Act I
Scene 1
At the Golden Inn
Just as the Moby Dick world is a relentlessly male world, the Golden Inn is a relentlessly female place. It is also an Incan place. It is an Incan Temple for the goddesses, the female mysteries. It is a temple to the wild, entheogenic, bacchus mysteries. And there is no contradiction in the fact that the Golden Inn is a chicha or corn beer brewery/pub/ live-music venue/urban club.
Chicha, (which means spit in Spanish), is fermented by the saliva of women. The sacred chicha was fermented and brewed by women chosen by the mystery. They prepared the sacred chicha for the Incan royalty. The seven sisters of the Golden Inn are these women.
The curtain opens with the seven sisters on the Golden Inn’s stage. Outside a tropical, thunder storm rages. The sisters are singing, drumming, and opening sacred space. Their song is also about facing into the storm, facing into the mystery. In the moment when the song, drumming, and dance ends there is a strong, rhythmic knocking on a strong, wooden, speak-easy door that has a metal slit at eye level.
Duena Maria goes to the door, opens the metal slit on the door to see who is on the other side of the door. There is a long pause. Duena Maria steps back as she opens the door to rain-drenched Jonah/Ishmael and The Buffalo/Steelkilt. They enter. The Buffalo is a young, bearded Nordic Giant. Jonah is older, dark, smaller. They both have the fitness and athleticism that would be expected of 19th Century whalers. Jonah carries a small, canvas duffel bag.
Duena Maria and Duena Catherina help them get their wet foul weather gear off. They bring towels and help them dry themselves. Duena Maria has almost a sister-like resemblence to Jonah, Duena Catherina has a sister-like resemblence to The Buffalo.
Duena Catherina: Who are you? Are you pirates or angels?
The Buffalo: Honest mariners, and hunters of leviathan, Madame.
Jonah: We seek an honest and good household.
Duena Maria: You have found one, gentlemen. But wouldn’t you be more comfortable at the waterfront establishments in Callao where your colleagues always gather?
Jonah: We are here not as a shore-leave, not because of coincidence or happenstance. We are here because it is meant that we be here. Our footsteps have been directed here.
Duena Maria: For what purpose, senor?
Jonah: To tell of oceanic revelations, to speak truth to the face of power, to bring good news.
Duena Maria: We try not to come, needlessly, to the attention of cruel and rapacious rulers. But this is such a place for your purpose. (She beckons to the rest of the sisters. They bring trays with glasses of chicha. The Buffalo, Jonah drink with thirst.)
Duena Maria: (to Jonah) What are you called, senor?
Jonah: I am Jonah.
Duena Maria: An ill-omened name for a mariner.
Jonah: A joyous name for a man.
Duena Catherina (to The Buffalo) And you, senor?
The Buffalo: I am known as The Buffalo.
Duena Maria: Such quaint names you Americanos go by. Will you both be staying with us.
The Buffalo: My shipmate will. But I must return to the ‘Rachel.’
Duena Catherina: Well finish your chicha, and be at your ease Senor Buffalo.
(Duena Maria and Jonah go to an alcove at stage left. Jonah in a practiced seamen-like way hangs his simple, sailor’s hammock, as he talks and begins romancing Duena Maria.)
Duena Catherina: (to The Buffalo) Who is your friend? What manner of man is he?
The Buffalo: He is the only survivor of the Nantucket Whale-Ship ‘Pequod,’ which was stove-in and sunk by a great, white, Spermaceti Whale. He is a prophet, one who brings oceanic revelations.
I am of the crew of the ‘Rachel,’ another Nantucket Whale-ship. A boat with the Captain’s son was destroyed in combat with this same great, white whale. We searched for the missing for over a week. We never found a trace of ‘em. But we found him.
He told us when he was a crew-member of the ‘Pequod’ he was known as Ishmael. But, Ishmael, died with the rest of the crew of the ‘Pequod,’ when she went down, and like Jonah, he is directed by a power greater than the natural human to this your Ninevah of Lima.
At first my shipmates wanted to cast him overboard. But then he had a wonderful ascendancy with them.
When the grief-sickened Captain finally called off his futile search, we were bound for Callao. And Jonah was always bound for this infamous city of Lima, and this hospitable Golden Inn.
Duena Catherina: How did he know of the Golden Inn?
The Buffalo: The same way he knows of all his revelations and prophecies.
The crew insisted I come with him to ensure he found a safe-harbor, to make sure he wasn’t left destitute, to make sure his holiness was recognized and to give you this.
(Buffalo places in Duena Catherina’s hand a sack of gold coins)
He insisted on leaving with nothing more than the shoes on his feet, the clothes on his back, and his hammock. The crew collected this for his board and lodging and anything else he may need.
Duena Catherina: We’re honored to receive this holiness. This is not necessary. (attempts to return sack of gold)
Buffalo: (Takes hold of Duena Catherina’s hand and closes it over sack of gold coins.) Please take it. (drains his glass of chicha). I go back into the storm. (exits).
Scene 2
(The thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn, overlooking Lima. It’s one saint’s eve. Jonah, Don Pedro, Don Sebastian, the seven sisters and other dons and duenas are smoking aromatic herbs, and drinking chicha. Don Sebastian, an older, Incan noble is finishing a story to appreciative laughter and mirth.)
Don Pedro:(he is the younger counterpart of Don Sebastian)(to Jonah) Senor Mariner tell us of your travels, the voyage that brings you to this our Golden Inn.
Jonah: (Pauses) It is a very long story. But it begins with a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so-called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This story, which I begin with, is the secret part of the tragedy which I in the coarse of time will narrate.
As my late ship, ‘Pequod,’ was rounding the southern tip of Africa, on the way to the Pacific Ocean, we encountered the Town-Ho, yet another Whaling Ship of Nantucket. It was manned mainly by Polynesians. But during the ensuing Gam, the social call between the ships, one of three confederate white seamen told this story to Tashtego – the Wampanoug harpooner on the ‘Pequod.’
Duena Maria: Wampanougs? We know so little of our indigenous brothers and sisters of the norte. Tell us of the Wampanougs.
Jonah: Suffice it to say, Madame, that the Wampanougs were hunters of leviathan long before European ships visited the shores of these, our Americas.
This story was communicated to Tashtego only after he agreed to abide by Romish injunctions of secrecy. But the following night Tashtego spoke and rambled in his sleep in the forecastle, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.
So potent an influence did this story have on the seamen who heard it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter that they kept the secret among themselves and it was never revealed to any of the ship’s officers. This story never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates.
Interweaving in its proper place this dark thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now begin to put on lasting record.
Scene 1
At the Golden Inn
Just as the Moby Dick world is a relentlessly male world, the Golden Inn is a relentlessly female place. It is also an Incan place. It is an Incan Temple for the goddesses, the female mysteries. It is a temple to the wild, entheogenic, bacchus mysteries. And there is no contradiction in the fact that the Golden Inn is a chicha or corn beer brewery/pub/ live-music venue/urban club.
Chicha, (which means spit in Spanish), is fermented by the saliva of women. The sacred chicha was fermented and brewed by women chosen by the mystery. They prepared the sacred chicha for the Incan royalty. The seven sisters of the Golden Inn are these women.
The curtain opens with the seven sisters on the Golden Inn’s stage. Outside a tropical, thunder storm rages. The sisters are singing, drumming, and opening sacred space. Their song is also about facing into the storm, facing into the mystery. In the moment when the song, drumming, and dance ends there is a strong, rhythmic knocking on a strong, wooden, speak-easy door that has a metal slit at eye level.
Duena Maria goes to the door, opens the metal slit on the door to see who is on the other side of the door. There is a long pause. Duena Maria steps back as she opens the door to rain-drenched Jonah/Ishmael and The Buffalo/Steelkilt. They enter. The Buffalo is a young, bearded Nordic Giant. Jonah is older, dark, smaller. They both have the fitness and athleticism that would be expected of 19th Century whalers. Jonah carries a small, canvas duffel bag.
Duena Maria and Duena Catherina help them get their wet foul weather gear off. They bring towels and help them dry themselves. Duena Maria has almost a sister-like resemblence to Jonah, Duena Catherina has a sister-like resemblence to The Buffalo.
Duena Catherina: Who are you? Are you pirates or angels?
The Buffalo: Honest mariners, and hunters of leviathan, Madame.
Jonah: We seek an honest and good household.
Duena Maria: You have found one, gentlemen. But wouldn’t you be more comfortable at the waterfront establishments in Callao where your colleagues always gather?
Jonah: We are here not as a shore-leave, not because of coincidence or happenstance. We are here because it is meant that we be here. Our footsteps have been directed here.
Duena Maria: For what purpose, senor?
Jonah: To tell of oceanic revelations, to speak truth to the face of power, to bring good news.
Duena Maria: We try not to come, needlessly, to the attention of cruel and rapacious rulers. But this is such a place for your purpose. (She beckons to the rest of the sisters. They bring trays with glasses of chicha. The Buffalo, Jonah drink with thirst.)
Duena Maria: (to Jonah) What are you called, senor?
Jonah: I am Jonah.
Duena Maria: An ill-omened name for a mariner.
Jonah: A joyous name for a man.
Duena Catherina (to The Buffalo) And you, senor?
The Buffalo: I am known as The Buffalo.
Duena Maria: Such quaint names you Americanos go by. Will you both be staying with us.
The Buffalo: My shipmate will. But I must return to the ‘Rachel.’
Duena Catherina: Well finish your chicha, and be at your ease Senor Buffalo.
(Duena Maria and Jonah go to an alcove at stage left. Jonah in a practiced seamen-like way hangs his simple, sailor’s hammock, as he talks and begins romancing Duena Maria.)
Duena Catherina: (to The Buffalo) Who is your friend? What manner of man is he?
The Buffalo: He is the only survivor of the Nantucket Whale-Ship ‘Pequod,’ which was stove-in and sunk by a great, white, Spermaceti Whale. He is a prophet, one who brings oceanic revelations.
I am of the crew of the ‘Rachel,’ another Nantucket Whale-ship. A boat with the Captain’s son was destroyed in combat with this same great, white whale. We searched for the missing for over a week. We never found a trace of ‘em. But we found him.
He told us when he was a crew-member of the ‘Pequod’ he was known as Ishmael. But, Ishmael, died with the rest of the crew of the ‘Pequod,’ when she went down, and like Jonah, he is directed by a power greater than the natural human to this your Ninevah of Lima.
At first my shipmates wanted to cast him overboard. But then he had a wonderful ascendancy with them.
When the grief-sickened Captain finally called off his futile search, we were bound for Callao. And Jonah was always bound for this infamous city of Lima, and this hospitable Golden Inn.
Duena Catherina: How did he know of the Golden Inn?
The Buffalo: The same way he knows of all his revelations and prophecies.
The crew insisted I come with him to ensure he found a safe-harbor, to make sure he wasn’t left destitute, to make sure his holiness was recognized and to give you this.
(Buffalo places in Duena Catherina’s hand a sack of gold coins)
He insisted on leaving with nothing more than the shoes on his feet, the clothes on his back, and his hammock. The crew collected this for his board and lodging and anything else he may need.
Duena Catherina: We’re honored to receive this holiness. This is not necessary. (attempts to return sack of gold)
Buffalo: (Takes hold of Duena Catherina’s hand and closes it over sack of gold coins.) Please take it. (drains his glass of chicha). I go back into the storm. (exits).
Scene 2
(The thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden Inn, overlooking Lima. It’s one saint’s eve. Jonah, Don Pedro, Don Sebastian, the seven sisters and other dons and duenas are smoking aromatic herbs, and drinking chicha. Don Sebastian, an older, Incan noble is finishing a story to appreciative laughter and mirth.)
Don Pedro:(he is the younger counterpart of Don Sebastian)(to Jonah) Senor Mariner tell us of your travels, the voyage that brings you to this our Golden Inn.
Jonah: (Pauses) It is a very long story. But it begins with a certain wondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so-called judgments of God which at times are said to overtake some men. This story, which I begin with, is the secret part of the tragedy which I in the coarse of time will narrate.
As my late ship, ‘Pequod,’ was rounding the southern tip of Africa, on the way to the Pacific Ocean, we encountered the Town-Ho, yet another Whaling Ship of Nantucket. It was manned mainly by Polynesians. But during the ensuing Gam, the social call between the ships, one of three confederate white seamen told this story to Tashtego – the Wampanoug harpooner on the ‘Pequod.’
Duena Maria: Wampanougs? We know so little of our indigenous brothers and sisters of the norte. Tell us of the Wampanougs.
Jonah: Suffice it to say, Madame, that the Wampanougs were hunters of leviathan long before European ships visited the shores of these, our Americas.
This story was communicated to Tashtego only after he agreed to abide by Romish injunctions of secrecy. But the following night Tashtego spoke and rambled in his sleep in the forecastle, and revealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could not well withhold the rest.
So potent an influence did this story have on the seamen who heard it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were they governed in this matter that they kept the secret among themselves and it was never revealed to any of the ship’s officers. This story never reached the ears of Captain Ahab or his mates.
Interweaving in its proper place this dark thread with the story as publicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now begin to put on lasting record.
