Les Blancs

by Lorraine Hansberry

Even in your wretchedness—are you still at it!?

  (One of them flings him to the ground, CHARLIE is about to come to his rescue but hesitates and stands back, frozen)

  Go ahead! Destroy yourselves! You do not deserve to survive! YOU DO NOT DESERVE TO SURVIVE!

  (The fighting CHILDREN do not hear him but continue tearing away at each other. The others simply stare at the screaming old man with a quizzical expression on their faces.

  Getting up almost in delirium, rolling and slipping and falling in trying to get on his feet)

  FORGET EVERYTHING I HAVE TAUGHT YOU—!

  (He rises and stamps on the pots, violently tears baskets to pieces as the boys fight on)

  I RENOUNCE YOU AGAIN! … YOU AND YOUR PASSIONS AND ALL YOUR SEED! … MAY YOU PERISH FOREVER FROM THIS EARTH!!

  (He staggers with sudden pain and goes reelingly off toward the woods. The fight continues)

  Blackout

  SCENE 5

  A few hours later.

  Blue lights at rise. The CHILDREN sit in a stiffly arranged group at right. With apprehension. The old man is flat upon his back in his lean-to; one hand is on his stomach, another trails to the floor.

  Each child hands CHARLIE a flower, and he crosses from them to the lean-to of the Master. The old man says nothing. The child holds out the bouquet.

  CHARLIE (Tentatively, expecting rebuff)

  Flowers …

  HERMIT

  If you got hungry enough you’d kill me and eat me. Go away, Charlie, I’ve had enough.

  CHARLIE

  Music—

  HERMIT

  I do not want flowers, music or poetry.

  CHARLIE

  Beethoven—

  HERMIT

  No, not even Beethoven … You want to know why, don’t you? Well, because I hate you. You are human, therefore you are repulsive! All of you. But you in particular!

  (CHARLIE looks at him curiously—but does not move)

  Now, that is what is known as an insult and, in the face of them, people generally go away.

  CHARLIE

  I don’t like insults then.

  HERMIT

  Which only proves that you are an even more common type than I had supposed. Go away, Charlie, I have decided to die and I prefer to die alone, after all. Ah, you still don’t know what that is, do you? Well: you just stand there and watch!

  (He turns his face gruffly away and CHARLIE, with the flowers, comes closer and peers down at him intently as if a lesson, like all others, is to be rendered pronto. The old man turns to see the earnest face above his own and shouts)

  Get out of here!

  (Primitive or not, CHARLIE is hurt by the tone and starts to back out as a hurt child must)

  (Relenting)

  Charlie …

  (The boy halts; but the old man does not look directly at him)

  When it does happen—

  (Slowly, seriously)

  —and it will be soon now … not tonight, but soon enough … I will get cold and stiff and still and it will seem strange to you that I ever moved at all. It will seem then, boy, that I was a miracle … but it will happen. Because I am old and sick and worn-out—

  (A hoarse rasp)

  —And mortal. But what you have to know is this: when it happens you will all stand for a long time with your mouths hanging open with wonder. That’s all right, boy, it’s an awesome thing. It is in the nature of men to take life for granted; only the absence of life will seem to you the miracle, the greatest miracle—and by the time you understand that it should be the other way around—well, it will be too late, it won’t matter then.

  CHARLIE (Smiling)

  Hen cross road.

  HERMIT (Smiling the least bit in return)

  No, it really isn’t a joke. Some men, in my time, spent whole lifetimes writing books trying to prove that it was. But it isn’t. The thing that you have to know is when mine is over, and I have grown stiff and quiet for a while, I shall begin to exude a horrid odor, and what you must all do is dig the deepest hole that you possibly can and put me in it. It doesn’t matter which way and I don’t have to be wrapped in anything. I shall be glad enough to merge, atom for atom, with the earth again. And that is all there is to it.

  (CHARLIE looks at him quizzically, mystified)

  Ah, you are wondering, how will I get out? I—won’t! I will stay there forever. For always. For eternity.

  (Shouting irritably)

  Well, you’ve seen other things die! The birds, the fish we eat. They don’t come back, do they? The wood we burn, it doesn’t come back! Nothing comes back!

  (Looking at CHARLIE’s puzzled eyes)

  You are thinking that I am not a bird or a fish or a piece of wood. All right—I am not!

  (Raising up on his elbow, screaming feverishly)

  WELL, I CANNOT SOLVE THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY FOR YOU, CHARLIE!

  (Sinking back again, exhausted)

  And you don’t like that, do you? Thy name is man and thou art the greatest arrogance in the universe … Well—

  (He shrugs. Gently)

  —put a stone over my head when you have buried me and come and spend hours there pretending to have dialogues with me and you will feel better. It won’t mean a thing to me, but you will feel better.

  (Then, more softly)

  The truth of it is that you really are going to miss me, Charlie. All of you. You will discover an abstraction that we never got to because there wasn’t time. Affection. And, for some of you, something worse than that even, something more curious, more mysterious, that I shouldn’t have been able to explain if there had been time. Some of you—you for instance, because we have been closest—will feel it; it will make you feel as if you are being wrenched apart. It is called “grief” and it is born of love. That’s what I was really trying to tell you about this morning, Charlie. Love. But, you see, it wasn’t a very respectable sort of business in my time; as a matter of fact we tried any number of ways to get rid of it altogether.

  CHARLIE

  What use?

  HERMIT

  Use, boy? How to use love? Well, we never found that out either. Mostly it got in the way of important things. And, for all I know, they did get rid of it altogether …

  (Sitting up again with great determination)

  Now, look here, Charlie! Do you—do you like Lily?

  (CHARLIE shrugs)

  Well, you will. Agh! The problem is that you all will. You can’t imagine how glad I am that I shall be out of here before all of that confusion erupts! But that’s beside the point, the point is …

  (Once again lost in the Victorianism of his world)

  Well, listen, let’s put it this way, boy: you’ve got to take rather good care of Lily. What I mean is if there should be a time when—when there just isn’t enough food for all of you … well, Charlie, you’ve got to see to it that Lily isn’t the one who goes without. It mustn’t ever be Lily as long as there are three of you … Yes, I know I taught you to share; but you can’t have permanent rules about things. The only rules that count are those which will let the race …

  (He halts once again; weighs this thought and its persistence and decides afresh)

  … let the race continue.

  (CHARLIE leans forward intently and, as if pushed by a compulsion to get through to the boy, the older man strains forward in turn. In its matching intensity, the child’s pose takes on a startling resemblance to the old man’s)

  I’m avoiding a good part of the thing about Lily, Charlie. Mainly because I can’t help myself. I promised myself that I would tell you only the truth. Only the truth is so damned—Well, let’s have a go at it this way:

  (Slowly)

  Lily is different, you see. That is to say that someday perhaps, when one of you is feeling—well, as I am feeling now—that is to say, sick—Lily is the one who will make it tolerable by bringing you an extraordinary cup of tea and looking at you in a way that will be different from the way the o
thers—hang it, this is impossible!

  (He turns away in a fury at his own inability to deal honestly with the moment. CHARLIE stands and waits attentively)

  The truth is, Charlie, you are right: the thing I saw in your eyes before when I was explaining death. I am nothing more and nothing less than a bundle of mortality; an old package of passions and prejudices, of frightful fears and evasions and reasonings and a conscience, and deep in my heart I long for immortality as much as you do already without even understanding it. We all did—and cursed one another for it! And renounced one another for it! That is why I went into the woods, you see: I was outraged with mankind because it was as imperfect, as garrulous, as cruel as I.

  (Turning and looking at him)

  But tell me something, Charlie, I’ve puzzled out a lot about you. I know that you were prelingual when I found you; you must have been perhaps five or less when—it—happened as you seem to be about nine or ten now. Can’t really tell; with your diet you might be much older. But let us suppose you are ten … The thing is it seems strange to me that you’ve not seen human death before. I assumed at first that there had been more of you, some who died around you. But you don’t know human death. Why were there so few of you?

  (Raising up, and enunciating carefully as when he really means to be understood)

  How did you get here …?

  (CHARLIE begins a narrative in flowing articulate gesture)

  … Yes, Charlie …

  (Studying a gesture which sweeps from one place to another)

  Why, you were brought here! Yes, go on …

  (As a stone rolls, so did that vehicle)

  In a thing that moved! Yes, yes!

  (Great blades of grass grew here on that day; high like this)

  Yes, there were many trees then! I understand, boy, go on!

  (The outline of the humam figure)

  You were brought here by one like you—

  (No. CHARLIE points to the HERMIT)

  Like me!

  (CHARLIE nods, then shakes his head. The HERMIT peers at him. CHARLIE points to him again)

  Like me …?

  (CHARLIE nods and shakes his head. The HERMIT is confused. The boy picks up a flower: the lily)

  … Ah, by one like Lily, only big! A woman. Yes, yes, go on!

  (CHARLIE smiles and goes to him and reenacts the only kiss of his memory)

  She kissed each of you …

  (The sweeping gesture from one place to another)

  And went away … And then—and then—?

  (A circle of the arms collapses)

  … “The sun fell down.” Yes, I see, I see. Of course. A woman brought you here to the perimeter of danger and then went back. A nursery school teacher or counselor or—some great woman had tried to guarantee the human race and then went back for more! She chose to go back …

  (Throwing his head back in anguish)

  Dear God: what a strange tribe they were! Lunatics and heroes all.

  CHARLIE

  “Heroes”?

  HERMIT

  A hero was a fool … No—come here, Charlie.

  (He draws the boy to him)

  How ashamed we were of our heroes always. That one, like Lily, who brought you here, she was like the song I taught you. Do not ever be ashamed of what you feel when you think of her.

  (Lying back in obvious weakness)

  Listen, Charlie, I’ve not tried to weigh you down with a lot of moral teachings; for one thing there hasn’t been time. And so much of what I would have tried to tell you about all of that would have been absurd and obstructive, and you will get into your own habits in time about that. But look here, fellow, about that woman—well, for reasons that we never did agree on, the vast majority of humankind over the centuries became committed to the notion that—that this particular unpremeditated experiment of the cosmos which was the human race—well—that it ought to go on … It was a defiant notion, and only something as fine, as arrogant as man could have dreamed it up: only man could have dreamed of triumph over this reckless universe. But the truth is, we didn’t quite know how. In the beginning, you see, we had such a little to work with and we never quite believed our poets when they told us that, in the main, we were doing the best we could. We demanded more of ourselves than that; for above all else, boy, man was valiant. Really—

  (An admission)

  quite splendid, you know. Ah, the things he perceived! You will be like them: heroes all of you, merely to get on as long as you do.

  (THOMAS enters with a thing: a crude wheel with little clay scoops attached to its spokes)

  Hello, Thomas … Now, what is that, boy?

  (THOMAS brings it and puts it on the old man’s stomach)

  Well, it’s fetching, child, but what is it?

  Look, Charlie, Thomas has made something. Now the question is … what has Thomas made?

  (He turns the thing about, utterly confounded, THOMAS races out and then back again and, mutely, pours water from a pot into the topmost scoop so that its weight forces the wheel to turn and scoop up more water)

  Yes … yes!

  (Drawing THOMAS to him)

  I understand, boy … you have found the wheel as simply as this! Creation, what ignites this flame!

  (Smoothing THOMAS’s hair about his face with adulation)

  I should have christened thee “Leonardo,” Thomas!

  (In a rage of jealousy CHARLIE seizes the invention and hurls it out of the lean-to. THOMAS’s instinctive move to seize him in return is arrested by the realization that CHARLIE is stronger. The HERMIT shakes his head in distress)

  Ah, Charlie, Charlie! You can’t understand, can you, that it is something for all of you … Thomas saw a problem and invented something to solve it. It’s all right to be jealous, in fact it’s a fine thing; it means that you have placed value on something, and that is fine. But you must use your jealousy, Charlie. You must help Thomas to build another wheel, a bigger wheel, and then you won’t have to waste all that time carrying water and can do something else, sit around and sing if you like, or make up new tunes on your flute—in the time that you used to spend carrying water before Thomas invented the wheel. Of all the things you must learn, this is the most difficult and that from which you most will profit.

  (CHARLIE’s face continues ugly with resentment. THOMAS retreats cautiously backwards and turns, when a safe few feet away, to dart toward his invention)

  But the truth is, I don’t think you will learn it. The truth is, children, that I don’t think you will survive at all. I have been indulging myself, no more. Engaging in a timeless vanity of man. Pretending with you that it would be possible. Pretending that you wild little things could conceivably raise great Egypt and China again, claim the equations of Copernicus and Newton—ha! the perceptions of Shakespeare and Einstein! Pretending that I could hand to you the residue, badly learned and hardly retained, of—five thousand years of glory!—

  (Turning gruffly away)

  —on which I turned my back with all the petulance of our kind …

  (Turning back and shouting)

  WHY, YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT STEAM WILL DO YET! WE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO STEAM!

  (Crying out to THOMAS)

  Steam, Thomas! A force that would make your wheel turn with revolutions undreamed of in your primitive soul! Mere simple heated water … You don’t know it.

  (Outside, the CHILDREN, drawn by the excitement, come one after the other to observe THOMAS and his wheel)

  That foolish, foolish woman! That silly sentimental female! Why did she leave you here to torment me in my last absurd hours! It’s all finished with you, the lot of you! Our little adventure among the stars is over! Finis! The brief and stupid episode will end now! The universe will have peace now …

  (He falls back, spent, CHARLIE stands and holds out the lily. The old man lifts his head)

  Use … What use? Charlie, the uses of flowers were infinite …

  (He lies still. CHARLIE
gently places the flower by his face and after a moment crosses out to join the CHILDREN who, unaware that the old man has left them, are now clustered intently about the wreck of the wheel which THOMAS, squatting in the dirt, is patiently reconstructing)

  Curtain

  ROBERT NEMIROFF, Lorraine Hansberry’s literary executor, shared a working relationship with the playwright from the time of their marriage in 1953. Originally an editor, music publisher and award-winning songwriter, he produced her second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. Mr. Nemiroff’s own play, Postmark Zero, was presented on Broadway in 1965, in London and on national television. Since then his adaptations of Miss Hansberry’s posthumous works To Be Young, Gifted and Black and Les Blancs have been hailed by both the critics and the public. In 1974 he won the Tony Award (“Best Musical of the Year”) for Raisin, based on Ms. Hansberry’s play, which he produced and co-authored. He died in 1991.

  JEWELL HANDY GRESHAM NEMIROFF was married to Robert Nemiroff from 1967 to his death in 1991. A former English professor, she is now a writer and lives in New York State.

  MARGARET B. WILKERSON is Professor of Theater in the African American Studies Department at the University of California at Berkeley. She served as chair of the department from 1988 to 1994, and is former Director of the Center for the Study, Education and Advancement of Women at Berkeley. In January 1995 she will be the Director of Berkeley’s new center for Theater Arts and Chair of the Department of Dramatic Art. Her biography of Lorraine Hansberry will be published by Little, Brown, Inc., in 1995–96.