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COGNAC IN COFFEE, OYSTERS IN CHAMPAGNE by Sue Walker Sue Walker is the Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, Alabama. She is the Poet Laureate of Alabama. She has published six books of poetry, as well as critical articles on Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, and James Dickey. She has written and performed a one-act play, The Light Guitar on the life of Madame Octavia Levert. She lives in Mobile, Alabama where she teaches Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama. ------- The voices of Eugene Walter, Karen Blixen, and the intrepid Professor NC can be heard. They swill T.S. Eliot Punch and sing: “Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past, each in a different key—B-flat, A and C. It may be said they sound like caterwauling cats. But if this be the music of love. Let it play. And play. And play. On the wings of imagination: One more than a dozen violins sound “The Music of Goodbye,” theme song to the film, “Out of Africa” . Blixen has said goodbye to Kenya, farewell to Bogani house where she lived with Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke until their divorce in 1922, and where she subsequently welcomed Denys Finch Hatton, the man who compensated for her every travail until his yellow Gypsy Moth airplane crashed near Voi on the 14th of May, 1931. Her beloved coffee farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills has been sold. Tears have been shed. Kwaheri. A Note About Time: Take the “yes” in yesterday. It bops, twists, and hully gullys with today. It sways with sunsets painting gold tomorrows. Hours should be made the most of, not counted. Years are memory and hope, are any time, all time. Westerners wear watches. Africans have time. Ever and Always: Time for a Scene.
I. [Rome’s Airport. May temperature is 80 degrees Karen Blixen with black kohl mascara eyes throws off the bearskin coat she is wearing and fans herself with a kid-gloved hand as she peers from under the brim of a bear-trimmed hat.] NC: “Who are the characters here?” [Eugene’s Mobile friend, Professor NC interrupts. She is given to intrusions, and though she was, herself, in Rome in the summer of 1958, she is a doubtful presence. Never mind; here they are, characters all. Eugene, removes his straw hat, waves it and tries to run the professor off stage.] NC: All plots have a twist. The twist plots. Let’s dance. [She stands at the corner of the stage, signals to Eugene and the two do the twist.] And let it be known that this is the Cast of Characters: Karen Blixen (Tanne, Tanya, Tania, Isak Dinesen, Pierre Andrézel) born at Rungstedlund in Denmark on April 17, 1885. Queen of the Northern Monkeys. Her character will thus unfold. Eugene Walter (aka “Ferd” for Ferdinand and much else) editor of Botteghe Oscure, poet, novelist, song writer, raconteur, translator, Air Force cryptographer, actor, artist, expert gastronome. [His hair is parted in the middle and slicked down as if with camel fat.] Clara Svendsen (aka apple cheeks), the secretary of Karen. Professor NC who also goes by many names, not to be listed here. [Ferd has on the ubiquitous blue and white seersucker suit worn by gentlemen in LA (Lower Alabama). It bears saucy food stains which Ms. Dinesen looks at quickly before staring Eugene in the eye. ] EW: Baroness Blixen, welcome, welcome to Rome. I’ve been perishing to see you. KB: How did you know me? [She doesn’t wait for Eugene to answer, but holds out her hand. He kisses it, and she recites: ] KB: We’ve eaten all the ripened heart of life / And made a luscious pickle of the rind. I love those words. In fact I’ve lived them. EW: [Eugene laughs his hardy deep Southern throaty guffaw.] You can recite my “Old Gibbon Lady, Longtime Scullery-Maid To King Colobus, Begs Him Remember That Nostalgia Is Not Only A Great Pleasure, But A Provocative Measure.” Darling, I adore you. But come, let’s fetch your luggage. [Clara Svendsen tags along. ]
II. [The song “You Are Karen” from ”Out Of Africa” plays softly as if the sky itself might croon.] [A sidewalk restaurant in the Piazza Navona in Rome. Eugene seats first Karen, and then Clara, and then seats himself at a little table with one leg just a bit shorter than the others. He wobbles it back and forth, folds a serviette, and puts it under one of the legs to stop the wobble. It is 4:30 p.m. He has awakened from his daily siesta. Karen looks tired. Her face seems thin, almost gaunt, but her eyes are deep set and luminous.] EW: Well, tell me, what sign are you? No, let me tell you. You’re an Ares : Adventurous and energetic. Pioneering and courageous, enthusiastic and confident, dynamic and quick-witted, but you’re also quick-tempered, impulsive and impatient, foolhardy and a daredevil. The first sign in the Zodiac, the first. KB: [ Karen does not follow-up on Eugene’s comments. She changes the subject. ] Do you think I resemble a monkey? I heard you thought so. [Karen fumbles in her large purse, pulls out a pack of cigarettes, pulls one out and lights her own cigarette. She inhales deeply, purses her lips, and smoke rings hover about her head.] EW: “Totally monkey. Totally. I myself came into the world a monkey and have been one ever since, alternating, of course, with my cat persona. Do you often see monkeys in Kenya? Do they please you? KB: Colobus monkeys. The word, you know, means “mutilated one. The colobus has only four fingers. [Karen holds up four fingers.] Its thumb is missing. But yes, I love them in art: In picture, in stories, in porcelain, but in life they somehow look so sad. I wrote a tale called ‘The Monkey’ you know. Someone suggested that were it ever made into a film, I should play the Chanoiness who turns into a monkey. Life is my act though. Life is my act. [A waiter comes up to the table and stands beside Clara.] CS: I would like some roasted figs with zabaglione, please. What will you have? [She turns to Tanne and touches her wrist.] KB: I think I’ll just sit here a bit and watch the sun set. At home . . . I still call Kenya home . . . it seems the sun falls of a sudden right out of the sky. It is day and then suddenly it is not. Like life, I suppose. One moment, someone you love sits beside you. He puts a log on the fire. It blazes for a moment, and gone. A beloved is gone. I have never been able to accommodate loss. I want to hold on to people, to things, I love. [She pats her hair, pauses, and begins wistfully to recite:] The eagle’s shadow runs across the plain, EW: People so resemble animals. Quite good it’s not the other way around. The definition of ‘monkey’ has not been satisfactorily resolved. KB: I would not be so—shall we say, jittery as the monkey seems to be. I would be tall with a thin neck. I wish I had the long lashes of a giraffe. The beast beguiles with its large and luminous eyes. Larger than any other land animal, and . . . EW: [butts in] But you beguile, my dear. Now it is time, darling, for me to quote you, your marvelous story, “The Giraffes Go to Hamburg.” [Eugene reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little notebook. He thumbs through the pages containing numerous handwritten notes.] EW: I understand you can’t confine giraffes, for the creatures will kill themselves trying to get away. You write that the giraffes are crated and shipped off to Hamburg. You say: Good bye, good-bye. I wish for you that you may die on the journey . . . so KB: We must ask the Giraffes to forgive us our transgressions against them. EW: Indeed. KB: A person who has for many years been known to all his surroundings by the name of an animal in the end comes to feel familiar with and related to the animal. Do you not think so?” Fish man, fat bull. [Eugene throws his hands up and roars with laughter. In the wings, Muriel Spark sings “Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow wow.” Oh do not ask what is it. Just sit and share this visit. Dog, monkey—all animal. Domestic and wild.] EW: Carson McCullers is monkey, too. [Wounded music from an organ grinder is heard.] KB: I shall meet her one day. I know it. And Marilyn Monroe. Arthur Miller. EW: I have a friend back home in Mobile who is pure gazelle. You probably know of Muriel Spark. She was in Africa in 1937. Had a miserable marriage, but it was Africa that inspired “The Seraph and the Zambesi.” She’s cat and monkey, and so is Ingeborg Bachmann. She’s a modern German poet. Really sizzling in the world today. Colette is a pussycat. Truman Capote’s a bulldog. And some people are, well you know, shall we say it? Asses. Simply asses. [Eugene drawls the word and lets it linger in the air like smoke from an expensive cigar.] KB: I was so pleased when you wrote and asked me to submit to your magazine, Botteghe Oscure. I had been working on “The Country Tale.” That’s spelled T A L E. EW: Well, T A I L is T A L E, dahling. They are both a part of us—an appendage, when we’re writing. You may seem sad, but I think it is a shame uppity critics can’t see the comic in your work. KB: My name, Isak, means laughter. I believe life demands of us that we love it, not merely certain sides of it and not only one’s own ideas and ideals, but life itself in all its forms, before it will give us anything in return. EW: Ah, this life to live, dear Karen. This joy to laugh out loud. KB: There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel the whole time as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne, —bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive. EW: Mobile where I come from, down on Mobile Bay where mosquitoes feast like crazy in long, hot, summers, is seven steps from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s ‘subtropical, there. Subtropical. The kingdom of monkeys. Sweet lunacy’s county seat. It’s impossible to be melancholy and bleak. KB: Are you never sad? EW: I have learned to master sadness. Like the animal trainer in a zoo, I snap my whip, and if sadness appears as a lion that day, I crack my whip. Sadness is afraid of me, the beast. More afraid of me that I am of it. I will not let it near. KB: It is delight to sit here in Rome, out in the open, but I haven’t been well for over a year, and I really should be going. Shall we continue our discussion on Sunday? EW: Yes indeed. And you must come to dinner. I live on Janiculum Hill. When I first came to Rome, there wasn’t all this “Honk Honk Honk” of traffic. Little flocks of sheep crossed town early in the morning. They set about like grazers in Africa. Never needed lawn mowers. Sheep trimmed the grass. KB: Not oat grass though. It waves in the early morning wind, the sunlight shining on it, shining through it, mother nature’s find red hair. EW: That reddish stuff that looks like Lucille Ball having a “set-to” with Desi Arnez. Lucy pulling her hair out. [Karen rises from her seat and Eugene waves for the waitress.] EW: Think of me as your maître de plaisure. Yes, think of me.
III. [The song “Have You Got A Story For Me” from the film “Out of Africa” plays from the wings. It is Sunday afternoon. Eugene sports the trousers of the same sear-sucker suit he wore on the previous meeting with a white shirt, long sleeves. No tie. Blixen wears a conical- shaped hat that seems loose on her head. She adjusts it. She also wears a rust-red wool suit. Eugene, Karen, and Clara saunter through the Etruscan collection in the Villa Giulia. NC tags along behind.] EW: You must have a lot of hats. This one is, indeed, pointing up something grand. CS: Oh, she does. She loves them. Looks smashing in them too. KB: [Pointing to a painting] Look at that pig. They say the creature’s a minion of the sun. Intelligent as well. Animals, all of them, are dear to me. [Karen points to the portrait of a pig. ] KB: Reminds me of our Kenyan warthogs, only the wart hog lifts his tail in the air when running. It goes 35 miles per hour. Did you know that? We call it the Kenyan express. NC: Richard Nixon’s a warthog. He has aspirations for President. EW: Go away! [Eugene waves his hand and puts his thumb to his nose, wags it back and forth. The ultimate dismissal.] EW: She pops up like an apparition. Not much monkey in her I fear. More dog. Too domesticated. She should be appropriately wild. NC: Talk about Africa. About the farm. About coffee. Kenyan coffee in shades of autumn. EW: Shoosh. Really dear heart, you don’t belong here. NC: I was in Africa, you know. EW: No, I didn’t know. Now, shoosh! [Karen Blixen walks slowly toward the museum exit. Her legs are thin and she has on high heels.] CS: Do you think we can sit down somewhere for a while? Have a cup of coffee? EW: Did you fail to have a siesta? You must always lie down in the afternoon. Rest the carcass for awhile. But, yes, let’s tarry.
SCENE IV. [Eugene takes Karen’s arm and the threesome find a small café. It is called The Poet. Inside there is the illusion that it is the hour before sunrise when the world seems absolutely colorless. The rich hues of night have withdrawn, . . . and in this still world there is a tremendous promise.] EW: When were you first in Africa? KB: 1914. January 13 to be exact. I’ll never forget. I was 28 years old. Once I wore my hair done up like there was a halo around my head. I dressed in lace gowns and looked lovely in them. 42 years ago. Bror, my fiancée met me in Mombassa along with my Swedish cousin. We married the next day. Bror had bought the farm at the foot of Ngong Hills. We went home to our Mbagathi. Our temperaments opposed each other, I fear. He called me Tanne. EW: Mobile, where I grew up in the 1920s, was a port city with a strong French influence, but what I remember about my childhood is the sound of coffee perking. Coffee—an aromatic morning’s ritual. Whole households up and perking. Coffee mills going grind grind crank crank. My grandfather used to put a thimble of cognac in my coffee on frosty mornings. It was sheer delight and why, I think, I grew up healthy and hearty, doing handsprings and playing the harpoon. [Eugene makes like he’s playing a musical instrument and makes harpoon sounds]. Jingle jingle, poon poon poon. KB: I think I’ll try that—the cognac in coffee that is. We had 4,500 acres. The farm lay 12 miles outside Nairobi. Over 6000 feet high up in the hills. Nearby was the Mbagathi River, but it seemed more a stream than a river in times of drought. Wild figs grew everywhere and the lilac-flowering Cape Chestnut. The views were immensely wild. Everything you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility. You’d have loved to see the buffalo, bushbuck, and leopard. EW: And the ostrich. I heard it can kick the holy trinity into you and beside’s that, it’s good to eat. Do you cook, Tanne? KB: I do. I love cooking and dinner parties. When I entertained the Prince of Wales, my cook, Kamante and I served clear soup with marrow, —fish from Mombasa, a kind of turbot, with sauce hollandaise,—ham with Cumberland sauce, spinach, and glazed onion,—partridges with peas, lettuce, tomatoes with macaroni salad and cream sauce with truffles,—croustades with mushrooms, a kind of savarin and fruit,—strawberries and grenadillas. EW: I serve Peanut-Spinach Balls with ham. Better than ambrosia. More substance to it. I crush 2 cups of peanuts, 2 cups of chopped spinach. A finely-chopped onion, 2 cups dried bread crumbs, a quarter-cup grated Parmesan cheese, 4 well-beaten eggs, 3/4 cup unsalted butter, a grated small garlic clove, a dash of grated nutmeg, a pinch of marjoram or thyme, freshly-ground black pepper. None of that pepper paste often served on American tables. Yuk! If you like it hot, add cayenne pepper. Roll up those little balls in the palm of your hand. Bake 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. Peanuts are good boiled and roasted and baked in a pie. Peanuts are heavenly. We even celebrate a Peanut Queen, but of course, we’re all nuts. KB: Without Kamante, I’m afraid I don’t do much cooking these days. I still have the Sultan Book of Cookery I taught him from. We kept a file of recipes. EW: Kamante? KB: I’m sorry. It seems we’ve known each other in aromatic grains of dream time. Kamante Gatura. He was a Kikuku. He was a sick child with boils when I took him in. Had him treated, and eventually he came to the big house to clean the kitchen. Worked his way to being a cook. Do you ever say names just to bring people you cared for near? Instead of counting sheep, I say Farah, Juma, Ali, Abdullai, Hassan, Kamante, Kamau, Kinanjui. NC: Kamante has authored a book, Longing For Darkness. It’s an account of Kamante’s days with Karen Blixen. My favorite tale is one Kamante wrote about an ass and a wild pig. EW: Be gone! [Professor NC proceeds as if she had not heard Walter at all.] NC: Kamante said that an ass was making jokes of a pig digging roots in his field. At length this pig looked up from his work and said, “Dull ass, as it is you please joke on! The world can see the smallness of you that protects you well against my easy revenge.” DO NOT GET ENRAGED AT DULL REMARKS—UNTRUTH MAY GAIN TRUTH. EW: Egad! Pay no attention to her. [Blixen recites from her poem “Out of Africa.”] KB: I hear sounds that die and reoccur, / As the night wind runs, runs without rest, a thousand miles through grass and thorn . . . NC: I have a poem about the African grass. Would you like to hear it? EW: No. KB: I would. It will bring me close again to the Ngong Hills. Eugene we are not marionettes, and you are not pulling our strings. Yes, do say your poem. NC: No, I think not. The moment I fear is spoiled. Let Eugene talk of his marionettes. [Music from “The Marionette and the Music Box.] EW: I managed a Marionette Theatre in Mobile, Alabama. Even made my own marionettes. I was still in school. Performed in prisons and oyster camps and schools and out in the middle of nowhere. I did Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Tom Tic Toc, The Child That Cried for the Moon. I lived with a man named Mr. Gayfer when my grandmother died. He was a lover of the arts. When I didn’t want to go to school—which was a lot because I didn’t like it, I’d say “Mr. Gayfer, I have a marionette performance to give, and I have to paint some scenery.” He was wise, so very wise. He’s say: “Eugene, you don’t have to go to school. It is much more important that you paint the scenery.” KB: The writer acts as a puppeteer in control of the marionette’s strings but needs to comprehend the matter of gravity. It corresponds to God’s control over wild animals through their instincts. The person who controls the strings is a kind of god, don’t you think? If one remains true to her own nature and doesn’t go against it, an understanding of her destiny will follow. I am trying to work this out in my mind. Perhaps, somehow it is related to destiny. EW: I affirm the principle of joy. The joy to laugh out loud. Listen to what I have planned for you, Tanne. Three parties. Each a day a party so the pleasure can ravel out like string. Extends the pleasure. We’ll jazz about until the sunup, retire for awhile, and start jazzing again. KB: I love jazz. EW: And Blues? New Orleans Blues? KB: Yes, the sound of the cornet, its long wilesome wail until you think no breath can be left in the horn blower. The clarinet coming in and claiming a place, maybe taking over the sound for a spell. Passion and melancholy, the near notes of it. [Eugene sings a few lines of “When The Saints Go Marching In.” Karen and Clara clap. Eugene joins in.] NC: It would be more appropriate to sing “Three Coins In A Fountain.” [But the scene, of a sudden, falls like Africa’s night.]
V. [Eugene’s apartment on Janiculum Hill. EW is bustling about tending to arrangements. In order to avoid the stairs, Karen was granted permission to enter from the owner’s garden. Eugene has spread candied violets on the table. He plops a few plump oysters in glasses and tops them with champagne. The meal is to be an intimate affair. Eugene, Karen, Clara, and Michael Batterberry who is in Rome studying painting. ] EW: This is just a preliminary fete, my dear. First, we’ll serve words and flowers. We’ll talk of fireflies. But, I hear you practically live on oysters. We eat them fried, nude, and stewed in Alabama. I love them nude. KB: It doesn’t get much better than oysters in champagne. I have a piece on fireflies, you know. Because fireflies flit about four or five feet above the ground, it is easy to imagine a whole crowd of children of six or seven years running through the dark forest carrying candles, little sticks dipped in a magic fire, joyously jumping up and down, and gamboling as they run, and swinging their small pale torches merrily. [Karen sips the champagne, then takes a fork and puts an oyster in her mouth.] NC: I used to catch fireflies in mason jars. Poke little holes in the top, and try to keep their light alive in my room, but all would be gone in the morning, the fireflies and their ephemeral light. EW: I’m not surprised. You, however, were not on the guest list. CS: Oh let her stay. What do you think Mr. Batterberry? EW: Don’t put him on the spot. It’s not polite. Silence is the best treatment for her—and a gesture like thumb to the nose. KB: Naughty. Naughty. EW: Well, ignore her. Clara: Time is fleeting. Ever fleeting. I would we could get back yesterday, pull it like a little toy along the floor and bring it back to us. KB: And things happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them. EW: We must have nine lives and enjoy them all. [Sweet Violets, sweeter than the roses, covered all over from head to toe, covered all over with sweet violets is played and hangs in the air like the Mardi Gras beads that hang from the chandelier in Eugene’s apartment. He picks a candied violet from the table and hands it to Karen.] KB: My maître de plaisure. EW: Just wait until the cock grows twice. Tomorrow’s tomorrow. Just wait.
VI. [Rome. An apartment on the Piazzale Tiburtino. It is a made-over morgue that once held plague victims. The owner borrowed a priest from next door who came waving incense, sang psalms. Heard from the wings: “Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us: for we are exceedingly filled with contempt. / Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.” A priest walks by like an apparition and sprinkles holy water. EW: Just sit down Madame Blixen. Put up your feet. Rest them for gamboling. KB: First I want to look out at the Tiber. I am fond of rivers. The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, of the sea. [“River of Tears” (by Eric Clapton and Simon Climie) is heard from the wings and voice is heard singing: “In three more days, I’ll leave this town / And disappear without a trace. A year from now, maybe settle down / Where no one knows my face. . . . Still I catch myself thinking, / One day I’ll find my way back here. / You’ll save me from drowning, / Drowning in a river of tears. / Drowning in a river. / Feels like I’m drowning, / Drowning in the river. Lord, how long must this go on? / Drowning in a river, / Drowning in a river of tears.”] EW: And wasn’t it fun, I mean FUN last night dumping that young man’s imitation of you, that book, The Red Umbrella right off the bridge? Plop it went right into the Tiber. KB: And you holding my hand and dancing while we shouted out. EW: Shouted – let’s say it: Rat shit, bat shit, three-toed sloth shit. O Tiber and oblivion, receive this manuscript and its author. Splash!” KB: Eugene, you make me laugh. EW: This joy to laugh out loud. KB: We held up lines of traffic – and that cab driver thinking we were crazy, worrying about us doing something illegal. EW: Traffic tooting. Toot Toot Toot. Honk Honk. I told him I’d give him a worthy tip. KB: I think this will be my very best memory of Rome Eugene, you monkey you. I wish there were never goodbyes. EW: Don’t think about goodbye. I have something splendid next in store. My friend Ginny Becker is creating a special space. Just wait until you see. KB: Is it a story you’ve written, Eugene? All sorrows can be borne if you put into a story and tel la story about them. [A grandfather clock climes 12:00 midnight.] KB: I am not pumpkin, and I don’t believe in glass slippers, but I think if you see me out the garden and call a cab, Clara and I will be on our way. CS: I hate to see this evening go. We have enjoyed everything Eugene. You’re such a marvelous cook. The garlic soup was divine. You must tell me how to make it. [Adressing Tanne] You would like it as a prelude to a meal, would you not Tanne? EW: Quick and Simple. Crush five or six garlic cloves. Put into a soup pot with about two pints of water and two tablespoons of olive oil, add two or three torn bay leaves and let it boil happily for about ten minutes. Get out a splendid soup tureen. Make an elaborate display of it. Dance around. I have several tureens just for company. CS: And you served our soup in that marvelous tureen with the monkey faces on it. “Monkey see, money do” written in script all around it. EW: Yes, Well, let me continue. Put five egg yolks into your heated soup tureen. Add a scant ladle of your liquid. This you do with fanfare, saying: “Have you said a little prayer lately for Mae West or Arthur Rimbaud?” Swirl the ladle over your head and then scoop a ladle full of liquid into the yolks. Oh, yes, I forget. I do this in full view of my guests. They like to see me as I dance about the kitchen and then to the table. You mix your eggs and liquid, you see. Then you ladle and dance, ladle and dance. After an appropriate performance, pour in the last of the liquid and stir, stir, stir. Finally place a toast triangle on each bowl of soup. KB; Jazz. Cook and kitchen jazz. EW: And I’ll never know why people whom you would think had a modicum of intelligence would ever want to serve gloppy, sloppy salads at the start of a meal. It’s barbarian. And never, NEVER, use dry dead dust for pepper. Along with the soup tureen, you’ve got to have a proper pepper mill to grind a grind-grind on top. KB: I shall dream of what you will do next. Clara: What can equal this? EW: You’ll see, my dears; you’ll see.
VII. [Rome. The apartment of the stage and film actress Ginny Becker.] EW: Thank you darling Ginny for letting us stage our marionette production, Tanya, Tanya, and Clara Too right in your sitting room. The drama will progress thus: The first scene will take place in Denmark. I will stand up and say: “Picture a Castle. It is snowing in the little woods.” Tanya and Clara are bundled in a sled drawn by two butterflies. I will throw bits of paper into the air. We’ll say that it’s snow. Let’s practice: TM: “It’s cold here. How I would love to have some fresh wood mushrooms.” [There is a pause. From the wings, a voice sings: Oh the weather outside is frightful But a fire would be delightful / And since we've a place to go / Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! ‘ It doesn't show signs of stopping / And I've bought some corn for popping / The lights are turned way down low / Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!] TM: “I’m tired of snow.” CM: “Well, maybe you should roam.” NC: This is too much, don’t you think? Over the top? That’s a silly pun. EW: Not again. You’re too much. Much much too much. You don’t know a thing about theatre. Go! NC: I have written a one-woman, one-act play and performed in it. I am not given to playing with dolls. EW: Are you listening Ginny? Okay. CM: “What mushrooms come from just outside of Rome?” EW: And Tanya will up and say that she wants to go to Rome. It’s exactly what she wants to do. There’ll be a fanfare. The sled will whiz off. The butterflies will flap their pretty wings and they’ll fly away, away. We’ll change the scene. And get this. Next we’ll be in the Piazza Navona in Rome. NC: Don’t you think you could have a scene set in Africa? You could feature bush babies. They’re darling. Come down at dinnertime to the table and if somebody hands them a roll, they’ll snatch it. And you could have some Maasai warriors dressed in their traditional red come out and dance and sing. EW: I don’t take kindly to your intrusions. Please be quiet. Vacate the premises. Lock yourself up in a two-story house, cross your eyes, and look out the window. [From the Wings a voice sings another Eric Clapton tune: “’Cause no, no, nobody knows you / When you’re down and out. / In your pocket, not one penny, / And as for friends, you don’t have any.”] Miss Rome marionette. I’m a retired soprano. I’ve come to meet you Clara. Tanya. EW: Isak Dinesen is supposed to throw out a ladder from a hot-air balloon, but the cardinal hasn’t come in yet. She comes down the ladder, sees he’s not there to greet her, and goes back up the ladder again. Comes down, goes up, comes down. Three times. Tanya marionette: “Where’s the cardinal? I was promised a cardinal. I will not descend again until there’s a cardinal. EW: The cardinal comes in on a bicycle and calls out “Where is she? Where is she?” Miss Rome marionette: I’ll sing a high C. EW: Tanya comes down the ladder from the hot-air balloon again, takes the cardinal’s hand, and they walk about. That’s all there is to it. A little divertissement. I’ll make a program and all. But I must get on with the hors d’oeuvres. Poor Man’s Caviar. Won’t take but 30 minutes. Two eggplants — plop into the baking dish with a blip of oil and water. After they come out of a stint in the over, just need to peel them, mash them up with a little chopped parley, basil and tarragon. A chopped onion. It’s disappear before faster than the twinkle of a firefly. And we’ll have tiny little cheeseburgers, one bite to a burger. We’ll finish with Peanut Butter Pie for dessert. [From the wings, Jimmy Buffet’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise” begins to play. Eugene dances around the kitchen and sings:] Cheeseburger In Paradise Cheeseburger in paradise Cheeseburger in paradise I need a cheeseburger in paradise
VIII. [Rome. Princess Brianna Carafa’s. Friday night. Enter Karen Blixen and Clara. “Jambo, Jambo Bwana is being played on a Beckstein Grand Piano.] KB: How very lovely. NC: Note, there is no verisimilitude here. Eugene had an Italian concert pianist play Albioni sonatas and Jeannette Pecorello from a Boston family in the States sing, but he shouldn’t have. The program should have read thus:
EW: No! No! Really, you must leave. Go milk the moon. NC: Tend to Tanya. She’s sitting on the sofa conversing with the prince of Lampedusa. [Eugene puts his hand to his ear and listens intently.] EW: They sound like a rare monkey and a wild wolf speaking languages neither understand. [NC advances toward Karen] NC: Baroness Blixen, may I pull up a chair. Eugene is having a fit of apoplexy, but surely you’ll speak with me woman to woman a bit. I can’t seem to get it about plot. In a story, is it really important? KB: Indeed: I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story. I think you understand this. NC: Characters. Real characters like you and Clara, Eugene and me? KB: With imagination. NC: Tell me, Tanya, if I may, do you feel that writing is seductive? [From the wings, strains of “What The World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love.”] KB: Yes and no. [Baroness Blixen plays with her skirt, twists it into a knot and laughs.] NC: And that’s all you’re going to answer? KB: In the beginning, when I started to write . . . .[She pauses, turns to Guiseppe Di Lampedusa, an Italian prince / writer, sitting on the sofa beside her] Would you get me a drink? [She turns back to Professor NC. ] NC: You ask a prince to get you a drink? KB: Why not? He is also a writer, a member of the club, so to speak. He’s the acclaimed author of The Leopard. It was touted one of Italy’s finest novels. NC: But about love? KB: Oh yes, writing. I began in the evenings to write stories, fairy tales and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times. I had been telling some of the stories to a friend when he came to stay on the farm. He would sit on the floor with all the cushions spread around him, and listen attentively to a long tale from beginning to end.” NC: Denys Finch-Hatton? KB: Yes. His death . . . just as I was preparing to leave Africa. I asked to fly with him on that last flight. He wouldn’t let me. The boy with him who was killed in the plane didn’t want to go. He was deathly afraid of flying. Premonitions perhaps. NC: I have a friend, Mary Mercer, who wrote a book called Becoming Human. It’s a lot about loving. I memorized the passage where she said “We are living people, not characters in a Shakespearean play, but the thoughts and feelings of his characters are often no different from our own.” Do you realize that people don’t know quite what to think about your story “The Monkey.” KB: Yes, I grow weary from the questions people ask me about that particular tale. NC: [Reciting]. . . . It happened that the Prioress’s monkey would feel he call of a freer life and would disappear for a few weeks or a month, to come back of its own accord when the night frosts set in.” KB: [Reaches out and takes NC’s hand.] And do you remember the section – the great supper of seduction? NC: The table was decorated with camellias. There was a snow white tablecloth and crystal glasses . . . KB: And green wineglasses that threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit of a pine forest in summer. NC: I forget what the Prioress was wearing. KB: A gray taffeta frock with very rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her large old diamond eardrops and brooches. It is about women, old women, the heroic strength of soul of old women [she pauses, takes her drink from the little decorative table in front of her and takes a sip] – women who with great taste and trouble make themselves beautiful – more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as young women – and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in the hearts of men . . . NC: And they had carp to eat. I’ve never had carp. I don’t think Eugene Walter has cooked carp. He just does it. Carp Carp Carp. KB: Now, now. NC: And they had marzipan and crystallized fruit. KB: Wine flowed freely. And do you remember? The convives of this quiet and dignified meal of an old and a young maid and a rejected lover, were all three of them more than a little drunk. NC: And the monkey? KB: Read the tale again dear. Let the monkey resolve the mess when the plot has got too complicated for the human characters. People say, “What does it mean?” It would be a bad thing if I could explain the tale better than what I have already said in the tale. The story should be all.” [From the wings a voice sings; “Shoo, fly, don't bother me, / Shoo, fly, don't bother me, Shoo, fly, don't bother me, / For I belong to somebody. / I feel, I feel, I feel like a morning star, / I feel, I feel, / I feel like a morning star.] EW: Are you here? You must leave Professor. Tanya, darling, you are the star tonight, night star and morning star. KB: My star, I fear, is losing its light. I think I must go. I have had an ample sufficiency of everything, and that is a good place for leave-taking. EW: And the book we will write together, is that still on? KB: You won the toss to set the theme. Have you? EW: We’ll have to have a monkey in it, or a ghost. And a fascinating lady of European background. KB: Oh yes, yes. Well, you write the first chapter, and I’ll write the second. NC: And me? I would like to write a chapter as well. EW: You would. You would. KB: Do you all remember this? “The Blank Page,” published in Last Tales? An old woman storyteller says: Be loyal to the story. The old hag tells her grand daughter that where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswearvingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak. Where the story has been betrayed, silence is but emptiness. But we, the faithful, when we have spoken our last world, will hear the voice of silence. Who tells a finer tale than any of us? Silence does. And where does one read a deeper tale than upon the most perfectly printed page of the most precious book? Upon the blank page. Upon the blank page.” [Music from the wings: After the ball is over, after the break of morn, / After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone, / Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all: / Many the hopes that have vanished after the ball.]
Passages in italics are from works featuring Eugene Walter, from essays, and from Milking The Moon. The words of Dinesen are from her works.
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