The Night of the Iguana

by Tennessee Williams

  CHARLOTTE: I don’t care.

  MISS FELLOWES: I do! I’m responsible for you.

  CHARLOTTE: I don’t want to go back to Texas!

  MISS FELLOWES: Yes, you do! And you will!

  [She takes Charlotte firmly by the arm and drags her away behind the hotel. Hannah comes out of her cubicle, where she had gone when Miss Fellowes pulled Charlotte out of it.]

  SHANNON [from his cubicle]: Ah, God. . . .

  [Hannah crosses to his cubicle and knocks by the door.]

  HANNAH: The coast is clear now, Mr. Shannon.

  [Shannon does not answer or appear. She sets down her portfolio to pick up Nonno’s white linen suit, which she had pressed and hung on the verandah. She crosses to his cubicle with it, and calls in.]

  HANNAH: Nonno? It’s almost time for supper! There’s going to be a lovely, stormy sunset in a few minutes.

  NONNO [from within]: Coming!

  HANNAH: So is Christmas, Nonno.

  NONNO: So is the Fourth of July!

  HANNAH: We’re past the Fourth of July. Hallowe’en comes next and then Thanksgiving. I hope you’ll come forth sooner. [She lifts the gauze net over his cubicle door.] Here’s your suit, I’ve pressed it. [She enters the cubicle.]

  NONNO: It’s mighty dark in here, Hannah.

  HANNAH: I’ll turn the light on for you.

  [Shannon comes out of his cubicle, like the survivor of a plane crash, bringing out with him several pieces of his clerical garb. The black heavy silk bib is loosely fastened about his panting, sweating chest. He hangs over it a heavy gold cross with an amethyst center and attempts to fasten on a starched round collar. Now Hannah comes back out of Nonno’s cubicle, adjusting the flowing silk tie which goes with her “artist” costume. For a moment they both face front, adjusting their two outfits. They are like two actors in a play which is about to fold on the road, preparing gravely for a performance which may be the last one.]

  HANNAH [glancing at Shannon]: Are you planning to conduct church services of some kind here tonight, Mr. Shannon?

  SHANNON: Goddamit, please help me with this! [He means the round collar.]

  HANNAH: [crossing behind him]: If you’re not going to conduct a church service, why get into that uncomfortable outfit?

  SHANNON: Because I’ve been accused of being defrocked and of lying about it, that’s why. I want to show the ladies that I’m still a clocked—frocked!—minister of the. . . .

  HANNAH: Isn’t that lovely gold cross enough to convince the ladies?

  SHANNON: No, they know I redeemed it from a Mexico City pawnshop, and they suspect that that’s where I got it in the first place.

  HANNAH: Hold still just a minute. [She is behind him, trying to fasten the collar.] There now, let’s hope it stays on. The buttonhole is so frayed I’m afraid that it won’t hold the button. [Her fear is instantly confirmed: the button pops out.]

  SHANNON: Where’d it go?

  HANNAH: Here, right under. . . .

  [She picks it up. Shannon rips the collar off, crumples it and hurls it off the verandah. Then he falls into the hammock, panting and twisting. Hannah quietly opens her sketch pad and begins to sketch him. He doesn’t at first notice what she is doing.]

  HANNAH [as she sketches]: How long have you been inactive in the, uh, Church, Mr. Shannon?

  SHANNON: What’s that got to do with the price of rice in China?

  HANNAH [gently]: Nothing.

  SHANNON: What’s it got to do with the price of coffee beans in Brazil?

  HANNAH: I retract the question. With apologies.

  SHANNON: To answer your question politely, I have been inactive in the Church for all but one year since I was ordained a minister of the Church.

  HANNAH [sketching rapidly and moving forward a bit to see his face better]: Well, that’s quite a sabbatical, Mr. Shannon.

  SHANNON: Yeah, that’s . . . quite a . . . sabbatical.

  [Nonno’s voice is heard from his cubicle repeating a line of poetry several times.]

  SHANNON: Is your grandfather talking to himself in there?

  HANNAH: No, he composes out loud. He has to commit his lines to memory because he can’t see to write them or read them.

  SHANNON: Sounds like he’s stuck on one line.

  HANNAH: Yes. I’m afraid his memory is failing. Memory failure is his greatest dread. [She says this almost coolly, as if it didn’t matter.]

  SHANNON: Are you drawing me?

  HANNAH: Trying to. You’re a very difficult subject. When the Mexican painter Siqueiros did his portrait of the American poet Hart Crane he had to paint him with closed eyes because he couldn’t paint his eyes open—there was too much suffering in them and he couldn’t paint it.

  SHANNON: Sorry, but I’m not going to close my eyes for you. I’m hypnotizing myself—at least trying to—by looking at the light on the orange tree . . . leaves.

  HANNAH: That’s all right. I can paint your eyes open.

  SHANNON: I had one parish one year and then I wasn’t defrocked but I was . . . locked out of my church.

  HANNAH: Oh . . . Why did they lock you out of it?

  SHANNON: Fornication and heresy . . . in the same week.

  HANNAH [sketching rapidly]: What were the circumstances of the . . . uh . . . first offense?

  SHANNON: Yeah, the fornication came first, preceded the heresy by several days. A very young Sunday-school teacher asked to see me privately in my study. A pretty little thing—no chance in the world—only child, and both of her parents were spinsters, almost identical spinsters wearing clothes of the opposite sexes. Fooling some of the people some of the time but not me—none of the time. . . . [He is pacing the verandah with gathering agitation, and the all-inclusive mockery that his guilt produces.] Well, she declared herself to me—wildly.

  HANNAH: A declaration of love?

  SHANNON: Don’t make fun of me, honey!

  HANNAH: I wasn’t.

  SHANNON: The natural, or unnatural, attraction of one . . . lunatic for . . . another . . . that’s all it was. I was the god-damnedest prig in those days that even you could imagine. I said, let’s kneel down together and pray and we did, we knelt down, but all of a sudden the kneeling position turned to a reclining position on the rug of my study and . . . When we got up? I struck her. Yes, I did, I struck her in the face and called her a damned little tramp. So she ran home. I heard the next day she’d cut herself with her father’s straightblade razor. Yeah, the paternal spinster shaved.

  HANNAH: Fatally?

  SHANNON: Just broke the skin surface enough to bleed a little, but it made a scandal.

  HANNAH: Yes, I can imagine that it . . . provoked some comment.

  SHANNON: That it did, it did that. [He pauses a moment in his fierce pacing as if the recollection still appalled him.] So the next Sunday when I climbed into the pulpit and looked down over all of those smug, disapproving, accusing faces uplifted, I had an impulse to shake them—so I shook them. I had a prepared sermon—meek, apologetic—I threw it away, tossed it into the chancel. Look here, I said, I shouted, I’m tired of conducting services in praise and worship of a senile delinquent—yeah, that’s what I said, I shouted! All your Western theologies, the whole mythology of them, are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent and, by God, I will not and cannot continue to conduct services in praise and worship of this, this . . . this. . . . .

  HANNAH [quietly]: Senile delinquent?

  SHANNON: Yeah, this angry, petulant old man. I mean he’s represented like a bad-tempered childish old, old, sick, peevish man—I mean like the sort of old man in a nursing home that’s putting together a jigsaw puzzle and can’t put it together and gets furious at it and kicks over the table. Yes, I tell you they do that, all our theologies do it—accuse God of being a cruel, senile delinquent, blaming the world and brutally punishing all he created for his own faults in construction, and then, ha-ha, yeah—a thunderstorm broke that Sunday. . . .

  HANNAH: You mean outside the churc
h?

  SHANNON: Yep, it was wilder than I was! And out they slithered, they slithered out of their pews to their shiny black cockroach sedans, ha-ha, and I shouted after them, hell, I even followed them halfway out of the church, shouting after them as they. . . . [He stops with a gasp for breath.]

  HANNAH: Slithered out?

  SHANNON: I shouted after them, go on, go home and close your house windows, all your windows and doors, against the truth about God!

  HANNAH: Oh, my heavens. Which is just what they did—poor things.

  SHANNON: Miss Jelkes honey, Pleasant Valley, Virginia, was an exclusive suburb of a large city and these poor things were not poor—materially speaking.

  HANNAH [smiling a bit]: What was the, uh, upshot of it?

  SHANNON: Upshot of it? Well, I wasn’t defrocked. I was just locked out of the church in Pleasant Valley, Virginia, and put in a nice little private asylum to recuperate from a complete nervous breakdown as they preferred to regard it, and then, and then I . . . I entered my present line—tours of God’s world conducted by a minister of God with a cross and a round collar to prove it. Collecting evidence!

  HANNAH: Evidence of what, Mr. Shannon?

  SHANNON [a touch shyly now]: My personal idea of God, not as a senile delinquent, but as a. . . .

  HANNAH: Incomplete sentence.

  SHANNON: It’s going to storm tonight—a terrific electric storm. Then you will see the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon’s conception of God Almighty paying a visit to the world he created. I want to go back to the Church and preach the gospel of God as Lightning and Thunder . . . and also stray dogs vivisected and . . . and . . . and. . . . [He points out suddenly toward the sea.] That’s him! There he is now! [He is pointing out at a blaze, a majestic apocalypse of gold light, shafting the sky as the sun drops into the Pacific.] His oblivious majesty—and here I am on this . . . dilapidated verandah of a cheap hotel, out of season, in a country caught and destroyed in its flesh and corrupted in its spirit by its gold-hungry conquistadors that bore the flag of the Inquisition along with the Cross of Christ. Yes . . . and. . . . [There is a pause.]

  HANNAH: Mr. Shannon . . . ?

  SHANNON: Yes . . . ?

  HANNAH [smiling a little]: I have a strong feeling you will go back to the Church with this evidence you’ve been collecting, but when you do and it’s a black Sunday morning, look out over the congregation, over the smug, complacent faces for a few old, very old faces, looking up at you, as you begin your sermon, with eyes like a piercing cry for something to still look up to, something to still believe in. And then I think you’ll not shout what you say you shouted that black Sunday in Pleasant Valley, Virginia. I think you will throw away the violent, furious sermon, you’ll toss it into the chancel, and talk about . . . no, maybe talk about . . . nothing . . . just. . . .

  SHANNON: What?

  HANNAH: Lead them beside still waters because you know how badly they need the still waters, Mr. Shannon.

  [There is a moment of silence between them.]

  SHANNON: Lemme see that thing. [He seizes the sketch pad from her and is visibly impressed by what he sees. There is another moment which is prolonged to Hannah’s embarrassment.]

  HANNAH: Where did you say the patrona put your party of ladies?

  SHANNON: She had her . . . Mexican concubines put their luggage in the annex.

  HANNAH: Where is the annex?

  SHANNON: Right down the hill back of here, but all of my ladies except the teen-age Medea and the older Medea have gone out in a glass-bottomed boat to observe the . . . submarine marvels.

  HANNAH: Well, when they come back to the annex they’re going to observe my water colors with some marvelous submarine prices marked on the mattings.

  SHANNON: By God, you’re a hustler, aren’t you, you’re a fantastic cool hustler.

  HANNAH: Yes, like you, Mr. Shannon. [She gently removes her sketch pad from his grasp.] Oh, Mr. Shannon, if Nonno, Grandfather, comes out of his cell number 4 before I get back, will you please look out for him for me? I won’t be longer than three shakes of a lively sheep’s tail. [She snatches up her portfolio and goes briskly off the verandah.]

  SHANNON: Fantastic, absolutely fantastic.

  [There is a windy sound in the rain forest and a flicker of gold light like a silent scattering of gold coins on the verandah; then the sound of shouting voices. The Mexican boys appear with a wildly agitated creature—a captive iguana tied up in a shirt. They crouch down by the cactus clumps that are growing below the verandah and hitch the iguana to a post with a piece of rope. Maxine is attracted by the commotion and appears on the verandah above them.]

  PEDRO: Tenemos fiesta!*

  PANCHO: Comeremos bien.

  PEDRO: Damela, damela! Yo la ataré.

  PANCHO: Yo la cojí—yo la ataré!

  PEDRO: Lo que vas a hacer es dejarla escapar.

  MAXINE: Ammarla fuerte! Ole, ole! No la dejes escapar. Dejala moverse! [To Shannon.] They caught an iguana.

  SHANNON: I’ve noticed they did that, Maxine.

  [She is holding her drink deliberately close to him. The Germans have heard the commotion and crowd onto the verandah. Frau Fahrenkopf rushes over to Maxine.]

  FRAU FAHRENKOPF: What is this? What’s going on? A snake? Did they catch a snake?

  MAXINE: No. Lizard.

  FRAU FAHRENKOPF [with exaggerated revulsion]: Ouuu . . . lizard! [She strikes a grotesque attitude of terror as if she were threatened by Jack the Ripper.]

  SHANNON [to Maxine]: You like iguana meat, don’t you?

  FRAU FAHRENKOPF: Eat? Eat? A big lizard?

  MAXINE: Yep, they’re mighty good eating—taste like white meat of chicken.

  [Frau Fahrenkopf rushes back to her family. They talk excitedly in German about the iguana.]

  SHANNON: If you mean Mexican chicken, that’s no recommendation. Mexican chickens are scavengers and they taste like what they scavenge.

  MAXINE: Naw, I mean Texas chicken.

  SHANNON [dreamily]: Texas . . . chicken. . . .

  [He paces restlessly down the verandah. Maxine divides her attention between his tall, lean figure, that seems incapable of stillness, and the wriggling bodies of the Mexican boys lying on their stomachs half under the verandah—as if she were mentally comparing two opposite attractions to her simple, sensual nature. Shannon turns at the end of the verandah and sees her eyes fixed on him.]

  SHANNON: What is the sex of this iguana, Maxine?

  MAXINE: Hah, who cares about the sex of an iguana . . . [He passes close by her.] . . . except another . . . iguana?

  SHANNON: Haven’t you heard the limerick about iguanas? [He removes her drink from her hand and it seems as if he might drink it, but he only sniffs it, with an expression of repugnance. She chuckles.]

  There was a young gaucho named Bruno

  Who said about love, This I do know:

  Women are fine, and sheep are divine,

  But iguanas are—Numero Uno!

  [On “Numero Uno” Shannon empties Maxine’s drink over the railing, deliberately onto the humped, wriggling posterior of Pedro, who springs up with angry protests.]

  PEDRO: Me cágo . . . hijo de la . . .

  SHANNON: Qué? Qué?

  MAXINE: Véte!

  [Shannon laughs viciously. The iguana escapes and both boys rush shouting after it. One of them dives on it and recaptures it at the edge of the jungle.]

  PANCHO: La iguana se escapé.*

  MAXINE: Cojela, cojela! La cojíste? Si no la cojes, te morderá el culo. La cojíste?

  PEDRO: La cojí.

  [The boys wiggle back under the verandah with the iguana.]

  MAXINE [returning to Shannon]: I thought you were gonna break down and take a drink, Reverend.

  SHANNON: Just the odor of liquor makes me feel nauseated.

  MAXINE: You couldn’t smell it if you got it in you. [She touches his sweating forehead. He brushes her hand off like an insect.] Hah! [She crosses over to the liquor cart, and he
looks after her with a sadistic grin.]

  SHANNON: Maxine honey, whoever told you that you look good in tight pants was not a sincere friend of yours.

  [He turns away. At the same instant, a crash and a hoarse, started outcry are heard from Nonno’s cubicle.]

  MAXINE: I knew it, I knew it! The old man’s took a fall!

  [Shannon rushes into the cubicle, followed by Maxine.

  [The light has been gradually, steadily dimming during the incident of the iguana’s escape. There is, in effect, a division of scenes here, though it is accomplished without a blackout or curtain. As Shannon and Maxine enter Nonno’s cubicle, Herr Fahrenkopf appears on the now twilit verandah. He turns on an outsize light fixture that is suspended from overhead, a full pearly-moon of a light globe that gives an unearthly luster to the scene. The great pearly globe is decorated by night insects, large but gossamer moths that have immolated themselves on its surface: the light through their wings gives them an opalescent color, a touch of fantasy.

  [Now Shannon leads the old poet out of his cubicle, onto the facing verandah. The old man is impeccably dressed in snow-white linen with a black string tie. His leonine mane of hair gleams like silver as he passes under the globe.]

  NONNO: No bones broke, I’m made out of India rubber!

  SHANNON: A traveler-born falls down many times in his travels.

  NONNO: Hannah? [His vision and other senses have so far deteriorated that he thinks he is being led out by Hannah.] I’m pretty sure I’m going to finish it here.