Night's Knock

(monologue excerpt)
by
Simone Barros

Simone Barros
347.419.3935
simone.barros@stochasticartworks.com
Copyright 2012, Simone Barros

ANASELLE, 34, FEM ALE

A BRIGHT AND CLEVER NDONGO WOM AN, BORN IN
LUANDA, ANGOLA, LIVING AS A SLAVE IN NEW AM STERDAM CIRCA 1790.
INSPIRED BY BURIAL #340 BUT NOT STRICTLY BASED ON ALL THE DETAILS OF
THAT BURIAL.

Anaselle, 34, dances around a Pinkster maypole, twirling

ribbons and laces over her head.
ANASELLE
(Ndongo accent, singing)
"Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi! Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi!"
Anaselle raises her skirt and kicks her heels.
ANASELLE
(singing in Dutch)
"Wilhelmus van Nassouwe, Ben ick van Duytschen bloet, Den Vaderlant getrouwe!"
Anaselle dances quickening her pace as her entire body
comes alive.
ANASELLE
"O could I loud as thunder sing,
Thy fame should sound, great Charles, the king, From Hudson's stream to Niger's wave,
And rouse the friend of every slave. But, cease to clank my hero's chain,
'Twill give his royal bosom painGood Pinkster comes with merry glee,
And brings a gladsome Jubilee."
Anaselle slows her dance and catches her breath.
ANASELLE
Pinkster comes, and with the sun Pinkster goes.
For this one brief day we forget our woes.
The holiest of holidays indeed,
Bringing fiery freedom our souls do bleed.
A blink, a wink, a whiff of liberty,
Springs the fragile fragrance out of reach for me.
Delicious dream dying in the morn's cruel light
conjures a hope sustain the year hold tight.
Nay, this Pinkster carries loads to isle's shore.
If ever bedrock of joy to anchor,
if ever concrete rapture should endure,
A crease aches with ceaseless stiff paramour.
Golden emancipation ever shine!

2.

Ever shine!
Half freedom, whole soul, I am mine!
I am mine!
Anaselle polishes the beads and shells strung around her
waist with the end of her apron.
ANASELLE
Sing praise to a man's death, fate's traded bliss.
Reddened flesh, milky sticky puss, bruised cyst
of M ercury's itchy grip on his mind
he walked naked for relief but unkind
neighbors tried his sanity in public.
Once a lauded architect now subject
to blast ridicule for his sacred quest.
'Til he solved M erlin's al-iksir, no rest.
Sleepless nights made his brain a dull plaster.
What care I? Except he was my master.
Phlegm straggled coughs wrestled him to his knees.
I wiped thick yellow mucus, swatting fleas,
Breathing gut wrenching stench of rotting cheese
From neglected meals in the study he
never left. His feces, thou, stacked neatly
in chamber pots awaiting me to clean.
A madman for a master proved most mean.
"Anaselle, gal, my designs you must trace.
The Great Work's unadulterated chase
must not be trespassed by such banal jobs.
Collect my salary from the damned slobs. "
He said one morn in a manner most daft.
I traced and by and by I learned the craft.
His hands twisted, and gnarled in crippled knots
I inked his blueprints, and paid his debtors' lots.
Wouldn't I want to hear the burghers root,
"Hail Anaselle, the Negress' building's a beaut!"
Shock their disregard of slave intellect
Lead a new conscience, antislavery sect
Enslaved, I veil the hand behind the name
Heinrich Vos, architect of great acclaim.

3.
Yet I know what M aster Heinrich knew not
Legendary philosopher's stone he sought
Lay beneath his very nose, so near him
Concealed from men taking life and love at whim.
Pain and bondage, suffering ceaseless strife,
blood, sweat, tears mix the elixir of life
turning slavery's lead into freedom's gold.
The elixir, I drank daily the formula whole.
Six solstices under master madman went.
Gold turned in my womb, hours birthing rent
apart, wet, blind pain but glowed it yellow,
hard, round and heavy but small and shallow.
It was enough, my half freedom to pay,
and master, breathless, eyes wide open lay
dead as lead and mercury poisoned stiff,
Skimmed moneys, an obsessed alchemist's gift.
Anaselle gently and carefully pats the beads and shells
about her waist.
ANASELLE
And now this Pinkster day I loudly sing,
For my freedom, no more a temporal thing!
Golden emancipation ever shine!
Ever shine!
Half freedom, whole soul, I am mine!
I am mine!
Anaselle returns to her dance and song.
LIGHTS OUT.