Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:
Uhm … this is the largest bookshelf on earth, apparently – I’m still on that first bookshelf in my kitchen – However, I will have you know that we are now on the bottom shelf. At last! But we still have a ways to go to get to the end of this particular shelf, because plays, in general, are skinny little books.
Now we come to Eugene O’Neill. Yay! The first collection of plays I have is entitled Seven Plays of the Sea
There are seven one-act plays here, all (duh) having to do with the sea. This one called Bound East for Cardiff.
This play takes place on the same boat as the one in Moon of the Caribees and it’s the same cast of characters. This time, though, they are not in the West Indies, but on a voyage from New York to Cardiff. And this play doesn’t take place on the deck of the Glencairn but in the forecastle. The men lie around in their bunks, talking. Yank had, earlier that day, fallen from the mast … and he lies in bed, struggling to breathe. Some of the men keep joking that he’s dead, or he’s going to die and Driscoll – (you’ll definitely remember him from Moon of the Caribees) angrily tells them all off. You can tell that he loves Yank. You can tell that, even more than that, Yank is all he has.
Of course they’re all big tough blustery sailors … but you can tell – that facing losing his best friend Yank is somethign Driscoll is too afraid to contemplate.
(This is the play my friend David made such a huge splash in in college. He played Driscoll. He was amazing.)
EXCERPT FROM Bound East for Cardiff, by Eugene O’Neill.
DRISCOLL. [trying to conceal his anxiety] Didn’t I tell you you wasn’t half as sick as you thought you was? The Captain’ll have you out on deck cursin’ and swearin’ loike a trooper before the week is out.
YANK. Don’t lie, Drisc. I heard what he said, and if I didn’t I c’d tell by the way I feel. I know what’s goin’ to happen. I’m goin’ to — [He hesitates for a second — then resolutely] I’m goin’ to die, that’s what, and the sooner the better!
DRISCOLL. [wildly] No, and be damned to you, you’re not. I’ll not let you.
YANK. It ain’t no use, Drisc. I ain’t got a chance, but I ain’t scared. Gimme a drink of water, will yuh, Drisc? My throat’s burnin’ up. [Driscoll brings the dipper full of water and supports his head while he drinks in great gulps.]
DRISCOLL. [seeking vainly for some word of comfort] Are ye feelin’ more aisy loike now?
YANK. Yes — now — when I know it’s all up. [A pause] You mustn’t take it so hard, Drisc. I was just thinkin’ it ain’t as bad as people think — dyin’. I ain’t never took much stock in the truck them sky-pilots preach. I ain’t never had religion; but I know whatever it is what comes after it can’t be no worser’n this. I don’t like to leave you, Drisc, but — that’s all.
DRISCOLL. [with a grown] Lad, lad, don’t be talkin’.
YANK. This sailor life ain’t much to cry about leavin’ — just one ship after another, hard work, small pay, and bum grub; and when we git into port, just a drunk endin’ up in a fight, and all your money gone, and then ship away again. Never meetin’ no nice people; never gittin outa sailor town, hardly, in any port; travellin’ all over the world and never seein’ none of it; without no one to care whether you’re alive or dead. [with a bitter smile] There ain’t much in all that that’d make yuh sorry to lose it, Drisc.
DRISCOLL. [gloomily] It’s a hell av a life, the sea.
YANK. [musingly] It must be great to stay on dry land all your life and have a farm with a house of your own with cows and pigs and chickens, ‘way in the middle of the land where yuh’d never smell the sea or see a ship. It must be great to have a wife and kids to play with at night after supper when your work was done. It must be great to have a home of your own, Drisc.
DRISCOLL. [with a great sigh] It must, surely; but what’s the use av thinkin’ av ut? Such things are not for the loikes av us.
YANK. Sea-farin’ is all right when you’re young and don’t care, but we ain’t chickens no more, and somehow, I dunno, this last year has seemed rottten, and I’ve had a hunch I’d quit — with you, of course — and we’d save our coin, and go to Canada or Argentine or some place and git a farm, just a small one, just enough to live on. I never told yuh this cause I thought you’d laugh at me.
DRISCOLL. [enthusiastically] Laugh at you, is ut? When I’m havin’ the same thoughts myself, toime afther toime. It’s a grand idea and we’ll be doin’ ut sure if you’ll stop your crazy notions — about — about bein’ so sick.
YANK. [sadly] Too late. We shouldn’ta made this trip, and then — How’d all the fog get in here?
DRISCOLL. Fog?
YANK. Everything looks misty. Must be my eyes gittin’ weak, I guess. What was we talkin’ of a minute ago? Oh, yes, a farm. It’s too late. [His mind wandering] Argentine, did I say? D’yuh remember the times we’ve had in Buenos Aires? The moving pictures in Barracas? Some class to them, d’yuh remember?
DRISCOLL. [with satisfaction] I do that; and so does the piany player. He’ll not be forgettin’ the black eye I gave him in a hurry.
YANK. Remember the time we was there on the beach and had to go to Tommy Moore’s boarding house to git shipped? And he sold us rotten oilskins and seaboots full of holes, and shipped us on a sky-sail yarder round the Horn, and took two months’ pay for it. And the days we used to sit on the park benches along the Paseo Colon with the vigilantes lookin’ hard at us? And the songs at the Salor’s Opera where the guy played ragtime — d’yuh remember them?
DRISCOLL. I do, surely.
YANK. And La Plata — phew, the stink of the hides! I always liked Argentine — all except that booze, cana. How drunk we used to git on that, remember?
DRISCOLL. Cud I forget ut? My head pains me at the menshun av that divil’s brew.
YANK. Remember the night I went crazy with the head in Singapore? And the time you was pinched by the cops in Port Said? And the time we was both locked up in Sydney for fightin’?
DRISCOLL. I do so.
YANK. And that fight on the dock at Cape Town — [His voice betrays great inward perturbation]
DRISCOLL. [hastily] Don’t be thinkin’ av that now. ‘Tis past and gone.
YANK. D’yuh think He’ll hold it up against me?
DRISCOLL. [Mystified] Who’s that?
YANK. God. They say He sees everything. He must know it was done in fair fight, in self-defense, don’t yuh think?
DRISCOLL. Av course. Ye stabbed him, and be damned to him, for the skulkin’ swine he was, afther him tryin’ to stick you in the back, and you not suspectin’. Let your conscience be aisy. I wisht I had nothin’ blacker than that on my soul. I’d not be afraid av the angel Gabriel himself.
YANK. [with a shudder] I c’d see him a minute ago with the blood spurtin’ out of his neck. Ugh!
DRISCOLL. The fever, ut is, that makes you see such things. Give no heed to ut.
YANK. [uncertainly] You don’t think He’ll hold it up agin me — God, I mean.
DRISCOLL. If there’s justice in hivin, no! [Yank seems comforted by this assurance.]
YANK. [after a pause] We won’t reach Cardiff for a week at least. I’ll be buried at sea.
DRISCOLL. [putting his hands over his ears] Ssshh! I won’t listen to you.
YANK. [as if he had not heard him] It’s as good a place as any other, I s’pose — only I always wanted to be buried on dry land. But what the hell’ll I care then? [fretfully] Why should it be a rotten night like this with that damned whistle blowin’ and people snorin’ all round? I wish the stars was out, and the moon, too; I c’d lie out on deck and look at them, and it’d make it easier to go — somehow.
DRISCOLL. For the love av God don’t be talkin’ loike that!
YANK. Whatever pay’s comin’ to me yuh can divvy up with the rest of the boys; and you take my watch. It ain’t worth much, but it’s all I’ve got.
DRISCOLL. But have you no relations at all to call your own?
YANK. No, not as I know of. One thing I forgot: You know Fanny the barmaid at the Red Stork in Cardiff?
DRISCOLL. Sure, and who doesn’t?
YANK. She’s been good to me. She tried to lend me half a crown when I was broke there last trip. Buy her the biggest box of candy yuh c’n find in Cardiff. [Breaks down.] It’s hard to ship on this voyage I’m goin’ on — alone! [Driscoll reaches out and grasps his hand.]
