Blood Knot and Other Plays. Athol Fugard

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СКАЧАТЬ to you and you don’t even listen. The farm, Zach! Remember, man? The things we’re going to do. Picture it! Picking our own fruit. Chasing those damned baboons helter-skelter in the koppies. Chopping the firewood trees . . . and a cow . . . and a horse . . . and little chickens. Isn’t that exciting? Well, I haven’t been sitting still.

      [Morris fetches an old map from the shelf over his bed.]

      Here, I want to show you something. You want to know what it is? A map . . . of Africa. Now, this is the point, Zach. Look—there . . . and there . . . and down here . . . Do you see it? Blank. Large, blank spaces. Not a town, not a road, not even those thin little red lines. And, notice, they’re green. That means grass. I reckon we should be able to get a few acres in one of these blank spaces for next to nothing.

      [Zachariah, bored, goes to the window and looks out.]

      You listening, Zach?

      ZACHARIAH. Ja.

      MORRIS. This is not just talk, you know. It’s serious. One fine day, you wait and see. We’ll pack our things in something and get the hell and gone out of here. You say I don’t want to get out? My reply is that I do, but I want to get right out. You think I like it here more than you? You should have been here this afternoon, Zach. The wind was blowing again. Coming this way it was, right across the lake. You should have smelt it, man. I’m telling you that water has gone bad. Really rotten! And what about the factories there on the other side? Hey? Lavatories all around us? They’ve left no room for a man to breathe in this world. But when we go, Zach, together, and we got a place to go, our farm in the future . . . that will be different.

      [Zachariah has been at the window all the time, staring out. He now sees something which makes him laugh. Just a chuckle to begin with, but with a suggestion of lechery.]

      What’s so funny?

      ZACHARIAH. Come here.

      MORRIS.What’s there?

      ZACHARIAH. Two donkeys, man. You know.

      [Morris makes no move to the window. Zachariah stays there, laughing from time to time.]

      MORRIS. Yes. It’s not just talk. When you bring your pay home tomorrow and we put away the usual, guess what we will have, Zach? Go on, guess. Forty-five rands. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have nothing. Ever think about that? You talk about going out, but forty-five rands—

      ZACHARIAH [breaking off in the middle of a laugh]. Hey! I remember now! By hell! About Minnie. [His voice expresses vast disbelief.] How did I forget a thing like that? It was . . .ja . . .ja . . . It was a woman! That’s what we had when we went out at night. Woman!

      [Morris doesn’t move. He stares at Zachariah blankly. When the latter pauses for a second, Morris speaks again in an almost normal voice.]

      MORRIS. Supper’s ready.

      [Zachariah loses the train of his thought, as with the alarm clock, earlier. Morris sits down.]

      So . . . where were we? Yes. Our plans. When, Zach? That’s the next thing we got to think about. Should we take our chance with a hundred rands, one hundred and fifty? I mean . . . we could even wait till there is three hundred, isn’t that so?

      [Morris has already started on his supper. As if hypnotized by the sound of the other man’s voice Zachariah fetches a chair and sits.]

      So what are we going to do, you ask? This. Find out what the deposit, cash, on a small two-man farm, in one of those blank spaces, is. Take some bread, man. [Offering a slice.]

      ZACHARIAH. No! [Hurls his slice of bread into a corner of the shack.]

      MORRIS. What’s this?

      [Zachariah sweeps away the plate of food in front of him.]

      Zach!

      ZACHARIAH. You’re not going to make me forget. I won’t. I’m not going to. We had woman I tell you. [Pounding the table with his fists.] Woman! Woman! Woman!

      MORRIS. Do you still want the farm?

      ZACHARIAH. Shut up! I won’t listen.

      [Jumps up and rushes across to the other side of the room where his jacket is hanging, and begins to put it on.]

      What do you think I am, hey? Two legs and trousers. I’m a man. And in this world there is also woman, and the one has got to get the other. Even donkeys know that. What I want to know now, right this very now, is why me, Zach, a man, for a whole miserable year has had none. I was doing all right before that, wasn’t I? Minnie used to come. He had a bottle, or I had a bottle, but we both had a good time, for a long time. And then you came . . . and then . . . and then . . . [Pause.]

      MORRIS. Go on . . . say it.

      ZACHARIAH. . . . then you came. That’s all.

      [Zachariah’s violence is ebbing away. Perplexity takes its place.]

      You knocked on the door. Friday night. I remember, I got a fright. A knocking on my door on Friday night? On my door? Who? Not Minnie. Minnie’s coming all right, but not like that. So I had a look, and it was you standing there, and you said something, hey? What did I say? ‘Come in.’ Didn’t I? ‘Come in,’ I said. And when we had eaten I said, ‘Come out with me and a friend of mine, called Minnie.’ Then you said: ‘Zach, let us spend tonight talking,’ Ja, that’s it. That’s all. A whole year of spending tonights talking, talking. I’m sick of talking. I’m sick of this room.

      MORRIS. I know, Zach. [He speaks quietly, soothingly.] That’s why we got plans for the future.

      ZACHARIAH. But I was in here ten years without plans and never needed them!

      MORRIS. Time, Zach. It passes.

      ZACHARIAH. I was in here ten years and didn’t worry about my feet, or a future, or having supper on time! But I had fun and Minnie’s music!

      MORRIS. That’s life for you, Zach. The passing of time, and worthless friends.

      ZACHARIAH. I want woman.

      MORRIS. I see. I see that, Zach. Believe me, I do. But let me think about it. Okay? Now have some supper and I’ll think about it.

      [Morris puts his own plate of food in front of Zachariah and then moves around the room picking up the food that Zachariah swept to the floor.]

      You get fed up with talking, I know, Zach. But it helps, man. [At the window.] You find the answers to things, like we are going to find the answer to your problem. I mean . . . look what it’s done for us already. Our plans! Our future! You should be grateful, man. And remember what I said. You’re not the only one who’s sick of this room. It also gets me down. [Turning to Zachariah, leaving the window.] Have you noticed, Zach, the days are getting shorter, the nights longer? Autumn is in our smelly air. It’s the time I came back, hey! About a year ago! We should have remembered what day it was, though. Would have made a good birthday, don’t you think? A candle on a cake for the day that Morris came back to Zach.

      [Zachariah leaves the table and goes СКАЧАТЬ