A Free Man of Color (4 page)

DOÑA SMERALDA
I go to Congo Square where all the slaves meet—“
Ba-doum”

DOÑA POLISSENA
(
trying to feel the rhythm
)
“Bad-oum Badoum!”
Your husband doesn’t mind?

DOÑA SMERALDA
I’ll give you a list of the things my husband doesn’t know!

DOÑA POLISSENA
(
trying to find the rhythm
)
Paradise!

DOÑA SMERALDA
Ba-doum!

DOÑA POLISSENA
My body has never moved this way—
Badoum

DOÑA SMERALDA
It will in New Orleans.

Gunshots. Creux returns, followed by
ORPHEE
.

ORPHEE
(
to Doña Smeralda
)
Your honored guest shot at us!

DOÑA SMERALDA
You mustn’t shoot our slaves!

CREUX
I won’t miss the next time. The odor of pomade on his black half-kinked hair sickens me.

Orphee barks.

CREUX
Don’t be frightened, dear.

Orphee exits, laughing.

CREUX
Sante Domingue?
A perfect civilization distorted by those leprous words of
liberte, fraternite, egalite,
which have no right in the mouth of the Negro.

DOÑA POLISSENA
It is the voice of history. This is a time of revolution.

CREUX
I curse all revolution. The Americans, the French gave too many people the idea of freedom.

DOÑA POLISSENA
What else could they have done?

CREUX
Had their revolutions, but done them in secret!

Jacques enters the garden. Murmur follows.

JACQUES CORNET
Stay at hand.

DR. T
As Jacques Cornet enters, let me take you to Paris.

Napoleon sits in a bathtub. Tallyrand paces studying a map of the world. Josephine does tarot cards.

NAPOLEON
I have lost the Rhine.

TALLYRAND
That is a sign from our creator to change directions. Oh Most Blessed Angel of Military Brilliance, move from Europe to the New World! The source of infinite wealth!

Tallyrand reveals a map of the vast Louisiana Territory.

NAPOLEON
Spain would never give us all this.

TALLYRAND
(
waving a letter
)
It will now.
Carlos Cuarto—
an utter jackass—wants something from us.

CARLOS CUARTO,
King of Spain, and his daughter, the
INFANTA,
appear. She has one eye and eats greedily.

CARLOS CUARTO
Illustrious First Consul, I who am as great a power as has ever existed in the history of the world except for you, come bowing to the might of France. My daughter has found a husband and would like to be a queen. We don’t need a large kingdom. She only has one eye.

INFANTA
I’d like my husband to be King of—Tuscany!

TALLYRAND
Tuscany is now called Etruria.

INFANTA
I want Etruria.

NAPOLEON
In exchange for what?

CARLOS CUARTO
Spain has nothing! Our colonies bleed us dry.

TALLYRAND
They are parasites, these colonies. Let us take a colony off your hands. We will give your son-in-law the throne of Etruria in exchange for—where? Here? Here? Here? No—Louisiana.

Tallyrand reveals the map of the Louisiana Territory.

JOSEPHINE
(
whispering
)
Not Louisiana! The Indies! I want my muslins washed!

TALLYRAND
(
whispering
)
Believe me, you want Louisiana.

JOSEPHINE
(
whispering
)
Whom do you listen to? Talleyrand or me?

NAPOLEON
(
whispering
)
I’m trying to take a bath.

JOSEPHINE
(
whispering
)
Your itch. Always your itch!

NAPOLEON
Get Louisiana! Let me take my fucking bath.

Napoleon exits.

JOSEPHINE
Don’t take Louisiana! Are you insane! Money! Get money!

Josephine follows.

CARLOS CURATO
But France gave Louisiana to us thirty-seven years ago.

TALLYRAND
We apologize for foisting it off on you. A colony is like having a spoiled
Infanta
for a child.

INFANTA
Don’t let him talk like that to me!

TALLYRAND
Present
Infantas
excluded.

CARLOS CUARTO
America
is
a nuisance. I don’t even believe these tales of volcanoes that spew gold.

TALLYRAND
You’ve dissuaded me. We don’t want Louisiana. Goodbye.

INFANTA
No! I’ll kill myself and then I’ll die and you’ll be sorry.

She gorges her mouth with grapes and chokes. Carlos Cuarto performs Heimlich.

CARLOS CUARTO
(
to Talleyrand
)
Carissima!
You want Louisiana? Take Louisiana. New Orleans is no Havana.

TALLYRAND
Oh, all right. Sign this treaty.

Talleyrand produces a paper. Carlos Cuarto signs. The Infanta smiles.

TALLEYRAND
(
bowing to the Infanta
)
The Queen of Etruria. And let us keep this treaty a secret until Napoleon is safely across the Atlantic and in view of New Orleans.

They go.

DR. T
(
to us
)
You now know more than the majority of people in this play.

Jacques Cornet takes out a key and enters Doña Smeralda’s bedroom. He lies on her bed. Jacques Cornet whistles an elaborate whistle. Think of a nightingale in heat. Doña Smeralda stands.

CREUX
Had their revolutions, but done them in secret!

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
beaming with joy
)
I don’t feel well!

MORALES
Bayou fever?

DOÑA SMERALDA
A definite fever.

She goes into the bedroom and embraces Jacques Cornet.

PINCEPOUSSE
What bird makes that call?

MORALES
It’s odd. I hear it all the time.

Jacques Cornet begins undressing her, then himself.

JACQUES CORNET
Have they found the cipher breaker?

DOÑA SMERALDA
Haven’t you come to see me?

JACQUES CORNET
Only you
.

PINCEPOUSSE
Look in there!

MORALES
The door is locked! Dearest, may I come in?

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
calling
)
No, adored one! I don’t want you catching what I have.

DOÑA POLISSENA
(
knocking
)
Is it yellow fever?

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
calling
)
It’s a fever of a different color.

Jacques Cornet embraces her.

MORALES
(
calls
)
Dearest Orgasm of My Eyeballs, could my Imperial code breaker be in our temple of joy?

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
calling
)
What does it look like?

MORALES
A long black tube with a red ribbon on it.

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
calling
)
It sounds familiar. I’ll keep my eyes open.

MORALES
Will you be well enough to go to Senor Coquet’s ball?

DOÑA POLISSENA
(
calling
)
Say you will go! I yearn to dance.
Ba-doum!

CREUX
No African dancing!

MORALES
Shall I call
Docteur
Toubib?

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
calling
)
I know exactly what he’ll say. Stay in bed till tomorrow.

JACQUES CORNET
(
to us
)
A seduction doesn’t count unless it’s taking place under the husband’s nose.

MORALES
The poor thing relies on me for everything.

JACQUES CORNET
Where is the cipher breaker?

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
whisper
)
What is this cipher? I am a code who needs to be broken.

JACQUES CORNET
Of course. (
He turns down the lamp.
) (
to us
) Let me solve this puzzle first. (
He dims the bedroom light.
)

DOÑA SMERALDA
(
orgasmic
)
Yes! Yes! Yes!

MORALES
Hear it in her voice? She’s getting better.

Enter Margery Jolicoeur.

MARGERY
Where are the best fields to walk in New Orleans?

CREUX
(
lunging at her
)
Get thee behind me, Negress!

MORALES
She is our house guest!

CREUX
In which house?

MORALES
In this house.

CREUX
(
to Margery
)
I know what you’re up to.

MARGERY
I just want to take a walk.

PINCEPOUSSE
Margery! Get upstairs!

MARGERY
I just want to see New Orleans!

Jacques Cornet, curious, peers out through the door.

JACQUES CORNET
Ahh, the lovely woman Pincepousse calls a man.

Doña Smerelda pulls him back to bed.

CREUX
You evil black voodoo witch!

PINCEPOUSSE
(
restraining Margery
)
She is my wife—

MARGERY
(
as they go
)
I could have had more fun in Natchez and Natchez is no fun.

Pincepousse drags her off.

CREUX
Wife! We’re leaving.

POLISSENA
To go where? We’re homeless.

MORALES
Leda!!

LEDA
appears. Creux shrieks.

CREUX
Another wife?

MORALES
Our slave.

PINCEPOUSSE
Leda, go to the guest room and costume her as a boy. An ugly boy.

MORALES
Leda’s perfectly happy here, aren’t you? For without the blessing of slavery, she wouldn’t be a Christian.

LEDA
(
to us
)
If I had an axe, I’d chop their heads off.

Leda smiles and goes.

CREUX
We will go to the ball as corpses. I shall costume myself as a ghost of what the white man used to be.

DOÑA POLISSENA
Your wife looked a sweet thing.

JACQUES CORNET
(
sizing up Doña Polissena
)
As you look a bit of succulence. Who is she?

Doña Smerelda pulls him back to the bed.

CREUX
Sweet? She’d slash our throats and then lick the knife. I am shocked by the laxity of morals I see in New Orleans.

MORALES
We thought if we gave the Negro some freedoms, he would be less likely to revolt.

CREUX
You’ve gone too far. Spain must come to her senses and restore
le Code Noir
.

Jacques Cornet interrupts the scene and comes down to us, wrapping his cloak around him.

JACQUES CORNET
(
to us
)
Let me tell you about this thing called
le Code Noir,
promulgated by the so-called Sun King in the year 1685. A Royal Edict Touching on the State and Discipline of the Black Slaves of Louisiana, Given at Versailles in the Month of March. We have judged that it was a matter
of our authority and our justice, for the conservation of this colony, to establish there a law concerning the discipline of slaves. No slaves may marry without permission of their master. No slave can sell anything without written permission of his master. Slaves of different masters who congregate in a group shall be whipped and then branded with a
fleur de lys
. No slaves may bear arms or large sticks. Children born of slaves belong to the master of the mother. A slave who strikes his master shall be put to death. Slaves are the master’s personal property. Oh, I’ve memorized every clause, every syllable, every letter of the notorious black code, which gave no rights to blacks, declaring them mere pieces of property.

This stellar document shone forth from the sacred light of Louis XIV—the Sun King. What kind of sun shines this hatred? The sun that God created was made to nourish and insure life’s growth, a light as gold as a lion’s mane. But
le Code Noir
? The sun of this Sun King only shrivels and dries, is a sun that never rises, a sun with no dawn—a blazing sun that puts ice around your eyelids, a burning sun that gives no heat but is up there an arctic block of ice at the heart of the universe—that sun to me is dark and silent as the moon. The sun of this Sun King is a pus-filled canker of hate, a rotting cancer, a phaeton’s chariot spewing out rot at its highest point of ascent.

But that’s all in the past. No, we now are on fire in this Age of Enlightenment—the way a magnifying glass catches the sun’s blaze and sets paper into flame—so the free and full splendoured sun shines in our day of universal
liberte, egalite, fraternite.
The French Revolution and the American Revolution brought the nurturing heat back to the sun, revived the sun. We stand in its heat.
Le Code Noir est mort
. We can never return to those principles that were so easily strewn in the gutter years of
Louis Quatorze
—even to say it
quatorze quatorze
—like the croak of a cancerous frog—no, the head of Louis XVI, his heir, rolled into the straw basket
under the guillotine along with the foolish scepter that issued such proclamations.
Le Code Noir
is dead. This is the Age of Enlightenment. (
Jacques Cornet bows and returns to bed with Doña Smeralda
.) Ouch! (
He holds up a black tube with a red ribbon on it
) Is this the cipher machine? This is it! Give it to him!