O Starry Starry Night: A Play - Softcover

Derek Walcott (1930-2017) was born in St. Lucia, the West Indies, in 1930. His Collected Poems: 1948-1984 was published in 1986, and his subsequent works include a book-length poem, Omeros (1990); a collection of verse, The Bounty (1997); and, in an edition illustrated with his own paintings, the long poem Tiepolo's Hound (2000). His numerous plays include The Haitian Trilogy (2001) and Walker and The Ghost Dance (2002). Walcott received the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

ACT I
 
 
Scene One
[ Pre-dawn in Arles. A café pavement, under an awning. GAUGUIN sits at a table, drinking a coffee. Lamps fading. The PROPRIETOR, sweeping, pauses, points.]
PROPRIETOR
Now dawn will set those cypresses on fire.
If you stay here, you’ll see the miracle.
Our city’s not a city but a fair-sized town;
it’s famous for a dent in its Roman wall
that bears, if you look very hard, the imprint
of Christ’s knee. I know it’s a long way
from Jerusalem, but I believe it.
I believe it’s capable of breeding saints
in spite of its brothels. There’re five.
Brothels, not saints.
Look, the fog is sneaking out of the city streets
like a thief, leaving our avenue bare
and stripped of everything but the sun. Coffee?
[GAUGUIN shakes his head no, then covers his cup with one palm.]
I’ve managed this place for centuries.
I know it like my hand. Arles is nice.
Your friend the Dutchman lives in the yellow house,
but you don’t want to wake him. I understand.
Three, wait, let me see, three corners up.
[LOTTE enters with an umbrella, stands behind a garbage bin. Begins to undress, half hidden. GAUGUIN watches.]
LOTTE
The sky’s bladder is as full as mine.
It’s going to rain.
[ She stoops behind the bin.]
GAUGUIN
Madam, pardon.
LOTTE
Did you just get off the train?
GAUGUIN
[ Nods.]
LOTTE
From Paris?
GAUGUIN
[ Lifts eyebrow, nods.]
LOTTE
Boy, you’re really talkative, aren’t you?
What do you plan to do
in this shithole of a town?
GAUGUIN
[ Removes pipe, gestures with it.]
Paint.
LOTTE
          Paint? There’s nothing to paint here.
I’m from here. There’s nothing.
Just in case you ask. I’m a …
Well, you can judge for yourself.
My name’s Lotte.
GAUGUIN
Good morning, Lotte.
But are you doing what I think you are?
LOTTE
Having a municipal pee. Yes.
GAUGUIN
Madame,
would you prefer to use the facility
of that yellow house across the street?
LOTTE
[ Crouching behind the garbage bin.]
Hold on. I’ll soon be finished. Good.
How about you? Would you care to share
the facility behind this box with me?
Or over in those bushes there? Fifty francs.
[ She rises, straightens her dress.]
GAUGUIN
Some other time. Everything is yellow here, or gold.
The yellow sunrise in the cornfields.
A prostitute’s pee, and that gangrenous
yellow house.
[ Crosses the street, shouts.]
Vincent! He’s here! The wild bull
from the pampas of Peru! Gauguin is here!
LOTTE
[ Shouts.]
I’ll see you around. Bonjour, Monsieur Gauguin.
[ Turns, goes up the street, steps carefully over something on the sidewalk, exits.]
VINCENT’S voice
Come in! Come in! The door is open, Paul.
I’m making breakfast. The sausages are burning.
[GAUGUIN heads towards the yellow house with his luggage.]
GAUGUIN
I don’t want breakfast. I want to sleep.
For six fucking months if possible.
[ He enters the yellow house.]
[ Fade.]
Scene Two
[VINCENT and GAUGUIN in the kitchen, a cash box between them.]
GAUGUIN
Now, in this little box we put our capital, agreed?
VINCENT
Agreed. And I prefer that you keep it.
GAUGUIN
Okay. This is the arrangement with your brother:
Theo supports me at the rate of
two thousand francs a month, for which I send him
every canvas that I like and finish,
which he then sells to Goupil’s at a cut.
VINCENT
The same with me.
GAUGUIN
                              Hold on. In exchange,
he’s billed for all of my expenses.
VINCENT
                      Our expenses.
GAUGUIN
Food, drinks, paints, women.
VINCENT
                      Agreed. We’re doing that.
GAUGUIN
What we are not doing is not accepting this:
that I shall be living in Arles forever,
that this agreement, as pleasant and as hospitable as it is, is not for good.
VINCENT
                              We’ll see.
GAUGUIN
No, we will not see. You understand?
VINCENT
Yes! Now, you asked me about this painting.
I’ll tell you how it happened.
I first beheld them, the family of Millet,
with their lantern-red, crooked Dutch faces,
ravaging their potatoes. One of them was Lotte,
delicate devourer of their only crop. I sat
away from them so I could see them better,
particularly Lotte. Her long, rabid fingers
moved as delicately as a queen’s. The others
looked as if they had been hewn
from the mud of the Borinage.
They chewed with the voracity of machines.
I watched without the compassion of the evangelist
I was supposed to be; they were subjects,
and mentally I was drawing them.
My heart was riven by Lotte’s bulging eyes,
by her false-flashing smile to me.
Reverend van Gogh like the lantern’s wick,
raging with blasphemous lust.
GAUGUIN
[ An explosive laugh.]
So they couldn’t see what the minister
was hiding in his holy trousers?
Erect with the beatitude “Blessed are the poor”?
There’s an eroticism to poverty.
How often have I admonished little Gauguin,
the scoundrel in my trousers, to behave!
But, Vincent, you preached and you believed, though?
LOTTE
[ In his hallucination.]
God is consistent, Pastor. Every night
He gives us the same shit to eat.
VINCENT
Please sit down. I beg you. Sit down, girl.
So that, at least, your turmoil can settle.
Look through the windows at these thin poplars,
so skeletal in the snow. Turn, look.
GAUGUIN
Did they listen? Did you believe your sermon?
VINCENT
And look at the stars guttering like candles
above them. The poplars do not break;
the constellations keep their design
through the most blinding blizzard.
We are insignificant, a mouse in a coal mine,
scratching. Poplar to candle, mouse.
[ To GAUGUIN.]
I didn’t understand what I was saying,
but I was passionate and Lotte was radiant.
GAUGUIN
That’s what belief is—doubt made consistent.
VINCENT
It was a word from Dante. “The Borinage.”
Like the Malebolge. And, Paul, it was Inferno.
An absolute Inferno. Menu, boiled potatoes.
Lotte loosened her bodice strings a little
to let me feast on a white flash of flesh.
GAUGUIN
[ Rises.]
A prelude to the whorehouse we’re going to.
O white thighs in their black mesh! Vive Lautrec!
[ Offenbach music. Cancan as the lights fade and change.]
Scene Three
[ Outside. A small hill overlooking the town of Arles. A starry night with a full moon over shining roofs. VINCENT and GAUGUIN descend the narrow road. GAUGUIN stops after a few steps.]
GAUGUIN
Stop. Monsieur van Gogh. Will you join me
in a tribute to your beloved little city Arles?
Pause and deliver!
[GAUGUIN turns his back, unbuttons, begins to pee.]
VINCENT
I shall join you in our golden tribute,
Monsieur Gauguin.
[ He also turns, unbuttons.]
GAUGUIN
[ Sings.]
Ach, du lieber Augustin, alles ist weg, weg.
VINCENT
That is German. Not French. Who the fuck
was Augustin?
[ Translating.]
All is lost, lost, Augustin, but take it easy.
All is not, not lost.
GAUGUIN
The only thing that is lost
is a cascade of golden urine
from the second-greatest pisser in the world.
VINCENT
Who’s first? Augustin?
GAUGUIN
Moi! Gauguin.
Your ancestors, the Romans, would have been
furious with you. Was it for this they built
their aqueduct? For your pathetic little pump?
VINCENT
I have ambition stronger than any aqueduct.
Look up, Monsieur Gauguin. I see those meteors
you humble pissers call the stars, like wheels
of perpetual motion, the primum mobile,
cartwheeling across the crouching roofs of Arles.
Someone has caught the candles of the sky
[ Hugs GAUGUIN around the neck.]
to guide us home, my vagabond Breton.
GAUGUIN
Not home, not yet. It’s too early, Reverend.
[ Silence.]
VINCENT
I cannot tell you how happy I am
to have you here with me, how blest I am;
for the smell of the pines in the night, the rustle
in the comforting cypress, the tormented olives
who understand our suffering like our Lord’s.
GAUGUIN
Your Lord, not mine.
VINCENT
                                 He’s ours, Gauguin.
He takes care of us. His corn-haired angels
stand guard over our yellow house. You’ll see.
I have a lot of active passersby
to keep the canvases busy, but even the trees
are hectic in the wind; there’s a lot of wind.
It sends the canvases flying off the easel.
Between the wind and the rooks, I tell you,
I look like a scarecrow, but that’s not enough.
GAUGUIN
So shoot the fucking birds then! Patow! Pow!
[ Mimes firing a shotgun.]
VINCENT
Great! We’ll cook the rooks, cook the rooks! Okay.
[ They enter the café.]
GAUGUIN
God, you’re a talker, Vincent!
VINCENT
The government, we should talk about that.
See it! The best artists we respect, unite
in an aesthetic republic, one with light.
GAUGUIN
And women.
VINCENT
                   And women, too, of course.
Away from the pernicious, vampiric galleries,
the shouts of prices in the market,
under the benign rule of our government.
GAUGUIN
In a new landscape, one without churches,
brick barracks, near a blue ocean
and white reefs, I know just where.
For a new school of painting, an academy
built in the open, and the world’s centre
will shift from Paris to the tropics.
From Montmartre to Martinique.
VINCENT
Cousin, we share one dream.
We’ll sign it with red paint for blood.
GAUGUIN
To a new art. A different life! Salud!
VINCENT
I’ll drink it in turpentine, the toast. Santé!
[ Drinks from the turpentine container.]
Scene Four
[ Interior. The café. LOTTE singing to an accordion. VINCENT and GAUGUIN enter.]
LOTTE
Sad as the smoke of trains
from the small country station,
as the bright streets of Paris after it rains,
as my heart’s resignation
that you have left me for good,
like the smoke that leaves from a hazy wood
in autumn. I should be sadder, I should
put you out of my mind, but we grow resigned
to arrivals and departures,
so, yes, I am resigned.
[VINCENT and GAUGUIN applaud.]
Scene Five
[ In the yellow house. LOTTE is looking at a Martinique painting.]
GAUGUIN
This is Martinique. I lived there once.
LOTTE
Yes? What is Martinique like?
GAUGUIN
                                       What is Martinique like?
Have you read Baudelaire? Charles Baudelaire? Non.
Well, it is like the happier verses of Baudelaire come true.
I can close my eyes now and see its blue horizons
humming with promise, all day
the volcano of Saint-Pierre smoking its pipe
like a contented peasant. I can see
the white thread of its waterfalls. I hear
the raucous racket of its parrots heading home
in the green dusk, awkraaaaak.
LOTTE
[ Laughs.]
And the women there went naked?
GAUGUIN
Oh, no, they covered themselves, their breasts,
like pious Catholics. Like you.
LOTTE
Unless I pose for you, perhaps.
GAUGUIN
                                             Perhaps.
Except I cannot promise to pay you.
LOTTE
I can wait to be paid. Shall I start?
[ Begins to undress.]
GAUGUIN
On credit? Let’s wait a little while. We’ll see.
[ Pause.]
Yes, all right. Go ahead, show me.
LOTTE
                                                    For free?
GAUGUIN
On credit.
[ Laughs.]
              Forget it. Another time perhaps.
[LOTTE turns, bares her breasts.]
LOTTE
What do you think?
GAUGUIN
                        Seriously. Another time.
They are beautiful.
LOTTE
[ Covering up.]
                        Until age breaks them down.
All beauties become hags in the end.
GAUGUIN
                                                Here—until that day.
[GAUGUIN gives her money from his pockets.]
LOTTE
You are most gracious, sir. A chevalier.
GAUGUIN
I am part of the Peruvian nobility
fallen on reprehensible times.
I recognize i...