Free Brian Friel Plays 2 by Brian Friel Page A

Christina.
    Jack Forgive me, Chris. You were only a baby when I went away. I remember Mother lifting you up as the train was pulling out of the station and catching your hand and waving it at me. You were so young you had scarcely any hair but she had managed to attach a tiny pink – a tiny pink – what’s the word? – a bow! – a bow! – just about here; and as she waved your hand, the bow fell off. It’s like a – a picture? – a camera-picture? – a photograph! – it’s like a photograph in my mind.
    Chris The hair isn’t much better even now, Jack.
    Jack And I remember you crying, Margaret.
    Maggie Was I?
    Jack Yes; your face was all blotchy with tears.
    Maggie You may be sure – beautiful as ever.
    Jack ( to Agnes ) And you and Kate were on Mother’s right and Rose was between you; you each had a hand. And Mother’s face, I remember, showed nothing. I often wondered about that afterwards.
    Chris She knew she would never see you again in her lifetime.
    Jack I know that. But in the other life. Do you think perhaps Mother didn’t believe in the ancestral spirits?
    Kate Ancestral –! What are you blathering about, Jack? Mother was a saintly woman who knew she was going straight to heaven. And don’t you forget to take your medicine again this evening. You’re supposed to take it three times a day.
    Jack One of our priests took so much quinine that he became an addict and almost died. A German priest; Father Sharpeggi. He was rushed to hospital in Kampala but they could do nothing for him. So Okawa and I brought him to our local medicine man and Karl Sharpeggi lived until he was eighty-eight! There was a strange white bird on my windowsill when I woke up this morning.
    Agnes That’s Rosie’s pet rooster. Keep away from that thing.
    Maggie Look what it did to my arm, Jack. One of these days I’m going to wring its neck.
    Jack That’s what we do in Ryanga when we want to please the spirits – or to appease them: we kill a rooster or a young goat. It’s a very exciting exhibition – that’s not the word, is it? – demonstration? – no – show? No, no; what’s the word I’m looking for? Spectacle? That’s not it. The word to describe a sacred and mysterious …? ( slowly, deliberately ) You have a ritual killing. You offer up sacrifice. You have dancing and incantations. What is the name for that whole – for that –? Gone. Lost it. My vocabulary has deserted me. Never mind. Doesn’t matter … I think perhaps I should put on more clothes …
    Pause.
    Maggie Did you speak Swahili all the time out there, Jack?
    Jack All the time. Yes. To the people. Swahili. When Europeans call, we speak English. Or if we have a – a visitor? – a visitation! – from the district commissioner. The present commissioner knows Swahili but he won’t speak it. He’s a stubborn man. He and I fight a lot but I like him. The Irish Outcast, he calls me. He is always inviting me to spend a weekend with him in Kampala – to keep me from ‘going native’, as he calls it. Perhaps when I go back. If you co-operate with the English they give you lots of money for churches and schools and hospitals. And he gets so angry with me because I won’t take his money. Reported me to my superiors in Head House last year; and they were very cross – oh, very cross. But I like him. When I was saying goodbye to him – he thought this was very funny! – he gave me a present of the last governor’s ceremonial hat to take home with – Ceremony! That’s the word! How could I have forgotten that? The offering, the ritual, the dancing – a ceremony! Such a simple word. What was I telling you?
    Agnes The district commissioner gave you this present.
    Jack Yes; a wonderful triangular hat with three enormous white ostrich plumes rising up out of the crown. I have it in one of my trunks. I’ll show it to you later. Ceremony! I’m so glad I got that. Do you know what I found very strange? Coming back in the boat there were days when