Frolic of His Own (14 page)

—Talking about this scar aren't we? We're talking about coincidence, my scar and the scar on the face of this character in my play that's a coincidence, his scar and the scar on the face of the character in this movie is not a coincidence, it can't be, the same battle, the Major there home from the war and the whole . . .

—Problem you run into with these similarities though you've got to prove it, prove they stole it, be surprised how many times somebody will make something up like a song maybe, he writes this song maybe just honestly forgets somewhere a long time ago he heard practically the same thing, even if he didn't there's just so many combinations of notes isn't there. Talk about a play now, you take O'Neill, Eugene O'Neill, see I did some, took some acting classes you might call them once, sort of little theatre, you know, even thought of being a serious actor for a while there and . . .

—If you want to play O'Neill fine, play your heart out. Go right ahead Mister Basie, the Emperor Jones is a powerful role, almost operatic isn't it but that's not what I'm talking about.

—Neither was I.

—What? Oh. Oh I meant, I didn't mean just because you're . . .

—Didn't mean anything by it no, that's good to know. See what put me in mind of O'Neill was some old Civil War play he wrote where there's this old Southern mansion with all these Greek columns and . . .

—Well it ends right there, believe me! Because his play's about the Civil War too? Which of course it's not is it, it's a clumsy warmed over schoolboy parody of Euripides with a few vulgar Freudian touches thrown in for good measure.

—No but see that's what I'm saying here, just the appearance, why just this appearance of even some real close similarities won't hold up in court, have to match them up line by line, prove they knew about your play, that they saw your play performed or had the easy chance to? or that they . . .

—Well of course they never saw it performed.

—Then how come you . . .

—Because it's never been performed that's how come! Nobody's ever seen it performed, a serious play of ideas like this one you expect to see it in lights on Broadway? All Broadway wants is tits and ass, a chorus line of stupid self indulgent idiots cavorting around the stage singing about tits and ass and the whole loud vulgar, tickets bought on company expense accounts to entertain your out of town buyer you think he wants to sit through something that requires one grain of intelligence?

—You been to the theatre lately Mister Crease?

—Me? God no. Wad up your coat and jam it under the seat you've paid sixty dollars for where you can see exactly half the stage, hot as blazes and you can't cross your knees, the curtain goes up on a torrent of obscenity or some burntout star who's decided a revival of an old chestnut like your O'Neill there's his vehicle for immortality the minute he staggers onstage the audience explodes in applause and goes to sleep till intermission for the cigarette in the alley and that watery five dollar orange drink. End of the limited engagement the investors grab their tax breaks and status as patrons of the arts one thing you can be sure of, they're having a better time up there on the stage than you are. Whether it's spouting tits and ass or your O'Neill chestnut they're all just having a good time at your expense.

—Let me ask you then, clear up one thing for me while we . . .

—‘A gross, coarse form of art,' Pound made it pretty clear didn't he? writing to Joyce when Joyce ground out that dreary play Exiles, ‘speaking to a thousand fools huddled together . . . '

—Feeling like that then, how come you'd want to write for the theatre in the first place?

—Did I say that? write for the theatre? Get back to our friend Yeats
here when he and Pound were going to write plays together that Pound said wouldn't need ‘a thousand people for a hundred fifty nights to pay the expenses of production.' They can read it can't they? produce it in their own minds if they've got any probably do a better job of it than these money grubbing producers, stagehand unions, actors unions and the rest of the . . .

—No that's good to know, you had it published? Access, see that's what we're talking about that constitutes access, chance for somebody to read it and lift whatever they . . .

—I didn't say it was published! No, I submitted it with some excerpts written as a novel, the way I'd treat the whole thing as a novel and they turned it down because of my age, they liked it they liked it a lot but they said I was too old to market, not the book but me, to market me! Talk shows, book tours all the rubbish that publishing's turned into, not marketing the work but selling the author in this whole revolting media circus turning the creative artist into a performer in this frenzy of publicity because I wasn't a baseball player with AIDS or a dog that lived in the White House I was just too old, try to deal with these publishers all they want is your coffee, put it down there Ilse not on the books! on those newspapers there, I sent a copy to myself registered mail in a sealed envelope against just such a piece of dirty work as this one, I did that when I . . .

—Takes care of your copyright then, already protected if it was never published or performed in public anyplace, send it to yourself in a sealed envelope you don't even have an audience of one if it never circulated out in the . . .

—I'm coming to that, just be patient. I sent it to some television director I can't remember his name, that was back when I wrote it when television was still occasionally doing things with some kind of artistic and intellectual content not this rubbish where a man's rushing around in a simian crouch jamming an enormous pistol at you, mindless action for the sake of action just like everything else out there, no. No, when Hector's body is dragged around the walls of Troy there's action, action with some meaning in it because Hector has meaning as a hero, put him up against Achilles and . . .

—Don't remember his name?

—Hector?

—This television director you sent your play to.

—No. It was a nice name like Armstrong, Montgomery but, no, I can't remember.

—He like it?

—No. He rejected it, he . . .

—You have his rejection letter? Did you sign a release? Usually they won't even read something without a release, won't even send it back without a postpaid envelope.

—It's around here somewhere no, I didn't sign a release. He probably never read it himself anyhow, probably some twit of a secretary right out of business school who'd ask which side George Washington fought on.

—Name couldn't have been this Kiester could it?

—God no! I said it was a nice name didn't I? You think I'd have submitted it to somebody named Kiester? That whole gang out there that's why I was told to call a firm like yours, dealing with a Montgomery or an Armstrong I would have called in Davis Polk or Cravath, but Kiester? you follow me?

—Can't say I do, Mister Crease.

—Go after that gang out there you'd better get a Jewish lawyer, that's what they told me.

—Why you were real surprised to see me walk in here.

—Well I, matter of fact, yes, I . . .

—Don't mean anything by it, no. You can send me right back you know, pay the consultation fee and that's it.

—Well that's not, no, no that's not what I meant at all we, after all Mister Basie we, you're obviously a civilized man with your theatre experience and the, and Yeats of course yes I think we're off to a good start here aren't we?

—That's good to know.

—Getting into slavery here and that whole sentimental myth about the old antebellum South, Thomas is leaving and trying to get his mother up to stay at Quantness while he's gone and the Major . . .

—You come to think about it though, it's those Jews in Hollywood you're talking about that pretty much gave us that myth, spread it around.

—That may well be yes, but . . .

—Butterfly McQueen twittering around and old Hattie McDaniel grousing all loving and faithful, horses and beautiful women and Leslie Howard off to fight the good fight?

—Just a shame they didn't win it, two separate countries like we've got right now but I mean really separate, borders, passports, import duties, rural economy down there growing God knows what for the mills in the North and religion, God, talk about another country, there's your nice Baptist lady on election day right behind the local bootlegger both of them voting dry, ever been in the South? Beautiful horses and bad teeth, sit down in a restaurant first thing you're offered is coffee, then the salad course and you finally get to the meal, getting it backwards like everything else. Ever been there?

—Been in Texas but that was . . .

—Well Texas of course. Texas is unspeakable. Here, you'll see what I mean.

T
HE
M
AJOR

Your, ah, mother, Thomas? Is she all settled in?

T
HOMAS

(SNAPPING HIS WATCH OPEN NERVOUSLY, LOOKS UP)

I had to send Henry down in a rig to get her. No one had told me about John Israel.

T
HE
M
AJOR

Told you what.

T
HOMAS

Why, that he ran off.

T
HE
M
AJOR

(TRANSFERRING HIS INDIGNATION)

John Israel, run off? We'll have them out to hunt him, and fit punishment . . .

T
HOMAS

No, it happened in winter, months ago.

T
HE
M
AJOR

Well why didn't . . . they didn't anyone tell us. William?

W
ILLIAM

(TURNING TO THOMAS SLOWLY, WITH A SMILE OF INNOCENT BUT ALMOST CUNNING INTIMACY)

‘The punishment it inflicts on those who refuse to obey it is nothing more than a means of compelling them to be free . . . '?

T
HE
M
AJOR

(TO KANE)

Yes, you might have noticed the staircase out here? This same niggra John Israel built it. I offered Thomas six hundred dollars for John Israel. They'd taught him to read down there at The Bells. Isn't that the gratitude you bound to expect? Teaching a niggra like that to read, that he's bound to run off with his head full of nonsense? The
newel post out there, it's carved like a pineapple, and then to go teaching him to read? A niggra that can turn wood like that, filling his head up full of ideas? How do they expect he's going to turn out?

K
ANE

A black Epictetus?

T
HE
M
AJOR

Yes, a black . . . what?

K
ANE

The philosopher Epictetus, a Greek slave . . .

T
HE
M
AJOR

Yes, they had the proper idea of these things now, didn't they. Aristotle, he was the Greek philosopher, I can show you somewhere what he had to say about natural slaves. That there's some just naturally meant to be slaves.

K
ANE

Ah . . . but to let a man's colour decide it, sir? Why, every Greek knew the threat of enslavement. Think, on the day he set off to war, how he must have pondered what the poet meant with ‘The day a man's enslaved, Zeus robs him of half his virtue.'

T
HE
M
AJOR

(HEATEDLY)

Exactly, sir! And who ended up taken prisoner and enslaved? Those with neither the skill to win nor the courage to die, like these niggras out here. What do we get over here from Africa? Not the ones with the courage to fight off the slavers, or smart enough to escape them, no. What we get here is the natural slaves, they're the ones that are already slaves where they come from, that can't do a thing but what they're told, that have to have everything laid out for them right down to the line, that can't do a thing but follow orders. We don't get the warrior class, the aristocrats . . .

(PAUSES, BUT IS PROVOKED BY
KANE'S
SILENT APPRAISAL OF HIM)

Yes, I can show you in these same books, sir. The Acropolis there in Athens, Greece, it was built the same way this house was built.

K
ANE

(PROMPTS, AS THOUGH PRIVATELY AMUSED)

For the same ‘arms-bearing aristocracy . . . '

T
HE
M
AJOR

Indeed it is, sir. I can show you in any Southern camp right today, the courtesies between officers and men, if you care to see these . . . arms-bearing aristocrats.

(TURNING TOWARD THE DOOR)

If you care to see the stables, Mister Kane?

(CROSSES TO THE DOOR, STOPS AND TURNS IN THE DOORWAY)

My own men, sir, have never wanted for my respect.

THE MAJOR pauses in the hall, looking round as KANE follows him, exiting left.

W
ILLIAM

(EAGERLY)

Thomas, you're leaving?

T
HOMAS

(ABRUPT, VEXATIOUS)

Why, should I wait? Wait and see everything up there taken? What's mine, the way all this is yours?

W
ILLIAM

(DISCONCERTED, WITHDRAWING A STEP)

No, you . . . you go. You go, Thomas.

T
HOMAS

Yes, and think what you like. Think what you like of my leaving.

W
ILLIAM

(DISTRESSED)

Anything I said Thomas, back in the parlour, anything I said there with Papa, Thomas . . .

T
HOMAS

(PAUSES, STUDYING HIM)

You knew, Will, didn't you. About John Israel.

W
ILLIAM

(MOCKING, AS THOUGH OF THEIR PAST FRIENDSHIP)