Narrator In place of a cryptic death threat, there now follows a hummingbird interlude.
Hungry and weak, Marjory huddles up under blankets in the box, on the outside glass of which, and possibly across the room too, slow-motion hummingbirds are projected.
‘In far-off Mesopotamia there dwelt
a club-foot Arabian beggar-girl who dreamt
of training a hummingbird army to fight
the armies of Africa’s oppressors.
‘For as tiny as hummingbirds are
And as massive as the armies they face may be –’
Marjory
‘All they’d have to do would be
to get ’em right in the fucking eyes.’
Narrator
‘The menfolk scoffed, as menfolk are wont to.
“How could a bird beat an army?”
She said …’
Marjory ‘I seen a lotta hummingbirds lately.
I ain’t seen a Roman in a long time, boys.
I ain’t seen a Roman in a long time.’
Lights fade on the hummingbird interlude, then rise again on Scene Seven proper.
A pygmy woman stands on the shelf, back to us, playing the haunted concertina – a creepy, vaguely Chinese melody. She turns to us, and we see that she is blind, her eyes gouged out some time ago, just as, inside the box, Marjory awakes, startled, and it’s clear for the first time that the other pygmy isn’t her …
Marjory Ogechi?! Ogechi?! Sister, is it you?! Look at me, Ogechi!
Ogechi laughs a creepy high-pitched laugh, and continues playing.
Put down the haunted concertina, Ogechi. It’s making you sound creepy.
Ogechi stops playing.
Can you reach the locks on the box, Ogechi?
Ogechi Chinese!
Marjory What?
Ogechi Chinese! You should have made the mermaid Chinese. Those are the scariest mermaids. Chinese!
Marjory I didn’t want her to be scary. I wanted the children to like her.
Ogechi Chinese ghosts are the scariest ghosts, and Chinese mermaids are the scariest mermaids. I don’t know why. Chinese children are cute, but dead Chinese children are fucking terrifying. Even the Chinese agree!
Marjory Oh Jesus, it’s a dream sequence.
Ogechi I’ll tell you a creepy Chinese story now. Keep your hopes up!
Marjory This will not be good.
Ogechi gently plays the concertina as background to her creepy story.
Ogechi A Chinese Siamese twin had his throat slit …
Marjory Knew it!
Ogechi But his conjoined twin brother knew nothing about it, for his conjoined twin brother was deaf and blind, you see …
Marjory It gets worse!
Ogechi The slit-throat brother died there and then in their Shanghai hovel but his brother didn’t die there and then. He just couldn’t work out why they weren’t walking any more, or talking any more, or eating any more. He thought he’d done something wrong, but he couldn’t work out what. How cruel the world can be to the sensitive. To kill one half of a Siamese twin, and leave the other half not knowing, in a room with no food and no heat, and in the wintertime too. That’s a box it’d be hard to write yourself out of, and he didn’t, the poor sap. He died five days later, and some said he starved, and some say it was the cold that got him. Some even said he died of a broken heart, but no. He died of his brother’s rigor-mortis. The first person ever to die of someone else’s rigor-mortis. It crept up his sides, it crept up his insides, it crept up his lungs and his arms and it crept up his jawbone. The final thing it crept up was his left eyeball, just as a last tear fell from it, on to a cheek that had already gone cold. So, thinking it over, if he was still crying at that stage, maybe it was the sadness that got him. Maybe it was the sadness. (Pause.) That story is over now.
She finishes the tune and hangs the concertina on the wall where it was previously.
I’d best get back to London. They’ll be missing me.
She laughs her creepy laugh again.
Ogechi Don’t forget where I’ve hung the haunted concertina. It might come in handy someday. If you ever wanna play some creepy Chinese shit.
She goes to the door.
Marjory Are you dead, Ogechi? Is that what this is?
Ogechi looks down at the ground sadly.
This isn’t a dream sequence, is it? It’s a ghost sequence.
Ogechi sadly exits, pulling the door closed behind her.
Goodbye, Ogechi.
Blackout.