Corporal Lestrade Character Analysis

TIGRE, SOURIS, AND CORPORAL
You are required by law to supply me with certain data, for no man is guilty except so proven, and I must warn you that anything you say may be held against you…

CORPORAL
{Turning} Look!

SOURIS
Don’t tell him a damn thing! You have legal rights. Your lawyer! Get your lawyer!

TIGRE
{Singing}
I pass by de police station,
Nobody to sign de bail bond,
Mooma don’t cry…

SOURIS
{Shrilly} What he up for, Corporal? What you lock him up for?

CORPORAL
Drunk and disorderly! A old man like that! He was drunk and he mash up Alcindor café.

SOURIS
And you going to cage him up here on a first offense? Old man, get a lawyer and defend your name!

CORPORAL
Animals, beasts, savages, cannibals, niggers, stop turning this place into a stinking zoo!

SOURIS
Zoo? Just because you capture some mountain gorilla?

[…]

CORPORAL
In the beginning was the ape, and the ape had no name, so God call him man. Now, there were various tribes of the ape, it had gorilla, baboon, orang-outan, chimpanzee, the blue-arsed monkey and the marmoset, and God looked at his handiwork and saw that it was good. For some of the apes had straighten out their backbone, and start walking upright, but there was one tribe unfortunately that lingered behind, and that was the nigger. Now if you apes will behave like gentlemen, who knows what could happen? The bottle could go round, but first it behoves me, Corporal Lestrade, to perform my duty according to the rules of Her Majesty’s Government, so don’t interrupt.

SOURIS
Drill, him, Constable, drill him,
He mash up old Alcindor café!

{The CORPORAL, isolated in a spot, with counsel’s wig and gown, returns with four towels, two yellow, two red}

TIGRE
Order, order, order in de court.

{A massive gong is sounded, and the CORPORAL gives the two prisoners the towels. They robe themselves like judges}

CORPORAL
My noble judges. When this crime has been categorically examined by due process of law, and when the motive of the hereby accused whereas and ad hoc shall be established without dichotomy, and long after we have perambulated through the labyrinthine bewilderment of the defendant’s ignorance, let us hope, that justice, whom we all serve, will not only be done, but will appear, my lords, to have itself, been done…{The JUDGES applaud} Ignorance is no excuse. Ignorance of one’s own ignorance is not excuse. This is the prisoner.

CORPORAL
[…] a vile, ambitious, and obscene dream […] Further, the prisoner, in defiance of Her Majesty’s Government, urged the aforementioned villagers to join him in sedition and the defilement of the flag, and when all this was rightly received with civic laughter and pious horror […] the prisoner, in desperation and shame, began to willfully damage the premise of the proprietor Felicien Alcindor, urging destruction on Church and State, claiming that he was the direct descendant of African kings, a healer of leprosy and the Saviour of his race.

[…]

You claimed that with the camera of your eye you had taken a photograph of God and that all you could see was blackness.

[…]

Blackness, my lords. What did the prisoner imply? That God was neither white nor black but nothing? That God was not white but black, that he had lost his faith? Or…or…what…

MAKAK
Sirs, when I hear that voice,
Singing so sweetly,
I feel my spine straighten,
My hand grow strong.
My blood was boiling
Like a brown river in flood,
And in that frenzy,
I let out a cry,
I charged the spears about me,
Grasses and branches,
I began to dance,
With the splendour of a lion,
Faster and faster,
Faster and faster,
Then, my body sink,
My bones betray me
And I fall on the forest floor
Dead, on sweating grass,
And there, maybe, sirs,
Two other woodmen find me,
And take me up the track.
Sirs, if you please…

{The two prisoners carry him}

CORPORAL
Continue, continue, the virtue of the law is its infinite patience. Continue…

CORPORAL
{Infuriated} My lords, behold! {Arms extended} Behold me, flayed and dismembered by this impenetrable ignorance! This is our reward, we who have borne the high torch of justice through tortuous thickets of darkness to illuminate with vision the mind of primeval peoples, of backbiting tribes! We who have borne with us the texts of the law, the Mosaic tablets, the splendors of marble in moonlight, the affidavit and the water toilet, this stubbornness and ingratitude is our reward! But let me not sway you with displays of emotion, for the law is emotionless. Let me give facts! {He controls himself} It was market Saturday and I, with Market and Sanitation Inspector Caiphas J. Pamphilion, was on duty at Quatre Chemin crossroads. I was armed because the area was on strike.

CORPORAL
Believe? Let me tell you what happen. I following this rumor good. And is the same as history, Pamphilion. Some ignorant, illiterate lunatic who know two or three lines from the Bible by heart, well one day he get tired of being poor and sitting on his arse so he make up his mind to see a vision, and once he make up his mind, the constipated, stupid bastard bound to see it. So he come down off his mountain, as if he is God self, and walk amongst the people, who too glad that he will think for them. He give them hope miracle, vision, paradise on earth, and is then blood start to bleed and stone start to fly. And is at that point, to protect them from disappointment, I does reach for my pistol.

MOUSTIQUE
{Pushing BASIL aside} You know who I am? You want to know who I am? Makak! Makak! or Moustique, is not the same nigger? What you want me to say? “I am the resurrection, I am the life?” “I am the green side of Jordan,” or that “I am a prophet stoned by Jerusalem,” or you all want me as if this hand hold magic, to stretch it and like a flash of lightning to make you all white? God after god you change, promise after promise you believe, and you still covered with dirt; so why not believe me. All I have is this {Shows the mask}, black faces, white masks! I tried like you. Moustique then! Moustique! {Spits at them} That is my name! Do what you want!

MOUSTIQUE
Yes, I will die. I take what you had, I take the dream you have and I come and try to sell it. I try to fool them, and they fall on me with sticks, everything, and they kill me.

MAKAK
How you could leave me alone, Moustique? In all the yard and villages I pass, I hear people saying, Makak was here, Makak was here, and we give him so and so. If it was for the money, I didn’t know.

MOUSTIQUE
No. You didn’t know. You would never know. It was always me, since the first time on the road, where…always be who did have to beg…to do…{He passes out. MAKAK shakes him}

MAKAK
Moustique, Moustique.

MOUSTIQUE
Go back, go back to Monkey Mountain. Go back.

MAKAK
No, she tell me what I must do.

MOUSTIQUE
Let me die, Makak, I hurting and I tired, tired…

CORPORAL
Here, hold this. […] Don’t tell me about the law. Once I loved the law. I thought the law was just, universal, a substitute for God, but the law is a whore, she will adjust the price. In some places the law does not allow you to be black, not even black, but tinged with black.

TIGRE
And that is what is eating out your soul, Lestrade. That is why you punishing this man. You punishing your own grandfather. Let him go home.

MAKAK
Let me go home. I will pay you. I have money. I have money that I hide…all of you.

CORPORAL
Bribery! […] Listen, you corrupt, obscene, insufferable ape, I am incorruptible, you understand? Incorruptible. The law is your salvation and mine, you imbecile, you understand that. […] Not the law of the jungle, but something the white man teach you to be thankful for.

CORPORAL
What you want to drink, old man…

MAKAK
Blood! Blood! Blood! Lion…Lion…I am…a lion! {He has grabbed the CORPORAL, stabbing him. Then he hurls him to the floor}

[…]

MAKAK
{Holding TIGRE and SOURIS and near-weeping with rage} Drink it! Drink it! Drink! Is not that they say we are? Animals! Apes without law? O God, O gods! What am I, I who thought I was a man? What have I done? Which God? God dead, and his law there bleeding. Christian, cannibal, I will drink blood. You will drink it with me. For the lion, and the tiger, and the rat, yes, the gentle rat, have come out of their cages to breathe the air, the air heavy with forest, and if that moon go out…I will still find my way; the blackness will swallow me. I will wear it like a fish wears water…Come. You have tasted blood. Now, come!

CORPORAL
All right. Too late have I loved thee, Africa of my mind, sero te amavi, to cite Saint Augustine who they say was black. I jeered thee because I hated half of myself, my eclipse. But now […] {He removes his clothes} I return to this earth, my mother. Naked, trying very hard not to weep in the dust. I was what I am, but now I am myself. {Rises} Now I feel better. Now I see a new light. I sing the glories of Makak! The glories of my race! What race? I have no race! Come! Come all you splendours of imagination. Let me sing of darkness now! My hands. My hands are heavy. […] My feet grip like roots. {He howls} Was that my voice? My voice. O God, I have become what I mocked. I always was, I always was. Makak! Makak! forgive me, old father.

MAKAK
{Holding out the mask} I was a king among shadows. Either the shadows were real, and I was no king, or it is my own kingliness that created the shadows. Either way, I am lonely, lost, an old man again. No more. I wanted to leave this world. But if the moon is earth’s friend, eh, Tigre, how can we leave the earth? And the earth, self. Look down and there is nothing at our feet. We are wrapped in black air, we are black, ourselves shadows in the firelight of the white man’s mind. Son, soon it will be morning, praise God, and the dream will rise like vapour, the shadows will be real, you will be corporal again, you will be thieves, and I an old man, drunk and disorderly, beaten down by a Bible and tired of looking up to heaven.

CORPORAL
Bastard, hatchet-man, opportunist, executioner. I have the black man work to do, you know. I breathe over the shoulder of your leaders, I hang back always at a decent distance but I am there to observe that the law is upheld, that those who break it, president or prince, will also be broken. I have no ambition of my own. I have no animal’s name. I simply work. And if a niche in history opens for me, what else can I do, for the sake of the people, Vox Populi, but to step into it? I don’t know where we are going. But forward, progress!

CHORUS
Whose hands are washed continually in milk,
Whose voice is the dove,
Whose eye is the cloud.

CORPORAL
Who shall do unto others as to him it was done.
Behold too, Basil, a dark ambassador,
Behold Pamphilion, apotheosised.

CHORUS
Who drew the thief to his bosom,
The murderer to his heart,
Whose blackness is a coal,
Whose soul is a fire,
Whose mind is a diamond,
Dispenser of justice,
Genderer and nourisher to a thousand wives,
Praise him!

BASIL
An offer to revise the origins of slavery. A floral tribute of lilies from the Ku Klux Klan. Congratulations from several Golf and Community Clubs. A gilt-edged doctorate from the Mississippi University. The Nobel Peace Prize. One thousand dollars from a secret admirer. An autograph of Pushkin. The Stalin Peace Prize. An offer from the UN. A sliver of bone from the thigh of Lumumba. An offer from Hollywood. {Throws all the letters away}

TRIBES
No!

CORPORAL
Unanimous negative!

MAKAK
[…] And I went in the little rain barrel behind my hut and look down in the quiet, quiet water at my face, an old, cracked, burn-up face, with the hair turning white. And it was Makak. So I say, if you dead now, if you dead now. Well what? No woman will cry for you, no child will look at your face in death, as if it was the first time. [...] A big, big loneliness possess me, as if I was happy once, and strong, but could not remember where, as if, in some way, I was not no charcoal-burner, God be blessed, but a king, and I feel strongly to go down the mountain, and to reach the sea, as if the place I remember was across the sea.

CORPORAL
[…] She is the mirror of the moon that this ape look into and find himself unbearable. She is all that is pure, all that he cannot reach. You see her statues in white stone, and you turn your face away, mixed with abhorrence and lust, with destruction and desire. She is lime, snow, marble, moonlight, lilies, cloud, foam and bleaching cream, the mother of civilization, the confounder of blackness. I too have longed for her. She is the color of the law, religion, paper, art, and if you want peace, if you want to discover the beautiful depth of your blackness […] chop off her head! When you do this, you will kill Venus, the Virgin, the Sleeping Beauty. She is the white light that paralyzed your mind, that led you into this confusion. It is you who created her, so kill her! kill her! The law has spoken.