Orpheus Descending and Suddenly Last Summer Read online

  NURSE: Aw, now, just look at that, that nice bright sun comin’ out.

  LADY: Miss Porter? It’s—it’s cold down here!

  JABE: What’s she say?

  NURSE: She says it’s cold down here.

  LADY: The—the—the air’s not warm enough yet, the air’s not heated!

  NURSE: He’s determined to come right down, Mrs. Torrance.

  LADY: I know but—

  NURSE: Wild horses couldn’t hold him a minute longer.

  JABE [exhausted]: —Let’s—rest here a minute. . . .

  LADY [eagerly]: Yes! Rest there a minute!

  NURSE: Okay. We’ll rest here a minute. . . .

  [They sit down side by side on a bench under the artificial palm tree in the shaft of light, Jabe glares into the light like a fierce dying old beast. There are sounds from the alcove. To cover them up, Lady keeps making startled, laughing sounds in her throat, half laughing, half panting, chafing her hands together at the foot of the stairs, and coughing falsely.]

  JABE: Lady, what’s wrong? Why are you so excited?

  LADY: It seems like a miracle to me.

  JABE: What seems like a miracle to you?

  LADY: You coming downstairs.

  JABE: You never thought I would come downstairs again?

  LADY: Not this quick! Not as quick as this, Jabe! Did you think he would pick up as quick as this, Miss Porter?

  [Jabe rises.]

  NURSE: Ready?

  JABE: Ready.

  NURSE: He’s doing fine, knock wood.

  LADY: Yes, knock wood, knock wood! [Drums counter loudly with her knuckles. Val steps silently from behind the alcove curtain as the Nurse and Jabe resume their slow, shuffling descent of the stairs. Lady moves back to downstage right-center.] You got to be careful not to overdo. You don’t want another setback. Ain’t that right, Miss Porter?

  NURSE: Well, it’s my policy to mobilize the patient.

  LADY [to Val in a shrill whisper]: Coffee’s boiling, take the goddamn coffeepot off the burner! [She gives Val a panicky signal to go in the alcove.]

  JABE: Who’re you talking to, Lady?

  LADY: To—to—to Val, the clerk! I told him to—get you a—chair!

  JABE: Who’s that?

  LADY: Val, Val, the clerk, you know Val!

  JABE: Not yet. I’m anxious to meet him. Where is he?

  LADY: Right here, right here, here’s Val!

  [Val returns from the alcove.]

  JABE: He’s here bright and early.

  LADY: The early bird catches the worm!

  JABE: That’s right. Where is the worm?

  LADY [loudly]: Ha ha!

  NURSE: Careful! One step at a time, Mr. Torrance.

  LADY: Saturday before Easter’s our biggest sales day of the year, I mean second biggest, but sometimes it’s even bigger than Christmas Eve! So I told Val to get here a half hour early.

  [Jabe misses his step and stumbles to foot of stairs. Lady screams, Nurse rushes down to him. Val advances and raises the man to his feet.]

  VAL: Here. Here.

  LADY: Oh, my God.

  NURSE: Oh, oh!

  JABE: I’m all right.

  NURSE: Are you sure?

  LADY: Are you sure?

  JABE: Let me go! [He staggers to lean against counter, panting, glaring, with a malignant smile.]

  LADY: Oh, my God. Oh, my—God. . . .

  JABE: This is the boy that works here?

  LADY: Yes, this is the clerk I hired to help us out, Jabe.

  JABE: How is he doing?

  LADY: Fine, fine.

  JABE: He’s mighty good looking. Do women give him much trouble?

  LADY: When school lets out the high-school girls are thick as flies in this store!

  JABE: How about older women? Don’t he attract older women? The older ones are the buyers, they got the money. They sweat it out of their husbands and throw it away! What’s your salary, boy, how much do I pay you?

  LADY: Twenty-two fifty a week.

  JABE: You’re getting him cheap.

  VAL: I get—commissions.

  JABE: Commissions?

  VAL: Yes. One percent of all sales.

  JABE: Oh? Oh? I didn’t know about that.

  LADY: I knew he would bring in trade and he brings it in.

  JABE: I bet.

  LADY: Val, get Jabe a chair, he ought to sit down.

  JABE: No, I don’t want to sit down. I want to take a look at the new confectionery.

  LADY: Oh, yes, yes! Take a look at it! Val, Val, turn on the lights in the confectionery! I want Jabe to see the way I done it over! I’m—real—proud!

  [Val crosses and switches on light in confectionery. The bulbs in the arches and the juke box light up.]

  Go in and look at it, Jabe. I am real proud of it!

  [He stares at Lady a moment; then shuffles slowly into the spectral radiance of the confectionery. Lady moves downstage center. At the same time a calliope becomes faintly audible and slowly but steadily builds, Miss Porter goes with the patient, holding his elbow.]

  VAL [returning to Lady]: He looks like death.

  LADY [moving away from him]: Hush!

  [Val goes up above counter and stands in the shadows.]

  NURSE: Well, isn’t this artistic.

  JABE: Yeh. Artistic as hell.

  NURSE: I never seen anything like it before.

  JABE: Nobody else did either.

  NURSE [coming back to upstage right-center]: Who done these decorations?

  LADY [defiantly]: I did them, all by myself!

  NURSE: What do you know. It sure is something artistic.

  [Calliope is now up loud.]

  JABE [coming back to downstage right]: Is there a circus or carnival in the county?

  LADY: What?

  JABE: That sounds like a circus calliope on the highway.

  LADY: That’s no circus calliope. It’s advertising the gala opening of the Torrance Confectionery tonight!

  JABE: Doing what did you say?

  LADY: It’s announcing the opening of our confectionery, it’s going all over Glorious Hill this morning and all over Sunset and Lyon this afternoon. Hurry on here so you can see it go by the store. [She rushes excitedly to open the front door as the ragtime music of the calliope approaches.]

  JABE: I married a live one, Miss Porter. How much does that damn thing cost me?

  LADY: You’ll be surprised how little. [She is talking with an hysterical vivacity now.] I hired it for a song!

  JABE: How much of a song did you hire it for?

  LADY [closing door]: Next to nothing, seven-fifty an hour! And it covers three towns in Two River County!

  [Calliope fades out.]

  JABE [with a muted ferocity]: Miss Porter, I married a live one! Didn’t I marry a live one? [Switches off lights in confectionery.] Her daddy “The Wop” was just as much of a live one till he burned up. [Lady gasps as if struck. Jabe, with a slow, ugly grin:] He had a wine garden on the north shore of Moon Lake. The new confectionery sort of reminds me of it. But he made a mistake, he made a bad mistake, one time, selling liquor to niggers. We burned him out. We burned him out, house and orchard and vines and “The Wop” was burned up trying to fight the fire. [He turns.] I think I better go up.

  LADY: —Did you say “WE”?

  JABE: —I have a kind of a cramp. . . .

  NURSE [taking his arm]: Well, let’s go up.

  JABE: —Yes, I better go up. . . .

  [They cross to stairs. Calliope fades in.]

  LADY [almost shouting as she moves downstage center]: Jabe, did you say “WE” did it, did you say “WE” did it?

  JABE [at foot of stairs, stops, turns]: Yes, I said “We” did it. You h
eard me, Lady.

  NURSE: One step at a time, one step at a time, take it easy.

  [They ascend gradually to the landing and above. The calliope passes directly before the store and a clown is seen, or heard, shouting through megaphone.]

  CLOWN: Don’t forget tonight, folks, the gala opening of the Torrance Confectionery, free drinks and free favors, don’t forget it, the gala opening of the confectionery.

  [Fade. Jabe and the Nurse disappear above the landing. Calliope gradually fades. A hoarse cry above. The Nurse runs back downstairs, exclaiming:]

  NURSE: He’s bleeding, he’s having a hemm’rhage! [Runs to phone.] Dr. Buchanan’s office! [Turns again to Lady.] Your husband is having a hemm’rhage!

  [Calliope is loud still. Lady appears not to hear. She speaks to Val.]

  LADY: Did you hear what he said? He said “We” did it, “WE” burned—house—vines—orchard—“The Wop” burned fighting the fire. . . .

  [The scene dims out; calliope fades out.]

  SCENE TWO

  Sunset of the same day. At rise Val is alone. He is standing stock-still down center stage, almost beneath the proscenium, in the tense, frozen attitude of a wild animal listening to something that warns it of danger, his head turned as if he were looking off stage left, out over the house, frowning slightly, attentively. After a moment he mutters something sharply, and his body relaxes; he takes out a cigarette and crosses to the store entrance, opens the door and stands looking out. It has been raining steadily and will rain again in a while, but right now it is clearing: the sun breaks through, suddenly, with great brilliance; and almost at the same instant, at some distance, a woman cries out a great hoarse cry of terror and exaltation; the cry is repeated as she comes running nearer.

  Vee Talbott appears through the window as if blind and demented, stiff, groping gestures, shielding her eyes with one arm as she feels along the store window for the entrance, gasping for breath. Val steps aside, taking hold of her arm to guide her into the store. For a few moments she leans weakly, blindly panting for breath against the oval glass of the door, then calls out.

  VEE: I’m—struck blind!

  VAL: You can’t see?

  VEE: —No! Nothing. . . .

  VAL [assisting her to stool below counter]: Set down here, Mrs. Talbott.

  VEE: —Where?

  VAL [pushing her gently]: Here. [Vee sinks moaning onto stool.] What hurt your eyes, Mrs. Talbott, what happened to your eyes?

  VEE [drawing a long, deep breath]: The vision I waited and prayed for all my life long!

  VAL: You had a vision?

  VEE: I saw the eyes of my Savior! —They struck me blind. [Leans forward, clasping her eyes in anguish.] Ohhhh, they burned out my eyes!

  VAL: Lean back.

  VEE: Eyeballs burn like fire. . . .

  VAL [going off right]: I’ll get you something cold to put on your eyes.

  VEE: I knew a vision was coming, oh, I had many signs!

  VAL [in confectionery]: It must be a terrible shock to have a vision. . . . [He speaks gravely, gently, scooping chipped ice from the soft-drink cooler and wrapping it in his handkerchief.]

  VEE [with the naïveté of a child, as Val comes back to her]: I thought I would see my Savior on the day of His passion, which was yesterday, Good Friday, that’s when I expected to see Him. But I was mistaken, I was—disappointed. Yesterday passed and nothing, nothing much happened but—today— [Val places handkerchief over her eyes.] —this afternoon, somehow I pulled myself together and walked outdoors and started to go to pray in the empty church and meditate on the Rising of Christ tomorrow. Along the road as I walked, thinking about the mysteries of Easter, veils!— [She makes a long shuddering word out of “veils.”] —seemed to drop off my eyes! Light, oh, light! I never have seen such brilliance! It PRICKED my eyeballs like NEEDLES!

  VAL: —Light?

  VEE: Yes, yes, light. YOU know, you know we live in light and shadow, that’s, that’s what we live in, a world of—light and—shadow. . . .

  VAL: Yes. In light and shadow. [He nods with complete understanding and agreement. They are like two children who have found life’s meaning, simply and quietly, along a country road.]

  VEE: A world of light and shadow is what we live in, and—it’s—confusing. . . .

  [A man is peering in at store window.]

  VAL: Yeah, they—do get—mixed. . . .

  VEE: Well, and then— [Hesitates to recapture her vision.] —I heard this clap of thunder! Sky! —Split open! —And there in the split-open sky, I saw, I tell you, I saw the TWO HUGE BLAZING EYES OF JESUS CHRIST RISEN! —Not crucified but Risen! I mean Crucified and then RISEN! —The blazing eyes of Christ Risen! And then a great— [Raises both arms and makes a great sweeping motion to describe an apocalyptic disturbance of the atmosphere.] —His hand! —Invisible! —I didn’t see his hand! —But it touched me—here! [She seizes Val’s hand and presses it to her great heaving bosom.]

  TALBOTT [appearing right in confectionery, furiously]: VEE!

  [She starts up, throwing the compress from her eyes. Utters a sharp gasp and staggers backward with terror and blasted ecstasy and dismay and belief, all confused in her look.]

  VEE: You!

  TALBOTT: VEE!

  VEE: You!

  TALBOTT [advancing]: VEE!

  VEE [making two syllables of the word “eyes”]: —The Ey—es! [She collapses, forward, falls to her knees, her arms thrown about Val. He seizes her to lift her. Two or three men are peering in at the store window]

  TALBOTT [pushing Val away]: Let go of her, don’t put your bands on my wife! [He seizes her roughly and hauls her to the door. Val moves up to help Vee.] Don’t move. [At door, to Val:] I’m coming back.

  VAL: I’m not goin’ nowhere.

  TALBOTT [to Dog, as he goes off left with Vee]: Dog, go in there with that boy.

  VOICE [outside]: Sheriff caught him messin’ with his wife.

  [Repeat: Another voice at a distance. “Dog” Hamma enters and stands silently beside the door while there is a continued murmur of excited voices on the street. The following scene should be underplayed, played almost casually, like the performance of some familiar ritual.]

  VAL: What do you want?

  [Dog says nothing but removes from his pocket and opens a spring-blade knife and moves to downstage right. Pee Wee enters. Through the open door—voices.]

  VOICES [outside]: —Son of a low-down bitch foolin’ with—

  —That’s right, ought to be—

  —Cut the son of a—

  VAL: What do you—?

  [Pee Wee closes the door and silently stands beside it, opening a spring-blade knife, Val looks from one to the other.]

  —It’s six o’clock. Store’s closed.

  [Men chuckle like dry leaves rattling. Val crosses toward the door; is confronted by Talbott; stops short.]

  TALBOTT: Boy, I said stay here.

  VAL: I’m not—goin’ nowhere. . . .

  TALBOTT: Stand back under that light.

  VAL: Which light?

  TALBOTT: That light. [Points. Val goes behind counter.] I want to look at you while I run through some photos of men wanted.

  VAL: I’m not wanted.

  TALBOTT: A good-looking boy like you is always wanted.

  [Men chuckle, Val stands in hot light under green-shaded bulb, Talbott shuffles through photos he has removed from his pocket.]

  —How tall are you, boy?

  VAL: Never measured.

  TALBOTT: How much do you weigh?

  VAL: Never weighed.

  TALBOTT: Got any scars or marks of identification on your face or body?

  VAL: No, sir.

  TALBOTT: Open your shirt.

  VAL: What for? [He doesn’t.]

  TALBOTT: Open his shirt for
him, Dog.

  [Dog steps quickly forward and rips shirt open to waist. Val starts forward; men point knives; he draws back.]

  That’s right, stay there, boy. What did you do before?

  [Pee Wee sits on stairs.]

  VAL: Before—what?

  TALBOTT: Before you come here?

  VAL: —Traveled and—played. . . .

  TALBOTT: Played?

  DOG [advancing to center]: What?

  PEE WEE: With wimmen?

  [Dog laughs.]

  VAL: No. Played guitar—and sang. . . . [Val touches guitar on counter.]

  TALBOTT: Let me see that guitar.

  VAL: Look at it. But don’t touch it. I don’t let nobody but musicians touch it.

  [Men come close.]

  DOG: What’re you smiling for, boy?

  PEE WEE: He ain’t smiling, his mouth’s just twitching like a dead chicken’s foot.

  [They laugh.]

  TALBOTT: What is all that writing on the guitar?

  VAL: —Names. . . .

  TALBOTT: What of?

  VAL: Autographs of musicians dead and living.

  [Men read aloud the names printed on the guitar: Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton, etc. They bend close to it, keeping the open knife blades pointed at Val’s body; Dog touches neck of the guitar, draws it toward him. Val suddenly springs, with catlike agility, onto the counter. He runs along it, kicking at their hands as they catch at his legs. The Nurse runs down to the landing.]

  NURSE: What’s going on?

  TALBOTT [at the same time]: Stop that!

  [Jabe calls hoarsely above.]

  NURSE [excitedly, all in one breath, as Jabe calls]: Where’s Mrs. Torrance? I got a very sick man up there and his wife’s disappeared. [Jabe calls out again.] I been on a whole lot of cases but never seen one where a wife showed no concern for a— [Jabe cries out again. Her voice fades out as she returns above.]

  TALBOTT [overlapping Nurse’s speech]: Dog! Pee Wee! You all stand back from that counter. Dog, why don’t you an’ Pee Wee go up an’ see Jabe. Leave me straighten this boy out, go on, go on up.