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Danger: Memory! I Can’t Remember Anything and Clara |
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The
plays illustrate a global evocation and a linear analysis. In an andoyne
conversation (I Can’t Remember Anything), two elderly people
reveal who they are. She is the widow of a bridge-builder who once worked for
the Maharajah, he used to do calculations for her husband, but now has
trouble with the small-town bridge. Her son is somewhere in India, they do a
sort of dance to a samba record the boy has made. She laments that things
have become vile. He is a Communist resigned to death, but she gives him high
blood pressure with her visits, he curtails them. There
is a murder to be investigated (Clara), the victim’s father is recalcitrant
and cannot be made to speak. He’s cajoled and winnowed by a police
detective until the facts come out. A state of shock clouds his mind, but
also a general framework of understanding. In the war he saved black soldiers
from a lynch mob, he’s proud of his daughter’s social work. Her
lover, a Puerto Rican ex-con, appears to have murdered her, and he can’t
bring himself to remember his name. “I used to have a lot of understanding,”
says the detective. “But I gave up on it.” The
father now is a bagman for mob builders, after years as a landscaper for a partner
who dumped him. He was relieved to see his daughter with a man, after seeing
her kiss an older woman. The
detective remembers “that day in 1945, remember?—when they first
showed those pictures of the piles of bones?”, he’s alive to the
realities. So is the father, remembering “Biloxi... a madhouse, clumps
of people running up and down yelling to each other, people racing around
corners with clubs and guns, or down on their hands and knees searching under
the porches.” The girl appears to him, he expresses his pride, she is proud
of him. The Medical Examiner arrives, the father names the man. The
memory screens of Miller’s early work are recalled in subliminal
effects of light and crime-scene photos. The father’s memory is stirred
by an old record of his, “Shenandoah”, made in his show-business
days. His wife was a Rockette. Frank
Rich of the New York Times found this all a bit “ponderous”
and previous. |