Vieux Carre Read online

  [Jane undresses Tye. The writer undresses. Nightingale sits on his cot. Tye and Jane begin to make love. Downstairs, Nursie mops the floor, singing to herself. The writer moves slowly to his bed and places his hand on the warm sheets that Tye has left. The light dims.

  [There is a passage of time.]

  SCENE FIVE

  The attic rooms are dimly lit. Nightingale is adjusting a neckerchief about his wasted throat. He enters the writer’s cubicle without knocking.

  NIGHTINGALE: May I intrude once more? It’s embarrassing—this incident. Not of any importance, nothing worth a second thought. [He coughs.] Oh Christ. You know my mattress is full of bedbugs. Last night I smashed one at least the size of my thumbnail, it left a big blood spot on the pillow. [He coughs and gasps for breath.] I showed it to the colored woman that the witch calls Nursie, and Nursie told her about it, and she came charging up here and demanded that I exhibit the bug, which I naturally . . . [A note of uncertainty and fear enters his voice.]

  WRITER: . . . removed from the pillow.

  NIGHTINGALE: Who in hell wouldn’t remove the remains of a squashed bedbug from his pillow? Nobody I’d want social or any acquaintance with . . . she even . . . intimated that I coughed up the blood, as if I had . . . [coughs] consumption.

  WRITER [stripped to his shorts and about to go to bed]: I think with that persistent cough of yours you should get more rest.

  NIGHTINGALE: Restlessness. Insomnia. I can’t imagine a worse affliction, and I’ve suffered from it nearly all my life. I consulted a doctor about it once, and he said, “You don’t sleep because it reminds you of death.” A ludicrous assumption—the only true regret I’d have over leaving this world is that I’d leave so much of my serious work unfinished.

  WRITER [holding the bedsheet up to his chin]: Do show me your serious work.

  NIGHTINGALE: I know why you’re taking this tone.

  WRITER: I am not taking any tone.

  NIGHTINGALE: Oh yes you are, you’re very annoyed with me because my restlessness, my loneliness, made me so indiscreet as to—offer my attentions to that stupid but—physically appealing young man you’d put on that cot with the idea of reserving him for yourself. And so I do think your tone is a bit hypocritical, don’t you?

  WRITER: All right, I do admit I find him attractive, too, but I did not make a pass at him.

  NIGHTINGALE: I heard him warn you.

  WRITER: I simply removed his wet shoes.

  NIGHTINGALE: Little man, you are sensual, but I, I—am rapacious.

  WRITER: And I am tired.

  NIGHTINGALE: Too tired to return my visits? Not very appreciative of you, but lack of appreciation is something I’ve come to expect and almost to accept as if God—the alleged—had stamped on me a sign at birth—“This man will offer himself and not be accepted, not by anyone ever!”

  WRITER: Please don’t light that candle.

  NIGHTINGALE: I shall, the candle is lit.

  WRITER: I do wish that you’d return to your side of the wall—well, now I am taking a tone, but it’s . . . justified. Now do please get out, get out, I mean it, when I blow out the candle I want to be alone.

  NIGHTINGALE: You know, you’re going to grow into a selfish, callous man. Returning no visits, reciprocating no . . . caring.

  WRITER: . . . Why do you predict that?

  NIGHTINGALE: That little opacity on your left eye pupil could mean a like thing happening to your heart. [He sits on the cot.]

  WRITER: You have to protect your heart.

  NIGHTINGALE: With a shell of calcium? Would that improve your work?

  WRITER: You talk like you have a fever, I . . .

  NIGHTINGALE: I have a fever you’d be lucky to catch, a fever to hold and be held! [He throws off his tattered silk robe.] Hold me! Please, please hold me.

  WRITER: I’m afraid I’m tired, I need to sleep and . . . I don’t want to catch your cold.

  [Slowly with dignity, Nightingale rises from the cot and puts his silk robe on.]

  NIGHTINGALE: And I don’t want to catch yours, which is a cold in the heart, that’s a hell of a lot more fatal to a boy with literary pretensions.

  [This releases in the writer a cold rage which he has never felt before. He springs up and glares at Nightingale, who is coughing.]

  WRITER [in a voice quick and hard as a knife]: I think there has been some deterioration in your condition and you ought to face it! A man has got to face everything sometime and call it by its true name, not to try to escape it by—cowardly!—evasion—go have your lungs x-rayed and don’t receive the doctor’s bill when it’s sent! But go there quick, have the disease stated clearly! Don’t, don’t call it a cold anymore or a touch of the flu!

  NIGHTINGALE [turning with a gasp]: You’ve gone mad, you’ve gone out of your mind here, you little one-eyed bitch! [He coughs again and staggers out of the light.]

  MRS. WIRE’S VOICE: I heard you from the kitchen, boy! Was he molesting you in here? I heard him. Was he molesting you in here? Speak up! [Her tone loses its note of concern as she shouts to Nightingale.] You watch out, I’ll get the goods on you yet!

  NIGHTINGALE’S VOICE: The persecution continues.

  SCENE SIX

  Daylight appears in the alcove window—daylight tinged with rain. The room of Jane and Tye is lighted. Tye is sprawled, apparently sleeping, in shorts on the studio bed. Jane has just completed a fashion design. She stares at it with disgust, then crumples it and throws it to the floor with a sob of frustration.

  JANE: Yes? Who’s there?

  WRITER: Uh, me, from across the hall, I brought in a letter for you—it was getting rained on.

  JANE: Oh, one moment, please. [She throws a robe over her panties and bra and opens the door.] A letter for me?

  WRITER: The mail gets wet when it rains since the lid’s come off the mailbox.

  [His look irresistibly takes in the figure of Tye. Jane tears the letter open and gasps softly. She looks slowly up, with a stunned expression, at the young writer.]

  JANE: Would you care for some coffee?

  WRITER: Thanks, no, I just take it in the morning.

  JANE: Then please have a drink with me. I need a drink. Please, please come in. [Jane is speaking hysterically but abruptly controls it.] Excuse me—would you pour the drinks—I can’t. I . . .

  WRITER [crossing to the cabinet]: Will you have . . .

  JANE: Bourbon. Three fingers.

  WRITER: With?

  JANE: Nothing, nothing.

  [The writer glances again at Tye as he pours the bourbon.]

  Nothing . . . [The writer crosses to her with the drink.] Nothing. And you?

  WRITER: Nothing, thanks. I have to retype the manuscripts soaked in the rain.

  JANE: Manuscripts, you said? Oh, yes, you’re a writer. I knew, it just slipped my mind. The manuscripts were returned? Does that mean rejection? —Rejection is always so painful.

  WRITER [with shy pride]: This time instead of a printed slip there was this personal signed note . . .

  JANE: Encouraging—that. Oh, my glass is weeping—an Italian expression. Would you play barman again? Please? [She doesn’t know where to put the letter, which he keeps glancing at.]

  WRITER: Yes, I am encouraged. He says, “This one doesn’t quite make it but try us again.” Story magazine—they print William Saroyan, you know!

  JANE: It takes a good while to get established in a creative field.

  WRITER: And meanwhile you’ve got to survive.

  JANE: I was lucky, but the luck didn’t hold. [She is taking little sips of the straight bourbon.]

  WRITER: You’re—upset by that—letter? I noticed it came from—isn’t Ochsner’s a clinic?

  JANE: Yes, actually. I am, I was. It concerns a relative rather—critically ill there.

  WRITER: Someone close to you?

  JANE: Yes. Quite close, although lately I hardly recognize the lady at all anymore . . .

  [Tye stirs on the bed; the writer irresistibly g
lances at him.]

  Pull the sheet over him. I think he unonsciously displays himself like that as if posing for a painter of sensual inclinations. Wasted on me. I just illustrate fashions for ladies.

  TYE [stirring]: Beret? Beret?

  [The writer starts off, pausing at the edge of the light.]

  WRITER: Jane, what was the letter, wasn’t it about you?

  JANE: Let’s just say it was a sort of a personal, signed rejection slip, too.

  [The writer exits with a backward glance.]

  TYE: Where’s Beret, where’s the goddam cat?

  [Jane is fiercely tearing the letter to bits. The lights dim out.]

  SCENE SEVEN

  A dim light comes up on the writer, stage front, as narrator.

  WRITER: The basement of the building had been leased by Mrs. Wire to a fashionable youngish photographer, one T. Hamilton Biggs, a very effete man he was, who had somehow acquired a perfect Oxford accent in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He made a good living in New Orleans out of artfully lighted photos of debutantes and society matrons in the Garden District, but for his personal amusement—he also photographed, more realistically, some of the many young drifters to be found along the streets of the Vieux Carré.

  [The lights go up on the kitchen. Mrs. Wire is seen at the stove, which bears steaming pots of water.]

  MRS. WIRE [to the writer]: Aw, it’s you sneakin’ in at two A.M. like a thief.

  WRITER: Yes, uh, good night.

  MRS. WIRE: Hold on, don’t go up yet. He’s at it again down there, he’s throwin’ one of his orgies, and this’ll be the last one he throws down there. By God an’ by Jesus, the society folk in this city may tolerate vice but not me. Take one of them pots off the stove.

  WRITER: You’re, uh . . . cooking at this hour?

  MRS. WIRE: Not cooking . . . I’m boiling water! I take this pot and you take the other one, we’ll pour this water through the hole in this kitchen floor, which is directly over that studio of his!

  WRITER: Mrs. Wire, I can’t be involved in . . .

  MRS. WIRE: Boy, you’re employed by me, you’re fed and housed here, and you do like I tell you or you’ll go on the street. [She lifts a great kettle off the stove.] Take that pot off the stove! [She empties the steaming water on the floor. Almost instant screams are heard below.] Hahh, down there, what’s the disturbance over?!

  WRITER: Mrs. Wire, that man has taken out a peace warrant against you, you know that.

  MRS. WIRE: Git out of my way, you shifty-eyed little— [With demonical energy she seizes the other pot and empties it onto the floor, and the screams continue. She looks and runs to the proscenium as if peering out a window.] Two of ’em run out naked. Got two of you, I’m not done with you yet! . . . you perverts!

  WRITER: Mrs. Wire, he’ll call the police.

  MRS. WIRE: Let him, just let him, my nephew is a lieutenant on the police force! But these Quarter police, why anybody can buy ’em, and that Biggs, he’s got big money. Best we be quiet, sit tight. Act real casual-like. If they git in that door, you seen a, you seen a—

  WRITER: What?

  MRS. WIRE: A drunk spillin’ water in here.

  WRITER: . . . that much water?

  MRS. WIRE: Hush up! One contradictory word out of you and I’ll brain you with this saucepan here.

  [Nightingale enters in his robe.]

  NIGHTINGALE: May I inquire what this bedlam is about? [He pants for breath.] I had just finally managed to . . . [He gasps.] This hellish disturbance . . .

  MRS. WIRE: May you inquire, yeah, you may inquire. Look. Here’s the story! You’re in a doped-up condition. Drunk and doped-up you staggered against the stove and accidentally knocked a kettle of boiling water off it. Now that’s the story you’ll tell in payment of back rent and your habits! . . . disgracing my house!

  NIGHTINGALE [to writer]: What is she talking about?

  MRS. WIRE: And you . . . one eye! [She turns to the writer.] You say you witnessed it, you back up the story, you heah?

  WRITER [grinning]: Mrs. Wire, the story wouldn’t . . . hold water.

  MRS. WIRE: I said accidental. In his condition who’d doubt it?

  NIGHTINGALE: Hoo, hoo, hoo!

  MRS. WIRE: That night court buzzard on the bench, he’d throw the book at me for no reason but the fight that I’ve put up against the corruption and evil that this Quarter is built on! All I’m asking is . . .

  [Abruptly Miss Carrie and Mary Maude in outrageous negligees burst into the kitchen. At the sight of them, Mrs. Wire starts to scream wordlessly as a peacock at a pitch that stuns the writer but not Nightingale and the crones. Just as abruptly she falls silent and flops into a chair.]

  MISS CARRIE: Oh, Mrs. Wire!

  MARY MAUDE: We thought the house had caught fire!

  NIGHTINGALE [loftily]: . . . What a remarkable . . . tableau vivant. . . The paddy wagon’s approaching. Means night court, you know.

  WRITER: . . . I think I’ll . . . go to bed now . . .

  MRS. WIRE: Like shoot you will!

  [Jane appears, stage right, in a robe. She speaks to the writer, who is nearest to her.]

  JANE: Can you tell me what is going on down here?

  WRITER: Miss Sparks, why don’t you stay in your room right now?

  JANE: Why?

  WRITER: There’s been a terrible incident down here, I think the police are coming.

  [Mary Maude screams, wringing her hands.]

  MARY MAUDE: Police!

  MISS CARRIE: Oh, Mary Maude, this is not time for hysterics. You’re not involved, nor am I! We simply came in to see what the disturbance was about.

  JANE [to the writer]: Was Tye here? Was Tye involved in this . . .

  WRITER [in a low voice to Jane]: Nobody was involved but Mrs. Wire. She poured boiling water through a hole in the floor.

  MRS. WIRE [like a field marshal]: Everybody in here stay here and sit tight till the facts are reported.

  [Nursie enters with black majesty. She is humming a church hymn softly, “He walks with me and he talks with me.” She remains at the edge of the action, calm as if unaware.]

  I meant ev’ry goddam one of you except Nursie. Nursie! Don’t stand there singin’ gospel, barefoot, in that old dirty nightgown!

  WRITER [to Jane]: She wants us to support a totally false story.

  MRS. WIRE: I tell you—the Vieux Carré is the new Babylon destroyed by evil in Scriptures!!

  JANE: It’s like a dream . . .

  NIGHTINGALE: The photographer downstairs belongs to the Chateau family, one of the finest and most important families in the Garden District.

  MRS. WIRE: Oh, do you write the social register now?

  NIGHTINGALE: I know he is New Orleans’s most prominent society photographer!

  MRS. WIRE: I know he’s the city’s most notorious pervert and is occupying space in my building!

  MISS CARRIE: Mary Maude and I can’t afford the notoriety of a thing like this.

  [Mary Maude cries out and leans against the table.]

  MARY MAUDE: Mrs. Wire, Miss Carrie and I have—positions to maintain!

  JANE: Mrs. Wire, surely there’s no need for these ladies to be involved in this.

  MRS. WIRE: Deadbeats, all, all! Will stay right here and—

  JANE: Do what?

  MRS. WIRE: —testify to what happened!

  NIGHTINGALE: She wishes you all to corroborate her lie! That I, that I! Oh, yes, I’m appointed to assume responsibility for—

  PHOTOGRAPHER [off stage]: Right up there! Burns like this could disfigure me for life!

  [Mrs. Wire rushes to slam and bolt the door.]

  MISS CARRIE [to Mary Maude]: Honey? Can you move now?

  MRS. WIRE: No, she cain’t, she stays—which applies to you all!

  PHOTOGRAPHER: The fact that she is insane and allowed to remain at large . . . doesn’t excuse it.

  [A patrolman bangs at the door.]

  MRS. WIRE: Shh! Nobody make a sound!

  PHOTOGRAPHER:
Not only she but her tenants; why, the place is a psycho ward.

  [More banging is heard.]

  MRS. WIRE: What’s this banging about?

  PATROLMAN: Open this door.

  PHOTOGRAPHER: One of my guests was the nephew of the District Attorney!

  PATROLMAN: Open or I’ll force it.

  PHOTOGRAPHER: Break it in! Kick it open!

  MRS. WIRE: [galvanized]: You ain’t comin’ in here, you got no warrant to enter, you filthy—morphodite, you!

  WRITER: Mrs. Wire, you said not to make a sound.

  MRS. WIRE: Make no sound when they’re breakin’ in my house, you one-eyed Jack? [The banging continues.] What’s the meaning of this, wakin’ me up at two A.M. in the mawnin’?

  PHOTOGRAPHER: Scalded! Five guests, including two art models!

  MRS. WIRE [overlapping]: You broken the terms of your lease, and it’s now broke. I rented you that downstair space for legitimate business, you turned it into a—continual awgy!

  PATROLMAN: Open that door, ma’am, people have been seriously injured.

  MRS. WIRE: That’s no concern of mine! I open no door till I phone my nephew, a lieutenant on the police force, Jim Flynn, who knows the situation I’ve put up with here, and then we’ll see who calls the law on who!

  WRITER: I hear more police sirens comin’.

  [The pounding and shouting continue. A patrolman forces entry, followed by another. All during the bit just preceding, Miss Carie and Mary Maude have clung together, their terrified whispers maintaining a low-pitched threnody to the shouting and banging. Now as the two patrolmen enter, their hysteria erupts in shrill screams. The screams are so intense that the patrolmen’s attention is directed upon them.]

  PATROLMAN 1: Christ! Is this a fuckin’ madhouse?

  [Still clinging together, the emaciated crones sink to their knees as if at the feet of an implacable deity.]

  MRS. WIRE [inspired]: Officers, remove these demented, old horrors. Why, you know what they done? Poured water on the floor of my kitchen, boiling water!