Black Caps and Red Feathers

Play 1: ACT TWO

27 ACT TWO Scene is the same. It is afternoon. A little ray of smoke is seen trailing out from the fireplace. More flies are plaguing the heap and Creature’s wound. Creature, still lying on his back opens his eyes and looks about wearily. He struggles and sits up looking agitated. He collects bone, yawns and scratches his belly with the bone, yawns and turns towards the refuse heap. He staggers to his feet and yawns again, this time more elaborately, scratches his neck and starts turning over refuse on the heap with bone. Creature: (In anticipation.) I thought I heard someone speak. I thought a beret came by to remove me from this hole. Or, at least to throw food on the heap for me. (Disappointed.) They have not come round for long. There are no fresh bones on the heap. No bread crumbs. (Turns over garbage with bone.) Only old tins. Plastics. Paper. Dirt. (Searches more thoroughly.) They don’t come to throw food for me any more. (Searches.) Everything is dry. Dry. Dry. Dry bones. Dry sticks, dry tins, dry rags. The bones, you can hardly have a pinch from the bones. Nothing. (Searches.) Hope he comes. I’m weary of the hole. Been too long in the hole. (Searches.) Hope when it shall rain Traourou will let the termites out of their holes, me with them. Hope he’ll send the berets to open the gates of the termites’ holes and send me to freedom. It isn’t a good place. Only a dry place, cold place, a death place. (Searches. Concentrates gaze on an item of refuse. He picks it, holds it to his nose, shakes his head and throws the item back to the heap.) The hole isn’t good. The berets don’t come to throw food to me in the grave any more. Even if they have been asked to show where Oumi hides, let them come straight to me. And I will tell them that I know not where Oumi’s hiding. I will tell them that the hole isn’t 28 a good place for me. I will tell them the truth how Ganje died. So that they send me out into the world. Ganje is gone. He isn’t stifled in the hole like me. (Searches. Finds nothing to eat. He returns to the fire discouraged and starts poking it, peeps into the pot and does not find any thing to eat. He sits on a stone with his hands clasped on his head in contemplation then picks the dry paste of his wound and throws in his mouth. Munches. ) Does he live? I don’t hear him roar any more. That lion of the jungle of the Alps. He doesn’t come threatening and thundering here any more. I don’t see the berets any more... (Pauses. Contemplates.) Two of his henchmen passed here. My two countrymen he lured to the other side of the Great River with throngs of men to betray and cut their heads. And they killed Bobe Khom. Their ghosts passed back home snivelling in the night. They stopped by and pined for a little warmth of my fire. I said nothing. They squawked and begged and I said nothing. “All’s not well,” they said. “All’s not well. Running on the wheels of power to wear cap and feather, we caught a cold in Shwaart, in Mbrouhngwi. We lost everything. We are on our way home.” I was frightened. “Where is Traourou?” I said. “He went abroad,” they said. “His ghost is hovering around the palace and his kid brother is so frightened”. “The berets!” I asked. “They have run amuck,” they said. “They want the cap where Traourou’s head is entrenched. Could we come for the fire?” “And the throngs of men you led to the other side of the river?” I asked. “We sold them with their heads and testes and their blood. But they weren’t enough. We could sell the whole land but that would not be enough to wear the 29 cap for a day.” “Why didn’t you wait a little longer, and hope and cut heads and hope?” I asked. “It was no use”, said the one who had dried and puckered up like the stem of a dead yam, his large eyes rolling in his skull like two minor spheres...