27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays by Tennessee Williams
Authors: Tennessee Williams
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afternoon it was, and she stood in the doorway . . .
( The dissonant notes are repeated. The rustling is louder. A sound of mocking laughter outside the door, sudden and brief.
The Desert Elena appears. It is the same lost girl, but not as the brother had seen her. This is the vision of the loveless bride, the water sealed under rock from the lover’s thirst — not the green of the mountains and the clear swift streams, but the sun-parched desert. Her figure is closely sheathed in a coarse-fibered bleached material, her hair bound tight to her skull. She bears a vessel in either hand, like balanced scales, one containing a cactus, the other a wooden grave-cross with a wreath of dry, artificial flowers on it. Only The Rancher observes her. )
R ANCHER:
‘Woman,’ I said to her, ‘Woman, what keeps you alive?’
‘What keeps you sparkling so, you make-believe fountain?’
( to the vision )
‘You and the desert,’ I told her,
‘You are sisters—sisters beneath the skin!’
But even the desert is sometimes pregnant with something,
distorted progeny,
twisted, dry, imbecilic,
gives birth to the cacti, the waterless Judas tree.
The blood of the root makes liquor to scorch the brain and put foul oaths on the tongue.
But you—you, woman, bear nothing, nothing ever but death—which is all you will get with your pitiful—stone kind of body.
E LENA: Oh, no—I will get something more.
T HE J UDGE:
More? You will get something more?
Where will it come from—lovely, smiling lady?
( The dead leaves rustle. )
Will it come singing and shouting and plunging bare-back
down canyons
and run like wild birds home to Sangre de Cristo
when August crazes the sky?
E LENA: ( smiling )Yes!
R ANCHER: ( to the Judge )
Yes, she admitted, yes!
For in their house, these people from Casa Blanca—no one can say they fear to speak the truth! ELENA:
Perhaps it will come as you say—but until then
The fences are broken—mend them.
The moon is needing a new coat of white-wash on it!
Attend to that, repair man! Those are your duties.
But keep your hands off me!
R ANCHER: My hands are empty—starved!
E LENA: Fill them with chicken-feathers! Or buzzard-feathers.
R ANCHER: My lips are dry.
E LENA:
Then drink from the cistern. Or if the cistern is empty, moisten your lips with the hungry blood of the fox that kills our fowls.
R ANCHER: The fox-blood burns!
E LENA:
Mine, too.
I have no coolness for you:
my hands are made of the stuff in the dried sulphur pools.
These are my gifts: the cactus, the bleached grave-cross with the wreath of deadvines on it.
Listen! The wind, when it blows, is rattling dry castanets in the restless grave-yard.
The old monks whittle—they make prayer-beads in the cellar.
Their fingers are getting too stiff to continue the work.
They dread the bells. For the bells are heavy and iron and have no wetness in them.
The bones of the dead have cracked from lack of moisture.
The sisters come out in a quick and steady file and their black skirts whisper dryer and dryer and dryer, until they halt before their desperate march has reached the river.
The river has turned underground.
The sisters crumble: beneath their black skirts crumble, the skirts are blown and the granular salty bodies go whispering off among the lifeless grasses . . .
I must go too,
For I, like these, have glanced at a burning city.
Now let me go!
( She turns austerely and moves away from the door. Three dissonant notes on the guitar and the sound of dead rustling leaves is repeated. A yellow flash of lightning in the portal, now vacant, and the sound of wind. )
R ANCHER:
My hand shot-out, whip-like, to catch at her wrist,
But she had gone . . .
My wife—that make-believe fountain—had fled from the door.
( He covers his face with his hands. )
T HE J UDGE: ( rising )
Player, give us the music of wind that promises rain.
The time is dry.
But clouds have come,
and the sound of thunder is welcome.
Now
( The dissonant notes are repeated. The rustling is louder. A sound of mocking laughter outside the door, sudden and brief.
The Desert Elena appears. It is the same lost girl, but not as the brother had seen her. This is the vision of the loveless bride, the water sealed under rock from the lover’s thirst — not the green of the mountains and the clear swift streams, but the sun-parched desert. Her figure is closely sheathed in a coarse-fibered bleached material, her hair bound tight to her skull. She bears a vessel in either hand, like balanced scales, one containing a cactus, the other a wooden grave-cross with a wreath of dry, artificial flowers on it. Only The Rancher observes her. )
R ANCHER:
‘Woman,’ I said to her, ‘Woman, what keeps you alive?’
‘What keeps you sparkling so, you make-believe fountain?’
( to the vision )
‘You and the desert,’ I told her,
‘You are sisters—sisters beneath the skin!’
But even the desert is sometimes pregnant with something,
distorted progeny,
twisted, dry, imbecilic,
gives birth to the cacti, the waterless Judas tree.
The blood of the root makes liquor to scorch the brain and put foul oaths on the tongue.
But you—you, woman, bear nothing, nothing ever but death—which is all you will get with your pitiful—stone kind of body.
E LENA: Oh, no—I will get something more.
T HE J UDGE:
More? You will get something more?
Where will it come from—lovely, smiling lady?
( The dead leaves rustle. )
Will it come singing and shouting and plunging bare-back
down canyons
and run like wild birds home to Sangre de Cristo
when August crazes the sky?
E LENA: ( smiling )Yes!
R ANCHER: ( to the Judge )
Yes, she admitted, yes!
For in their house, these people from Casa Blanca—no one can say they fear to speak the truth! ELENA:
Perhaps it will come as you say—but until then
The fences are broken—mend them.
The moon is needing a new coat of white-wash on it!
Attend to that, repair man! Those are your duties.
But keep your hands off me!
R ANCHER: My hands are empty—starved!
E LENA: Fill them with chicken-feathers! Or buzzard-feathers.
R ANCHER: My lips are dry.
E LENA:
Then drink from the cistern. Or if the cistern is empty, moisten your lips with the hungry blood of the fox that kills our fowls.
R ANCHER: The fox-blood burns!
E LENA:
Mine, too.
I have no coolness for you:
my hands are made of the stuff in the dried sulphur pools.
These are my gifts: the cactus, the bleached grave-cross with the wreath of deadvines on it.
Listen! The wind, when it blows, is rattling dry castanets in the restless grave-yard.
The old monks whittle—they make prayer-beads in the cellar.
Their fingers are getting too stiff to continue the work.
They dread the bells. For the bells are heavy and iron and have no wetness in them.
The bones of the dead have cracked from lack of moisture.
The sisters come out in a quick and steady file and their black skirts whisper dryer and dryer and dryer, until they halt before their desperate march has reached the river.
The river has turned underground.
The sisters crumble: beneath their black skirts crumble, the skirts are blown and the granular salty bodies go whispering off among the lifeless grasses . . .
I must go too,
For I, like these, have glanced at a burning city.
Now let me go!
( She turns austerely and moves away from the door. Three dissonant notes on the guitar and the sound of dead rustling leaves is repeated. A yellow flash of lightning in the portal, now vacant, and the sound of wind. )
R ANCHER:
My hand shot-out, whip-like, to catch at her wrist,
But she had gone . . .
My wife—that make-believe fountain—had fled from the door.
( He covers his face with his hands. )
T HE J UDGE: ( rising )
Player, give us the music of wind that promises rain.
The time is dry.
But clouds have come,
and the sound of thunder is welcome.
Now
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