The CTR Anthology

by Alan Filewod

  Fats Navarro, 27.

  Chu Berry, 31.

  Bunny Berrigan, 33.

  Chick Webb, 37, Fats Waller, 39, Bessie Smith, 43, Lester Young, 50. Miles Davis ain’t looking so good.

  (He leaves the stage, music solo. End of music, Clem reappears up in the attic.)

  Clem: Jazz fans, I’m talking to you. Schubert took the exit at 30 years of age. Young Master Mozart didn’t last too long. So here is Clem, a hipster of 59 years. If my music had more whoopee, I might not be around to play.

  Dr Roy Milford: (Played by Laila) I have tickets to give away to three callers for the First Canadian Jazz Festival, sponsored by the Canadian Mental Health Association.

  SCENE NINE: BEATNIK MEETS ETHNIC

  (“House of Hambourg” music. Jekyll enters and lies on the floor.)

  Jekyll: Hey waitress!

  (Austra enters with a tray and a cup.)

  Jekyll: I didn’t order cappuccino. I want it black.

  Austra: Oh, I’m very sorry. Your name is Zoot, yes?

  Jekyll: Zoot Dr Jekyll of the Potions. Poet, Painter, Man oh Man About Town. Dr Zoot Jekyll, and you?

  Austra: I’ve seen your work, it’s good. Van Gogh, like. Paint what you see, colour and line, exactly fast.

  Jekyll: (Laughs) Van Gogh, hey, get hip, sister, like de Kooning is where it’s at, and Jackson Pollock down in the Big Apple.

  Austra: Yes, de Kooning is quite marvellous, but my father always preferred Van Gogh.

  Jekyll: So who’s the old man.

  (Clement enters, Austra doesn’t want him there. Once he goes to the piano, she speaks again.)

  Austra: My father runs an art gallery in Paris.

  Jekyll: Oh?

  Austra: Yes, I ran away from him. It was too much. But he follows me. If you see a man in a black hat, please warn me. (Austra exits)

  Jekyll: Sure babe sure.

  (Re-take of scene. Music. Jekyll gets up and leans against the piano. Austra re-enters, lounges against the door.)

  Jekyll: Hey, miss, I didn’t ask for cappuccino, I like it black.

  Austra: Hey, bongo man, you’re too tense. It’s me who should be tense. I am being followed. By a man in a black hat. Call me Shirley.

  Jekyll: Shirley. You don’t look like a Shirley. Are you the chick who smuggled Ginsberg’s Howl into Canada? Shirley?

  Austra: (Pauses for quite a while) I think maybe not that Shirley.

  (Re-take of scene. Music. Austra and Jekyll sitting at the same table. They do not speak for a long time. They are lost in each other’s eyes. Clem is discomforted by this attraction, clears his throat.)

  Clem: I never drink cappuccino. I like it black.

  Austra: (Appassionata) Money is a drag and politics stinks.

  Jekyll: Soon we’re all going to go pop, man, boom, baby!

  Austra: Everyone dies sometimes.

  Jekyll: No, doll, I don’t mean kicking the individual bucket, I mean the big blast, the ultra-fungoid, the End!

  Austra: There is no future. I know that. The world teeters on the edgs of a volcano.

  Jekyll: Only the consciousness of imminent death can focus your spiritual being. The world is rotting, it’s disintegrating, it needs a coup de grace, a heavy stick of dynamite up its arse. The sixties are coming and I am not afraid.

  Austra: (Idly) Isn’t it curious, how the bubbles gather in the corner of your mouth when you talk so much.

  Clem: (Walking over to the two) So – you like my niece?

  Jekyll: She’s not your niece.

  (Music resumes. Jekyll and Austra jump to their feet and dance, joined by Kennedy and Black Hat. They crowd Clem out, stare at him with the last beat of the music. Throughout this scene, Herbie twirls his bass and Babe plays his sticks on his shoulders. Stylized movement with text.)

  Austra: Black, his mood is very black. It is a catastrophe. This club is the secret heart of Toronto, it beats, it beats, boom, boom, boom. Yes, he is a great mystery. I found a room – upstairs – where the door is locked. And the windows are closed, too.

  Jekyll: I tried to paint him once and all I got was a great big laughing skull.

  Austra: He is a great man. I can see this right away. He is a great man. We will do it. A bake sale. A special concert. A raffle – the Girl Guides made big bucks with a raffle. In Switzerland. Before my father disowned me. We must sell something.

  Jekyll: You could sell a few dreams. If someone gave you the dust dreams are made of.

  (Dangles the heroin in front of her. Clem is completely blocked out and exits.)

  Austra: What?

  Kennedy: What?

  Jekyll: Dream dust for the jazz mecca.

  (Austra does not understand what it is.)

  Austra: Yes?

  Black Hat: What?

  Jekyll: Norm’s Grill at Carlton and Jarvis. 8 o’clock tonight. You wait for a guy to come in with kind of sandy hair and a blank expression. He’ll wink at you. Twice. Then you sell him the dust. For (Whispers the amount). Come back to the club and presto press the money into Clement’s hands. It’ll cover the bills, at least. But don’t tell him where the dollars came from. Say you got it from … your uncle.

  Austra: I don’t know.

  Jekyll: You square?

  Austra: No.

  Jekyll: You scared?

  Austra: I’m not scared of anything.

  (Jekyll gives her the heroin.)

  Jekyll: I’ve done it before. I’d do it again, if the narcs weren’t watching me. Itching to empty my unholy pockets. But they’d be crazy to nail an upstart daisy like you.

  Austra: For sale.

  Jekyll: For Clem.

  SCENE TEN: TENSE, ANYONE?

  (Jekyll, Black Hat and Kennedy leave Austra as she stands alone with the heroin and music for “Tense, Anyone?” begins. She makes gestures of decision, trying to throw the heroin away, stuffing it into her coffee cup, pirouetting with the heroin, throwing it on the ground. Clem bounds in. Austra covers the heroin with her foot. Clem forgets what he has to say and bounds out again. Austra exits.)

  SCENE ELEVEN

  (Norm’s Grill, as before. Austra is sitting in a corner, looking nervous, with heroin to sell. Jekyll leans nonchalantly at the door, waiting for the customer.)

  Jekyll: The steam was rising from the Jarvis Street manholes while broads in bright dresses lured the unsuspecting to their lairs. Like one-eyed lemmings they came. If you catch my meaning. If you don’t, beat it. Flog it to death.

  Herbie: Key, Kennedy. Hey, sweetheart. Your fly is open.

  Kennedy: What’s the world coming to.

  Jekyll: It was a tense and trying evening in Toronto and you couldn’t resist but kick the tires of every car. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the icepick in your head. What a night. Good citizens wrote letters to the Telegram. Buns staggered through the alleys. New Canadians huddled in their kitchens and sang strange ballads, barely audible to the human ear. I caught a bat in my kitchen. Stuffed it in a bag and knocked its brains out against the door. It was that kind of night.

  (Silence. Jekyll paces. Radio news comes on.)

  Radio: July 17, 1959. The news. Plagued by drugs Billie Holiday dies. The Negro entertainer, called “Lady Day,” was arrested on her deathbed for heroin abuse. She died a wasted shadow of the once great blues singer who packed night clubs from coast to coast. She was 44 years old.

  (Austra has a change of heart. She starts to pour the heroin into her coffee. Jekyll catches her hand and pushes the sugar container towards her.)

  Jekyll: Norm supplies the sugar here, lady.

  (At this moment, a Policemen enters. There is a coffee waiting for him.)

  Cop: So boys, keeping it clean tonight? (Eyeing Austra) New girl on the strip? Who does she think she is, Leslie Caron?

  Black Hat: Nah, she’s some Transylvanian nursing student.

  Cop: You speak Russian? Govorite po-russki [Do you speak Russian]?

  Austra: Ne, es esmu latviete, tu lielā cūka. [No, I�
�m Latvian, you big pig.]

  Cop: Es neesmu liela cūka un kas tu tāda? [I’m not a stupid pig and who are you?]

  Austra: Ak tu kungs man loti žēl. Es domāju, jūesat krievs. [Oh my God I’m sorry. I thought you were Russian.]

  Cop: (Laughing) She called me a stupid pig because she thought I was Russian.

  Jekyll: Are you Russian?

  Cop: You crazy? Kātevi sauc, mazā? [What’s your name, little girl?]

  Austra: Mednis. No Liepājas. [Mednis. From Liepaja.]

  Cop: Mednis – no Liepājas? [Mednis – from Liepaja?]

  Austra: I have a crazy cousin who ran away from home the night of her engagement party.

  Cop: That’s right, Austra, her name is Austra. They say she’s been found in Las Vegas. She’s a stripper now. Such a shame.

  Black Hat: The night of her engagement party. I ask you what do women want.

  Cop: Austra Mednis. The fiancé works in a bank. Nice guy, real nice. Es atgriezīšos pēc divām stundām ja tev vajag pavadoni. [I’ll come back in two hours if you need an escort.]

  Austra: Oh, don’t worry about me, my husband will be here any minute. He is a boxer.

  Cop: Kā tu gribi. [Whatever you say.] Austra Mednis. Such a sad story. Her sister crazy too. Sits in the basement all day, waiting for the bomb to drop. So fellas, see you. And don’t do things I would never do. (Exits.)

  All: Sure, Mac.

  (Norm’s Grill disintegrates, while Ruthie speaks, in a trance.)

  Ruthie: It was a night like any other night in this our city of slop. Far away on Bloor Street West, five hundred young people listening to rock and roll cracked each other’s noses on the lawn. A squirrel was found dead in Queen’s Park. Electroshock. Down at Norm’s Grill, it was the quiet before the storm. Norm sniffed the air like he’d lost his armpit. There’s some bitter people in this town. They don’t suck cocktails at Diana Sweets. It’s an ugly business. If you can’t take it, move your noodle to the fields of North York. Now there’s some rolling hills.

  SCENE THIRTEEN

  (Austra and Jekyll walking down the street. Austra crosses to the other side, every time Jekyll wants to walk with her. During this scene she changes out of her beatnik clothes and into her engagement party dress.)

  Jekyll: I give you powdered money, You pour it in your java. Now we’re playing skip tag from sidewalk to sidewalk. What is this? oral limbo? You have to stoop too low to talk to me?

  Austra: Ten cents, you have ten cents for phone?

  (He looks for ten cents, and tempts her with it while he speaks.)

  Jekyll: What happened, was it the radio? Billie Holiday died, so what? Fate, risk, death, that’s life. What Swedish Sunday School did you crawl out of? Swedish, yeah, I heard you in there, Shirley. Or is it: Dagmar.

  Austra: Just give me ten cents, OK?

  Jekyll: I happen to love Clem. I do. Those cool tight-bearded hipsters sitting without moving with their unfriendly girlfriends dressed in black, they might take the GALACTIC liberty of laughing at him now and then, but not Jekyll, I love the old geezer from one end of his Rachminanoff to the other. And you just threw his future, his future, the future of jazz music in this city and probably throughout this great nation of ours, you threw it right down the sink.

  Austra: Talk, talk, talk, where’s the Gravol. Your goddam dream dust dirt went down the drain, that’s all. Mr Clement will be fine. You just wait and see. Give me the ten cents.

  Jekyll: Please.

  Austra: Heck, please.

  Jekyll: Now say it in Swedish.

  Austra: Take a short walk on a long pier.

  Jekyll: You mean take a long walk on a short pier.

  Austra: Oh you artist you smart aleck you beatnik peacenick jelly roll formica top (She grabs the dime from him) Scram.

  Jekyll: Eternity. You never think of it.

  (Jekyll exits. Austra contemplates calling Aivars.)

  Austra: Sveiks Aivar, vai tu vēl dzīvs. (“Hello Aivars, are you still alive?” – a colloquialism) Sveiks Aivar, vai – Aivar. Sveiks. I do so remember, I remember everything.

  (Aivars leaps into the scene.)

  Aivars: Austra. Austra. I love you.

  (“Austra Austra I love you” music and movement – lover’s quarrel duet)

  END OF SECOND SET.

  THIRD SET

  (Whirr of the sewing machine. No one is there.)

  SCENE ONE: I DO SO REMEMBER EVERYTHING, I DO.

  (Image of Laila, Aivars and Austra, fresh off the boat. Aivars raising a glass; they sing:)

  Lai dzīvo sveiks, lai dzīvo sveiks! Lai dzīvo sveiks, lai dzīvo sveiks! [A celebration song – “May They Live Well”]

  Aivars: Mēs, jaunais pāris, mēs būsim maza latviešu sala. Te nav Amērika. Te nav nekāds melting pot. Kanada ir viens - jigsaw puzzle! “I am proud to be – ne takai - Canadian bet – : a Latvian Canadian. “Kamēr esam tālumā, tālu no mūsu dargo Latviju, slava mūsu trimdas mājām: Toronto!

  [We, the young couple, will be a little Latvian island. This is not America. There is no melting pot here. Canada is a – jigsaw puzzle! “I am proud to be – not only – a Canadian – but a Latvian Canadian.” While we are abroad, far away from our precious Latvia, hail to our home in exile: Toronto!]

  (The three begin the “Walter Thornton” movement, walking like models.)

  Laila: Toh-ronto! Heck! Everything is so ugly here, I’ll never get used to it. Kanadiešiem nav kultūras, nav kultūras. [Canadians have no culture, no culture.] Little ugly houses, ne dārzu, ne stādu, ne klavieres, ne grāmatu, nekā. [no gardens, no flowers, no pianos, no books, nothing] just Television! We come to Toronto, it is 1951. Haalifaks-Montreal-Toronto. The bread on the train – Canadian bread like pape! [cardboard]. (Searches for the word) Wood!

  Austra: (Flatly) Cardboard.

  Laila: (Cheerful). Yes. We all come, Mama, Papa, my sister, my cousins, and on the ship we meet our neighbour from Liepaja, Aivars Pūtvējinš, and I, I meet my husband, Gunārs. He is a good man. Dabū [He gets a] job caks [like that!] [Then I got a] job, caks [like that!] (Snaps her fingers) Papa, he was a teacher, now he is security guard, what you can do. Twenty-five dollars a week mazgājot traukus [washing dishes at] Hospital for Sicks Children. “Good Morning!” Tad Ozola kungs man atrada [Then Mr Ozols got me a] job pakojot zekes [packing socks at] McGregor’s Sock Factory. Spadina Avenue. I’m wearing some right now. (Points at her foot) Nice? Mana mamma un Austra šuva blūzes priekš [My Mama and Austra sew blouses for] Elite Blouses. Spadina Avenue. We gave all our money to Mama, and she divided it among the family. Austra.

  Austra: Liec mani miera. [Leave me alone]

  Laila: (Exasperated) Mamma always said: the man who marries Austra, he’ll end up in the nuthouse.

  SCENE TWO

  (Clem and Kennedy playing the piano and having a lot of fun. Surrounded by the other musicians, they toy with the theme of “Three Blind Mice, see how they run, oh say can you see.” Hilarity.)

  SCENE THREE: LANGUAGE CLASS

  (Austra, Aivars and Laila are reading from Reader’s Digest. Musicians read along with them, standing at the piano, in the voices of little boys.)

  Aivars: “Yellowknife is not everybody’s cup of tea.” (Others repeat sotto voce) “The natives of Montreal are known for their (Cautiously misreading) joie de vivre.” (Others repeat)

  Austra and Aivars: “Halifax is a naval city.”

  Laila: – is a naval city.

  Little Boys: The Calgary stampede draws many a curious visitor.

  Laila: Canadians. Funny people. Smile, Candid Camera. God Save the Queen. The customer is always right. I am a new Canadian. Cheeze Whiz.

  All: Vancouver is a jewel not to be overlooked.

  Austra: I am a new Canadian. My name is Austra Mednis. I was born in Liepaja, Latvia, in 1938.

  Aivars: I have a high school diploma from Augustdorf, Germany, where I was in a camp. I speak English and I can type. Career goal: journalist.

  Austra: Now I am
a student at Harbord Collegiate.

  Aivars: I do not play golf or bowling.

  All: The merchants of Fredericton are made of sturdy stuff. Whale blubber is a choice commodity for the people of the North.

  Austra: I have been in Canada for one year and three days and I am 15 years old almost. My New Year’s resolution for 1952 is to make many Canadian friends. My resolution is to tell jokes so they can understand when to laugh. Also I will save up my money and buy a baton. Also I …

  Laila: My boss, he said, what’s your name. He said “too hard. I call you Sally.” No, no. Laila. Not hard. My boss he says “call me Hirsch.” He’s OK. He says “Merry Christmas.” He says “egg nog.” My boss, he gives me a poin-set-ti-ya. Cheers. We are alive.

  All: In Winnipeg, the temperature drops far below the freezing point. Spring is greeted with joy by the farmers of Annapolis valley. Yellowknife is not everybody’s cup of tea!

  SCENE FOUR

  (Aivars jumps up, throwing off his coat. It is 1953. He turns into a boxer, with Austra as his coach.)

  Aivars: CBC! Man ir darbs pie CBC! [CBC! I have a job at CBC!]

  Austra and Laila: CBC!

  Aivars: I don’t believe it. CBC. I went to Jarvis Street, funny building, like the radio house in Riga, and there at the desk is a pretty lady –

  Austra: Oh?

  Aivars: For a Canadian. She sits there, nice desk, and I tell her all about myself, how I wrote for the newspaper in camp, and how I know Mr Kalns cousin who is a good friend of Max Ferguson and the lady smiles and gives me an application, and so I write: Aivars Putvejins, born in Riga, Latvia, 1929, I speak English and I can type! I give her the application.

  She looks at it. Looks at me. Looks at it again. I can see her thinking, thinking. And then she says: “WE’LL CALL YOU!”

  Austra and Laila: WE’LL CALL YOU!!

  (Split-second freeze, then realization sinks in.)

  Austra: (Dejectedly) We’ll call you!???

  Aivars: CBC. We’ll call you! Ši stulbā zoss [This silly goose], this bobby soxer treats me like I have a big gaping hole in my brain!