ROBERT
REEMER steps out from his store.
Behind
him shelves of canned goods, small
advertising
displays, rice from California,
suntan
lotion, cocktail peanuts, beer, liquor.
REEMER
The
drums are far away.
There
are nomore drums.
All
the people have is their bare feet
and
their island and the coconut palm
and
breadfruit and pandanus and taro
and
the coral sand and the surf on the
barrier
reef pounding and pounding
all
day and all night and which would be
worth
big millions of dollars if it could
be
taken away and sold and a f ew people
could
be very rich and - but the island
would
be vithout the sound that has
craddled
it for many years.
There
are no more drums, no dances
done
withthe old enthusiasm as in the
old
days when the mentalked to the sharks
and
the women laughed at the serious moon.
Now
there is Reemer' s Store where they can
buy
all they need and want and if they have the
money
they can go home with it
and
eat the candy and the canned mackerel
and
drink the redeye whiskey that
is
so less troublesome to get than
the
fermented coconut juice you have to climb the bird-high palms to get
that
can make your brain roll like the waves
under
the passing moon.
Scene
7
Yacht
deck.
STERLING
Did
you get the Time magazine?
ANNEAL
They
had one, five months old.
The
front had some sort of fungus
and
tiny flowers were growing out of it.
I
couldn't bare to disturb it.
STERLING
Too
old anyway.
Scene
8
Coconut
grove.
LOMONA
0,
the white boat is still there!
Scene
9
Banana
grove. The wind blows, leaves
shudder.
RIKLON
Lomona
floats when she walks.
She
walks on the leaves
that
swim on the ground.
The
breadfruit, the pandanus,
the
red hibiscus
that
have just fallen
on
the coral sand and are yet flying.
Lomona,
I know, is beautiful. My ears burn
in
the wild feeling of her words.
My
skin against hers has steamed under the moon.
We
were crazy like children.
Yet
my heart for her
is
not warm now.
Now
that woman I saw
seems
to blind me
like
a white cloud
that
blows with the face
of
the sun.
I
am dizzy and I wish my skin could
pale
and my mouth could speak
the
strange words of her land.
My
heart is like the red coral choked
with
life where the moray eel lives strong,
and
I an confused.
The
foreign woman. . .
I
wonder what is her name?
