BINTOU Scene 2: JAZZ
One of the many amazing things about translation is that it takes you to places you would never dare go to yourself.
And never be able to go to either.
The writing here is so extreme, so brutal and yet also so beautiful.
I don’t know why I find beauty in it, but I do.
And so admire the way the unflinching courage of Kwahulé’s eye: looking at lives from which we would normally turn away.
The characters in this scene are so so far away from my experience I have no idea if I’ve managed to find the words to give voice to them.
Probably not. But I’m proud of trying.
BINTOU by Koffi Kwahulé . translated by Jo Clifford.
translation © John Clifford 2000
All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before rehearsals to Alan Brodie Representation Ltd, Barbon Buildings, 14 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4QH. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained.
Jazz
An uncertain location. This scene is at the same time like a journalistic interview and
a police interrogation. Only the face of the speaker is lit. The characters
seem to be replying to someone whose presence and whose voice has been cut in
editing. It is three monologues spoken at different times.
Manu (aims at random with an imaginary revolver): Bang!
Blackout: Okoumé. Sixteen years old. But Bintou wanted to call me Blackout. So that’s my name now. Blackout.
Manu: Before, we had no name. But it was Bintou’s aunt who kept saying “the Lycaons... the Lycaons...” And so we said, “OK, we’re Lycaons”. And all at once everyone started calling us Lycaons. Samiagamal didn’t like that at first. But she likes it now.
Kelkhal: Samiagamal, that’s Bintou’s name. It was my dad who when he saw her dance...My dad’s a musician and my mum’s a belly dancer, or used to be...I’m seventeen, used to be called Kader, now I’m Kelkhal: it was Bintou who wanted to call me that. Before the Lycaons, and this is the truth, I was what parents and teachers call a good example with every prospect of a good future. I got a poetry prize and a class prize and all that... But I can’t ever talk about that to Samiagamal and the others. I couldn’t bear it if Blackout knew I write poems. He’d start calling me a queer.
Manu: Samiagamal? She’s like the sun. The closer you get to her, the less you can see her... She’s the best. There’s no touching her. I think I’ve got too close.
Blackout: Bintou? At first, see, she came round to see my kid sister. They’re friends. First time I saw her I could tell she was a big mouth, always wanted to sound off about something. Fine, as long as she kept clear of me. Anyway I’m going out one day and I hear someone shouting after me. Bintou. So I stop and she says to me, just like that in the street: Show me your gun. Fuck, how does she know I got one. Cause I have, a real nine millimetre fucker (He shows the weapon) Now with this thing, see, you got power, noone can touch you. You don’t have to take shit from anyone. You aim it, bang, and that’s it. Doesn’t matter who it is . they can be Rambo or fucking Tarzan for all the difference it makes. Bang. And they’re wiped out. I love it. Just thinking about it really turns me on. It’s not made me come yet, but it will.... I found it in a car I stole. Everyone’s got their thing: with me its hot wiring. As soon as I see a car I like, I’ve just got to have it; then I drive I just drive without caring where I’m going. I drive I drive I drive just to get the fuck out of this arsehole place. Sometimes I drive until I get to the sea. It makes me feel better, the sea. I don’t know why. Just makes me feel better.
Kelkhal: I saw her first at a bar. A bar called Nenesse.
Manu Nenesse, that’s the guy who runs the bar, he promised her that if she could get her belly button to go round in a perfect circle, like real dancers do, he’d give her a job in his club.
Kelkhal: She was so beautiful I just knew she was forbidden fruit for me, and that I’d never be part of her gang but I followed her anyway, had to, even if it was ridiculous, and worse, worse than ridiculous going after a little girl of thirteen. At school they were legends, the Lycaons, legends. People kept going on about her: this girl of nine, or fifteen, or eighteen, or twenty, nobody really knew how old, but what everyone did know was that there was this girl, like sitting on a throne, the undisputed leader of a gang of a dozen guys and that they had managed to drive the pigs out of the district. And people also said that they used to hang out at Nenesse, this bar near the canal..And they would close all the windows and lock all the doors and then, to that Eastern music some people say the devil plays, Samiagamal would slowly take off all her clothes and offer hernaked body to the Lycaons and they would make love to her and she would make love to them till she was full to the brim with cum and they were lying spaced out and empty on the floor by her feet. But as it turned out there weren’t a dozen Lycaons; there were only three.
Manu (Still firing at hazard): Bang Bang! Bang!
Blackout: I don’t have my gun, I said, it’s not on me, and anyway I don’t like being followed by girls. And she just starts on at me, talking and talking and talking blablablablablabla...blablablabla...talking like she was an adult. And in the end she said, and I just couldn't stop laughing, she said: I’m not following you, she said, Bintou doesn’t follow. She said, you’re the one, she said, You're the one following Bintou. I just started laughing like crazy, out there on the street, I was laughing so hard I was pissing myself. And people were staring at me like I was crazy. I mean she was telling me, me, Okoumé, that I was following her. And I’m laughing so hard I could explode but Bintou, Bintou takes no notice. She just points to a car and says: They tell me your thing is stealing cars. OK, then, just to prove it's you who follow me: see that car? You're going to steal it. That'll earn you the right to follow Bintou. And then, I don't know what happened, I was like a zombie: as if all my life I'd dreamed of stealing a car so I could give it to my little sister's girl friend. Give it like an offering.
Kelkhal: Samiagamal used to make her belly turn, dancing to the sound of this tinny music from the juke-box. Bintou didn't dance badly Bintou didn't dance well. Bintou danced like a savage. Bintou never gave a damn about rhythm or cadence or anything like that. She just danced like a wild thing. Danced like a poem. Nenesse couldn't take his eyes off her, he was always checking her out, and he said, and I think he said it just to grab her attention, he said if she learnt to dance like a real belly dancer he'd give her a job dancing in his bar. And I took my chance then and I said that my mother was a dancer and could help her. She jumped up and down and kissed me like a little girl, a little girl so happy and excited she couldn't stop herself.
Manu: Bintou always kisses you when she's happy
Kelkhal: Then I really screwed up my courage and I said I wanted to join the Lycaons. Suddenly she became very calm. She looked me in the eye for a really long time and said: see you this evening then. On the towpath. And that night, as soon as I got there, Blackout and Manu attacked me. Really savagely. After a minute or two, Bintou ordered them to stop. She came up to me and said: "From now on, you're Kelkhal. Follow us". And that's how I became a Lycaon.
Blackout: Once, on the motorway, she said: cross over the other side.And I said: but then we'll be driving the wrong way. Up a motorway. And she said then drive the wrong way. So we did, all the car horns blaring at us like mad. But they all got out of our way. I said they'll end up hitting us, and she said, no, they wouldn't dare do that, they're all too fond of their shitty lives.. Faster! she said, and I said: I can't go any faster. So she puts her leg in between mine, kicks my foot off the pedal and pushes her foot down on the accelerator. And so because she's got her legs apart and her skirt is really really short, as usual, I can see she's got nothing underneath... I mean that wasn't the first time I'd seen, that wasn't it, it was just, there, in the middle of the motorway, going up the wrong way, with all the car horns going crazy, I thought I was dreaming. We're going to get killed Bintou, I said, and do you know what she said? She said can you think of a sexier way to die? And she pushed the pedal to the bottom of the floor.
Manu: Bang!.. See, Blackout's already done it. The top. The best thing. And there's nothing you can say against it. It's no use talking about it either. You just have to do it.
Kelkhal : The first time my dad saw Bintou dancing, he said she reminded him of Samia Gamal. And Samia Gamal, he said, was the greatest dancer of this century. Even when his wife was at her best, he never dared compare her to Samia Gamal.. Samia Gamal! I told the others. then Manu and us we started calling her Samiagamal, Samiagamal all in one word, Samiagamal. But Blackout never calls her Samiagamal. For him, she's Bintou. Nothing else.
Manu: That's crap. What a load of crap. Me, jealous? That's just not where it's at. I can't be jealous of a brother, and Blackout is a brother. Besides, it's been done. Now you have to do something else. otherwise, people'd just say: “OK, not bad, but Blackout's already done it." So you have to find something else; and something better. I mean, something even bigger. Bigger even than what Samiagamal did when the school head master came to slag off Kelkhal for failing his course and his parents punished him. They locked him up in his room for a week. Never let him out. So when Kelkhal told us what had happened, Samiagamal said: tonight lift your eyes up to the sky, because the stars are going to come close to the earth. And she left.
Kelkhal: She wanted to be alone. And so she went, she was beautiful but scary like a full moon.. like she was in that terrible time when she decided was going to forget about being Samiagamal, just fuck off with all that and just be Bintou.
Manu: So that night the three of us were in Nenesse when we heard the fire engines. We went out and we looked at the sky: it was full of sparks coming from the direction of the school. Samiagamal had set the place on fire. Vlan!
Blackout: No-one ever knew who'd burned down the school, but we, of course, we all felt certain it was Bintou. She really hated the place because of what happened to Kelkhal. It's not that she ever boasted about it, it's just we knew, that's all.
Kelkhal: I don't think Samiagamal does anything out of hatred. She does what she does out of love. It was her who did the school, even if she never said she did, and no-one ever really tried to find out. Everyone knew, that's all: whenever she does something good, something we call good, Samiagamal never shows the slightest sign of being pleased with herself. But it's what we do that makes her happy and makes her jump up and down like a little girl.
Manu: So all night the firemen were working their guts out to put out the fire, but the whole school burnt to a cinder. Right down to the last blackboard. But even that was nothing to what Blackout did. So now we've got to find the even bigger thing, the mega monster thing, the thing that's really over the top.
Kelkhal: It just happened really suddenly. From one day to the next, she just stopped coming to the house. My mum wouldn’t say why and my dad never said a word. So I decided to bring it up with her. I waited for the two of us to be alone, without the others around, and I asked her. We were the other side of the canal, under the trees. She was lying on her back, she had her eyes shut and her lips half-closed. So I was sitting beside her, trying to figure out how to ask her. She had her legs folded back behind her and because her skirt was so short I couldn't stop myself seeing she was wearing nothing underneath, and I felt bad, somehow, very strange... Just to see her like that, I admit it made me feel uneasy.. I couldn't stop looking at her skirt, so I turned away to stare at her belly button, breathing in and out like an oasis in the desert of her belly. Samiagamal still had her eyes closed and her lips half open. Without even thinking about it, I just plunged my tongue into her belly button. And a strange vision streaked across my mind....
It’s of a woman dancing. I can’t drag my eyes off her belly button. I detach myself from the crowd. people try to stop me but the dancers makes a sign so they let me come forward. So I'm with her now, in her circle, and really obviously in the way she moves her hips she's offering me her belly button and I go down on my knees and my tongue goes in once, twice, ten times, a thousand times in her navel, and then when my tongue is licking round the rim the music stops. Oh Kader, the dancer sighs, and her voice is so incredibly sexy. And I look up, and it's my mother...
Then I took my tongue out of her belly button, and her eyes were still shut and her mouth was still half open, and I was feverish, I was sweating, sweating like a pig, and I had to do something, say something or run away, and in the end, really slowly and painfully my tongue managed to get itself round the words: Why don't you come to our house any more? And her lips parted, her lips parted in a smile, but her eyes stayed shut. Without a moment’s hesitation, as if she knew I'd come there to ask her this, she replied: "Men are only men, Kelkhal, and I didn't want your mother to be unhappy".
Manu: Blackout's done someone in. Bang. End of story. The best.
Blackout: So me and Bintou had stolen this car and we'd gone somewhere, I can't remember where. Somewhere by the sea. So we were eating in a Macdonalds and this guy just keeps on eyeing Bintou. So I told the guy to take his fucking eyes somewhere else. And straight away, see, he gets really angry, and he says he'll look at whoever he wants to , and that's his business and not mine, and all that kind of shit. But I didn't let that stop me, I just said, you stop looking at my girl or I'll kick your arse, and all of a sudden he gets really aggressive with me and starts calling me a queer and a pervert and all of a sudden Bang! I don't like people calling me that, Bang! And his face is just pissing blood and he falls to the ground and keeps on bleeding...Noone not even Bintou has ever called me a queer. Nobody will ever call me queer, not even Rambo. Bang! Then people start screaming, he's killed him, he's killed him, where are the police call the police... the guy's bleeding to death, call the police! All the kind of crap people say... and there's Bintou grabbing me and pushing me out of the Macdonalds and over to the car and she takes the gun off me and yells: Start the car! And me, I'm amazed at how calm I feel. I always thought if ever I did anything like that I'd be shit scared but no, not a bit of it, I'm driving along calm as anything, really fast really fast but just cool. And there's Bintou kissing me over and over again. She just kisses you when she's happy, kisses you on the neck and you remember she's just a little girl. She was all excited and happy and proud, really proud of me. She was stroking the gun, which was still warm, and she was saying: Now you've become a man. Okoume, a real man. From now on you're Blackout. And that's how I got my name.
Manu :That is just the best that is. The best thing ever. To kill that guy for Samiagamal. And that is just mortal, that is, mortal, you can’t compete with that. But I’m looking, I’m still looking for something to top that to give Samiagamal. When I wanted to go out with Bintou she said: choose. me or crack. So I chose her. No problem. But there was no way I was going to stop dealing. Bintou agrees. “Just so long as you don’t blow your own head off”, she says, “enchantment”. That’s what she calls me: “enchantment”. It’s her thing, that is. Her groove. So this is what she says: “just so long you don’t blow your head off, my enchantment, you can deal as much as you like.”. So when I stopped crack, I thought I had pulled off a mega trick for her... until I learn the bang! of Blackout. And that, that has stunned me. Now its a matter of finding, of finding something that will be bigger than life itself. Whatever that is. So what I’m going to kill a policeman.. First find a gun, like Blackout, then Bang! That’s it, begin by killing a pig, then we’ll see. The most mega of all would be an AK47. Totally. That calls for a drink. By the way, my name’s Emmanuel; its Samiagamal who wants to call me Manu. She thinks that’s cute. And that’s fine by me, Manu, like her calling me “enchantment”. In any case, everything that she thinks of is fine by me, because it all grooves between us. And when it grooves, it grooves, you can’t stop it. Its just a matter of finding the big thing... and then.. I’m Manu, I’m eighteen, and I’m Samiagamal’s boyfriend. (To Bintou, who comes in) Bang!
Bintou: Stop being stupid, Manu.
Blackout: OK Bintou, where you been
Bintou: Its my family being a drag. again.
Kelkhal: Your uncle again? I’d like to-
Bintou :I’d like nothing. It’s a family affair. And P’tit Jean?
Manu (facing the audience): Bang! bang!
(Somewhere in the theatre we find P’tit Jean. His movements are all disjointed like a
junkie)
P’tit Jean: Hi Bintou
Bintou: We hear you.
P’tit Jean: Well
Kelkhal: Why do you want to join the Lycaons?
P’tit Jean: Well.. because its a family. (silence) Its a kind of family. (Silence) You stick together..... No but its right isn’t it, you stick together...And anyway there’s people after me.. after me..
Kelkhal :Is it true what they say? That you call us the mad wise men.
P’tit Jean: What
Manu: You killed anyone yet?
P’tit Jean: What?
Manu: Bang! Bang!
P’tit Jean: Oh no..! No..no....
Kelkhal: Think you could?
P’tit Jean: Don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. Depends
Blackout: On what?
P’tit Jean: On what? I don’t know... don’t know..
Bintou: Come and look. (P’tit Jean joins them on the stage. Bintou makes a sign to Blackout who gives his revolver to P’tit Jean. Pointing at the audience) See those people there? Good. All you got to do is shoot one.
P’tit Jean: For real?
Kelkhal: Yeah. Anyone. just anyone.
P’tit Jean :But
Manu :Bang! Bang! For fun.
P’tit Jean: But I don’t know them
Blackout: Do you really need to know someone before you can kill them?
Bintou :Aren’t there people on the street who piss you off?
P’tit Jean: Well yes but
Kelkhal: See the face of that guy down there? OK then. Aim. Fire. Come on! Blow his head off. Because he’s bald.
Manu: Kelkhal doesn’t like bald guys
P’tit Jean: No but listen, you’re joking, right?
Bintou: Do we look like we’re joking?
Blackout: Go on shift your arse. That’s all you got to do, see.
P’tit Jean: I can’t just kill someone for no reason. I mean, I don’t hate them enough.
Bintou: And you want to become a Lycaon? Listen to me, P’tit Jean: you got to get this. You find you’re a Lycaon when you wake up one morning with this branded all over your face: the shame of being human and the wish to destroy everything, to blow the head off the whole fucking world! For no reason at all!... You don’t become a Lycaon. You wake up a Lycaon.
Manu: And now you know us Lycaons are capable of killing someone for being bald, what do you think we’re going to do to you?
Kelkhal: Because you can go and kiss and tell, can’t you P’tit Jean?
P’tit Jean: No...Listen mates don’t be stupid
Bintou: Give me that and move over
(She aims at P’tit Jean)
P’tit Jean: No don’t do that Bintou.... tell her guys... Don’t do anything stupid.
(Little by little, faced with Bintou’s cold determination and the other’s impassivity,
P’tit Jean understands the seriousness of his situation, and becomes paralysed,
unable to say the slightest word. Bintou presses the barrel of the gun against his
forehead.)
Bintou: Watch, P’tit Jean, watch how to kill a man. In a few seconds, you won’t even remember you had a head, and you will have entered the most secret place in the world.
(She squeezes the trigger but the click is not followed by an explosion.
P’tit Jean, relieved, falls at Bintou’s feet. He covers them with kisses.)
P’tit Jean: Oh thank you...thank you Bintou
Manu: That’s enough. Don’t get excited.
P’tit Jean: What?
Manu: Did you think we didn’t see your fingers climbing up Samiagamal’s thighs? Like spiders.
P’tit Jean: But...
Blackout: It hasn’t got the balls to kill the first piece of flesh it comes across but it wants to drool over a girl’s thighs...
P’tit Jean: It’s not true. Bintou, tell them it’s not true. All I did was kiss her feet.
Kelkhal: And he’s telling us we’re liars.
(Kelkhal slaps him violently at the same time as a vicious stunning rap explodes. P’tit
Jean falls over. The three throw themselves on him, kicking and punching.)
Bintou: Defend yourself, P’tit Jean. If you’re afraid, they’ll eat you alive. Show them what you have in your guts. Hit them, P’tit Jean, hit them.
P’tit Jean: Stop! Bintou tell them to stop! They’re going to kill me. Tell them to stop....they’re going to kill me...stop...stop...!
Bintou If you’re afraid, they’ll eat you alive. P’tit Jean! Prove that you’ve woken up a Lycaon! (But P’tit Jean does not respond to any of the blows he receives) OK. That’s enough.
End of the beating. P’tit Jean, in a bad way, goes on his knees to Bintou.
P’tit Jean: Thank you Samiagamal... I can call you Samiagamal?
Bintou: Get up. (He gets up) You’ve got a problem, P’tit Jean.
Chorus: You’ve got a problem, P’tit Jean.
Bintou Body and soul you’ve given yourself
Given yourself to drugs.
Deal outyour drugs to them, P’tit Jean,
You’ve handed yourself over
Body and soul to drugs
Don’t take drugs, P’tit Jean,
Sell drugs. Live off their stupidity and their cowardice
But don’t touch them yourself
Chorus: You’ve got a problem, P’tit Jean.
How can you
blow the world’s brains out
if you blow your own out first?
Deal P’tit Jean deal
Deal deal
Bintou: Deal to their stressed out women
deal to their overworked men
Chorus: Deal P’tit Jean deal
Deal deal
Bintou: Deal in front of the schools of their children
Deal in front of their parent’s old folk’s homes
Chorus: Deal P’tit Jean deal
Deal deal
Bintou: Deal because they sell solidarity
Chorus: Deal because they sell friendship
Bintou: Deal because they sell love
Chorus: Deal P’tit Jean deal
Deal deal
Bintou: Deal the way they deal
selling the world’s innocence
Deal the way they deal
selling their children’s virginity
Chorus: Deal the way they deal
selling their dignity like their degradation
selling the truth like lies
Bintou :The sky like the earth
The air like the sea
Chorus :Deal P’tit Jean deal
Deal deal
Bintou: Sell them their drug
as much as you want
Blow the head off the world
using drugs like bombs
Chorus: Deal P’tit Jean deal
Deal deal
Bintou: Deal
but don’t touch it yourself
Let them take it
sell them whatever passes for conscience
sell them whatever brings them death
Sell them also your own death
Chorus: Deal P’tit Jean deal
Deal deal
Bintou: Now go. We will meet again, when you have stopped taking drugs. For now you are not ready to wake up a Lycaon.
P’tit Jean: Don’t leave me... don’t leave me....
Bintou: We’ll see each other again, P’tit Jean. I’ve told you.
(P’tit Jean leaves. Bintou moves forward. The light is focused on her face) My name is Bintou. My men call me Samiagamal. I am thirteen years old. I know I won’t live to eighteen: but I don’t give a shit.