For the Reckord Read online

  JOSHIE: Mama, we must graft ourselves on to white people, for what we want they got – houses and fruitful land. We have candle and brushwood; they have science and make good light. They have history and learning. They had the strength to beat us up and bring us to this land.

  DELLA: White worm has bored into you and will eat you out.

  JOSHIE: All I know is that our people ugly, nasty, ignorant and smell.

  DELLA: Then they smell of the filth white people pitch on them and are nasty because they haven’t yet found out the path to that high spring will wash it off. Who will lead them to that high spring? Not my own son, for he out to shove his hefty foot into white man boot and don’t know yet it will squeeze him. You want to make a marriage between black and white. The run of such marriage is not between flesh and flesh but between whip and back. So make sure when you hand them a wife, they don’t fancy her a whore.

  ACT TWO

  SCENE ONE

  Early Evening. SHEPHERD in his room, tipsy, drinking rum and crackers. A series of raps on the door.

  SHEPHERD: Say first if you have black skin for White Wolf would give me such a bite in my belly, but on black skin his teeth break. (Knock.) Come in if you have black skin, for now if he black, I would welcome my enemy… But black Della conspired with white man to fall Shepherd.. (Knock.) If you black, keep out… Fool to buy crackers with weevil… black people grow weevils in their guts. White makes them a smooth tomb.

  Knock. A voice muffled by the rain calls out.

  Shove the door.

  Enter DELLA.

  Ho, ho, ho, a stubborn bitch like you, soon as your baby starts his journey to the grave, comes running back? Your Doctor patched and patched but still the life leak out, till now Tata sag. I so drunk I can’t lay hand on you to crunch you like crackers, go out black and white whore. Your skin black, but your mouth must be white from playing with the white man.

  DELLA: (She kneels.) On my knee, Shepherd, I never have nutten to do with him.

  SHEPHERD: I guess not on your knee, but on your belly you play with him. Go out. I say go out. Your ears not so black they can’t hear.

  DELLA: Your eyes not so red they can’t see. I come on my knee to explain, to beg.

  SHEPHERD: On your knee, yes, on your knee before the power of God’s people.

  DELLA: You know your power over Liza drive me ‘way.

  SHEPHERD: And my power over Tata bring you back.

  DELLA: Your colour, your blood, your kinship bring me back. Use the power Tata put in your hand to help Tata people. Let them feel the white man spread out lies over them, to coop them up and keep them down. Make them rip open, steal out into the wide space and sense the cramp of the cell. Oh, Shepherd, our people have a live mind, but the habit of reverence for the white man chain it, and though it bark, it can’t spring.

  SHEPHERD: I’ve got no more to fear from White-Wolf than from negro. All who come to the yard know two or three old herb women they believe in their heart are deadlier than me. They believe in old women; and all of them, even some of the children, believe in themselves. See them when the full moon come tie their heads with red cloth, see them in the early morning draw herbs. Or they believe in rings, or put Bible over water and read a dreadful psalm. Policemen are just dying to see me stumble because they tall like me, and carry guns and work for the Queen, yet don’t possess my name and authority. But the joke is, Lord God, it’s sweet, they afraid to arrest me. Most of them were born right in Trench Town here, where people have respect.

  DELLA: Respect for what, Shepherd? Respect for spirits? That’s what you teaching them: fear the spirits, fear this house, fear that neighbour, fear the evil eye; from the spirits come bad luck and sickness?

  SHEPHERD: Yes. When I command them. Watch Tata.

  DELLA: So I must come to Shepherd and sing ‘way the spirits and make them wither under his prayer, and under his wonderful hand? Father, you were a carpenter once. When we come to the yard, tell us about the work and money and skill we need to be even with any man. With all these people round you this town should be a fortress with our flag flying high and fighting men in it. Not blind bodies feeling after spirits. No wonder they straying from you.

  SHEPHERD: So I will lash them to me with the obeah whip. Today I stroll down the street, the children stub them nose ‘gainst the window-pane and wonder to see Shepherd. The mother sigh, the father shame to know he must cower under obeah. Obeah is the strength of the yard, to hook your neck, Della, when you stray, and to exalt Shepherd.

  DELLA: Exalt you. But what about your people? When the Government pitch tins of rejected milk on the damp foul-brown dungheap next door to us, some of your women run to the dump, half-laughing with shame, their old slippers dragging along the pavement. The old milk truck rest on the dump and young and old attack it, screaming, tugging, rooting among the refuse, driving off the swine. Your women, once they lose their shame, are the best rooters, using their weight and demureness to trample on the little boys and fill their own pans with the rancid milk. When, last year, that place had just become the dump, some of these same women loudly called out ‘gainst this grubbing for garbage. It was ‘gainst dignity. But time and need for us have worn out dignity. Their little half-laugh is the last piece dignity has to its back. Down beneath the green leaf of life negroes hang on now naked as caterpillar. But they eating the leaf. They will spread wings beautiful as butterflies, and adorn a new earth.

  SHEPHERD: Trust meself to black people, I fall to ground. Root meself to obeah, I stay high. Sweet breeze blow on me.

  DELLA: It don’t trouble you, Shepherd, that there is a distance between the two colours which God never set?

  SHEPHERD: Black people too tired to cover distance. (Making a lewd pass at her.) I will lie down with them.

  DELLA: (Starting to go out.) God leave you to your ageing guts, you yard ram.

  Enter LAL.

  LAL: Miss Della. Tata dead.

  DELLA: Dead?

  LAL: As you stand there. Dead.

  DELLA starts to go out.

  SHEPHERD: (Coming over to her, with a facial expression of sympathy.) The death of a child can be the way back to faith and salvation.

  DELLA says nothing, starts once more to go and he again interrupts her. She is holding back her tears.

  Confess that obeah kill your son. Confess.

  DELLA: Not obeah, Aaron.

  SHEPHERD: (Striking her.) Confess.

  DELLA: Not obeah.

  SHEPHERD: Yes obeah kill him. (Striking her.) Admit to me it kill him.

  DELLA: (After a long silence.) Not obeah.

  SHEPHERD: You will come back to me, Della. If you not goin’ starve or be a servant, you will have to come back and make my bed.

  DELLA: Not obeah.

  DELLA exits.

  SHEPHERD: (Overjoyed and enjoying a great calm.) When I was a boy alone I used to sit beside the river. Evening come falling over my shoulder. When I look on the dark night I think it a relative. I solely belong to it. I don’t command money like White Wolf, but like Jesus Christ I command life. That life, young in the pickney like a far out wave, I, Shepherd, squeeze to foam. Life far out in the pickney, but greedy and tough. How manhood would see it move in to lap experience, elbow and surge to lap experience; every inlet and strait, every bay and harbour and gulf, lap and fall back again. That searching lamp life, Shepherd darken with mind and finger and word. (To LAL.) You tell the people?

  LAL: Yes I tell them.

  SHEPHERD: Then tonight we wail for Tata.

  SCENE TWO

  Early evening.

  DELLA is on her way home from SHEPHERD. She passes a number of children talking and playing, and when they mention TATA, she listens to them.

  Thunder.

  FIRST CHILD: It set up for rain.

  SECOND CHILD: Storm goin’ bust tonight. Me mother goin’ cover up her bed with board and newspaper and make us sleep under it. The roof a-leak.

  THIRD CHILD: Me mother say she never k
now a time when Trench Town roof don’t leak. She say they leak like Trench Town people mouth.

  SECOND CHILD: Trench Town people say Tata poorly.

  FIRST CHILD: Let’s play hopscotch in the dark.

  THIRD CHILD: That’s a girl’s game.

  FIRST CHILD: Throw taw, hop one, bend down, pick it up, rest two, spin round…

  SECOND CHILD: Me ‘fraid of the thunder.

  THIRD CHILD: If you were like Tata you wouldn’t ‘fraid.

  FIRST CHILD: Trench Town people say Tata dead.

  SECOND CHILD: You think lightning can strike the dead?

  THIRD CHILD: No, but it light them up so you can see their ghost.

  SECOND CHILD: You ever see a wet ghost?

  THIRD CHILD: Tata ghost will wear rompers to keep off the lightning.

  SECOND CHILD: How long they say he dead now?

  Drum.

  FIRST CHILD: Some of Shepherd people say today.

  SECOND CHILD: Hear the drum?

  FIRST CHILD: Throw taw, hop one, spin round, rest one…

  DELLA goes off. Drum. Dog howls.

  SCENE THREE

  DELLA’s house.

  The stage is empty, DELLA appears downstage-left, dragging herself home. JOSHIE appears upstage-left, carrying the baby, nursing it. DELLA reaches the window and leans against it, sobbing. JOSHIE hears her, puts the baby in the cot and runs out of the door to her.

  JOSHIE: Mumma, why are you crying?

  DELLA: Tata…

  JOSHIE: Tata’s all right. Miss Lal come here, tell me she hear Tata dead, so I nod. If Tata live or dead, it’s our business, not hers. Simply because I nod Miss Lal carry it down the street that my brother dead. But he not dead. (He shakes DELLA to convince her.)

  DELLA: Tata!! (She runs into house and kneels over TATA.)

  JOSHIE: (Following her into house.) What make Miss Lal believe that because my brother sick he must die? If every sick fowl was a dinner, crows like them would be fat… Mumma, it wasn’t as if I was joking with death.

  DELLA: I hear Tata name fall dry from their tongue. Not a word of pity for him. Black baby life cheap as yam.

  JOSHIE: (Enjoying his ruse a little in spite of everything.) They all hot with the death eh? They hear what they want to hear.

  DELLA: Shepherd calling the whole yard to a burial service tonight.

  JOSHIE: His dog must be dead.

  DELLA: They believe him dead because you tell them.

  JOSHIE: They believe him dead (A mocking imitation of the stereotyped credulous negro.) because Shepherd mark him for death like he mark Liza, and because with their own two ears they hear how he slip away from doctor medicine, pale and almost without a breath. (He pauses listening to the balm-yard call.) Tonight before the whole yard we can show Tata alive and flatten Shepherd.

  DELLA: Yes. Listen. Tonight I will go to the yard as a penitent. When Shepherd has announced the death of Tata, he will be at my mercy. Joshie, this weapon we now have in our hands, we must use it.

  The Balm-Yard call goes on as the lights fade and the curtain falls.

  SCENE FOUR

  A yard lit by candles wrapped in brown paper shades. In the background is a table covered with food – rice, chickens, rum; and to one leg of the table is tied a goat, pure black. The yard is gradually filling up, as many men as women, sitting on chairs or on the ground, many standing. A hymn, scarcely heard, is passing almost unconsciously from their lips; phrases taken up and let go again in the midst of talking, moving from one place to another, watching the food or just waiting in a vague expectancy. The hymn becomes a little fuller, then full enough to be the centre of interest, some enjoying it, some feeling it, some parodying it, some passing the time with a noise. Everybody harmonises, the basses with conscious and proud dexterity. They push out their chests. Then a beautifully wailed note from the same hymn signals the entrance of the “White Dove”, the leading lady in the yard. She is VIE, dressed in white with white shoes and covered with a white veil. She sings with her eyes closed and her body limp, and moved by her, the whole yard sits in the entrancement of this long, slow hymn.

  Two young men, GEORGE and RUDDY, now cycle up to the fence.

  GEORGE: Ruddy, stop here a little. The old fools are jumping tonight. God’s taught them to spend their wages on cheap silk and head wraps, while worms immobilize their children.

  A MAN INSIDE THE YARD: (Shouting.) Move on, irreverent.

  They are silent for a moment.

  Is the music make people stay in this racket.

  RUDDY: (Starting to move off.) Come George.

  GEORGE starts making peculiar nasal noises wrecking the music.

  GEORGE: Since God not hearing them, he might hear me. (Making the noise again.)

  A MAN INSIDE THE YARD: No manners taught at your home, son?

  GEORGE: No home, you old bastard.

  MAN: No religion. No Lord, no God.

  GEORGE: No Lord, God, Almighty, Saviour, Providence. With three persons and so many aliases it hard to catch up with him.

  MAN: Blasphemer.

  GEORGE: Shear your sheep, Shepherd.

  RUDDY: Come, George.

  MAN: No wonder you can’t find work.

  GEORGE: Oh, yes. Yes, Mass Sam. I don’t like God so He stops me getting work.

  RUDDY: Georgie, come, they will kick you down.

  GEORGE: With their first pair of boots. You think I don’t know.

  The young men cycle away and the yard continues the hymn. It finishes.

  A MAN: Look how our meeting going nicely, nicely, and those hooligans want to mash it up. They question too much.

  A WOMAN: (Saucily disagreeing.) Yes, they question, but not this. This is a thing too stale to question. They question that some can sicken their bellies with food while the rest of us have to steal or want.

  At this point the SHEPHERD enters with a red dunce-cap, a loose gown that falls just above his ankles and brown shoes.

  A WOMAN: (Swooningly.) Let the wisdom of the Shepherd cool all argument.

  SHEPHERD at first pays no attention to his audience but attends the table gravely, setting it in order. Then dramatically, he pronounces:

  SHEPHERD: You can’t serve two masters. Who won’t credit me, can’t feel my spirit. You hear rumours saying somebody dead. Tonight, somebody dead, and little by little through the night my little white goat turn black with his spirit. For he is a tormented spirit. And let all who believe not on me fear torment. (Beginning an invocation.) Come over spirit; melt away their little fear; sing out.

  (He sings.) Me alone, me alone,

  In the wilderness

  Forty days and forty nights

  In the wilderness.

  The yard takes up the hymn and SHEPHERD takes up collection. Then DELLA comes in. The whole yard says “Della” in astonishment, and there is a bubble of voices. She sings:

  DELLA: Oh my people

  Turn back from the trudging road,

  Turn, turn, turn,

  Back from the trudging road.

  The people are dissatisfied with the presumption her song implies and they protest: “What sort of song this?”

  SHEPHERD: Do you sing this to show penitence? Vie, sing her a penitence song.

  VIE: (Her face covered with spite and insolence leads the yard in the Sankey.) Born of the water, the spirit and the blood Thank God I’m born again.

  This is accompanied by a tremendous dance by SHEPHERD, in which he jerks his chest and frowns as if shaking off the opposition of devils.

  Born of the water, the spirit and the blood

  Thank God I’m born again.

  SHEPHERD: Confess now, obeah kill your son.

  DELLA: Obeah failed.

  JOSHIE enters with TATA. He is accompanied by GEORGE.

  JOSHIE: Tata not dead. He here with the living.

  The people crowd round JOSHIE.

  GEORGE: Look like Shepherd can breed more than he can kill.

  Pause.

  DELLA: Gull
master.

  SHEPHERD: The miracle of death reach out to the miracle of resurrection and more glory to Shepherd. I raise him, for her sake I did it. Because of her penitence. I said I would bring the white goat in for a sign, dead if Tata stay dead, alive if I raise him up. White for her sin, alive for her penitence. Now see the goat alive and Tata lives. Blessed be Shepherd. Ooh-aih

  The crowd join in responses, then exit.

  Now more of the simple people honour me, reverence me, respect me, feed me, obey me, bow the head when I talk, so no blotch come between my life and my dream. Power under my foot now; I bend down, raise it up and find it full in my hand. (Holding her.) Therefore, you must come over to me now, Della; draw away from the sweep of my hand to the shelter of my side.

  DELLA: Your five fingers rest on my shoulder like claws. Take them off. You will yet be glad to crawl out this yard and leave me your mantle. I will see the beast’s Shepherd’s eyes weaken and fall beneath me, and then lead the yard away from obeah.

  Enter several angry young men.

  GEORGE: Well, Shepherd, you seem to fool Tom, Dick and Harry, but you can’t fool George.

  SHEPHERD: Pshaw. Time for bed now man, no time for argument.

  GEORGE: Admit Shepherd, Della son put it over you.

  SHEPHERD: Stand there fellow. No nearer.

  A YOUNG MAN: Easy George, easy.

  DELLA, excited at this support, runs out of the yard, but is too curious to go away altogether, and lingers unseen to hear what is happening.

  SHEPHERD: Money you want?

  GEORGE: Gentlemen, you know how many anxious people money this man collect up. You know what he planning for Della, and for the boy who, God bless him, open the people’s eyes.

  SHEPHERD: Leaving Della to God. Bothering with her no longer. From this night she is the easiest piece of tail in town. Go try her now.

  Approval from some of the gang.

  GEORGE: Time for that.

  SHEPHERD: (To GEORGE, speaking of the rest of the gang.) But they out to romp with her. The both of them. One behind the other.

  YOUNG MAN: Right. You know the ways of man.

  SHEPHERD: (Throwing money to the gang.) Take this, buy cock soup to keep your strength up with her. She will tear you down. She a big woman.