there somewhere, take it and read it, why the Major brings up this whole question of wage slaves in the North we get into
all that later, when Thomas takes over these coal mines in the second act and . . .

  —Doesn’t sound much like the movie.

  —I’m not talking about movies! I’m talking about ideas.

  —I thought we’re talking about this movie, why you had me to come all the way out here, talking about infringement aren’t we? this movie you say they stole from you? You talk about ideas this, ideas that, you can’t copyright them. Talk about these natural slaves, you just finished saying it’s all right up there in Fitzhugh didn’t you? I know it is. I’ve read it. They can read it, anybody out there can read it, lift whatever they want to. You tell me this play here is a play of ideas, I have to tell you I don’t think you’ve got much of a case.

  —Well that’s not, wait a minute, you’re not leaving? We haven’t even got to the main . . .

  —No, just stretch my legs, pace up and down helps me talk while I’m thinking, like the courtroom, makes the juices flow. I see you laid out there what I’m really seeing is this jury, all . . .

  —If you want to pace up and down you’ll have to do it in the hall, here you can’t even wait, the phone there, can you hand me the phone? I can’t quite, yes. Hello? Yes hello, what . . .

  —Down the hall on the left?

  —On the right. Hello? Yes well what is it now I’m busy, I’m . . . No I’m in conference, in a conference with a new . . . No but can you just tell me quickly what’s the matter? I’m . . . What do you mean it’s too terrible, if it’s so terrible you can’t even talk about it why did you call, can’t you just tell me quickly what it’s about? What . . . ? Well not this minute no, no I told you I’m in conference with a new lawyer who . . . It’s not about the accident no, it’s my . . . Well it is really important! It’s about my . . . All right then! Maybe it’s not as important as what you’re calling for but if you won’t even tell me what it’s about how can I . . . about Bobbie? What, go where . . . ? All right do all that first then, pick out the dress and go to the shoe store and stop at the hairdresser and then come over if you . . . yes, goodbye. Mister Basie . . . ?