Vieux Carre Read online

  NIGHTINGALE: She’s lying. These unfortunate old ladies just came in, they thought the house was on fire.

  PHOTOGRAPHER: This woman is the notorious Mrs. Wire, and it was she who screamed out the window. Why, these old women should be hospitalized, naturally, but it’s her, her! [He points at Mrs. Wire from the door.] that poured the scalding water into my studio, and screamed with delight when my art models and guests ran naked into the street!

  MRS. WIRE: There, now, AWGY CONFESSED!!

  PATROLMAN 2: All out to the wagon!

  [The scene is dimmed out fast. A spot comes up on the writer in the witness box at night court.]

  OLD JUDGE’S VOICE: Let’s not have no more beatin’ aroun’ the bush in this court, young fellow. The question is plain. You’re under oath to give an honest answer. Now for the last time, at risk of being held in contempt of court, “Did you or did you not see the proprietor of the rooming house. . .”

  MRS. WIRE’S VOICE [shrilly]: Restaurant and roomin’ house respectfully run!

  [The judge pounds his gavel.]

  OLD JUDGE’S VOICE: Defendant will keep silent during the witness’ testimony. To repeat the question: “Did you or did you not see this lady here pour boiling water through the floor of her kitchen down into the studio of Mr. T. Hamilton Biggs?”

  WRITER [swallows, then in a low voice]: I, uh . . . think it’s unlikely . . . a lady would do such a thing.

  OLD JUDGE’S VOICE: Speak up so I can heah you! What’s that you said?

  WRITER: . . . I said I thought it very unlikely a lady would do such a thing.

  [Laughter is heard in the night court. The judge gavels, then pronounces the verdict.]

  OLD JUDGE’S VOICE: This court finds the defendant, Mrs. Hortense Wire, guilty as charged and imposes a fine of fifty dollars plus damages and releases her on probation in the custody of her nephew, Police Lieutenant James Flynn of New Orleans Parish, for a period of . . .

  [His voice fades out as does the scene. A spotlight comes up on Mrs. Wire in a flannel robe, drinking at the kitchen table. The writer appears hesitantly at the edge of the kitchen light.]

  MRS. WIRE [without turning]: I know you’re standing there, but I don’t wanta see you. It sure does surprise me that you’d dare to enter this house again after double-crossing me in court tonight.

  WRITER: —I—just came back to pick up my things.

  MRS. WIRE: You ain’t gonna remove nothing from this place till you paid off what you owe me.

  WRITER: You know I’m—destitute.

  MRS. WIRE: You get tips from the customers.

  WRITER: Nickels and dimes. [Pause. The sound of rain is heard.] —Mrs. Wire? [She turns slowly to look at him.] Do you think I really intended to lose you that case? Other witnesses had testified I was in the kitchen when you poured those kettles of water through the floor. And the judge knew I could see with at least one eye. I was on the witness stand under oath, couldn’t perjure myself. I did try not to answer directly. I didn’t answer directly. All I said was—

  MRS. WIRE: You said what lost me the case, goddam it! Did you expect that old buzzard on the bench to mistake me for a lady, my hair in curlers, me wearin’ the late, long ago Mr. Wire’s old ragged bathrobe. Shoot! All of you witnesses betrayed me in night court because you live off me an’ can’t forgive me for it.

  WRITER: —I guess you want me to go . . .

  MRS. WIRE: To where would you go? How far could you get on your nickels and dimes? You’re shiverin’ like a wet dog. Set down. Have a drink with me befo’ you go up to bed.

  WRITER: You mean I can stay? [She nods slightly. He sits down at the kitchen table; she pours him a drink.] I don’t think I ever saw you drink before, Mrs. Wire.

  MRS. WIRE: I only touch this bottle, which also belonged to the late Mr. Wire before he descended to hell between two crooked lawyers, I touch it only when forced to by such a shocking experience as I had tonight, the discovery that I was completely alone in the world, a solitary ole woman cared for by no one. You know, I heard some doctor say on the radio that people die of loneliness, specially at my age. They do. Die of it, it kills ’em. Oh, that’s not the cause that’s put on the death warrant, but that’s the true cause. I tell you, there’s so much loneliness in this house that you can hear it. Set still and you can hear it: a sort of awful—soft—groaning in all the walls.

  WRITER: All I hear is rain on the roof.

  MRS. WIRE: You’re still too young to hear it, but I hear it and I feel it, too, like a—ache in ev’ry bone of my body. It makes me want to scream, but I got to keep still. A landlady ain’t permitted to scream. It would disturb the tenants. But some time I will. I’ll scream, I’ll scream loud enough to bring the roof down on us all.

  WRITER: This house is full of people.

  MRS. WIRE: People I let rooms to. Less than strangers to me.

  WRITER: There’s—me. I’m not.

  MRS. WIRE: You—just endure my company ’cause you’re employed here, boy.

  WRITER: Miss Sparks isn’t employed here.

  MRS. WIRE: That woman is close to no one but the bum she keeps here. I’ll show you. [She rises and knocks her chair over, then bawls out as if to Tye.] More boxes! Take ’em out an’ stay out with ’em, sleep it off on the streets!

  [Jane rises in her dim spot of light. She crosses to the door.]

  JANE [offstage]: Tye! Tye! I thought I heard Tye down there.

  MRS. WIRE: Miss Sparks—don’t you know that bum don’t quit work till daybreak and rarely shows here before noon?

  JANE: Sorry. Excuse me.

  WRITER [his speech slurred by drink]: God, but I was ignorant when I came here! This place has been a—I ought to pay you—tuition . . .

  MRS. WIRE: One drink has made you drunk, boy. Go up to bed. We’re goin’ on tomorrow like nothing happened. [He rises and crosses unsteadily from the kitchen light.] Be careful on the steps.

  WRITER [pausing to look back at her]: Good night, Mrs. Wire. [He disappears.]

  MRS. WIRE: —It’s true, people die of it . . .

  [On the hall stairs the writer meets Nightingale, who speaks before the writer enters his own cubicle.]

  NIGHTINGALE [imitating the writer’s testimony in night court]: “I, uh, think it’s unlikely a lady would do such a thing.” [He coughs.] —A statement belonging in a glossary of deathless quotations. [He coughs again.] —Completely convinced me you really do have a future in the—literary—profession.

  [The light builds on Mrs. Wire, and she rises from the kitchen table and utters a piercing cry. Nursie appears.]

  NURSIE: Mizz Wire, what on earth is it? A bat?

  MRS. WIRE: I just felt like screaming, and so I screamed! That’s all . . .

  [The lights dim out.]

  INTERVAL

  PART TWO

  SCENE EIGHT

  A spotlight focuses on the writer working at his dilapidated typewriter in his gabled room in the attic.

  WRITER: Instinct, it must have been [He starts typing.] directed me here, to the Vieux Carré of New Orleans, down country as a—river flows no plan. I couldn’t have consciously, deliberately, selected a better place than here to discover—to encounter—my true nature. Exposition! Shit!

  [He springs up and kicks at the worn, wobbly table. A lean, gangling young man, whose charming but irresponsible nature is apparent in his genial grin, appears at the entrance of the writer’s cubicle.]

  SKY: Having trouble?

  WRITER: Even the typewriter objected to those goddamn lines. The ribbon’s stuck, won’t reverse.

  SKY: Let me look at it. [He enters the cubicle.] Oh, my name is Schuyler but they call me Sky.

  WRITER: The owner of the knapsack with “SKY” printed on it, that was—that was deposited here last winter sometime?

  SKY [working on the typewriter]: Right. Landlady won’t surrender it to me for less than twenty-five bucks, which is more than I can pay. Yeah, you see—I’m a fugitive from—from legal wedlock in Tampa, F
lorida, with the prettiest little bitsy piece of it you ever did see. There, now the ribbon’s reversing, it slipped out of the slots like I slipped out of matrimony in Tampa—couldn’t you see that?

  WRITER: I don’t think there’s a room in this building where you could be certain it was night or day, and I’ve . . .

  SKY: Something wrong with that eye.

  WRITER: Operation. For a cataract. Just waiting till it heals.—Are you staying here?

  SKY: Just for a day or two while I look into spots for a jazz musician in the Quarter.

  WRITER: There’s several jazz combos just around the corner on Bourbon Street.

  SKY: Yeah, I know, but they’re black and not anxious to work with a honky. So, I’ll probably drive on West.

  WRITER: How far West?

  SKY: The Coast. Is there a toilet up here? I gotta piss. Downstairs john’s occupied.

  WRITER: I know a girl across the hall with a bathroom, but she’s probably sleeping.

  SKY: With the angels wetting the roof, would it matter if I did, too?

  WRITER: Go ahead.

  [Sky leaps onto the alcove and pisses upstage out of the window.]

  Why’d you decide not to marry?

  SKY: Suddenly realized I wasn’t ready to settle. The girl, she had a passion for pink, but she extended it out of bounds in the love nest she’d picked out for us. Pink, pink, pink. So I cut out before daybreak.

  WRITER: Without a word to the girl?

  SKY: A note, “Not ready. Be back.” Wonder if she believed it, or if I did. That was Christmas week. I asked permission to leave my knapsack here with the landlady, overnight. She said, “For fifty cents.” Extortionary, but I accepted the deal. However was unavoidably detained like they say. Returned last night for my gear and goddam, this landlady here refuses to surrender it to me except for twenty-five bucks. Crazy witch!

  [Mrs. Wire is at the cubicle entrance.]

  MRS. WIRE: What’s he doin’ up there?

  SKY: Admiring the view.

  MRS. WIRE: You was urinating out of the window! Jailbird! You ain’t been in a hospital four months, you been in the House of Detention for resistin’ arrest and assaultin’ an officer of the law. I know. You admire the view in the bathroom. I don’t allow no trashy behavior here. [She turns to the writer.] Why ain’t you on the streets with those business cards?

  WRITER: Because I’m at the last paragraph of a story.

  MRS. WIRE: Knock it off this minute! Why, the streets are swarming this Sunday with the Azalea Festival trade.

  WRITER: The time I give to “Meals for a Quarter in the Quarter” has begun to exceed the time originally agreed on, Mrs. Wire.

  MRS. WIRE: It’s decent, healthy work that can keep you off bad habits, bad company that I know you been drifting into.

  WRITER: How would you know anything outside of this moldy, old—

  MRS. WIRE: Don’t talk that way about this—historical old building. Why, 722 Toulouse Street is one of the oldest buildings in the Vieux Carré, and the courtyard, why, that courtyard out there is on the tourist list of attractions!

  WRITER: The tourists don’t hear you shoutin’ orders and insults to your, your—prisoners here!

  MRS. WIRE: Two worthless dependents on me, that pair of scavenger crones that creep about after dark.

  [Nightingale coughs in his cubicle. Mrs. Wire raises her voice].

  And I got that TB case spitting contagion wherever he goes, leaves a track of blood behind him like a chicken that’s had it’s head chopped off.

  NIGHTINGALE: ’sa goddam libelous lie!

  MRS. WIRE [crossing to the entrance of the adjoining cubicle]: Been discharged from the Two Parrots, they told you to fold up your easel and git out!

  NIGHTINGALE [hoarsely]: I’m making notes on these lies, and my friend, the writer, is witness to them!

  MRS. WIRE: You is been discharged from the Two Parrots. It’s God’s truth, I got it from the cashier!

  [Sky chuckles, fascinated. He sits on the edge of the table or cot, taking a cigarette and offering one to the writer. Their casual friendly talk is contrapuntal to the violent altercation in progress outside.]

  She told me they had to scrub the pavement around your easel with a bucket of lye each night, that customers had left without payin’ because you’d hawked an’ spit by their tables!

  NIGHTINGALE: Bucket of lies, not lye, that’s what she told you!

  MRS. WIRE: They only kept you there out of human pity!

  NIGHTINGALE: Pity!

  MRS. WIRE: Yais, pity! But finally pity and patience was exhausted, it run out there and it’s run out here! Unlock that door! NURSIE!

  NURSIE [off stage]: Now what?

  MRS. WIRE: Bring up my keys! Mr. Nightingale’s locked himself in! You’re gonna find you’self mighty quicker than you expected in a charity ward on your way to a pauper’s grave!

  WRITER: Mrs. Wire, be easy on him . . .

  MRS. WIRE: You ain’t heard what he calls me? Why, things he’s said to me I hate to repeat. He’s called me a fuckin’ ole witch, yes, because I stop him from bringin’ pickups in here at midnight that might stick a knife in the heart of anyone in the buildin’ after they done it to him.

  NIGHTINGALE [in a wheezing voice as he drops onto the cot in his cubicle]: It’s you that’ll get a knife stuck in you, between your—dried up old—dugs . . .

  WRITER [sotto voce, near tears]: Be easy on him, he’s dying.

  MRS. WIRE: Not here. He’s defamed this place as infested with bedbugs to try to explain away the blood he coughs on his pillow.

  WRITER: That’s—his last defense against—

  MRS. WIRE: The truth, there’s no defense against truth. Ev’rything in that room is contaminated, has got to be removed to the incinerator an’ burned. Start with the mattress, Nursie!

  [Nursie has entered the lighted area with a bunch of musty keys.]

  NIGHTINGALE: I warn you, if you attempt to enter my room, I’ll strike you down with this easel!

  MRS. WIRE: You do that, just try, the effort of the exertion would finish you right here! Oh, shoot, here’s the master key, opens all doors!

  NIGHTINGALE: At your own risk—I’ll brain you, you bitch.

  MRS. WIRE: Go on in there, Nursie!

  NURSIE: Aw, no, not me! I told you I would never go in that room!

  MRS. WIRE: We’re coming in!

  NIGHTINGALE: WATCH OUT!

  [He is backed into the alcove, the easel held over his head like a crucifix to exorcise a demon. A spasm of coughing wracks him. He bends double, dropping the easel, collapses to his knees, and then falls flat upon the floor.]

  NURSIE [awed]: Is he daid, Mizz Wire?

  MRS. WIRE: Don’t touch him. Leave him there until the coroner gets here.

  NIGHTINGALE [gasping]: Coroner, your ass—I’ll outlive you.

  MRS. WIRE: If I dropped dead this second! Nursie, haul out that filthy mattress of his, pour kerosene on it.

  NURSIE: Wouldn’t touch that mattress with a pole . . .

  MRS. WIRE: And burn it. Git a nigger to help you haul everything in here out, it’s all contaminated. Why, this whole place could be quarantined!

  NURSIE: Furniture?

  MRS. WIRE: All! Then wash off your hands in alcohol to prevent infection, Nursie.

  NURSIE: Mizz Wire, the courtyard is full of them Azalea Festival ladies that paid admission to enter! You want me to smoke ’em out?

  MRS. WIRE: Collect the stuff you can move.

  NURSIE: Move where?

  MRS. WIRE: Pile it under the banana tree in the courtyard, cover it with tarpaulin, we can burn it later.

  NIGHTINGALE: If anyone lays a hand on my personal effects, I’ll [His voice chokes with sobs.]—I will be back in the Two Parrots tonight. I wasn’t fired. I was given a leave of absence till I recovered from . . . asthma . . .

  MRS. WIRE [with an abrupt compassion]: Mr. Nightingale.

  NIGHTINGALE: Rossignol!—of the Baton Rouge Rossignols, as
any dog could tell you . . .

  MRS. WIRE: I won’t consult a dawg on this subject. However, the place for you is not here but in the charity ward at St. Vincent’s. Rest there till I’ve made arrangements to remove you.

  SKY: The altercation’s subsided.

  WRITER [to Sky, who has begun to play his clarinet]: What kind of horn is that?

  [Mrs. Wire appears at the entrance to the writer’s cubicle. Sky plays entrance music—“Ta-ta-taaaa!”]

  SKY: It’s not a horn, kid, horns are brass. A clarinet’s a wood-wind instrument, not a horn.

  MRS. WIRE: Yais, now about you all.

  SKY: Never mind about us. We’re leaving for the West Coast.

  [Mrs. Wire and the writer are equally stunned in opposite ways.]

  MRS. WIRE: —What’s he mean, son? You’re leavin’ with this jailbird?

  WRITER: —I—

  MRS. WIRE: You won’t if I can prevent it, and I know how. In my register book, when you signed in here, you wrote St. Louis. We got your home address, street and number. I’m gonna inform your folks of the vicious ways and companions you been slipping into. They’s a shockin’ diff’rence between your looks an’ manners since when you arrived here an’ now, mockin’ me with that grin an’ that shifty-eyed indifference, evidence you’re setting out on a future life of corruption. Address and phone number, I’ll write, I’ll phone! —You’re not leavin’ here with a piece of trash like that that pissed out the window! —Son, son, don’t do it! [She covers her face, unraveled with emotion. Exchanging a look with Sky, the writer places an arm gingerly about her shoulder.] You know I’ve sort of adopted you like the son took away from me by the late Mr. Wire and a—and a crooked lawyer, they got me declared to be—mentally incompetent.

  WRITER: Mrs. Wire, I didn’t escape from one mother to look for another.

  [Nursie returns, huffing, to the lighted area.]