by Alan Filewod
Clem: Dig it.
Ruthie: And your serendipitous Babe, how come he only plays in four four when Bela Bartok taps it out in ⅝, ⅞ all the time.
Clem: Babe? But Ruthie dearest, his seraphic syncopations!
Austra: Oh, yeah, to the core: the hidden thing, the subconscious that lies in the body; you feel this, you play this. It is jazz, Ruthie, that’s what it is.
Ruthie: I know what jazz is, young lady, I’m talking about genius. Genius on the piano, genius on the harpsichord, music is music, but it’s genius I’m talking about.
Clem: And welcome, here it is, right here in our club. Ruthie dearest. Patience! Nature needs nurture: il faut arroser les fleurs!
Kennedy: I’m a genius all the time.
Clem: Don’t you fret your fugal stretti, Ruthie dearest, they are all tutti musici, tutti orchester, tutti fortissimi pianissimi – look at Herbie here, whose fingers fly across the strings like crazed tarantulas. You know, sometimes, just a little, he reminds me of Boris –
Ruthie: – Boris, now there was a maestro.
Austra: Boris?
Clem: My brother. He played the cello – with the Hart House Quartet –
Ruthie: You should tell them about Boris.
Clem: – but what is Boris to Herbie or Herbie to Boris? (Ruthie exits up to her sewing machine) The young ones don’t want to hear about the past, the past is boring, they want to crack open the non-alcoholic champagne substitute and burn, burn, burn into the now. No-surname Shirley here never talks about the past, she has no past, she was born yesterday. She is of the now, the everlasting present, no past, no future, an eternal immediacy in which the musicians of the House of Hambourg play forever.
Ruthie: (Looking at the fatal letter) I don’t think so.
Clem: Why not? They are happy here, huh, boys?
Black Hat: Not bad, Clement, but how about some dough?
Babe: There’s a hole in my shoe.
Herbie: I’ve been living on hot dogs for two weeks.
Clem: All right, all right (Paying them). You see, oh infanta Shirley, we fight for our boys. We tell the CBC again and again – you must play their music! we tell those lousy critics Durov Idiotski at the Globe and Stale: go stuff it in the wazoo! We give tutti musici all their ten dollars tonight, eh Ruthie? so this is the jazz mecca and they will play here for the next hundred years!
Ruthie: I don’t think so.
Austra: It’s a long time, Mr Clement.
Ruthie: There’s a letter here from the city, Clem. The subway is coming through Cumberland Street. The Club will have to move.
Musicians: Again? (etc)
Clem: But we can’t move, we can’t afford to move again.
Ruthie: It’s a letter from the city. Clem, we’ve got to do something.
(Silence.)
Clem: I’m a visionary, not a businessman. Black Hat, Herbie, Kennedy, Babe. My dear, dear, dearest boys. You must never give up. No matter what happens, doesn’t matter, this club, some other club, the basement of your Aunt Tilly, you must continue. An artist’s love of his art must be so big as it will carry him over everything, every mountainous disappointment, like the elephants of Hannibal. Kennedy, son, play something for me?
Kennedy: You play something, Clem.
(Clem hesitates, all Musicians urge him on.)
Kennedy: C’mon play something.
Clem: Rachmaninoff’s C sharp minor prelude, perhaps.
(Musicians stare at the floor, cough, etc.)
Clem: No, my fingers are stiff today, the weather, go ahead Kennedy, and watch that left hand, all right? (As Kennedy plays) It’s very interesting, very interesting. Not the sort of thing I would play of course. Don’t have the knack, really. In my youth, Debussy was ugly; Ravel was ugly; Stravinsky was ugly; Schönberg was worse than ugly. These boys are cherubim. (Emphatically) We are spreading the gospel of music.
(Clem exits. Austra follows him, but he stops her with a look)
SCENE THREE
Ruthie: It’s a letter from the city.
Austra: Money. Money, money, money.
Musicians: (Echo:) Money, money, money.
Austra: A hundred bucks in your back pocket. (Starts to talk into Babe’s ear, who responds with drumming)
Herbie: We’ll just have to play somewhere else.
Kennedy: So go to the Park Plaza or something.
(Herbie and Kennedy exit. Black Hat stays glumly put. Babe’s drumming becomes a duet with Ruthie.)
Ruthie: The mail I bring the mail, read it Clem, look at it? NO and who would but we’ve got to do something we’ve got to sell something what is there to sell, our couch is too old. The sheriff will come and take it all away. Someone is coming here to get something I can see that I’ve got the sacred premonition. You boys going to help? You love him but do you respect him? You’d respect him sure if he played for you he doesn’t play enough for you I’ve told him that (To Black Hat) You hungry? (Pulls a sandwich from her pocket) Go get yourself some milk. I’m supposed to be practical I’m not practical, I just look practical because I worry. Sewing costumes, making pies, I’ve gone through all my savings, Clem has spent some $30,000 of his own, there’s nothing left.
(End of drumming.)
Austra: Money falling from airplanes in the sky.
Ruthie: You do something you worry with me Shirley, you worry you look for signs in your dreams. Turn around. (Making Austra model for her)
Austra: I should worry? would Sartre worry? No. Dig the spendour of being. But when the being becomes nothingness? When the splendour is gone? I should worry? C’est une question de perception.
Ruthie: How long are you planning to stay? Shush. It will be raining and you will be under a bridge. That’s not so long, I don’t mind. Eat all the pie you like. There’s one room. It’s off limits. It’s Clement’s room. It’s locked.
Austra: I don’t understand what you are saying.
Ruthie: Of course you do, you understand everything. You’re not some baton twirler. Why are you wearing black? Don’t be so silly. Look, I know about you. I know about most people. Everyone has secrets. Souls travel, you know. Take this soul. Once it was a fish. Now it’s a drummer in a jazz club. Once it was a Sumerian slave driver. Now it’s Miss Cognac at the Victory. Shirley. You’re no Shirley. Your eyes are too old. You’ve seen something.
(Clement enters wearing aviator suit and eating spaghetti.)
Clem: Cheer up!
Ruthie: (To Clem) See this costume? It slips off in seconds! (To Austra) Go ahead and worry. And there’s a pizza in the oven from two days ago. (Ruthie exits.)
SCENE FOUR: JEKYLL POEM
(Drum roll. Showtime.)
Clem: Welcome, welcome, welcome. Tonight we have a very interesting line-up and whenever I think of where it is going, I’m reminded of Paderewski when he – or maybe it was Hindemith. Now there was a fellow. You all have tried Ruthie’s sandwiches I hope and next week we will experiment with potato salad. Yes indeedy. Clem has had some crazy news, crazy. Subway subterrane-ay, House of Hambourg no delay. So what. But now! I give you the Saint Incarnate of Our Sewers, the Archangel Resident Poet of Our Troubled Establishments, do not heckle our Mister Zoot Jekyll.
(Jekyll takes the stage for a dramatic reading of a poem accompanied by sunglasses, bongo drums and sax.)
Jekyll: Hi you cool cats and chicks. I was down in The Village the other day, took in the Cafe Bizaaarre. Saw Allen
Clem: Ginsberg
Jekyll: and Jack
Clem: Kerouac.
Jekyll: and all those guys. Saints. And they inspired me to – (Groans for a long time) This here from a cat called Delacroix (Reads from a scrap of paper) “If you have not sufficient skill to make a sketch of a man throwing himself out of a window, in the time that it takes him to fall from the fourth floor to the ground, you will never be capable of producing great machines.” Great machines … (He reads the poem (ecstatically, and moves in unison with bongo player and sax, Babe and Black Hat res
pectively. Bongo bongo bongo. Jekyll keens.)
Jekyll: The symptoms of nerve-gas poisoning.
(Neutral voice)
A concrete poem transcribed from the manual.
(Dramatically)
Runny nose. Tight chest. Dim vision. Pinpoint pupils.
Laboured breath. Drooling, spittle, saliva, guck.
Ex
ce
ssive
sweat SWEAT.
(bongo bongo bongo)
Bang in the guts. Boom in the brains.
Puke-vomit-puke-vomit-CRAMPS.
Involuntary shit
Involuntary piss
Twitching jerking staggering Aspirin-g
help
(Falsetto) Mom, dad
(Strong) Confusion, coma, convulsion, cessation
of breathing.
Death.
(Bongo)
Death.
(Bongo)
Death.
(Bongo bongo bongo)
(Jekyll falls on the floor. Babe, Black Hat and Jekyll lie on the floor too long. Silence.)
SCENE FIVE: BLIND MAN OVER MY DEAD BODY
(Austra stand up and looks at the “dead” bodies. Cast walks on stage and joins her. Laila begins to sing “Lācītis ir bedigs, kas vinam kaiš?” [“The little bear is sad, what’s wrong with him?”] Others join in, as do Jekyll, Babe, Black Hat. “Lācitis” is the song for a round which has people in the middle of a circle pretending to be weeping bears, crouching with their arms over their heads. During the second verse, they leap up and dance. Then others take their place in the middle. Their positions look like “duck and cover” poses.
As the dancing continues, the musicians peel off and play a different, haunting melody: “Avotāi guni kura.” The dancers change from a happy image to a surreal one of war. First chorus: freeze. Second chorus: circle the other way, Jekyll peels off and stands at the periphery with the information of watching a bomb attack. Third chorus: Ruthie and Clem peel off, and stand same as Jekyll. Fourth chorus: all are huddled on the ground, Austra and Laila look up at the sky. Austra is having fun. Laila tries to make her duck, she won’t. Laila hits Austra. Everyone backs away from Austra. As Austra continues her dance on her own, Laila enters with a baby buggy.)
Laila: Mommy got a letter, mommy got a letter.
(She settles down to read the letter. At certain points, Austra stops and watches her.)
Laila: Dear Laila … We are well. Irina’s pregnancy is going well … The birch tree is also well and sends her love to you, so far away now from our little Latvia … Is your husband Gunārs still working so hard? Do you look like an American yet? The Ozols next door say that … The price of eggs has gone up. There is no meat in the market …
(Herbie walks over behind Laila with his bass. Starts to make insistent sound of planes flying over. Laila gets very worried.)
Laila: It’s only an airplane.
Laila: (Starts to pace) Austra. Austra! Austra! They are coming! (She runs to the door. She hides under the table in the same pose as Austra. The drone of the bass changes to the drone of an accordion. During the next scene, Austra and Laila change places.)
SCENE SIX: HEY MAC!
(Aivars and Kennedy, with an accordion, appear on an upper balcony. Music and text dialogue.)
Aivars: I hear an airplane and you know what I think, I think: “watch out!” No, no. Joke. I think: here is progress. Here I am Aivars PŪtvējinš, never gone anywhere, and some day soon, airplanes will be so cheap, I can fly to Paris for lunch. Some day, ja. What you need is to always have $100 in your back pocket. They teach me this when I worked as a used car salesman, long time ago. There was this guy, Bob McDuff. Canadian guy. He wears checkered trousers. Drives a sports car. No wife, no family. Always has money. Calls everyone “Mac.” “Hey, Mac.” I am very bad at selling cars. I make no money. I hate the bastard. One day he looks at me and says “Harry” – my name is Aivars, but he calls me Harry – Harry you need $100 in your back pocket, then you’ll sell. I think crazy, $100. Crazy. I make twenty dollars a week. But I do it. I don’t eat lunch. I walk home without streetcar. Takes me a few months, but I do it. And you know what. I sell. $100 in my back pocket and I sell. Now I work in a bank. Don’t have to sell anything. But there has to be some money in my pocket. There are other things in life. There is the family. There are the millions dying behind the Iron Curtain. There is all that. Last time Austra had a birthday, you know what I gave her? A broom with a red handle. You understand. Next time I give her something special. No money, no object. A television. I can give her a television. We will watch the news together every night! A hundred dollars in the back pocket. What you know, mac.
(The airplane drone returns.)
SCENE SEVEN: THE NEWS
(Ads and newscasts: movement sequence in frames of televisions and radios. Austra is crouching under a table in the club. Clem bends over her.)
Ad #1: Tense, anyone? There’s so much bad news these days that it’s a little trying on the nerves to get it all repeated on the radio, television, everywhere you turn.
News: Plans for a “War Supplies Agency” ready to swing into action in the event of an attack on Canada were announced last night by Prime Minister Diefenbaker.
Ad #1: As a tonic, we prescribe the Saturday Evening Post. We think our editorial balance helps Post readers keep theirs.
Clem: I’ve never been afraid. The day I was afraid was when I lost for two minutes my capacity to wonder. I heard Mingus play a honeyed riff and thought so what. So what. Horrors.
Austra: You’re afraid they’ll close the club.
Clem: Some things you can escape. Others come and get you in the end. Then all you can say is
Austra: Welcome.
(Austra and Clem move with the media frames.)
Ad #2: Do you realize that if 263 bombs dropped on the United States, the fallout from Maine, Michigan and the American West would knock out Canada’s population centres? The trapper, the Eskimo and the farmer are the only men who might survive.
Marlene: I was Miss Toronto this year, and Miss Toronto Maple Leaf the year before, and a few years ago, Posture Queen of Ontario. It’s strange.
Ad #2: Ralph Lapp, well known writer on atomic topics, predicts the Russians will be capable of an attack by 1965.
(Austra and Clem at the piano.)
Austra: Mr Clement, I will serve the club for the rest of my life. I will never be in love. I will play the saxophone.
Clem: You’ll blow your mug out of shape.
Journalist #1: Today it is impossible to go anywhere in my city without coming in contact with the foreign born. They work in our banks, our offices, libraries and department stores. They are cultured and educated people.
Austra: Look at Herbie, Black Hat, Kennedy, Babe, Jekyll. Radical independence. In their steps, I will follow.
Clem: Ridiculous! most ridiculous. What is Clement without Ruthie, hm? Human beings weren’t made to live alone.
Austra: Then I’m an extra-terrestrial. And the House of Hambourg is the only home I recognize.
Clem: (Exiting) You might have chosen something a little more permanent. Something more concrete. A bunker.
(Slams the door in her face. During next sequence Austra and Clem change places so that Clement is in the club space and Austra is seemingly speaking through a locked door to Clement in the next section.)
Journalist #2: Many Canadians, raised in the flapjack and maple syrup tradition, are switching to more pungent European foods. The sales of black olives have increased.
Journalist #3: 300%.
Journalist #2: since 1956. We can sample new specialty cheeses like
Journalist #3: gouda or Edam.
Journalist #2: The imports of exotic spices like
Journalist #3: oregano, basic, chervil,
Journalist #2: fennel,
Journalist #3: rosemary and tarragon,
Journalist #2: have taken off like a rocket.
Ad #2: A shopping li
st of conserved foods for a crucial fourteen days is one of many useful tips in his new book, The Family Fallout Shelter.
Journalist #1: Thirty years ago, if anybody had told me that today our city would have a Jewish mayor, Ukrainian and Polish aldermen and foreign-born policemen, I would have waved them off to the funny farm. Now you can’t walk down the street any more because it is so crowded with people speaking all different languages. And that’s what makes Toronto the city it is today.
Austra: Clem, many tips. The guy with the art gallery gave me a whole dollar. Clem, they say Ella Fitzgerald might stop here after the show tonight. (Silence) OK. Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Audrey Hepburn are all trapped on a hot air balloon. Only one of them can stay. Frank turns to Elvis and says – OK. Diefenbaker, Khrushchev and Castro are all trapped on a hot air balloon. Only one of them can stay. Castro looks at Diefenbaker and says – OK.
SCENE EIGHT: LAMENT
Clem: All we’ll get is another kick in the face. Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego. That’s how much love there is in this city for music. Ripping, soaring, pulsing, wailing, cooking, moving, grooving, crying: music. Just listen to my boys, MY BOYS, saints! Angels!
(“Lament” music begins, baritone sax and piano.)
Clem: (Crooning) Goodnight, goodnight.
Goodnight, you ladies and gentlemen.
All good things come to a swansong.
All good people to an end.
Take Charlie Parker. There’s not a jazzman alive doesn’t owe something to the Bird. This Bird doesn’t get the worm, the worm gets the Bird. Hooks him on heroin at age 14. The Bird wanders around Greenwich Village like an ambulatory trash can. But they love him. They all love him. Even Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter loves him when he collapses on her doorstep and dies in her guest room watching the Tommy Dorsey show.
Charlie Parker, dead at 34.
Sonny Berman, 23.
Clifford Brown, 25.
Bob Schilling, 26, remember Bob Schilling?
Bix Beiderbecke, 28.