Play, Page 2

  Jo Ni

  Act I, Scene Two

  You lift your mask to your forehead and look around, blinking. As soon as your mask is off, it all comes back to you. You have a murder to investigate.

  A hat rack with a blue kimono hanging off it. Tin cans full of mismatched carpentry screws. Paper screens. A few neglected power tool cases. A dogeared script. All the usual backstage stuff.

  A mop sits in a red bucket. It’s too dim here to see inside. Beside the bucket, a knife. Wait, was that all you saw? Did the red bucket just remind you of blood? The floor is dry. Thirty seconds before your next cue.

  Where's Quinn? Could she still be alive? Did she just trade places with this demon impostor?

  Beyond the backstage floor, the grassy field waits. Ahead are the last twilight shadows of the mountain before night is full. The shadows are matched by the smell of trees.

  Nobody.

  No body.

  As you pace around, trying to locate her, you listen to Punch’s soliloquy onstage. He’s stealing Shanne’s food. He’s stealing horses. Maybe he’ll even steal your children while you’re hiding away in the mountains. Following his bad advice. Following his lies.

  Mask in hand, you jump down from the platform of the stage to the grass below. Hunkering, you run quickly behind the tree backdrop toward the solid wall of stage left. There’s nothing. Pace back the way you came. There's nothing suspicious. Nothing except for an orange nose mask on the ground. You pick it up. Something sticky coats the inside of the mask. Something red.

  Red.

  The red light blinks twice. Your next cue.

  Setting the sticky, oozy red nose mask down, you vault onto the backstage platform and waddle out with your pitchfork. You see Punch from the opposite side of the stage. Your hand moves to your face.

  Horrors! You’ve forgotten to put your mask back on! The Shanne mask dangles from your fingertips. The elastic cord is sweaty in your grip. Expecting shocked whispers, you turn your eyes to face the audience. They see you.

  You forgot your mask.

  Your face is naked for them to see.

  You’re not a bumpkin anymore. You’re just an actor.

  A very bad actor.

  Everyone see you.

  There’s nothing worse than this. They all know you’ve flubbed it. Your heart’s in your throat.

  Seconds tick by. You try reciting some of the bumpkin’s lines, but it doesn’t work. You don’t have a mask on. The mystery weighed too much on your mind, and you forgot. Maybe it was the bloodstained nose mask that distracted you. Maybe in your nervous mind you thought there was blood inside your own Shanne mask. Is it too late to put it on?

  Seconds tick by. You’re onstage. The audience stares at you.

  You can’t say your lines. You can’t let yourself go, not without the wooden mask. The murderer Punch grins at you evilly.

  Seconds tick by. Sweat appears thick on your forehead and drips like ice over your eyes.

  What do you do?

  The Noh demands that each actor play the role of the mask.

  Right now, your mask is your face.

  Your character is you.

  So you do the only thing you can do. You speak as yourself:

  “You killed her. I found her mask.

  You killed my friend and took her place,”

  you say, out of measure and out of turn.

  “There's blood on her mask.

  Listen everyone. Punch is a monster!”

  Applause. The audience thinks it's part of the show, or maybe they just feel sorry for you. Punch smiles like a spider. He holds up the saber and turns it in the floodlights, examining it.

  “This sword is Murakumo, the Sword that Cleaves Fakes in Two.

  Lord Sosono blessed it. Only the blessed can pick it up.

  Quinn was stabbed through the heart by the power of Murakumo

  And it bounced back to me, because I’m blessed!”

  You don’t believe in that superstitious stuff. Nobody does. She was stabbed with the knife by the bucket! The murder weapon is right there, offstage. You can see the red bucket out of the corner of your eye. Punch is just trying to distract you. But the audience doesn’t know. They don’t understand. They think it’s all part of the show.

  You’ve got to convince them.

  “You’re not even an actor!”

  you shout.

  “You’re not even human!

  Why don’t you take off your mask

  And show everyone who you really are!

  As you talk, you forget about Shanne, your old character. There are more important things now.

  Forget the hay bales, the battle, your horses, your family.

  Forget that old story; it doesn’t matter anymore.

  Forget the character. Toss the wooden Shanne mask offstage carelessly. It hits the hardwood floor and cracks down the middle. Now that character is gone forever.

  It doesn't matter. Your best friend is gone. You've got to find her.

  If you're quick, maybe you can even save Quinn’s life.

  It’s just you and Punch. The stage is bare. Two bright spotlights shoot from behind the audience, one for each of you. Punchinoni advances. He’s an orange demon jester stalking towards you, hunching with each step, his long nose wobbling. His footsteps sound like pots and pans. A gloopy pool of snot drips from one enormous hairy nostril. A real demon. The audience has to realize that he’s an impostor. They’ve got to.

  “Take your mask off!”

  you shout.

  “I bet you can’t!”

  Punch reaches up and grabs his own hideous nose.

  He pulls.

  It comes off.

  High-tech latex is stuck to his face. Strands of stage glue stretch out. Was it really just a very realistic mask? It lifts off.

  Beneath Punch’s mask is your face, looking back at you. Punch’s face is your face. The eyes are open in shock. You feel a blast of anger at the demon. Like an irritating, mocking child, Punch imitates your facial expressions. From shocked to angry to scared. Smiles. Frowns. It’s like looking in a mirror, if the mirror were wearing a black and white jester’s outfit. His hands and feet are still orange and hairy, though.

  Punch honks his regular-sized nose at you. A voice whispers into your ear: This is just another one of my masks.

  “We wear so many faces, don’t we?”

  recites Punch, wearing yours and mimicking your voice.

  “You see a friendly face and you take your mask off.

  A stranger appears, and you put a new mask on,

  Becoming a whole new person.”

  A gasp escapes the audience. The lines weren’t that great, were they? Confused, you turn and look around, trying to spot the reason they gasped.

  You spot the reason.

  A remarkable girl approaches along the hashigakari bridge. It's not Quinn; it's someone new. Someone you've never seen before. Her dress is a flower garden, a painted rainbow, a twirling bouquet. Long hair and a hat with a plastic tropical bird on it. Her smile is familiar, contagious.

  She walks toward you.

  Who is she? It’s almost like you know her.

  She’s going to be your best friend. You can just tell. You want to follow her around. You want her to know all about you.

  You realize you’ve heard about her. Quinn told you about her. Everyone told you about her. You know exactly who she is. She's the coolest person in the world.

  Her name is Columbia.

  Punch walks straight up to her and talks to her.

  Wearing your face.

  They both turn their backs on you and fall deep into conversation. You stand there, watching and listening, feeling useless as this easy Romeo steals your new best friend away and makes her his best friend. After all, people can only have one best friend.

  Punch charms her and walks offstage with her, arm in arm. Columbia was supposed to be your new best friend. Now she’s gone, maybe forever. You didn't even get
to ask whether she's seen Quinn.

  Columbia never even noticed you.

  You’re alone onstage. Silent. Boiling angry. Life’s so unfair. You weren’t quick enough. Weren’t brave enough. You didn’t even have a chance to introduce yourself. Now she’s gone. And the audience is staring at you.

  Then a new voice emerges from stage left:

  “She is very thrilling, my ami, very charming.

  But dreamers like you and I, we cannot speak to her.”

  Who said that? It wasn’t Quinn's voice. Come to think of it, you didn’t realize there were any other actors in this production company. It was supposed to be just you playing Shanne and Quinn playing Punch. And an Understudy, you suppose. There's always one of those. But this actor definitely isn’t some Understudy. It’s someone you’ve never met.

  The voice speaks again from offstage:

  “For dreamers like you and Pierrot, there can be no Columbia.

  There is only the night, the mountain, and the moon.”

  You feel angry at this Pierrot person. You were all ready to sink into a sulk. First Quinn vanishes, then you lose your chance at meeting Columbia, and now this Pierrot person comes along and interrupts your feelings. You’re steaming mad, you're scared for Quinn, and now you feel tangled up and overwhelmed. You’re just going in too many directions at once. You don’t know what to do.

  And anyway, you’re not a dreamer. Who’s he calling a dreamer? You've got a good head on your shoulders. And you need to get to know Columbia. You can feel it in your toes. She'll help you stop Punch and solve the case. You have so much in common with her. She’d make a great friend.

  Who is this Pierrot guy, anyways? What’s he doing here?

  Pierrot leaps, and he's onstage.

  Baggy white pants. A floppy white ruffled ruffed coat with red puffball buttons. Pointy red shoes. A sleepy white nightcap with another red puffball at the end. A sad thin boy inside, his face painted.

  Pierrot is a clown.

  He looks like a stringbean stuck inside a snowball. Frowny red mouth. Whiteface, intercepted by black crosses painted over his eyelids. Sad Pierrot has stars in his eyes.

  “I can’t deal with you right now,”

  you moan.

  “My best friend vanished,”

  you say,

  “And Punch took Columbia away,

  And . . . and . . .”

  You look out over the backlit audience and gesture at them all.

  “. . . and everybody’s looking at me.”

  Pierrot stands beside you and peers out at the sea of Japanese faces.

  “Ah, the watching people,”

  the pale clown sighs.

  “So many eyes, always following us.

  Here is a secret, my ami. I will tell it to you.

  The watching people are not real.”

  Stepping lightly in his pointed slippers to the very edge of the stage, Pierrot kneels at the footlights. He gestures you closer. Leaning out over the rapt and watching faces of the audience, he holds an open hand to his lips and takes a deep breath.

  He blows.

  Stars and snowflakes fly from his red-painted lips, and the audience folds in half over the backs of their low seats.

  “See? They are only cardboard,”

  he whispers, smiling at you.

  “But Pierrot thinks it is better that they watch.

  If everyone in the world is cardboard,

  Who will applaud when we triumph?”

  He inhales deeply, so deeply that his star-crossed eyes cross. The Japanese theatergoers pop upright again.

  “But . . . then who was clapping earlier?”

  you ask.

  “It couldn’t have been them.”

  Pierrot winks.

  “It was only a recording,"

  he answers.

  "Applause is never for the audience, my ami.

  It is a gift for the performer.

  And if it is a gift, what does it matter who gives it?

  Come, my friend. Let us follow Punch and our divine Columbia.

  We will see what they will do.”

  The clown tiptoes away across the hashigakari bridge. You follow him. Exeunt.