The Captain's Tiger

Athol Fugard

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9781559361644
• eBook ISBN: 9781559366885
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Drama
• Index: Literature

The Captain’s Tiger provides a glimpse of an author’s beginnings, that rare chance to witness the embryonic start of a great man’s life with all the shadows and light so much part of the writer’s landscape. Fugard catches us unawares in a story that is not all that it seems—just like life. —Pretoria News

In The Captain’s Tiger, Athol Fugard sets out as a young seafarer and writer to begin The Great Novel—the exciting tales of his mother, a young Afrikaner, and her escape from small-town life. But what he discovers on his travels is that the secret to great writing comes from the desperate need to tell the truth, and in turn he finds his voice as an author.

Subtitled a "Memoir for the Stage," the play is told both from the point of view of the twenty-year-old author who was the captain’s tiger—a glorified personal servant to the ship’s captain—and the author as his current-day self. This is a fascinating voyage, a writer’s pilgrimage, a whole painful process we are privy to. We witness his coming of age through author monologues, recreations of onboard conversations, letters written to his mother, imagined discourse, and dreams. Fugard has created a personal dramatic structure moving from present to past, from reality to reverie. One of the author’s most imaginative works, Fugard has created a world with imagery that is visual, visceral and poetic.

SCENE 1

The stage. A ship’s bell. The Author enters and strikes it eight times.

AUTHOR (To the audience): Eight bells. End of the watch.

Imagine you’re at the wheel of an old cargo ship steaming slowly across the Pacific. Its the deadman’s watch, midnight to four A.M., so the wheelhouse is dimly lit. In front of you is the illuminated face of the compass. You glance at it from time to time to check your course but mostly you’re just staring out into the darkness, watching the proud forward mast sweeping the stars as she rolls gently from side to side. Its a calm, clear night with a slight swell so an easy swing of the wheel is all that’s needed to keep hold your course. The sailor who is going to take over from you as helmsman is there at your side. You give him the compass bearing and he repeats it to make sure there is no mistake. You greet the officers and then head down to the galley for a mug of strong, hot tea, and because it’s that sort of night, you’ll sit out on deck, on one of the bollards maybe, and drink your tea and think your thoughts while the ship sails steadily on, the bows lifting and falling in a rhythm as seductive as those hips that gave you such a good time in the last port.

That is how I remember some of my nights on board the SS Graigaur. “Graigaur” . . . it’s a Welsh word. It means “rock of gold,” though by the time I joined her in 1952 she was starting to look more like a rock of rust.

One of the old tramp steamers, any cargo anywhere. A true wanderer of the seas.

My first sight of her was in Port Sudan harbor where she was taking on a cargo of salt for Japan. I knew absolutely nothing about ships so I thought she looked very impressive as I stood there on the quay side, watching the harbor crane dump avalanches of gleaming white crystals into her holds. In any case you can’t get to know a lady like her when she’s tied up with heavy mooring ropes in a stagnant harbor basin with hordes of shore workers crawling all over her. You need to be out on the open sea for that.

I got my chance a few days later when the last mooring rope was cast off and the tugs started to pull her away from her berth, swing her around and guide her toward the opening in the breakwater. The image that came to me then as I stood there on deck and which still seems so right to me, was of some ancient, blind leviathan, deep rumblings coming from her belly, as she nosed around clumsily looking for her escape, and when she found it, when she slipped past the breakwater and her bows dipped into the freedom of the open sea, I felt a thrill shiver through her rusty old hulk.

The voyage had begun.

I was twenty years old.

SCENE 2

Number Four hatch of the SS Graigaur; a small folding card table, box to sit on, stack of paper, fountain pen and ink. The Tiger writes a letter to his mother.

TIGER:

SS Graigaur

Somewhere in the Red Sea

August 17th, 1952

Dear Mom,

I sincerely hope you didn’t faint when you read the address at the top of this letter. It is not a joke. I am writing to you now aboard the steamship Graigaur which is headed for Japan.

Just when I thought my only hope of getting out of Port Sudan was to stow away on one of the ships headed for England, I met Captain Hersee in the bar of the Red Sea Hotel. We started talking and when he heard about my predicament he offered to take me on board his ship as a supernumerary. That means I get a shilling a month, a comfortable bunk in the sick bay and three whopping good meals a day in return for which I have to look after the captain—clean his cabin, make his bed, do his washing, serve him his food . . . a sort of glorified servant. Tell Dad that in sailors’ jargon I am what is known as the Captain’s Tiger. I think we are going to get on very well. I’ve only been on the ship a couple of days so I don’t really know yet about the rest of the gang. The officers are white and the sailors a real bag of liquorice-all-sorts . . . black, brown and yellow.

But the important news, Mom, is that apart from seeing the world, this is my chance to keep the promise I made you, and settle down at last to serious writing. I’m ready for it now. No more short stories and poems—I’m going for the big one, a novel à la Tolstoy, and its going to be about a beautiful young Afrikaner girl in a white dress in a small Karoo town. Recognize her? That’s right! Its the photograph of you when you were a young girl that’s hanging in your bedroom. That is going to be my inspiration. I’m going to weave together all the stories you’ve told me about your life and what you wanted to do with it, only this time all those dreams you had are going to come true. When I finish this letter—I’m writing it on deck outside the sick bay, it’s as hot as hell, Mom—I’m going to settle down to my first session.

I’ll be posting this letter in Aden. After that the next port of call is Colombo, the capital city of Ceylon. Tell Dad to get a map, a red pencil and a ruler, and to draw straight lines joining up all the places I mention in my letters. That way he can follow me on all my travels and adventures. It will give him something to do. How is he, by the way?

So there, Mom. First Africa, now the world! The great adventure continues.

Your ever-loving son,
The Captains Tiger

(Folds his letter and puts it in an envelope which he addresses. After that he prepares, with great deliberation, for his first session of writing . . . filling the fountain pen, organizing the paper, moving his chair to a different side of the table etc., etc. While he is doing all this, Donkeyman appears on deck. He is a big, fierce-featured, black man, bare-chested and wearing short trousers and sandals, his body gleaming with sweat. He has just come up from the engine room and is wiping his hands on an oil-stained rag. Tiger tries a smile and a timid greeting. He gets no response and returns, self-consciously, to his writing. A title page is written with a flourish. A second page is given a number and a chapter heading. Donkeyman watches him for a few seconds then leaves.

With eyes closed, pen poised, Tiger tries to recall as accurately as possible the photograph of his mother as a young girl.)

TIGER: All in white . . . everything was white . . . floppy sort of hat . . . with a broad brim . . . dress almost down to her ankles . . . a little necklace of beads around her throat . . . (Betty appears. She is as he describes her. She stands expectantly still, posed for the camera) . . . white gloves in one hand, a book in the other . . . old-fashioned shoes with bu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Production History
• Characters
• Contents
• SCENE 1
• GLOSSARY
• About the Author