Wole Soyinka
verbal jousts and language games between linguistic duelists, or in the
spirit of a fervent evangelizing African nativist Christian worship in which
the sermonizing intensity of the Old Man, as an ironizing “evangelist” of
“As,” is matched by the fervor of the response of his “congregationalist”
disciples, the four mendicants:
: I hope I didn’t do too badly.
(sighs, turns to face him): No. It was quite a good effort.
: It was rather like old times.
: Very much like old times.
: Hey, listen. The Old Man was pleased.
: I should bloody well hope so. It was just like old times.
: My feelings exactly. Just like old times.
: It...was...just...likeoldtimes.
:Yes. So why risk putting us here together?
:Because...wearetogetherinAs. (He rises slowly.) As Is, and the System
is its mainstay though it wear a hundred masks and a thousand outward
forms. And because you are within the System, the cyst in the System that
irritates, the foul gurgle of the cistern, the expiring function of a faulty
cistern and are part of the material for reformulating the mind of a man
into the necessity of the moment’s political As, the moment’s scientific As,
metaphysic As, sociologic As, economic, recreative ethical As, you-cannot-
escape! There is but one constant in the life of the System and that constant
is AS. And what can you pit against the priesthood of that constant deity,
its gospellers, its enforcement agency. And even if you say unto them, do
I not know you, did I not know you in rompers, with leaky nose and
smutty face? Did I not know you thereafter, know you in the haunt of
cat-houses, did I not know you rifling the poor boxes in the local church,
did I not know you dissolving the night in fumes of human self-indulgence
simply, simply, simply did I not know you, do you not defecate, fornicate,
prevaricate when heaven and earth implore you to abdicate and are you
not prey to headaches, indigestion, colds, disc displacement, ingrowing toe-
nail, dysentery, malaria, flatfoot, corns and chilblains. Simply, simply, do I
not know you Man like me? Then shall they say unto you, I am chosen,
restored, redesignated and redestined and further further shall they say
unto you, you heresiarchs of the System arguing questioning, querying
weighing puzzling insisting rejecting upon you all shall we practise, without
passion -
: Practise...
: Withnoill-will...
: Practise...
: With good conscience...
: Practise...
: That the end shall...
: Practise...