The Lamplighter, стр. 5
A very good Tim Wisky with good harness.
A Chestnut Gelding, he goes safe. A good grey Mare and a well tempered Black boy who has recently had the smallpox.
BLACK HARRIOT:
After we were sold, I myself recall,
We were marched down
The cobbled quays where the ferrymen
Met us, the men with the moon faces.
CONSTANCE:
The men with the red sun faces.
Then we would be rowed to the waiting vessel.
FX:
(The sound of the wind with the sound of the sea.)
LAMPLIGHTER:
I can’t tell you everything I lost. I lost my family. I lost my name.
I lost my country. I lost my freedom. I lost my weight.
I lost my sense of smell.
BLACK HARRIOT:
I lost my bearings. I lost faith
(for a while.)
CONSTANCE:
I lost my words.
I lost my tongue.
BLACK HARRIOT:
I lost my sense of fun.
LAMPLIGHTER:
At night… At night,
BLACK HARRIOT:
In the morning
MARY:
During the day
LAMPLIGHTER:
The men with the red sun faces came.
Nobody told my story before.
This is Me talking.
MARY:
This is Herself.
CONSTANCE:
This is Herself Talking.
LAMPLIGHTER:
I was the one who was stowed away.
For weeks on the Mary, the ship
Roared and tossed and everything was green.
Nobody knows what I went through coming here.
Just to stay alive, to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to feel.
Nobody ever did stop and think about me. And so, my inside-
Voice got louder. And so my inside-thoughts got faster. And so
My outside-smile, wider.
And I learnt how to, how not to
CONSTANCE:
How to, how not to, what to not do, what to do, what not to do.
LAMPLIGHTER:
And I just about survived. I lived to tell this story.
I have forgotten what I have not remembered.
I am jumbled with the span of years, and the weight of things.
The weight of a horse bit in my mouth.
BLACK HARRIOT:
The weight of a chain on my arm.
MARY:
The weight of my body
On the scales before I was sold.
CONSTANCE:
The weight of my heavy heart.
MACBEAN:
I’ll never forget the sight of her,
Standing on the cobbles with the tears
Flowing down her face. I can see her still.
Like she is still standing there.
Like it was yesterday.
LAMPLIGHTER:
Over the big span of years
I span myself, time myself.
Could say those years are one step in time.
Could say they are nothing at all.
Not long ago.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Not long ago enough yet.
CONSTANCE:
Not far away enough yet.
MARY:
Not in the past yet.
LAMPLIGHTER:
Not as long ago as I would like to think.
I can still stretch my arms back and be able to touch it again, smell it again, taste it again. Slavery. The feel of it.
Don’t forget to remember me. My voice is coming back.
MARY (low):
This is Herself talking.
LAMPLIGHTER:
My voice is coming back,
Stronger by the day,
By the light of the silvery moon.
Close, slavery. Close – too close ever for comfort. A trudge and
A slide away. A scrape and a pull away. A skip and a jump away.
I remember when I was bought and sold and weighed as if it was yesterday.
BLACK HARRIOT:
This is the story of Herself.
MARY:
Told without the bit between the teeth.
LAMPLIGHTER:
The deaths I managed to avoid. The deaths
I did not live.
BLACK HARRIOT:
The endless deaths in us, the windowless deaths,
The deaths in the dungeons,
The deaths at sea
The deaths in the ship
The deaths in the new land
The deaths tied to the tree
The deaths in the plantation
The deaths in the shacks
The tobacco deaths, the sugar deaths.
The broken-hearted deaths. The love-missed and missing
Deaths. The in-your-face deaths. The stowed away deaths.
The sea deaths. The deaths at sea.
LAMPLIGHTER:
Death looked like a big steel ship called
Grace of God. Death tasted
Like a wounded bird, like captured freedom.
MARY:
And death was in all of us.
Scene 5: Shipping News
MACBEAN:
New Low, moving rapidly North-east and deepening.
Occasionally moderate or poor.
Buryed two slaves –
A man (no 140) and a boy (no 170)
Of the gravel and stoppage of urine.
A boy, no 158, then a girl no 172.
No 2 died of a flux. No 36 died of a flux.
Decreasing 4 for a time.
Biscay. Southwesterly veering westerly. Very rough or High.
LAMPLIGHTER:
Very rough or High.
MACBEAN:
Sole Lundy Fastnet Irish Sea
CONSTANCE:
Sole Lundy Fastnet Irish Sea, Sole Lonely Lundy, Fastnet,
Chain, Irish Sea. Monday, Monday. Tuesday, Tuesday. Fast.
Net. Sea. Fish. Soul. Sea.
MACBEAN:
From fore to aft
From the nose of the ship to the rudder
From shoulder to shoulder
Head to toe and toe to head,
The slaves were packed tight.
BLACK HARRIOT:
Dire was the tossing. Deep the moans.
CONSTANCE:
The men with the moon faces
Came to the shore
In big ships glinting like knives
Across the huge- big mirror water
LAMPLIGHTER:
I would rather die on yonder
Gallows than live in slavery
MACBEAN:
Squally showers for a time later.
1716. The Windsor reached Buenos Aires
with only 164 slaves surviving.
1714 The Norman left London
to pick up 300 slaves.
The Norman carried 150 gallons of malt,
Three hundred weight and ten pounds of flour.
12 hundredweight of biscuits. Coming soon.
Fifty chests of corn.
Twenty gallons of rum.
MARY:
Coming soon.
MACBEAN:
Rain later, moderate or good.
CONSTANCE:
Bad or good. Happy or sad. Big or small. Good or bad.
Sad or happy. Small or big.
Left or right. Right or wrong.
Scene 6: The Story Coming Back
FX:
(Exterior a place of memories: West African village. The sounds of children playing.)
LAMPLIGHTER:
I remember back before –
when I played with my friends in my
own country, and time was long
And trees were tall, I remember how my brother
and I watched out for kidnappers.
And how good my father was shaping the wood and metal, and
visits to the snake spirit, how some healers could really heal.
I remember how the Crocodile River,
ran fast. I remember my brother ran fast.
I remember our home with its cone-shaped roof, how my
brother and I belonged to our entire village. I remember the
days I lived before I came here, the life before.
The life before, the life I lived,
the life when I could breathe,
when I could smell the smells
and taste the tastes.
FX:
(Fade West African village. Cane field. Suggested rather than stated.)
LAMPLIGHTER:
Seems another me
lived that blessed life, another girl-
girl, deep in the interior country
far away from the coast,
a girl who had never ever seen the sea,
a girl who climbed to the top of trees.
I like to think she is up there, still,
mysterious, magical girl,
that she would never ever
hear this story.
MARY:
I wanted to run from that story.
CONSTANCE:
I wanted to pretend it never happened.
BLACK HARRIOT:
I wanted a break.
LAMPLIGHTER:
But no matter how fast I