THE BRONZE WEAVER'S DEBT.part three

ACT SIX: THE ECHO IN THE ANVIL(The scene shifts to the interior of OLOWE’S FORGE. The fire is a low, pulsing orange. The air is thick with the scent of palm oil and charred wood. OLOWE is alone, stripped to the waist. He is no longer the frantic man in the cell; he is a craftsman reclaimed by his element. Beside him lies the unfinished bronze bust of the late King.)OLOWE:(To the fire) They thought to lock the wind in a cage of iron bars. (He strikes the bronze with a hammer—the sound is deep and melodic). They thought the soul was a ledger entry that could be cancelled by a stroke of a clerk's pen.(A shadow falls across the doorway. It is SERGEANT MUSA. He has discarded his police tunic, standing only in his trousers and an undershirt. He carries a small gourd of libation.)MUSA:The District Commissioner is writing his report, Master Weaver. The lamp in his office burns like a spiteful star. He seeks words to bury the truth, just as we seek earth to bury your son.OLOWE:Let him write. His ink is water; it will fade before the moon completes her journey. But my son’s blood... that is a dye that does not wash out. It has soaked into the very floorboards of his "Civilization."MUSA:(Pouring a bit of the gourd’s contents onto the floor) He asks if you will finish the King’s image now. He thinks... he thinks if the bronze is completed, the ghosts will be satisfied.OLOWE:(A bitter laugh) He wants a trophy to hang in his museum! A story to tell over gin and tonic about the "savage" who killed his son for a statue. No, Musa. This bronze will never be finished. Look at the King’s face—I have left the eyes hollow.MUSA:Why hollow, Olowe?(IYALODE enters. She carries a bundle of white cloth—the shroud for Ife.)IYALODE:The women are ready, Olowe. The earth has been opened. It was a shallow grave, for the boy was light—he carried too much of the white man's air in his lungs.OLOWE:(Stopping his work) I will come. But first, one last casting.(He picks up a small, molten crucible. With a steady hand, he pours a thin stream of liquid metal into a mold at the base of the King's bust.)IYALODE:What do you shape now, Weaver?OLOWE:A chain. Not the iron chain of the Commissioner’s cell, but a bronze chain that binds the father to the son, and the son to the soil.(He plunges the mold into a vat of water. The hiss of steam fills the stage, obscuring the characters in a white mist.)OLOWE’S VOICE:(Through the mist) Tell the Commissioner that the sun has risen, as he predicted. But tell him also that the sun does not only bring light. It brings the heat that melts the wax, and the heat that reveals the dross in the gold.IYALODE’S VOICE:The cycle is closed. The weaver has run out of thread.(The mist clears. The forge is empty. Only the King’s bust remains, its hollow eyes staring directly at the audience. The sound of a single, distant drum beat marks the end.)[THE END]OLOWE:So the King can look through them and see the world the white man has made. Let the King see the empty markets and the sons who die in the shadow of the crown. A King with eyes of bronze is a King who can be bought. But a King with hollow eyes... he is a judge who never sleeps.