The living room in CHIEF GOODTIME’S mansion in that part of town as still as death; houses with faces white and dull like gravestones. This living room is the size of a country. (GOODTIME, whose diminutive figure has been well-rounded by the long-term effects of affluence, is perched on the edge of his seat on the gilt-edged couch facing this thing that is too monstrous to be a television; he is watching the chaos of numbers and heads scattered across the screen as the results of the election are being collated. SMALLIE, the burly manservant about to burst out of his ill-fitting suit, is standing behind the couch, hands behind his back, eyes on the screen, watching the proceedings with less interest and animation than his master.)
GOODTIME: (hops to his feet, small fists bunched): Smallie! Do you see what I am seeing?!
SMALLIE (dully): No sir, I do not see what you’re seeing.
GOODTIME: Then open your bloody eyes and look!
SMALLIE: Sir, my eyes are open and bleeding from looking at the sore for too long.
GOODTIME (turns to look at him): Where is the sore?
SMALLIE (nods at the screen): There, sir. An open sore for all to see.
GOODTIME: Oh, I see that the small-small pieces of madness have climbed up into your head again, and blinded you; so, no matter how hard you try, you cannot see what I’m seeing.
SMALLIE: Sir, I’m not even trying, because we could be looking at the same thing and seeing two different things.
GOODTIME: See, if you see a sore, it is inside your eyes, trust me, a bloody weeping sore, because you never see anything good in anything… Me, I see our big victory rushing towards us like an avalanche. So maybe if you closed that basket mouth of yours and opened the good part of your eye you would see it, too…
SMALLIE: Sir, even if I had a third eye, I don’t think I would.
GOODTIME (takes off his glasses): Try four eyes… Take…
SMALLIE (smiling): My two eyes are fine, sir.
GOODTIME: Ah, maybe it is your head that isn’t then.
SMALLIE: My head is also sitting fine on my neck, sir.
GOODTIME: With the way you’re going, it would soon be taken off for good. Because if you cannot see this great victory before us, which is the beginning of the birth of a new country, then it would be that either your eyes, head, or something in your body needs repair.
SMALLIE (in low voice): Maybe it is the stomach, sir; hunger has been known to cause blindness in lowly people.
GOODTIME (laughs): You, you call yourself a lowly person? You live in this big mansion and earn a salary as big as your mouth, and you call yourself a lowly person?
SMALLIE (solemnly): When you stretch that amount you call a ‘big salary’ over a big family and their bigger problems, in this economy, it becomes thin and useless. And, sir, I don’t live in a big mansion, I work in it. I work for you, sir, a person more highly placed than me, far, far up, on society’s ladder – I am a lowly person… So I cannot see what you see while you’re up there – I’m down here at the bottom, too far down. Forgive me if I cannot see with your rose-tinted eyes, sir. (Keeps his eyes to the ground.)
GOODTIME (sighs): So, tell me, what do you see then?
SMALLIE (looks up): Where?
GOODTIME: I don’t know, anywhere, in the world! What, what do you see when you look at the world?
SMALLIE (snorts): People like me are too small inside the world to see anything in it, and even if we did, we’re too tiny for our worldview to matter; nobody sees us, the world doesn’t see us, and we don’t see it, that is the order of the world.
GOODTIME: That is nonsense. I see you here in front of me. I see you every day.
SMALLIE: Do you, sir? Or do you just see the man that does things for you to make life softer for you in the world?
GOODTIME (laughs): You think too highly of your worth. You don’t make life softer for me, it is my money that softens my living.
SMALLIE: I am your money in a suit, sir.
GOODTIME: Eh-hen! See?! So, you cannot claim that I don’t see you; I put you in that suit, didn’t I?
SMALLIE: Your money did; no man can put another man in his pocket without the power that money gives him.
GOODTIME: Do you feel pocketed?
SMALLIE: I’m in a suit at your beck and call, how do you think I feel?
GOODTIME (shrugs shoulders): I don’t know, you’re the one in the suit, do you feel as if it is a prison, this suit?
SMALLIE: I feel as if you only see me because I am in the suit that you put me in, whenever your command puts me in front of your eyes… But when I am not in the suit I am nothing to you, like air, nothing. Unseen. If I passed you in the street, you wouldn’t know it was me.
GOODTIME (mouth twisted in irritation): All this talk of not being seen is just rubbish, an excuse to fit into the mold of ‘victim’ that you people like to fold yourselves into to attract pity, because of the low station that the circumstances of your birth put you in, which is actually Fate’s fault, not the fault of the wealthy people your frustrations are pointed at.
SMALLIE: Yes, Fate put us there. But who has kept us there?
GOODTIME: Anybody that remains there remains there of his own will, of his own doing! You, you have pulled yourself up out of it and made something of yourself, haven’t you?
SMALLIE: Am I something?
GOODTIME: Look at you! Are you?!
SMALLIE: Tell me, am I? Am I something to you?
GOODTIME (wildly exasperated): What does it matter what you are to me? Whatever you have made of yourself is for yourself! It is not for me. Lord! What is this?! Am I the cause of your problem?! I only asked you what you see in the world. And I’m being accused of class blindness. Unfair! Totally unfair.
SMALLIE (quietly): Are you now the victim then, sir?
GOODTIME: I am nothing! Nothing! I am not blind! Get out of my sight! (SMALLIE turns to leave. GOODTIME stops him; drops his voice.) Come, man. See, I am sorry… And, I see you. I do. You are in front of me every day! – I, see, you.
SMALLIE (in a small voice): And when I am not in front of you?
GOODTIME (sighs): Then you are not in front of me, Smallie, you are not in front of me.
SMALLIE (smirks): And you stop seeing me. I become nothing. Until you need something. Then you see the man that gets it done.
GOODTIME (throws hands up in exasperation): Enough of all this nonsense of not being seen and being nothing! I see you and that’s it; whether you feel seen or not, I see! And all I am asking, simply, is what do you see on this screen if you don’t see what I am seeing?
SMALLIE: Ok, I see the owners of the country doing magic with numbers to keep their kind in control of the wealth of the country and keep it out of the reach of the rest of us.
GOODTIME (sits, speaking slowly): Magic, you say.
SMALLIE: Yes, sir, magic.
GOODTIME: Ah, show me.
SMALLIE: I’m not the magician; they are. Watch.
GOODTIME (looks at the screen): Magic, eh?
SMALLIE: Yes, yes, government magic, bending numbers to fit the pockets of the highly-placed, to keep them perpetually in the place of power, over us.
GOODTIME (laughs): You know nothing about politics, you small ignorant man. Even with all the books you claim to have eaten and digested, you know nothing. Oh you know nothing of the world, my man. You think these people have that much power?
SMALLIE: You don’t think they do because you’re not the one they’re holding the power over; you’re not the one feeling the force of the power, pressing down. The insulation of aristocracy affords you the luxury of being oblivious to the kind of power that the political class has over the masses; that is the only reason why you would ask such a question.
GOODTIME: Come on, you’re being a naïve little man; politics isn’t about power, my man, not that kind of oppressive power.
SMALLIE: What is it about then? To them.
GOODTIME: Service! Service! That is what it is!
SMALLIE (chuckles): I’m the naïve little man? (Shrugs.) Ok, service, you say; service to who?
GOODTIME: To my fat yellow buttocks… Of course, it is service to the people, you fool!
SMALLIE: You really do believe that these people are killing each other to get to the top of the food chain to serve those of us at the bottom? (Drops voice.) The only serving that is happening, and has been happening for decades, is our flesh being served on gold platters at their big-man banquets.
GOODTIME (squints eyes): You fancy yourself to be some kind of poet, don’t you? But do you know what you really are? A disturbed man who grows madman theories in his chaotic head and harvests them with sweet-scented flowery words to distract from the stench of his stupidity… You really do think that the people who would do and spend anything to get to a position of service do not have your interest at heart?
SMALLIE: I know they don’t have it at heart, they might have it somewhere else, in their stomachs maybe, anywhere else but not at heart, where I can see it, feel it.
GOODTIME (waves at the screen): Because of what you think are a few little tricks with numbers?
SMALLIE: It is more than a few little tricks in a street show, sir. It is a grand performance.
GOODTIME: And that means they don’t care about you.
SMALLIE: If they did, they wouldn’t need tricks to bend numbers into the shapes they want. We would give them the numbers, of our own free will.
GOODTIME: To be fair, from interacting with your lot over the years, I have come to realize that you people wouldn’t know the right choice for you if it was pressed to your nose.
SMALLIE: So, based on this assumption, this ‘right’ choice should be determined for us by the privileged few; the same few who have our necks under their fancy loafers.
GOODTIME: You want to make your own choices? Go ahead, let’s see how it works out. Make your choices…
SMALLIE: We do, every four years. What we want is for them to let the choices we make live, and not be choked to death by the weeds of their corrupt–
GOODTIME: (cuts him off and turns back to face the screen): About that, wait… (Holds a finger up.) Shhh, I think they’re about to announce it… They are, they are…
(After a lengthy stretch of winding words and numbers, the winner is announced. There is a brief moment of stillness before shouts break out all over the screen – shouts of joy, some of anger and protest, others of nothing… The shout in the living room is of elation; a bottle of champagne is kicked off a stool in excitement; SMALLIE looks at the shards of glass on the floor. GOODTIME jumps up and grabs him by the arms.)
GOODTIME: We won! We won! We won!
(SMALLIE grabs the smaller man’s shoulders and pushes him away. GOODTIME falls back over the arm of the couch, spills onto the floor, and lies there sprawled on top of the pieces of the broken bottle. He looks up at his manservant, stunned. The giant glares back at him. The world stops.
GOODTIME, wincing in pain, is struggling to his feet, red spots appearing through his white caftan, in the places where he has been cut. His face, too, is red, his eyes redder, flaming, burning with black things like hate, fury, murder… SMALLIE doesn’t flinch; there’s a smirk flitting on the corner of his mouth.)
GOODTIME (slowly, in a low, menacing tone): I see that the madness has finally eaten through the rest of your brain.
SMALLIE (smiling): It has. And it has cleared my eyes, for now, I see. I see that we will never win against you. But we will not lose either. (He begins to unbutton his suit jacket and take it off. He takes off the trousers and shirt, too.)
GOODTIME (laughing): He has gone mad! He is mad o! See, you will suffer. You haven’t seen anything yet. You think you have won? No, your suffering has just begun. Go. Go, and see what the world looks like out there.
(SMALLIE, with slow, measured steps, wearing a menacing smile that looks like an animal baring fangs, approaches GOODTIME, who is backing up with arms raised to shield his face, stepping on pieces of the broken bottle, wincing as they cut his feet; the couch stops his retreat, as he plonks into it. SMALLIE, now standing over the small man, towering, takes his legs and ties them together with the trousers, then he grabs the man’s hands and ties them behind his back with the jacket, securing the knots tight. There is no struggle from GOODTIME.)
GOODTIME (grinning): What are you going to do now, Goliath? Kill me? (Guffaws.) Do you think you can kill me? You think you can kill?
SMALLIE: No, I don’t think I can. No, I’m not going to kill you.
GOODTIME (laughing): Please do, please, my good friend. Kill me. Do it, dead man.
SMALLIE: You want an easy way out. But I want to show you what it feels like to be on the pointed side of power.
GOODTIME: Ha-ha! You know you want to kill me that is what you really want! What you have always wanted; I see it in your eyes every day, that is what I see when I see you. Yes, I see you, no matter what you think. And I see the thirst burning in your eyes. You want to know what a rich man’s blood tastes like – does it taste like gold? Or like piss? Ha-ha! Yes, you want to open my vein and drink my blood until you’re full. You want to cut me open and see what colour I am inside, if I’m black inside like you think I am… I am! Cut me! See for yourself! You’ll find the devil inside me, yes! And even Death could not kill the devil. Ha-ha.
SMALLIE: I know you want it to be my hands that will bring Death to you, but they won’t.
GOODTIME: What, are you afraid of killing as much as you are of dying? A dead man shouldn’t fear death. Because, whether you kill me or not, you are dead.
SMALLIE: You are the one who is afraid, sir, of not dying, not knowing what being close to death and not dying feels like. That is what I want to show you. What the lives of the many you don’t see look like every day, not dying, not living, just nothing…
(SMALLIE advances towards him.)
GOODTIME (squirming): Help! Heeeeeelp!
SMALLIE: Now you cry for help. We cry for help every day but the ears at the top are stones. Now you cry for help, but where will your help come from? From those that have cried for it all their lives? The sweet thing about big men crying for help is that they have built themselves countries as homes, out of reach of the dirty people they don’t want to see, so nobody can hear them when they cry… Look at how far the security post is from here; look at how far the quarters for the help are; the people that would have helped you are too far down to hear you, sir.
(SMALLIE bends his face into the whimpering man’s face, leering into it, then he shoves the shirt into the man’s shouting mouth, pushing it down the top of his throat and shutting him up. He sits on the couch beside the wriggling body, takes the remote control and turns off the TV.)
SMALLIE: There, your victory is dead. Oh, settle down, you will not die today, but neither will you win. There is no victory for you today, sir. Yes, we might never win against you, but we will not lose today. Today, it is you who loses. Look, look at me well – see? Now you see what I look like outside the suit, what I look like inside – black, like the devil, like you. See? You see now that we are the same? You see me now? See me as you. Now, you are me; that is what it was like to be inside that suit – hands tied, voice dead, powerless; a feather caught in an iron fist… Nothing.
(SMALLIE gets up and walks away without looking back. He walks out of the house. GOODTIME stops struggling; he lies still for a long time, staring at the dead screen, and tears start rolling down his cheeks…)
Olubunmi Familoni is a dramatist who has written plays for stage and for radio. His debut play, Every Single Day, was selected by the British Council for production as part of the Lagos Theatre Festival; his second play, Big Masquerades That Dance Naked, will be published this year. His works have appeared in Ake Review, Jalada Africa, Kikwetu Literary Journal, Bakwa Magazine, among other publications. He lives in Ibadan, Nigeria.