SHANNON: Untie me.
HANNAH: Not yet.
SHANNON: I can’t stand being tied up.
HANNAH: You’ll have to stand it a while.
SHANNON: It makes me panicky.
HANNAH: I know.
SHANNON: A man can die of panic.
HANNAH: Not if he enjoys it as much as you, Mr. Shannon.
[She goes into her cubicle directly behind his hammock. The cubicle is lighted and we see her removing a small teapot and a tin of tea from her suitcase on the cot, then a little alcohol burner. She comes back out with these articles.]
SHANNON: What did you mean by that insulting remark?
HANNAH: What remark, Mr. Shannon?
SHANNON: That I enjoy it.
HANNAH: Oh . . . that.
SHANNON: Yes. That.
HANNAH: That wasn’t meant as an insult, just an observation. I don’t judge people, I draw them. That’s all I do, just draw them, but in order to draw them I have to observe them, don’t I?
SHANNON: And you’ve observed, you think you’ve observed, that I like being tied in this hammock, trussed up in it like a hog being hauled off to the slaughter house, Miss Jelkes.
HANNAH: Who wouldn’t like to suffer and atone for the sins of himself and the world if it could be done in a hammock with ropes instead of nails, on a hill that’s so much lovelier than Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, Mr. Shannon? There’s something almost voluptuous in the way that you twist and groan in that hammock—no nails, no blood, no death. Isn’t that a comparatively comfortable, almost voluptuous kind of crucifixion to suffer for the guilt of the world, Mr. Shannon?
[She strikes a match to light the alcohol burner. A pure blue jet of flame springs up to cast a flickering, rather unearthly glow on their section of the verandah. The glow is delicately refracted by the subtle, jaded colors of her robe—a robe given to her by a Kabuki actor who posed for her in Japan.]
SHANNON: Why have you turned against me all of a sudden, when I need you the most?
HANNAH: I haven’t turned against you at all, Mr. Shannon. I’m just attempting to give you a character sketch of yourself, in words instead of pastel crayons or charcoal.
SHANNON: You’re certainly suddenly very sure of some New England spinsterish attitudes that I didn’t know you had in you. I thought that you were an emancipated Puritan, Miss Jelkes.
HANNAH: Who is . . . ever . . . completely?
SHANNON: I thought you were sexless but you’ve suddenly turned into a woman. Know how I know that? Because you, not me—not me—are taking pleasure in my tied-up condition. All women, whether they face it or not, want to see a man in a tied-up situation. They work at it all their lives, to get a man in a tied-up situation. Their lives are fulfilled, they’re satisfied at last, when they get a man, or as many men as they can, in the tied-up situation. [Hannah leaves the alcohol burner and teapot and moves to the railing where she grips a verandah post and draws a few deep breaths.] You don’t like this observation of you? The shoe’s too tight for comfort when it’s on your own foot, Miss Jelkes? Some deep breaths again—feeling panic?
HANNAH [recovering and returning to the burner]: I’d like to untie you right now, but let me wait till you’ve passed through your present disturbance. You’re still indulging yourself in your . . . your Passion Play performance. I can’t help observing this self-indulgence in you.
SHANNON: What rotten indulgence?
HANNAH: Well, your busload of ladies from the female college in Texas. I don’t like those ladies any more than you do, but after all, they did save up all year to make this Mexican tour, to stay in stuffy hotels and eat the food they’re used to. They want to be at home away from home, but you . . . you indulged yourself, Mr. Shannon. You did conduct the tour as if it was just for you, for your own pleasure.
SHANNON: Hell, what pleasure—going through hell all the way?
HANNAH: Yes, but comforted, now and then, weren’t you, by the little musical prodigy under the wing of the college vocal instructor?
SHANNON: Funny, ha-ha funny! Nantucket spinsters have their wry humor, don’t they?
HANNAH: Yes, they do. They have to.
SHANNON [becoming progressively quieter under the cool influence of her voice behind him]: I can’t see what you’re up to, Miss Jelkes honey, but I’d almost swear you’re making a pot of tea over there.
HANNAH: That is just what I’m doing.
SHANNON: Does this strike you as the right time for a tea party?
HANNAH: This isn’t plain tea, this is poppy-seed tea.
SHANNON: Are you a slave to the poppy?
HANNAH: It’s a mild, sedative drink that helps you get through nights that are hard for you to get through and I’m making it for my grandfather and myself as well as for you, Mr. Shannon. Because, for all three of us, this won’t be an easy night to get through. Can’t you hear him in his cell number 4, mumbling over and over and over the lines of his new poem? It’s like a blind man climbing a staircase that goes to nowhere, that just falls off into space, and I hate to say what it is. . . . [She draws a few deep breaths behind him.]
SHANNON: Put some hemlock in his poppy-seed tea tonight so he won’t wake up tomorrow for the removal to the Casa de Huéspedes. Do that act of mercy. Put in the hemlock and I will consecrate it, turn it to God’s blood. Hell, if you’ll get me out of this hammock I’ll serve it to him myself, I’ll be your accomplice in this act of mercy. I’ll say, “Take and drink this, the blood of our—”
HANNAH: Stop it! Stop being childishly cruel! I can’t stand for a person that I respect to talk and behave like a small, cruel boy, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: What’ve you found to respect in me, Miss . . . Thin-Standing-Up-Female-Buddha?
HANNAH: I respect a person that has had to fight and howl for his decency and his—
SHANNON: What decency?
HANNAH: Yes, for his decency and his bit of goodness, much more than I respect the lucky ones that just had theirs handed out to them at birth and never afterward snatched away from them by . . . unbearable . . . torments, I. . . .
SHANNON: You respect me?
HANNAH: I do.
SHANNON: But you just said that I’m taking pleasure in a . . . voluptuous crucifixion without nails. A . . . what? . . . painless atonement for the—
HANNAH [cutting in]: Yes, but I think—
SHANNON: Untie me!
HANNAH: Soon, soon. Be patient.
SHANNON: Now!
HANNAH: Not quite yet, Mr. Shannon. Not till I’m reasonably sure that you won’t swim out to China, because, you see, I think you think of the . . . “the long swim to China” as another painless atonement. I mean I don’t think you think you’d be intercepted by sharks and barracudas before you got far past the barrier reef. And I’m afraid you would be. It’s as simple as that, if that is simple.
SHANNON: What’s simple?
HANNAH: Nothing, except for simpletons, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: Do you believe in people being tied up?
HANNAH: Only when they might take the long swim to China.
SHANNON: All right, Miss Thin-Standing-Up-Female-Buddha, just light a Benson and Hedges cigarette for me and put it in my mouth and take it out when you hear me choking on it—if that doesn’t seem to you like another bit of voluptuous self-crucifixion.
HANNAH [looking about the verandah]: I will, but . . . where did I put them?
SHANNON: I have a pack of my own in my pocket.
HANNAH: Which pocket?
SHANNON: I don’t know which pocket, you’ll have to frisk me for it. [She pats his jacket pocket.]
HANNAH: They’re not in your coat pocket.
SHANNON: Then look for them in my pants’ pockets.
[She hesitates to put her hand in his pants’ pockets, for a moment. Hannah has always had a sort of fastidiousness, a reluctance, toward intimate physical contact. But after the momentary fastidious hesitation, she puts her hands in his pants’ pocket and draws out t
he cigarette pack.]
SHANNON: Now light it for me and put it in my mouth.
[She complies with these directions. Almost at once he chokes and the cigarette is expelled.]
HANNAH: You’ve dropped it on you—where is it?
SHANNON [twisting and lunging about in the hammock]: It’s under me, under me, burning. Untie me, for God’s sake, will you—it’s burning me through my pants!
HANNAH: Raise your hips so I can—
SHANNON: I can’t, the ropes are too tight. Untie me, untieeeee meeeeee!
HANNAH: I’ve found it, I’ve got it!
[But Shannon’s shout has brought Maxine out of her office. She rushes onto the verandah and sits on Shannon’s legs.]
MAXINE: Now hear this, you crazy black Irish mick, you! You Protestant black Irish looney, I’ve called up Lopez, Doc Lopez. Remember him—the man in the dirty white jacket that come here the last time you cracked up here? And hauled you off to the Casa de Locos? Where they threw you into that cell with nothing in it but a bucket and straw and a water pipe? That you crawled up the water pipe? And dropped head-down on the floor and got a concussion? Yeah, and I told him you were back here to crack up again and if you didn’t quiet down here tonight you should be hauled out in the morning.
SHANNON [cutting in, with the honking sound of a panicky goose]: Off, off, off, off, off!
HANNAH: Oh, Mrs. Faulk, Mr. Shannon won’t quiet down till he’s left alone in the hammock.
MAXINE: Then why don’t you leave him alone?
HANNAH: I’m not sitting on him and he . . . has to be cared for by someone.
MAXINE: And the someone is you?
HANNAH: A long time ago, Mrs. Faulk, I had experience with someone in Mr. Shannon’s condition, so I know how necessary it is to let them be quiet for a while.
MAXINE: He wasn’t quiet, he was shouting.
HANNAH: He will quiet down again. I’m preparing a sedative tea for him, Mrs. Faulk.
MAXINE: Yeah, I see. Put it out. Nobody cooks here but the Chinaman in the kitchen.
HANNAH: This is just a little alcohol burner, a spirit lamp, Mrs. Faulk.
MAXINE: I know what it is. It goes out!
[She blows out the flame under the burner.]
SHANNON: Maxine honey? [He speaks quietly now.] Stop persecuting this lady. You can’t intimidate her. A bitch is no match for a lady except in a brass bed, honey, and sometimes not even there.
[The Germans are heard shouting for beer—a case of it to take down to the beach.]
WOLFGANG: Eine Kiste Carta Blanca.
FRAU FAHRENKOPF: Wir haben genug gehabt . . . vielleicht nicht.
HERR FAHRENKOPF: Nein! Niemals genug.
HILDA: Mutter du bist dick . . . aber wir sind es nicht.
SHANNON: Maxine, you’re neglecting your duties as a beerhall waitress. [His tone is deceptively gentle.] They want a case of Carta Blanca to carry down to the beach, so give it to ’em . . . and tonight, when the moon’s gone down, if you’ll let me out of this hammock, I’ll try to imagine you as a . . . as a nymph in her teens.
MAXINE: A fat lot of good you’d be in your present condition.
SHANNON: Don’t be a sexual snob at your age, honey.
MAXINE: Hah! [But the unflattering offer has pleased her realistically modest soul, so she goes back to the Germans.]
SHANNON: Now let me try a bit of your poppy-seed tea, Miss Jelkes.
HANNAH: I ran out of sugar, but I had some ginger, some sugared ginger. [She pours a cup of tea and sips it.] Oh, it’s not well brewed yet, but try to drink some now and the—[She lights the burner again.]—the second cup will be better. [She crouches by the hammock and presses the cup to his lips. He raises his head to sip it, but he gags and chokes.]
SHANNON: Caesar’s ghost!—it could be chased by the witches’ brew from Macbeth.
HANNAH: Yes, I know, it’s still bitter.
[The Germans appear on the wing of the verandah and go trooping down to the beach, for a beer festival and a moonlight swim. Even in the relative dark they have a luminous color, an almost phosphorescent pink and gold color of skin. They carry with them a case of Carta Blanca beer and the fantastically painted rubber horse. On their faces are smiles of euphoria as they move like a dream-image, starting to sing a marching song as they go.]
SHANNON: Fiends out of hell with the . . . voices of . . . angels.
HANNAH: Yes, they call it “the logic of contradictions,” Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON [lunging suddenly forward and undoing the loosened ropes]: Out! Free! Unassisted!
HANNAH: Yes, I never doubted that you could get loose, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: Thanks for your help, anyhow.
HANNAH: Where are you going? [He has crossed to the liquor cart.]
SHANNON: Not far. To the liquor cart to make myself a rum-coco.
HANNAH: Oh. . . .
SHANNON [at the liquor cart]: Coconut? Check. Machete? Check. Rum? Double check! Ice? The ice-bucket’s empty. O.K., it’s a night for warm drinks. Miss Jelkes? Would you care to have your complimentary rum-coco?
HANNAH: No thank you, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: You don’t mind me having mine?
HANNAH: Not at all, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: You don’t disapprove of this weakness, this self-indulgence?
HANNAH: Liquor isn’t your problem, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: What is my problem, Mr. Jelkes?
HANNAH: The oldest one in the world—the need to believe in something or in someone—almost anyone—almost anything . . . something.
SHANNON: Your voice sounds hopeless about it.
HANNAH: No, I’m not hopeless about it. In fact, I’ve discovered something to believe in.
SHANNON: Something like . . . God?
HANNAH: No.
SHANNON: What?
HANNAH: Broken gates between people so they can reach each other, even if it’s just for one night only.
SHANNON: One night stands, huh?
HANNAH: One night . . . communication between them on a verandah outside their . . . separate cubicles, Mr. Shannon.
SHANNON: You don’t mean physically, do you?
HANNAH: No.
SHANNON: I didn’t think so. Then what?
HANNAH: A little understanding exchanged between them, a wanting to help each other through nights like this.
SHANNON: Who was the someone you told the widow you’d helped long ago to get through a crack-up like this one I’m going through?
HANNAH: Oh . . . that. Myself.
SHANNON: You?
HANNAH: Yes. I can help you because I’ve been through what you are going through now. I had something like your spook—I just had a different name for him. I called him the blue devil, and . . . oh . . . we had quite a battle, quite a contest between us.
SHANNON: Which you obviously won.
HANNAH: I couldn’t afford to lose.
SHANNON: How’d you beat your blue devil?
HANNAH: I showed him that I could endure him and I made him respect my endurance.
SHANNON: How?
HANNAH: Just by, just by . . . enduring. Endurance is something that spooks and blue devils respect. And they respect all the tricks that panicky people use to outlast and outwit their panic.
SHANNON: Like poppy-seed tea?
HANNAH: Poppy-seed tea or rum-cocos or just a few deep breaths. Anything, everything, that we take to give them the slip, and so to keep on going.
SHANNON: To where?
HANNAH: To somewhere like this, perhaps. This verandah over the rain forest and the still-water beach, after long, difficult travels. And I don’t mean just travels about the world, the earth’s surface. I mean . . . subterranean travels, the . . . the journeys that the spooked and bedeviled people are forced to take through the . . . the unlighted sides of their natures.
SHANNON: Don’t tell me you have a dark side to your nature. [He says this sardonically.]
HANNAH: I’m sure I don’t have to t
ell a man as experienced and knowledgeable as you, Mr. Shannon, that everything has its shadowy side?
[She glances up at him and observes that she doesn’t have his attention. He is gazing tensely at something off the verandah. It is the kind of abstraction, not vague but fiercely concentrated, that occurs in madness. She turns to look where he’s looking. She closes her eyes for a moment and draws a deep breath, then goes on speaking in a voice like a hypnotist’s, as if the words didn’t matter, since he is not listening to her so much as to the tone and the cadence of her voice.]
HANNAH: Everything in the whole solar system has a shadowy side to it except the sun itself—the sun is the single exception. You’re not listening, are you?
SHANNON [as if replying to her]: The spook is in the rain forest. [He suddenly hurls his coconut shell with great violence off the verandah, creating a commotion among the jungle birds.] Good shot—it caught him right on the kisser and his teeth flew out like popcorn from a popper.
HANNAH: Has he gone off—to the dentist?
SHANNON: He’s retreated a little way away for a little while, but when I buzz for my breakfast tomorrow, he’ll bring it in to me with a grin that’ll curdle the milk in the coffee and he’ll stink like a . . . a gringo drunk in a Mexican jail who’s slept all night in his vomit.
HANNAH: If you wake up before I’m out, I’ll bring your coffee in to you . . . if you call me.
SHANNON [His attention returns to her]: No, you’ll be gone, God help me.
HANNAH: Maybe and maybe not. I might think of something tomorrow to placate the widow.
SHANNON: The widow’s implacable, honey.
HANNAH: I think I’ll think of something because I have to. I can’t let Nonno be moved to the Casa de Huéspedes, Mr. Shannon. Not any more than I could let you take the long swim out to China. You know that. Not if I can prevent it, and when I have to be resourceful, I can be very resourceful.
SHANNON: How’d you get over your crack-up?
HANNAH: I never cracked up, I couldn’t afford to. Of course, I nearly did once. I was young once, Mr. Shannon, but I was one of those people who can be young without really having their youth, and not to have your youth when you are young is naturally very disturbing. But I was lucky. My work, this occupational therapy that I gave myself—painting and doing quick character sketches—made me look out of myself, not in, and gradually, at the far end of the tunnel that I was struggling out of I began to see this faint, very faint gray light—the light of the world outside me—and I kept climbing toward it. I had to.