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Fiction-Online Volume 6 Number 2
FICTION-ONLINE
An Internet Literary Magazine
Volume 6, Number 2
March-April, 1999
EDITOR'S NOTE:
FICTION-ONLINE is a literary magazine publishing
electronically through e-mail and the Internet on a bimonthly basis.
The contents include short stories, play scripts or excerpts, excerpts of
novels or serialized novels, and poems. Some contributors to the
magazine are members of the Northwest Fiction Group of
Washington, DC, a group affiliated with Washington Independent
Writers. However, the magazine is an independent entity and solicits
and publishes material from the public.
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explicitly licensed, are reserved.
William Ramsay, Editor
=================================================
CONTENTS
Editor's Note
Contributors
Songs of the elders of Argos, poems
E. James Scott
"The Day the Music Stopped," a short story
Bunny Brown
"Little People," an excerpt (chapter 13) from
the novel "Ay, Chucho!"
William Ramsay
"Decisions," part 4 of the play, "Julie"
Otho Eskin
=================================================
CONTRIBUTORS
BUNNY BROWN is the nom de plume of a Palo Alto (CA) clinical
psychologist who specializes in the treatment of abused adolescents.
She is also a watercolorist and occasionally writes articles for
newspaper travel columns.
OTHO ESKIN, former diplomat and consultant on international affairs,
has published short stories and has had numerous plays read and
produced in Washington, notably "Act of God." His play "Duet" has
been produced at the Elizabethan Theater at the Folder Library in
Washington.. His play, "Season in Hell," recently had sixteen
performances at the SCENA Theatre in Washington.
WILLIAM RAMSAY is a physicist and consultant on Third World
energy problems. He is also a writer and the coordinator of the
Northwest Fiction Group. His play, "Revenge," recently received
readings by the Actor's Theatre of Washington.
E. JAMES SCOTT is an airline pilot and has taught at gourmet
cooking schools in Chicago and Mexico City. His latest researches
have been on pre-classical Greek civilization.
==================================================
SONGS OF THE ELDERS OF ARGOS
by E. James Scott
Feast of Revenge
Woe to the House of Atreus,
Killing the killers and then again killing,
Boiled golden curls and nets full of royal gore.
Now the killing is over,
Soon the killing begins again.
Death is justice,
And justice destroys all!
Games of the Gods
Round, round, round, round:
Love turning to hate.
The hearth becomes a battle ground,
Crimes punished,
Punishments avenged,
Vengeance repaid
Blood, blood, blood.
Round, round, round:
The circular games of the gods.
==================================================
THE DAY THE MUSIC STOPPED
by Bunny Brown
Julie always got up each morning in a bright, positive, if somewhat
brittle state of mind, but found it difficult to keep it going for long.
Chaos shoved its ragged claws even into the process of selecting
something to wear from the assorted scraps of partially dirty clothing
lying between the piles of books, magazines, and half-eaten snacks that
carpeted her tiny bedroom. Pulling on a wrinkled but only slightly
musty sweater from the heap, she checked quickly to make sure it didn't
pull too tightly across her newly swelling and already quite obvious
breasts. No point in getting Daddy raging again, she thought, as she
noticed that the tear in the back of the skirt hardly showed. Even
though she hadn't as yet gotten into the bathroom to brush her teeth,
she took out her shiny new lipstick, stolen on a dare at the dime store
yesterday, and carefully applied it, admiring the effect in the cracked
mirror of her little compact. She could practice putting it on a little
more once she got to school.
Trying to get some time in the bathroom was a daily ordeal. Her bratty,
noisy brothers stormed the door each morning and stayed in the shower
for what seemed like hours, resisting her pleas to let her in for just a
few moments. The door was locked again this morning, so she
retreated to her room to reread her diary notes from the day before.
"All the boys seem to like me, but Joey likes me the most -- he said so
in his note yesterday!" Absently, she drew a little heart with "Joey
loves Julie" inside, and began to decorate it with frills and ruffles as she
listened for the sound of the bathroom door opening. She glanced again
at her little mirror, to be sure the bruise from Daddy's slap last night
was covered by her bangs.
Suddenly, her heart sank. She'd completely forgotten - today was piano
lesson day, worst day of the week, and she'd as usual neglected her
practicing. The big recital was looming, and her teacher was
determined that Julie be the star of the show. Auntie Clem, her teacher,
bragged to everyone about Julie's talent, and talked effusively about
how extraordinary it was to have a child only twelve years old playing
Beethoven's "Sonata Pathetique". Julie actually loved the piece, and
enjoyed playing it on her old, out-of-tune piano. Quiet moments to
practice were really hard to come by in their turbulent household,
though, and her brothers took special delight in banging on the piano
as Julie tried to practice. She'd given up hope of mother ever trying to
get them to stop, especially since the baby came. She played with
bravado, with passion, with dash - never mind a lot of wrong notes.
She felt the music and its melancholy deeply, and often heard the notes
echoing in her mind while she tried to do homework. And yet, she
dreaded the weekly lessons. With every wrong note, Auntie Clem
would shriek, "no, no, no" as she smacked Julie's fingers with the sharp
edge of her ruler.
A quick glance at the clock confirmed the usual bad news - late again!
Never mind the unbrushed teeth and unwashed face - she grabbed her
books and jacket and tore downstairs, nearly colliding with her father
as he emerged from the bathroom set aside for his exclusive use in the
mornings. "Where the hell do you think you're going, young lady!" he
barked, stepping back to take in the sweater and the lipstick hastily
smeared over her unwashed face. "You're not wearing anything that
tight out of this house" he roared, "and wipe that garbage off your face
while you're at it." Julie thought briefly about trying to explain, but
knew it was hopeless in the face of her father's rage. Dreading the
prospect of another scene like last night, she dragged back upstairs to
try and find a less offensive sweater, knowing that she'd probably have
to make a mad dash for the school bus once again.
The metallic brightness of the day's prospects seemed to dim with each
passing moment. If she had to wear one of her old, lumpy sweaters
Joey probably wouldn't even notice her! Her eyes smarted,
remembering the mean comments yesterday from the catty group of
girls who used to be her friends. Ever since she got her period, way
before anyone else in the crowd, they never missed a chance to poke
spiteful fun at Julie's clothes.
She walked into the kitchen just as everyone around the table was
grabbing the last bites of breakfast. Her father greeted her arrival with
a storm of angry invective about being late, not having the wits to get
herself together in the morning, going out looking like a slut. Knowing
it was best not to provoke him further by saying anything in her own
defense, she slumped into her chair and began mechanically shoving
food into her mouth, fighting down the alarming waves of nausea that
usually accompanied family meals. Her brothers smirked as Daddy's
attack intensified, and John, the next oldest of the group, gave her a
sharp mean kick under the table as if to underscore the invective.
Mother, head down and apparently oblivious to her husband's rapidly
escalating rage, smiled sweetly as she continued to feed the baby.
Everyone said Daddy's heart was really in bad shape -- he was supposed
to try and be calm, but he didn't seem to be making much headway on
that problem, nor on the heavy drinking the doctors insisted must stop.
Despite her good intentions, she finally lashed back at him. "Daddy,
that's just completely unfair!" she protested, "John and Jack
monopolized the bathroom for more than half an hour, and there's no
clean clothes to wear!" At this statement Julie's mother looked up
from the baby for a second and said sharply, "That's a lie! There's
plenty of clean clothing in the laundry room -- all you have to do is get
down there and iron it! And by the way, Auntie Clem called to say
you haven't been practicing, again, and the big recital's only ten days
away!" This was the final straw for Julie's father. Yelling "I told you
those lessons were a complete waste of money" he leaped up, kicking
over his chair. "And I told you to wipe that goddamned lipstick off
your stupid face." He grabbed Julie by the hair and dragged her to the
bathroom, where he forcibly wiped all the lipstick off. Fuming to
himself about being late, he ran for the door, without even his usual
muttered good-bye.
For a moment, the little family group sat very quietly at the breakfast
table. Mother cooed to the baby, who stopped screaming and
responded with smiles and gurgles. Fighting back tears, Julie made her
way back up to her room. Once upstairs, she locked her door and sat
on the bed, staring dejectedly at the mess. No point in rushing to
change again -- she was sure to miss the school bus now in any event.
Mother called up, "Julie, get down here right now. You're going to
miss the bus! And don't forget your piano lesson this afternoon!" Julie
threw on yet another sweater and dashed downstairs.
From the moment she climbed panting onto the waiting bus to the jeers
and catcalls of all the kids, the day darkened into an ever descending
spiral of despair. Julie plodded numbly through her classes all day, her
spirits hardly lifted at all by Joey's little notes scribbled on scraps of
paper dropped by her desk. The prospect of facing Auntie Clem again
with no progress on the Adagio made her tremble every time she
thought of it.. By the end of last period, when she gathered her books
and started out alone on the long walk down to Auntie Clem's house,
she felt like she was walking to an executioner's block.
As her fingers stumbled through the opening bars, Auntie Clem started
in again as usual, screaming at her, slapping her with the ruler, working
herself into an ever escalating frenzy. Julie hunched over the keys,
trying not to cry, and started playing it again from the beginning.
However, her playing and the screaming just got worse, and she finally
collapsed in tears over the keyboard. In a rare gesture of kindness,
Auntie Clem leaned over her and brushed the hair away from her face,
muttering "There, there now ." She noticed the bruise on Julie's
forehead, and said, "Julie dear, who hit you? That's a really nasty
bruise." Julie jumped up, kicked over the piano bench, and threw the
sheets of music all over the floor. "You . You . You just go to hell,"
she sobbed . She ran from the room, slamming the french doors so
hard a pane of glass broke. Crossing the porch, she heard the broken
shards of glass falling to the floor one by one.
==================================================
LITTLE PEOPLE
by William Ramsay
(Note: the is chapter 13 of the novel, "Ay, Chucho!"
I had been more than four hours in the hands of G-2, and it was
almost two A. M. when I found myself standing again in the lobby of
the Presidente, waiting for the elevator. After only a minute or so, the
elevator arrived and the doors opened. The elevator was working --
that was good. The elevator operator was Mr. Marcus in a maroon
uniform with gold braid -- that was not so good.
"We've made plans for your escape," he said.
"But I don't want to escape."
"The Fidel factor has compromised the mission."
"No, no," I said. "Listen."
A chambermaid got in at the next floor and we rode in silence for a
few floors. As she got off and the door closed on her, I said, "Fidel
wants me to do a job for him. If I finish it on time, I can get my father
out." I thought "maybe" but didn't say it.
"And Pillo?" he said.
"Him too," I said, really stretching the facts. The elevator reached
the top floor and we started back down again.
"Better to abort the mission and get out."
Even if I wanted to return to the States now and face a
disappointed Gomez and a disillusioned I.R.S., I doubted that Fidel's
boys would allow me to get out of Cuba now -- I was sure they would
be watching me closely from now on. "Give me some time, Mr.
Marcus -- say, what is your first name?"
"Seymour," he said, making a sad face.
"Two weeks," I said. "Mr. Marcus," I added.
He shrugged. "Send messages through the soda bottle."
A man in his forties wearing Russian-looking clothes got on the
elevator. As we reached my floor I headed for the door.
"Wait..." said Mr. Marcus.
I got out of the car quickly. It had been a very long day.
The next morning, the sunlight through my broken venetian blinds
seemed to promise better things. If I could keep Mr. Marcus from
panicking, I should be able to get out of the amateur spy business
entirely. Instead of an impossible cloak-and-dagger assignment, I
would be a professional engineer again -- just like in my days as a
research assistant in graduate school. Of course I might be tackling an
impossible _technical_ assignment. Impossible or not, I didn't care,
any change was for the better. At least I didn't have to try to pull off a
prison break in a communist country anymore, I didn't even have to
pose as a harmless left-wing physician -- at least to Castro and Pineda,
the only two people who really counted.
I resolved to buckle down to work, not knowing whether or when
I could produce Fidel's crazy phones -- but determined to give it a
damned good try. The two weeks I had asked Marcus for wouldn't be
enough -- but he didn't have to know that. Yet.
The next week I spent sitting in my hotel room, reading articles
and leafing through E.E. books, making calls, and trying to figure out
exactly how I was going to pull off this cellular phone scheme. I spent
a lot of time battling the Cuban international phone dis-service, bulling
through busy signals and sudden disconnects to talk to my assistant
Fabricio at the store in Miami and to my friend Professor Suarez at
Florida State, trying to get books, articles, instruction sheets --
anything about the cable business. In Miami, my contact at McGraw
Cable was out of town -- great timing.
In the meantime, my mother hadn't been idle. I saw her on
Wednesday when we had lunch together. I said very little to her about
my interview with Fidel. She obviously suspected that something was
up, but I was determined to keep mum about my deal with Fidel --
knowing her, it was best to keep her in the dark about anything even
halfway confidential.
"I've been thinking," she said.
Oh, God, I said to myself.
"Everything's so deadly serious. Like you, _hijo_ _mio_. You
seem to be working so hard," she said, smearing more butter on one of
the crusty hard rolls that are one of the few genuine treats that are still
left on most dining tables in socialist Cuba. "It makes a person think."
"Yeah."
She pursed her lips and brushed a crumb of something off the
bodice of her dress. It was excessively low-cut, and I tried not to stare
at the curve of her breasts where the dress front hung loosely. Cover
up, Mom, I felt like saying, act like a normal middle-aged woman. The
color of the dress almost matched the royal blue of the corner of the
Florida Channel that showed through the palms and over the low wall
along the Malecon. She took out a pocket mirror and examined her
chin, pulling it up with one hand. "I believe I've lost a little weight.
Hmmm." She turned to look at me, her hazel eyes bright in a ring of
green eye shadow. "You know, Chucho, all that's very Cuban," she
said.
I asked her what was very Cuban.
"All that fuss about everything. _You_ are so serious, _He_, that
bearded Bolshevik bum, is absolutely in earnest about all his crazy
schemes, even your father..."
"Even my father what?"
"I don't know!" She poured herself a large glass of red wine from
the decanter. She drank, slurping a bit. "Nobody has a sense of
humor."
"I don't see that anything's funny," I said.
"You see, you see! Always so serious." Her eyes bugged out,
glistening. "Everybody's too busy trying to be a big shot." She waved
her hands. "_Big_ shot, _big_ people, the _large_ picture."
I closed my eyes. When my mother gets this way, forget it.
She turned to gaze out at the sea. The reflections from the pool below
lit up her forehead as if a great light were shining out from inside her
skull. Her eyes squinted. "People are really little things, aren't they? I
mean, we're all just here for a little while, just _little_ people..."
"Crawling between heaven and earth," I said, remembering
Professor Sawyer's Shakespeare course.
She made a face. "I don't know what you mean by crawling." Her
face grew more bizarre, a wild smirk, as if I were selling porno movies.
"Crawling, that's what's so wrong about everything. Some people have
to crawl, they have no legs, the common man is often not only
common, he's little, weak, deformed -- but who cares about that? Not
Castro!"
Her wine glass was empty. The gray-haired man in the orange
polo shirt at the next table was staring. I poured her some more
Chilean white.
It was like high school. All I could think about was my
embarrassment -- about why I couldn't have a regular mother like other
guys. So I now confess that I didn't make the effort to connect with
what she was trying to get at -- she was talking now about a "different
kind of plan" -- whatever that meant. Instead of thinking, I had
another quick glass of wine instead. And when I finished it, I told my
mother I was busy and left to get back to work, putting _mamacita_
and her wild thoughts out of my mind. I dismissed all her blathering as
just hot air.
Oh well, you can't foresee everything, can you? I felt then that I
had no time to even _think_ about anything but my new job. God
knows I did have my work cut out for me. As I said, as a "reseller" of
cellular service in Miami, I had been accustomed to buying up blocks
of telephone numbers and selling service contracts to the cellular
customers in my shop. So I knew something about the way the cellular
business worked -- unfortunately I also knew that parts of the problem
might be exceedingly difficult to work out from a hotel room in
Havana.
The cellular phone is just a fancy version of the old mobile phone,
phone messages carried by radio. So that part of it, the radio
transmitters and receivers, shouldn't turn out to be a problem. But the
new part of the concept was the cells themselves -- geographical areas
each with a separate central radio that transmitted and received
conversations from mobile phones, each on its own individual radio
frequency. When you were in your car, moving around the city, you
would pass through various cells -- the trick is for the Mobile
Telephone Switching Office, which sits like a spider in the midst of the
web of cells, to keep track of what cell you're in, and switch you to the
right frequency available at that time in that cell.
All that meant computers -- which in general I knew about. But it
also meant special cellular hardware and software that were all Greek
to me. Fidel had promised me the help of Professor Apodaca in the
engineering department of the University. Apodaca was supposed to
be a whiz at telecommunications and computers -- but as I suspected,
he turned out to know very little about the specifics of electronic
communications switching.
He was a very slight, intense young man with bright eyes behind
the spectacles.
"Ah, ah," he might say as I brought up some new difficulty. "That
is a problem. But...," he would wave wildly at me, "intriguing, very
intriguing, it reminds me of the time..." And he would go off onto one
of his reminiscences about some software glitch that kept him -- and
his wife, too, I suspect -- awake for three nights in a row. Then he
would suggest going to the Czechs or even the French for help. I
smiled, trying to make my lips assume the position that I was learning
to think of as the "Fidel knows best" grin. My smile did all the work: I
didn't have to tell Apodaca that for some reason official outside help
was not going to be allowed. He saw, his face turned grave. I
changed the subject to our liaison with the Ministry of
Communications. He and the Deputy Assistant Minister for State
Radio Networks been classmates at the University in Havana together
-- thank God.
Another good thing that happened was that Eddy showed up again
on the day after we started work. He was on "work break" from his
school, and like all good socialist students was expected to help out
with the sugar harvest. A word to Pineda, however, and I got him
attached to my staff on the Hilton roof.
"I'll be expecting a lot from you, this is important," I said to him.
"Don't worry, Doctor, I'll show you what I can do." And he did,
he worked like a dog, doing everything from going out for
_empanadas_ to helping to program systems codes. Sometimes I
caught him gazing at me with a look that reminded me of Cleopatra
eyeing Anthony, but I shoved the thought aside -- I didn't need to stir
up trouble if he didn't.
By the end of the first four or five days, I was optimistic. By the
beginning of the following week, my mood had shifted toward
desperation: I had talked with Philip George, my contact at McGraw,
who had in a kindly voice told me that all the key circuits and software
logic diagrams were strictly proprietary, not only within his company,
but in the whole industry. By the middle of that week, I found out
that transmitter crystals in the 800 megahertz band would have to be
special-ordered from Canada. The prospect for meeting the
conference deadline looked infinitesimal -- and my chances for
outliving the conference as a free, or even breathing human being
looked even worse.
I had too many drinks that night -- Polish vodka. I got so out of it
that as I was dropping off to sleep, I was convincing myself that I'd get
my friends in the C.I.A., Marcus, Dominguez, to sneak me out of the
country. "And that would be that," I muttered to myself, my eyes
dizzy. But waking up at about five to go to the bathroom, my head
pounding merrily, reality sneaked back into my alcohol-deadened brain.
Escape. Maybe. But what after that? Back to "the Men" in Miami?
They had long arms, those guys. And they also had good contacts
with the C.I.A. -- which probably had some field officers who were a
little more formidable than Mr. Marcus. So that even if I'd be able to
get away from my ever-present G-2 shadow long enough to reach
Dominguez, who knew if I'd even make it out of the country without
some "accident" befalling me?
I woke up again to a muffled series of peremptory knocks on the
door. It was light outside. I shuffled over to the door, hardly able to
open my eyes. When I unlocked the door, it gave a loud crunch and
squeak, and Paco's big arm pushed me aside as he slipped into the
room.
"_Hola_, Chucho! I think I'm in the clear." He took a deep
breath, released it, and then gave me a big smile.
I told him I was glad that the police hadn't picked him up.
"But they did. It was rough going for a time, but I'm an American
now, I was in Cuba perfectly legally, and all the evidence was gone. I
maintained that Duran was a liar and a crook -- which he is -- and that
he had been trying to shake me down over currency regulations."
I questioned him about his interrogation. As I did, I gradually
came to the realization that I too would have been all right with G-2
except for my false name. They had obviously bought Paco's story that
we were innocent tourists that were being blackmailed by a local con
man. So that explained why Pineda and company had been relatively
easy on me, why they hadn't questioned me about the bomb plot. All
they were interested was what Duran must have disclosed about my
identity: that I was a _gusano_, a persona non grata in Cuba
masquerading as an FMLN cadre.
Paco frowned. "Lend me a few dollars, will you? Elena isn't in."
His forehead was dotted with perspiration. "How is Elena? All right?"
I told him that I didn't know, that she had talked about being busy
with some new kind of plan to help get "dear Fedy" out.
He raised his eyebrows and made a face. "Good old Elena.
Always a new project of some kind." He shook his head, lowered it,
and flipped the long strands of his hair back up into place. He gave me
a sloppy abrazo. His arms felt sweaty, and as he pulled away, I could
still smell the perspiration. "Need to rethink things," he said. "Check
out Elena's new project." He started to slam the door on the way out,
but then he gave a little sigh and stopped, carefully easing the door into
its frame. "Got to be cautious now," he said. "Well-behaved."
I found out soon enough what my mother's new project was all
about. I knocked on the door of Paco's room a few days later. There
were scuffling sounds inside, and then the door opened, but no one
was there. At least I thought at first that no one was there. A thin,
high-tenor voice said, "Yes, yes, yes?" I looked down into big brown
eyes set into a large egg-shaped head perching on top of a very small
body with short bowed legs. I stammered, asking for Paco.
"Oh," the dwarf squealed, showing me in. "Paquito's in the
powder room, back in just a jiffy."
"Paquito" came out almost immediately, zipping up his fly
dramatically with a long sweep of his arms, as if he were conducting
important business. And I guess, given Paco's dedication to his career,
he was right to take care of his most obvious economic asset.
"This man wants to see you, Paco."
He's O.K., Jerry. 'Felipe,'" he said, "this is comrade Santander,
Jerry Santander." As normal with Latins, he pronounced it as if it were
spelled "Cherry."
"Pleasure," said the dwarf. "Pierre's told me about you."
"You know Pierre?" I said.
"Who doesn't?" said Jerry.
Paco took my arm as if he were telling me something very personal
and upsetting. "Jerry's helping Elena organize the project."
"What kind of project?" I asked, but they both ignored me. Paco
started to talk to Jerry about rendezvous points and signs, where to get
the printing done, and so on.
"Don't worry, Paquitito," said Jerry," we'll have a good turn-out."
Paco clapped him on the back, staggering the little man. Jerry
caught himself on a chair and came up smiling. "Hey, I'm _little_
people, remember, _little_." His eyes came about up to Paco's belly
button, and he poked him hard just below it. Paco grunted and pulled
away. "Easy, Jerry boy, easy!" he said. Jerry laughed and pointed at
his own crotch. "But not so little here!" He waved good-bye and
went out, humming something that sounded very much like "Whistle
while you work."
Paco put his arm around me. The hand was clean and dry for a
change. "I didn't think I should talk while he was here, Chucho. It's
about getting your Papa out."
I asked him what he meant.
"It's a demonstration to embarrass the Cuban government. It's
Elena's idea, I'm just helping out."
I told him it sounded fishy. I didn't know how a demonstration
could get my father out of prison. And that was only in the first place
-- in the second place, any kind of demonstration would be an
impossibility -- Castro's Cuba was a pretty efficient police state,
despite all the comradely democratic bullshit. Paco was wearing a new
gold ring in the shape of a heart. He rubbed it thoughtfully and then
smiled bashfully at me. "You may be right. But you know your
mother, Chucho." He made a face. "And we are out of other ideas,
aren't we?"
I did know my mother -- I knew enough to know that I didn't
know _anything_ about what she was likely to think up next.
I met Mama for lunch the next day on the terrace overlooking the
pool. Paco was with us, his eyes following the bikinis of a cluster of
razor-thin graduate-level nymphets that were talking and laughing as
they jumped in and out of the pool or sat stroking themselves sensually
with suntan lotion.
I pulled my own eyes away -- nice, but on the anorexic side, I
thought. I turned to my mother. "This is crazy, Mama."
"Somebody has to do something."
I still didn't dare tell her about my hopes with Fidel and the phones
-- so I shrugged my shoulders and took a look for myself at a
well-rounded redhead with suntanned hips that flowed like wine into
her long legs. Then a phone rang somewhere across the pool, and I
found myself worrying again -- about the cellular project. The plans
for the central transmitting stations had been drawn up, technicians had
been assigned for installing phones in the demonstration fleet of
MININT vehicles and diplomatic vehicles. But on the computer
problems, I was still nowhere.
"What are you dreaming about, Chuchito?" said my mother.
I told her: nothing.
"'Nothing,'" she said. "That's exactly what's been done in this
famous socialist state for the handicapped, exactly nothing. You
wouldn't believe it. If you knew the discrimination a fine person like
Jerry Santander has gone through, fired from job after job, turned
down by the civil service even though he got high grades on the exam.
'Height limits' indeed! It's more a limitation on the intelligence and
imagination of the pointy-headed _barbudos_ that are running this
country."
"Easy, Elena," said Paco, looking at the group of Eastern
Europeans at the next table. Her voice had grown loud.
"Except for Fidel, they use Norelcos now, they're not _barbudos_
any longer," I said. She smiled at me as if I were two years old, but I
wasn't in the mood for being put down. "Even if you could do
something," I said, "why pick such a piddling little issue, why not the
mixed economy question or the political prisoner problem in general?
And anyway, how does all this have anything to do with Father's
predicament?"
She shook her head. "Men always love complicated issues. Keep
it simple, son, keep the issue simple. Simple, _little_!" she said,
smiling. "Besides, don't you see?" Her face took on a middle-aged
Joan of Arc look. "The political prisoners are little people too. If they
start out big, like your father, Castro's prisons end up making them
little. And we intend to get some publicity with this demonstration that
will make Castro get off his rear end and do something about letting
people like Federico go free!" She raised her glass of beer and sipped
sparingly. "As to the practical problems, well, we'll see, won't we?"
And she stared at me with her large brown eyes that reminded me of
Jerry Santander.
I could see that she was going to make a nuisance of herself in the
good old American way -- but whether her gringo-type plan would
work in Cuba was another story entirely.
Just them a husky but legless man in a wheelchair came scooting
into the restaurant. He careened against a bus tray and sent dishes
flying. The chair stopped momentarily and he winced slightly at the
crash, but then he revved up again and made it over to our table, where
my mother gave him a passionate but somewhat stiff-looking
_abrazo_. I whispered to Paco, asking if he was one of the "little
People" too. Paco smiled and said that Cecilio had lost his legs in the
civil war in Angola and always joked that he was a lot smaller now than
he should have been -- by about three feet.
The sun had moved around to shimmer blindingly off the pool. I
realized I didn't know anymore what my mother meant by "little" --
and I didn't much care to know, since I was sure she would never get
her crazy scheme off the ground.
Which -- given the way things turned out -- may or may not tell
you something about who was crazy and who wasn't.
Paco leaned over and whispered to me. "A certain friend of ours
has knocked over another bank -- this time in Sancti Spiritus."
Pierre. I pictured him entering the bank, Uzi held under one
armpit, his cat Kropotkin cradled under the other.
"Practical politics," I said. Yes, I thought, maybe the anarchists
were right after all: money=power=politics. And Pierre I was sure
would say that an anarchist couldn't destroy a central government any
more effectively than by taking its money away.
But where would the money end up? I guessed in a Swiss bank
account of Pierre's.
I was sorely tempted to confide in Paco about my cellular
problems. Mr. Gomez and the other "Men" must have had ways of
shaking loose some proprietary software and a component board or
two. But Paco wasn't exactly my idea of a discreet confidant. Neither
was Marcus, but it seemed to me that he was the lesser of the two
evils. I decided I'd try out the emergency contact procedure: I'd go
directly to the C.I.A. -- and maybe through them the Association -- to
get some help for my phones.
That night I left a note in the "mailbox," a tin "Coola-Cola" bottle
under the third palm from the right along the walkway starting from the
edge of the park on the Avenida side. There was an answering note
under my door when I returned -- and the following evening I took a
seat in the open-air garden restaurant, taking a table close to the corner
of the wall separating the garden from a garage and service area. I was
expecting Valeska to meet me there, as usual, in about half an hour.
Since she was always late, I thought I should be able to get my
message delivered well before she arrived.
Unfortunately the instructions in the note hadn't taken into account
that there appeared to be two corners close to the garage, so I sat at a
table halfway in between. As soon as the waiter had brought me a
drink, I began humming the anthem "America," you know, "My
Country 'Tis of Thee" -- as per instructions. I started out humming it
under my breath. But as the minutes slipped by, I turned up the
volume. My waiter came back and I stopped abruptly. He stared. I
waved him away, and as I began humming again, I noticed somebody
moving behind the decorative frieze of perforations in the wall. A
half-shadowed figure moved back and forth like a confused moth near a
candle. I hummed louder. Another waiter had joined the first one and
they were both standing about fifteen feet away, eyeing me and
whispering together. I figured it was now or never, and I began to
sing out loud: I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and..." One waiter
looked at his feet, the other chuckled, took the first one by the arm,
and they walked away whispering together and looking back at me.
From behind the wall came a stage whisper, "What is that you're
singing?"
"America," I said.
"That isn't America, it goes 'Oh beautiful for spacious skies,
la-di-la- di-la." I couldn't see through the wall in the poor light, but I
recognized the husky nasal voice of Mr. Marcus.
"That's 'America the Beautiful,' for God's sake." I walked over to
the wall and inserted my thin sheaf of notes on my requirements for the
phone system through a perforation in the shape of a pineapple. "Here,
for God's sake, hurry," I said. The notes scrunched and quivered in the
perforation and then disappeared. I looked around -- one of the
waiters was talking, head bowed, to the maitre d'. I pretended to be
gazing at the moon -- which was difficult because a bank of wispy dark
clouds had almost blotted it out. I saw the dapper maitre d' coming
toward me. "Have you got it?" I said to Marcus.
"Yes, but what's this all about?"
"It's about getting my father out of jail, that's what."
A whiny groan came through the wall. "And Pillo?"
"Him too," I said, crossing my fingers.
"But what is it exactly that you need?"
"It's in the damned notes, don't you understand them?"
"Wait a minute, don't be in such a rush, let me light a match."
The maitre d' raised himself up to his full five feet and then leaned
toward me, an impossibly wide smile on his lips. "Is the comrade ready
to order?"
"No, not yet." He frowned. I said, "I mean, yes, yes."
"What would you like as an appetizer?" he said, peering over my
shoulder at the wall.
"The chicken what-you-call-it."
"I'm sorry, but..."
"Chicken, you know, the one at the top of the menu."
"Ah, you mean the duck, comrade."
"Yes, that's it, that's it."
He raised his eyebrows. "Yes, comrade." He pursed his lips. "I
hope there is no difficulty, _senor_," he said, slipping up on his
'comrades.'"
"No, not at all. I'm just waiting for a friend." A long whisper
came through the wall. The maitre d' looked at me sideways. "Some
kids fooling around," I said.
"Beggars. An insult to the Revolution. I'll chase them away."
"No, no, it's all right, I like it."
"I beg your pardon."
"Live and let live."
The eyebrows went even higher. "This is a dignified restaurant,"
he said. I shrugged. He shrugged too and turned to go. Another loud
whisper came through the wall. The maitre d' turned again.
"Kids," I said.
"Kids," he said and walked off.
"Is he gone?" said Marcus' voice.
"Take the notes and go." I saw a voluptuous figure approaching --
Valeska.
"Wait, wait," said Marcus' voice, "wait. You have to take more
time on a mission when necessary."
"Necessary my ass, everybody's looking, and my girl's coming."
"Tell her to go away -- bad security procedure on your part.
Damn, I can't get these matches to light, I should have brought a
flashlight." Valeska waved and smiled. "Just get the information
sent to me," I said, lowering my voice, "it's about a computer
switching system, that's what I need, they'll know in Miami. Any
engineer will know." I got up to kiss Valeska on the cheek and pull
out a chair for her.
Marcus' voice came through, flat and penetrating. "Not my field, I
majored in psychology."
It figures, I thought.
"Who was that?" said Valeska, turning around.
"Nothing." I got up and went over to the wall. "Get lost, Marcus,
get lost," I whispered. As I returned to the table, I heard more
whispering. I began to hum, "America the Beautiful" this time, trying
to drown out the whispering.
"What are you humming, Flip?" said Valeska.
"You don't have to get mad," said Marcus in a loud voice.
"Who said that?" said Valeska, starting to get up. I grasped her
wrist, gently easing her back down in her seat. There was a scuffling
behind the wall and all I could hear was the drone of conversation
three tables down and the thump-thump from the salsa music in the
discotheque on the mezzanine.
"Flip?" she said, puzzled. "Who was that?"
"A friendly wall," I said. "Sweetheart!" I said gruffly and leaned
over and kissed her in the crook of her neck. She shivered and
giggled.
"Oh, Felipe." She opened her eyes wide at me. "Sometimes you
are a complete nutcase. Talking to walls!"
I smiled.
"I think you must work for the C.I.A."
"No."
"No?"
"No, even stupid old Felipe is too smart for that."
She giggled. "Say, honey," she said. "There is this new kind of
pants outfit..."
The next morning at breakfast my mother told me she had decided
to "implement the project" on a Saturday night. I told her she was
crazy, that the whole idea was mad.
"This is a mad little island, Chucho, mad as the devil -- always a
little crazy, and now completely mad under the wing of the great
bearded devil himself."
"You'll get yourself killed."
She shook her head. "You don't understand Cuban men. No
matter how vicious they may be, they still feel they have to play by
certain rules."
"What rules?"
"Come and see Saturday night at Lenin Park."
Lenin Park is about fifteen miles south of Havana and is Cuba's
answer to Disney World. Sort of. There _is_ some hint of Disney in
the Mickey Mouses and Plutos who greet the children along the walks
running between the ferris wheel, the merry-go-rounds, the water
flume ride. And there is a hint of the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen in
the cafes and restaurants, particularly in Las Ruinas, a first-class
restaurant with impressive Spanish colonial furniture and rock walls
graces with a jungle of ferns. But the sign over the main Park pavilion
says "Salute Workers Who Have Overfulfilled Their Quotas," not
"Welcome to Fantasyland," and the exhibits inside on space science
look ragtag and scanty. The rides are few and overcrowded and the
equipment, though fairly new, has been maintained in accordance with
lackadaisical socialist standards. All in all, the Park reminds you more
of a county fair than of an international tourist attraction.
I flouted the foreign exchange regulations and took a cheap peso
cab to the park, gave the driver $5 to wait for me, and paid my 50
centavos to enter. Then I walked aimlessly around, waiting for nine
o'clock and thinking more than ever that this idea of my mother's was
going to turn out to be a total fiasco. At nine, I stationed myself in the
back of the Cafe Pinchon fronting the central plaza, ready to lend a
hand -- or get the hell out of there -- depending on what happened.
The electricity was working that night and the three cafes around the
plaza looked jolly and welcoming. The roller coaster, closed for some
reason, was dark, glaring faintly in the plaza lights and in the glow
from the last quarter moon, which was just rising in the east. The
plaza was large, surrounded by streets or pathways for pedestrians and
for little electric trams that carried visitors around the Park. The
crowds looked like any other Cubans on a weekend night, groups of
boys, some holding hands, others roughhousing, pairs of
bashful-looking girls, not so bashful women, apparently tarts, in short
skirts, with as much paint and costume jewelry as they could get away
with in the atmosphere of official puritanism.
By about nine thirty, nothing much had happened and I wished I
had gotten a table. At least, I thought, my guy with the dark glasses
from G-2 seemed to be taking the night off. Then I saw Jerry
Santander. He had taken up position in front of me, and he was
accompanied by a young girl in a pale blue school uniform and a blue
"Pioneer" scarf. She looked to be about ten years old, but she was half
a head taller than Jerry. She was darkish blond with fair skin, and I
wildly imagined them as mother and child, the swan with her awkward,
dark little cygnet with his big head and dumpy little body. An old man
in a white shirt stared at them. Then on the other side of the plaza, I
saw another dwarf, this time with a very young girl in a pink dress.
Suddenly Cecilio, the Angolan vet in the wheelchair, appeared from a
side street and bumped over a curb, heading right between a battered
tram filled with teenagers that was cruising slowly down the roadway.
The tram stopped abruptly, and all the teenagers stood up in the back,
pointing and snickering at the exertions of Cecilio's personal Pioneer, a
thin dark-haired girl who scrambled along behind him, finally catching
up and helping the wheelchair up the curb and into the plaza.
By the time my mother arrived with the signs, there was quite a
crowd. Surrounding the blackish-green statue of Che Guevara in the
center of the plaza was an inner circle of young children, most wearing
blue or red Pioneer scarves, mixed in with a number of "little people"
-- dwarfs, midgets, paraplegics, cases of Down's syndrome. They in
turn were surrounded by an outer ring of onlookers: young men yelled,
girls giggled behind their hands and whispered, and an old man on a
bicycle muttered loudly, while a few older women, some in traditional
black, looked on solemnly, as if they were attending a high mass. A
single policeman stood in front of a soft-drink vendor and a taco seller
and his paraphernalia on a three-wheeled bicycle. The policeman's
chestnut-brown face, as he stared at the growing demonstration, looked
zombie- like, as if he had been recently sandbagged.
In the center of the inner ring, a young man with red hair, who
later turned out to be a Canadian free-lance TV producer, was
tightening a tripod and adjusting several photoflood lamps. The lights
went on, the old man on the bicycle shielded his eyes, and my mother
and Uncle Paco made their way through the crowd, carrying a
rolled-up banner. Behind them, several Pioneers toted signs. My
mother turned and motioned, and the children handed out the signs to
the "little people" around them. In the glare from the floods, I could
see some of the signs:
"SMALL IS REVOLUTIONARILY BEAUTIFUL"
"WE STAND SMALL BUT WE STAND TALL FOR TRUE DEMOCRACY"
"DON'T LET THE HIGHER-UPS FORGET THE LOWER-DOWNS"
Then my mother strode into the center of the inner circle and
motioned, and all the "couples" of children and little people massed
around her. Paco unfurled the banner -- "March of the Little People
for Revolutionary Democracy." Someone handed Mama a bullhorn,
and she began to speak. Her first words sounded halting and hoarse,
as if she had begun to doubt herself, but then she began to warm up.
She said she was born in Cuba but was now an American. That got a
cheer from the crowd. In the harsh shadows, Che on his pedestal
looked as if he were trying to ignore the whole thing. Next to me
another policeman appeared. My mother said that people all over the
world, in countries with all kinds of political systems, must learn to
respect those handicapped -- either by nature or accident. Her voice
strengthened as she told them that true democracy meant that all
citizens, the smallest as well as the largest, were to be given access to a
productive place in society. Then she said something about political
prisoners and the right of all men to be heard -- all men, bigshots or
just plain little people. At this, the policeman next to me hurried away.
Finally she introduced Jerry Santander. Heads strained, figures rose on
tiptoe as the crowd strained to catch sight of him, low, invisible, next
to my mother. I imagined that Che was eavesdropping too. Jerry
began to speak -- he said that he believed in the Revolution. But, he
asked in a high, acid voice, did the Revolution believe in him? He said
that the handicapped needed work like anyone else. Shouts came from
the crowd, "What's going on? "Who is it?" I supposed that many
people thought that the demonstration was part of one of the street
shows at the Park -- if so, I suddenly realized that my mother might
not have been so crazy after all in choosing Lenin Park. Uncle Paco
reached down and lifted Jerry up to stand on the rail of Cecilio's
wheelchair. Someone cheered, some others laughed. I could hear a
siren in the distance. As I looked to see where it was, I caught a
glimpse of my friend with the wispy beard and the sunglasses. Oh shit!
I thought.
Jerry was now talking, saying that when you were smaller,
sometimes you had to yell louder to get yourself heard. As Jerry spoke
on, I saw the Canadian producer panning the crowd, then changing
cassettes, handing the old one to a young man who worked his way
out of the crowd, coming past me and heading toward the exit to the
Park.
Jerry said they were ready to march for justice, for fair play for the
little people. "If you're not a big shot, you're a little person just like
us." A scream of a siren, and a pickup truck with a red light on top
pulled up and several policeman piled out. Jerry shouted: "Join us,"
we're ready to march for justice." The entrance of the police hit the by
now overcrowded plaza like a blow, sending a wave out through the
crowd that splashed people toward the edges of the square, leaving a
gap between the police and the inner ring. On the edge of the inner
ring, the children had formed into a circle, hands clasped, enclosing the
little people, my mother, Paco, and the producer and his crew. The
officer leading the police walked warily up to the circle. He yelled out,
asking if they were employees of the Park. No one answered him and
then he shouted for them to disperse. I could hear my mother replying
"No." The officer looked down. He was standing right in front of the
girl in the pink dress. She looked terrified but her hands still clasped
tightly those of the children to either side of her. He bent down and
yelled "Go home!" The girl shuddered as if he had hit her. He yelled
again, but this time she looked up straight into his eyes. A high
piercing shout came from the onlookers -- "They're just children." The
officer looked around him. Another voice: "Leave the children alone."
A third: "Hey, that one's my daughter!"
One of the police came up behind the officer and they turned and
began to talk. My mother seized the bullhorn and said that now was
the time to show solidarity. The officer turned and shouted that this
was an illegal demonstration. My mother said into the bullhorn:
"We're going to all ride the merry-go-round -- round and round until
we get our rights." First the little people and the children, and then the
onlookers cheered. The little circle began to move outward, making a
line across the plaza as it moved. The police retreated back to the
truck. The officer had picked up the radio microphone and was talking
into it. My mother shouted to remember that this was not a parade
and to keep to the walkways on the side, out of the main roadway. I
realized that unauthorized parades would be highly
counterrevolutionary -- my mother may be crazy sometimes, but she's
not stupid. Not that unauthorized "demonstrations" would be exactly
legal, either. But she had sure picked a place where the authorities
weren't quite certain themselves exactly what was going on and what
the rules were.
The "couples" of children and little people made off down the
"Main Street" with its imitation of Disney's imitation of a Victorian
town, headed for the giant merry-go-round. I followed at a distance.
A police van appeared silently and drove up on one of the walkways,
blocking it, but the demonstrators just milled around it. A policeman
grabbed one midget, and struggled briefly with several little girls. One
of them, about five years old, seized the policeman's hand and bit at it,
and the policeman stopped in the middle of the street, waving his
fingers and crying "Ay!" while the midget slipped away. Paco and
another man carried the banner half-sideways through the crowd. The
Canadian photographer kept filming.
At the merry-go-round, the demonstrators milled around while
Jerry and another dwarf were lifted up on two of the horses and began
to talk again through bullhorns. I wondered where my mother had
found the bullhorns in Cuba - - she is quite a woman, I must say. While
they talked, she stood by, looking like a queen, smiling and urging
bystanders to applaud. By this time the crowd was really large. The
operator of the merry-go-round stood gesticulating and talking to a
policeman.
Just as the third speaker, a spastic, began to twitch and stutter his
way through an appeal for better medical care, there was a rumble of
movement through the crowd and seven or eight large women
appeared. They were dressed in khaki slacks, and wore "Comite de la
Defensa de la Revolucion" armbands. At the edge of the park, one
woman grabbed one of the Pioneers while another took hold of the
back of a wheelchair and pushed it with the old man in it toward the
street. A corridor opened up and the woman pushed the wheelchair
toward a policeman waiting beside a long police van. The youthful
Pioneer struggled with the first CDR woman, pulling at her hair, but
the big woman lifted the child up, bent her knee slightly, placed the
child over it, and began to spank her. Soon several of the "couples"
had been broken up, little girls and little people were melting into the
crowd, while several dwarves and cripples clustered around my
mother. The banner had fallen, and my mother was trying to sweep the
folds away that had fallen over her head. Paco had disappeared.
I suddenly realized I ought to go to Mama's aid. But while I
hesitated, looking around, trying to spot my shadow, wondering
whether just being here would end up getting me sent to the
_paredon_, my mother and the other last- ditch survivors had already
been handcuffed and were being led away into the police van.
The "night of the little people" was over.
My night wasn't -- quite yet. I got back safely to Havana and the
hotel by eleven. I hadn't seen anything more of my pal "Shades." As I
was lying in bed, wondering what the outcome of mother's ingenious
scheme would be, the phone rang.
Me: Yes.
Voice (low, hoarse, Spanish-speaking): You know who this is.
Me: No I don't.
Voice: Try to remember.
Me: No, no. No.
(But by this time I did -- Mr. Gomez.)
Gomez: When we do someone a favor, we expect them to be
grateful.
(I was wondering who might be listening in.)
Me: I can't talk now.
Gomez: Don't talk, just listen.
Me: Yes?
Gomez: We hear that Mr. Peterson and Mr. Marcus are not so
happy. Your project is experiencing a severe slippage in schedule.
(My "two weeks" had expired ten days previously.)
Me: Listen, I can explain...
Gomez: Don't talk, just listen.
Me: Sure, sure.
Gomez: Show some respect.
Me: Yes?
Gomez: Fulfil your end.
Me: I will.
Gomez: We don't like lack of respect.
Me: Of course.
Gomez: It gives us heartburn.
Me: Don't worry.
Gomez: We won't. It's for you to worry.
Me: Let me explain.
Gomez: Have a good evening.
And he hung up. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the world. It
was obviously going to be a three-aspirin, two-Valium, one-Dalmane
night.
==========================================================================
DECISIONS
by Otho Eskin
(Part 4 of "Julie," a play based on "Miss Julie" by August Strindberg, a
new version by Otho Eskin)
CHARACTERS:
MISS JULIE White, early thirties, the only daughter of a
"patrician" family in the deep south
RANSOM African-American, late twenties. The family chauffeur.
CORA African-American, early twenties. The family cook.
PLACE:
The kitchen of a large, once-elegant home somewhere in the Deep
South. One door leads to the kitchen garden. Another door leads to
Cora's bedroom.
TIME:
Sometime during the 1930's. It is Saturday night Midsummer's
Night (June 23). .
AT RISE: The kitchen, an hour later. RANSOM and JULIE enter.
JULIE is distracted, upset. RANSOM goes to the ice box and gets
himself a beer. He sees Julie's handkerchief where she left it on the
table.
RANSOM
God damn! This yore 'kerchief?
JULIE
I don't know, Ransom. Maybe. Yes. What of it?
RANSOM
You left it where anyone could see it?!
JULIE
Don't be angry with me, Ransom...
RANSOM
The others they been here. They must' a seen yore 'kerchief. They
know'd you been here. They know'd we been together.
JULIE
Maybe they didn't notice...
RANSOM
They noticed.
JULIE
They won't say anything. Will they?
RANSOM
They'll talk. Right now they talkin'. 'Bout you an' me.
JULIE
(angry, hurt)
How dare they!
RANSOM
They love to gossip, particularly 'bout their betters, particularly 'bout
what white folks do.
JULIE
You mean everyone knows what happened?
RANSOM
They sure gonna guess.
JULIE
The servants? The field hands? What are we going to do, Ransom?
RANSOM
We jus' gotta pretend what happened this evenin' didn' happen.
JULIE
How can you pretend it didn't happen? Have you no feelings? Just a
little while ago you were holding me in your arms, you were kissing me.
Now...
RANSOM
(Harshly)
That was then! We done somethin' dumb' we in trouble. Done' make
it worse by gettin' all sentimental.
JULIE
Do you expect me to stay in this house after what happened? With you
in the house? With everybody looking at me?
RANSOM
Yore right. Even if no one knows 'bout us last night, it's only a matter
of time 'fore it happens again. An' sooner or later we'll be found out.
JULIE
What we did you know that's a crime in this state.
RANSOM
I know that better'n you.
JULIE
Father thinks it's the worst thing that people can do. Worse than
murder, he says. He calls it mongrelization of the race. Oh, my God!
Father will be back any minute now. Any minute the phone's going to
ring and he'll tell you to pick him up at the station. Or he'll take a taxi
and walk in through that door wanting to know where his breakfast is.
Father will find out, I know it. He always does. I couldn't live with the
shame. What am I going to do? Please tell me, Ransom. I don't know
what to do.
RANSOM
We gotta get away from here from yore daddy from the big
house.
JULIE
Where could we go?
RANSOM
We can go north. We can go to Chicago.
JULIE
How would we live, Ransom?
RANSOM
I can make it playin' horn.. They'se plenty clubs would hire me. I can
make good money, too.
JULIE
I don't know...
RANSOM
Some day I gone be rich. Some day I gone be somebody. I've always
dreamed of goin' back to Chicago. Of someday maybe havin' my own
club. White folks will come from up town to hear the music. They like
nigger music up there. I'll make a pile. Sell them watered down hooch.
They don' know no better. I'll stand by the front door an' tell 'em which
tables they can have. Maybe turn some away if I don' like they looks.
It'll be my place' I'll be king there.
JULIE
That sounds wonderful for you, Ransom. But what about me?
RANSOM
You can stand at the front all dressed up an' pretty like an' show them
to their tables.
JULIE
It all sounds so... it sounds exciting...
RANSOM
They's a Greyhound leavin' for Memphis at three this afternoon. We
can be in Chicago by tomorrow.
JULIE
I'm frightened, Ransom. You must give me courage. Tell me you love
me. Hold me in your arms.
RANSOM
I can't do that. Not in this house. I can't do it, Miss Julie.
JULIE
Miss Julie!? Call me Julie! We're equals now.
RANSOM
Not in this house, we ain't. Not in yore daddy's house. They's three
hundred years a' history says we ain't equals. You can't j
ust walk away
from three hundred years a' history like it never happened. When yore
daddy's 'round I feel like a slave. It's a slave way a' thinkin' but I can't
help it. I hear his voice an' I jump. I see his hat on the peg in the entry
way an' I be scared. It's that way of thinkin' I done learned as a child.
It's in my blood. I hate myself for feelin' that way. That's why I gotta
leave this place. I won't have those feelin's in Chicago. In Chicago
people will come to my club an' say "sir" an' show me respect. I won't
get those feelin's I hate. Not in Chicago. In Chicago I'll be free of the
past.
JULIE
If you don't love me ... what am I?
RANSOM
I'll tell you I love you a thousand times but later. Not now. Not
here. Not in this house. We gotta keep clear heads. You unnerstand
me? We gotta decide what to do. We gotta be reasonable. Will you
come with me to Chicago?
JULIE
It sounds... wonderful but...
RANSOM
I can make it in Chicago. I toll' you, some day I'm gonna get my own
club.
JULIE
Doesn't that take money?
RANSOM
That's why I need somebody to bankroll me.
JULIE
Who's going to do that?
RANSOM
You! You gotta do it. You my partner, ain't you?
JULIE
I don't have any money.
RANSOM
You got nothin'? You live in that fine house. You wear fine clothes.
Drive 'round in a big car. an' you got nothin'?
JULIE
Nothing of my own. I don't own anything. Not even my thoughts
belong to me. Every idea that I have I got from my father. Every
emotion I feel I got from my mother. I've got nothing of my own to
give you.
RANSOM
Pull yoreself together. I'll get you a drink.
(RANSOM opens a drawer and
removes a bottle of brandy and
fills two glasses.)
JULIE
Where did you get that brandy?
RANSOM
From the wine cellar.
JULIE
You stole it!?
RANSOM
It's not like really stealin'. I'm almost the Judge's son-in-law.
JULIE
You're a thief!
RANSOM
You gonna tell yore daddy?
JULIE
Why was I so attracted to you? Because I'm weak and you're strong?
Or was it love? Was it love? Do you even know what love is?
RANSOM
Sure I do. I've had plenty of women in my time.
JULIE
My, God, that's not what I'm talking about.
RANSOM
That's the way I am. No point in gettin' upset 'bout it. As far as I can
see, you an' I the same.
JULIE
What have I become? My God, what's to become of me?
RANSOM
Why you feelin' sorry for yoreself? You got yore conquest. If you
wanta feel sorry for someone feel sorry for Cora. Don' you think she
got feelin's too?
JULIE
She's just a servant...
RANSOM
An' yore just a whore!
JULIE
Is that what I've become? A whore?
RANSOM
I feel almost sorry for you. Remember the nice story 'bout my first
seein' you out there in the gazebo? 'Bout how I wanted to rise to yore
level? How I wanted you as a friend? Do you know what I was really
thinkin' all that time watchin' you?
JULIE
Please don't, Ransom.
RANSOM
I was thinkin' how much I wanted you. I didn' care 'bout the books.
'Bout bein' yore friend.
JULIE
That beautiful story you told me that was a lie?
RANSOM
I wanted to play all right but not the way you was thinkin'.
JULIE
I now see what you're really like.
RANSOM
That kind of sweet-talk always gets to women.
JULIE
I was supposed to be your way to a club up north to the comfortable
life. Is that it?
RANSOM
I don' see why you complainin'. I'd do most of the work.
JULIE
That's all I was to you? Nothing more? A ticket to Chicago. I've never
seen another person so low.
RANSOM
You in no position to talk!
JULIE
Stand up when I speak to you! Show proper respect!
RANSOM
I may be a nigger but you a nigger's whore.
JULIE
How dare you!
RANSOM
You think a nigger would a' dared look you in the eye if you hadn'
asked for it?
JULIE
Please, Ransom, don't.
RANSOM
I'm almost sorry to see you fallen lower'n yore own cook.
JULIE
Stop it!
RANSOM
My people would never ack the way you did tonight. You think a
black girl would throw herself at a man the way you did? You ever see
a black girl actin' the way you did? Only animals an' whores do that.
JULIE
You're talking as if you were my better.
RANSOM
I am yore better.
JULIE
At least I'm no thief.
RANSOM
They'se worse things than bein' a thief.
JULIE
You're proud of what you've done, aren't you?
RANSOM
Not really. It was too easy. But I gotta say I get satisfactin' learnin' that
everythin' I thought I wanted -- everythin' I been dreamin' of -- is no
more'n a pile of shit.
JULIE
Doesn't what happened between us tonight mean anything to you?
RANSOM
Miss Julie, somethin' happened tonight. You got crazy there for a while.
Now you want to make up for yore mistake by pretendin' to yoreself
you love me. You don't. You got needs only I can satisfy. All that
means is we both got the same hunger. Don' mistake that for love. I
could never live bein' yore lap dog. An' you can't never love me.
JULIE
We could try to love one another.
(RANSOM tries to pull JULIE
to him but she breaks away.)
JULIE
Let go of me! I loathe you! But I can't leave you.
RANSOM
Then let's go away together.
JULIE
Give me something to drink.
(RANSOM pours the brandy
into a glass and SHE drinks it
down. JULIE holds out the glass
for more.)
RANSOM
You gonna get drunk.
JULIE
Who cares?
RANSOM
T'aint right to get drunk, especially for a woman.
JULIE
I need a drink.
RANSOM
Miss Julie, it's time to go.
(JULIE does not move)
RANSOM
(Continued)
Do as I say!
JULIE
Are you the master now? I the servant? My mother made me swear I'd
never become any man's slave.
RANSOM
But you got engaged.
JULIE
I wanted to make that man my slave.
RANSOM
He'd never do that. No man would ever do that.
JULIE
Oh, yes he would. He wanted to be my slave. But I became bored
with him.
RANSOM
Sounds to me like you 'bout hate all men.
JULIE
Why shouldn't I? Men.. Every man I've ever met, ever heard or read
about.. all men are either spineless cowards or they're brutes. They're
mostly stupid, playing stupid little games. They're children. Spoiled
children who if they can't have what they want throw a tantrum. That's
the lesson I learned from my mother. Except... Except...
RANSOM
Except what?
JULIE
I have this need, this longing. I can't control it. And I feel such shame.
RANSOM
Do you hate me?
JULIE
I despise you! I'd like to see you dead.
RANSOM
Shot like a mad dog?
JULIE
Like a mad dog.
(RANSOM goes to the
cupboard and takes out the
revolver.)
RANSOM
This yore chance, Miss Julie.
(RANSOM puts the revolver on
the table.)
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