Les Blancs (17 page)

(
He sits and bemusedly picks up
ABIOSEH
’s
apple)

ABIOSEH
Eric is coming to St. Cyprian’s with me.

TSHEMBE
(
Polishing the apple with great concentration
) And I would prefer to take him with me.

ABIOSEH
At St. Cyprian’s he will be educated.

TSHEMBE
He might also become a priest.

(
He bites the apple
)

ABIOSEH
And that is a horrible possibility?

TSHEMBE
Horrible
.

ABIOSEH
T
O
give one’s life to God …

TSHEMBE
To my knowledge it has never been proved that it is
He
who enjoys the gift! (
Picks up the other’s Bible
)

ABIOSEH
(
Whirling
) You would be better off, my brother, if your Christian teachings had been more forceful!

TSHEMBE
I never thought much of Christian forcefulness.

ABIOSEH
That is what you think, but God is raging in you, fighting for you!

TSHEMBE
(
Slamming the book shut
) Why does He always tell you and not me what He is doing! (
He gets up and crosses away
)

ABIOSEH
In any case, Eric will return with me.

ERIC
No. I am staying here—where I belong! (
To
TSHEMBE
,
pleading
) They call me by the name my mother gave me—

TSHEMBE
(
Derisively
) —Ngedi!

ERIC
Yes. Ngedi. They have asked me to take the oath.

A
BIOSEH
“They?”

ERIC
Peter …

(
Knowing suddenly he should not have said it
.
ERIC
and
TSHEMBE
exchange glances
)

ABIOSEH
Peter? (
ERIC
rushes off
) Ah yes … 
Peter
. (
Remembering
) “… We do not recruit Europeans …” Tshembe, you knew this? But why? He works for them. They trust him …

TSHEMBE
Abioseh, you really don’t understand any of it, do you?

ABIOSEH
I understand he must be stopped!

TSHEMBE
Why?

A
BIOSEH
It is creatures like that who make it impossible for us.

TSHEMBE
“Us”?

ABIOSEH
For responsible men. (
TSHEMBE
shoots him a look and turns away
.
ABIOSEH
stops him
)—Practical men who know how to bide their time—who understand there is only one way to power here. Tshembe, when the blood of this hour is past, when order and reason are restored to these hills, the West will compromise because they must. The government at Zatembe will call upon us, because they cannot go on in the old way. And then, my brother, it will be
our
time! Black men will sit beside the settlers. Black magistrates, black ministers, black officers! Responsible leaders—

TSHEMBE
(
Turning to him slowly as if for all time and all comprehension
) You are altogether committed to them, aren’t you?

ABIOSEH
I am committed to God, to civilization—and to Africa! Yes, Africa, my brother—

TSHEMBE
(
Quietly, the controlled precision of a scalpel
) The American blacks have a name for those like you, Abioseh, but it lacks … magnitude! (
He starts away, turns back
) Perhaps among the twelve disciples of your Jesus—a better one might be found!

ABIOSEH
Yes, Tshembe—but it is not
I
who am Judas! It is
you
who have sold yourself to Europe! It is I who chose Africa! Tshembe, Tshembe … I have watched you and listened to you and desperately wished that you would share my goals for our people. I have waited and prayed. But you believe in nothing! You act on nothing! You have put man on God’s throne—but you serve neither God nor man!

(
ABIOSEH
turns on his heel and starts out
)

TSHEMBE
Where are you going?

ABIOSEH
I must go.

TSHEMBE
Go!? Go where?

ABIOSEH
To see Major Rice.

TSHEMBE
Peter …!

ABIOSEH
(
Turning to him
) They are murderers, Tshembe. Murderers!

TSHEMBE
Abioseh, stay out of this. It is not your affair!

ABIOSEH
(
Taking hold of him
) It is both our affair. Tshembe, come with me!

TSHEMBE
(
Breaking free
) He is an elder. He helped to raise us. They will kill him, Abioseh …

ABIOSEH
I must go.

(
ABIOSEH
starts out
.
TSHEMBE
grabs him
)

TSHEMBE
N
O!

(
They grapple and at last
TSHEMBE
flings him to the ground and grabs up the spear to hold him there
)

ABIOSEH
Then you must
use
the spear!

TSHEMBE
Abioseh, there is butchering on both sides. Stay out of this!

ABIOSEH
Christ leaves me no option.

(
ABIOSEH
rises and stands tall in his righteousness, inviting the blow
)

TSHEMBE
Abioseh! We sat together as children and watched the fire and spoke of what we’d become as men. Look at us now!

ABIOSEH
(
Advancing on the spear until it rests against his breast
) Then use the spear. Because that is the side you have chosen. The side of terror, the side of blood. I
make
you your brother’s keeper!

(
The two brothers stand, facing each other
.
ABIOSEH
sweeps past him and exits
)

CHARLIE
No cable. No mail. No phones. I wish to God there was something I could do.

DEKOVEN
Mr. Morris, you really must learn to give up. You are sitting there, still harboring the fugitive hope that sooner or later Torvald Neilsen will walk out of that jungle and announce, “I have been to Zatembe to intercede for Kumalo!” Isn’t that so?

CHARLIE
(
Smiles
) It was only a thought—

(
TSHEMBE
enters
)

TSHEMBE
Mr. Morris! Dr. DeKoven. Is Peter here?

DEKOVEN
He went cross river early this morning.

TSHEMBE
Then I must wait. Do you mind?

DEKOVEN
Of course not.

CHARLIE
(
As
TSHEMBE
turns away
) Tshembe—

TSHEMBE
(
With polite finality
) Mr. Morris.

(
He sits on a stump at some distance
.
CHARLIE
at last turns back to
DEKOVEN
)

CHARLIE
You know, I care about this place. Very much.

DEKOVEN
I do not doubt that.

CHARLIE
You said something the other day. About how coming here had “saved your life.” Did you mean that?

DEKOVEN
For whatever little that’s worth

CHARLIE
Well. Obviously a great deal to a good many people.

DEKOVEN
Some other age will have to know that, Mr. Morris. I don’t.

CHARLIE
Why
not
, Doctor?

DEKOVEN
Mr. Morris, there is a hospital for Europeans only seventy-five miles from here. Entirely modern. Here things are lashed together with vines from the jungle. Surely you must have wondered why.

CHARLIE
Well, I assumed I knew why—that it was obvious …

DEKOVEN
Is it? Electric lines between here and Zatembe could be laid within weeks, a road in six months. The money exists. All over the world people donate to Missions like this. It is not obvious, not obvious at all

CHARLIE
But I thought the African wouldn’t come if it were different. Marta—

DEKOVEN
(
With a gentle smile
) Marta is two things, Mr. Morris: a very competent surgeon and a saint; but she questions nothing very deeply. One of the first things that the new African nations have done is to set up modern hospitals when they can. The Africans go to them so freely that they are severely overcrowded, so something is wrong with Marta’s quaint explanation, don’t you think?

CHARLIE
Apparently.

DEKOVEN
(
With great acuteness and irony
) Mr. Morris, the struggle here has not been to push the African into the Twentieth Century—but at all costs to keep him
away
from it! We do not look down on the black because we really think he is lazy, we look down on him because he is wise enough to resent working for us. The
problem, therefore, has been how
not
to educate him at all and—at the same time—teach him just enough to turn a dial and know which mining lever to raise. It has been as precise as that—and that much a failure. Because, of course, it is impossible! When a man knows that the abstraction
ten
exists—nothing on earth can stop him from looking for the fact of
eleven
. That is part of what is happening here. (
Drinking and looking off
) But only part.

TSHEMBE
(
Swinging around and smiling slightly
) You seem disturbed, Mr. Morris—

CHARLIE
Well, it’s simply that—well, it takes a hell of a lot of education to turn a backward people into—How many people in this village can even read?

TSHEMBE
Read
what?
Drums? Everyone. Books? Six, eight, a dozen at most.

CHARLIE
(
Sitting back, confirmed
) Well, then.

DEKOVEN
(
Smiling
) Morris, this Mission has been here forty years. It takes perhaps twenty-five to educate a generation. If you look around you will find not
one
African doctor. (
Shrugs
) Until they govern themselves it will be no different.

CHARLIE
(
Nods
) And the … “other part”? You said there was another part, DeKoven—?

DEKOVEN
(
Rising and moving about like a man possessed, reliving the past
) The other part has to do with the death of a fantasy. I came here twelve years ago believing that I could—it seems so incredible now—help alleviate suffering by participating actively in the very institutions that help sustain it.

CHARLIE
You’re not suggesting that lives have not been saved here, Doctor? Why, you alone …

DEKOVEN
Oh, I have saved hundreds of lives; all of us here have. I have arrested gangrene, removed tumors, pulled forth babies—and, in so doing, if you will please try to understand, I have helped provide the rationale for genocide.

CHARLIE
Genocide!? Come on now, DeKoven, you can’t really—

DEKOVEN
Mr. Morris, colonial subjects die mainly from a way of life. The incidentals—gangrene, tumors, stillborn babies—are only that: incidentals. Our work—(
He interlocks his fingers
)—reinforces the way of life. But when you come with a faith, an ideal of service, it is impossible to believe that. It was, at first, for me. But I saw my first delegations my first year here.

CHARLIE
Delegations?

DEKOVEN
Yes, at that time they were always sending delegations with a petition of some sort; about the land, grazing rights, taxes. And some of them were always making the trek into Zatembe, you know, to see the governor, the ambassador—
anyone
who could do something. But they always came here first.

TSHEMBE
To get the Reverend’s opinion.

DEKOVEN
And he would talk and joke with them and, usually, nothing was done, or, if it was, they were invariably herded onto
less
land, the taxes were raised
higher
—or something. And then one day, seven years ago, they came, led by old Abioseh as usual, with a petition to the Governor General for a new constitution that would permit Africans to sit in the legislature in proportion to their numbers. They were petitioning, of all things, to govern the colony; quite like that. I shall never forget his face—

CHARLIE
The Reverend?

DEKOVEN
(
He is standing on the very spot, acutely recalling the moment
) Yes. He had the most extraordinary expression when he finished reading the petition and he put it down—like this, you know—and he stood up and wiped his glasses and then put them back on, and he smiled at them and they smiled back as they always did, and then he walked among them, his arms outstretched, saying, “Children, children … my dear children … go home to your huts! Go home to your huts before you make me angry.
Independence indeed!
” (
A beat. He shakes his head
) No, I shall never forget the old man that day. And the thing is that until that moment, standing here, I hadn’t understood in the least, not the slightest, any different than he. The fact that it was all over was in the face of the second old man there, Abioseh.

TSHEMBE
(
Interjecting
) My father.

DEKOVEN
He did not move, he did not smile, he did not speak. He just stood there with the paper in his hand which they had gone to such pains to draw up, that pitiful piece of paper with its awkward syntax and utterly lucid demands which presumed to do what was and remains impossible:
ask
for freedom!

TSHEMBE
(
After a beat
) He never came back.