Free Remembrance and Pantomime by Derek Walcott Page B

What you think?
    JACKSON
         You want my honest, professional opinion?
    HARRY
         Fire away.
    JACKSON
         I think is shit.
    HARRY
         I’ve never been in shit in my life, my boy.
    JACKSON
         It sound like shit to me, but I could be wrong.
    HARRY
         You could say things in fun about this place, about the whole Caribbean, that would hurt while people laughed. You get half the gate.
    JACKSON
         Half?
    HARRY
         What do you want?
    JACKSON
         I want you to come to your senses, let me fix the sun deck and get down to the beach for my sea bath. So, I put on this hat, I pick up this parasol, and I walk like a mama-poule up and down this stage and you have a black man playing Robinson Crusoe and then a half-naked, white, fish-belly man playing Friday, and you want to tell me it ain’t shit?
    HARRY
         It could be hilarious!
    JACKSON
         Hilarious, Mr. Trewe? Supposing I wasn’t a waiter, and instead of breakfast I was serving you communion, this Sunday morning on this tropical island, and I turn to you, Friday, to teach you my faith, and I tell you, kneel down and eat this man. Well, kneel, nuh! What you think you would say, eh?
    ( Pause )
         You, this white savage?
    HARRY
         No, that’s cannibalism.
    JACKSON
         Is no more cannibalism than to eat a god. Suppose I make you tell me: For three hundred years I have made you my servant. For three hundred years …
    HARRY
         It’s pantomime, Jackson, just keep it light … Make them laugh.
    JACKSON
         Okay.
    ( Giggling )
         For three hundred years I served you. Three hundred years I served you breakfast in … in my white jacket on a white veranda, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib … in that sun that never set on your empire I was your shadow, I did what you did, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib … that was my pantomime. Every movement you made, your shadow copied …
    ( Stops giggling )
         and you smiled at me as a child does smile at his shadow’s helpless obedience, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib, Mr. Crusoe. Now …
    HARRY
         Now?
    ( JACKSON ’s speech is enacted in a trance-like drone, a zombie )
    JACKSON
         But after a while the child does get frighten of the shadow he make. He say to himself, That is too much obedience, I better hads stop. But the shadow don’t stop, no matter if the child stop playing that pantomime, and the shadow does follow the child everywhere; when he praying, the shadow pray too, when he turn round frighten, the shadow turn round too, when he hide under the sheet, the shadow hiding too. He cannot get rid of it, no matter what, and that is the power and black magic of the shadow, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib, until it is the shadow that start dominating the child, it is the servant that start dominating the master …
    ( Laughs maniacally, like The Shadow )
         and that is the victory of the shadow, boss.
    ( Normally )
         And that is why all them Pakistani and West Indians in England, all them immigrant Fridays driving all you so crazy. And they go keep driving you crazy till you go mad. In that sun that never set, they’s your shadow, you can’t shake them off.
    HARRY
         Got really carried away that time, didn’t you? It’s pantomime, Jackson, keep it light. Improvise!
    JACKSON
         You mean we making it up as we go along?
    HARRY
         Right!
    JACKSON
         Right! I in dat!
    ( He assumes a stern stance and points stiffly )
         Robinson obey Thursday now. Speak Thursday language. Obey Thursday gods.
    HARRY
         Jesus Christ!
    JACKSON
    ( Inventing language )
         Amaka nobo sakamaka khaki pants kamaluma Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ kamalogo!
    ( Pause. Then with a violent gesture )
         Kamalongo kaba!
    ( Meaning: Jesus is dead! )
    HARRY
         Sure.
    ( Pause. Peers forward. Then speaks to an imaginary